113804910392342735 January 23, 2006

Wow, what a week… Last week I finished the final draft of my proposal, arranged committee members for my defense, and sent them each a copy of my proposal. Little did I know, one usually sets a date for defense before you send out a copy, but I’ll leave the aside about my never-to-be-seen advisor for another time. So, this morning I arranged the date for my defense to be February 8th. At least tentatively… With any luck, after that, I should officially be a Ph.D. candidate.

I also stumbled upon some research that might be interesting to someone other than me and my advisor. I might even get to write a quick paper in the next month or so about it. That would make my second paper! I might be a real scientist one day!

To top the week off, I went to a wedding in St. Louis with my boyfriend. I, of course, didn’t know anyone since it was his friend getting married, but that didn’t stop me from being offended by the ceremony. This was a protestant cermony in which the girl promised to “submit unto her husband”. I have heard the whole Christian propaganda about the husband as the head of the household like Christ and the church as his bride, but I just don’t understand how a woman today would willingly vow to submit to someone. I understand that you love this person and would do anything for him, but he doesn’t vow to submit to you. Why can’t we all be equal in a relationship? Making decisions together… Consulting and compromising on both sides… Why does the woman have to always submit? Grrr!

Anyway, on a lighter note, I get to try my first homebrewed beer tonight. It is on the early side of the bottle conditioning period, but it can’t hurt to try just one. I think my next beer will be something lighter. On the amber ale side of things…

113701155327401300 January 11, 2006

So I registered for an obscene number of races yesterday and today to prepare for the St. Louis Marathon… First on the calendar is a 10 miler in Goodletsville. Next up is the Frostbite Half-Marathon in some state park. This one is supposed to be pretty difficult because of the hills. Then, I am going to run in the Land Between the Lakes Half-Marathon trail run. It is actually 14.3 miles (a little over a half-marathon, but who’s counting at that point). That run should be really fun. That is if it doesn’t rain and make the course all muddy… And finally, I registered to run in the Tom King Half-Marathon. I am supposed to run 20 miles on that day, so I will have to run to the race and back from my home to make up the distance. Running in actual races as part of training is more laziness on my part than “training for race day”. I don’t have to strategically plan for water and food and drive the course to figure out mileage. Although I did shell out over a $100 in fees… But I also get t-shirts that will inevitably not fit correctly! Now, let’s hope I don’t get injured before the races.

113682607109887184 January 9, 2006

I bottled my very first beer brewing attempt yesterday. I am a bit nervous about how it will turn out given all the mishaps I had in boiling the wort. It was rather comical to watch from afar I am sure. So, being a scientific person, I tried to approach beer brewing from a recipe/experiment standpoint. I wrote out all of the instructions step by step, and tried to follow them to the letter. Tried being the operative word. My very first mistake was to purchase a pot to boil the wort that was a gallon too small. The Joy of Hombrewing book says a 3-4 gallon pot is sufficient. So I went with the 3 gallon pot. Not thinking about how much volume the malt extracts would add… This meant that in the middle of mixing the ingredients for the wort, I had to go to Target to buy a larger pot. My next mistake was to pour in the malt extract while the pot was being heated. The extract went straight to the bottom and proceeded to burn. I think I caught it in time though. After I finally got all the ingredients in the pot and to a boil, the damn thing boiled over not once, but twice! And this isn’t just water. It had hops and all kinds of sugar that ended up in my stovetop and on the floor. Well, I finally get the mix into the bucket to cool down, and I drastically underestimate the time the stuff needs to cool before I can add the yeast. So somewhere around 4am, I add the yeast and close off the bucket. But when I put the fermentation lock on the bucket, the gasket pushed through the lid and fell into the wort. Not a problem I think… It has been sanitized and should float. What!? The gasket, rubber I am assuming, sank to the bottom? So I soap up my arms with antibacterial soap and search around in the dark sugary mess for a tiny gasket. Arrgh… I just want to go to bed. Finally, I get everything together as it should be and wait around a week or so. Now, I get to bottle. Nothing really interesting happened during that process. Just a lot of sanitizing and capping…

So any of you lucky enough to actually know me may be able to sample my catastrophe of a belgian-style dubbel. In two or three weeks, I will know just how big of a catastrophe it was.

113647776466890150 January 5, 2006

Well, I really just created this blog so that I could post comments on another. Maybe I should give this thing a try. Though I am fairly sure no one will ever read this…

So, about me… I am a graduate student at Vanderbilt who gets away with surprisingly little work. That will all catch up with me eventually though. I just finished writing my Ph.D. proposal, but my advisor is a little slow in responding. It will probably be a few months before I can present it. And maybe another year or two to graduate…

Hmmm… I like to bake and take photos, sometimes of my baking creations. I have a flickr account which I suppose I should link here. Oh, and I am training to run the St. Louis marathon! I just started training a few weeks ago, so my weekly mileage is still only 20 or so miles.

So… If anyone does end up reading this, let me know what you think.