The ports of heaven ...

... opened and poured about a gadzillion of liters of water onto Madison, especially downtown and the Campus area. After like 15 minutes or so, the sewers couldn't take it anymore and spilled out water instead of draining it. Streets became rivers, parking lots became duck ponds and some poor peoples appartments became fishtanks as they submerged completely. Here's a couple of shots "borrowed" from the local newspaper as I didn't have my camera with me.

The parking lot of an appartment block. I walk past this place every day on my way to UW.

This intersection is in 5 min walking distance from my house.

At the back of the UW police station, about 5 min walking distance from the Biochemistry building.

Our Institute got hit pretty bad as well ... honestly, I had never seen a flooded elevator before ;) But that was not a big deal compared to the sub basement that had 5 inches of water standing there. Sub basement, huh? Doesn't sound so serious ... well it does when you know the NMR facility is done there, with instruments worth a couple of million dollars! So when they called for help, a bunch of people went downstairs quickly, took of shoes and socks, waded through ankle high water and helped moving the endangered equipment of the floor onto an elevated position. Hope to get some pictures of it, then I will post them here.

Final words: did that storm cool off Madison? No, of course not! It's still friggin' hot and muggy here! Waiting for the next storm ...

No pain, no gain!

After being in pain for almost 2 weeks now because of my lower back, I finally made a trip to the nearest chiropractic. Like I expected one of my vertebrae was slightly dislocated (for my german friends: Ischiasakralgelenk war wohl bisschen rausgerutscht ...), which I got "adjusted" then. Already feeling a lot better ...
Treated myself to a big lunch at the indian restaurant "Maharaja": $8-all-u-can-eat buffet ... and believe me, it is really good! Jeet always gets very emotional when we got there, he claims it is like "coming home". XD
Afterwards I felt pretty spherical, probably looked like this.
Later on, I will join Tom on the terrace to have a couple of beers as it is his birthday today ...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOM !!!

Keep it real!

I wanna make my point by quoting one of todays great philosophers and one of my personal idols ... Sascha Baron Cohen aka Ali G.

Ali G: You wanna know 'ow I make diz country bettah? Iz simple, two words: Keep it real!
Cabinet M.P.: That's three words!
Ali G: Don't be a spannah, it ain't a real word, it's short for innit, innit?

You start thinking about this once you live in a land, where "Chicken" Nuggets are not made from meat, butter comes as a spray and ice cream comes "100% fat free" (WTF? This is impossible!). Also I am really happy about the guys that invented the delicious Orv's Super Combos Pizzas, because they put REAL cheese on top. Wonder what other manufacturers use as topping? Shredded plastic? Maybe it's better not to know ...

Me luv you, delicious Super Combos Pizza with da 100% real cheese! Aiii!

Baseball is ...

... just an excuse to drink too much beer, Frank says. I think he's absolutely right and just want to add, that you also have to eat a lot of junkfood, to soak up all that alcohol. Just to prove the point, there was half price beer and half price hotdogs for the first 5 innings at the Mallard's Game on monday.
Maybe it is also a tactic to keep people happy, coz, honestly, if you don't sit behind home plate you pretty much have no idea what's really going on with that game. Adding to the mobs entertainment are the little games in between innings, like a bat race or the so-called ice cream eating contest. Wikipedia's definition of eating competitions:

Competitive eating involves the consumption of large quantities of food in a short time period – typically 12 minutes or less. The type of food varies, although contests are primarily focused on fast food or dessert, items are almost always a single type of food such as hot dogs, pie, or mayonnaise.

Well, somehow the organizers got that totally wrong and the goal was to distribute the ice cream as evenly as possible ... everywhere, meaning the messiest kid won (see pic below).

Eating?

... let the pictures do the talking ...

Hey man, want some chips?

As the evening progressed, people became happier and happier (here: Tom).


Frank trying to do what most people do when they see a camera pointing at them ... hide (behind Steve). Unsuccessful, I might say :P

All in all, I would say the evening was a success. I had 4 hotdogs and a lot of beer (Jeet estimated 8-10) and a huuuuge headache the next day.
Who won? Uhmm, Mallards won 5:4 by scoring a double in the last inning. Not that it was important ...

Sweaty ...

... just arrived to the institute (8.15 am) and had to check CNN for the actual temperatures here in Madison coz I felt so hot on the way ... 77 F (25 C) and 76% humidity. Wonder what it's gonna be like this afternoon/evening when I will go watch a baseball match with some of my work mates? I should adapt soon. otherwise I will melt ... or I might just require more cold beer to cool down ;-)

BBQ

Couple of snapshots from a Good-Bye-BBQ for Moushumi, Brian, Steve and Jason from last week already. Thanks to Frank and Stef for hosting it and setting everything up so nicely.

Brian and his daugther (Emma? Eva? Jeez, I am bad at names -.- Just learned her name is Ava ... thx Moushumi)

Frank and Annie

Steve, Matti (the Dog), Erin and Moushumi and a pair of unknown legs (left 2 right)

Jeet and Eugene

Errr, grammar?

Hmmm, this sentence no verb?!

Coffeeeeeeeeeeee!

Today I crave a coffee really badly. Still I don't feel ready to go out into the pouring rain (Bugger! I want sunshine! ... short-skirt weather Tam used to call it!) for buying some burned tasting, brown water.
And my Cafetera only shipped yesterday for crying out loud! And I still need to get beans.
Bad day today ... really bad ... nobody should try to talk to me!

That's just crazy ...

... outside the sun is shining and it's probably 25-30 degrees Celsius warm, but inside the building the air conditioning is that cold that I need to put on a bloody jumper?
Reminds me of the Chemistry Building in Cologne: when sitting there in summer, sweating like a pig, and finding out that the heating was turned on. The reasoning behind that was that the institute needed to use all the oil that it was issued with for that year, otherwise it would get less the next year ... That makes sense, no?
.
.
.
Hey, wait a minute! Maybe they didn't need that much oil at all? Maybe it would have been good if they got less for the next year cuase then they would not have to burn it in summer?
That's just crazy ... or maybe I am an idiot!?

OMG! Have mercy ...

... I dont deserve this!
Gilipollas haunt me!

Everything was fine in the lab until another german student arrived. Luke whom I shared the lab with first is a great lab mate: he is clean, helpful, refills stuff that he used etc. just a person with common sense.
You wanna know about the tonto aleman?
Here we go: 2nd day he was at work was actually the Soccer Match Ghana - USA (yeah about 2 weeks ago) that we watched with a couple of people. He comes in and asks me wether I had already had a look at my fumehood ... Oh, shit! He had blown up a reaction in MY hood the evening before, because he wanted to use a device that was in there (reflux condenser for the pros among you), but I shouldn't worry, he cleaned everything ... Well, it kind of looked clean, but since then it has that pink gleam (that guy is working with fluorescent substances) and I find more and more pink spots. Well in principle that is not a tragedy, but Luke told me later that he had told him NOT to do the reaction until his compound was really, really dry. Obviously he knew better. At that point in time I decided that guy must be an idiot!? Also he had been told NOT to try and dry his compound on a particular pump because all the water would clog up the cooling trap. WEll, take a wild guess ...
I will try to summarize the rest of the dilemma, otherwise it will get too long:

- Just how is it possible to distribute pinkish-red crap evenly through a whole rotovap and TWO(!) connected cooling traps?
- I can't just use any lab equipment anymore out of the drawer, because it might not be clean (thank god he is exclusively doing colored stuff, that is easy to spot!). That brings me to the next point ...
- He is too stupid/lazy to really clean his glassware etc. It's so easy: scrub, rinse with water, rinse with acetone, air dry and PUT IT AWAY once it is dry!
- Squeeze bottles with solvents don't refill by themselves! Also solvent barrels don't switch from empty to full by themselves
- Why does he ask me where to get ice if he never refills the f***ing cooler?
- Why does he leave a bucket with ice on my lab chair overnight resulting in a big puddle of condensated water? Leave it on your own!

Argh! Plz dear God ... make it go away!
Closing words for this post: I feel like Vesuvius and he is Pompeji ... if I don't get mollified, there will be fire and brimstone raining down on him!!!

Independence Day

Ok, first of all: There is NO alien attack, ok? It's just a movie! ... not real!

But also, there's no parade here in Madison, which I find quite disappointing, as I would have liked to watch that (at least for a while, to take some snapshots and make fun of it afterwards). There will be fireworks in the evening ... Wow, big deal!

So, what to do? Well, I am in the lab at the moment, but will be leaving soon to watch the Soccer/Fussball/futbol World Cup semi final between Italy and Germany. Other than that, I have no news -.-