Short and sucky

Yeah, I really kind of suck at posting things on the blog recently. And guess what, it's not going to get all that much better with this post, I think I'm going to resort to point form updates.

See part of the problem is that I just haven't felt the usual spur of creativity (ok, usually it's anger) that gets me to write a blog entry...actually that's not entirely true. Recently my office has been besieged several times by construction workers. This wouldn't have been so bad except that they showed up unannounced, twice! See the joy to all this is that the work is taking place though the wall directly above my desk. So when they come in I need to vacate. However if the come in without warning it seems that my usual arrival time of 8:00 am is too late, and they will have started dropping crap on my books, notes, computer... In fact this week they managed to "clean up" one of my platinum electrodes for my microfluidic chip, thanks a lot fuckers! All because they didn't think to warn us that they would be doing work that day.

This past weekend I entered my second race of the year. Yet another crit, they seem to really like crits here. Unfortunately even though they are extremely spectator friendly races they seem to hold them in out of the way locations, like behind a hospital in a little town called Hutchinson. Though the location was kind of useful after all. It stated raining at the beginning of my race making some already sketchy corners even worse. Well in the race there were three crashes that I saw. In the first one I almost ran over the guy's head as he turtled in middle of the road. Though now that I think about it, even though we were right next to the hospital it took about 20 minutes for an ambulance to show up and take care of him...I guess he had the wrong insurance, you've gotta love the American system. Oh, I finished about 12 or 15th out of 45 starters, I held onto the tail end of the lead group the whole race, so I'm getting better again.

Speaking of the great American system I've started to realize why lawyers here have such bad reputations. Now I have lawyers as friends in Canada and they are in no way the kind of scumbags that seem to be the stereotype of the industry. If you recall I got a speeding ticket in Wisconsin on the way back from Pittsburgh. Well shortly after I got a letter from a law firm in Wisconsin telling me that they could reduce the fine and prevent me from getting any points on my license for only $50 (or some crap like that I never really read the toilet paper it was printed on). Now my question is: is this the most noble manner of performing law? By scouring the public records for legal infractions and then soliciting them for money? And you wonder why people think lawyers are scum. Why don't real lawyers stop these idiots from making them look like total sleazes?


Oh and I'm feeling even older now. My little brother turned 26 last week and spent the weekend dealing with things for his friend's wedding. When the hell did he turn 26? Why are his friends getting married, I mean mine only started getting married 3, 4...damn I'm getting old!

And one finally joy I need to share with the rest of you is the climate of my temporary office while construction is going on. This hallway turned office space (normally used by other members of my lab) is ridiculously hot! It's literally hotter than it is outside. Now in a place like Minnesota that would normally be a good thing throughout most of the year. But when it's at least 30 C (86 F) in your office you kind of start to sweat just by sitting down. Now some of the beautiful irony to all this is that the construction work going on is to bring cold water for the air chilling system of the other chemistry building. Incidentally the water is coming from a building that is literally on the other side of campus campus.

Anyway that's about it for now, yeah I know this entry kind of sucked, but like I said last time, it's not my job to entertain you. But if you are in the twin cities area and are looking for some entertainment Friday night head to downtown Minneapolis. The Nature Valley Grand Prix, a pro, 5 stage, bike race is taking place this week and Friday night is the crit stage. It was damn exciting last year and should be this year as well. Oh and if you are only into racing for the crashes, it's likely to rain so there are likely to be lots of crashes.