I'm Baaack! (Updated)

Hey Everybody,

Did you miss me? I didn't think so. Anyway, I shall update all my faithful readers with my exciting week. It's probably going to be a long one, so just sit right back and I'll tell you a tale, a tale of fateful trip....

Wednesday

Alright, so Wednesday morning I catch our limo bus to the Philladelphia airport with my supervisor, his supervisor and another co-worker. Our trip to the airport was fairly uneventful. Once at the airport we got our e-tickets and headed through security. Where my suprevisor realized that he had forgot his license, lucky for him he had an expired one still in his wallet and that airport security could care less if your license was expired or not. So our plane ride to Houstan was uneventful. We were scattered throughtout the plane so I decided to spend most of the trip either napping or reading, so it seemed to go by rather quickly.

At the Houston airport we had two limos waiting to pick us up and take us to the hotel, which was about an hour away. I have to say the area where our company was located in Houston was actually fairly nice, and the hotel was fairly close to our building. We had about two hours to kill before our dinner with several of the Houstan group members that are working on our project. So my supervisor decided to buy me a beer at the hotel bar and we just waited in the lobby for our pick-up.

I have to say that my group is actually a good group. They are all very laid back, but very intellegent and motivated people. It's a quality that you don't tend to find in Chemists, and I'm really glad to be working for them. My supervisor is an especially great guy, because he pretty much leaves me to my own devices and doesn't try to micro-manage me. Which is great because I don't respond very well to micro-management.

So, next we were off to a fancy steak place in Houstan, where I got to meet several members of our Houston team, and enjoy a good meal. I had Filet Mignon, and it was pretty good, almost as good as the beef I can get back home, but nothing beats Alberta beef. :)

After dinner it was back to the hotel, for some much needed rest. It had been a long day and I was exhausted. However, I had difficulties sleeping, and I really didn't get much sleep that night.

Thursday

Woke up around 7:00 and got ready for my long day. Our schedule had us going to various places and meeting various people working on the same project as us throughout the day, followed up with a dinner and a show. We weren't going to be back to our hotel room until 11:00 that evening.

So, first on the agenda was a continental breakfast in the Auxilliary Bridge (got to love science geeks) followed by a video conference meeting with the rest of the princeton crew as our monthly project working group meeting. Here we discuss all the relevant discoveries made in the last month. There was definately some interesting data reported.

After, our meeting it was off to check out some of the labs and meet more of the people. It was definately nice to put a face to the name of several of the people that you've been in contact with. The little screen that you see them on during video conferences just doesn't do them justice. The labs in Houston were very nice.

Then it was off to lunch, Thursday is our Company wide lunch meeting where everyone from the company attends. Today's speaker was my supervisors, supervisor, confusing eh? Anyway, the cafeteria was fantastic and the food was good. We definately need a cafeteria in Princeton, I guess we just need to get 100 more employees. :) Anway, the talk was good and then we went and saw a few more labs and met a few more people. I met so many people I can't even remember all there names.

We had a short break and then it was off to dinner at an English Pub, in downtown Houston. The food was O.K. but not great, and they shoved us upstairs in a Private room. Which would have been O.K., but there was an answering machine upstairs that people kept calling and we could hear all these messages being left. It was very loud and annoying. So, at one point my supervisor and the director of our project went over and disconnected the whole thing. The funny thing was, that about 15 minutes later some guy came upstairs and started fiddling around with it trying to figure out what was wrong with it. That was our cue to leave. :)

After dinner we went to see a Broadway play called "Moving Out". Basically it was a musical play set to Billy Joel Idol songs. It was actually very good, and I rather enjoyed it. I probably wouldn't pay 100's of dollars to see it, but it was entertaining.

Then we loaded back up in the bus and headed back to the hotel, where I got some much needed rest.

Friday

The flight back from Houstan was fairly painful. When I finally boarded the plane, the seat I was assigned to was occupied, by a small child who was with his mother and brother. It turns out that the family of four had two seats and two seats, and I was supposed to be beside them. Oh Joy! I have nothing against children, I just don't want to listen to them scream while I'm stuck in an enclosed space with nowhere to go, thousands of miles up in the air. Anyway, I waited beside my co-worker, hoping that nobody showed up for the seats beside her. I kept monitoring the time and watched the minutes tick by as nobody was showing up. The flight was supposed to leave at 10:25, and I was almost home free but at the last second an older couple boarded the plane and I had to move. Damn, so close but yet so far. Anyway, I let the mother sit with the two children and I sat with the father.

I ended up watching the movie "Elektra" on the flight. It was O.K., nothing fantastic and defiantely something I would never get to watch with my wife. She thinks that Jennifer Garner is very unattractive. Anyway, there was only a little bit of screaming that I had to endure, in the middle of the movie one of the children decided to throw a fit and the father had to get up and take them to the bathroom. Ahh, the joys of being a parent. :) Other than that the flight was fairly uneventful.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I picked up my wife a pink cowboy hat and pink scarf and the Houstan airport. She'll probably never wear the pink cowboy hat, but it did look good on her. I'm sure it will end up on one of the many stuffed animals we have. :) Saturday is our anniversary and I really didn't have any time to get her anything special, so this will have to do.

So, the wife and dog picked me up at work after finally arriving back home. The dog was happy to see me, but not overly excited. I guess I wasn't gone for long enough to warrent extreme excitment. My wife wasn't feeling well still. It seems that a few days ago she tried out this new lotion and it seemed to react badly with her and even days later she seemed to be suffering the effects of the reaction. Anyway, apparently she did get a lot of writing done on thursday and that's a good thing.

So at home, my wife made dinner, and I helped out by putting dishes away, getting out pots, etc. We had a simple meal, and just spent the rest of the evening, hanging out, watching t.v., chatting and playing on the computer. We actually ended up going to bed fairly early for a Friday evening, I was exhausted from my trip. We read for a bit, and then put Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone on and started watching it.

The funny thing about Harry Potter is that the first time that we had ever had sex together was when Harry Potter was playing. Basically almost anytime we've watched the movie it's ended up in us engaging in some sort of sexual activity. So, I have to say the first Harry Potter movie is one of my all time favorites. :)

Anyway, we started flirting and fooling around and one thing led to another and well, you know...

I have to run, so I'll fill you in on the rest of the details later. :)

Saturday

It was our anniversary, we should have done something special, but we didn't. My wife still wasn't feeling well and really had no desire to go out anywhere. So instead, we stayed home all day and I catered to her every desire. I picked up lunch and dinner for us, I walked the dog, I got her drinks and snacks and rubbed her feet. We didn't do anything special on our anniversary but we spent the day together and it was good. In just a few more weeks she'll be gone for six weeks and we'll have to manage not seeing each other every day. It's kind of a strange thing that's looming in the near future. She's starting to get nervous about the course, but I keep telling her that she'll do fine.

Actually some interesting news, one of the stories that my wife submitted to an anthology (collection of short stories and novellas) passed the first round of rejections. This week or the next should be when she finds out if it's rejeceted or not. It's always good to make it through the first pass. My fingers are crossed, it would be a big break to her to have something published. :)

Sunday

Well Sunday is work out day and it had been far too long since our last work out day so there was no way around this one. First thing in the morning we tidied up the house, washed the floors, vaccumed and all that fun stuff and then headed off to the gym to play squash. Squash was fun, right up until the point in game two where my wife beaned me in the head with the squash ball. Man did that hurt. She was so sorry, it was a complete accident. She even promised me wild sex later that night to make up for it. She ended up winning that game, surprise, surprise. :) Weights were a different story, I just wanted to get them over with. I had no desire to be there any longer than I needed to. We didn't quite finish our weight routine, my wife was exhausted and I was starving because I hadn't eaten anything all day.

So, we went out for lunch with our friends at the usual spot. We had a good lunch and a chat, and then went shopping for a specific item, and after looking at several different locations and not finding what we were looking for, we headed back home. We stopped and picked up some fruit on the way back and by the time we got back home it was already 7:00 PM, my how the time flew by.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the evening hanging out together again, playing on the computer and watching cheesy Sci-Fi movies. My wifes face was still a little swollen and she wasn't feeling great. Her earlier promises of wild sex, never came to furition, but that's okay, we were both pretty tired and for once, she seemed to have a good nights sleep.

I'm Off

Well peeps, I'm off to Houston in about an hour.

It's funny, Houston is supposed to be like the sister city to where I grew up (Calgary). Both have very similar skylines and their main industry is oil. It should be interesting.

I'll let you know all the dirty details of my trip later.

Hmmmm

Well I'm not exactly sure what to post about today, but I feel I should post something because I'll be taking off for Houstan on Wednesday and I won't be back till Friday. So, what should I talk about before my several day haitus?

Well things at work are going well. I have lots of things that I need to do and each thing that I complete gives us one more piece of the puzzle. That's kind of thing exciting thing about my job, there are always questions and answers out there waiting to be found.

Last night we went to the gym and played squash and did our weights. It was once again very tiring. Tonight we work out yet again, I'm not looking forward to it, but I can't really skip it because I'll miss Thursday nights work out. Although we may reschedule for Friday night, but I'll have to see.

I'll miss my wife for the couple of days that I'm gone, but it will only be a prelude for what is yet to come. It's now only a few more weeks and then my wife will be gone for 6 weeks. I'm still not exactly sure what the dog and I will do for that ammount of time, but I suspect I will catch up on a lot of reading and video game playing. I wonder how much muscle I can build up in 6 weeks, while she's gone?

Wow, I'm very boring and dry. I have no in depth thoughts, no excitement, no cheating, no affairs. I'm surprised I have readers. Ah well, maybe I'll do a Chemistry update today.

Delgar's Thought of the Day:

"Choosing a Parking spot is like choosing a Urinal, if you can leave an empty space/spot than you should."

Later

Monday Madness

Well it's Monday morning and I have very little to report.

We did not go out for dinner on Friday with friends. Instead we went out ourselves, and then went shopping. We picked up a few odds and ends and then my wife got her hair dyed red and cut. It actually looks pretty good. Wow, more reasons for me to want to have sex with her. :)

Saturday, we went out for lunch with friends, and it was okay, but afterwords I think my wife and I just wanted to be alone. So, we went for a bit of a drive and stopped at a pet store. During the drive my wife asked me, "Pretend we were getting married again and had to write the vows, what would you say?"

Ack! What would I say? Here I am driving down the turnpike and I get hit with this whammy. I'll be honest, I don't usually think of why or how, I just know. Now my command of the English language is spotty at the best of times and I'm known for saying the wrong things at the wrong times. How was I going to survive this one.

So, I took a few moments to gather my thoughts. As we were driving down the turnpike, I saw a pair of Canadian geese on the side of the road, something that is a very common sight here in New Jersey. Here is what I said to her:

"My love for you is like that of a goose, I've searched out all the flocks for my perfect match, for with whom I'm destined to wander the fields and the skies with forever."

Anyway, it sounds kind of lame writing it here. Plus there was a whole lot of pressure and not a lot of time. But she was actually kind of impressed.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the evening watching T.V. and playing around on the computer.

Sunday was work out day. We worked out, and by the end of it I was exhausted. We went and grabbed a bite to eat and then trucked off home. Where we were invited to a BBQ with friends. I think any other day we would have jumped at the chance, but today we were tired and not really in the mood for company. So, we took a rain check and just hung out at home, watched a cheesy movie on Sci-Fi and played on the computer.

Anyway, today I have lots of work to do. Mainly because I'm heading to Houston on Wednesday and won't be back till Friday, so I'll only have a short week in the lab this week.

Obliguatory Thursday Post

Yesterday was a busy day at work again so I didn't get a chance to say anything. I made an interesting discovery yesterday in the lab, actually something happened that nobody would have predicted. So, I spent most of the day trying to figure out what had actually happened. It was both frustrating and fascinating at the same time. On one hand I just wanted the desired product to submit it for testing, but on the other hand it proved an interesting intellectual challenge.

Anyway, right now I'm just waiting for our Thursday lunch meeting. WooHoo free lunch! Today is Italian, so it should be alright.

Lets see, Tuesday night, my wife and I went and worked out, and by the end of it we were pretty exhausted. That meant 4 days in a row of some kind of physical activity. So, Wednesday was definately a day off, and I was looking forward to it. I got home made Delgar Cuccina (read KD) and we basically just chilled, played on the computer and watched T.V.

Oh, we also called up this friend of mine from Calgary, and asked him to lend us the money for my wife to take this 6 week course. I knew that he would lend it to me, hell he would probably give it to me. But I'm the kind of person that doesn't like to borrow money from people. However, we don't have much of a choice as things go right at the moment. We are not strapped for cash, but we have certain bills that need to be paid, and an extra 2-4 thousand isn't in the books in the next couple of months. However, we will be able to easily pay him back over the next year. So with the ability to pay for the course my wife will be taking the next step in her writing career and we are one step closer to it becoming a reality.

I'm extremely happy for her, I hope that she can manage to tough out the 6 week course. Apparently it's just rough and grueling. Basically each week, you are taught by one author in the trade and your work is critiqued by said author, the other students, and an editor in the industry.

On the plus side:

- She'll get to meet 6 authors in the trade and one editor in the industry.
- She'll learn tons
- She may make some contacts in the industry.

On the negative side:

- She'll be alone for 6 weeks, in the middle of nowhere without a vehicle.
- She'll be working very hard 7 days a week.
- She'll be bombarded with a lot of negative and constructive critism

In the end it will all be good for her, and maybe she'll decide that writing is not for her or maybe she'll come out of it with renewed vigor. I guess only time will tell.

The other question is, what are the dog and I going to do for our 6 weeks of bachelorhood? Any ideas?

Things that will probably happen:

- I'll continue to work-out, because I want a buff bod
- I'll probably eat even more unhealthy food, but damnit I will get to enjoy some of the foods that she hates (Mmmm Chilli chees fries here I come)
- I'll probably get a lot of reading done
- I'll probably get a lot of computer game playing in
- I'll probably hang out with friends
- I'll hope for a little phone sex. :)

Anything that I should do while she's away?

I know that I will definately clean up the house before she gets back. I think she'll be pretty impressed if she comes back to a clean house. Hell I'd be pretty impressed if I can actually clean. :)

Anyway, it's about time to wrap this up. Lunch is calling, and hunger is starting to take over.

Long Overdue

Well this post is long overdue and so lets get down to business:

Friday:

Well let's see, on Friday evening the wife and I had a relaxing dinner at home just the two of us and we watched movies and played around on the computer. Nothing overly exciting, but definately nice and relaxing.

Saturday:

Saturday was such a nice day outside that we decided to go and play tennis with the couple that we have dinner with often. Let's call them M and C. See, I haven't played tennis in about 4 or 5 years and my wife hand't played in about 8. Now my wife had been talking to M and apparently she was supposed to be pretty good. My wife was worried that she was going to look bad (now this she all told me after). I myself know that they are extremely out of shape and extremely overweight so I knew that it would take us a little while to hit the ball around just to get used to hitting the tennis ball. Tennis is really differenty compared to squash, so you have to retrain yourself to hit the tennis ball.

So, we go to the tennis courts and it was a beautiful sunny day out, with a slight cool breeze. Really it was a great day for tennis. We started hitting the ball around and as I suspected both myself and my wife hit some very bad shots, but as the rallying continued we improved immensely. So, after about 15-20 minutes of rallying C basically sat down on the side of the court. Apparently he had strained his ankle at some point in the past and didn't want to re-injure it. M played for a bit longer and then sat with her husband. My wife and I continued to hit the ball around for another 15-20 minutes while chatting with them off to the side and then we all went out to have some lunch.

Basically what we learned is that M is not that great at tennis, her weight really hampers her ability to play, if the ball comes right to her she can hit it, but if it's low she can't bend down to get it and she can't actually reach around her body therefore she doesn't really have a backhand. C actually probably played some tennis back in the day, because he can actually hit the ball and put top spin on it (something that when I usually try to do it goes into the net) but again his weight and injury hampers him as well.

All in all playing tennis was fun. It was nice to take advantage of the nice day, rather than sitting indoors. The bad news was that nobody actually wore sun screen and we all pretty much burned. The spring sun can't really burn you can it?

Oh, I forgot to mention that we took our dog with us, so he got to hang with us all day. Plus anytime a ball came near him where he was tied up he went for it. :)

So, we went for lunch at a diner and then went back to there place to play a game. It was so nice out we decided to play out on their deck, plus the fact that they have three cats and I'm allergic to cats also helped in that decision. :) Plus our dog got to continue to hang out with us so that was pretty cool. Except that he ate a bunch of grass and threw up, not so cool.

We ended up playing scrabble, I was winning for the whole game but C came back and won it at the end. However, M was basically a poor loser. I usually do terrible at scrabble as my command of the English language is poor at best. Anyway, after that we headed home, grabbed a small bite to eat, and played on the computer for a bit.

Sunday:

Sunday is workout day, so first thing in the morning - by first thing I mean like 11:30- we headed off to the gym to play squash and do our weights. I was still a little stiff from tennis, but the squash was fun and I bumped up a bunch of my weights so afterwords I was defiantely sore. We went out for lunch with M and C, and this time our meals weren't all that good. We hit the Sunday after church crowd and the food was just terrible, ah well.

Anyway, after lunch M and C and another couple came back to our place to play a game at which M was whining quite a bit and this annoyed my wife. But after they left we vacuumed, folded some laundry and took our dog for a walk.

It was a beautiful evening, still fairly warm with a nice cool breeze. It was a clear night and the stars were brightly lit, the background was filled with the croaking of frogs off in the distance. It was nice to go for a short walk with my wife and the dog. We didn't see any wildlife on our walk this evening, but what we did find was this green ball. It looked like one of those light kid bouncing balls and had my wife actually run up and kicked like I thought she was going to she would have broken her toe. It turns out it was a bowling ball. What the heck is a bowling ball doing in the middle of a field? Anyway, we picked it up and brought it home. My wife cleaned it off and set it on the floor and the dog tried to attack it. Apparently the bowling ball was taunting my dog because he put his butt up in the air and snarled and attacked it several times. It was quite entertaining. Now the bowling ball is just sitting in the living room and occasionally the dog will just attack it.

So, I chatted to a friend back in Calgary, who is going to come out and visit us in August, which will be cool. I told him about my wifes good news and updated him on things, and things seem to be going well with him.

After that we jacked around for a bit and didn't get to bed until midnight, at which point the wife was being very flirty and teasing me quite a bit. It was rather enjoyable, and the teasing ended with a little mutual enjoyment, so my actionless weekend actually included a little action. :) I won't go into the details, just to say I'm still confused by her signals, but hopefully I'll get there.

Monday:

Ahh, Monday. I was exhausted from our evening activities and I had no desire to get up in the morning. But I rolled my ass out of bed and went to work. It was actually a good day at work and I managed to make one of my desired target molecules. One that my supervisor had failed to make, so it was a good day. Today I just need to purify it.

After work we had corn chowder with shitake mushrooms for dinner which was actually good and then we went and played squash. The whole time my wife was very flirty, exaturating bending over and starting at me like I was a piece of man meat, and making comments about my package and how she'd like to have sex with me right now in the squash court. Needless to say it was very distracting and she did win two out of four games.

Afterwords we went out for an appatizer with M and C, which was alright. But by the time we got home my wife was no longer as flirty and she was feeling rather sore and tired. So we just tidied up a bit at home and went to bed.

Wow, that is very long and boring, perhaps I should learn to condense things. Which do you prefer:

- Hung out with Friends
- Played Tennis
- Got Sunburned
- Bowling Ball attacks dog
- Got a little action
- Work went well

So what do you think?

WooHoo Friday!

Well it is now Friday, I just have to get through today and I'll have two days of rest and relaxation. At least I hope I'll have two days of rest and relaxation.

Today I have a couple of compounds that I need to submit for testing and they both should prove to be interesting or at least give us further understanding of our project. It's always nice to have those kind of compounds. Also, today we are interviewing a new chemist and I get to have lunch with her (as well as 3 other employees). She gave a talk this morning and it wasn't too bad, but the most notably thing about her is she's actually quite attractive. Which in a Chemistry setting is rare indeed. Perhaps I'm just incredibly horny and I'm lowering my standards but she is quite cute. She's originally from Lebanon and she has the most interesting eyes. Anyway, enough of that. Lunch should be good, at least I don't have to pay for it. :)

Last night the wife and I went to the gym, we called ahead and booked a squash court. We showed up and started playing squash and then two guys came and told us that they had the court booked, which couldn't be the case because we called ahead and booked the squash court right? Well turns out the person I talked to didn't write it down in the book so we had to leave the court. This pissed my wife off something fierce. She was irrated before but after this happened she just kind of blew up. To me it wasn't a big deal, we didn't get in our whole squash game no big deal, we have no plans for the weekend so we can go in any time and play squash (we are going in tonight to play). Anyway, she was so furious that she didn't do the rest of her weights and actually went and waited in the car until I finished my weight routine. Anyway, I tried to find out what bug crawled up her ass, but to no avail. It really must be something, but I'm not sure what.

The other thing that I was thinking about yesterday is that our Anniversary is coming up pretty quickly here and I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do for this year. Then I realized that I'm going to be in Houstan on business the day before and arriving back home on our anniversary. Which means I'll have to have a game plan before I head out of town, which makes life much more difficult. I'm really not sure what to do for her this year, anyone have any ideas? Usually I'm good at this, but this year I'm just drawing a blank.

Anyway, I guess I can look forward to the weekend, but I doubt that it will break my dry spell.

Almost Friday

For some reason I'm really looking forward to the weekend. I'm not exactly sure why, but I am. I had meant to post something yesterday but work was just far to hectic.

The really cool thing that happened is that my wife got accepted into a writing workshop. Which was very cool, she was expecting to get rejected because they only pick 20 people a year for it. It's great for her because she is trying to become a writer. Right now her stuff is good, it's just a matter of finding someone to publish it and this workshop will help out with that. The bad thing is that it's six weeks long, and it's ten hours away from home. :( What adventures will me and the dog get into while she's away? What will I do for six weeks? We've honestly never been apart for more than a day or two since we got together, this will be rather strange for us. Also, we'll have to come up with some way to pay for it, this will be the hard part. But I figure we'll just go into a little more debt, I mean why not? But six weeks? Man, that's going to be a very long six weeks. I'll have to keep myself motivated and working out, but I know for sure I'm going to eat all the unhealthy stuff that she hates while she's gone. Man, six weeks. Plus, I'll have to go home at lunch time to take the dog for a walk, and our poor dog won't know what the hell is going on.

But, truthfully I'm really proud of her. She only started writing last year and she's made so much progress in such a little time. I honestly believe it's only a matter of time until she's published, her work is really good. She doesn't believe me of course because I'm her husband and not therefore not objective. Now all she needs is to get a few things published and build up her portfolio, so that she can work her way out of the HUGE slush pile and work her way into just the LARGE one. She's published a few articles, but now what she really needs is to get one of her short stories published. One of the coolest things that has happened so far was that she actually got rejected by the editor of one of the top magazines. Which is quite a feat in itself. The rejection letter wasn't a form letter and it wasn't from the slush pile guy. Actually, even the letters she recieves from the slush pile guy aren't form letters anymore. But, usually this magazine recieves somewhere around 500-1000 stories a month and only about 10 make it out of the slush pile. So, I see that as a pretty big achievement.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this weekend, we have no plans as of yet. So it might actually just be a nice relaxing weekend at home (except for Sunday because we have to go to the gym).

It's actually supposed to rain again today and possibly keep raining through Saturday. I guess that just means that there will be more flooding. It won't really affect us because we're no where near a river. So, we can sit at home and enjoy the rain.

Wow, what a boring post eh? I wonder what I can do to spice it up a little.

Spring is in the Air

Well it is definately spring time here in New Jersey.

I say that because when I took the dog out this morning, it was bright and sunny and there were a ton of different types of birds flying around and chirpping merrily. It was a very good morning.

So, last night when I was walking the dog after work we have this large clearing near our complex that I take him to fairly often, however, today as we were just entering the clearing we had an audience at the other end watching our every move. There were about 8 deer ranging in sizes from small to large staring at us intently. The dog of course ran to the end of his leash and choked himself, all the while I sat there watching the deer. They didn't move they just watched. So, I decided not to interupt whatever nefarious plans that they had and I decided to scoot around the clearing. At one point there is a building between me and the deer and the whole herd moved to the other side of the clearing so they could continue to watch us as we came out from the other side of the building. It was kind of cool, we were be followed by the deer. I'm sure they just wanted to be sure that we weren't trying to sneak up on them, but it was kind of cool. Something that would NEVER happen in San Diego.

We worked out last night, did the whole routine, squash for an hour and then our weights. Afterword I was pretty exhausted. I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before and the work out definately tired me out. So, I took the dog out a little earlier and we went to bed a little bit earlier than normal, and today I'm not quite as tired. Funny how that works out. :)

Tonight shall be another night of pain and suffering, but I should be getting in shape right? Well as of last night I'm 3 pounds heavier than when I started. So, I suppose that it could be muscle or I could just becoming an even fatter bastard. :)

Organic Chemistry 101, Part IV

In Part II of my Organic Chemistry series, I talked about the Mitsunobu reaction (For a refresher please check it out here Mitsunobu ). Now, in the example I talked about, they used pthalimide to displace an alcohol. Now the main reason that you would do this type of reaction, is so that you can convert an alcohol to a primary amine (a primary amine is only bonded to one carbon species and has two free hydrogens, a secondary amine is bonded to two carbons and a tertiary amin is bonded to three carbon species).

The way you go about this is you take your newly formed Phthalimide product and react it with hydrazine (rocket fuel, very explosive, also very nucleophilic) usually in ethanol and it reacts with your Pthalimide to give you a primary amine. (see below)



Well, I also thought that I would show you just how this process works. In organic chemistry, we draw arrows to show how the reaction takes place mechanistically (This is what we call a mechanism) . What I've drawn below is most likely what is happening within the reaction mixture. Hydrazine is very nucleophilic (which means that it has a lot of electron density) and will attack places that are very electrophilic (places that lack electron density). As you can see from the diagram below, hydrazine attacks the carbonyl carbon (carbonyl carbons are fairly electrophilic and you can add a variety of nucleophiles to them) forcing the electrons onto the oxygen. After a quick hydrogen transfer the electrons on the oxygen force the five membered ring open and then the other nitrogen in hydrazine can swing down and react with the other carbonyl, finally forcing out our desired primary amine.



Using this hydrazine reduction of Pthalimide to give you a primary amine is a fairly common method employed in Organic Chemistry. It's actually very hard to generate primary amines in other ways because they themselves are very nucleophilic and reactive. Once you have your primary amine in hand there are a variety of transformations that a medicinal chemist will employ to generate a variety of analogues. Such as reductive amination, carbonylation, sulfonylation, alkylation and a variety of others, perhaps in my next Organic Chem 101 I'll talk about the different things you can do with amines.

Anyway, I'm going to be doing this reaction today on my material so that I can generate a primary amine as a starting scaffold, to generate a variety of amine analogues.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed todays Chemisty update. Any questions?

A Weekend in Review

Well the weekend is over and I'm exhausted, actually right now I wish I was still in bed cuddling with my wife. That would be so nice, but instead I need to figure out what I'm going to do in the lab today (if I get a chance I'll give a quick chemistry update). So here is my weekend in review:

Friday:

So Friday we went out for dinner with two other couples to a small italian place just over the border in Pennsylvania. It was alright but nothing to write home about. Throughout the dinner I definately noticed my wife getting irrated and I wasn't exactly sure why. I think that she wasn't looking forward to the outing and that really didn't bode well for the evening. Needless to say she got mad on the way home, and the rest of our evening was a bust, but we did get a lot of sleep.

Saturday:

We woke up on Saturday and watched a cheesy movie on Sci-Fi. It was raining outside and the prediction was for a lot of thundershowers throughout the afternoon. My wife loves rain, and thunder and lightning, so she was looking forward to it. She was still feeling a little off today, but I finally convinced her to come out to the movies with the same two other couples. So we trucked off in the pouring rain and went to the movies. I dropped her off outside the theatre and parked the vehicle, so I got soaked and I got water in one of my shoes so now I'm wandering around with a wet sock, and it was starting to dry and get all itchy!

Anyway, we went to see Sin City, this is the first movie that we've gone to since moving out east, which is rather odd for us because we usually go out to the movies often, but we just haven't been motivated to go see anything. Anyway, the theatre itself actually wasn't to bad, the seats were very comfortable and the screen was an alright size. But so far, all of the Amercian theatres I've been too just don't compare to Canadian ones. In Calgary going to the movies is an Entertainment experience. First off, most Calgary theatres have machines where you can pay for your movie ticket so you don't really have to wait in line because they usually have somewhere between 12-18 machines. In the states you have to stand in a big line up on a rainy Saturday afternoon because they only have one person working cash. In Calgary, most movie theatres have several different food places, such as Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, a Coffee place and several others as well as your regular movie fair (Popcorn, etc). Plus you can take this fast food with you into the theatre. In the states you get movie food, that's it. Both Calgary and Edmonton have theatres where every 15 minutes there is a little perfermance in the main lobby. In Edmonton they have a fire breathing dragon (which is very cool I might add) and in Calgary there is this Egyption themed show, which involves a sphinx and a lot of lasers (the dragon is better but the Egyption thing is cool). States nothing, absolutely nothing. The seating in the states and Calgary compares, except that in the states the hand rests move, so I'll give them a big plus there. Much easier to have sex in the theatre in the states :). But Canada comes back and kicks them in the ass with bigger screens and bigger sound. I have yet to go to an American theatre that beats out their Canadian brethern. So, in the end, Canada's theatre going experience is FAR better, I guess it's because their cold for so much of the year, but I definately miss my home theatre :(. My wife misses the Kool-Aid slushes that you can buy back home and for that matter any slushy (slurpee). Here in the states they just suck, in Canada there is just so much better, less sweet, and way less airy. I don't know why that is.

Anyway, the movie itself was actually pretty good. It was different, it was melodramatic and it was over the top. Having never read any of the graphic novels before I had nothing to compare it to. But the people that we were with said that it correlated fairly well. On it's own I definately enjoyed it. Most of the acting was superb and any movie that involves castrations, yes that is correct I used the plural, is fine by me. It was definately dark and disturbing. Elijah Wood, played a character that had absolutely no lines in the entire movie and he makes a very creepy little kid, but not too give to much away, if you hated the hobbit in lord of the rings, in this movie he finally bites the big one. :) Although the movie was very violent, because it was in black and white it didn't really seem to be all that graphic. If it was in color, I'm sure it would be pretty gory.

Anyway, after the movie the wife and I headed over to the mall and did some underwear shopping, where we bought her several new bras and some very cute underwear. Now all I have to do is actually get her to wear some of them for me. :(

Then we headed home, had a fast food dinner, played around on the computer for a bit and went to bed.

Sunday:

We hung out with some friends in the afternoon and went for dinner, after we got home my wife wasn't feeling well. It seems it's been coming on for a few days now, probably why she was so short on Friday. We hung out for a bit at home and vegged, and then off to bed it was for us. She wasn't feeling to well, so I made her some tea before bed. Then I got up and got her a snack and she spent the next hour annoying and teasing me. Let's just say that when she's bored or sick she can be very annoying. But she's cute. Anyway, I finally got to sleep and had NO desire to get up this morning.

Now, she's still in bed and I'm wishing I was there with her. Hopefully she's feeling better today, so that she can finish editing her story and send it out.

I'll be back later with an update, now I need to go get some work done. :)

Life of a Drug

So rather than do a Chemistry tutorial today, I thought I would just go over the whole drug discovery process.

See the only thing you hear about drugs is that they are too expensive and old people can't afford them, but what you don't hear is how long it actually takes for a drug to become a drug. The entire process is very long, and my job is right near the begining.

First what you need is a biological target, some enzyme or protein in the body that is causing a chain reaction of events to occur. In the begining you usually have no idea what that target actually does until you develop a compound to tell you that information. Let's take Vioxx for example, seeing as that is a pretty high profile drug.

Before Vioxx, the only non-opiate painkillers available were Acetyl Salcylic Acid (Aspirin), Acetominohpine (Tylenol), Ibuprofin (Motrin) and Naporxin (Alleve). Now all of these drugs act on both the COX1 and COX2 receptors which is part of the pain and inflamation pathway. Acetyl Salcylic Acid is way more potent for COX1 than COX2 and the others are still more potent towards COX1 over COX2 but to a much lesser degree. However, it is know that by inhibiting the COX1 pathway, you tend to cause stomach ulcers. Which is why taking alot of these medications all the time is not good for you.

So that's why COX2 selective inhibitors were developed, to avoid wearing away of the stomach lining, so that arthritis sufferers could continue to function without damaging there stomach. However, unbeknowst to the companies that selectively targeting COX2 can result in increased heart risk, hence why they're in the position that they are in now. Anyway, this is just a very long winded way of telling you how people come about targets. There are many other ways targets are chosen.

Okay so once the target is chosen, this is where chemistry jumps on board. What usually happens is that a large library of compounds is screened against your target and activity is measured. This usually gives you a few hits, where the chemists then remake those compounds and retest them in the assays to see if they are real or not.

These real hits are then handed off to the medicinal chemist that's me. It's our job to optimize the compound so that it SELECTIVELY acts on our target. The reason you want this selectivity is because the more selective the compound the less side effects. We do this by taking the hits and making structural changes to the molecule and retesting them in the assays. We continue to fine tune the molecule until we have achieved certain desired properties. As I said before you want the compound to be selective for your target, to this end, the molecule is tested against a variety of KNOWN problem targets to see whether or not it is active against them. Also, nowadays consumers want to take a pill rather than an injection or supository, therefore your molecule needs to be absorbed by the body, taken up into the bloodstream, and circulated through your body, and eventually excreted. The longer the compound remains in your system the less often you have to take a pill. Compounds that are excreted quickly mean that you have to keep dosing (ie 2-4 times a day or worse). The ultimate desired compound is one where you can dose once a day, people seem to be able to remember to take a pill once a day.

Once we've sufficiently optimized a compound, the real fun starts. You need to test the compound in animals to see if the desired effect is observed. In other words you need to measure the efficacy of your compound, is it doing what you want it to. This also means you have to scale up production of the molecule and this is where process chemists come into the picture. There job is make large quanities of the material for testing. These guys/girls are the real chemists, they know how to do some serious chemistry. Us medicinal chemists are really only concerned with testing the final product not optimizing how it's made.

Then the molecule has to go through toxcity studies which are also done in animals, and then finally it can go into man. It then has to go through 3 phases of man studies, which are known as Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III. Depending on what type of area you're working in this can take anywhere from 4-10 years. Phase I studies are just testing out dosing strategies and your trying to determine the optimal dose. Phase II is a more comprehensive study, where you nail down your dosing regiment and also you get some efficacy data (usually known as a Phase IIb study). Phase III involves a WHOLE lot of patients, and this is where your drug either makes it or breaks it. Here it needs to show efficacy, it needs to work in a statistically significant portion of the study (ie it needs to work better than placebo).

The basic statistics of the process is that 1 in 10 compounds that make it into man actually successfully become a drug. There are just so many things that can happen along the way. That means that 9 out of 10 times all the money and effort that have been put into a particilar compound is completely wasted. Most of the time the compound falls out in Phase III which is the most expensive of the studies. Overall, it takes somewhere along the lines of 7-10 years from inception to drug, does that help you appreciate pharmaceutical companies anymore?

I know Pharmaceutical companies are protrayed as these great big evil corporations that feed on the sick and elderly, but my personal opinion is that at least there trying to do something good. Whereas a lot of other corporations out there are just taking your money for absolutely nothing. At least Pharmaceuticals are helping people.

Anyway, so there you have it. That is the basic gist of the pharmaceutical industry. If you've made it this far, and you're still awake and you have any questions, go ahead and ask away.

April Fools

Well I've been meaning to write something for some time now, but I've just been so hectic at work. So, I'll just be giving you a quick update now and hopefully I'll be able to do another update later in the day (probably around lunch time).

Anyway, last couple of days have been pretty busy both at work and at home. We've worked out now Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. However, on Tuesday we just played squash for an hour and started doing weights and my wife wasn't feeling well, so we just stopped for the evening. Wednesday we went and played squash for a half hour and did our whole weight routine and then we went out for coffee with the other couple. Last night we played squash for an hour and did our weights and then went and got a frosty. The depressing thing is that I'm 4 pounds heavier. :( It's possible that's it's muscle but I'm not sure. I'm probably just a fat bastard. :)

At work I've been busy slaving away in the lab, and attending meetings. We also went for a group lunch on Wednesday to celebrate one of our group members new child. The plus side at work is that one of the compounds that I've synthesized is actually active. Maybe at lunch today I'll give a brief rundown of the drug discovery process, or at least my take on it. So, right now have a lot of things that I need to make so that I can provide the group with further information. Work is always exciting when things are working. I guess that's sort of the up and down's of my field. When things are working well, there is an excitement in the air. The hard part is to keep motivated when chemistry is not working. But I guess the good thing about my job is that it provides daily challenges and I guess that's what keeps it from being boring. I'm not sure if I'm explaining that well.

Our weekend is booked pretty solid, tonight we have dinner plans. Saturday we have plans in the afternoon and on Sunday we have plans with a group of friends. Our weekend should be fun and busy.

Wow, what a very boring update, I think I'll have to come up with some tragedy or something to complain about if I want to keep up my readership of 2 or 3 people.

What should I bitch and moan about? What will keep you coming back for more?

The lack of my sex life?
My Geekdom?
Some great personal tradgedy?
Some Moral Issue?

Let me know and I'll work on it. :)

Gotta run, have lots of work to do. I will definately be back later today.