Second week of Survey of Organic Chemistry and I’m still having fun and learning lots. Hotter’n Hell with more hotter to come, however. The only drawback, IMO.

This weekend, I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (or as I call it HP7.2) with the folks. We all agreed the movie was great. And it had my favorite scene from the book in it. (I have an LJ icon that spoils it, if you want to hunt for it.) The audience actually cheered when the scene occurred, myself included. Our only drawback was having to sit in the front row to see it.

On Sunday, I headed to mom & dad’s before I left for Indiana in order to catch the Women’s World Cup Final. Mom and I sat and watched and cheered (and sighed) as the game progressed and went into extra time. So I wound up heading to uni later than I’d intended. Picked up a Filet o’ Fish & large fries from Maccas on the way (bad me).

Yesterday I went to The Laughing Planet Cafe, a local restaurant that serves interesting burritos. I ordered the Pestato with basil pesto and it was yummy. And for supper, I hung around on campus for a while reading, and then went to Hartzell’s Ice Cream for a Blizzard-like item with chocolate soft serve, Reese cups, and peanut butter. Very yummy, but it didn’t last the whole 25 (hot hot hot) minute walk back to the dorm.

Today for lunch, I went to Basil Leaf Vietnamese Bistro. I ordered the Vietnamese salad, which according to the menu is “lemongrass grilled with spring roll served over soft rice vermicelli noodles, fresh bean sprouts, basil/mint, carrot, lettuce and crushed peanuts.” I had it with pan fried tofu and it was very yummy (though the mint leaves were overpowering and I took the last few out).

After lunch was lab. Once again, long jeans & closed-toed shoes made for hot walking outside, but are very important for lab safety. Our task today was to make a Grignard reagent (an organometallic compound that makes for a negative carbon and is great for making C-C bonds. We used it to make either Crystal Violet or Malachite Green (both dyes, among their other uses). Our group was going to make Crystal Violet but nearly everyone else was too, so we made Malachite Green instead.

It was pretty neat. We tried to be as anhydrous as possible since water reacts with the Grignard agent even more readily than the organic compound we were using. And our instructor told us that the reaction works better if you speak with a French accent. My partner and I opted to not do this, but wound up with the reaction working fine. However, there was a group who wound up not making a dye at all. Still, we had enough of the two dyes to do some tie-dying afterward. I tie-dyed two socks (one in each) and my fingers. And now, apparently, am dying the bathroom counter here in the dorm. Oops!

Here’s a photo of my dye-job (which doesn’t look as nice as it did earlier today):

Malachite Green and Crystal Violet socks (with multi-fiber samples beside them).

Tonight I had yogurt & granola for supper (yay for my cooler) and then went off to see HP7.2 for a second time. This audience weren’t quite as appreciative of my favorite scene, but they’re from Indiana – what do you expect? 😉