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:)