The Week of Good Things

The past week has been awesome. I wasn't feeling so good on Friday or over the weekend and we did our taxes and it turns out we owe money (grrr, why the hell do I have to get a 1099-MISC instead of a W-2???). But it seems like all of the good things that can happen to a grad student have happened for me all in the span of a week!

Good Thing #1:
Monty gave me the print edition of the journal that published my review paper so now I have that to add to my bookshelf :-)

Good Thing #2:
I reached 137 pounds on Wednesday (loss of 6 pounds since January 14) , which is the lightest I've been since essentially right after we got married (I weighed around 133-135 when we actually got married) even though it is still almost 20 pounds more than I weighed when I graduated from NCSU. I am hoping to weigh 135 before/at the end of this week so I will make my goal to reach my vacation weight. That shouldn't be hard because it is great running weather and I specifically told Keegan "NO CANDY" for Valentine's Day.

Good Thing #3:
Eating healthier. The past few days I've been making smoothies at home and bringing them for lunch. I haven't been eating after dinner and I've been running every day for the past 2 weeks (even Super Bowl Sunday!) I also like to bring cut up veggies to eat at school too, so I'm glad to be getting in that routine. Otherwise I haven't changed my eating habits much since meeting with the nutritionist over the summer except that now I'm eating less and burning 600+ calories on the treadmill/track every day.

Good Thing #4:
In November Monty submitted a grant on my research with my data that I helped to tweak and edit and we found out last week that it was funded! On the first try! Hello $275K over the next two years (presumably funding the rest of my research)!!

Good Thing #5:
I mentioned on here that I submitted an abstract to the 3rd International Conference on Self-healing Materials in January and today I was asked to be a speaker! WOOO, ENGLAND!

Good Thing #6:
I went to the dentist and I have perfect teeth with very little plaque or tartar. Money saver!

Good Thing #7:
It is absolutely gorgeous outside. And it's Valentine's Day so I can be confident that there will be roses at home when I get there :-*

Good Thing #8:
I have been listening to a new (to me) cd in my car the past week and I'm totally in love with it. It's called Brothers by The Black Keys and there's not a single song on it that I skip.

Now this week is crunch time but it's a lot easier to work knowing that I have a Masters thesis to write so I can walk in May and a trip to England to look forward to!

Costa Rican adventures!

I haven't actually elaborated about what we're going to be doing when we finally take our vacation, but our general desires when we planned the trip were to spend time in both the rain forest and on the beaches. So we're starting the trip with 4 days in the mountains at Arenal Volcano. During our time here we'll be staying at the Lost Iguana Resort, which looks like it has some pretty nice things to explore just on its property :-) From this hotel we should actually have a view of the volcano and be able to see the lava flowing. I'm hoping Arenal will be mildly active while we are there because it would be really neat to see some actual lava flow. The volcano has been continuously erupting since 1968 or something, so our chances of seeing the flow are pretty good *fingers crossed it won't be TOO exciting...*

During the first days of our visit we're going waterfall rappelling, doing a canopy tour, and spending time hiking through the forest around the volcano. It should be a LOT of fun and we'll get to see some unique animals, birds, and bugs I'm sure. Just reading up on Costa Rica I've learned it has a ridiculous amount of biodiversity (which is why we wanted to go there in the first place) and it has been estimated that something like 6% of all the species of life found in the entire world can be found in the country, which is about the same size as Vermont + New Hampshire! Eeee! I'm mainly excited about the birds and mammals though, ESPECIALLY sloths and monkeys (but mainly sloths). I'd also really like to see a quetzal.

After our days in Arenal we're going to go to Manual Antonio, a small national park on the Pacific coast (and I've never seen the Pacific Ocean!) where we'll spend the last 4 days of the trip. Here we're planning a tour of the park and then 3 days to relax and explore (local cuisine, crafts, snorkeling, etc). We're going to be staying at La Mansion Inn, which sounds pretty classy hah. Part of traveling to countries in Central and South America is the difference in costs once you're there. Currently the dollar is worth about 500 colónes so it will also be interesting dealing with the local currency. I collect foreign money so I'm pretty excited to see what Costa Rican money looks like and what varieties there are.

Making use of the library

I have been checking out a lot of books from the Duke library lately; I wanted to find a few to read for pleasure because that's much cheaper than just going out and buying something but all but 2 of the books I have currently checked out (16!) are actually for my research. Boy, nothing keeps me on the edge of my seat like Structure-performance relationships in surfactants, Szycher's Handbook of Polyurethanes, and Emulsion and emulsion stability. In all seriousness though, these books have been extremely helpful in figuring out what's going on with my project when I've hit a few walls. I also have a book I checked out for pleasure reading called Castle but I've had it for two weeks and I just can't get into it so I'm just going to take it back. That's a bummer because I don't really like to start things and not finish them but I also don't like wasting my time, and reading that book is a waste of my time. It's unusual for me to be relying so heavily on books again because in undergrad and most of grad school so far I've relied on Google and then scientific journals. But I remember spending a lot of time at the library in elementary and middle school so it's nice to get back to my roots :-P

January's third new dish: black beans and rice

Well this recipe was actually a bit more glamorous than the title to the post, but I can't remember what it is called in Spanish. One of my good friends and former college roommate came over this past weekend and taught me how to make this dish in preparation for our trip to Costa Rica! She studied abroad in Costa Rica and has probably spent a total of about 6 months there, so I trust her to know what the common foods are :-)

I didn't take any pictures as we were cooking because we were chatting and catching up. But essentially we sauteed some garlic with onions, then added the black beans and then dumped all of this on to some rice. It was EXCELLENT. Not my typical breakfast food, but it was so good. I was really looking forward to eating all sorts of weird fruits for breakfast but now I'm looking forward to some heartier meals as well. We also grilled some plantains and scrambled some eggs to eat with it. We had a lot of black beans left over which I mixed into another rice dish for Keegan and I to make our own versions of burritos a few days ago. Mmm, tasty.

I'm really excited about the different food options for this trip. And I'm also getting pretty psyched up for some New Orleans cuisine as well!



This picture of the leftovers in some tupperware definitely doesn't do it justice, but believe me, it was delicious.

Yearly progress

I think I have made some good progress on the goals I wanted to accomplish in 2011 considering we're only about 3 weeks into the new year.

So far I have:

• Submitted an abstract to 3ICSHM
• Made the maximum yearly contribution to my IRA
• Run at least 20 miles every week (in fact I've run more than 25 miles every week but I've been slacking at updating my little blog tool... which I'm going to delete now because I don't use it)
• Saved more than 20% on both my trips to the grocery store (28 and 34% the past two weekends!)
• Made plans to attend the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival with Caitlin (I will be going to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama! By May I will have visited 35/50 states - well on my way to my lifetime goal of visiting all the states)
• Submitted my Master's committee form (first step towards graduating with my Master's in May!)
• Made three new recipes (the third I will post about once I take the pictures off my camera)
• Lost 4 pounds (if I maintain this pace I should reach my "vacation" weight prior to our trip!)
• Worked more than 40 hours a week in lab each week (I've been working 6 days/week so far this year in preparation for my lab meeting presentation and just because there are a lot of things I am working on and the weekends are the best time to get to use all the equipment I need without being in everyone's way)
• Read 4 books for pleasure (only two of them were books I'd never read, so I only included two posts about them)

January pleasure reading, part 2

A few days ago I finished reading the fourth book in the Narnia series, Prince Caspian. This was like all the other books in the series have been -- entertaining but not really mind-blowing or anything. It was a nice story, and I guess these books are geared more towards younger readers, but it seems like C.S. Lewis could have elaborated more in his books, like J.K. Rowling. All of these books are pretty short so it feels like the entire book is a buildup to something that lasts 3 lines. What a let-down... It's also a little boring because everything is wrapped up in neat little boxes. I guess you can't kill off main characters in books designed for readers that are only like 10 years old, but it seems like nothing really happens to move the story forward. Anyway, I'm planning to read the last 3 books in the series and I'm mostly happy about that, but I also just want to read the whole series for completion's sake. :-)

My hobby:

Reading about trips I would love to take but can't afford (now, or most likely ever).

This is how I kill time waiting on experiments when I've finished the papers I want to read for the day. And in all fairness, we could probably afford some of them someday, but there are so many! And a lot of the more active ones we wouldn't be able to afford until we're too old to do them :-P