This is me.
NO MORE SCHOOL!

School ended yesterday, oh yeah! This means more sleep, getting back to Photoshopping, catching up with my Christmas shopping list, and... well, just more time doing great stuff.

Yeah, I still have the unique aversion to school normally found in preschoolers. It's not the school's fault but all my relatives are like that. Maybe we're just wired that way?

Anyway, our last Organic Chemistry Laboratory was cool. Nerve-wracking, too. I mean, we broke a stirring rod (long glass stick) when Cookie, my lab partner, poked at a cork that wouldn't come out. Then as Zyx and I washed our round bottom flasks companionably, he elbowed my glass funnel into the sink and broke it.

Henri and Joni dropped their beaker, and Galai swept her glass tube into the sink. Needless to say, we paid for a lot of delicate stuff last Friday.

Lookie at the complex-looking distillation thingamajig!

The goal last Friday was not to break as much equipment as possible, but to make aniline. Aniline is a poisonous carcinogenic (read: causes cancer) substance that can be gotten from benzene... yada yada yada. I am mindful that most people who check this blog are not very chemistry-oriented so will not appreciate the long-winded discussion.

Moving on, it was fun. I mean, watch Cookie smile.

That's my lab partner.

We ended up with a little more aniline (ok, twice the amount *blush*) than Arn2x & Zyx got. Cookie and I theorize our equipment had high self-esteem so they made more aniline for us. I mean, we sang edited Christmas songs to them ("The weather outside is frightful, and the water here is boiling but since the burner's turned down low, let it flow, let it flow, let it flow..."), held them, talked to them, and even took pictures of them.

Weird, you say? Think of all those people who talk to their plants. :)

the aniline's at the bottom

Making aniline is dangerous though; I read on the internet that most schools don't even make it. So don't do this at home, folks. The fumes are poisonous and the experiment stinks.

On other breaking news, we finished up our schoolwork yesterday with a bang. No, not the experiments but a Christmas party at my grandma's house.

It was great fun. Our whole college batch is made up of about 40-50 crazy people who were bound to have a good time. We're also pretty thrifty which is why I ended up in the kitchen with some of my classmates cooking up the party food (which is cheaper than buying out). The food was pretty good though; it surprised us.

The games we had were a riot. It did start raining in the middle of the party but since all the games left were in the pool, no one minded. People who refused to swim because they would get wet under the rain were properly smacked. I didn't swim but I was pretty tired after all the cooking and running around.

I'll detail more of this in my next post because I have no pictures yet. I have to get them off my friends first. If you're impatient, Cookie has some of them on her blog now though.

Oh yeah, I did a Christmas skin today. It's not my best work but after not skinning for a month, it'll take a while to get back in the groove of things.

See it here.

So I guess I'd better get some sleep now. Good night. :)

Daisy on 12/21/2006 01:14:00 AM