Security blanket, and if this doesn't label me as a geek...

Yeah this really is the ultimate geek-y admission I have. And here you all thought it was that I was a lover of math as an art form. Nah, that's child's play, this one is really geeky. When I left the science world 3 years ago now? I left my college books with my girlfriend/coworker Donna who hasn't got a college degree (she's working on it) but learned it all by working, on the job training as it were. Didn't think you could do that in the world of science? As I understand it you can't anymore, she got lucky and started out early and worked her way up to lab tech. I left my books with her because I figured they'd go to waste if I kept them, at least she's going to college.

Now realize in the world of science you actually use these books as reference. Horrifying isn't it? That all of those terrible books you despised in college would come back to haunt you for the rest of your days? If you were a psych major or an english lit major you wouldn't have this problem. Chemistry? Yes you need that book stuff.

My most hated, most abhored nasty horrid class, the only one I got a tutor for (and it didn't help at all, sadly) and barely passed was Physical Chemistry. The only science that I didn't like at all was physics, just did not get that class but I passed it. Mix it with chemistry and you have P Chem and it's all theoretical, yuck! It even has math mixed in with it but at a level that wasn't required for chemists and I didn't have time to take that math class. Differential equations (diff E-Q) was what came after Calculus II and I only got as far as Calc II. So they teach the P Chem class assuming that you know Diff E-Q and if you don't you need to figure it out (wha?). Oh hell hi howdy no, that math was beyond me. I tried and my tutor did too but alas no, I didn't get it. My P Chem teacher was the sweetest old man that had retired years earlier, I don't know what he was still doing there. I was at his office hours every single day, I swear he passed my with a C just out of pure pity's sake because I didn't learn squat. Tenacity? I learned more tenacity in that class than in any of the 9 years of college combined. Then? The next semester I had to take P Chem II. With another teacher. Who didn't want to teach and didn't even have office hours. How jacked is that? Yeah I passed it but it wasn't pretty, another don't-know-where-it-came-from-C. It was my last semester in school and as far as I was concerned C was passing. 9 years of college and a last semester where class started at 8am and ended at 10pm, no breaks of note in between? C was passing.

Back to the book, because I get distracted sometimes. The P Chem book has charts in it, definitions, conversion, etc and I used them all the time. Funny, Organic chemistry book didn't have the tables in them and those books are like 6 times the size, enormous gargantuan books. Damn expensive too. Regardless, even though I never used anything inside the P chem book pages proper the usefulness of the tables inside the cover were incalculable to me. I reached for that book at least once a day. And I left it behind in San Diego. Hey I was leaving the science world there right? And who hires mass spectrometrist in San Antonio? Please!

I got a hold of my friend Donna who I left the books with and asked her for the black book back when I started here back in May. What I forgot is that I left the lab P Chem book with her too, hard cover, said P Chem on the front, black. And so she sent me the black P Chem book. The lab book. I am such a doofus. Anyway we have played random e-mail/phone tag over the months and just recently she finally sent me the right book. Can I tell you? I just wanted to hug that book. So I did. I feel much better with my P Chem book. That book from the evil hell class. I missed that book. My work will be much better now that it's in my arms, I just know it.

So you still have some sort of security blanket? Is it twisted like mine is? I know my hubby is going to read this and think I have sort of deep seated sado masochistic oddity going on in my wee little brain. Hey, I'm a chemist, it kinda goes with out saying doesn't it?