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.