This weekend we purchased a Sony digital camera from Circuit City. We are soon to be posting pictures on our site now. It is the coolest camera I have ever seen. We could even make short videos. I have no idea if everyone's cameras do this, but I am impressed. We have ogled cameras in every store for months and we figured it was time we gave in to our yearning and drooling. As soon as we figure out everything, we promise pictures up soon. So far it seems pretty easy to use.

The answer we have all been waiting for is, yes, the fragrance Liloia smells nice. Today I got to check it out and I guess I would describe it as a flowery, spacey, metal-like fragrance. Pretty nice if you could imagine it. And I am not just saying that because we are visiting the Liloias this coming weekend. We are sooooooooooo excited to visit. Thanks for having us over Tara, Dave, and Trevor. Can't wait to see you.

I am proud to say that I have completed my first week of work at International Flavors & Fragrances. At first I was nervous, and now, I still am but much less. My first day consisted of paperwork, reading manuals, watching safety videos, taking quizzes, computer entry exercises, and GC orientation. My second day I made two compunds. The idea is a company gives a fragrance to us and we must figure out the recipe and they pay you for it. We figure out the recipe by extracting the fragrance and analyzing it with GC and Mass Spec. The compounds that I made were Wizard Oil Air Freshner and Phebo Rose for a soap. These had about twenty-five and thirty ingredients each, respectively. I also learned how to change one of those huge Hydrogen tanks. The next day I made the same fragrances as modified versions. I had new one new one, which was citrus fragrance for bleach, and more GC work. On Thursday, I got to pop open a natural air freshner, non aerosol of course, and GC it directly which showed that all those really good air freshners from the health food stores are expensive because they are all orange oil. I also got this special project to try as experimental, but I didn't get to start it. I learned to extract the fragrance from two orange scented cleaners, Lysol Orange Breeze and Fantastic Orange Action all purpose cleaners using an L/N method. And on Friday, I extracted with a different method the fragrance on an aerosol air freshner Glade Tangerine Ginger and I did my project all by my self! which was extracting the fragrance from a french deodorant Rexona. I used GC, centrifuge, Nitrogen reducer, and liquid/liquid extraction. I am finding my way around the building and trying my best to fit in with all the people. I hope I can stay here. When I learn all these methods and the track of the paper trail, it will be much more comfortable and I will be less nervous. My favorite fragrances so far are the natural lemon oils. P.S. There is a fragrance on the L shelf called Liloia.

Today I thought about Sean when I saw this popup advertisement where a man was yelling, "My boss needs three orangutans by tomorrow, but the stockroom's all out!" Then his problems were solved by checking out Instant Monkeys Online. It's kind of silly, and I think I will honor my brother in law, Sean and his love of monkeys by including this as my latest blog entry.

This is my new favorite show! On MTV last night, The Osbournes premiered. Awesome. It's a reality family sitcom about Ozzy, Sharon, Kelly, and Jack. And wow, they are such a nice family. I would like to live next door and invite them over for dinner and be their friend. Ozzy appears to be the quintessential loving family man and he is very funny. We laughed the whole time we were watching the show. Ozzy is not the focus of the show, however, the whole family is the star. The first episode was titled "There Goes the Neighborhood" where the Osbourne family is moving into their twenty eighth home. It was really pretty and down to earth and you can see that Ozzy is a regular guy who gets nervous, is silly with his family, affectionate with his wife and kids, and just wants a remote that he can watch the History Channel without turning on the shower. I think we will be loyal viewers of The Osbournes. I have always been a huge fan of Ozzy as a musician, philosopher, and personality. Seeing the show about his whole family is a real treat. I recommend watching this show, on Tuesdays at 10:30 PM.