1 Day, 1 Sentence [November 2023]

Wednesday, November 1 – Got into work early to start a column and stayed late to run a filtration step.

Thursday, November 2 – Had leftover Chinese food from the previous night for lunch.

Friday, November 3 – Decided it was a good idea to start cross stitching potential Christmas gifts the month before Christmas.

Saturday, November 4 – Hiked up a “mountain” in a neighboring town to take advantage of the mild weather, though we were pretty well past peak fall colors, and trees were mostly bare.

Sunday, November 5 – Another warm November day, so we got in a final pickleball session for the year.

Monday, November 6 – Spent the day attempting to figure out what was going on with the conductivity probe’s calibration coefficient.

Tuesday, November 7 – Chauffeured my parents to take the bus to the airport for their Singapore trip, thus beginning my Home Alone experience (spoiler alert: no bandits, wet or otherwise, and much fewer traps).

Wednesday, November 8 – Took a field trip to the gas station for slushies and watched the Revolution’s season officially end with their second loss to Philadelphia in a best of three playoff series.

Thursday, November 9 – Due to unexpected circumstances, we had to repeat the filtration we did at the beginning of the month, and this one went excruciatingly slowly for no discernable reason, keeping us in the lab until 11 pm.

Friday, November 10 – Reported back in to work bright and early, but took off for a couple hours in the middle of the day for a dentist appointment.

Bare trees post-brush fire

Saturday, November 11 – Met a couple coworkers at Tower Hill Botanic Garden for Gnomevember, followed up by a quick hike along the Wachusett Reservoir and a trip to Wegmans.

Sunday, November 12 – Raked up the carpet of leaves in the backyard by myself in an hour.

Monday, November 13 – Since I was uninspired to cook over the weekend, I turned to one of my standard fallback dinners of pasta, tomato sauce, and meatballs.

Tuesday, November 14 – Made it into the lab before 7 am for double column day and found our loading material very much not thawed, which could have thrown off our entire week from the start, but somehow, we recovered to finish the day at a halfway decent hour.

Wednesday, November 15 – Performed the next (and final) step of our shortened run with no unexpected problems.

Thursday, November 16 – Went to get bagels for lunch; I had sausage, egg, and cheese on a jalapeño cheddar bagel.

Friday, November 17 – Mandatory work seminar, but we got samosas.

Saturday, November 18 – Quiet day at home, minus a quick trip to the library.

Sunday, November 19 – Took a trip to the grocery store for milk and animal crackers.

Monday, November 20 – Made waffles.

Gnomes

Tuesday, November 21 – Filled in for a coworker and presented update slides to one of our clients.

Wednesday, November 22 – Moved bagel day because of Thanksgiving, but I had leftover rice/ground beef/corn/tomatoes, string cheese, and clementines for lunch.

Thursday, November 23 – Did two loads of laundry, raked, and made a sides-only Thanksgiving dinner of mashed potatoes, stuffing, steamed broccoli, and cranberry sauce.

Friday, November 24 – Baked my yearly loaf of pumpkin cranberry bread and batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.

Saturday, November 25 – Watched Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, which I quite enjoyed.

Sunday, November 26 – Had a block of tofu to use up, so I made peanut tofu to have an excuse to eat peanut sauce.

Monday, November 27 – Started a column and dealt with a bunch of miscellaneous tasks at work.

Tuesday, November 28 – Began reviewing batch records for scale up.

Wednesday, November 29 – Spent all day going through batch records.

Thursday, November 30 – Worked a split shift, finishing batch record review in the morning and returning in the evening to set up a reaction.

Wachusett Reservoir

1 Day, 1 Sentence [October 2023]

October began with our largest scale run yet, continued with a series of DoE (design of experiments) runs, then we got a break to prepare for another run scheduled for November. Meanwhile, it was fall, meaning leaves changing colors, raking, and shorter days.

Sunday, October 1 – Went apple picking and left with 17 Gala, 2 Empire, 5 Jonagold, 13 Smitten, 17 Honeycrisp, and 6 mystery apples, plus 4 Harrow Sweet pears, apple cider, and apple cider donuts.

Monday, October 2 – The beginning of a busy week in the lab, involving finalizing batch records, running TFF (tangential flow filtration), equilibrating a column, and setting up two more columns to run overnight all at the same time.

Tuesday, October 3 – Started the day in the lab at 7 am,but managed to hand off 4 columns in various stages of cleaning/loading/equilibrating and leave before 4 pm to get in a quick hike on the way home.

Wednesday, October 4 – Arrived at work to hear about everything that went wrong the previous night, but we forged on ahead with the run.

Thursday, October 5 – Another long day at work, though at least I got pad thai for dinner.

Friday, October 6 – Celebrated the unusually high number of October birthdays with cake at lunch, and completed the final concentration and formulation of our protein in the evening.

Saturday, October 7 – Good news: saw a Cornell ChemE friend for the first time in 6-ish years; bad news: watched the Revolution lose to Orlando, though Carles Gil tried his best to save New England with two goals, one in (wait for it) second half stoppage time.

Sunday, October 8 – Officially ended the tomato season with 1075 cherry tomatoes and 75 yellow pear tomatoes and baked an upside-down apple cider spice cake.

Monday, October 9 – Had the day off for Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, so went for an 8.2-mile long 6-mile hike around a lake.

Tuesday, October 10 – Ate leftover banana French toast for breakfast.

Fall colors

Wednesday, October 11 – Continued running DoEs for a client and had a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich for lunch.

Thursday, October 12 – Used comp time to spend the day hiking at World’s End, a park on a peninsula in Hingham, MA with views of the Boston skyline.

Friday, October 13 – Survived Friday the 13th without any mysterious power losses, equipment explosions, and/or missing orders (our lab is 1000% haunted).

Saturday, October 14 – Did laundry, made sushi for lunch, went for a hike near my high school, and had the absolute pleasure of seeing New England lose to Nashville, though Tomás Chancalay had another two-goal game and almost brought the Revolution back from a first half three-goal deficit.

Sunday, October 15 – Finished Mistborn (The Final Empire) and raked for the first time in the season.

Monday, October 16 – Finally got around to catching up on documentation tasks at work.

Tuesday, October 17 – More lab organization while in between runs.

Wednesday, October 18 – Cornflakes for breakfast.

Thursday, October 19 – Got into work early so I could leave early and go hiking in search of fall colors.

Friday, October 20 – Spent part of my morning on the lab floor taping around our equipment.

World's End

Saturday, October 21 – Completed a jigsaw puzzle of scenes from The Office and got to see the Revolution actually win a game for once, their last game of the regular season, against Philadelphia, on two Gustavo Bou goals.

Sunday, October 22 – Went out to look for more fall colors, then came home for a raking session.

Monday, October 23 – Enjoyed an apple cinnamon yogurt (sadly, a seasonal item from Trader Joe’s) as part of my lunch.

Tuesday, October 24 – Packed columns, mixed buffers, and made applesauce with some apples that had been hanging around in the fridge.

Wednesday, October 25 – More or less a normal day.

Thursday, October 26 – Eventful day for the lab – there was a new piece of equipment delivered, our existing equipment got a maintenance visit, and we had a water delivery.

Friday, October 27 – Managed to get off work early enough to get in a quick hike at a nearby farm and see the sheep.

Saturday, October 28 – Had coworkers over for lunch and pickleball to enjoy fall before everything became cold, dark, and grey.

Sunday, October 29 – After almost a year, finished a cross stitch piece for a Cornell friend.

Monday, October 30 – Two days before starting client work, decided to rearrange the lab, which may or may not have involved a lot of climbing onto the lab benches.

Sheep

Tuesday, October 31 – Low-key Halloween at work, though my lightsaber did make an appearance.

1 Day, 1 Sentence [September 2023]

September wasn’t the most exciting month, but that was probably a good thing considering the August we had. We got a bit of a break from lab work at the beginning of the month before ramping up again going into October.

Friday, September 1 – Start of meteorological fall at the end of the week as we finished up batch records and did some troubleshooting to figure out why the pressure was high on one of our instruments.

Saturday, September 2 – Went to see an outdoor art exhibition at a nearby nature preserve, harvested the first yellow pear tomato, and watched the Revolution drop two points against Austin on the last play of the game after an encouraging Tomás Chancalay brace.

Sunday, September 3 – After hearing his name in fantasy circles all across the internet (and picking up his books for free), I began ridiculously prolific author Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn trilogy.

Monday, September 4 – Celebrated Labor Day by making a tomato, onion, and spam quiche to use up some of the tomatoes.

Tuesday, September 5 – Spent the day at work inventorying chemicals and labeling shelves.

Wednesday, September 6 – Arts and crafts continued with picture labels for our drawers of AKTA parts.

Thursday, September 7 – It was a Thursday.

Friday, September 8 – Moved on from labelling to working on batch records for an upcoming run.

Saturday, September 9 – Hiked in a neighboring town and saw some fun fungi and lots of ferns, then witnessed the beginning of the Revolution’s slide into a depressing fall as they yet again snatched a draw from the jaws of victory by allowing Minnesota to score a(nother) second half stoppage time tying goal.

Sunday, September 10 – Had hot dogs for lunch, did some work on the garage door, made an instant pot chocolate cake, and started Avatar: The Way of Water.

Quiche

Monday, September 11 – Finished blue people Avatar 2 – cinematography was solid, but I dislike Jake Sully to the point where I wanted the incredibly militaristic antienvironment jerks to win.

Tuesday, September 12 – Took tomatoes with smoked pepper jack cheese and peanut butter and jam on marble rye to work for lunch.

Wednesday, September 13 – Edited batch records for both projects and continued my Grey’s Anatomy rewatch while in between shows on Netflix.

Thursday, September 14 – Meeting day at work was disrupted by one of our fridges losing power.

Friday, September 15 – Lunch was burgers and fries.

Saturday, September 16 – Made chili, baked cranberry orange scones and mini cheesecakes, tried crab flavored potato chips, and saw the Revolution break their streak of last-minute ties by having Omar González, of all people, score a second half stoppage time consolation goal in a loss to Colorado.

Sunday, September 17 – On a trip into Boston, stopped at Tatte for a prosciutto fig panini with gruyere and pear for lunch.

Monday, September 18 – Started lab work for both projects at the same time.

Tuesday, September 19 – Simultaneous project work continued, plus batch record editing.

Wednesday, September 20 – Got to have a leftover giant meatball for snack.

Tomatoes

Thursday, September 21 – Went to the Big E for the first time, where we saw some animals, got deep-fried Oreos, had a lot of people try to sell us things, admired quilts and cross stitch projects, and visited all six New England statehouses.

Friday, September 22 – Returned to work for the fifth straight day of filtration for one of our projects, and finished the major edits to a set of batch records for our other project with over a week to spare.

Saturday, September 23 – Baked a coffee cake, tried out playing 7 Wonders thanks to the library, and watched the Revolution draw Chicago with no second half stoppage time goals.

Sunday, September 24 – Started the last season of New Amsterdam.

Monday, September 25 – Worked late to set up and start an overnight reaction.

Tuesday, September 26 – Found a round red mushroom on the front lawn.

Wednesday, September 27 – Ran the second half of our post-reaction solution through a column and set up another reaction.

Thursday, September 28 – Packed columns and did a test run of a new chromatography method.

Friday, September 29 – Ordered pizza for lunch.

Saturday, September 30 – Made another quiche and actually saw the Revolution beat Charlotte on Dave Romney’s first regular season goal for the team.

Rides at the Big E