Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bars

Today is going to be a very good day. I know, this is a surprising thing to say on a Monday. However, this is the last day of work before I head home for the holidays. Winter lab shut-down, such a great time of year. This year will be especially sweet for me and my lab mates because we have all been working very, very hard. The past few weeks have been very crazy. If it were a day of the week that ended in ‘day,’ we were in the lab.

My friends out there who have been to grad school, or are currently in grad school, should understand this perfectly. Those of you who thought it was a good idea to get your PhD in the sciences, you know. When I signed on to go to grad school I didn’t realize that I was giving up my free-time/life for the next five years. Seven years now if you include my postdoctoral training! Luckily I like what I’m doing. If you are considering graduate school, or your PhD, consider how much you like other things. You know, fun things. Things that include going outside in the daylight. Things that include seeing people who don’t work in the same room as you do. Are you that dedicated? If so, c’mon in! Grad school is great!

If you’ve chosen to pursue your graduate degree, don’t worry. You’ll be coming to grad school with many like-minded people. Depending on your field will of course determine the number of “normal” people you’ll meet. In the hard sciences it goes this way, in order of increasing weirdness. Biologists, biochemists, chemist, physicists. Sorry physicists, you know you’re a little strange.

So, you’ll see that I put myself pretty high on the oddness scale. Don’t worry about me, I’m not that much of a weirdo and luckily neither are my lab mates. They are some pretty wonderful people, which helps with the fact that I see them approximately 60 hours a week (on a slow week). Today is the last day I have to see these people for almost two weeks. This is a good thing, because we are all running out of things to say to each other. We also think that punching each other is a good idea these days.

To avoid getting punched today, I’m plying my lab mates with sweets. Here are some peanut butter bars lab mates! Please, don’t punch me in the face.

Browned-butter spritz sandwich cookies

Can you believe that it’s December 17th already? I feel like it was September just a few days ago. Now here we are, creeping up on Christmas. How are you doing? Have you finished all of your shopping? Have you baked all of your cookies? How about the decorations, are they hung by the fireplace with care? To make you feel better let me answer these questions. No, no, no and no. I have not done any of the above. I’ve been living in my little fantasy world over here. You know the one. It’s the one where I have plenty of time before Santa comes rolling into town. What happened this year?

When I was little I would get ready for Christmas in November. It was simple, after my birthday was Christmastime! I spent the day after my birthday preparing my countdown chain. You remember those, right? A ring of paper for each day before Christmas and each day you tear off a ring. In the early days of the chain I would behave and tear off the right number of rings. As the days went on I would pretend to forget about the chain, only to be able to tear off three or four when I “remembered.” Such gratification, tearing off three rings!

Then thanksgiving would arrive, marking the official start of the holiday season. (For everyone else that is, I was already celebrating) The morning after thanksgiving we would head to the local garden store and get two trees. A cute tiny one (for my tiny grams house) and a huge one for us. And I mean HUGE, ten to twelve feet. We would bring it home and set it on the deck. This is where it would sit until the week before Christmas. It would taunt me. It would inevitably be buried in feet and feet of lake effect snow!

According to my calendar it’s one week from Christmas. The tree on my parents deck is getting ready to make its appearance inside the house. A few more days after that I’ll be heading home to visit. The holidays are here and they snuck up on me this year. I decided to make some more cookies to try and convince myself that they really are here.

Chorizo and Vegetable soup

This is what it looked like when I stared out my apartment window this Sunday.

Yup. Grey, dark and stormy. It was one of those days where you just want to curl up on the couch and watch a bunch of terrible movies. Sadly for me, I don’t own a couch. It just wouldn’t fit in my palatial, 325 square foot apartment. It was either a bed or a couch and I decided I could probably use a place to sleep.

The second problem I faced was the work I had to do in the lab. Why did I set up chemistry that needed attention Sunday morning? Because I’m a crazy person, apparently. So, I had to trek into work and pay some attention to my chemicals. Now, I only live a mile away from work and I had driven into work the past two days. These two factors combined led me to decide that it was a good day to walk to work. Oh boy, what a mistake.

The walk into work wasn’t particularly bad, just windy. It got to be a problem when I wanted to leave work. Bands of rain came and went over the hours I was in the lab. From calm to downpour and back again in just minutes. How was I supposed to get home? Like I said, bad day to walk to work. Finally, during a break in the weather, I decided to head out.

Halfway home, whoosh! Downpour! Umbrella in hand, fighting the wind, I battled my way home. My poor little umbrella, it was working so hard. I think I managed to keep my head dry. When I got back to my apartment my coat was soaked through. After shedding my soaked coat and rubber boots, I had to laugh. I was completely dry, except for my jeans. From where my coat ends at my mid-thigh, to where my boots begin below my knee, was completely soaked. Wet knees. Time to change into some sweatpants and make soup.