Life in Durham

I'm moved in to my townhouse in Durham now, and I really like it! There's still a considerable amount of unpacking to be done, but that's okay. It sort of looks like a home now, I mainly just need a couch and a desk. I found a desk I really like at Office Max that is a nice L desk that fits in a corner with two separate workspaces (which is what I really want), so once I start having a reliable income, I'll venture out to buy it.

I've started some minor decorating too; it's nice to have room to spread out all of my important things and trinkets where I can see them. Speaking of trinkets, Cait brought me a really neat coffee pot from Ethiopia; it's made from clay so they can grind up their coffee, put it in the pot, and then put the pot right on the hot coals. She also brought me a beautiful scarf and gave me some of her money from the countries she visited. I like to collect coins, and considering that I haven't really visited many countries, I've got a lot of foreign money! I still need to print a lot of the photos I've taken in Ecuador, at the beach, etc, to use for decorations. I also have a few small paintings I bought in Ecuador that need frames. So maybe by the time it's time to move into a house when I graduate, I'll be finished unpacking and decorating :-P

I haven't made a lot of progress on my wedding planning, but I have started looking at photos of wedding cakes to get a general idea of what I want. I'm going to start looking at photographers also, but I'm not sure how to know that I'm getting a good deal; I know they are expensive. I don't really have much money to spend on this wedding, so I hope I can find something I can afford. On Saturday I'm going to visit the hall where our reception will be held to see what it looks like all dressed up; it's so exciting! I will also set up a time to sample the menu of snacks and things we could choose to have at our reception. Our meeting with the priest has also been set up, so I suppose I am making a little progress :-)

Yesterday my old senior design team met with the Office of Technology Transfer at NCSU to discuss starting a patent application for our design project, that's really exciting too! They're going to start contacting companies we listed as possible competitors to see if they would be interested in licensing our idea. Then we could decide to file for a patent. Looks like my plan of just living off royalties from my inventions might actually happen ;-) Then again, maybe not...

Orientation starts next week; it's hard to believe classes are about to start again. But I'm excited because now all the classes I take are ones that I want to take and are actually in my areas of interest.

I'll try to keep this updated with wedding details as I go, but here is a link to our Knot website:
Alice and Keegan