Shower curtains and pies

I've only gotten like seven e-mails today. The usual number is like 20 or more on the weekdays. I'm wondering whether the university e-mails are out of order or something. But at least I now have time to write in this blog instead of going through e-mails.

I am now recommending to everyone to wash your shower curtain. See I have been wondering for quite a while now whether it could be done in a washing machine. I hadn't really had the courage to try it out since I was afraid my lovely shower curtain with dancing people might get destroyed and then I'd have to go find a new one. Finding that one was hard enough. Of course I wanted frogs to begin with but could find no lovely frog curtains and went for the people instead. I haven't regretted my decision. But so I finally gathered the courage to put it in the washing machine since it was down right disgustingly moldy and it was either wash it or get a new one, ie. a possible lose-lose situation in case it did get destroyed. And as you might have guessed, it did not get destroyed and did indeed get washed. It is totally like new now. The only regret of course that I didn't washed it sooner. Or now that I think about it, I could have just washed my previous lovely frog shower curtain instead of throwing it in the trash. So I am now spreading the joyful message of shower curtain washing - in a washing machine! And yes it was one of those see-through vinyl shower curtains, not like any sort of cloth and I did it at 40 degrees on regular wash.

I organized an election coffee evening for yesterday because of the local elections. After a few days of pondering I decided to bake banoffee and lemon-meringue pie. And to top that off I decided on a whim to make fudge with this recipe I got from my colleague. And to the doubtful - yes, you can get condensed milk for the banoffee in Finland. I got it from like a specialty oriental food shop. Granted it was sweetened, which wasn't required. The fudge was also made using condensed milk and it ended up being just like fudge. (I remember trying to make toffee in my teens and it never ending up right do I was quite skeptical.) The only problem with the fudge was the Latvian sugar, which had huge crystals and did not dissolve well. The actual happening was quite nice. Me and like 7 other people, ate way too much sweet stuff, talked about politics and travel mostly and at least I had a good time.

I've mostly been looking at some articles today at work. They are quite interesting and I think I may have to try out some new things so long as I can find so chemicals.

Getting ready to go and life

I've been cleaning my office and lab today and generally trying to get things in order. I also booked plane tickets for my initial trip to Germany. I'll be going there for the first three weeks of December. I don't yet have a place to live but it's looking hopeful that I'll get to live in the same building as before. The same landlord says he'll look into what he could get for me. He owns like 20 apartments in that building so there is a good chance I'll get something. I'm counting on my luck. I hope it doesn't fail me.

I've noticed that I sort of like doing office work more than doing stuff in the lab with the exception of measuring crystal structures. It sort of bothers me since at one time in my studies I noticed the same thing but decided that since I am going to be a chemist I will like working in the lab. And I do sort of like it. I think I'm just quite lazy and sitting at my desk is easier than going into the lab. So mostly the problem at the moment might just be that what I mostly do is weigh stuff and dissolve it and that's not very challenging. The thing is that I should start more experiments since if I don't I won't get any results and then there will just be no use in doing anything. But I'm now counting on getting into doing stuff as soon as I've cleaned the last of my old experiments. It's sort of like me not wanting to start cooking if there is already a pile of dishes, I guess. But liking office work is not so bad if I take into account that once I get my PhD, I'll most likely not be doing the weighing in the lab and will maybe even miss it.

Everything else in my life is going quite well. Nothing much special I guess. It does seem that life has gotten more serious. It might be that I haven't been to a really crazy party in quite a while or just the fact that going to work everyday and then spending most the nights at home since I don't always have energy to do anything special is just boring. Luckily there's climbing, the bnd and my other friends.

This post is really boring and I'm sorry about that. I think it's because I'm at work and it's three in the afternoon and I'd really like to go home though there's nothing much special to do there either. (Sounds depressing. I best stop here.)