Mortality.

I learned this week that our chemical stockroom manager at Cornell, Linda Halsey, passed away on Easter Sunday from (I think) breast cancer. She was 69 years old. Linda was awesome. She was a retired nurse, and had been the first female nurse to work in the Iowa Prison system.

Linda (NEVER 'Mrs. Halsey'......"Halsey is my husband. I'm LINDA.") was the kind of person you didn't want to get on the wrong side of. She took her job extremely seriously, and woe to the student who took chemicals without asking! But considering I was, and most of us were, on her good side, she was just a wonderful, hilariously sarcastic person.

My favorite Linda moment: During one of our upper-level chem classes, there was also Organic Lab going on. There was a girl who was taking it who was...an odd duck. She tended to faint a lot from the lab. One day during our break there was some hubbub in the hallway. "What happened, Linda?" we asked.

"Oh, Sniffy fainted again."

I'll miss you, Linda.