What Can I Even Say - Blog Posts

stevehharringtcns​:

it was hard falling asleep now, something that had always been so easy for steve. he mostly blamed the pain he was going through it, whether it was his ribs or his wrist or whatever it was that was aching at this point, but he couldn’t seem to be able to fall asleep. he was sure that he could just ask the nurses for some sleeping pills, but he decided not to as he stared up at the ceiling, letting out a sigh in another failed attempt of trying to fall asleep. he knew that cole was right next to him falling asleep and he would have thought adam was too if he didn’t see him standing up and stretching, his eyes drifting towards the other with a small smile on his face as he looked at him.

“yeah, it’s kind of hard to sleep when you’re in an hospital bed… especially when i’ve been here all day.” he said, shrugging his shoulders as he shook his head at adam’s suggestion for him to call the nurse. he appreciated it. “nah, thanks, i’ll be fine. i just… i’ll fall asleep soon enough.” he said with a small nod, looking over at cole for a couple of moments and then back at adam. steve had finally convinced eddie to go back to his trailer for the night at least. the other needed to rest too and steve wasn’t going to let him stay there and not sleep. but he did miss the company now, although adam wasn’t bad company at all. but he understood that the other was very much focused on cole right now. “he’ll be fine, it’s… cole. he always is fine.” he said with a small shrug of his shoulders.

as they started talking about what had happened during the carnival, steve let out a small sigh. he remembered adam acting weird, he still wasn’t sure what had happened, but he wasn’t himself in that moment. “it’s… fine. you guys clearly didn’t know what you were doing. there was just something strange going on.” he said as he bit his lower lip, looking away from adam for a couple of moments. “me? oh, i’m just fine. nothing i can’t handle.” he said - he thought it couldn’t get worse than this, but then again, he thought that every time he had been injured in the past. “are you okay?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

No one had ever said hospital beds were comfortable. But the chairs they kept in there for visitors? Absolute torture. Adam was stiff just from sitting there and then laying down with Cole, he couldn’t imagine how much pain Cole and Steve were in from their injuries on top of that. It was amazing to him that Cole was able to sleep at all, but Adam was grateful for it. To get better, all of them would have to rest up, but that would probably be easier once they were allowed to go home. Adam shot Steve a cautious, sympathetic smile after asking him about whether or not he needed a nurse. 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Adam nodded, frowning slightly. “I can get more pillows or something, if you want that?” He had always been the type to want to help people, and that was even more true now that he’d been part of the group who’s put Steve and Cole in here in the first place. He felt guilty about the part he’d played, and he wanted to try to help Steve as much as he could. “Okay,” Adam agreed, dropping the idea of going to ask for sleeping pills. He’d do it if Steve changed his mind, but he wasn’t going to push him. 

Adam wanted to argue that Cole was not always fine - not even close. While they didn’t really talk about it, he knew Cole had struggled a lot during the three years Adam hadn’t been around. Cole was great at hiding his pain behind sarcastic comments, but if you were looking closely, you could see the cracks in his façade. And Adam was always paying that much attention to Cole. “....um, how’s Eddie handling stuff?” Adam asked awkwardly after a moment, unsure if Steve knew that Adam knew about them. Cole had mentioned it at Skull Rock, when he’d also told Adam that he’d kissed Thad. Adam didn’t want to make Steve talk about it all if he didn’t want to, but he got what it was like having to hide a relationship. 

“It’s not fine,” Adam shook his head. “But yeah, I wasn’t... in control, really. I don’t know what happened.” He wished he had a better explanation for it all, but he only knew what Cole had told him about whatever the Mindflayer was. Adam didn’t know if Steve knew about that stuff or not, and it didn’t seem like the time to ask. He nodded at Steve saying he could handle it. Hopefully he could. “Good. I mean, this entire situation is fucked, dude.” That felt like an understatement, but Adam really didn’t know what else to say about it all. It was such a messed up situation, and Adam wished he could help to fix it. “Um, yeah,” Adam nodded, shrugging. No, he really wasn’t okay, but he wasn’t going to unload all of that on Steve and make it his problem. Not when he’d helped put Steve in the hospital in the first place. 

I found out during our department DEI committee meeting today that the major federal granting agencies (e.g., NSF, NIH) now have "lists of banned words" that, if found, can cause your grant application to basically go into the shredder.

Among the words the government really hates is "transition" (because RaDiCal GenDEr IdEolOGiEs!). Our committee members are all chemists. If you want to study liquid-vapor phase transitions, you're screwed. Transition states in a chemical reaction? Nope.

I'm a mass spectrometrist. My little corner of the analytical chemistryverse uses a technique called "multiple reaction monitoring", where your instrument is simultaneously monitoring a precursor ion and a certain fragment. That specific-combination-of-ions is called a transition.

...I literally can't even talk about fucking mass spectrometry.

But hey, some trans girl in Iowa can't play badminton anymore! Victory! Yeah! Cheaper eggs! Make America Great Again!