03/24/2009

Man, searching for houses is draining.

Bryan, John, and I went to tour the green Victorian last Tuesday, and it was fantastic.  Just fantastic.  All new stainless steel appliances in the kitchen.  Newly remodeled.  Great backyard.  Right in our price range.  The only issue is that there is another family that wants it.  Kind of.  They’ll be moving in with their grandmother, so they have to get her approval, and they have a little kid, and aren’t terribly financially stable.  So they want it, but they’re not sure if they can have it.  They also get priority because they’d want to move in in April and we’d want to move in in May.  So as soon as they let Danny (the realtor) know, we’ll find out if we get it or not.  Danny seemed to like us a lot better than this other family.

I won’t put up pictures of the house unless I find out that we’re going to live there.  I am already horribly attached to this house, and I don’t want to get even more attached than I already am, just in case we won’t get it.  I think that there’s a good chance that we will, but we also might not.

I wish these people would get back to Danny so that he can get back to me.  🙁  I really want to know.

I’ve been looking around at other places in the interim, and it’s frustrating.  There are things that mostly fit what we’d like, but aren’t right for one reason another.  Like the places with perfect location, but they don’t quite have four bedrooms and only have washer and dryer hookups for stackables (we have a washer and dryer, but they are not stackable).  Or there’s the house that has four bedrooms, is partially furnished, has a great landlord, but is 1.6 miles from any form of useful transportation.  I’m not only rooting for the green house because it’s so much more wonderful than we could ever want, but because it has everything that we need, unlike, it seems, everything else.

So, cross your fingers for me!

In other news, the American Chemical Society is hosting its annual convention in Salt Lake City.  I’m definitely not rich enough to attend even one of the talks, but I’ve been hearing a lot about them from various professors, grad students, and various undergrads who happen to get the funds.  The big news requires a small bit of back story.

20 years from last Sunday, two chemists from the University of Utah, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, announced to the world that they had successfully produced cold fusion in one of their experiments.  This result has been a thorn in the University’s chemistry department’s side for a long, long time.  How fitting, then, that at the Salt Lake convention, an Italian scientist, Pamela Mosier-Boss, announced that she has been able to produce cold fusion, also.

You can go read tons of articles on this– the scientific media is all aflame.  The sad thing is that every article I’ve been able to read is HUGELY sceptical.  My physical chemistry professor, who attended the talks, says that the experiments performed were valid.  He also explained to us many of the political dealings between chemists and physicists.  Which are, well, complex.  Basically the physicists are not behind the chemists on this one, and until they are, cold fusion probably won’t go anywhere commercially.  There’s a lot of money in nuclear fission reactors, and cold fusion butts into that.  Those people with the money are going to discredit cold fusion as much as possible.

Maybe I’m just an optimistic chemist, but I think we can make this work.  And I’m excited about it!  Alternative energies for the win!

I’m also surprised that the Wikipedia page on cold fusion has not updated yet.  Maybe I’ll go fix that when I get some time.  I’d actually have to research this a bit further, though.  I bet there are some good articles out there, though.  I imagine the American Chemical Society has a lot to say about this issue.  😉

Another great thing about the ACS convention being in Salt Lake?  Most of my professors are off to see them.  I have had several of my classes cancelled for this week.  Free time for Addie!  It’s pretty great.  Huzzah!