2011 in review

Well it’s not quite the end of the year, but I haven’t updated in a while and I’m waiting around lab for one of my experiments to finish and I was thinking about the past few months and how they’ve really flown by.  This entire year really has flown by actually, but when I really think about everything that happened it seems impossible that it all fit into one year!

January

- Started by 6^th semester of graduate school without any classes or TAing responsibilities – it was weird!

- Spent a lot of time in lab because I was trying to get enough data to submit to the 3^rd International Conference on Self-healing Materials (which I did!)

- Submitted an Intent to graduate form to get my MS in the spring!

-Starting working with my first long-term undergraduate student, a Pratt Fellow who will be working with me until he graduates in Spring 2012

- Began work at Ethicon with some really awesome folks

February

-Went to Costa Rica for a week with Keegan, my best friend, and her boyfriend!  It was amazing and I’m so happy and fortunate to have been able to go

-My review paper submitted and accepted in 2010 is published in print in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A

-R21 Monty wrote with my data receives funding!

March

-This is probably when I found out I was going to England… yeah, we’ll go with that

-More work on my thesis

-Somewhere in here we started planning a Biomaterials Day event to be held at Duke in April 2012 with funds awarded by the Society for Biomaterials

April

-Successfully defended my MS thesis!

-Went to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival with Caitlin – it was awesome and I can’t wait to take Keegan!

-Work presented at Society for Biomaterial’s annual meeting in Orlando, FL

-Celebrated Easter in Hilton Head with Keegan’s family

May

- Celebrated my 25^th birthday!

- Celebrated 5 years with Keegan!

- Around this time I had lost about 12 pounds for the year

June

- Went to England to present my work!  This was my first trip to Europe and I can’t believe it took me so long to get there!  Keegan and I had a great time exploring London then relaxing in Bath and Cardiff before returning to the hustle and bustle of London

July

- Lots of work, can’t remember anything particularly special happening this month

August

- Started my fourth year of graduate school – HOW HAS IT BEEN FOUR YEARS ALREADY?

- Submitted first draft of my first research paper to Monty

September

- Attended Campout 2011 and unfortunately did not win tickets in the lottery but managed to procure one anyway…

- Went to the Midtown Music Festival in Atlanta, GA primarily to see The Black Keys but also to visit with Keegan’s sister

October

-More work, mainly a blur

-Presented at BMES 2011 in Hartford, CT; also able to visit Keegan’s grandparents that weekend

-Starting training new MS student to work with me

November

- Submitted a paper with one of the MS students in the lab who worked on my project; will hopefully hear if that is accepted and then I will have second authorship on a research paper

- Submitted abstract to the Material Research Society’s spring 2012 meeting; was freaked out by the use of 2012

- Went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure in Orlando, FL – WAS AMAZING AND I CAN’T WAIT TO GO BACK!!

-Played paintball for the very first time and had a ton of fun

December

- Monty actually reads paper given to him in August; edits quickly made and article submitted!  Will hopefully hear back soon about any revisions necessary

- Set prelim date- yipes!

- Started applying for internships

- Will leave to go skiing for the first time

- Ending the year at -12 pounds from last year (not anticipating any more loss over the holidays - definitely hit a big lull from England through October, now at 133, down from 145 last year.  Never did make it below 130 although I hovered tantalizingly close to it for about a month in the summer.  There is always next year!)

And just because I always track where I’ve been during the year:

North Carolina

Costa Rica*

Florida

South Carolina

Alabama*

Mississippi*

Louisiana*

England*

Wales*

Connecticut
Georgia

* indicates locales that were new for the year!

October pleasure reading, part 4

This month I also read two other John Grisham books, The Associate and The Client.  Both of these books were less depressing than the first Grisham books I read, so that was refreshing.  They both ended in slightly ambiguous ways but at least I can tell myself that the main characters got their happy endings (instead of knowing that they died or something).  When I return these books to the library I'll see if there are any remaining Grisham books that I haven't read, but I also have a few biographies that I want to read so maybe I'll get to those first :)

October pleasure reading, part 3

This month I also read The Existential Detective by Alice Thompson.  Honestly, I only picked this book up from the New and Noteworthy section of the Duke library because I saw my name on it, but it turned out to be really interesting and a quick read.  It was a story about a private detective who was hired to find a man’s wife.  Throughout the course of the story,  he keeps flashing back to earlier points in his life where we find out he had a daughter who was abducted and never found.  Anyway, the book has a nice, if weird, ending and that’s really all I need from my books.

October pleasure reading, part 2

At BMES 2011, I was able to read some on the plane/in the airport and during conference down time.  I borrowed a book from my friend on an impulse and I enjoyed it.  The book was called Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon and it was not really the type of book I would usually read, but that's okay.  It was short and quick but a bit sad because it was basically about two women that fall in love with the same man and each make big sacrifices to try to be with him.  It did parallel The Little Mermaid a bit, but this was definitely a lot darker, like the actual fairytale by Andersen.  It really makes me want to go on a Disney-watching binge...

October's new dish: Beef stew

This month I made beef stew, the first time I’ve ever used our Crock Pot to make a meal!  It’s not an awesome Crock Pot (I bought it for about $1 at a yard sale the summer I graduated undergrad hah) but it did the trick.  I followed this recipe for the most part, except I just bought two frozen bags of stew vegetables from the store instead of chopping all that stuff, but it turned out nicely!  There was so much left over that Keegan had lunches for an entire week, so that was nice.  I made this recipe because it’s getting chilly and also because stew beef was on sale at the grocery store.  I lucked out with timing for things being on sale because the meat, frozen veggies, and beef broth were all on sale.   I would make this recipe again but I think I’d scale it down a bit; there were a LOT of huge chunks of veggies in it so it took longer to cook than it should have.  I could also let them thaw more before starting this because the recipe was not for frozen veggies.  I also need to figure out the best amount of “browning” for the beef before I add it to the stew because this beef didn’t pull apart as nicely as beef in other stews I’ve had.  I guess now is the part of the marriage when Keegan gets to endure my cooking experiments! :)

This week I stocked up on chicken because it’s about 60% off; as a result of that and some crazy sales on Greek yogurt, this week we saved $38 and spent $56.  I’ve really been falling behind tracking our grocery spending so I’m missing about 3 weeks of information (basically since campout) but oh well.  The receipts keep a running tally of how much we’ve saved with our MVP card so I’ll just have to look at that the next time I think about it.  Then I can at least ball park what we saved in those weeks.

October pleasure reading

This month I finished Heat Rises by “Richard Castle” and The Appeal by John Grisham.  Both books were enjoyable and I got through them really quickly.  A lot of that is because I was at Ethicon on Raleigh on Monday and Tuesday last week so I had a lot of opportunities to read because I don’t have access to the Internet while I’m there.  I finished them both over the weekend.

Anyway, Heat Rises is loosely based around the show Castle, so that automatically is a point in its favor.  This was one was a bit different because the roles were reversed from how they usually are in the show.  For example, in the show, one of them is seriously injured but in the book the other was seriously injured.  I’m sure it’ll turn out alright in the end, but it’s interesting to draw some connections between the show and the books.  I also like the sense of humor of whoever is this ghost writer that takes on the name of the author on Castle.  He had one quip about George Michael’s song “Careless Whisper” and another scene where some agent tells the author in the book that he “sorta looks like that guy who roamed outer space everybody’s so crazy about” to which the character in the book replied, “Malcolm Reynolds?”.  First of all, I LOVE Firefly, and secondly, the actor who plays the author character in the show is the same actor who played Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion).  Just a little humor for the hardcore fans I guess.

Now, I’m still entertained by the John Grisham books, but I’m noticing the theme that none of them ever ends well.  Not a single one.  You want that execution stayed?  No such luck.  You want that juror to survive?  Well too bad, she dies.  You want that appeal denied?  Today’s not your day.  I've started reading The Client and I feel like I should just go ahead and assume they never discover the body they’re looking for and the young protagonist is murdered by mobsters.  It’s not worth hoping it’ll turn out well.

September's new dish: Flaxseed meal pizza

This month I made pizza following the crust in this recipe that was recommended by one of my friends.  It was delicious!  I added garlic to the crust, also following the recommendation of my friend, and that really made it even better.  I have never had flax seed before but I've read health articles where people add it to yogurt and other food to boost its fiber content to fill them up quicker and I can DEFINITELY see how that would work.  There is so much fiber in this that I was practically bursting at the seams by the time I ate a quarter of the pizza and I ended up bringing the rest of my portion of the pizza for lunch the next day.  For toppings I used some of the spaghetti sauce we have around as well as shredded mozzarella cheese.  As a treat I bought some turkey pepperoni (which is delicious) and we used that as a topping (although Keegan used a lot more pepperonis than me!)  Maybe next time we'll branch out and add green peppers or spinach or something. 

I've actually made this recipe twice this month, including on Keegan's birthday on Monday because that's what he requested specially.

September pleasure reading, part 2

So I have read quite a few books in the past couple of weeks – I hope I don’t leave any out of my recaps here!  I read The Great Train Robbery, Jurassic Park, and Travels by Michael Crichton and I read Catching Fire and Mockingjay (the second and third books of The Hunger Games trilogy) by Suzanne Collins.  I really liked all of these books except for Travels, which turned out to be autobiographical.  I guess if I had known it was not a fictional story I might have enjoyed it more, but because I was expecting something different, this story let me down (a lot of the books in Duke's library have been recovered so I had no idea what the book looked like or any ideas about what it was about, even though the picture shown here makes it pretty obvious that it's about Crichton).  I really enjoyed Jurassic Park and I’m going to look for The Lost World when I get the chance.  I was surprised by how very different the book is from the movie!  I know that is to be expected when books are made into movies, but a lot of people died in the book that didn’t die in the movie, and several people lived in the book that died in the movie.  It seems like those are things you shouldn’t mess with when you’re making a movie, but whatever. 

The Hunger Game series was a bit depressing and ended on a bittersweet note but the stories really sucked me in, and that’s what counts for me when I’m reading.

I’m not sure what I’ll look for today when I go to explore Duke’s library, but I’ll probably end up in the New and Noteworthy section again.  I’m already reading The Count of Monte Cristo, so there’s one on my list.  I'm pretty sure I've read it before, but I'm not sure if I finished it, or maybe I read it once half-heartedly in school (we were required to read books outside of our coursework and take quizzes on them and we had to earn a certain number of points from these quizzes each semester, so I might have skimmed the book because it was worth a  lot of points on the quiz or something).  Also, one of the shows I really enjoy, Castle, has books that are written by the fictional author on the show and I'm pretty sure another one came out either this week or will come out sometime this month.

September pleasure reading

Last week I read the first book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (the book is also called The Hunger Games).  This series has come highly recommended to me from various friends, so I thought I would check it out (plus I was able to borrow it from one of my friends, score!)  I read the entire thing in one night.  Seriously.  I started around 8 and I stayed up until 1 to finish it.  This was bad seeing as how I am already missing out on sleep, and should have gone to sleep around 10 that night, but that’s okay.  I need to learn to pace myself with reading books that are part of a series (ex: reading the first 6 HP books in the span of a week, knowing there were only going to be 7 books) and despite the really depressing content of the books, it was hard to put it down.  I guess it’s like HP in that there’s a main character who everyone is rooting for and even though you know that (s)he’s not going to lose (because that would make the entire series lame), you still want to see how it turns out.  Anyway, the book was a quick read, but also enjoyable.  I’m looking forward to borrowing the second and third books in the series!

Yesterday I finished a book called Rising Sun by Michael Crichton.  This was not as good as the other books I’ve read by him, but that’s okay.  They can’t all be winners.  It was sort of interesting because the premise of the story is about the US and its business relationship with Japan.  I’m not sure how accurate his information is (but I’m assuming quite accurate because he includes references) but it makes me want to understand more about our economy and our trade laws with other countries.  I’m not sure how we expect to turn our economy around if we continue to buy things made in China over things made in the US, but I really would like to know more about those sorts of relationships.  I only had to take basic macroeconomics in undergrad, so my exposure to those sorts of things was quite limited.  Back to the story: to me (at least) the murderer was really obvious from the beginning.  Still well-written, but I’d recommend Congo and Sphere before I’d recommend Rising Sun.

August pleasure reading, part 4

Maybe I read to escape acknowledging the fact that I'm a fourth year Ph.D. student, but I also read While Mortals Sleep, a posthumously-published collection of short stories by Kurt Vonnegut, Sphere by Michael Crichton, and Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas.  I guess technically I've read Funny in Farsi before, but I was in high school and there were several chapters I don't remember ever reading.

 

All the books were really good (obviously, since I got through them so quickly!) and I would recommend them to anyone looking for something to read that's not too involved.  I read a lot when I go to the fitness room (I usually run then either bike, walk on a steep incline, or (only as a last resort) go on the elliptical) so that's how I get through so many books I think.  I also enjoy reading before bed although lately that's been getting difficult because I've been getting up early to get to lab around 715 so I like to just go to sleep :)

I'm now reading Rising Sun by Crichton and one of my friends lent me the first book in The Hunger Games series, so I'm sure I'll get started on that pretty soon.

Anyway, lunch time over, back to work.

August's second and third new dishes: Baked chicken

Well baking chicken is not new for me, but I had some ingredients I wanted to use up as well as many pounds of chicken breasts that I bought super on sale and froze, so I looked for various baked chicken recipes.  The first one was just chicken breasts in cream of herb soup that was baked and we ate it with rice.  It was very yummy and really easy :)  My mom used to make something similar so it wasn't that new for me, but that doesn't mean it wasn't good!

On Wednesday I made chicken using this recipe; I didn't use Hellman's mayo and I didn't use as much as the recipe calls for, but that's okay.  I had the parmesan cheese and Food Lion brand light mayo that I used to make a feta cheese and artichoke dip I've made a few times and I wanted a recipe to let me use up some of that stuff.  I don't really like mayo that much, but in the dip it just tastes like creamy cheese (since there's so much cheese already in the dip) so in this recipe the mayo taste was more obvious, but it wasn't overwhelming, so the end product was really good.  Plus the small amount of bread crumbs gave the chicken just the right amount of crunchiness, mmm.

I also don't have any pictures because I haven't been charging my camera very regularly, but oh well, everyone knows what chicken looks like.

I'm excited for the seasons to be changing so that there will be new foods in season (and therefore on sale) so I can try to mix up what we eat some.  I think if we're going to buy some produce we've never bought before that I'll want to go to the farmer's market because I'm not sure how to tell if something is ripe and frankly sometimes the produce selection at Food Lion is really depressing and makes me miss Harris Teeter (except the ridiculously overpriced part).

August pleasure reading, part 3

Wednesday I finished Congo by Michael Crichton and I really enjoyed it!  I've also almost finished Sphere by him as well, but I'll write about that after I read the last 60 or so pages.  I had a lot of down time the past 2 days because I was at Ethicon doing some experiments that are mainly "hurry up and wait" types of experiments so I read in between.  I had some journal articles that I read too, but I also don't have internet access while I'm there so sometimes it's hard to read articles if there's something I want to look up.

Anyway, the book was really good!  Apparently it is also a movie, but I'd never heard of the movie.  Sphere is also a movie, but I'm glad I haven't seen them because that would ruin the suspense of the book.  Now that I've read a lot of John Grisham books I guess I'm moving on to another prolific writer.  What's next, James Patterson?

Congo was about a group looking for a valuable type of diamond in the jungle of Congo but all the groups that get close to their destination just vanish and are never heard from again.  The book follows one expedition team that is a follow up team sent in when their first team is destroyed (why you would send another group in seems stupid, but I guess business is business!).  Anyway, it was fun to read but not hard to read, which is nice sometimes when you're tired of journal articles.

August pleasure reading, part 2

This month I also read the book Lucy by Laurence Gonzales; it wasn’t something I’d normally read but it jumped out at me when I was returning the last round of books I borrowed from Duke’s library.  I had been talking to one of my labmates about Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which she saw and said was entertaining but really impractical from a scientific POV.  For instance, the guy in the movie did his experiment once on one animal then immediately said “We’re ready for human trials!!!”.  We had just been talking about this when I picked up Lucy in the library to read the inside cover and it talks about one character rescuing a girl only to discover she’s a “human hybrid, half human and half monkey…”.  So since we’d just been talking about things shown in mainstream media that are ridiculous to scientists (ie: DNA tests that take half an hour to run so that the criminal can be caught just in time) I decided to give it a read.

It was pretty entertaining and the author threw a lot of scientific garble into his description of how Lucy was made, but even with my somewhat limited understanding of genetics I know that the sentences were not coherent.  But I guess using a lot of multi-syllabic scientific jargon is really all you need if you’re just writing a book for the general public to enjoy.  It’s not like this author was claiming this could really happen.  It kind of made me want to read Jurassic Park again, just to see how Crichton described that process now that I’m not 12 and know more about science.  I am currently reading a book called Congo by Crichton, but maybe then I’ll reread Jurassic Park and The Lost World.  I also checked out Funny in Farsi, which I read in high school but don’t remember much about except that I liked it.  I read Firoozeh Dumas’ other book and talked about it here, but I’d like to read her first book again.

Last week I also read Something Borrowed and Something Blue by Emily Giffin, but I’ve read them both a few times, so there’s nothing to summarize really.  It had just been awhile since I’d read them.  It feels like I’m averaging 2+ books/week this summer!  Maybe it’s because I know writing my prelim is fast approaching and I’m trying to get all my pleasure reading in while I can…

Ron Paul love

I do love the way Jon Stewart calls everyone out.  His segment on Newsweek's cover of Bachmann was also really refreshing (although she's a moron, and I much prefer him defending Ron Paul)



 

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Progress on my yearly goals

Well it has been a long time since I thought about the goals I made for myself this year.  I have accomplished quite a few things on my list, started a few of the things on my list, and abandoned a few of the things on my list.  I guess that’s why I have a lot of goals – so the odds of meeting at least one of them are increased.

With respect to labwork:

• I have been in lab at least 45 hours every week, but at least twice a month I work on the weekends, so I think I’ve been sporadically meeting my goal of working 50 hours/week.  I guess it doesn’t necessarily matter the amount of time that I’m at work but the quality of work I’m doing well I’m there
•  Submitted abstracts to 3ICSHM and BMES 2011; both accepted, one for a talk (which I already gave on our England trip!) and one for a poster, which is in October in Hartford, CT
•  Successfully defended a Master’s thesis, woo!  Now I need to actually hang the diploma somewhere
•  I wrote a research paper which I gave to Monty a week ago to get his first round of feedback (which I'm waiting for now but will hopefully arrive soon so we can get a bulk of the revisions finished before he starts teaching again); it took me longer than I wanted and I’m still waiting on data for part of a figure from my undergrad; my new revised goal is to submit by September 30

With respect to finances:

• I’ve been able to save at least 20% on our weekly groceries every week at the store with the exception of 3 weeks; however, I’ve saved more than 30% on numerous occasions, so in my mind that balances.  I’ve averaged more than 20% savings every month, so that’s good.  I don’t think we’ll be able to save a month’s rent at the grocery store, but maybe.  I’ll have to see how the stars align with stuff going on sale when I need it and that will probably determine what we save.  Right now we’re at about $500 saved with MVP and coupons (I think) so maybe we can squeeze another $300 in savings by Dec 31.
•  I've started using online coupons -- maybe this will be a way for me to find more useful coupons for things I actually buy
• I haven’t been making regular monthly contributions to my mutual funds, but I have made several large contributions that almost even out to what I would have put in otherwise.  It’s been a little slow because I opened another checking account and was moving my direct deposit so the past few months have been weird setting that up and I haven’t been able to set up an automatic withdrawal yet.  I did however buy a fair amount of shares in the mutual fund for our house last week when the market opened after the US credit downgrade so hopefully we’ll make some money on that purchase in the long run.
•  I have opened two individual mutual funds in addition to our joint one to make more use of my money than letting it sit in a money market account  

With respect to health/wellness:

• I didn’t make it to the target weight I wanted to be at before our England trip (the trip itself definitely messed with my weight loss plans haha) but I have been hovering around that target weight (130) for a few weeks now.  My ultimate goal is 125 but honestly I haven’t been trying too hard to reach it.  I need to be more serious if I want to lose the other 5-7 pounds because I still eat pretty much whatever I want, I just exercise a little more.  I do eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, but not a large variety.  For example, last week I ate an apple, a banana, cucumber, spinach, and watermelon every day.  But maybe I need to shake things up a bit and eat the foods I don’t usually eat.  But still, I’m 15 pounds down, so that’s something!
•  I’ve made about 8 new recipes this year, so I’m keeping track with that.  They’re pretty lame recipes though, so I should keep working to improve this goal.  Not that they aren’t tasty, they just aren’t really grown-up foods hah
•  I’ve given up weight training.  Once classes start again maybe I’ll try to make more use of Duke’s gym.  I do lift weights in our living room, but nothing nearly as involved was what I was doing last fall.  I also do the ab workout for P90X twice a week, so I’m trying to strengthen my core.
•  I’m doing well limiting my caffeine intake
• I go on the treadmill every day, or at least 13/14 days and going for at least 40 minutes each time (sometimes running the whole time, sometimes a combination of running and walking at a really steep incline)

Other random goals:

• I have been reading up a storm, probably 25 books this summer alone (if you count all the ones I’ve reread, like HP before the movie came out)
•  Campout is in 4 weeks (only 4????) and I’m definitely going
• Attended Jazz Fest in New Orleans (still need to get my poster framed though…)
• Put pictures from our Costa Rica and England/Wales trips in albums (still need to put the rest of our wedding pictures in an album though…)
• I won’t get to run the Turkey Trot this year because we’re having Thanksgiving with my stepdad’s parents this year, and they live out of town, so we’ll have to leave early-ish in the day.  I can still get up and run 5 miles though, so I will aim to just beat my time from last year on my own this year

All-in-all I think I'm on track to accomplishing a lot of the things I wanted to do this year, although maybe not by the deadlines I had originally set for myself; better late than never I guess :)  I'm really mainly hoping to get this paper submitted by the end of September so I can set a prelim date.  Monty won't let his students prelim until they have a first author research paper published, so I'd like to try to aim for the November - February time frame to prelim, which means I need to publish soon!  Hopefully preliming then will keep me on track to finish in 2013 (fingers crossed).  I guess there's really no HURRY to finish because at least I'm getting paid, but I'd like to finish in 5-5.5 years.  We'll see... it all depends on how successful I am at figuring out all my little problems hah

August pleasure reading

So far this month I have read two more John Grisham books, A Painted House and The Last Juror.  Both were suspenseful but The Last Juror was definitely more interesting to me and had a better ending.  In my opinion the end of A Painted House was a bit of a let-down and the ending felt a bit abrupt.  It was still well-written with colorful side stories along with the main plot so I'm not too disappointed.  I’m still not sure what genre to classify John Grisham books because they aren’t really mysteries or detective novels or anything, I guess they’re just “suspenseful” and that’s their category.  I’ll still continue to make use of Duke’s library because they have quite a few other John Grisham books that I can plough through. 

I also have a book by Kurt Vonnegut that is from the library as well as mystery-type book I saw there the other day when I was returning a textbook.  I borrowed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo from one of my labmates so I should restart that soon too.  I read the first 80 pages or so the day she gave it to me, but then I got distracted with the Grisham books.  Maybe I just need to stop reading books concurrently and that will solve my problem.

Talking about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo reminds me of this website, which a friend sent to me but I had seen on someecards.com on other occasions – it’s pretty entertaining!

August's new dish: Crunchy parmesan chicken tenders

This week I made some very tasty chicken tenders using this recipe.  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it because neither of my camera batteries were charged.

It was especially good because the final product was very lightly breaded and was way more chicken than breading (which is a common problem in the chicken tenders/strips I've often had at restaurants and such) so I was a lot fuller by the end of the meal.  The dipping sauce was also good, but I ended up eating most of mine plain because although I really like balsamic vinegar I do not really like olive oil when it's the main ingredient to stuff.  For instance, I don't usually dip my bread in oil at restaurants and while I don't mind a hint of the taste of olive oil, I don't want to eat it straight either.

I would highly recommend this recipe to others!

July pleasure reading, part 3

I was a busy reader in July!  I also read The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.  This book was pretty good and a little spooky but I enjoyed it.  The main action of the story took a while to develop and it was never reeeeeally clear what was happening.  I guess that is the way to keep the reader interested, trying to pay close attention so they don’t miss anything.  It’s kind of like the excellent older movies, like Alfred Hitchcock movies, that are scary for what you don’t see than what you do see (ex. Psycho).  Anyway, this was another book I checked out from Duke’s library, the “New and Noteworthy” section.  I think I’ll go over there this afternoon while my experiments are running and see if there’s anything else that catches my eye!

Mebane outlet mall madness!

This morning I went to the outlets in Mebane with one of the girls in my program.  I have been needing new running shoes for quite a while and I wanted to buy myself a "real" wallet.  For the past 6 months or so I've been toying with the idea of buying myself a Coach wallet.  I have wanted a nice high-quality wallet because I just seem to be buying cute wallets that fall apart and I decided it was time to invest in one that has a classic look and will last for years.  I know that the outlets have monster deals on stuff so I thought that would be a good place to start.  They also have a wider selection than the stores in the mall.

I don't have extensive outlet shopping experience (I have only been twice) but both times I've gotten great stuff on sale!  I don't buy myself clothing very often, but I think I may try to start shopping almost exclusively at outlets because I can get high quality brands for less money.  Don't get me wrong, I love me some Target, but their stuff isn't always built to last.

Today I got myself a pair of running shoes, a wallet from Coach (which I can't find a picture of online but it looks similar to this one) that was very heavily discounted because the outlet price was already 1/2 of the retail price and I had a coupon for 30% off my purchase, a dress, a pair of jeans, a sleeveless shirt, and a winter sweater from Banana Republic, and then two necklaces from Anne Taylor Loft to wear with my new dress :)  I can't find pictures of the clothes online because the outlet inventory is last year's new stuff I think, but I'm really happy with all my purchases.  Everything I bought was on sale and several things were both on clearance and on sale, score!  I also had several more coupons outside of the one for Coach that I used in Banana Republic (to get 15% off my entire order) and in Anne Taylor Loft (to get 20% off a single item).  I wore one of the new shirts out tonight to Keegan's company summer outing, so that was a nice way to celebrate with the spoils of the day.  I also wore the running shoes for my afternoon run.  I'm really happy to have some new jeans, especially since they're high-quality and I seem to have a big problem with buying shirts and no corresponding pants...

Keegan wanted to take a picture of me in my "cute outfit" as he called it.  I was also happy to be wearing capris I haven't worn since we got married (wooo!):

Anyway, the damage today wasn't too bad, especially considering that I bought running shoes and a nice wallet (things that I won't buy again for months -- in the case of the shoes -- and years in the case of the wallet).  All in all I got $552.06 worth of merchandise for $246.47.  I shouldn't need to buy any clothes this winter although I may need to go down one more jean size, so we'll see.  In any event, I'd like to head back out there to make the most of all the savings!
 

July pleasure reading, part 2

I have finished another book this month, the first John Grisham book I’ve ever read (that I remember…) and it was called The Confession.

The story was really good and very intriguing – it only took me 2 days to read the whole thing and I’ll certainly look in to checking out other books by him.  The whole premise of the story was also thought-provoking because it was about a criminal who got away with a murder that a man on death row is about to be executed for committing.  The minister who this murderer confides in tries to convince him to turn himself in to save the innocent man.  The story is about racing the clock to the execution time as well as getting authorities to believe the criminal when he says he is the murderer.

This book was heavily tilted against the death penalty, given as how it was told from the perspective of a minister and just the fact that it was about trying to get an innocent man off of death row.  As someone in favor of the death penalty I am a bit confused by the attitude that a lot of more liberal people take, saying that the death penalty is “cruel and unusual”.  I’d say it’s infinitely crueler for someone to torture, rape, murder, imprison, etc another person than it is to be heavily sedated to the point that your heart stops and you just don’t wake up.  I like to think that the possibility of the death penalty causes people who are willing to commit such crimes to perhaps think twice about their actions. 

I also find people who are against the death penalty but favor abortion, especially late-term abortion, to be pretty hypocritical.  This is especially annoying to me in people who are liberal and religious and use religion as their basis for objection to the death penalty but feel that abortion is somehow not included in the blanket “thou shalt not kill” statement (and yes, I’m aware how people define “life” and argue that it does not apply to a fetus that could not live outside the womb).  For my own personal reasons I disagree with abortion but I also don’t agree with the government trying to dictate what a woman can do with her own body (also ironic that most people who are pro-choice only disagree with that particular infringement into personal rights made by large and over-reaching governments), so I’m not saying that I think abortion should be illegal just that people who are pro-abortion and anti-death penalty need to figure out what they actually think and how they can be okay with one and not the other.  Basically what motivates my feelings is the presence of guilt in one case and not the other; executing a criminal who committed heinous crimes against another individual is not the same as abortion.

I also just finished the book Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs.  I decided to check out this author because her books are the ones that the show Bones on Fox is loosely based on.

I enjoyed this book a lot too -- the story was good even if the characters are not really at all similar to the tv show.  I'm sure I'll end up reading more of her books because as you can see, she has many!  This was not nearly as controversial as The Confession, and was pretty much the standard murder mystery.

July pleasure reading

I've been making more use of the Duke library to check out books that have nothing to do with surfactants, emulsions, and polymers which is nice to save some money and also because I just choose books at random from the "New and noteworthy" collection and would read books that I wouldn't normally read.

I've read two books so far this month, both from the Duke library, one called Finny by Justin Kramon and one called If I Loved You I Would Tell You This by Robin Black.  Both were good, but I enjoyed Finny more.  The second one was a collection of short stories, which was cool, but I generally like to read books that are more cohesive.  Anyway, I'm not much for critiquing books really, I just want a way to keep track of what I've read so that when I reach December 31 and look back at the year I'll remember having read these books and maybe a little bit about them.

Right now I also have The Hobbit, a John Grisham book called The Confession, and a third book that I can't remember the name of but appeared to be some sort of thriller-type book checked out for pleasure reading.  I also have about 20 books on polymers, but I try not to think too much about those :-P  I now know where the Surfactant Science Series can be found without having to double check and a few weeks ago someone actually recalled two of my books that I've had for about two years and I was irrationally annoyed (the nerve!!).  How can more than one person want to read about nonionic surfactants?  I just photocopied the important sections of the books before I returned them but I was still contemplating recalling the books as soon as I turned them back in, just to be spiteful.  I wouldn't really do that, I was just so shocked that someone wanted these books!  They recalled two of them!  I think I was more annoyed because this was the week I was leaving and swamped with work I was trying to wrap up before we left and finishing the presentation and data analysis and the last thing I wanted to do was photocopy a book chapter!