I was hoping to have the chance to post last night, but I’m still not able to access the WiFi on campus. I spent some time at Panera last night (and some money on supper) in order to get somewhat caught up, but figured I could post when I returned to my dorm. Alas.

Anyhoo, I’m back at Bloomington’s Indiana University campus, staying in a dorm this time (hence the difficulty with the WiFi – the hotel was easy). Today we had our first lab, which meant I had to wear long pants & closed-toed shoes. And it’s f*****’ hot here!

Still, the lab was fun, and we isolated limonene from orange peel using distillation. We then tested it with a polarizer to show that it was a chiral molecule (lemon has the other-handed stereo isomer of limonene in its peel). We were also going to examine it with IR, only the machine was being a butthead. Kate, our instructor, will get us the IR graphs tomorrow from our compiled limonene.

I’m enjoying the organic review (and some may be new stuff, rather than stuff I’ve simply forgotten) and got a lot of the first homework set done last night because I had no Internet to distract me. May have a similar case tonight. At least I purchased the 4-book set of Song of Ice and Fire for my BeBook before I left cuz it’s been a good read. Book 5 not yet available electronically from my library.

I’ll get more details later – not having supper here, gonna have yogurt back at the dorm (provided it isn’t spoiled yet). So guess I’d best upload this & log off.