You're Coming Home!

It is a little ridiculous how excited I am to see you.  It's been almost a year since I've seen you, and although that has felt like a really long time, it also has gone be so fast.  A year is 1/20th of both of our lives.  I don't know if that seems long or short to you when I put it like that, but to me, I can't fathom how that much time has already gone by.

I don't know if you feel like you've changed a lot since high school.  A lot of the people I talk to seem to think that they have changed a ton since their high school days.  For me, I know there has been some personal growth and changing, but a lot of me still feels pretty similar.  And I feel like you are in the same boat.  Maybe this is just giving away how much I don't get a chance to talk to you anymore, but I thing we already had it kinda figured out back in high school, and college was just a chance to see that. Regardless of how much we have or haven't changed as people, our lives have definitely taken us to different experiences in the last year.  

Since last Christmas, you've gotten to experience your co-op and learn how much free time you have with a 9-to-5.  You started dating Brandon, a mysterious stranger who can cream me at scramble with friends.  You lived in, and hopefully got to explore, a new place.  You probably have done many many more things that I don't know about or can't remember since you've been on the other side of the country.

For me, I've done somewhat similar things in completely different ways.  I worked as a Head TA this summer, and learned that not all jobs are 9-to-5s.  I also started dating someone you've never met in person, though I don't know how good he is at scramble.  I moved away from home and really haven't looked back.  My life in Seattle kind of consumes my time and I almost never go home to visit my family.

I can't wait to hear more about all of the things you've done in person.  And to get to tell you more about mine (including some of the most recent things I'm attempting).  I hope you have a safe flight tomorrow.  And I hope I get to see you really really soon.  We'll make delicious things to eat, play trivial pursuit, play with your pets, and you can meet all of the people my mom has populated the house with to fill her empty nest.

This break is going to be awesome.

Love you!
- Ry

A Post with Such Disconnected Topics that I can't Think of an Appropriate Title. (I Blame the Coldpocalypse.)

I am sick. Yes, it is just a cold, but it is the kind of cold that caused me to spend the entire day yesterday trying to achieve the ability to breathe out of both nostrils (a skill I apparently take for granted on most days) and to refer to it to my brother as the “coldpocalypse”.

It’s been awhile since I had a cold, but I realized that my thirst for knowledge and basically trying to live life to its fullest is always at its highest when I’m sick. Home with a migraine? Spend the entire day reading even though it makes your head feel worse. Unable to breathe comfortably? Attempt a logic puzzle written by Einstein he said 98% of people wouldn’t be able to solve. [It was the German who lives in the green house, drinks coffee, and smokes Prince that owned the fish.] Highly contagious? Find the pull of a nice day irresistible. Am I alone in this? It seems like a weird quirk…

Other than the cold, things are going pretty well. My landlord fixed our oven this week, so on Thursday I roasted potatoes for the first time in months and was reminded of how much I freaking love roasted potatoes. I also finally got moved into the bioengineering department a couple of weeks ago, though it’s not quite what I was expecting. Part of that is because “no one has time” to devote to training me and supervising me. (Can you tell I find that to be a bullshit excuse?) I think most of it is that they thought they had a reasonable project for me to do on my own, and then once I actually started doing it I found out they were missing about half the necessary parts to complete said project and had lost all of the manuals I needed. Fortunately, after a completely awful and needlessly long meeting with the condescending director of bioengineering, he assigned me to a very competent, nice, busy, and somewhat frenzied Asian lady who has been a blessing. Unfortunately once I start the experiment she wants me to do I’ll have to come in on weekends. Fortunately that probably means I get to leave a little early during the week.

Last week a couple of guys from the Cornell alumni association of “the distinguished class of ‘74” took all of the co-ops in the Boston area out to dinner. I had calamari as an appetizer and salmon with potatoes and vegetables as a main dish and pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. (All of which were delicious and a nice departure of my usual “I’ll just throw whatever vegetables I have in the microwave and/or eat toast.”) I think it ended up being like 40 bucks per person and I didn’t have to pay a thing. The guys were also really nice, as were the other co-ops, and it was nice to have something to go to after work. I like Boston, as a whole, but the past few months have gotten pretty lonely at times, so this dinner was a nice departure from what has become mundane. It also was sort of eye-opening to see that guys who went to school together 42 years ago, who met freshman year, had stayed friends all this time. They basically told us that Cornellians are a special breed, and you don’t stop being one after you leave. It felt like we were all a part of this huge family. In the words of my mom, “and that’s why we pay the big bucks.”

Girl, I wish you would let yourself spend a few hours doing nothing and not feel so guilty about it. People are not designed to be productive every waking moment! If you ask me (which you didn’t but I’m going to tell you anyway), you’ve been working too hard for too long and finally your brain is deciding to just do what it needs to do. You know how if you consistently don’t get enough sleep, eventually your body just goes whomp and you fall asleep with your shoes on and don’t wake up for four hours? Your brain is doing that. Who cares if you don’t touch a musical instrument or find an amazing park? Apparently you need pop-nerd-culture ramblings. It’s like dudes and steak, or women and chocolate, or hipsters and vinyl: a necessity. Don’t fight it.

I’ve been thinking about that time you decided to “explicitly introduce” Tristan on the blog, and now that Brandon and I have been dating for a bit it seems appropriate for me to do the same. I mentioned him last time, but pretty briefly. He’s a fellow ChemE co-op, hails from Disneyland (well, Anaheim, but that’s where Disneyland is), and is now known as “the pie king” among the other co-ops at his site. If a friend or even a mild acquaintance asked him for a favor he’s the type of person who would do it without thinking twice, no questions asked. He hates being late, cuts his own hair, uses Sriracha liberally, and his favorite piece of clothing is the sweatpants I made him buy because he kept complaining about being cold. He loves puns as much as I love alliteration. He has trouble articulating himself sometimes, and he recommends good books (i.e. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, possibly the reason I can’t stop reading despite the dull ache in my head). He’s a pretty cool kid, even though a little (very competitive) part of me hates that he pretty much always beats me at Scramble with Friends. (I keep telling myself I would hate it even more if he let me win, but I'm still not convinced.)

Anyway I hope your quarter (totally just typed semester and deleted it) is going well! Classes and TAing and hanging out with people and all that jazz. It’s almost thanksgiving, which means you’re in the homestretch. Happy birthday! (In case I forget to mention it on the actual day.) Only one more month until I’m home! I was talking to my mom on the phone today and she said if your house of full of mysterious Asian men you are more than welcome to stay at ours. J

Much love,

Lola

Also I found this quote today: "A hug is like a boomerang, you get it back right away." Bil Keane

Living Week to Week

I think I have taken the suggestion of "living in the moment" in the wrong direction. Ever since fall quarter started, I have been non-stop living in the moment. And by that, I mean I have to ignore everything else I need to do, to focus on just the task I'm currently trying to handle, without going insane.

 Every Monday, I find out the things I need to accomplish that week, and every Saturday, I flop onto my bed and ignore the world. Currently, that is what I am doing. Does it matter that I have a midterm on Monday that I haven't studied at all for, homework due next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday that I haven't even looked at? Does it matter that I have to grade 20 assignments before Monday, and then will spend the rest of my Monday grading midterms? Nope. It is personal-time-with-my-bed day.  I can start all of that stuff late tonight and tomorrow.

Maybe if I were devoting my efforts towards school right now, it would mean that my average bedtime of 2:00 am could actually move more towards midnight, but I can't seem to make myself give up these precious hours.  Sometimes, that seems weird to me since I never seem to accomplish anything during this time.  I flock from internet site to internet site and dully immerse myself in pop-nerd-culture ramblings, when instead I could be applying myself to finding the best park near my house.  Or actually picking up a musical instrument this quarter.  Or any number of things.  You think I should be more productive and feel like I'm contributing to my life?  Yeah?  Well, good luck trying to convine my subconscious, cause so do I.

Anyways, I just wanted to check in with you and mention my lack of anything interesting going on with my life.  Just lots of school, prepping for exams, grading, and hunting for an internship for next summer.  I think I'm going to try and get out of Seattle this time.  As much as I love it, I think I need new scenery for a while.

Actually, that reminds me of something semi-interesting that has been preoccupying my brain cells lately.  I think I'm going to try to work as an APM for Google.  What's an APM you say?  Well, that acronym stands for Associate Product Manager, and basically means "make all of the things work".  Or at least, that seems to be what it means according to the people I have talked to.  I've known for a while that I want to try interning as a Product/Program Manager for a while.  Those are the people who make the connections between the engineers and the testers and the lawyers and the users and the bosses all make sense.  So some company would hand me a project (as an intern!) and say... okay, we need it to look like this in three months.  Make it happen.  

Part of me is terrified by that idea, but part of me is completely intrigued.  I talked to one of the TAs this quarter who did the APM program at Google last summer, and what she had to say convinced me that this is something I need to attempt.  Even though Google only hires about 20-25 APM interns every year, and last year only 2 of those were from public schools, and even though I feel completely inadequate in my technical abilities as of yet, I kind of want to apply and see just how far down the interviewing process I get.  The interview process alone is pretty scary.  They ask the kinds of questions like "how many lightbulbs does America use every year?" and "if you could make any product ever, what would it be? how would you break that down?  where would you get funding? how would you advertise?" and other such open ended questions.  This kind of thought process seems exciting to me, but I don't know if I have the passion yet to really land this kind of job.  I do intend to dip my toe in the water and see what is out there though.  And who knows?  The very worst that could happen is that I don't get it.

So, now you're semi-caught up with my stream of consciousness.  I hope you are doing well, and that you enjoy your visit to Ithaca.  I can't wait for December to roll around and for our baking/movie-viewing/random adventure hangouts.  I can hardly believe this quarter is half over as is.

Love you,
Ry

"What Happened to the Girl Who Got Everything She Ever Wanted?" "She Overanalyzed the Poop Out of It."

In my last post I was roughly halfway through my summer semester. My biggest concerns were a roadtrip with my grandpa to Niagara Falls, finals, and organic chemistry lab.

My, how times have changed.

I now have been working at Shire Pharmaceuticals for almost six weeks. I have gone from, “what’s a micropipette?” to, “the phage display titering failed last week because our tetracycline was in culture too long.” I can also identify “E. coli smell” (and yes, that is a thing.) The job is not exactly chemical engineering, it’s more like straight up biology, but I’m learning a lot and the group I’m in is full of genuinely fantastic people. I now live in Cambridge, about halfway between MIT and Harvard. I am kitty-corner from both a Rite-Aid and a Whole Foods, and it takes about 12 minutes to walk to the subway.

I also started dating someone almost two months ago, and our compatibly weird senses of humor are still compatible (and, as always, weird).

I have had two visitors to Boston (three if you count when Joe came here with me), took one roadtrip to Pennsylvania (where the boyfriend and the best friend are on their co-ops), and for the future I have planned three trips to NYC, one trip to Ithaca, one more trip to Pennsylvania, and two trips to California.

In a nutshell here are the life goals I have for myself: go to a good college (check), have an awesome, supportive best friend (this role is filled by about 5 people simultaneously, so a resounding check), have a healthy happy relationship (check), work for a biopharmaceuticals company (check), have wonderfully funny and intelligent coworkers I’m excited to see every day (check), live in/near Boston (check), finally get a smartphone (check), have enough money for spontaneous trips/shopping sprees/coffee runs (check).

Basically, if I sat down and listed all of the things I wanted to do by the time I was 21, I have already achieved them. (Crushed that deadline by about two years…)

And yet I haven’t been that happy the past few weeks, and I finally figured out why. I, Lola, am a huge worrywart.

Do I really want to work in pharmaceuticals? I’m not getting to do engineering right now, what if I don’t like the engineering? Or what if I’d like it more and I’m not getting a chance to do it? What if I don’t take [X Class] that would be oh-so-crucial to getting a job at [Y Company] when I graduate? What if I never live in the same state as my parents again? What if I’m not married before I’m thirty? What if I have kids? What if I have to give up career stuff for family stuff? What if I have to give up family stuff for career stuff? What if I go into the wrong industry?  WHAT IF I DIE ALONE AND MY 14 CATS DON’T EVEN WANT ME? AAHHHHHHH *explodes*

I have been in this horrible worrywart spiral of thinking of every possible thing in my life that I have no effect over and making it seem like it is the worst possible thing ever. But I’m finally starting to get over it.

One of my favorite shows is The Big C (I made you watch a season…) and one of my favorite parts is when Cathy (woman who finds out she has about a year to live) realizes “I don’t need to worry about raising Adam (her son), he will be raised.”

I don’t need to worry about getting married or having kids or choosing the perfect career, because I don’t know what “perfect” is for any of those things, or if it even exists, and I’m not in a position to influence any of them right now. They're most likely just going to happen when it's time. I’m 19, should I really be worried about work/life balance? I can worry about that in 10-15 years! Which is literally 50% of my current amount of life.

Long story short, my life is pretty damn awesome, and all of my problems are in my mind. Hopefully now that I’ve made this fabulous realization I can start focusing more on the A and the E of my CARE. (That stuck with me from when we talked about it with your mom… I have a tendency to let my A and E get a little neglected.) 

This post is a bit on the short side considering how long I’ve been absent and how much has been going on. I feel like I’m at the point where there’s so much to say I have nothing to say… I hope your first week of classes went well! It’s kind of crazy (and liberating) to not have to worry about midterms and problem sets and lab reports and bad TAs and orchestra rehearsals… Who am I and why did all my problems turn into fictitious ones?

I’d love to catch up sometime in the next month or so… Hopefully I’ll write again before then, but I should be home on December 18^th, and I better see you shortly thereafter… or else. (Plus we have an end of the world party to plan.)

Much love,

Lola

Summertime

And the living is easier. Congratulations on finishing your semester! You are probably at this moment off in Boston about to start your Co-op and new adventures for the next few months. Firstly, I am so excited for you to explore Boston. You should catalog the best pizza places and if it as cool of a city as I think it is, we can wander it together someday. Secondly, by you starting this new chapter it has made me realize just how much closer we are to being reunited! That makes me very happy. Thirdly, go kick butt. Be as awesome as you are and learn tons of really cool things. I hope this is a really good experience for you. Now for some send off reading material, I shall recount some of my summer adventures for you.

The last time you heard from me, I was settling into my house with boxes strewn across my room and nothing put in a proper place. At that time my room was still white with a large hole in the wall, I owned neither sheets nor a laundry basket, and I owned about half as many books as I currently do. Much has changed about my surroundings since then, though most of the improvements have happened at a snail's pace. My room is now a pretty blue, the wall has been patched (including the large chunk of wall I managed to tear out while removing an outlet cover), and many items that I needed have been acquired. Along with those items came a slough of things that I didn't *need*, but have loved getting nonetheless. My bookshelf is now completely full with even some books spilling over onto the dining room bookshelf. I have yet to read many of the books I've bought this summer, but I'm looking forward to perusing them all before the school year starts and I will no longer have time for such things. My most recent acquisitions are probably the best of them all though, two pristine I-SPY books that I read through the very day I got them. Now I just need to collect the Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein books and I will be set.

There have been improvements happening around my house as well. Bathrooms have been painted, dishes and curtains purchased, and proper couches moved in. I also tore up a strip of grass outside the front of our house and planted some more attractive plants instead. You should have seen the look on the neighbors' faces. I kid you not, on the day I was digging up the grass, six different groups of people stopped to congratulate me. There were names and pleasantries exchanged and now I have become a sort of ambassador to some of the neighbors. The second time I was outside gardening and planting the new plants, two more groups stopped by. Trudy from next door came outside despite her arthritis, and said hello to both me and my neighbor Cam across the street. Cam is the resident gardener of the neighborhood, and Trudy jokingly likes to call her our Cam-petition. Apparently if you want to meet and impress your neighborhood, gardening is the way to go. Later at the neighborhood block party I got to meet some of the other neighbors and realized that our street is full of 80 year olds and young couples with small children. Two of the young mothers jokingly asked us if we were a party house, and when I reassured them that we don't drink they instantly turned serious and asked if we were open to babysitting. I hope this means we have made a good impression on the people around us and that they will enjoy our company for what will probably be the next two years. As far as college kids go, they really didn't wind up with a bad group to live next to.

We are college kids though, and have had some learning to do (including how to make a really good fruit fly trap). It has been interesting adjusting to living with this group of people. For as adaptable as I am, I can't help but miss all of the amazing people that I lived with at my last house. I learned a lot about myself living with them and miss their company. And getting used to my new house will start again at the end of the summer when the faces of the house change a little bit as subletters move out. In the large scheme of things though, it won't really be that different. I will still be busy with school every day and trying to balance seeing the people I care about with doing the things that interest me.

Most of the new things I have done this summer haven't been around the house though. It has actually surprised me how little time I spend at home. Each day, I do some sort of head TA thing on campus, but physically being there actually requires very little of my time. Mostly, I figured I would be at home and working on new projects. Instead, I have managed to fill my free time by adventuring with other people and learning new things. I just got back from my first backpacking trip ever, a two day backpacking trip into the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Man, this is a really beautiful part of the country, and every time I go out into nature, I see how amazing it is. I also went cliff jumping earlier this summer and learned how not to land in a bad way after falling 30 feet off of a rock wall into water. It was really fun though, and some of my friends are thinking of a repeat before summer is out. Another activity I tried for the first time this summer is hot yoga. One of the friends I made in the CS department decided to take me to the hot yoga studio she goes to for two weeks straight and it was a lot of fun. I don't think I'll ever really have the time or patience to take it up during the school year, but dripping sweat in a hot room doing impossible poses made me not care if I sweat in day to day life and realize how much I need to work on stretching. The last of my trying new things adventures I can think of to tell you about is ice blocking. Even though we had friends in high school who liked to slide down hills on large blocks of ice, I never actually had partaken in this particular activity. That is until recently, when I slid down the slopes of Gasworks park with a group of friends in interesting formations. Pyramids were probably the best, and this is definitely a thing we should try together at some point.

I'm sure I have tried other new things and learned other lessons this summer, but those are some of the big ones that jump out to me. Otherwise, I have been spending my time trying to explore Seattle a little bit, going climbing every once in a while, seeing friends, and enjoying the heat while it is here. By the next time you hear from me, I will hopefully have tried more new things to tell you about. Maybe by that point, I will have hung pictures on my wall and convinced my housemates to do their dishes. The latter is not likely, but I can dream.

Lots of love,
Riley

Visitors, Lab, and Sub-Par Editing

This past weekend I got the opportunity of showing off Ithaca’s splendor. It is a rare and welcome occasion when I am visited up here, a place which my hairdresser once said sounded like “a magical land”, and which takes probably the same amount of trouble to get to (which explains the rarity of such an event). My grampa and his lovely bride the N-factor came up to the magical and mysterious land of community-owned bookstores, rednecks, and solar powered candle shops in order to see me and to drop off an automobile. (The N-factor’s real name is Nancy, but there was an abundance of Nancy’s in my life at the time I met her, so she was christened by none other than myself with a most distinguishing, and a trifle badass, nickname.)  [Also I have an automobile!]

While they were here, we had a plethora of nice meals and introducing friends to family. The Ithaca commons did not fail on at least two occasions to provide live music and eclectic folks. I remember one conversation, after walking by the hemp store, about how certain items displayed rather prominently in the window were illegal. I had to point out to my elders that glassware itself is not illegal.

The trip also included a visit to Niagara Falls. I naively thought that it would be somewhat less of a tourist attraction than it was, but the entire town is hotels, Casinos, and tour buses. That’s not to say I didn’t have a good time. We saw it from the top of the Skylon tower (the best view of it, at the price of an expensive lunch), went into the mist on a Maid of the Mist Tour, and saw it from behind the falls. I finally tried lobster, and have now been to two foreign countries on this passport. I have until 2021, so I hope I can get a few more.

Unfortunately much of my grampa’s visit was marred by me having to study/do homework. This week was the last week for two of my classes, so I was doing finals-prep (as well as midterm prep for orgo, due to Scott’s wish to have us take three midterms for a six week class) and trying to wrap up the last of the problem sets. Even more unfortunately, I have a peculiar talent of consistently beginning really excellent books right before I become too busy to give them the attention I would like. The day you posted on the blog it was to be 93 degrees, so I holed up in the nicely air-conditioned library and found a copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I’ve been meaning to read for a while. I finished it on Tuesday (two days before two finals). I have also done this with Atlas Shrugged, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Shining during the semester about which I say: “I didn’t know how bad I felt until I felt better.” At least I am consistent.

As previously mentioned, this week I took two finals: orgo and heat and mass transfer. I officially am not required to take any more chemistry courses, so naturally there is a little empty space in my heart. Fortunately I think I am going to take principles of biochemistry for my advanced science elective, so I can keep riding the “I love chemistry while normal people tolerate it for the minimum amount of time” train. My parents and brother are also on this train. It must be genetic.

Now that heat and mass is over and thermo is yet to begin (it will on Monday), orgo lab is the new most-work-required class. It’s also extremely stressful. Their motto might as well be: We are going to put you in a room full of noxious fumes (we actually had to evacuate the lab on the first day because we vaporized some benzoic acid. Nbd.), expensive equipment, things that might kill you, and breakable stuff, and ask you to do a bunch of things you’ve never done before with minimal guidance and require that you do it in a small amount of time. Also you must wear a silly apron whose strings keep breaking and lose a ridiculous amount of points on lab reports for not doing things you didn’t know you were supposed to do. You must also overhear your lab partner telling your TA she will be gone and in an attempt to idly make chit chat discover she will be attending her grandfather’s funeral. At such time you awkwardly decide to go dump something in the organic waste bottle on the other side of the room and regret bringing it up altogether. (Well, maybe without the last part.) The days when we only have one lab to do aren’t too bad actually, and it’s definitely a change of pace from your normal lecture/discussion/problem set type class, but I’m more of a survivor than a thriver in the lab.

There is certainly more I could talk about, but I feel like I have been scatterbrained enough writing what I have already written. In the words of George Bernard Shaw, “I’m sorry this letter is so long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” (In hindsight I’m pretty sure I’ve written longer blogposts before, but usually I exhaust what I was intending to talk about in that time while this time I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. Perhaps I’ll write again relatively soon, depending on if things get busier again.) I really do hope we get a chance to Skype sometime… (Am I pathetic enough yet?) I don’t have much going on this weekend since thermo hasn’t started yet and we basically have the week off from lab because of the fourth of July. If you are around with even a little time I hope you will think of lil ol’ me! I hope your summer’s going well so far.

Much love,

Lola

Moving, Finals, and One Spoon

Yesterday was the first day in a long time where I had some free time. The only way I know, is I wound up reading in bed in the middle of the day. I guess you don't realize just how quickly life has been moving until it stops. For the last nine months I have been pretty much solely in school/TA mode. Maybe that time frame is biologically hardwired into me, but nine months is about all I can handle before I go insane. And yes, what they say about the third trimester being the worst was completely true for me. I somehow managed to cram a conglomerate of "have tos" and "shoulds" into one quarter, more than I have every crammed before. To express this, here is the timeline that has been going on for the last 3/2 to 2 Months.

The beginning of May: Still frantically searching for a house (5-6 bedrooms) to live in starting in June with a group of friends I have met over the past school year. We know we want to live in a nicer area but also not totally willing to pay for it. It would be better if we could be pretty close to UW, but we don't want to be in the sketchy area next to The Ave. I really only care about a nice kitchen and cheap heating, but the rest of my group also wants large open rooms and extra storage space. And we need to find this house soon; we have been on the market looking since early February. Thankfully, in the beginning of May we find such a house sans a few of the parameters we were looking for. A huge house in Wallingford, in a great location, lots of large spacious rooms, a cool back porch, June 1st move-in, but on the more expensive side. Oh, and the kitchen is completely out of date and to make it financially viable for me I'd have to share a room. However, we have been searching for so long and this house is the closest we have come to what we want so we are committed to working it out. A long winded, very difficult, negotiation with the land-lady-from-hell ensues and it turns out we don't get the house. This is after we've provided papers to go through extensive background checking (including our parents), and put down a deposit check. I seem to be the only one truly against the house by the time it falls through, besides a few of the other group members' parents, but regardless now we are in stress mode with potentially no place to live in less than a month.

Mid May: I see an ad pop up on Craigslist that does not sound very hopeful. The ad says 4-6 bedrooms, in "U-district/Wallingford", and there are no pictures posted. If the house is only 4 bedrooms, or not actually in Wallingford, or tiny and terrible, then it won't work for us. Seeing as we have already spent every weekend going to open houses for at least a month and a half, and much longer looking at places online, I don't have much hope for this house. I tell my group, this is the last summer start date house I will look at. If this isn't the one, I will be subletting from someone for the summer and I have to figure that out now. I call the landlord, Larry, and we show up on the stoop of where I am currently sitting to write this blogpost. Somehow, we managed to find the perfect house for us. It is 6 bedrooms, in Wallingford, tall ceilings, large open spaces, a garage for storage/art studio, a fire pit in the backyard, a breakfast nook, and an okay kitchen. And best of all, ridiculously cheap for the area. The average rent in this house is $400/month, and we have some variable pricing, so my room is even cheaper. It is an old house that is falling apart a little bit, I mean I have a hole in my wall, but even if the heating bill is $100/person/month, it is still cheaper than the earlier house we had found and I get to have my own room. We came on a Saturday at around 1:30, we grabbed some applications and filled them out, two hours later we were signing our lease with an awesome landlord, and two weeks later we were moving in.

June 1st (and the few days leading up to it): The quarter is almost over and final exams are on my doorstep. Johannah and I have subletters moving into our rooms on the same day that we are supposed to be moved out. She is coming to live with me at my new place for a week until school is over even though I have no guarantee that I'll have a bed or any house stuff like toilet paper, lightbulbs, or silverware. We still pack up all of my things into one load of her car and set her stuff up to be easily loaded up as well and are ready, May 31st, to move in the next day. However, my landlord has been out of town for the last two weeks and we have no idea when he will be able to let us into the house. As I am walking around my classes on the last day of Spring quarter, I am texting back and forth with Zorah and Johannah and it looks like today is not going to be the move in day after all. Thankfully, Johannah's subletter is not going to be moving in that day, so we can spend one more night in her bed, and with all of our things packed up we bunk down for one last evening at the first place I moved out of my parent's house into. The next morning we go do the security deposit walkthrough of my new home and in a couple of hours have all of my things moved in (including a bed!) and her stuff all packed into her car. Thus starts the week of camping out for finals in an empty house.

Finals Week: Johannah and I are staying in my still packed up room, full of my boxes, and sleeping together in my twin bed. This is surprisingly very comfortable and we spend our finals week hodge-podging meals together and questing for spotty internet stolen from our neighbors. We have all the essentials, there are two pianos, two record players, a bunch of board games and some circus equipment, and no couch. There is no shower curtain in the bathroom and when someone takes a shower we notice the wet floor causes the kitchen ceiling to leak. We have a few mugs, some chopsticks, two bowls, a plate, a few pots, and one spoon. Regardless, I have some basil plants in the window and a roof over my head. I ace my Bio final and we decide to take off Tuesday evening to gather our graduating friends to say goodbye in the only way we know how: Indian food and fondue. We send them each a printed invitation with a flower and Tuesday night finds us gathered at Cedar's restaurant, some of the best Indian food I have ever had. Somehow, all of the amazing people we invited managed to make it for a portion of the evening and it was wonderful to see everyone before we were all split up for a few weeks, the summer, years, or who knows how long. Back at my new place, Johannah and I throw together some fondue with some dumpstered Theo's chocolate and every dish I own. Being the responsible (most of us graduated) adults, we are, the evening turns into painting chocolate fondue mustaches on each other and playing with the various things in my house. Sadly, it is still finals week and the evening disbands into writing papers and studying for finals to come.

Saturday, June 9th: After frequenting Cedar's restaurant again the evening before with my family for my dad's birthday, I am home in Woodinville with a bag packed full of shorts and tank tops. I have just barely finished finals and grading exam and I am about to hop on a plane to LA with my three sisters to visit our family down in California. Even though I still have quite a few assignments to grade, and a heck of a lot more to backread, My sisters and I arrive in LAX to hug our cousin that we haven't seen in a few years. After doing many touristy things around LA, we drive down to San Diego and visit with family that it has been probably 10 years since we were last together. It was a good trip, but I don't think we stopped to breathe once. Every day, there was an activity planned. We did the Safari Park, the Del Mar Fair, Universal Studios, Kayaking in front of the house that used to belong to Dr. Suess, and altogether ate way too much food. Every night we collapsed into bed and I'm not sure how I managed, but I got all of my remaining TA duties done. A short week later, we were back at LAX hopping on a plane back to Seattle for our respective summers.

Now (ish): One short weekend at home later, I find myself back in Wallingford, only this time there is a full house awaiting me. I unpack a few more things, including my bookshelf and book collection. The house now has a shower curtain and actual silverware. Yesterday, we even acquired some couches. We still have bikes parked in our dinning room, but our floors have been scrubbed and ideas for painting have been thrown around. I have started TAing fulltime and am trying to put together an idea of how much free time I'll have to explore a summer in Seattle. I found out I can still check out books from the UW library, even though I'm not taking any classes this quarter, and I just bought a pass to the IMA so I can go rock climbing whenever I want. I am thinking about getting another parttime job to fill some of my evenings, but I have decided to keep my weekends relatively free for hiking explorations. Yesterday, I reread A Wrinkle In Time and The BFG, and today I am visiting Scotticus over at SPU. I can tell this summer will be whatever I make of it, potentially really full and potentially really awesome.

There is a character who has been intertwined throughout this story in real life, but I haven't mentioned him here at all. Yes, a him. You know about him sort of, but I feel like I should explicitly introduce him on the blog. About a month ago I started dating a really nice guy named Tristan. I met him this last quarter while TAing, he is a 14X TA as well, and we just hit it off. My mom asked him who he thought had initiated the relationship and he thought for sure that it was me. However, I am very sure that it was him that initiated everything, so apparently we just work together without trying. I could tell you all of the typical things about him, like he is tall, dark-haired, handsome and into Ultimate Frisbee. He worked in a bike shop for a while and is really into both riding and fixing bicycles. This summer he is an intern at The Climate Corporation in downtown Seattle which is an environmental computing company. We also really get along on a mental level and can be total computer science nerds together. However, the important thing to know about him is that I'll find myself smiling unexpectedly and realize that it was because of him. Even when he is not there.

I can't believe how long it has been since high school. And I can't believe how long it will be before I get to see you again. I miss you all of the time. I can't wait to hear about all the amazing things you are doing this summer and I hope you are able to also incorporate some amazing fun things in as well. I also hope your life stops for a bit and you can realize what a blessing (non-humid) sunny days are. And that sometimes one spoon is more than enough.

Much love, Riley

P.S. I would love to Skype soon, I am free mostly in the afternoons and evenings.

It is Hot.

                Some people get a thrill out of summer weather. Beach-going, planning for ultimate frisbee days in advance, and relaxing in the sun wearing half the amount of what you normally wear are things one can only really do in summer. From these things I understand the thrill, and yet I am not one of those people. Just five minutes ago had the thought that “anyone who says they ‘looove’ hot weather is a self-hating or delusional moron”. It is currently 89 degrees out there (‘out there’ being the scary hot place I did not go today) but it feels like 94 because of this terrible terrible thing that does not exist on the west coast: humidity.

                I will repeat part of that because apparently no one understands: IT IS NOT HUMID IN SEATTLE. Got it? Just because it rains a lot ('a lot' being a relative term) does not mean there is gaseous water suspended in the air. If there is water in Seattle it is on the GROUND, WHERE IT SHOULD BE. Hot weather makes people cranky enough (or “complainy”, as my friend Seyoun described himself today) without purposelessly adding more heat and sweaty wetness. (Say that ten times fast.)

                I am realizing now that I have never actually had to spend an entire summer in a place where there was actual summer. I have never lived anywhere where an air conditioner was a necessity. I have rarely woken up and thought “oh damn… it’s already too hot today”. I do not know if I can handle it. My German/Irish/Norwegian complexion is adopting a semi-permanent pink hue. My body does not know how to properly control its own temperature, so nothing on me is sweating with the curious exception of my eyebrows. Inexplicably hot weather does not deter me from hot foods, and I made mashed potatoes for dinner. My only consolation is the fact that mosquitoes find my body abhorrent, as evidenced by years of Girl Scout Camp attendance sans bites.

                Fortunately for me a beacon of hope is on the horizon: Thursday. Oh, sweet Thursday, I count the days until you and I will be reunited. I cannot shake from my mind the prospect of your partly clouded self. Your 61 degrees could not be more devoutly wished. Alas! If only cruel Tuesday and Wednesday did not stand between you and I… But we will be together soon, my love, and it will be a most blissful and joyous day, most likely involving long pants.

                To think of the years I did not properly appreciate 60s and light rain… Enjoy them like I never did, my dear, and I hope to hear from you soon.

                Love,

                Lola

Happy Easter!

So... I'm just going to pretend like I haven't completely neglected this blog. I'm officially now un-incognito (cognito?) and very glad to be back. Instead of catching you up on all of the many things that have happened since I last posted (seriously, I probably couldn't count all of them), I think I'll just give you some idea of my life currently.

This quarter, my free time consists of Sunday afternoon, Friday evening, and the rare chunk of time on Mondays from 3ish - 5. I am currently using the first of those to write this and am blissfully ignoring all of the reading that I have to do tonight. The rest of my time is spent on homework, house stuff, and head TA duties. (I was originally going to sneak in the fact that I'm one of the CSE 142 head TAs this quarter, but I couldn't mess with that 'h' alliteration). My course load isn't too crazy, but all of my classes have tons of little components that are keeping me busy. Mixing that with TAing means that I am literally at school doing something from 9 - 7 four days a week. Hopefully, this will all be helpful for later on and I'm not going slightly insane for nothing.

Apparently the other I've been filling my time with lately is self improvement. My housemate, Johannah, and I seem to have semi-daily discussions over our food and I have been very grateful for the insights she has given me. I feel like since moving into my current residence that I have learned a lot about myself, both things I like and things I wasn't aware that I needed to work on. Hopefully when you see me next I will be a much better person because of living here.

One of the other new things that I've taken on recently is getting active again. The weak spring sun is trying to appear daily in Seattle and I've taken advantage of that to start finding time to be athletic. Also, I have a class that is legitimately 2 miles from my house so I've taken the initiative and bought a bike. Soon after that purchase I discovered that I do not have any of the muscles required for biking. Did you know that there are muscles on the outsides of your quads? Apparently that is a thing my body was not informed of, and riding a bike for even a short period of time leaves my legs twitching and sad faced. The other active thing I've started is I went rock climbing for my first time in forever last Friday. I remember climbing once at Western a long time ago and being pretty awful, but somehow one of the other TAs convinced me that rock climbing is a thing that I should be doing. Surprisingly, it was tons of fun and I wasn't as terrible as I thought I would be. I climbed to the very top of one of the really tall walls at the IMA and got to be lowered down on a rope and harness. Even though the day after this adventure my triceps were constantly shouting at me, I can definitely see myself purchasing a pair of rock climbing shoes of my own.

The only problem with finding new things to fall in love with is that other things get left behind. Rock climbing will probably steal my Friday afternoon free time slot, which means I have even less time to explore the things I want to be doing. Included in that is music. I found that last quarter I would pick up a guitar quite frequently, but now I haven't really touched any musical instruments all quarter. I want to change that, but I'm not sure if I have the time to and any musical pursuits will probably get pushed back until summer. My housemate, Richie, wants me to record, and it would be cool because he is really good at recording and producing music, but I honestly can't seem to find even two hours to give him. And this is only the first two weeks of the quarter; it only gets busier from here.

The other thing that has been suffering because of my full schedule is photography. Recently, I discovered the ability to check out expensive cameras from UW and have been doing so ever since. Even though they are only available for 7 day rental, I keep checking out nice cameras and lenses and experimenting with taking pictures. It has been really fun to document my day to day life with pictures and I think I'm finally getting used to being the awkward girl walking around with a camera all the time. Maybe at some point in the future that is another purchase I could see myself making. Actually, I have also been sharing the record of my life with the internet. If you weren't aware of An's blog, you really need to check that out. An is a fantastic photographer (she works for the Daily!) and she posts amazing pictures most days of the week. After checking her stuff out for a while, I decided that I wanted to try this daunting task of photographing my days as well. So I have been updating this on a semi-regular basis. I don't really write anything too interesting, but I have enjoyed collecting photographs of my day to day life. Hopefully I will be able to keep it up and be able to look back on my college life through pictures. Plus, hopefully taking lots of pictures will force me to become a much better photographer. By the way, if you are at all inclined to take pictures, I would love it if you posted them somewhere I could see them. I would really like to see your life as well as hear about it.

I miss you so much already and I can't believe we will be parted until Christmas. Even though I am super proud of you for landing your awesome co-op, I will be counting down the days until we can play Trivial Pursuit together again. Also, I will keep thinking about the amazing trip we will eventually take to Europe or some other place. I will probably keep planning that in my free time to keep me sane from not having my daily dose of Lola. I wish that this were more like a Skype conversation or phone call and that I could legitimately ask you how your day is going, but regardless, I hope life is going well for you and that I get to hear how you are soon.

Love you!
Riley

Nothing I Can Do But Wait... *smashes head against wall*

It has been way too long since I wrote a blog post, but thankfully Riley’s consistent procrastination can ease my guilt a bit. Everyone understands what it’s like to be busy and exhausted. In that state, writing out your witty thoughts so anyone who wishes to can read them on the internet is just not something you feel up to doing. So now, naturally after waking up at 5:30 (yes, for anyone who doesn’t know me, I do mean a.m.) on a Saturday I am sitting here thinking of how waking up at 5:30 really does open up my schedule, and I have time to write.

I have had a ridiculously difficult time this semester getting into a routine, and in ways am still not really able to manage it. On a weekly basis, I have three problem sets, a lab report, and a 30-40 multiple choice question online quiz. Of course, all three problem sets (the most time consuming portion of my weekly homework) are due on Friday. Of course, the professors’ lectures are consistently behind the homework material. Of course, this means that one can either decide to wait until further lectures have been administered (making the weekend an enormous length of time in which nothing can be accomplished) or one can spend the weekend trying to teach oneself the material (as I do in the case of stats, because I simply cannot, despite my best efforts, pay attention for more than half of a lecture. I pride myself on my focusing/paying attention abilities, and I really just can’t do this one.)

Anyway, so you spend the weekend taking four times as long on some homework as you should and avoiding the rest of it and by the time the week rolls around you realize how very much you need to do and how very little time you have to do it. Naturally, this means you skip your discussion classes Tuesday morning because a) they are not required, b) in the case of the harder class (stats) they post the discussion section assignment online, and c) you really would like an extra three hours that morning to get things done, like PChem and lab reports, and maybe sleeping if you could do that.

So aside from busy weeks full of homework and angst-y weekends full of purposeful procrastination, there are some other things going on. As I mentioned some time ago, it is currently try-frantically-to-get-a-co-op-position time. I’ll be honest, I sent in a lot of applications and received a lot of rejections, and each one seriously made me feel like a loser. I looked at some of the people being accepted for interviews, and knew that I was a harder worker, a less shy person, or better at ChemE academically than they were, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. It’s not that I don’t like the other ChemEs, they are all fantastic people and I sincerely want them to receive the best co-op positions they can, but I was deluded by my jealousy into thinking it was unfair. Maybe it was unfair, but I shouldn’t have gotten all pouty and two-year-old-y about it. (Really though, after 13 fairly impersonal rejection emails or complete lacks of response knowing interviews were already conducted, I don’t think you would be a very happy camper either.)

But all that was a few weeks ago, and last week the angels sang a bit and I was accepted for two interviews. The first was with a guy named Keith from Air Products, who has been working there since he was a teenager, because he did the co-op program and is a young’un (like me. His birthday is actually the day before mine.) I met him at the networking event and, because I was pretty late due to band, I ended up having an uninterrupted half hour with him and two co-op students from last fall. The interview went really well (I am “very easy to talk to”x2), but he did tell me that was really impressed with the caliber of applicants this year. I had a later interview, and he said usually he would have a couple people in mind who were a cut above the rest by the time he got to me, but everyone was just so good he hadn’t been able to do that more than once. He also said they have accepted as many as 5 co-op students before, and there were only 8 people on the interview schedule (though he may have added more.)

The second was Tom, from Shire Human Genetic Therapies. Due to lots of flight delays, he got to Cornell 20 minutes into my interview time, and I was supposed to be his third interview. Luckily he still gave me the entire 30 minutes, but I think he was so wound up from being on a plane and whatnot that he really needed to talk. And talk he did. I chimed in as often as I could, and I think I came across as being knowledgeable about the biopharm industry for someone my age and experience level. Also, when I mentioned my interest in scale-up and plant development, he was enthusiastic that if they chose a co-op who was interested in those things, they could definitely get him or her involved with them. Overall, this interview went well too (we kept talking all the way back to the waiting room, and only ended because of time.)

Now, it is a waiting game. I’ve submitted my resume and cover letters, done the best I could do at my interviews, and there is nothing more I can do. Decisions from employers are due by March 9, so in less than a week I should have some more information. So, I guess a big question is: which one do I want? I know I shouldn’t be too terribly optimistic and think I will be offered both, but if I were, which one do I go with? Before I met with the guy from Air Products, I was Shire all the way. After I met with the guy from Air Products, I was completely torn 50/50. After meeting with the guy from Shire, I know that is really where my heart wants to be. The position is in pharmaceuticals, the field I want to go in, and that I sort of feel I must go in if I ever want to be able to move back to Seattle (which I do.) It’s located near Boston, which is a place I would be really excited about living. It’s also the company’s first time taking on a co-op student, and, as such, I think it will be much more easily tailored to the co-op’s interests.

And if I don’t get offered either? The process of searching continues, but it will be with a LOT more help from co-op and career services. They have a 100% success rate of finding something, as long as the student in question is willing to step outside their comfort zone with respect to technical skills and is also willing to go to any location. I hope it doesn’t come to that, because I really like having things of this sort planned out far in advance. We will see what happens, though.

What else is going on in my life? I’ve become quite a bit more social, and may start playing squash on a weekly basis. More gossip-y, my somewhat recently declared facebook official relationship is going well. The distance is difficult at times, usually when things slow down so you have enough time to think about it, but not unmanageable. For Valentine’s Day, Niko mailed me homemade truffles. Oh. My. God. If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, a way to this girl’s heart is through chocolate. Fucking delicious homemade chocolate. (In case you’re curious, in honor of Valentine’s Day, one of my gift offers was a creative writing piece on the topic of his choosing, and I am to write an elaborate plan cats would use to take over the world.) We are, as you might have guessed, a funny cards couple, which is basically code for freaking awesome.

I hope all is well with you, Riley! Sorry I blathered on so much about co-op… it’s just what’s been on my mind. I am so glad your moving-out went well! And, I’m sorry, but your mom says to tell you you’re a weenie for not writing on the blog… (I still love you J) Good luck on the last couple weeks of the quarter, and on finals, and I can’t wait to see you! (and do our inevitably epic tribute to My Drunk Kitchen.)

Love,

Lola

PS: Joe got the research job he wanted with St. Jude’s, so next summer he will be in Memphis! Also, yes of course we already are planning on going to Dollywood. What sort of fools do you take us for? You should send him a congrats text and a happy almost 21^st birthday text if you get the chance!

A Review of Dublin (Spoiler Alert: It's a Rave)

The thing about travel is that there are some places you’ve always wanted to go, and some places you never want to go, and some places that you wouldn’t pass on going to. For me, Ireland was in the latter category. I assumed it would be very much like England, which I had been to previously and hadn’t found particularly enthralling.

I was dead wrong.

Dublin is a fantastic combination of European charm (i.e. you know the buildings and streets have been around for generations longer than you have) and modern architecture. It is large, but not too large; clean, but not too clean; loud, but not too loud. (I deliberated saying “quiet, but not too quiet,” that’s how perfect it was.) The people will generally keep to themselves, but are incredibly helpful when it is asked of them. The river is both grand and muted in its there-ness. The street signs are written in both English and Gaelic, an occasionally confusing feature but ultimately one that reminds you that you are somewhere else and how proud the people there are of their heritage. Irish people don’t call their language Gaelic, they call it Irish. The pedestrians have stoplights. The cars drive on the left. The impossibly green park is full of ducks, seagulls, little dogs, and calm people. Almost none of the clocks in public places are correct. The coffee is good, the beer is probably better. (I didn’t have much, I’m more of a coffee person, but I did learn that almost anything can be infused with Guinness).

In short, I love Dublin. I want to go back. I could totally see myself living there.

The flight over was on Ireland’s airline, Aer Lingus. The pilot was female. The flight attendants wore a bluey-green which matched the seats and the plane. The food was okay. There was an extensive coffee and tea service. The people clapped after we landed (at the time, I thought this was weird. In hindsight, I like the sentiment.)

The entire trip we lucked out with respect to the weather. We got rained on while outside for like ten minutes the whole trip and it was barely a drizzle. For Ireland in January, I think that is a fantastic success.

As far as tourist attractions go, I saw the Book of Kells, the Chester Beatty Library, Kilkenny Castle, Ailwee Cave, the Cliffs of Moher, and Bunratty Castle (in addition to lots of wandering around the city.) The Book of Kells is a Latin translation of the Bible, and while I am not religious or particularly interested in Latin, the exhibit discussed a lot of the symbolism in the artwork and whatnot. It was interesting, and followed by a room called the Long Room, housing something like 200,000 of Trinity College library’s oldest books in one of the most gorgeous and awe-inspiring rooms I’ve ever been in. The Chester Beatty Library is full of artifacts and photos of Asia, and had a particularly interesting and informative comparative religion exhibit. The castles of Kilkenny and Bunratty were basically nothing alike. Kilkenny Castle was used for greeting kings and entertaining people and the like, so it is grand and has things like Italian marble wake tables and silk wallpaper. Bunratty Castle, on the other hand, is medieval in design and has a much greater focus on defense. In the main room, the Great Hall, there are holes in the walls where men could shoot arrows at visitors who looked like they may attack the Earl. Ailwee Cave is the oldest known cave in Ireland, and in it they found remnants of black bears, which haven’t lived in Ireland for a long long time. Also, there was a stalagmite believed to be about a third of its current size when the pyramids were finished, which was between one and two feet high. My favorite attraction by far, though, was the Cliffs of Moher. The highest cliffs in Europe, they are one of the most breathtaking sights I have ever seen. While an acrophobic’s nightmare, a photographer’s paradise.

Ever have one of those moments where there is so much to say that there is nothing to say? That’s kind of how I feel about this trip. I’m sure I’ll think of more, though, and write again soon. I hope the snow week finds you well and warm.

Cheers!
Lola

PS: Irish people say “cheers” a lot, and I totally love it and might start doing it too.

PPS: Do you know how to add photos on here?