laborless day news

It's been a week. I'm glad to have this nice, long weekend to...er...well, to knit and tidy up the house and read and do some work on the grant.

Perhaps the best news of the week is that our dryer is fixed!!!!!! It has NEVER worked properly since we moved in August 2003. It always took at least 2 cycles (70 minutes each) to dry a normal load of laundry because they heat just didn't exist very well. Now - POOF, just like that your stuff is dry!!! Will certainly change my laundry-doing habits.

School started this week. Not that this adversely affects my life. I only take 2 classes during the school year, both from noon to 1p.m. - on Monday it's talk about new scientific journal articles and on Wednesday it's talk about new stuff you've done in the lab. Not really a homework-heavy or exam-laden courses. Basically school starting again means I have a big huge hour in the middle of 2 days that I need to schedule my experiments around (actually more like 1.5 hours since the classes are in a building 2 streets over from my lab) and that the buses are packed full of students.

Speaking of buses, other great news -- stating Tuesday there will be another busline that stops at my normal stop and one other new one that will stop a few streets over from where I live. With any luck, this should cut down on the crowdedness of the buses. However, it also has the potential to be a big huge drag because it's possible that the buses will run less often. The new schedules haven't been released yet, though, so there's no way of knowing. It would make a lot of sense for Port Authority to publish the new bus schedules so people could know when to expect buses to get to work on Tuesday morning...

On Thursday I attended a meeting that I think I wasn't supposed to be invited to. It was for the church high school youth group, with which I've volunteered for the past 3 years. My presence wasn't completely uncalled for, but judging from the fact that I was the only volunteer there, I think it's safe to assume there was an error in the mailing announcing the meeting. Anyhow, it was good to see the students again, and I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of ministry things again. This year some changes are happening in the ministry. We're switching from meeting on Thursdays to now meeting on Sunday nights - and there will be a new church service geared for younger adults (like...me?) and students on Thursday evening.

I'm trying to decide if I'll go to that Thursday night thing or not. I have a goal to keep as many weekday evenings free this year so I can work longer. I know that sounds obsessive, but I often end up where an experiment has some disastrous turn of events and I need to make a split-second decision to either fix the experiment and continue working on it or leave, slurp up some supper, and scram to my next commitment. I've been known to be an hour late for events because of this... That's not something I like to do.

I haven't been reading much of Harry Potter lately. I picked it up yesterday and read a few chapters. It's always amusing to me how I don't remember the things that I watched in the movie until they happen in the book. My brain isn't so good at remembering much as far as details of movies.

Last Sunday I made tons of treats. In an effort to celebrate 3 birthdays for people in my weekly Bible study, I made cupcakes, pudding, and cookies. I learned today that it was no wonder the ginger-and-molasses cookies turned out so bitter. I used blackstrap molasses instead of the dark molasses the recipe called for. Bad reading of the labels, Ruth!! But at least the molasses was free because it rang up as 10 cents more expensive than it was listed on the shelf, and Pennsylvania law says that the first item you buy that is incorrectly priced, you get for free. So I did. Even with the blackstrap the cookies were really good; I can't wait to try them with the right ingredient!

Last night, while knitting (or trying to knit...), I watched East of Eden with James Dean. Wow, what a great movie!! I've never read the book by John Steinbeck, but I think I'll have to. It almost made me cry at the end. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to watch something that makes them think a litte.