Summer Journals

So I woke up with a full belly from YUMMY steak, potatoes, and corn and thinking it was going to be cooler then that last couple of days living in the desert. No, just a tad cooler and sticky. What happened to the spring weather and gradually go into summer. Crazy!

Since I finally produced a large quantity of product, I was trying to make more today. I ran my reaction below zero for an hour then at room temperature for two ours and went to run a TLC. Well the spotters would collect the solution but not dot it on the TLC plate. Yeup, you guessed it, I could not run a TLC plate. Then I skipped my way over to the CO2 tank to make dry ice. Blair and I thought we were going to freeze to death. Instead of the dry ice collecting in the correct area, it went everywhere. It felt kind of nice for a while then I felt like I was in the freezer section at the grocery store. I knew that since I did not have any dry ice I could not rotavap my product so it is currently under lab air blowing off the solvent.

TOMORROW I GET TO START STEP TWO! Can you tell that I'm excited?!

Also, today was the first freshmen orientation. Nate and I made fun of them. One blew me a kiss. Then we got starbucks. Then slurpees. The good thing about SURF is that we always stay well hydrated.

Back in my wonderful air conditioned house after the heat stroke I almost had drive home. I'm pretty sure I lost ten pounds driving from the heat. Gross but true.

Time to clean up for HOME HOME made lasagna by the best chief and a tv show with the girls. Sorry Blair and Shark Bait I can't pass up the chief's good cookin. I got to try the sauce last night and I have had to eat things today that weren't in the fridge so that I didn't eat the sauce before dinner. Yeah, its amazing.

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So I had a WONDERFUL weekend of wine tasting and eating. Probably the most fun I have had in quite some time. Dr. Schreiner would be proud of how skilled I am at swirling my wine, sniffing, swirl some more, then taste. But I do have to mention that smoked red wine is GROSS. Not a fan. Sorry to those of you that are. Yuck.

So far today things have been going great. Got a little bit of a work out, found my product again, had crystals formed, took a nap, and had starbucks. What more could one ask for?! Oh I know, steak and potatoes for dinner! Too excited for tonight.

This morning I filtered my pure TOSMIC crystals which are currently in the oven at 75 degrees drying. Once they are completely dry I need to weigh them to see how much product I have. Hopefully this time it is more then 2 grams. I also ran NMRs on my solid product and my oil product that turned into a solid...weird. My product was found in the solid layer and I am sooo excited. It is finally working after 4 weeks of research. Step two here I come!

While I was waiting for my carbon NMR to finish, which usually takes about 40 minutes I thought it would be a fine choice to take a little nap. I just didn't know my nap would be caught on camera and end up on the SURF website. Welp, thats why Blair is my bestie. She posted the picture of me sleeping on her blog. I am fully awake now. Blair, Nate and I went for the normal starbucks run and saw an older gentlemen wearing daisy dukes. Quit entertaining when you are extremely sleepy.

Almost time for my crystals to be dry! Off to go check them and think about my steak dinner. Sorry Blair and Shark Bait, I am not sharing.

PS. Daddy: nitro, nitro, nitro! =)

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Welp, my product is still being blown off with lab air. Goodnight

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Well, my product is still blowing off right now. Blair, Nafey and I found it wise to make a run to starbucks while we wait. Our lunch was fantastic. Mexican and making fun of Dr. Schriener. What more could one ask for?! Even Dr. Michelsen made fun of him during her lecture. Dr. Schreiner and SuChen ate lunch with all the chem besties and we had a delightful dragon flag as a center piece due to the lovely holiday we are currently celebrating. Yeah, Dr. Schreiner is just being harrassed all day long and can't say anything about it. Funny!

But date move update: Shark Bait and I did the wave thing with our arms. New dancing partner. Blair and Nafey have no idea what was going on. Major let down. Yet we did dance to more Whittney which Dr. Schreiner loves to enjoy, especially after we are hyper and then get a caffeine and sugar high from chocolate and caramel fraps from starbucks. Thanks Megan!

Highlight of the day: Nafey "what does Katie Perry mean when she says 'my sleeze is going to be affected like a love sick crackhead'". "NO Nate, it's my SPEECH is going to be affected". We are only friends with him because he is slow.

Back to my wonderful coffee and waiting for my product to form. And I'm off.... 

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So I have been slacking on my blog and my dad just sent me an email of why I hadn't been blogging and if everything was ok. Daddy I am just dandy and doing great!

Recap of my life:

Friday: Day after the amazing Corey Smith concert. About two hours of sleep and the drive back to Ashland was a breeze. I made it back in time to take a 15 minute nap. I grabbed a rockstar energy drink from my fridge on the way out and Nafey had starbucks waiting for me. Oh how I love my besties! Easy day in the lab; just had to dry more DME and purify TOSMIC. That's when things got interesting. Some of our hot plates do not give accurate readings of heat. I probably should have used a thermometer to make sure I had the correct boiling point but I missed that step. I decided it would be a great idea to turn the hot plate up so that my solution would boil. It did, I did my recrystallization and added charcoal. Problem started. My charcoal caught on fire and there was smoke in my entire flask. Yes, I burnt my product and had to start all over again. No sleep and a burnt product does not make a happy Kimmy especially at the end of the day. Needless to say I did finish everything correctly, took a much needed nap and headed home for Daddy's day!

Monday: I had to purify more TOSMIC. Weird. I started with 5.5 grams of original product and only ended up with a little over 2 grams of purified product. Not good since I needed just over 7 grams to run my first step over again using larger amounts. Oh well things like this happen. I just purified more and this time ended up with a little over 1 gram. What is going on in the world?! Where did all of my 5 grams go. COME BACK! Then I dried some EtOH. I did this because when the bottle is opened it will absorb some oxygen and that is bad news bears. Some chemicals react with oxygen like it's their job. Not trying to blow up Copley this week. Now that I had give or take 4 grams of pure TOSMIC I had to re-do my calculations to make sure I had the correct amount of chemicals for all of my steps. Dinner was just with Blair and myself. Shark Bait made the lady friend dinner (too cute!). It's ok, Blair and I had Thanksgiving dinner with chicken: roasted chicken, homemade mashed taters, cheeeesssssy mac and cheese, and some m-bean. Not exactly sure of the right name of the m-bean but they were yummy and good for your health. I'm game. I guess I should mention how cute Blair and I are. Not only do we both have the most amazing lab coats (which I spray painted over the weekend so now it looks sweet and not ugly like the picture in Blair's blog) but we now have matching watches thanks to Momma Bear. Yes, and we are joint at the hip.

Tuesday: Cranky day for Blair and I. Not a good dance party day. We did have the usual starbucks which was an upside. Other than that. Nope, not good. I had to re-do my procedure with large amounts. Very exciting but it just didn't seem to be going right. I finally got the set where I had to filter my product through my Celite and it took FOREVER and a year. No lie. So after my clothes went out of style it stopped, good and bad. Good that it stopped but bad becasue I still had more product to filter that was not filtering. I waited half an hour for it to filter more and it didn't. Didn't budge, move, dip, NOTHING. First I lose some of my TOSMIC from the day before and now this. BOO! So I had to seperate my layers of water and ether so I went ahead and did that and blew off my product with lab air. Blair and I needed a pick me up so we went to the best place of all: El Az. Made friend with the waitor as well as inviting everyone we knew to join us. Yes, quite a fabulous time. After being there to almost closing time and a tab of $40 it was time to leave and go to Blair's for a round of grEEn glaSS dOOrs. Only two of us knew how to play and everyone else had no idea. We kept saying you can bring the LETTERS but not the words. You play by saying words that have two of the same letters next to each other. Oh goodness it was fun.

Wednesday: Today! Well. I woke up in time JUST to make it work. PHU! So right now I am waiting for my product to blow off. That product that didn't filter through the Celite yesterday needed to be filtered today. However I did not use the Celite. I jsut used a buchner funnel and fitler paper. I did it once and some of my product still went through the filter paper. Round two: re-filtered it for the third time and used two pieces of filter paper. WOO! It worked. I had to seperate it next. It didn't. Well thank you chemistry gods for hating me this week. I ran to to Dr. Green to save my life. She is the best person I know. I had to add some NaCl aka salt to make my water and ether seperate. IT WORKED! So once I did my sepeartion five times, normal procedure I added my ether layer to my product that had been blowing off all night to get more product. Keep your fingers crossed! I thought this would be a good time to blog. Here ya go Daddy! So right now Blair and I are jamming to our new favorite: Whittney Houston. Love. Don't worry I just sang "and I will always love you" to Dr. Schreiner. He just laughed. But today is a special day for him: HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY LETZEBUERG! And yes Dr. Schreiner is rocking the letzebuerg love with a sweet shirt and flag outside his door. Also, TODAY WE GET FREE LUNCH FOR BEING AWESOME SURFERS! WOO! I love to eat and free food is always a plus. I just hope it's an eight layer burrito from taco bell. What, I mean five.

Keep your fingers crossed everything works out! Be back later to update you on my wonderful life.

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Yesterday I didn't blog because I was going to the wonderful Cory Smith concert which was EXTREMELY fun! Plus I saw one of my sorority sisters there and her little sister.

Yesterday I was up at 5am and already working by the time it was 5:30am. No worries, I had some sweet tunes going and having a dance party to myself. I got a work so early because we wanted to run the entire reaction in one day to see if that made a difference or not in the carbon and proton NMR. The reaction has taken me from two to three days. I knew I needed an early start. Thank goodness my reaction has to run for an hour at -10 degrees Celsius followed by a two hour stir time at room temperature. Perfect time for a nap and of course a Starbucks run and get extra, extra shots of espresso. I am proud to say I am officially a gold card member. Thank you mom for supporting my addiction!

The Starbucks trip was a success and I even picked some up for Blair! The nap was a no go. I had more glassware to clean then I did brains and was able to brush up on my subway dressing skills with our crazy soap. I also ran a proton and carbon NMR on my product from the previous day. A proton NMR tells how many hydrogen atoms are in the product in relation to its neighboring hydrogen, while a carbon NMR tells how many carbon are in the product. When I ran my carbon NMR I was expecting atleast nine peaks. How many did I have...none. Not a single peak other then my chloroform solvent. Good thing I had to run the reaction again!

I finally ran my entire reaction, ran more NMRs and the verdict..... it didn't work. Fourteen hours of straight chemistry and nothing worked. I was not a happy camper but what can you do?! Just have to keep on trucking and hope for better luck next time and think of ways to improve. In the words of my oldest brother, "you just have to be one percent smarter". So that is exactly what I did! I thought it was best to end for the say and held down to Chesapeake for a larger dance party then the usual chem crew at the Corey Smith concert. BEST CHOICE ALLLLLLL DAY BY FAR! (minus the hour of traffic)

Now that leads to today. Friday. Wonderful, joyous Friday. Another early 5 o'clock in the morning wake up call to make it back to Ashland in time for work, which is the reason for very little sleep. I did manage a 15 minute nap and was thankful for the RockStar I had in my fridge. Nate, or Nafey as we like to call him sometimes, brought Blair and I Starbucks too! Another addiction supporter and the start of my caffeine high before I crashed and died.

Today started by Blair, Nafey, Shark Bait, Katie, and I having a hall talk. I was so tired that I sat on the floor and Blair dragged me my lab. I simply told her that I was cleaning the floors. The lab work was straight forward today. Just a simple reflux to dry more DME to run my reaction next week using larger amounts. I also had to purify TOSMIC which was quite interesting. I had to boil ethyl alcohol, which has a boiling point around 60 degrees Celsius. Somehow the my hot plate exceed that temperature by more then a factor of ten. Needless to say, I burnt my TOSMIC and had to start the purification process over again. I had smoke in my flask and was probably the most terrifying thing to happen to me in the lab. Never again will I turn a hot plate up that high!

Blair, Shark Bait, and I now not only share meals together but play "draw" like in an old western movie with our fingers as guns. It is rather cute, I do have to admit. The dance parties were shorter today due to work on the hoods in other labs, but my lab kept the tradition alive. The messages on the white board in my lab continues to be filled with useless comments between Blair and I that no one seems to grasp. Oh how my love my best friend! I even tried to explain the term "giggy"Blair and I use to Nafey and all of the many meanings it has. He didn't get it. I am not surprised.

After the all the caffeine and smoke, I made it home to Manassas to share the weekend with my Daddy to celebrate father's day with him. Time to catch up on sleep and prepare for the upcoming week. I cannot wait!

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I was just a busy little beaver today! It all started off on a good note because I received my winterball dress in the mail last night and the most adorable picture of my niece. Who could complain?!

So I was able to filter my product today with the celite I started to dry yesterday. Luckily when I came in this morning most of it had already dried which was a plus. Once I had everything filtered I had to separate my product and water which was done by adding ether. Once I did the separation five times, to assure accuracy, I had to blow off the solvent using lab air. Weird things started to happen. Instead of getting a yellow liquid as an end product I had clear crystals. Freak out mode kicked in asap. Thank goodness Dr. Green came to the rescue and said to just add water to see if the solid would dissolve. But it didn't. Go figure, just my luck! So I ran a TLC anyways just to make sure everything was still there that I was looking for.

WOOHOO! My product was still there and it was amazing. I just had to filter everything and rinse with ether. I think ether is my new best friend, or just Suchen since she gave me my own bottle so that I no long have to steal it from Dr. Schreiner's lab any more.

Once everything was going the right way again, I was able to make the gel Dr. Green taught me to make the other day and I did it on the first try. So cool! =) Then I could run my product through the gel to see where the product was. I collected the solution through  a chromatrography column in small vials. It reminded me of milking a cow, yet I have never done that, weird. Then after that I did some more TLC's and found what vials my product was in. Number 33 through number 49! And yes, I ran a TLC on 54 different vials. Oh the hard work of a chemist!

Currently all of the vials are in one large round bottom flask being blown off over night using lab air to dissolve the solvent so I have a wonderful product in the morning allowing me to run an NMR. Hopefully there will be good results tomorrow and not a hot mess.

SURF wouldn't be the same if it weren't for my wonderful friends around me and our great dance parties. Yes dancing and chemistry is the best thing since sliced bread. Can't live with it and can't live without it. I did feel sad though, I went into one of the labs and there was not music just silence. Misery. Never again will I visit that lab. Plus, not one had tie dyed lab coats. Always a minus.

As always the day finished off with a yummy dinner with the besties. Tonight was just Shark Bait and myself. Shark Bait made pizza and then we went out on a mission which ended sadly. Blairski ditched us for the boy. It's okay though because I'll be ditching them to see the Corey Smith concert tomorrow with Larry. This just must be ditch your besties for your lover week. What else are good friends for?!

Off to the lab awfully early tomorrow morning with Starbucks in hand to finish everything on time for the concert. Corey Smith, what a stud.

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Today was a very relaxing day that ended in excitement. So I starting working on the first step of my reaction, and everything went smoothly and as expected. After I had to wait a couple of hours for my reaction to mix at below 5 degrees Celsius and then at room temperature, it was the moment of truth; did the starting material and solvent separate?! Well sort of.

So new steps were taken to achieve better results. That's where the fun starts. Dr. Green introduced me to a new technique that would allow me to achieve better separation. I did my rotavap and then added my DI water and NaCl. We needed a source of pressure, so we used a vacuum source using water. I turned the water on as fast as it could, and it sucked the stopper into the Erlenmeyer flask like a hard boiled egg does with a match. Needless to say, it scared Dr. Green and I as well as the lab next door! Thank goodness it was just my bestie, Blair. She thought we were dying.

After that escapade we also managed to break a beaker and decided we had accomplished a fair amount of work for the day. Keep your fingers crossed that everything stays intact tomorrow.

The day did end well with the usual besties, of course chemistry majors: Blair and Ian aka Shark Bait. Blair and I forced Ian to go shopping with us, which wasn't hard once we told him food would be involved. Thank goodness he came because we were privileged enough to experience his FIRST El Az meal. I am definitely thinking there are more of those to come.

PS- If this research doesn't come turn out well, I know that I can find a job at subway being the "dressing girl" due to the fact that our soap to clean our glassware only works if upside down....weird, yet true.

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Today was so hot in Copley, mainly because the AC went down. Yuck! So it was super hot and gloves were not fun to wear. Yet it was a dandy day in the lab. I was able to learn a new technique and make a gel. Plus, my starting material and product separated so the reaction is working! I am ready for tomorrow to "push the frontiers of science" as Dr. Schreiner likes to call it. Of course, dinner was fun with just one chemistry love, the other one left us for his girlfriend but he is going to join his favorite chemistry girls soon.

PS. Thanks mom of my new watch! Much easier to time things, what would I ever do without you?!

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