What's goin' on

Since I seem to be posting on a monthly basis, maybe it's time I gave some updates.

School:
Classes are keeping me so busy it's a little alarming. I don't think I'll be taking 4 classes in the spring semester, but we'll see how I manage with this load. It might be easier next semester too when I've got a bulk of the wedding details hammered out. But more on that later.

Luckily I only have one class with an in-class midterm (I have one that's take-home, too), but it's in my hardest class. Somehow I thought Tissue Engineering would be about tissue growth and how to manipulate it, but so far it's all quantitative, which is boring and difficult for me. I want to know how and why cells move and grow in certain ways, and I don't really care about things like radial flow detachment assays. I know they're important, but that's not what I was hoping to learn when I signed up for the class.

My math professor is really, really nice, but I don't really learn too much during class; I learn it all on the weekends when I go home and crack open my book. He's actually very helpful outside of class- I went to his office hours once, and he's hilarious and explains things really well one-on-one. But in class he seems to stress the theory and doesn't do many examples. Or stresses the fact we're allowed and strongly encouraged to solve everything in Mathematica. Maybe I'll actually learn this program! I hated Maple and I never was forced to learn Matlab, so maybe here's my shot to actually learn a program.

Biomolecular engineering is very interesting but still a little over my head. I didn't come in with much background in biochem or even biology (that was high school) and it's a very detail-oriented class. I have my first lab to write, which I'm about 1/3 of the way finished with, and it's going to be beastly I think. There's a lot of reading I still need to do to understand more of the fundamentals behind the experiments we did during lab.

Biomedical materials is keeping me busy working on my IACUC protocol, but that's due on Friday, so then I'll have one thing out of the way for the semester. It's like 35% of my grade though I think, so hopefully it goes well. Monty hasn't said anything bad about the draft I sent him, so I'm crossing my fingers that doesn't mean I'll get an email on Thursday night with a list of 8 things wrong with it. Then after this I'll get to work on the R21 grant proposal and I'll try to turn it into an NSF proposal also.

Wedding:
I went dress shopping with Cait and Sara on Sunday and I think I found "the ONE". It's beautiful and has all the elements I was looking for in a dress and none of the ones that I really didn't like. We also found a color dress for them that they both like (I just told them I wanted blue and they could pick their own style dresses) and will look nice on my sister too. We're going to go out again in a few weekends, just to scout out a couple more places to cover all my bases pretty much. But I have a feeling I'll be back in David's Bridal ordering that dress :-D

Keegan and I met with a photographer on September 12 and she seems really great and her prices are reasonable compared with all the other quotes I've seen. She's very sociable too, so that's a plus. Now we just have to send in the deposit :o)

Speaking of Keegan, his birthday was on Friday- happy 23rd birthday to him!

I've been looking a bit at bridal bouquets also to get an idea of what I want to do with everything else. I know I want calla lilies, but other than that I'm pretty much open. A lot of colors will go with the blue for the bridesmaid dresses, but I'm thinking maybe something yellow or peachy colored. We'll see what sorts of flowers exist for each option. Maybe yellow calla liles for them and white ones with something else for me... Hmmm...

Keegan and I also have our Marriage Prep Forum this weekend at his church, so that will be really interesting and insightful I think. Hopefully he won't realize that really I'm so annoying he can't deal with me for the next 70 years. But I think we've already discussed a lot of the major pitfalls to relationships (finances, kids, careers, values, etc) so we're probably in better shape than some couples.

Well, my lunch break for myself is just about over, so I'm going to get back to working on that lab report. I'm about 2/3 of the way finished with my tissue engineering homework due on Friday, but I'll try to get some sort of idea on how to do the first one this afternoon too. Then I can go home, cook dinner, watch House, and then work a bit more before bed. Sounds like a pretty sweet time, huh?