I think that I’ve finally realized that I don’t really want to do “bench” science anymore. It’s been a long time coming and yet I still struggle with it. I feel that I’ve put so much of my heart and soul into my work at the bench, and so saying I no longer want to pursue it feels like giving up to a certain extent. The question the lingers now, painfully, is what next? Perhaps over the next several weeks I’ll pursue this is greater detail as I flesh this out in the my own mind (and as a break from writing my thesis). I know there are a multitude of unhappy (or at least confused) graduate students in the biological sciences that are wondering what else is there after I get my Ph.D. in biochemistry/chemistry/biology/etc. I think what I might end up doing, more for my own sake than anything else, is writing a series of posts about alternative careers in the sciences followed by pros/cons. Then at least I can look back and see what makes the most sense to pursue.

People read blogs that they can relate to. In order for people to relate to a blog, it has to have a purpose – a reason for existing. Otherwise what’s the point? I can blog about all these little things that happen to me during my day and does anyone really care? No probably not. I can tweet about the ice cream I just ate or the beer I just drank, and while that might be interesting to my close friends, no one else really cares. So what’s the point of this blog, “a tenable peace” ?

I used to write in this space about my thoughts. Then I realized that, well, sometimes those things might not be appropriate for the entire world to know. In fact I wasn’t sure I even wanted to admit them to myself let along millions of random people who might search for an odd collection of words on google. Throughout this whole process though, I think what I was looking for can simple be summed up in one word:

Hope

And you know what? There are alot of people out there, besides me, who are looking for hope too. We work and toil hoping that what we do isn’t in vain. We listen, learn, and try not to repeat the mistakes of our parents but usually this is a lesson in humility and love. We hope we are doing right by our kids even though we have no clue what we are doing. We hope we can make a difference somewhere to someone. I’ve started to ask myself each day, have I at least tried to bring hope to someone? Is my life bringing hope to anyone or am I merely trying to survive?

Finally, what can I do to bring hope to someone who desperately needs it? If I answer these questions honestly, it necessitates a radical paradigm shift, a radical change in thinking in my everyday life. It necessitates a simpler life focused on others rather than myself.

Small things can and do make a difference.

One of my resolutions this year was to blog more. Yes I know – that’s a lot of people’s resolution and so in the month of January the internet gets clogged with extra resolution posts. Part of this blogging resolution was also to take more photographs. Recently, I re-found my dad’s old Canon EF in the back of a closet in our house and had some work done on it in order for the camera to be functional. While I probably spent too much money on an old Canon camera, it has sentimental meaning to me and I wasn’t ever going to sell it so I figured I might as well put some money into in and resurrect the thing from the back of my closet.

The Canon EF was made from 1973-1976 and this particular EF was purchased in Japan when my dad was stationed there in the Air Force. It’s a great camera. But there’s so much I realize now that I just don’t know about it and using an SLR to take pictures.

I’m sure if you’re interested in the EF you can find some more information about it elsewhere on the internet, but I’ll give you my impressions.

First, it’s heavy. I mean everything in this thing is mechanical, so you are hauling around this camera with all these mechanical parts made of metal. There isn’t much plastic here. I actually like this. It feels more substantial than alot of the lightweight dSLRs I’ve handled and therefore I just think it feels better in my hands. I love the fact that I have to manually wind the film. This seems like an annoyance at first, but part of me just loves the noises it produces. The sturdy click of the shutter moving when you depress the shutter release button, the film winder, it all makes for a great experience.

I also didn’t realize there are such differences in film. Obviously there’s the speed differences, but even from one company to the next, people love or hate these different films. I can’t really throw my hat into this ring yet since I haven’t shot enough to really say one way or the other on anything.

Enough words. For a couple pics from the EF using Kodak 400TX film, check out my photoblog. I’ve also put some pics in this post just to check them out in this format.

Let me know what you think – good or bad.

After three torturous weeks in the bottle, I broke out the pumpkin spiced ale that I brewed a couple weeks ago.  My first impressions were that overall, it’s a very drinkable ale with a slight aftertaste of spices. At first impressions, the beer was still a little hazy, but had very good head retention (from the malted wheat I guess?).  About the color of a regular ale.  The interesting part, the part that surprised me, was that as I drank it, and as the beer began to warm a little bit, the spice flavors became more pronounced. I guess that may not be so surprising to alot of you out there in “I know how to cook for real” land but for those of us over here in “I can make a mean meal directly from a recipe on the back of a box” land this was rather astounding to me.  Overall, for my first spiced beer and for my first homebrew batch in over a year, I’m pretty happy.  The spice flavor wasn’t over the top – somthing I was shooting for – and probably could have even been a little bit stronger. What would I change? Well, I might add a bit more cinnamon, or perhaps break up the cinnamon sticks more that I did add.

It will be interesting to see if the flavors become even more pronounced as the beer continues to age in the bottle. I’ll just have to wait and find out.

The pumpkin spice ale has been in bottles for almost a week and a half now. I fermented the wort in the primary fermentation for approximately a week (until the air lock stopped bubbling, basically) and racked the beer to a secondary. After racking to the secondary fermentation, it bubbled a small amount, but then really nothing for about a week. I left it here to help clear the beer more than anything. After that, I racked the beer to my bottling bucket, which is basically a bucket with a spigot on the bottom of it, and bottled up about 40 bottles of “Icabod’s Spiced Pumkin Ale.” (For carbonation in the bottles I used 3/4 cup of corn sugar instead of the dry malt called for in the BYO recipe – I actually forgot to get extra malt for bottling and had this on hand from the last beer I made). Final Gravity was about 1.008, making the beer about 4.5% alcohol.

I’ve been concerned the entire time now that the beer will be overly spiced since I think that it’s probably pretty easy to add too much of these spices when making a beer like this. However, when I was racking the beer to the secondary and then racking again for bottling, I never smelled any “spice” smells, so I actually started thinking I hadn’t put enough nutmeg, cinnamon, etc. into the beer. After all, five minutes isn’t much time for the beer to absorb the flavor of these spices. However, after I was done bottling, I smelled the small amount of wort left in the bottom of the bucket (don’t worry – it was well less than one beer) and it smelled exactly like pumpkin pie. Hopefully this means that the spices will be present in the final product but not overpowering – exactly what I was shooting for.

Hopefully in another week or so the beer will be well carbonated and I’ll be able to have a taste and give a final verdict.