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.
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