well, i’ve finally jumped on the bandwagon and gotten our own domain name. after much debate amongst the ben/christina/izzy household, we’ve decided to go with andsafetybelts.com . of course, it is from a song. gold stars to those who start singing it in there head.

and so therefore this blog shall now be published to http://andsafetybelts.com/cblog/

though it might be the end of the weekend before it goes live.

this week we’ve had the harper’s favorite contracter around to fix stuff like the fan that hasn’t worked since ben moved in and some random design flaws in the condo, which make life annoying like some wires behind the dishwasher that prevent the dish washer from being installed correctly and anchored so the thing tips around when open and the fact that the kitchen has as much light as a cave, so he’s installing lights under the cabinets. i’m quite excited about finally being able to see in the kitchen. ooooo and the garbage disposal he is also putting in. that’s exciting so the trash will quit getting so stinky.

i’m sad that he wasn’t able to figure out what is wrong with the dryer which takes 2 hours to dry stuff. i was hoping it was something easy like the outside vent wasn’t installed correctly, but i think i’m going to have to harass the store they got it from over christmas. stupid dryer, but i cannot live with the dryer taking so long NO MORE, especially cuz the thing is brand new and never worked!

I see lots of dogs when I run around our place. I run during that first thing in the morning take the dog out to pee time period. I like to rate my runs by how many pugs I see. I don’t ever stop and get them. I’m usually running and don’t want to stop. And some owners aren’t all about strangers petting their dogs. So I usually just smile and say hi puppy. Sometime I compliment them on their cuteness.

This morning I walked out of my apartment building to see the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time – a true puppy, an 8 week old english bulldog puppy. it was so cute and it bounded toward me, I couldn’t resist asking if i could pet it. Of course, the nice lady said. and I fell in love. so in love am i with this puppy that lives next door. If it would stay that size forever, I would be looking for breeders as we sit here reading. Of course, it will become an 80 lb dog soon enough. i hope hope hope i see it a bunch.

of course this makes me want to get an actual puppy instead of our current plan of a dog that’s already housebroken. We don’t have the time to house break a dog and I want to get one sooner than later. Therefore we have to get an adult. Plus, I feel like it is service as lots of dogs need homes. There is as boston terrier (the kind of dog we shall be acquiring this fall) rescue in the area. I had banned myself from looking because it makes me so sad, but i can’t resist today with my heart yearning to steal the bulldog puppy from next door. and now i’m sad. because the hardest things is that as much as i want to rescue one of these boston terriers, the existence of slim shady (a.k.a. izzy my love) and a kiddie (yet to be, well, conceived, much less named) makes it very hard to adopt a dog that has been abused. so i look every so often and hope that a dog will need adoption that is good with cats and small children.

enough about puppies. i’ve made myself so sad by looking at petfinder.com.

Hunk o’ man and I went to the cubs game last night with ben and julie, our favorite getting married in a month couple. you can see julie and i and the group thanks to their newest money maker, fanfote. ben’s a big astro’s fan for no particular reason besides having been born there, yet not raised there. I totally thought we were going to lose b/c Roger Clemens (sp?) was pitching against some no named pitcher we just brought up from triple AAA to sub for Wood. But Mr. no name did a good job, and once Roger doger had thrown his 70 pitches, we got 4 runs off their closer, who was sucking. and the strangest thing was is the astro’s manager just left him in. weird. so the game turned out to be exciting in the end, and we got to leave a half inning early which was welcome because i was freezing my ass off. tales of 95 degree temps in houston make me wonder if i am on the same planet as them.

p.s. makes PERFECT sense the mr. christopher would defend the sting’s music. him and his old timey piano loving.

I house/dog sat this weekend. All of the harpers were out in rainy cold Amherst for Pete’s graduation. I enjoyed a beautiful weekend complete with 70 degree temps and blue skies. About damn time, stupid chicago weather. It’s almost June and I just now feel like spring has started. I had great run in Wilmette. The lake is so beautiful sparkling in the sunshine, and the houses are more beautiful than I ever could decribe. And the Bah

Okay. at some point i just realized. i must post for karma reason. yes i’m busy, but i have lots of small chunks of time where i am waiting on something, so i read other people’s blogs. and so i must return the favor.

My conference in san diego was great. If you couldn’t tell, I’d been feeling a little blah about my research leading up to it. The conference is a bunch of people that make thin films and it does two things:

(1) remind me that i am not the dumbest kid in the class.
(2) remind me that though my research isn’t sexy (like nanotubes, nanowires, SAMs, electronic devices), my research is going to have a bigger impact that many sexy projects are. I can reduce energy consumption and material consumption (two things dear to my heart) with my coating in cars, in hard drives, in biological implants (if only i had the stomach that would be some cool research to go into).

I came back with a horrible head cold, but was all refreshed and inspired on a research side.

it is amazing what my personal guilt level can do – i feel so guilty when i don’t run, or if i forget to return something i borrowed, or i forget who i owe dinner. There are three friends i routinely eat out with (one on one). One of them, i have this memory of picking up the tab one dinner and me saying that i’ll get it next time. I cannot remember who. and it is so bothering me. I can just ask around, but i don’t want it to seem like I’m asking to try to get out of it. So i feel guilty. i often wonder what it would be like to not feel guilty even when my brain says that there’s nothing to feel guilty about. i wouldn’t run most days, that’s for sure. About half the mornings i get up to run, i’m driven by pure guilt to go. I know if i don ‘t run that morning i’ll feel guilty for the rest of the day.

stupid magnetic fields. they play a large part in my research (larger that one would think) and the field dies off so quickly that i got new material target to sputter from, the surface is further from the magnets (~1.5 inches) and therefore the field and therefore plasma is weaker and thus my deposition conditions change dramatically causing me all sorts of frustrating issues. i replaced some of the magnets that were definitely loosing their magnetization (due to heat) and now i wonder if i shouldn’t have just replaced all of them. i might go ahead and just do that or i can polish down the thickness of the target. that is the quick fix, but then that effects how it sits in the holder. sigh.