Free at last

I did it! I passed my candidacy, and now I'm free!! My oral was last Wednesday, and while it was nerve-racking to say the least it actually went better than I had envisioned. My committee seemed pleased, and there were even some laughs flying around the room before it was all said and done:) All in all, I'm satisfied with my performance but the questions I couldn't answer are still bugging me deep down. I keep going over them in my head trying to think up better answers than what I said initially, but it doesn't really mean anything anymore, so eventually I'm just going to have to put it behind me and move on...

Speaking of moving on, I experienced quite a change this weekend as compared to those of the past few months - I actually was allowed guilt-free fun! For the past several months I kept secretly punishing myself every time I'd go out or do anything not related to my candidacy exam because "I should be writing/studying." But for the first time in how long I actually had fun and didn't feel bad afterwards! What a great feeling, I almost forgot what it was like:)

Okay, my day just took a turn for the worse about a minute and a half ago... I just found out they are not offering free pizza/sodi at our Friday seminars anymore! My whole reason for working on Fridays was the free Adriatico's pizza at the 'Research in Progress' seminars!! (For those of you who don't know the magic associated with Adriatico's, let me just tell you it's probably some of the best pizza I've ever eaten - and it is normally F-R-E-E, which makes it taste even better) Hhhuuuugghhh:( This sucks. Apparently there's some new university policy that prevents them from enticing us with cheesey pizza and fizzy sodi. Ohio State sucks!!

On another note, I'm looking forward to being heckled on Saturday because I'm wearing Minnesota gear down to Lane avenue to tailgate for the OSU/UofM game. OSU fans can be the biggest a-holes on the planet, but I'm actually kinda looking forward to hearing what kinda trash they can dish out... I think it will be especially funny since the UofM is no where close to favored, but OSU fans will inevitably find it necessary to rub it in as far as they can - just to be a-holes... My friend from Penn State wants to wear MN too just to spite the Buckeye fans:) This could be great!! I'll keep you posted:)

For those who didn't hear...

...I couldn't take my candidacy exam:( I was all geared up to take it this past Tuesday (Oct 3rd) but there was an unfortunate turn of events that prevented me from going through with it - so I postponed until Wednesday, Oct 18th. Mark your calendars, but only in pencil! What happened was that one of my committee members had a family emergency and was out of town for a couple days - I heard that her father is ill and he's had several emergencies in the past month or so. I have to say that I can't blame her for her absence, my guess is that my candidacy exam doesn't rank too highly on her scale of importance when it comes to family - and that's totally understandable. At any rate, after contacting the graduate school I learned that no less that 4 people can sit on my committee panel during the exam, and with her out it left me with only 3. Thus, I had to reschedule. Apparently this is giving me more time to study, however I haven't looked at anything since last Tuesday... To this I say, "Welcome back, Procrastination, I missed you!" It has been really nice working at the lab bench again though, so I'm going to be cranky when I have to give it up again (briefly) to study again.

In other news, I'm still trying to better my skills as an amateur cook. I'm actually considering taking a class! (Mind you, I haven't looked for any yet - I'm still just thinking about it at this point.) How fun would that be though?! Maybe there's one that teaches just italian or chinese or mexican style cooking:) I don't think I need any help with baking, because I pretty much bake all day as it is - only with biological reagents. It's not too hard for me to read a recipe to bake some cookies, what's hard is when I have to cook dinner. For some reason I'm no good at thinking up flavors that would go well together and actually pulling off the taste in the final product. (Not to mention the fact that I simply suck at trying to cook meat - it's always too dry or too chewy or something.) And can anyone explain to me what "al dente" means??! I always hear the people on the Food Network saying to cook my pasta like that, and I have no clue what that means. My latest creation was taken from Paula Deen's show and it involves shredded chicken, tortilla shells, and a sauce made from nacho cheese soup, cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, and a can of tomatoes. You make it sort of like a lasagna, starting with the tortilla shells, then the chicken, then the sauce... and then end with tortilla shells and sprinkle cheddar cheese on top. Then you bake it to a golden bubbly for about 25' at 325 degrees. It tastes pretty good, but I'm kinda getting tired of it since I made enough for 6 or so people to eat from it! Good thing it freezes well:)

Well, I think I'm going to go home now... I have a dodgeball game later tonight and I want to be able to eat and relax a little beforehand. Tootles:)