I made myself into a crystallographer because a friend of mine who was doing her PhD a little before me suggested that above and beyond being a synthetic chemist, I should think about having a secondary, necessary technical skill that would make me indispensible somehow. Her specialty was nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, her "supplement" to being a synthetic chemist. Nowadays we all cross boundaries, and nobody is simply one thing or another. The dividing lines in science have all softened so that we can cross over or go down the hall or across campus to ask someone something we don't know. and then we collaborate, and we do this across the country, across borders, as necessary.

So now I'm a chemist, but I never call myself a crystallographer, I let other people do that.

I'm a lot of things and I try not to be stuck with any one label. I knit, for example, and I knit quite well, but I'm not particularly interested in designing. Not that I can't, and not that I haven't, but mostly that it takes a long time and I don't have a lot in the way of spare time. And this then inspires the question: why do the blog, if you don't have spare time?

Why do this? I am doing it because I want to write things, keep a record. Right now I feel like putting my opinions out in public. I may not always be motivated to do this, but I am motivated to do it right now. I don't know why. Exhibitionist? Possibly. Curiosity? Perhaps. A public forum...inasmuch as a blog is public if no one is actually reading it...is not a threat if it's an anonymous public forum. Therefore the "no names" policy on here. I won't name names because no one has given me their permission to use their names or information about them. And so I can be Hilary, and my best friends and family will get their monikers as the need arises, and I probably won't talk about where I work except in a very roundabout way or to rant about something stupid, and I won't tell you very much about my children except that there are two of them.

And this introduction stuff will stop soon.

on the news:

I am watching the liberal leadership campaign here on the CBC, and Michael Ignatieff has just given the last speech of the night. It will be interesting tomorrow; Ignatieff has been the leader in this race for a while, but I really, really prefer Bob Rae. First ballots run tonight, and there are rumours that Joe Volpe will cross to Bob Rae's camp, pulling Rae up closer to Ignatieff. Now, as far as Gerard Kennedy and Stephane Dion, who are tied more or less for third...hell, I'd rather see any of them rather than Ignatieff. And Ignatieff is really smart, and I do love the smart boys, but he's been out of the country for most of his adult life, and I don't believe that, outside of his own invented foreign outlook, he really knows the country very well.

As far as the politics go, and descriptions of the Liberal convention and its eventual outcome, Rick Mercer does a far better and far more entertaining job than I'll ever do. He was there after all. (Dec. 5/06)