First!

My good friend but at times cranky chemistry buddy JM suggested that I start a blog. So, here goes.

I decided that this would be a fun yet productive way of distracting myself from graduate school, and I started thinking about a title that would sum up my life. While wandering around Target, I came up with the phrase "ironic bond."

Now, I can't be the first person to have thought of this. Just as it turns out, I am not. A quick google search (not reading more than the first five entries--I have a blog to write) later, I discovered that that confusing "ironic" and "ionic" is a common mistake on the internet.

I think it's pretty ironic that one woman's clever/bad pun is another's sign of scientific illiteracy.

Okay.

Let me explain how this phrase represents me:

- I love figures of speech and wordplay, especially bad puns

- I enjoy the word "ironic," to the point of overuse

- I think the phrase describes my preferred professional, platonic, familial, AND romantic relationships (when do those otherwise overlap? Wait, nevermind)

- Words that have both a scientific or mathematical meaning as well as a common usage or literary meaning make me inwardly joyful (anyone else have good ones?)

- I am about to start a PhD in chemistry, but I still struggle with having to specialize in my studies

-Literature is my true love, but as the goody-two-shoes brat of an English and a philosophy professor, I didn't want to be "propelled to professordom" (as I put it in high school) and needed to rebel somehow. Hence, science.

Now my subheading "the difference between the real and the ideal" was a definition for the word "irony" I came across when I first formally learned about the concept, maybe in middle school. I think it might be a quote. Anyone know from whom? I will try to find that out later. Anyway, "the difference between the real and the ideal" is something that we all struggle with, whether we are writers, philosophers, scientists, or customer servicepeople.