meisa's lagoon

here i am back in ithaca. i was kind of nervous about my trip - not just whether or not my chemistry would work, but taking on this unknown town on my own again. but a bit of serendipity by the name of mike brown put me at ease.
i sat next to him on the plane and after some mindless chatter about sudoku and my plans in ithaca, he mentioned that he would be taking an expensive limo service from syracuse to ithaca and then asked if maybe instead he could tag along and ride in the rental car with me. the guy was super nice, so before really thinking about it, i said yes. then, of course, i started to think about what my father would say if i told him i agreed to give a stranger a ride to a place an hour away where i knew nothing and no one. i started to think about all the awful things that make you say no to doing nice favors like that. anyway, i went with my better judgement and went ahead and gave him the ride. and although we had some awkward silences, it was great. i had someone from the area tell me how to get to ithaca, instead of struggling with directions as i was driving in the dark. he led me towards take out thai food and pointed out directions to other places to eat in town. i dropped him off at his car parked on the cornell campus, and we went our separate ways. and although i probably shouldn't have agreed because who knows what could have happened, i'm really glad i did.
sometimes it's nice to have a little faith in humanity and be rewarded.

Posted by Meisa at 08:39 PM | Permalink

my molecules have left my hands. i have spent many hours and brain cells creating these precious things, only to trust them in the hands of FedEx. let's hope they get to cornell in one piece, and not affected by the possibilities of moisture getting the better of them as they travel.
i leave to catch up with them on monday. i've been so preoccupied with making these things that now i'm a little unsure of what to do with myself for the next few days before i leave. so far i have planned to get my hair cut tomorrow and not work this weekend. yay!

Posted by Meisa at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

it finally worked! even though i do my best to try to screw "the man", he doesn't always notice and sometimes he's even nice to me.
nearly everyday for the past 4.5 years, i have walked past a certain house on my way to school. and every single time it snows these people do not shovel their sidewalk. i never really mind trudging through it for a few days, but then when it gets icy and stays that way for weeks or months, i start to get a little pissed. so this year, after i almost fell flat on my butt, i finally decided to try to do something about it. that's right...i called "the man".
i checked into the city of evanston ordinances and found that every property owner is responsible for shoveling the sidewalk adjacent to their property after a 2" snowfall. so after being bumped around to several different representatives of "the man", i finally spoke to the right person. i told them that i had fallen a few times (white lie, but almost true) and that i didn't care if those people were old and decrepit, i happened to know that their house was on the market for $2 million and they could afford to pay someone to shovel for them. "the man" told me that he would send the city inspector out to check it out. i figured it was just "the man" blowing me off, because most of the time that's what "the man" does.
anyhow, as i walked to work today, after a 4" snowfall on friday, their walk was shoveled! after 4.5 years and a million snowfalls, they finally did it.
thank you, "the man".

ps. don't think this means that i won't keep trying to screw you.

Posted by Meisa at 09:04 AM | Permalink

my eyes still hurt from crying yesterday. i lost something i never even had, but felt like it was mine because we were perfect for each other.

they gave my dream job to someone else.

after two months of waiting (they told me two weeks), i finally got up the nerve to call. and after a series of phone calls that convinced me that they had to still be interested, they made a phone appointment to tell me that i wasn't good enough. they said that with 30 applicants, i made the short list, but then they decided to give the job to someone with more experience. which, of course, leads me to ask, how am i supposed to get experience if you don't give me a job?

i've gotten over it for the most part. khalid reminded me how much i love stories about the triumph of the human spirit, and how i need to get back into the game. so yesterday i moped around crying about how it was the perfect job. today i'm thinking that maybe the reason i didn't get it was that it wasn't right for me, and that there is something better just waiting for me to find it. screw them. they weren't perfect for me - they weren't even good enough for me! my spirit WILL triumph.

Posted by Meisa at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

i was sitting at my desk this afternoon when i heard a loud explosion coming from the lab. all of us in the office sort of eased our way into the lab and began cautiously exploring our workspace. i checked my hood first and everything seemed to be in order. as we were looking in cabinets for exploded waste containers, the fire alarm went off. after handling all the chemicals that i do on a regular basis, i know enough to get the hell out as soon as possible. all the fire alarm drills you go through in school, while important, really just set you up to be very relaxed about fire alarms. it's always just a practice drill, right? so when the fire alarm here goes off, my first thought is, "oh, it's just a drill". that thought is very quickly followed by "holy crap, if it isn't, this place would blow up in seconds"...and that is just based on the chemicals i have by my hood alone. i usually give myself time to grab my coat, but then i book it.
this time, it was the lab next door. they mixed some stuff they weren't supposed to mix, it exploded and all the organic solvents in their hood caught on fire. they got everyone out and no one was hurt, and i don't think there was a horrible amount of damage. luckily.
most days i curse the shoddy construction of this building. in the 3 years since it's been built, we've had door handles fall off, leaks everywhere, elevator buttons break, tile come off the floors. but where it counts, those guys did it right. we could have had a mini-chernobyl on our hands otherwise. yikes!

Posted by Meisa at 05:22 PM | Permalink

just got my second paper accepted for publication! yay!
2 down, 2 to go.

Posted by Meisa at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

khalid and i just watched the world's worst movie. nothing. that's what it was called. khalid said he felt like artsy fartsy. but in his words, there was neither art, nor fart in this movie.
i think we would have been better off if we had actually watched nothing at all.

Posted by Meisa at 09:47 PM | Permalink

i'm finally breaking the blog silence. with my vacation home and getting my new (to me) laptop, it took awhile. but i am finally back. my new machine is quite lovely...a panasonic (hence its name, sonic) toughbook. super light and sleek. i've been carrying it home and back these past few days and barely even notice that i'm carrying it. and now we have internet at home! i know, i'm way behind. but i spend so much time at work and it's only a 10 minute walk away if i'm not there, so i didn't really feel like i needed it. but now, we've caught up with the rest of the world. it's really a beautiful thing.
so in my return to the lagoon, i'd like to wish everyone a happy new year. here's to making your dreams a reality in 2006!

Posted by Meisa at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)