Oh Darlings It's Been Ages

Almost a month. Not bad.

We spent a wonderful family evening after supper playing Billy Talent I and dancing around. This, after Big One had a hysterical (no word of a lie) fit about making pompoms for her older cousin. Cousin is doing a thing for the Santa Claus parade and Big One agreed to making pompoms, $0.25/pompom, 100 in total. Big bucks. Said fit was had over the first pompom, which didn't quite work. Ye gods, you'd think that the world had caved in. In fact, now that she's going to bed late, she's having another fit about the pompoms. I am only writing the word pompom because after a while it's very silly, much like the fit-taking, which has moved its way up the stairs to read Stuart Little before it goes to bed.

In other news, a couple of weeks ago I attended my first NMR conference, the MOOT, held at the University of Windsor. I have to admit that some of it went sailing over my head, but at the same time it was really interesting to find out that NMR isn't just for making sure that you've made the compound you meant to make. In fact, I would say that's a small part of NMR, and that most of it is taken up with some remarkable research...not least of which is NMR Crystallography. Now while I did pick a Friday night fight with one of Canada's premier NMR researchers (it was the pub before the conference started, the Informal Mixer, I was really sick, and I'd had two pints of beer, oh, and I've known him for a really long time. That link to the paper on his site is the talk he gave. Quite fabulous.) I honestly find this topic to be fascinating. Still, I was an X-ray crystallographer at an NMR conference, of course I'm going to question the method. If I actually had more than five minutes of spare time, I'd read up on it. I have a copy of the introduction to a book that's being written.....and the beginning of it is somewhat defensive (X-ray diffraction people think they own crystallography, well I'm here to tell you they don't! they don't! Damnit! get me a tissue!) but the rest is an interesting foray into what X-ray can't do, and NMR can. I'm not saying for a second that X-ray diffraction can tell you everything about a molecule (where are those pesky hydrogens...and can we discuss those intermolecular interactions? because I think there are other techniques that do a better job) I still do think that we get more information than most other techniques. Not everything, not solution interactions, not native behaviour of a protein, not all the information about H-bonding, certainly.

It just occurred to me, it's sort of like looking for a new hairdresser. For years, this one has been doing your hair, and it's okay, but it's not what you really want to look like, and she's/he's not changing with the times. Or she/he has other interests and they don't have to do with updating haircutting skills. So while you're not unhappy with your current hairdresser, you can see that she/he isn't everything, and you try the place up the street, and WOW there are so many things about your hair that you'd just been taking for granted.

Like that, yes. Exploring different forms of crystallography is exactly like finding a new hairdresser.

I was sick at the conference because on the way down there a bad cold caught me (the same one that was messing with my eyes and making them hurt), so by the time I arrived I couldn't talk, and do you know what? Nobody complained about that, which is so hard for me to believe. I was restricted in the numbers of stupid things I could say to people, and so anything I did say had to be extra stupid. It was like concentrated stupid, not diluted down by normal conversation or beer, but rather, can't waste a word, better say the dumbest thing I can think of.

I fulfilled the prophesy.

So the weekend was mostly spent sitting in a nice chapel thing, listening to talks about stuff that I couldn't always follow...the bio talks were okay, because those were mostly biochemistry and a little bit of NMR. Protein NMR is mostly proteins, less NMR, but when they get into it, it's in four dimensions. Yeesh. There was a talk by a geologist who showed a lot of diffraction (aaaaahhhhhhh, relief for my brain) patterns...looking at cement in concrete, and the 29Si NMR of said concrete, and how the aggregate (gravel) that's used in the concrete is usually helping the stuff to disintegrate. Bye-bye, bridges in Quebec! your aggregate is toooooo alkaline.

I didn't have to talk at the conference, at least not too much. I had laryngitis, which is fine with me because it means that I won't be as super-sick as if I had a regular cold or flu, but I was still pretty sick. I was kept mostly human by my favoured cold product, one that leaves you feeling sick, but functional. It's quite exceptional that way.

That was MOOT, and two weeks ago, and now my voice is almost normal again. It wouldn't usually take that long to get better, but I guess I'm old.

Still working on that picasa album from the wedding blessing.....but also writing a paper for the course I'm taking, and hoping to get some sleep in before the sun comes up. what a great life. I won't bother complaining about the course tonight, as it's getting late, but you know what? I am a bit tired of people not knowing the difference between "it's" and "its". This is not a difficult concept: it's is a contraction of it and is. its is the possessive form of it. As in, "That? It's my cat's ball. Its ball. Yes, I know it's orange green and purple. I like it that way. I'd chase it myself if I weren't a human, but as a human I've got other things to do. No, seriously. I can't chase the ball, it's my cat's ball." And yet, so many people in my class cannot differenciate between its and it's.

It is driving me bonkers.