Matt's View

So in last night's softball game the Beer Barron Brigade played the who cares what their name is team and lost.  The fact that we lost both games was not surprising.  At this point the season we have a perfect record.  We are 0-8 or something like that.  Basically, we have never won a game.  On the upside, the guys came really, really close last night.  The score was tied at 10-10 at the end of regulation, and it took another two innings to determine who the winner would be. 

 I have already given it away by mentioning the fact that we lost, but it doesn't matter.  Everyone played a great game, and it was much more enjoyable to watch than the previous week's crushing by the Run Rule Recipients when we were beaten 40 something to 8 and then high 20 something to not very many.  Made for some very short and dare I say embarassing games? 

Before the nubulation I used to play right field for the team.  I enjoyed the games that I did get to play in, and sitting in the stands last night I was really wishing that I could be out there playing with them, but alas... my wounds are still too fresh.  I am looking forward to next season though.  We are going to knock them all out and show them how a team that should be playing in say H or I league ball plays C leagues ball, and I can tell you right now, it is not going to be pretty.  Look out, we are going to be crushed by you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Insert war cry here)

So I took some pictures last night while I was sitting in the stands so I think I will try to post them in the this blog as that is what I have seen a lot of people do.  The question is how do you do it?Let's see... 

Ok, so I think I have a picture of Jimmie at Bat posted in this entry.  It it showing up as a dead link, so I am not sure if it will work or not.  I will have to wait until I get this entry published to see if it works.  If it does, then I have some other things I can slap in here as well.

So from watching the team and playing with them for a couple of games, it would seem that we as chemists are not very well suited to play softball.  There are things that we do well.  Synthesizing various molecules, both organic and inorganic depending on your tastes, analyzing said molecules, and then tellling world why we think that they way we made the molecule is better than anyone else's method of making the same thing.  And... consuming a large amount of a golden EtOH enriched liquid at deparmental functions.  Those are things that we are good at.  Softball really isn't our forte.  Good thing it is all for fun.  It is not entirely clear how much fun the players have during games when we are getting crushed, but our loyal band of trveling hecklers gets a huge kick out of seeing us get dominated every week. 

So allow me to leave you with a random really bad chemistry analogy.  Chemists and softabll appear to be a heterogenous mixture.  They sort of mix fi you really stir them up well, and reactions do occur, but seemingly more slowly then under optimum conditions.  Chemists and beer are a homogenous mixture.  Everything mixes together well, and reactions happen so fast they sometimes exotherm on you and there is absolutely no way to control them.  So maybe we can use the beer as a phase transfer catalyst to help boost the softball playing performance reaction.  Would that be like using a performance enhancing drug?  Someone should try it next week.  See if playing drunk increases a chemist's ability to play softball.

Posted by Matthew Sherrill at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I should probably start by clarifying what I mean by being on drugs before the DEA or some other grad student regulating agency comes busting down my door @ 3 am while I am sleep to haul my butt off to jail or at least to take away my GRA for the semester.  The presciption, that is the key word prescription, drugs that I am taking are doing interesting things to me.  Since the Nubulation (the making of the Nub) happened, I have been in a reasonable amount of pain.  To help control said pain, the doctors prescribed some nice pain killers.  Although they are really great about helping to alleviate the pain associated with the Nub, they are also great at bringing most higher brain functions to a complete halt.

When I wake up in the morning, I find that most of the effects of the last dose of drugs that I took right before I went to bed have mostly worn off.  Then comes time for the next dose.  After I have taken the pills, I have discovered that I have less than one hour of true brain function left before I turn into what I like to call the oblivious vegetable.  I will describe the symptoms of this state in a minute.  This morning I used the limited time of brain function to proof read a portion of a grant draft that my boss Michael Rubin is preparing to submit next week. 

So that was all tjat I was able to get done this morning that was productive before turning into the oblivious happy vegetable.  This process starts with a slight warm fuzzy feeling that begins to grow of deep inside.  From there the vision begins to get slightly blurry.  Not horribly blurry, but the kind of blurry that you get when you have a good buzz from drinking a bit too much alcohol.  Next to go is the concentraion and the ability to think about anything that actually resembles rational thought.  You could have been working on solving the deepest mysteries of science and doing well at it, take some of these drugs, and the only things that you can contemplate after that is why if I hold my breath, I can't take any more breaths.  (You can see how much sense this whole last paragraph is making to see my point.)

So I spend the rest of the day in this vegetable like state doing a lot of not much.  I have been updating thenub.org a lot recently and learning about developing webpages and everything that goes along with that.  Plus I have gotten into this blogging trend.  Not sure how long it will last though.  Those were some of the random ramblings of a drugged grad student for the day.

Thanks Tiff for the comment and the encouragement.  I have to do something with my time or I would completely blow a head gasket, so I am going to try to keep everyrhtng updated at least until I get back on my feet and back to work. 

Now I need to put together an entry about the softball game last night.  I have it... the drugged musings of a grad students on the effects of chemists on softball...

Posted by Matthew Sherrill at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, so I am new, very, new to this whole being on the web thing.  In the past week I have bought a domain name, put up a not very good website, and then started playing around with it.  I have been trying to learn the in's and out's of webhosting.  So I came across this option for my domain and that is to add a blog to it.  I have never blogged before, but I know a lot of people out there who do, so I thought that I would give it a shot.

Recently there has been a lot of stuff going on in my life.  Most of it related to the motorcycle accident that I was in two weeks ago.  There have been a lot of changes too that have been brought on by that same incident.  It has been really, really good to have family friends around to support me.  Without them, this recovery would be a whole lot more difficult than it already is going to be. 

 One thing that I have found really difficult is the change in pace.  I went from working 60+ hours a week in the lab on my research, to sitting at home doing very little due to the limitaions placed on me by the injury and the side effects of the pain medication that I am on.  I find that when I am taking the meds it is really hard for me to focus on anything and get anything accomplished.  It takes me forever to update the website when I have just taken the meds as I also have to battle the drowsiness that they bring on.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw this out there and see what it looks like and how the blogging thing works.  I will use this to keep everyone that is interested posted on what is happening in my life, and how the recovery is going.

Posted by Matthew Sherrill at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)