Money for nothing (...chicks for free)

I made $101.14 in dividends this quarter on my IRA! I'm very excited because these are the first dividends I've been paid in this account (I opened the IRA in September). This gives me 7.039% growth over 4 months! I know not all years will see this amount of increase in value but this is still very exciting for me!

New recipes!

I received several cookbooks this year and I'm really looking forward to getting started on some new meals! I'm going to make it my goal to try and make at least one new meal every week (we'll see how that goes). Maybe I'm channeling the movie Julie and Julia...

Tonight I'm going to make whole wheat mac-n-cheese. The sauce is made with chicken stock, cheese, and Dijon mustard, but it also adds cauliflower. This will be good to get me to incorporate veggies we don't usually eat into out diets :-)

I wonder how many other people find it totally sketch and unconstitutional that the only way the health care bill was passed was by promising the senator from Nebraska that the residents of Nebraska don't have to pay anything for Medicaid and the rest of the country has to foot the $300 million dollar bill for this. ("the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of a planned Medicaid expansion in perpetuity, the only state getting that deal") Also sketch is that Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota received similar "concessions" before they would give their votes to the bill but that no news sources are outlining what those concessions are (but I suppose even the liberal news reporters can't ignore the whole 49 states paying for 50 states worth of medical care thing). I'm also curious about how many people will be dropped from their employers' insurance when it costs an average of $9800 to insure a single employee under this new regime but the fine for not supplying insurance is only $750. You could NOT insure like 13 employees and pay the fine for the cost of what it would be to insure just one of them.

Organizing

We finally ordered our media cabinet last week! I'm so excited to be able to (finally) unpack all of the boxes cluttering up our office :-D And then, a year and a half after the fact, we will be fully moved in to our place. Keegan has also decided to buy himself a desk so that he'll be able to unpack all of his computer stuff and then he'll have a place to work at home too.

Speaking of the office, that's one of the other major things I will be tackling later this week -- cleaning/clearing it. It's become the dumping ground for all the stuff we don't know where to put elsewhere. I also desperately need to go through all of the mail I get; Vanguard sends me shameful numbers of statements (so many dead trees!) that I really need to get into a binder or something so I can find all these month-end summaries if I ever need to reference them for some reason. I've switched to paperless for my checking accounts though, so that's eliminated some of the mess. I also still need to change my name with Vanguard, which is proving challenging. After that though I'll only need to change the name on my car/health insurance, my passport, and my car title. There are so many things I forget about when I'm changing my name and school has kept me so busy it's really challenging to get to all these places during their normal hours of operation to get my questions answered.

I've started a list of my goals for 2010, which I also did for 2009 and I think it helps me feel a sense of accomplishment when I get to the end of the year and about 3/4 of the things are checked off. In one of my investment books the author recommends making a list of things that are important to you (as far as what you're saving for) to help motivate you to reach your goals. I have done that for finances but also just with other goals too.

I had the goal to weigh 125 by Christmas, which was an optimistic, yet unrealistic goal to set for myself. Exams get in the way of exercise time... My new goal is to maintain my current weight (133) through the end of the year and then work my way down to 125 by about March I'd say. Keegan and I are planning to go to Hilton Head with his family for Easter, and it would be nice to be able to wear the bikinis I bought for our honeymoon again :-) It would also be nice to be able to wear my sundresses again! I bought a new dress to wear to The Nutcracker on Wednesday, a more formal winter dress that I can wear to nice events we go to during colder months. Here's a link to one that looks similar to mine, but mine is really bright red and the neckline is a little different. I'll post pictures after Wednesday!

In the spirit of organizing I have finished wrapping all of our Christmas gifts! I know Keegan still needs to wrap the ones for me, but we're almost ready for Christmas. His family came over last night for coffee/hot chocolate and cookies and we had a nice time hanging out with them. I think my mom and siblings will come over later this week to see the place also (I hope so!) I'm going to go buy Keegan "It's a Wonderful Life" tonight as a "we've been married for 6 months!" gift but I'll give that to him early so we can watch it on Christmas Eve. Yesterday I watched Christmas Vacation with my siblings, and Keegan and I will find time for the Charlie Brown Christmas, the Grinch, and Rudolph before the big day. I just can't believe Friday is Christmas! It's almost a little sad -- once it's over I have to wait a whole year for the excitement of Christmas again! (Of course really I only have to wait until August when the first Christmas decorations go up in Target) But I think January and February are depressing months honestly; it's cold without the excitement of Christmas in the air and everything is just bleak with no leaves on the trees, few flowers out, etc. Can you tell I'm not a fan of winter? I do, however, love snow :-) Edit: when the power remains on, I love snow.

Man, this is a long, rambling, and most likely boring post.

Exciting things:

• We're going to see Eric Clapton with guest Roger Daltrey on March 8, 2010!!!! AHHH!
• My friends Emily and Kyle recently got engaged! Yay, happiness! :-D
• I'm going to Boone to go snowboarding/tubing/winter things with Keegan's mom and one of his sisters while Keegan, his dad, and the rest of his siblings are skiing in Colorado
• I had killer grades this semester
• I finished another draft of my paper!
• I'm going to see a few of my high school friends tomorrow for coffee(/lunch?) -- I love catching up
• I got to see one of my other high school friends get married on Saturday!
• Keegan's big project at work was approved for the next phase, so he's guaranteed a job through May (and hopefully longer)
• We have been married 6 months (and one day)
• We're going to see The Nutcracker, my first ballet!
• I'm officially a TA next semester, though not for Monty's class; I'm TAing EGR 75L, intro to statics being taught by (I've heard) one of the best professors at Duke

Well, I think that's enough for now :-)

Freedom!

My last fall semester of classes is over! Hooray! I still have two classes left to take, but I'm taking one in spring 2010 and one in spring 2011 (the one I'm taking in spring 2011 is only offered in the spring semester and it's a very small class, so that's when I was able to get in to it). This spring I will also be TAing BME 202L, a new lab that should be very interesting. It's a combination of two other classes that they're not going to be offering anymore, one that's an intro biomaterials lab and another that's an intro mechanics lab. The class is small and there are some really helpful faculty members that are looking forward to helping me set up the labs.

Although my classes are finished for now I'll be hanging around the lab getting another version of my paper ready for Monty this week -- I hope to have it finished by Thursday at the latest. It's a lot of information-compiling right now. I'm putting together a new table of info that requires me to look back at all the papers I've read and pull info from each of them about different biomedical composites. It's tedious and time-consuming but not especially difficult. I'll probably come in to lab through December 23 because Keegan is working until then anyway and now is a really good time for me to get stuff finished. It's a little weird thinking I'll only have one class to take (maybe technically 2 classes, since I'm also taking a seminar) and one to TA in the spring. I hope I'm able to get a concrete plan laid out as to what exactly I'm going to be doing in all the time I'll have next semester to research.

I am still waiting for some of my grades, but I know I did really well in my bio class because those grades have already been posted and I think my other exam went alright, but I guess we'll see. I believe it will depend on how all the other students in the class did since I think they curve the class to a B or B+ so my numerical grade doesn't matter so much as my score compared to the class average.

Saturday night was Keegan's Christmas party through work; it was held at a restaurant in downtown Raleigh called Humble Pie and it was veeeerry tasty. Our meal was tapas-style which just a bunch of different appetizers that made up the dinner, but it was really nice to socialize with his work friends and enjoy being finished with all of my studying. Yesterday I went with my mother- and sisters-in-law on a tour of historic downtown Raleigh where we were able to tour some of the houses and see all of the decorations. It was really nice and interesting but the weather put a damper on things; it was so cold and the drizzle was a little annoying. All in all a good day though. :-)

I also was able to do some shopping for Keegan for Christmas; I've been waiting to do it because I bought him ski gear and I needed him to go with me to show me what he wants/needs because I don't know anything about skiing. Now we just have most of our other shopping to do! We have finished shopping for my sister, my brother, one of Keegan's sisters, Keegan's dad, my dad, and my dad's girlfriend. We haven't started shopping at all for my mom, my stepdad, or Keegan's mom and we have part of our gifts for both of Keegan's brothers and his other sister. Whew! And then I still need to finish Keegan-shopping. I just loving shopping for people and picking out things I know they want/need and I especially enjoy wrapping presents! I wrap everything we buy except for whatever Keegan buys for me :-D Boy it's a good thing we get paid early in December! (except for the part where I don't get paid again for another 7-ish weeks at the end of January)

I'm not gonna lie -- I'm reading the chapter on cancer immunology for my exam Saturday and there are many sections talking about tumor-associated transplantation antigens, abbreviated TATAs -- and I giggle every time. Hello, I didn't realize I am in fact a 13 year old boy.

Traditional year-end travel review

Well I know technically it's not the end of the year, but I also know I'm not traveling anywhere outside of North Carolina for the rest of the year. I've decided to carry on my tradition of looking back over the year at everywhere I went; it seems like every year goes by slowly if you look at individual days but when I try to think back about all that actually happened it's like it just flew by. How is it already December?!

2009 travel list:

1. North Carolina (duh, not exciting)
2. South Carolina (Hilton Head for Easter)
3. Virginia
   
4. West Virginia (awesome rafting trip!)
5. Maryland
6. Washington, D.C.
7. Delaware
8. Pennsylvania
9. New York
10. New Jersey
11. Connecticut (visiting Keegan's grandparents on the way to the family reunion)
    
12. Massachusetts
    
13. New Hampshire
14. Vermont (Brochufest 2009)
    
15. Ohio
16. Michigan
17. Illinois (conference for self-healing materials)
    
18. Bermuda (!!! honeymoon !!!)

So a lot of these are just driving through states or hanging out in airports, but still remembering where all I went helps me think back through everything that happened during the year. Now I can look forward to all the things I'm doing next year! :-D

These ladies make me smile!
:-D

And now I'm unable to stop singing "Ladies Night" in my head. Gotta love Kool and the Gang.

Small success stories

I have achieved part of my weight-loss goals! Today I weighed 136.1 pounds, down from 142.7 pounds the last time I weighed in (but I don't remember when that was, I think it was about 10 days ago). That 142.7 was my eye-opener because I haven't weighed that much since high school; that's when I really started going to the fitness room more reliably and controlling my eating. And I have been drinking only one Diet Coke per day for awhile now and I think that's helping with my goals too. Yay! When I started exercising again recently my goal was to weigh 135 by Thanksgiving and 125 by Christmas. We'll see how that goes, but I think I'll make the 135-pound goal. :-D I'll try not to think about what I'll weigh after all the eating I do this weekend! I'll just make sure to keep up with the power walking/jogging.

Coupon thrills!

Yes, I totally am a coupon-clipper. And proud of it!

Food Lion has a deal going on where if you spend $45 during 6 separate weeks during an 8 week period you earn a $20 coupon. Keegan and I spend about that much every week (unless it's a week where we're stocking up on meat or something), so it wasn't really a problem to reach that goal. Some weeks we were able to stock up on things that I will need during the baking season (butter, chocolate chips, sugar, flour, etc) in order to meet the $45 limit, but at least we were working towards our coupon!

This past week I was able to buy $31.53 worth of groceries for $6.72! That's 78.69% savings! I think that's a new personal best! I was able to use our $20 coupon, an additional $1.55 in coupons, and saved $3.26 with my MVP card. I know it might seem lame that I get so excited about this, but in MVP savings alone this year Keegan and I have saved over $700, which is a lot of money-- almost a month's rent! We've saved additional money with coupons, probably around $60 there. Maybe we will actually save a month's rent by the end of the year; I think that will be my new goal :-)

I'm still working on that whole integrating new foods into my diet thing. I now eat more canned nuts than I used to (mainly sunflower seeds and almonds) but I'm still having trouble with the eggplant/other colorful veggies part. This week I bought us fresh spinach (for salads), bananas, green apples, cucumbers, and green peppers. We also stocked up on canned fruit like pears, peaches, pineapples, and fruit cocktail during the past few weeks. Also, my siblings sell fruit and poinsettias as members of their high school band, so we bought a lot of navel oranges from them -- in the past years these oranges have been the absolute best oranges I've ever had in my life. Yuuuuum, I'm looking forward to their arrival!

I have been to the fitness room 3 of the last 4 days (but the day I didn't go to the fitness room I raked leaves at my family's house)! This is big news for me; I used to love running all the time but school has been dragging me down and it's difficult living off campus where in undergrad I could just walk to class, here I walk from the parking lot and then pretty much just sit at a desk all day. I haven't started running again, but I will start jogging soon. Right now I walk at an incline (usually working my way from 9% to 15% incline) at 3 mph. I'll probably jog around 4.5-5mph for a few weeks, getting back into the swing of things, then move up into running around 6.5-7mph for 3 miles, what I used to do.

On the school front I'm still working on that review paper (but I'm not really surprised since it took other members of my lab more than a year to write theirs), but I will be able to send a draft of it to Monty's class over the break. Hopefully at least a few people we provide helpful feedback :-) That's what I'm going to be working on today and probably most of tomorrow. I'm also working on a presentation with one of my friends that we are giving during group discussion in immunology on Friday. The paper is pretty straightforward so I think we'll be able to do it justice even without any previous immunology background. I did, however, do much better on the second immunology test than the first! Maybe my grade will still turn out okay in the end since I'm now above average for my combined test grades :-D

This Friday the girls in my program are coming over to our house for a girls' night -- I'm so excited! I want to watch a chick flick! Not that Keegan won't let me watch them, but I feel guilty making him sit through them. Of course, he is going to take me to see New Moon on Saturday... poor guy.

Supporting my graduate school!

Friday the 13th

Today is mine and Keegan's 3.5 year anniversary! I know it doesn't much matter now that we're married (5 months next Friday!) but I always get a little nudge on the 13th of each month because back in the early days of dating it was exciting to be dating for 5 months, 18 months, etc. so I looked forward to the 13th. And it's also Friday the 13th, oooOooooOoo.

Yesterday I submitted my NSF application and it's nice to have that weight off of my shoulders. Of course, I didn't start the essays until Monday night, so I guess even though I wasn't actually working on them for a long time, they were lingering in the back of my mind for awhile. Now I'm going to work on the DOE and NDSEG fellowships too, but I think a lot of the same info will be asked on these applications. Last week was so busy, catching up from when I was sick, taking 2 midterms, and then writing an abstract to submit to the Society for Biomaterials on Monday I sort of lost track of time. And I feel like I submitted that abstract weeks ago but really it was only 4 days ago. Man.

Today Keegan's mom gets back from the Galapagos and Machu Picchu! Exciting! I'm sure she will have shocking numbers of pictures (I can't really talk -- I took at least 1500 pictures in only 7 days in Bermuda and she's been gone for 2 weeks). So Keegan stayed at his family's house Monday-last night while his dad traveled for work so that his younger siblings wouldn't be alone. It was so nice to have him back yesterday! It gets lonely hanging around the townhouse while it's pouring and the wind is whipping around the building. But, as I said, I had a lot to work on.

Tomorrow my dad is coming down from VA and he and Keegan and myself are going to the Duke/GT game! I haven't been to a Duke football game yet and this is the last home game I can go to; there are only two more home games, tomorrow and then the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend, when Keegan and I will be doing Thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family. On Thanksgiving day we're going with my mom, stepdad, and siblings to see my stepdad's parents. I only ever see them on Thanksgiving and they were unable to come to the wedding, so Keegan has never met them. John's mother is getting up there in years but she is so funny! I want Keegan to have the chance to meet them, so this year that's what we're doing on the day of. Next year we'll have Thanksgiving with Keegan's family I'm sure :-) Now that his aunt and uncle are officially moving to Wilmington in January (his aunt got a job here!) they will probably do Thanksgiving at Keegan's family's house. That will definitely make for a huge crowd at their house!

The rest of the weekend will be spent getting back to work on my review paper (I've been neglecting it because of school junk) and reading for immunology. Our house also desparately needs to be cleaned, but I'll be doing that tonight so it will be somewhat presentable when my dad gets here tomorrow. I think I will also do a little bit of Christmas shopping today just because I feel like wrapping something and I already know a few things that Keegan wants; our families have been pestering us for Christmas lists, so I've had to think about stuff I want and stuff Keegan wants and now I'm ready to go buy it! I think I'm also going to cave and go to the bookstore and buy a Duke sweatshirt to wear to the game tomorrow. Damn, I haven't paid for any college apparel like... ever. I have a zillion free NSCU and WISE stuff and then I guess I did pay for Duke grad school shirts (but $5/shirt doesn't really count for a total of $20). But I don't own anything Duke except those shirts and the grad school bumper sticker I put on my car. It's time.

Also I FINALLY changed my name on my bank accounts so I'm officially Alice Brochu now. I guess that means I need to start practicing signing that way. And change my name at Vanguard, on my car title, with Duke's registrar, and on my various forms of insurance. Then I think everything will be changed. I would like to share that I think it's ridiculous that changing my name with payroll at Duke does NOT change my name everywhere at Duke and that I have to go to the registrar if I want to change my name in the system and on my records. Annoying.

I can almost see the light at the end of this chapter of immunology notes, so I'm determined to finish before this presentation I'm going to during class time (as class was canceled).

Edit: Biology is amazing for a reason

Biology is amazing except for the scientists that insist on naming things in weird ways. Enter the RTK (receptor tyrosine kinase) signaling pathway called Sev (short for "sevenless" because it has a defect in its seventh photoreceptor) found in drosophila (flies).

As if calling a receptor "sevenless" isn't bad enough, its ligand is called "bride of sevenless" (Boss) and the downstream product, a GEF that causes the activation of a Ras protein, is called "son of sevenless" (Sos). Why, oh why?

Of course these scientists are studying flies, so maybe they're a little out there.

Biology is amazing for a reason

I may complain about class stuff and having to memorize lots of crap but it is very amazing. Every single time we have a class in immunology or biology I'm always astounded at how things work. For instance, on my last test we were learning about the electron transport chain; essentially chloroplasts and mitochondria use high energy electrons to pump protons against their gradients and then use the energy generated by the proton gradient to make ATP using the F0F1 ATP synthase.


Our bodies, our world, they're so efficient and so perfect for what they do. I can't believe there aren't exponentially more individuals with diseases, seeing as there are infinitely many ways our bodies could be screwed up. What scientist could look at the glorious things we have evolved into and not think that there was someone guiding it, someone who planned it all out? How could more than 30 proteins miraculously come together independently to form nuclear pore complexes that allow transport into the nuclei of our cells? Everything our cells do is for a bigger purpose, and I just can't believe it happened by accident. And I'm not saying we didn't evolve, you'd have to be majorly delusional to just flat-out ignore all of the evidence supporting our evolution from prior species, but I'm just saying that it's all so amazing and it seems to me that the odds we just accidentally happened are astronomical.

Crunch time

It's crunch time for me (and I'm sure for all other students out there) and I'm really starting to feel the days off I had to take last week. Unfortunately time does not stand still just because I had to make a trip to the ER, undergo some tests (that would have been awesomely cool if I hadn't felt so crappy), then be prescribed medicine that makes me super-drowsy. But whatever, I would probably be in the same position if I hadn't been sick, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Today was my second immunology test -- I feel more confident about this one than the previous one, but I don't know that that means much. My TA told us after the first one that if we got over a 60 on it, we were "golden" but I'm not so sure I believe her. Luckily I did get over a 60, but I guess I'll just have to see how the curve pans out. The highest grade was a 92 (again, according to the TA) but we were also told the lowest grade was 58 points lower than the highest grade. With a range from 34 to 92 I'm not so sure what to think; seeing a distribution would be more helpful than knowing the average.

Thursday is my second cell and developmental biology test -- for which I have done no reading. I've learned about 1/2 of the material on this test in other classes, so it's not all foreign to me. I do need to review though, and I'm supposed to be studying with some of the folks in my class, so I should look at it before then so I'm actually useful in discussion. I did really well on the first test so I'm not too concerned. It'll all balance out.

Hmm, what else has happened lately... Keegan and I went to Wilmington last weekend (as I was starting to feel bad) to see his aunt and uncle's new house. It was really nice and it is exciting for Keegan to finally have some relatives in the area. They are wonderful and have already told us more than once that we should feel free to come and stay there, telling us the codes to the houses and giving a key to Keegan's mom. Yay, beach! Speaking of Keegan's mom, she's in the Galapagos then on to Machu Picchu -- so very jealous. I can't wait to see her pictures!

For Halloween Keegan and I carved our pumpkin and gave candy to all the little kiddos in our development. There were some crazy-adorable children out that's for sure. I can't wait to dress our kids as pumpkins and M&Ms or something; those seem to be classic round-baby costumes. Although there was a toddler carried to our door dressed as Yoda. :-) We have a lot of leftover candy, which I'm sure I subconsciously bought so that Keegan and I could eat it all. This weightloss thing needs to happen soon. Keegan and I have set a goal that we'll each lose 15 pounds before the new year -- I can do it! He can do it! He's also trying to put muscle back on for his ski trip in January; he'll need to be in good shape to cope with all the cold and constant physcial activity involved with skiing!

We finally have all of our wedding pictures! I am going to buy a nicer album to put them all in. I'm sure I'll get around to that by our 5th anniversary or something...

My task list is pretty daunting, including finishing another draft of my paper, continuing the name-change stuff on all my various things (passport, bank, car title, etc), abstracts and fellowship applications, presentations, studying... you know.

Sigh.

VH1's 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs... Ever

At trivia at the Joyce this week the music category were all songs from VH1's 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs... Ever list. I looked this list up and I'm slightly ashamed to say that I love most of these songs! And I have most of them on my computer. C'mon, who can resist "The Thong Song" or "Ice Ice Baby"?

I might suggest the addition of "The Bad Touch" by Bloodhound Gang. And "I Like Big Butts" by Sir Mix-a-Lot. And pretty much anything by Juvenile or the Spice Girls. (And I have these)

Songs on the list I actually have:

• Sunglasses at Night-Corey Hart
• Two Princes-Spin Doctors
• We didn't start the fire-Billy Joel
• What's Up?- 4 Non Blondes
• I wanna sex you up-Color Me Badd
• Heartbeat-Don Johnson
• Butterfly-Crazy Town
• Jenny from the Block-Jennifer Lopez
• Pimp Juice-Nelly
• I'd do anything for love (But I won't do that)-Meatloaf
• The only thing that looks good on me is you-Bryan Adams
• You rock my world-Michael Jackson
• Sussudio-Phil Collins
• Thong Song-Sisqo
• I'll be there for you -Rembrants
• I'm too sexy-Right Said Fred
• The Final Countdown-Europe
• Mmm,Mmm,Mmm,Mmm-Crash Test Dummies
• Will 2K-Will Smith
• Barbie Girl-Aqua
• Rico Suave-Gerado
• The Heart of Rock & Roll-Huey Lewis and the News
• Don't worry, Be happy-Bobby McFerrin
• She Bangs-Ricky Martin
• Breakfast at Tiffany's-Deep Blue Something
• Ice Ice Baby-Vanilla Ice
• Rollin'(Urban Assault Vehicle)-Limp Bizkit
• Achy Breaky Heart-Billy Ray Cyrus

How many of you no longer want to be my friend?

In a nutshell...

To do:

• Change name on bank accounts, at Duke, on my car title, car/health insurance, etc (but I can't do this until I receive my new license)
• Give draft #6 to Monty -- will be done by Wednesday because I'm like 85% there
• Pay Ebill, boo
• Hang our wedding/engagement pictures somewhere undecided in our apartment
• Organize office -- it's disturbing
• Order media cabinet (even though it's painfully expensive, we really need somewhere to keep all of our media stuff... and we should get something nice that we can actually use later in life)
• Find something to do with my wedding dress (Where do I get it cleaned? Do they put it in a box or something for me?)
• Read unnatural amounts of immunology to catch up
• Complete NSF graduate student fellowship application
• Submit abstract to the Society for Biomaterials conference in April (wahoo, Seattle!)
  

Completed:

• Wedding pictures ordered!
• Awesome mixer rebate mailed out (seriously, the mixer was marked down 20% on sale, we had a 15% off coupon for Kohl's, AND a $40 mail-in-rebate, savings of $180 which is more than 50% of the price of the mixer)
• Keegan bought me some gorgeous chrysanthemums so our fall-ish decorating is mostly finished
• Grocery shopping (I saved $27.97 on $52.39 this week!)
• Cleaned house
• Saw houses on Parade of Homes that I wanted to get through
• Finished putting honeymoon pictures in an album
• Actually went to the fitness room on Saturday and Sunday

It doesn't look like I did much this weekend, but I really did, I promise! I did a lot of work on my paper and those wedding pictures were taking over my life! Now that's all finished and I can focus on things like reading and improving my paper.

Here is my new favorite wedding picture -- I certainly know all of the pictures very well by now :-P

Why I love babies

My grandmom has called me twice in the past 4 or 5 days just so that my cousin's 2 year old daughter could talk to me; apparently she sees my picture around my grandparents' house and then just can't wait to talk to me. So cute!

*Phone ringing* Grandmom: "Hi Alice, it's Grandmom, I've got someone here who wants to talk to you." *Jumbled noises* Elizabeth: "HEY ALICE!!!" *unintelligible gibber, something about grapes and cleaning* Alice: "Hey there Elizabeth, what are you doing?" Elizabeth: "Ahhhdunno" *something with the word crayons?* The second time was much along the same lines, only she told me about having "chickfries" for lunch.

Then my grandmom called me yet again to tell me that right after Elizabeth talked to me on the phone, her dad, my cousin Matt, called my grandparents' house to speak with Elizabeth, and when my grandmom went to her and said "There's someone here who wants to talk to you, Elizabeth!", she took the phone and yelled, "HEY KEEGAN!". I'm sure that made Matt feel really nice, but I thought it was so funny. She knows that Keegan and I go together and when she's shown pictures of us, she knows who we are :-) I can't wait to visit with her again!

Christmas 2007

May 2008

Christmas 2008

I can't believe she's already 2 years and 3 months old! I have some other really cute pitures of her on here from last Christmas. Babies!

I should be continuing to edit my paper...

... but instead I'm reading online news, thinking about going to get a giant cookie from the restaurant in the same building as my lab, and enjoying the empty lab. And listening to "Superfreak". (Guilty pleasures)

I have a seminar class this afternoon, but I've read the papers already so I'm taking a lunch time break instead of continuing right back to editing my paper. It's such a daunting task -- I'm constantly adding things or rearranging them or thinking of things I could include in the paper as supplemental info that is not strictly necessary but would be useful... I'm not sure what is overkill.

I went on the Parade of Homes this past weekend with my mom and sister; it was a lot of fun! Keegan and I went on Saturday, and I went with the family on Sunday. Keegan and I looked at reasonably priced homes, trying to determine what exactly we can expect when we're actually shopping for our first home. We want something from the late 80s, early 90s because it will be more established and most likely better built. We would like a yard (not a huge one at first, but something with trees and room for kids to kick a soccer ball or something), a minimum of 2000 sq feet, and two stories. I don't like ranch style homes very much, and our townhouse is 1200 sq ft with a full attic, so if we're going to buy a house, it needs to be a step up from what we have now. We want a large family, so we know our first house will be a starter house, something big enough for 2 adults with 2-3 small children; hopefully as our family grows, our incomes will also increase... but I guess we'll never know for sure.

This was the house I absolutely loved -- now there's something to aim for in the distant future! I'm taking Keegan to see this house tomorrow :-D I know that really this house is not necessary and that we would make do just fine in a house with half this square footage, but that's why it would be called a dream house, not a realistic one! Plus right now it is going to be difficult for us to save 10% of the price of a modest house for a down payment, probably somewhere in the $20K area. But luckily we have some time before we need to start looking seriously at houses.

I finally, finally sent the list of pictures we want from our wedding album to the photographer -- and only 4 days before the online album is closed! I guess I'm slacking off a bit or something. And I still need to order additional pictures through the gallery, which I'll do tonight. We got to choose 300 pictures, but we wanted more than that, so I'm going to order the additional pictures through the website rather than sending a list to the photographer. Yahoo! We also need to select an 8x10 of us; we received a "free" one with our engagement sitting, so now we'd like to have one from the wedding so we can hang them together.

Alright, back to work. Or maybe to buy that giant cookie...

I <3 Law and Order

"I'm sorry, but the last time I checked, stupid is not a defense to murder."

100 days of marriage

Keegan and I have been married for 100 days! They have been the best 100 days of my life, even better than the 3 years, 1 month, and 1 week preceding them :-D I'm so lucky!

May 13, 2006

June 20, 2009

Ahh, a trip down memory lane :-)

And just for fun...

Baby Alice

Baby Keegan

Unfortunately, I am still studying. At least I'm (mostly) caught up with the reading for immunology, but there are some sections I'm not sure if we're supposed to read for the test. So I'm not reading them until I know if I have to read them. I should also reread the first couple chapters because I don't remember them well from the first few weeks of class... boo.

How to avoid studying

Round one of year two's exams are getting ready to start so I've been trying to find ways to de-stress in preparation for them. I mainly do this by thinking about all of the things I'd rather be doing and all of the things I have to look forward to. This for me mainly includes different trips that Keegan and I are planning to take. And drinking a lot of chai tea...

We have a lot to look forward to in the coming year, and not just growing in our marriage together! We were initially planning to go up to the northeast between Christmas and New Year's to visit with some of his extended family, but I being the stealthy wife I am helped plan a surprise ski trip with Keegan's dad for him and Keegan right after New Year's. So that's part of Keegan's birthday and Christmas gift from his parents :-) Keegan will be going to Colorado in January! I've never been skiing but it looks like something I would like to try (but most likely be bad at).

For Easter we're planning to go back to Hilton Head with Keegan's family, at least for a few days. Easter I think overlaps with the younger kids' spring breaks, but I know Duke doesn't have any days off for Easter; I also don't know what my course schedule will be like, so maybe I won't have class on some days.

I'm hoping that sometime in May/June/July I'll be able to take that train trip with my grandparents, to see all of those beautiful places and also to spend some more quality time with them. But I'll need to talk over with Monty to figure out if it will be okay for me to be gone that long. I don't think he'll mind, but I want to make sure I'm at a good break point when I go and that I achieve enough before I leave to really enjoy the trip and not worry about what I could be doing in lab :-)

One of Keegan's good friends is getting married on June 19 in the Outer Banks, so we'll be going there too! And then we'll probably be going up north for the July 4th picnic with his dad's side of the family. Our plan was also to visit Newport, RI and then drive up the coast to Maine to visit with Keegan's cousin and her husband for our anniversary during this same time frame (since we'd already be in the area for the picnic), but we may not do that because I would feel really bad taking a two week trip then missing another half week of work so close together. We could always take that trip later in the year and they would be more spread out and less buggy (I hear Maine has a lot of bugs in the summer) but I'd also like to avoid the 6 feet of snow they get in the winter...

I'll probably be going to BMES next year, which I think is in Texas, so there's yet another place to go. And I've never been to Texas!

See, I really like to avoid studying by planning all the other things I could be doing... but I also can't look at these complex diagrams for more then 2.5 hours before I start to crack and my back hurts.

New NCIS tonight!!!! EEEEE! My goal is to know enough that I don't feel guilty watching it! Or that I feel less guilty watching it anyway :-) I didn't feel bad at all watching House last night because I was on campus from 7:30a.m. to 9p.m. and I got a lot done with studying. And then I think Grey's Anatomy starts Thursday (which has regrettably started to suck) and Desperate Housewives starts on Sunday. Ahh, premiere season!

VFIFX

I can already tell I'm going to be an obsessive fund-checker. I didn't think I'd ever be "that" person, but I so am. It was up 0.44% today- I made $22!

Today I was in lab for 12 hours. 6:55a.m. to 6:45p.m. I desperately needed to get work done and Keegan was wonderful enough to drop me off and pick me up on his way to and from work; that way I wasn't able to just leave at 4, I was forced to be productive. And I really was. I did this reading for my discussion group in immunology, I did my biology homework, I made a lot of progress on my presentation for lab meeting and I was able to talk to Monty about my paper organization. I was trying so hard to figure out his comments on rearrangement and I was wasting all this time formatting instead of improving the content.

Really? It's September 12th?

This year has really flown by and it's going by even faster now that classes have started up. It's already been 3 weeks of class- somehow I feel like I've barely started classes and that I've been in classes forever all at the same time. I'm enjoying them so far, but it's a lot of somewhat tedious reading. My first round of exams starts on September 24, so we'll see how much I like classes then.

In sad news my aunt had a massive heart attack this week and she is recovering poorly. She had an aneurysm that was repaired in early August, but shortly after the surgery she began having kidney failure and was in and out of the hospital. She was home for about a week then she had this heart attack and was back in the hospital. She also has pneumonia with significant fluid buildup in her lungs, requiring a ventilator. She is also back on dialysis for kidney failure. They're not sure what caused the heart attack but her other problems are unlikely to resolve themselves without treatment for her heart problems. She is still in the critical care unit and can only have 2 visitors at a time and they must wear masks. I hope she is able to recover enough to come home even though she may always require dialysis if her kidneys do not pick up their functioning soon. She has been a very heavy smoker and drinker, so I hope her and my uncle realize how these behaviors absolutely CANNOT continue.

This weekend is the graduate student campout for season basketball tickets but I'm not participating because I want to be able to get to the hospital immediately if necessary and also because I have a lot of lab work this week. I'm giving Monty another draft of my paper on Tuesday and I'm presenting at lab meeting on Thursday; both of these things require a lot of time this weekend that I just wouldn't have at campout. So I need to get back to work on those things shortly.

And also (at this moment) UNC is losing their football game and Duke is actually winning! I know this may not last, but it's nice for now :-)

Retirement!

Is it wrong to be so excited about having a Roth IRA? Because I'm pretty excited! Pretty much I'm thinking about all the sweet stuff I'll be able to do when I'm 59.5 :-P I'll put in as much as I can now since I'm not sure what the future will bring as far as expenses go. I hear kids and houses are pretty pricey... I think I'll be able to make the maximum contribution for at least 2 years (2009 and 2010) then I'll work from there depending on our situation. Compound interest is my frieeeeend. Even if I didn't add any more money to the account, with 8% expected rate of return until I retire at age 65, it'll be worth something like $125K. Assuming I make no additions after this one, that is. However, if I manage to put in $3-5000/year, that'll become roughly $1.1-1.8 million by age 65. So $225K becomes almost 2 million... not too shabby. All that depends on the funds I choose and everything, so I guess we'll see how it goes. I'll let you know when I'm 65 :-P

I'm also excited because my funding is now from a fellowship again, not a grant, so I don't have to pay Social Security- wahoo, extra ~$150 this month! June and July were sad in the savings department compared to previous months. I'm just going to save it anyway (I know, I'm lame) but it's still exciting to think about what it will be used for when I actually need to spend it. I've got everything I need right now so I might as well save it for our trip or a house or a crib or something in the future. Of course I guess in actuality it'll go towards my parking permit or my textbooks but I like to dream big.

Commence year 2

Well I've had all of my classes now (except for seminar) and I think I'm going to really enjoy them both. It's going to be a lot of memorization, but it's all stuff that I want to learn. I am a little uncomfortable in BIO 119 because I'm a lot older than the other people (most of the students are sophomores and juniors in the biology department) but that's okay. I want to learn the material! I would like to express my displeasure at the 7-10p.m. final exam time though...

I did a lot of cleaning this weekend and got almost everything I wanted to do finished. I need to vacuum and my desk is a mess, but the house is probably 75% clean. Keegan's aunt and uncle are coming to see it on Thursday on their way back through town, so that's when I'll have it finished. Caitlin and I hung up our pictures from Bermuda, so the house is looking even more like a home. That's a nice touch :-)

I finished The Time Traveler's Wife over the weekend, so now maybe I'll go back to The Fountainhead. I have a lot of stuff to read for school (textbooks for bio and immunology and papers for seminar, grant proposal for CBTE) but maybe I'll find some me time in there too.

Back to the article-reading...

Reading ADD

I'm reading several books concurrently- this seems to happen often with me. When one of them appeals more to me than the others, I focus on reading that one first; this sometimes leads me to read other books before returning to the initial group I was working on and I end up working on reading the same book for months. Then I may as well just start the other books over.

Currently reading:
The Time Traveler's Wife: Audrey Niffenegger
The Fountainhead: Ayn Rand
Catch-22: Joseph Heller
Smart Women Finish Rich: David Bach

I also read an excerpt from a book called The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by A.J. Jacobs in the most recent Reader's Digest (Yes, I get RD because my family gave me a free subscription... something about if they renewed theirs they got to give one as a gift for free. I think last month was the last one though) It looks pretty funny, so I may put that on my list of things to read also.

This weekend should be a fairly restful one before classes start up again on Monday. This semester will be much better than the past ones because my course load is lighter and I'll be able to get into research. Yay! Tonight Keegan and I are going to see Ponyo which I think looks really good. We've been watching Miyazaki's movies at home in the evenings recently, so I'm looking forward to seeing his newest masterpiece :-) On Saturday I'm finally seeing Caitlin! I haven't seen her (or Sara :-( ) since the wedding, which is inexcusable. I'm not sure what we'll do, but I at least have her bridesmaid gift now! I'm going to be doing some thorough house-cleaning this weekend too, since I know when classes start I'll slack off in that department. I also want to get our pictures from Bermuda hung up so our house looks even more welcoming. Plus they're pretty and I want to be able to look at them all the time! Keegan's aunt and uncle are going to be in town this weekend and we'll be seeing them on Sunday. I know we'll be having dinner with his family in Raleigh but I hope his aunt and uncle will be able to come by and see where we live; that's another incentive to get the house super clean. We don't mind having junk everywhere, but it'll look nicer if we don't (we really need to get that media cabinet so I can unpack the office). And, best of all, I gave my review paper to Monty yesterday, so now I'm waiting for his feedback before tackling the revisions. It's nice to have that load off! :-D I've been working on the presentation for the BME 311 seminar in September today, and it's almost finished, at least until Monty gives me more specifics on what he wants to present. It didn't take me too long because I already had a presentation I made for Monty when we met one-on-one a couple weeks ago. But I made some edits and added some new figures.

I hope it's not storming when I want to walk to my car...

Another place to add to the list

I've already talked about how Keegan and I would like to save money to go to Italy, and here's why!

Cinque Terre, Italy

Hmmm, I hope we can make it there someday! My college roommate (and one of the readers from our wedding) called me today; she spent two weeks in Italy and two weeks in Spain and she was telling me all about them! I'm so jealous :-) But we'll get there someday!

Also, Keegan's mom is going to the Galapagos Islands with her sister and brother this fall! I'm looking forward to seeing all of her pictures! One of Keegan's uncles died almost 4 years ago and he and Keegan's aunt used to take trips in the fall; since his passing, Keegan's mom has filled his shoes and gone on trips with her sister. The first year they took a cruise through the Panama Canal and down the west coast of South America, going to Peru, Ecuador, and Chile (maybe a few other countries, I'm not sure). The second year they took a cruise around the Mediterranean; I'm not sure exactly where they went, but I know Spain, France, and Greece were on the list. Last year they took another cruise that went around the Greek Islands, then to Egypt and Turkey. They were planning another trip to that general area for this year; it turns out Keegan's uncle has always wanted to go to the Galapagos, and he offered to pay the difference if they would change their plans to go to the Galapagos with him. I wonder if my brother will ever actually pay for me to go on vacation with him... :-)

On an unrelated note, the BME department was able to find someone who could TA both sections of BME 83, so they don't need me to do it this fall. Kathy says they've already put me down to do it in the spring semester, so I guess that's something. I'm not sure what additional class I should take now. I'm not involved enough in my research and don't have a concrete plan yet, so I don't want to only have one class and a seminar and nothing else. I'm currently signed up for a cell and developmental biology class, which I would like to take, but I want to see if there are any other classes out there that might be a better fit for me. I know in the spring I'll be taking the cell signalling class and the second half of the seminar, but maybe I'll take a structural biochem class or something too. There's also a theorectical materials class that is offered in the spring that might be helpful. I looked through the mechanical engineering and materials science classes offered this fall but none of them really catch my interest. I think I'll be fine in the bio and immunology classes though. Maybe the polymer chemistry class taught at UNC will be offered in the spring too. Then I could take cell signalling and polymer chemistry and TA. Wahoo!

I'm almost done with my review paper; just have 1 section left to edit and 2 figures to make. I will certainly be finished by my Friday deadline for myself. Hopefully I'll be finished tonight or tomorrow!

Backsliding

The ankle sprain combined with sales on unhealthy items (namely ice cream) has set back my "being healthier" plan. Today my weight was 137lbs, although that may not be entirely accurate because of the odd distribution of pressure I had on the scale to compensate for my ankle, so it might be even higher. I forgot to weigh myself on the 7th, and then I injured myself on the 10th, so I'm not sure what my weight was on the 7th (probably not 131lbs, although it's likely that I gained 5 pounds in the week, eating unhealthy things and not walking anywhere). That was really sad for me to see because I haven't weighed that much since my first year of undergrad. But Keegan and I did go through like 4 things of ice cream in the past couple of weeks; they kept being buy one, get one free and I just couldn't resist. I also ate a lot of snack foods because I was not feeling up to doing things like cutting up apples or melons when I could just grab a box of crackers that didn't require as much balancing and time on my feet to get. That sounds super lazy, but whatever. It was super lazy.

Today I'll try to do better at the store (or at least send Keegan with a good, healthy list). We did have cantaloupe, grapes, and pumpkin seeds from our last grocery trip which are not always on the list and have their own unique benefits. I also found some eggplant recipes, so maybe I'll try them out soon. Maybe... This week I'm going to put the typical things on the list; bananas, spinach, cucumbers, granola bars, etc. The fresh produce on sale this week are not things that we really want, like potatoes, asparagus, and avocados (although Keegan loves guacamole), so maybe we'll get something like green apples and peaches that are not too exciting but still tasty :-)

I guess my revised weight for the end of the month will be higher; it's still 16 days until the end of the month, so I could feasibly weigh 131 by then. I'm still doing my sit ups and lifting weights, but only those that I can do lying down or sitting in a chair.

In other news, I received my new Social card, so I will be able to go to the DMV, the bank, etc to really become Alice Brochu.

I have subscriptions to both National Geographic and National Geographic Traveler that I enjoy reading every month (or 4 at a time when I have a break from school). This month's Traveler deals with Italy and has another section dealing with awesome US roadtrips. I'm trying to think what I might like to do for Keegan for his 25th birthday (which admittedly is not until September 2010) and some of the trips look really neat. Of course, it might be easiest just to do something nice at home and save the money to put towards the European trip we're planning. Treat him to some sort of excursion while we're wherever it is we go to visit.

We went to visit my grandparents last weekend and they're trying to put together another trip for next summer now that my poppop has had his joint replacement surgery and will be up for taking a good long vacation. (How can you need a vacation when you're retired?) The trip they're looking at is a train ride that starts and ends in Seattle. It leaves and travels east through Washington, Idaho, and Montana, then moves northwest to go through Alberta and British Columbia. It hits Glacier National Park, which is somewhere I'd really like to go, and it also stops at Lake Louise in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, which is absolutely beautiful! Not that I'm even necessarily invited, and if I were, I'm not sure I could leave Keegan for 2 weeks. I'm sure Monty wouldn't mind as long as I cleared it with him in advance and as long as I made sure I reached a good breaking point before I left. But I don't want to leave him behind on a trip I know he'd love to be on also. I guess I'll cross that bridge if I get to it :-)

Ankle sprain

Updates:

I turned my ankle over the weekend and I think it's sprained. It's pretty puffy and purple. I've been reading and editing from home and it's actually made me more productive so I think I'll have my paper ready for Monty before I thought I would have it ready.

I found out that my mom and stepdad had decided not to come to our wedding after the rehearsal but then they came to it anyway. I'm not sure why they decided to come... but I'm glad they did. I'm just concerned that they may not have allowed my siblings to come even though they were part of the ceremony.

Keegan has been working a lot lately and I feel so bad for him :-( But I think he'll be able to take a day off later this week to make up for working a full day on Sunday and working super-overtime on Monday.

I actually deserve this weekend!

This is the first weekend in awhile that I actually feel like I deserve! I accomplished so much this week, really getting my project moving and presenting what I want to begin work on this fall to Monty. He was pleased by my work and declared my paper to be 80% finished. Yay! Once I add my handy figures and a few other sections I will send it to him (August 21 is my deadline for myself). The additional sections are not that complicated because they are things that I read about but didn't feel the need to include, like background info on certain types of implants, but that Monty feels would add to the paper. I also met with Dr. Craig to go over some of my thoughts and to ask him a few questions about his work to clarify what I want to add to the paper about methods used by his lab and others similar to it.

Last night Keegan took me to see Coldplay - it was incredible! At least as wonderful as when I saw them on their X & Y tour in 2005 :-D What a wonderful birthday present! They also had free CDs for everyone, live versions of some of their songs from other legs of the tour. We managed to take some (poor quality) pictures on our cell phones, so maybe I'll try to upload them to Facebook. Our seats were pretty good- in the center section under the covered portion of the amphitheater so I could actually see what all the band members looked like without relying on the huge screens they had set up.

This morning before coming to lab I stopped by Target to pick up some stuff during the tax free weekend. I wanted to make sure that the bookbag I wanted was still in stock :-P I was able to get my backpack, a computer carrying case thing, some index cards (sometimes they're useful when studying, and immunology seems like the type of class to require a lot of memorization), some push pins, a planner, and some tape. We never seem to have tape when we need it (like when we're wrapping gifts) so that was sort of an impulse buy, but it was Target brand and less than $1.50 for 4 rolls of it. I only saved about $2.65 on things being tax free, but that's okay. Plus this week the backpack was on sale, so I saved another $14 there! I've been keeping an eye out in the weekly ads to see if it went on sale; I would have just bought it earlier if it were on sale and I would have saved more from the sale than from the 6.75% sales tax being waived. I still got to campus by 9, so it wasn't that much of a sacrifice.

Tomorrow Keegan and I are going to go visit my grandparents and the rest of my dad's side of my family. My dad will be in town from Virginia too, so that will be nice. I want to see all of the little cousins! I guess technically they're my first cousins once removed since they are my cousins' kids, but babies are babies. And Sunday Keegan has to go to work, so I will do laundry and continue working on my paper :-)

And this afternoon I take the first step to becoming an actual Brochu; I'm going to the Social Security Administration in Durham to send off for a card with my new name :-) I'm just going to have 4 names instead of changing one out, so hopefully they'll be able to handle that for me. I mean I can't be the first person to come to them and choose to just add a name instead of substituting one name for another. I'm also finally going to take the huge pile of thank you cards to the post office. They've been finished since last weekend, but since it's so many cards I just want to take them straight to the post office rather than dumping like 70 envelopes into the teeny mailbox at our complex.

I'm also an official TA for BME 83 for this fall - wahoo! I'm glad this worked out well because I'm only signed up for 1 class and 1 seminar now, and I wasn't sure what else I wanted to add. But now I think 1 class, 1 seminar, and being a TA will be well-balanced so I'm able to get a lot of lab work done but not too light of a load that I don't have enough to work on in lab to fill in the gaps. And I'll be able to still have time to devote to finishing this paper and submitting it for publication. My goal is to do that by September 30, but it all depends on who Monty wants to have read it through and whatnot. Hopefully this spring I can take 3 classes and the second half of my seminar to finish my coursework requirement, but it wouldn't be too bad to have 2 classes and a seminar and then finish up my last class and last TA requirement next fall. Or maybe I'll TA BME 83 in the spring too... in short, I should be finished with the non-research requirements to graduate by December 2010.

Appliances!

Our new washer and dryer are amazing!


Sears had all of their appliances on sale for 15% off and the pedestals came free with our model, so that was a nice $400 value (we wouldn't have bought them otherwise, but hey, they were free).

This weekend was pretty uneventful other than our fancy new appliances. We went out for coffee (and chai tea in my case) with one of my friends from high school on Saturday night and we spent most of Sunday at Keegan's house with his family; his sister leaves for school this week, so we wanted to see her before she left.

I'm meeting on Thursday with Monty to go over my presentation, so I guess my goal for myself will now be moved from August 3 (today) to August 5. I hope I will be ready, but he hasn't given me any sort of guidelines, so I'm not sure which info he's really looking for. I guess it's just going to be a really comprehensive slideshow :-)

It also turns out that Keegan owns Catch-22, so I borrowed it and I'm going to start reading it today during my lunch break. I've started taking my break closer to 1 so that way when I get back it's later in the day and I think that gives me a second wind or something. And it splits the day more evenly; instead of working 9-12 then taking a lunch and working 1ish-6ish I can work 9-1 and 2ish-6ish. Somehow in my mind that is better...

I'd like to make Keegan fettuccine alfredo from scratch, so I'm looking for a good recipe. I know it's not very healthy, but we both love it and I want to start cooking more "real" meals. I made an herb chicken casserole on Saturday, but that's about as adventurous as I get. And there's nothing all that difficult about baking rice and soup with chicken.

I need to read more

I've seen this note floating around Facebook, but I didn't really read the list until now. I do read a lot, but I tend to stick with what I love (translation: I re-read books obsessively). I'm confident I've read each of the Harry Potter books at least 10 times, and I didn't even start reading them until after the 6th one came out. Ahh! I tend to buy things called "classics" in the bookstore and never get around to reading them...

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X (should I put multiple X's?)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible / (1/2 an X here)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 5 (or should that be 11 because there are 7 books in the HP series?)

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read maybe 4 of his plays... so nowhere near the "complete works")
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 3 (wahoo, I've read more than 6 total!)

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (I've heard this is terribly depressing)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Total: 3

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X (are they not aware that this is part of the series the Chronicles of Narnia?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Total: 3

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 4

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafo
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 1 (sad :-( )

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Total: 2

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Total: 1

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Total: 3

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

Total: 4

Grand total: 29


However, we have several of these books at the house so I could read them if the urge strikes me. Keegan has read all the gigantic and tragic books by Russian authors (Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Anna Karenina). He also has the complete works of Shakespeare and most of Jane Austen's books (which I really want to read because I love Pride and Prejudice so much). I'd also like to read The Lord of the Rings so the movies will make some sort of sense and I don't have to consult the LOTR Wiki to get all the details. I also have Great Expectations sitting on my bookshelf because I bought it for school and then never had to read it. I also want to read The Iliad and The Odyssey, both of which Keegan has and both of which are not on this list. I started one of them once and I don't remember which... I'm also reading Ayn Rand's books- well The Fountainhead anyway (Atlas Shrugged should definitely be added to this list). Catch-22 is another I've heard good things about. And I'd like to read more F. Scott Fitzgerald. Basically... I read all day at work and want to go home and read more for fun. I already read during lunch for fun!

My new thing: to-do lists

My recent updates have all included to-do lists, so let's not break the trend:

• July 31: buy washing machine and dryer!
  
• August 3: slideshow to Monty recapping all my work for the summer and my future steps
• August 7: desired weight of 131 pounds
• August 8: send list of wedding pics we want printed to our photographer
  
• August 7-9: make use of tax free weekend to buy school supplies, namely a backpack I can carry my laptop in and textbooks
  
• August 21: send final draft of paper to Monty including all the new info I've gathered through my meetings with Dr. Craig and feedback from Monty between now and then. I know Monty will want to make major changes to the paper (based on the comments of other grad students around the lab) but at least I'll have a good starting place for the new school year. Then I can enjoy that last homework-free weekend before classes start :-)
  
• September 1: have all of our remaining boxes unpacked. This will involve buying our media cabinet so we have somewhere to put our DVDs and CDs. I think the office will be much more inviting when it's not got 8 boxes sitting in the middle of the floor!
• September 1: desired weight of 128 pounds
• October 1: desired weight of 123 pounds (and that's my stopping goal; generally I'd like to be between 120 and 125)

Is it really almost August? I looked at my calendar this morning and saw July 29 - I can't believe it! Classes start in a little over 3 weeks, ahh! Hunter turns 14 next Wednesday and Keegan and I are going to see Coldplay as my belated birthday present on Thursday (he gave me the tickets in my birthday card- what a great hubby).

The eating healthier is going pretty well. Keegan and I had milkshakes from Cookout on Monday, but other than that I seem to be keeping to my plan for the most part. I still haven't managed to buy any of the intimidating odd-colored vegetables (read: eggplant, carrots, sweet potatoes), but I'm doing well with fresh fruit. This week we have bananas, green apples, strawberries, and blueberries which will make good snacks and desserts. Tonight I'm going to make beef stroganoff (not that impressive, seeing as how the stroganoff part is pre-packaged) with spinach salad and fruit. I've also been adding sunflower seeds to our salads, which is something I always do at salad bars in restaurants, but it's nice to have that extra source of nutrients. We still have canned nuts around as snacks, but we've been keeping snacking down. Last week I made fresh blueberry muffins, so we had those for after-dinner snacks (and breakfast on the weekend)

First check in

Well today I weighed 133.4 lbs; I'm not sure if that's an improvement or just reflects a change in the amount of water I'm retaining now or something. So I guess I wouldn't call it progress, but at least it's not going in the wrong direction...

I've met some of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the week.

• Keegan is finishing his portion of the thank you cards this afternoon when he gets home from work- what a great husband!
• I have found answers to all of the questions raised at my meeting with Dr. Craig, but I do not feel they are not answered to the fullest extent (ie: what are typical failure modes of dental implants? I have found much information that answers this question in general terms, but I know there is a ridiculous amount of info out there to answer this)
• The curtains are hanging! Yahoo!
• Returning camping gear this afternoon
  
• Sadly I did not go to the fitness room any days this week :-O But Keegan and I have been taking walks in the evenings, so that's a tiny shred of redemption there
• I picked about 30 pictures I know we're going to get
• We haven't been to Sears, but will most likely go there tomorrow morning!

I have additional "to-dos" for my list this weekend, including:

• Send the nearly final version of my paper to Dr. Craig, who has graciously (and enthusiastically!) agreed to look it over. This involves some reformatting and re-organization, and I haven't compiled all the info I want to make one of my tables very thorough, so I'll continue to work on that.
• Go through my clothing to set aside items I never wear to take to Good Will; I'm going to have Keegan do the same thing because for two people, we fill insane amounts of our limited space with clothing
• Attend Keegan's company picnic! Two summers ago they had a cornhole tournament that Keegan and I won. Keegan really raked it in though; we won $50 in gift certificates to the movies from the cornhole, but he also won an iPod shuffle in a raffle and a Starbucks gift card at Bingo. I need to take this guy to Vegas!

Today when I was coming in to lab I noticed an older gentleman walking across campus and one of his legs was about 2 inches longer than the other. He was walking completely lopsided with his back bent at a horrible angle and it made me really think about how lucky I am. I guess that sounds stupid, but I always remember how fortunate I am at weird moments.

And finally, here are a few pictures from the rafting trip last weekend!

Whitewater fun

This past weekend Keegan and I went whitewater rafting with some of the students in my program- it was really fun! I had been once during the summer between 7th and 8th grade with my Girl Scout troop, but we were doing much milder stuff than what we were exposed to this weekend! We had a great time though :-) Keegan and I both fell out on separate occasions, but honestly I was more concerned with losing my glasses than falling out (and luckily my glasses are fine!) However, one of the other members in the team chipped a tooth on a rogue paddle :-/ The next time we go rafting I'm going to wear an old pair of glasses and a mouth guard! We were rafting on the New River Gorge and there were some pretty intense rapids; we watched a video afterwards and it may feel intense while you're actually on the boat, but watching it on tape it looks terrifying. Like when I feel out and just disappeared under the boat.... But anyway, point of the story, it was really fun and I recommend it to others. I guess the next thing to do is go skydiving. My stepdad has been trying to get me to go since I turned 18, but I've been too much of a whimp. The last time he invited me was the Friday before my graduation from NCSU and I figured I should at least get my diploma first if I happened to squash in to the ground :-P

I have several goals for myself this week.

• Finish our thank you cards (I've written the ones for my family and our friends, but Keegan needs to finish the ones to his family and friends that are closer to him, then we'll each sign them all)
• Find all of the info to answer the questions Dr. Craig and I uncovered at our meeting on Thursday- I've already answered 2 of the 5 big ones, so I think I'm on my way.
• Clean out all the camping gear we used and return the borrowed stuff to its owners
• Finally hang up the curtains for our bedroom. I ironed them a week ago and Keegan borrowed a power drill from his family (I have all hand tools, nothing powerful) but we just haven't gotten around to actually doing the hanging.
• Go to the fitness room at our complex at least 3 more times this week (this may be difficult as I'm pretty sore from the trip and my thighs are a bit sunburned- I'm thinking the waves washed off most of the sunscreen I put on my legs)
• Pick the wedding pictures we want to have printed. We get to select 300, so it's no small feat to sift through the website and pick the ones we really want. I've picked about 20 so far, but I didn't start at the beginning and I started making the list as an afterthought.
• Check out Sears for their deals on appliances, specifically, efficient washers and dryers. Our energy bill is really not that high (average cost $50.42/month since moving in last August, which is roughly $25/person/month) but we want machines that actually clean the clothes well and don't turn our upstairs into a sauna during the drying cycle. Additionally, I know Sears aften has big sales where buying more than one appliance at a time you save greater percentages, and since we need to buy both, it would be nice to save 10 or 15% off of our total order.

Well, I guess that's about it for my week. I'm also meeting with Monty sometime next week to discuss the direction I want to move in this fall and how I plan on doing what I want to do :-) I'm really glad to have talked with Dr. Craig because I think he will make an excellent and enthusiastic collaborator. Yay, progress!

Welcome to the real world!

Today Keegan and I opened our joint accounts at Bank of America- I feel so grown up! Not that getting married doesn't make me feel grown up, but now we've got something that is really ours :-) We opened a risk-free CD as our savings account because we are allowed to make withdrawals from it without being penalized, receive a 1% interest rate (which is not fantastic but is much better than 0.1% on standard savings accounts), and are not charged fees if the amount in the account falls below a certain level. We initially wanted to open a money market savings account, but there's no way we can guarantee we'd always have $5000 in there, at least for now. But maybe in a few years we'll be able to make the transition. We also opened a joint checking account that doesn't have any sort of minimum balance requirement. Our plan is going to be to contribute equal percentages of our income to the joint account to cover things like rent, tv/internet, water, electricity, cell phones, and groceries. I'm going to try to contribute part of what's left of my stipend to my personal retirement accounts and then add a bit to our joint account too, but we'll see how that goes.

In other news, I have a big meeting tomorrow with a professor in the chemistry department who might be able to provide me with some very useful contacts. His name is Stephen Craig and he should be able to introduce me to some potential collaborators and give me some guidance on my ideas. Wahoo! I've been really unhappy lately, feeling kind of pathetic and a little lost since I'm just reading a lot and working on my paper but I don't have a path to follow for doing actual hands-on work. I did make some microspheres, but that was just me playing around, getting back in the feel of labwork. But I will at least have a paper by hopefully the middle of the fall semester, pending Monty's revisions.

Also, the 3rd International Conference on Self-Healing Materials is going to be held in the UK in 2011! Here's hoping I have something noteworthy to present so I can actually go!

**Update
My meeting with Dr. Craig went really well- he's very excited about the project I proposed! I'm so happy to have a real defined path with specific answers that I want to find, rather than a billion questions pulling me in opposite directions. Now I'm going to work on more details!

Starting point

My weight as of Friday, July 10:
134.8 lbs

Let's see what two weeks of healthier eating and lifestyle choices will do :-)

Grocery store success!

I made the first trip to the grocery store while in my new "eat better" mindset and not only did I buy some new things I've never bought before, but I saved money on them!

Strawberries and blueberries were both on sale, so I bought some of each and I'm looking forward to making some nice yogurt smoothies with them or eating them just as fresh fruit as desserts. The strawberries came in a 2lb container, so they will be very useful! On sale for $3.99 too! That might not be the best deal, but it's better than some I've seen :-) I also picked up a jar of sunflower seeds (which I absolutely love) and a container of mixed nuts (both unsalted/sweetened and on sale). I can't remember all the kinds in there at the moment, but I remember almonds, peanuts, cashews, and I think macadamia nuts also. Now I just have to make sure I eat them at a controlled pace! I also bought spinach, cucumbers, bananas, skim milk, and non-fat yogurt, but those are things we get every week at the store anyway (sometimes substituting green peppers or celery for cucumbers). There wasn't a lot for me to buy this week because I stocked up on meat, pasta, and cereal before the wedding when it was on sale and I've got like 15 meals worth of each chicken and beef in the freezer.

I've never bought nuts or blueberries before, so I'm branching out at least a little bit. Maybe next week I'll venture towards something more colorful in the veggie section...

I use Excel to track our grocery spending, dividing it in to savings by MVP card and savings by coupons, then looking at the total cost of the groceries and the percent savings each week. It's not a totally accurate reading because we occasionally buy food at Target, especially if it's on sale or in their summer section that always has larger boxes, like what you'd get in a Sam's Club or something. But these expenditures are less than $20. We also buy all of our health and beauty things at Target too, but only when I've also got coupons for them; sometimes we can luck out and buy things on clearance with coupons too, like Pantene shampoo and conditioner.

So far this year we've spent $1203.69 at Food Lion on groceries and saved $399.78 using our MVP card and coupons. This gives us a percent savings of 24.932%! This is pretty good I think, seeing as how we've saved almost half a month's rent on groceries so far this year. Looking back on the year I see my personal best shopping week was in April when I spent $32.53 and saved $33.89 for a percent savings of 51.02%! I'm assuming that's one of the weeks when chicken was on sale for like 50% off per pound and I was able to buy it and wrap it up to store in the freezer. Of course that might also have been when Diet Cokes were on sale or Lipton noodles or something else was 10/$10. It's too bad I don't have a pantry because I could do some serious stocking up if I did!

I'm sure that now that I'm going to be buying more fresh foods we will spend more on groceries, but that's something I'm willing to be flexible on. Plus we can always scout out the deals in the paper and buy the fresh items that are on sale :-) I read this book called America's Cheapest Family that my stepdad picked up at a garage sale, and this family was hardcore. They only went to the grocery store one time per month and I think they had something like 6 kids, so they talked about storing all the foods and which were the first to be eaten. They also had a lot of info about how they paid off their house in a ridiculously short period of time (9 years I think?) by living frugally and on one income of around $40,000. Their last name is Economides (it's Greek) and very fitting!