Making my 2011 goals

My goals for 2011 are about the same as my goals for 2010 except they are a bit more specific:

• Submit an abstract to 3ICSHM by January 14, 2011
• Submit an abstract to BMES 2011
• Reach vacation weight by February 10 (I know I can't reach my target weight before our trip using healthy avenues, so I have two deadlines for myself)
• Reach target weight by May 1
• Attend basketball campout
• Save $900-$1000 at the grocery store over the course of the year -- This may or may not be possible, depending on how much we spend on groceries this year. Usually we spend about $50/week on groceries, with some weeks being higher when I stock up on meats and stuff. We can reasonably expect to pay about $2800 for groceries and health and beauty stuff over the course of the year and saving $900 in a year would be pretty significant savings. We'll see what I can do...
• Save at least 20% on each trip to the store -- This is a more feasible goal based on how much we spend on groceries, but it's nice to aim high. I guess ultimately I want to save at least a month's rent ($815) on groceries but it would also be nice to save a month's rent plus utilities at the store
• Contribute the maximum to my Roth IRA -- I will be doing this Monday!
• Open an individual mutual fund
• Contribute a set amount to our joint mutual fund every month
• Contribute a set amount to my Vanguard accounts each month, dividing it as necessary between my money market (money I might need in the short term) and mutual fund
• Run at least 20 miles every week
• Weight lift twice every week using the new regimen I planned with my course instructor
• Run in the Turkey Trot race on Thanksgiving and beat my time from this year
• Plan trip to England/Wales (assuming I'm asked to present at 3ICSHM)
• Go to Jazz Fest in New Orleans with Caitlin
• Submit research paper describing my current experiments by June 15, 2011
• Get my Master's -- submitting my intent to graduate form this month!
• Try one new recipe every month
• Read a book for pleasure every month


Well this is a nice summary of most of my goals for the year; it's not all of them, but it's a good overview of what I want to do. Ambitious, but I work well when I have a checklist of all my stuff that I can go through and see definite progress.

Meeting my 2010 goals

Each year I make a list of "goals" instead of New Year's resolutions because not all of the things I want to accomplish during a year are really "resolutions", such as saving money, submitting to conferences, and making new recipes. I think "goals" are also easier to keep because I have defined end points (ex: saying I want to lose 10 pounds is a lot more descriptive than saying I want to lose weight).

Overall I'm happy with the progress I made towards those goals and I successfully completed about 80% of the stuff on my list :-) Some of those goals I was able to meet:

• Getting in shape and learning to eat healthier
• Contributing the maximum to my Roth IRA
• Contributing a set amount to our joint mutual fund and my money market account every month
• Submitting abstracts to and presenting at both the Society for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering Society conferences
• Completing my review paper by May 31 and submitting it for publication (it's now online!)
• Planning our trip to RI and ME for our one year anniversary
• Attending basketball campout
• Reading a book for pleasure every month
• Finishing coursework and TAing responsibilities

Some of the goals that didn't fare as well:

• Losing weight -- I did lose some weight, but I didn't reach my target weight. I'm not sure if that's due to the fact that I gained a fair amount of muscle or if I just didn't lose enough weight. My clothes fit better though, so maybe I'm a little smaller than I was earlier in the year...? I don't know, but since we're going to Costa Rica in a few months I have extra incentive to slim down!
• Making a new recipe every week -- For the first two months of the year I kept up with this resolution really well, but now it's the last day of the year and I've made about 30 new recipes. That's pretty good, roughly a new recipe every other week, and for 2011 I've modified that to be a new recipe every month
• Backing my computer up once a week -- I am AWFUL about this. I rarely back up my computer. But now that I have a new computer at work and actual data worth protecting, I have an external hardrive that I take with me every day to backup what I do that day. And really that's the important info on my computers anyway, work/school stuff
• Tracking our grocery spending and saving -- I did this really well for the first year we lived together, and then I began slacking off. From fall 2008 to fall 2009 we saved almost a month's rent at the grocery store! We rarely ate take-out or ate at restaurants. This year as I've become busier with work and school I've slacked off a bit and we make a lot of little trips to the grocery store that is a sure-fire way to waste money. I still shop with a list and stock up on things when they're on sale and I have coupons, but I only saved roughly $600 this year with coupons and MVP savings -- next year my goal is for between $900-$1000 in savings. I'm already off on a better foot; yesterday I bought our meat for the next few months because beef, chicken, and pork chops were on sale (I buy a lot and freeze it) as well as some healthier and new produce choices (like asparagus) and I spent $86 but saved $31. That's not the best percentage savings I've ever had, but it's still respectable. I hope next year to save at least 20% on every trip to the store!

Soon I will post about making my 2011 goals, which are really similar to my 2010 goals, only perhaps more specific and including more work-related information (since now I know much more about what I'm doing than I did this time last year). Happy New Year!

December pleasure reading, part 3

I just finished reading the third book in the Narnia series, The Horse and His Boy. This book was also enjoyable although it didn't really have that much of a plot. I guess since it's just a kid's book it doesn't really have to have much of a story behind it. It's only peripherally related to the other books, mentioning Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter only briefly. I think I'll keep reading because now I'm invested in finishing the whole series. :-)

The season of... receiving?

This year I got SO MUCH STUFF for Christmas! Keegan and I even cut what we decided to spend on each other by a third, and I still feel like I got so many presents I can't even remember what all was involved.

Now, I am thankful that I received all these wonderful things, but I'm also a bit overwhelmed. I am much happier giving thoughtful presents to people and it makes me a little uncomfortable actually when people watch me open presents (other than when it's just me and Keegan). I know they want to see that I like the gift, and I love watching people open what I've given them, but when I look under our tree I'm almost a little ashamed. Some people have nothing for Christmas and yet here I sit with more things than I could possibly dream of asking for. I had like 6 things on my list and all of them were things that I would like to have but nothing that I needed. For example, I really love the show Murder, She Wrote, so I thought, "Hey, I'll put that on my list because otherwise I only have gift cards on here" and I got SIX seasons! I'm really pumped to watch them (I love me some Angela Lansbury... "Good times, she wrote" as Phil Dunphy would say) but at the same time I feel like that money could have been spent in much more rewarding ways. Again, that doesn't mean I didn't want the gifts, because I love them and will enjoy them, but how much do I really need?

When I was growing up, and even now (although regrettably since I started grad school I've slipped a bit and began buying more things just because I want them) I would never buy things for myself. I would agonize over small purchases, like a single movie, and just look at it every time I was in a store without ever buying it. I guess now that I have steady income that is above what I need I figure if I want to buy a season of something or a movie that I "deserve" it. I think this is a really dangerous attitude for myself because I remember at Christmas from my mom and stepdad I would get about 4 presents, usually around $100 in value, and I was always very content with that (and I'm still content with that). But as a kid I was really insensitive to my siblings because I remember coming back from my "second Christmas" with my dad and my grandparents and gloatingly showing off all my Beanie Babies and toys or whatever I got that year. It was never really big, valuable stuff, but as a kid I think the number of gifts was always more impressive than the value. I look back on those times and I feel ashamed. I've tried to make up for that in the past 6-8 years or so, getting them presents I know they'll love and downplaying the things that I have that Keegan or other family members have given me and just generally being less obnoxious. I also try to think of things we can do together that are just fun and don't require spending any money at all.

But joining Keegan's family has also changed that because they give a TON of stuff at Christmas. I would say that they spend at least 5-6 times more on each person than my family does. It's wonderful they're in a position to afford that but I feel like they may be setting their kids up for disappointment when they realize that in the real world you have to work for stuff. It also makes me feel a little sad because I think maybe the kids just don't realize how much their gifts cost and that they are in fact above the "middle class" bracket and have astonishingly more than a huge percentage of the population. I've heard several remarks about the "rich" and "upper class" and I wonder if they realize they're in the group they're commenting on. Keegan seems to have adjusted well to working in the "real world" and having to save for things you want, so I hope his younger siblings are also able to make that transition smoothly. But then again, Keegan has very little that he wants for and I think that's in sharp contrast to some of his family members. I am really happy to be a part of their family now too, and I love them all dearly, but I can't really adjust my mindset to getting so much stuff, easily 3x more than my own family gives me, when I'm happy with a lot less. I guess I don't want to get "poisoned" or whatever and start needing progressively more and more to feel satisfied.

Keegan and I are also concerned with what will happen when we have a baby. We would like to set up a college fund for the baby(ies) that would be open for everyone to contribute to because, especially with the first grandbaby on both sides, and with my parents being divorced, there is going to be a crazy amount of toys and clothing given to us when in reality one toy from each source would give the kid 5 or 6 toys, and that is more than enough at a time.

For example, this Christmas I got 35-40 individual items and that's crazy to me! I'm worried that I don't mind getting so many gifts enough to tell people to stop giving things to me, but I also feel like there's no harm in getting all this stuff. But there is a little bit. I don't want to raise our kids valuing the wrong things and I'm worried that there will be several sources from which our kids will not learn by good example. Hmm, I guess maybe I won't have to cross that bridge for awhile though....

December pleasure reading, part 2

This month I also read the second of the books based on ABC's Castle. This book was called Naked Heat and was just like the first one: fun to read but not substantive (I mean, just look at the cover. It really screams "life-changing novel" :-P). I read so many technical things at work that I'm okay with easy reads at home. The book was a lot like the show, focused on the sexual tension between the two main characters, also similar to the show Bones. But I didn't figure out who the killer was before it was revealed in the book, and I enjoyed the book. And at least I haven't fallen all the way to trashy romance novels (which I think are funny and, I'm not gonna lie, I might start reading).



Right now I'm reading The Horse and His Boy, the third book in the Narnia series, and I received Ayn Rand's Anthem and We the Living for Christmas.

#26: Mint chocolate chip cookies, #27 Puppy Chow, #28 Sharp cheddar cheese straws

I always bake a TON at Christmas, but primarily for us to give away. This year I made three new recipes that were not hard at all but were still new and therefore I wanted to sneak them in to this calendar year as far as my "new recipe" goal goes:

#26: The only thing different here is that I made these with mint chips instead of chocolate chips. Woo, fancy, I know. But I made them from scratch and I also used Splenda because I gave them to my grandparents, who are all diabetic.



#27: I eat this almost every year but I've never actually made it myself. This finally gave me an excuse to use my 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup :-) This was gone in like 3 days flat, but we did give about half of it to Keegan's family.



#28: I love cheese straws. I love the extra kick the cayenne pepper gives them, but this year I took a recipe I found online and modified it to use Cabot's seriously sharp cheddar cheese, essentially the sharpest cheese I've seen at our grocery store. Oh man, they were delicious! I know for next year to double the recipe because we gave half to my family and half to Keegan's family and kept only the ones we "taste-tested" right out of the oven for ourselves.





This mixer and my double boiler (featured in the picture for the puppy chow, where I was melting the chocolate/peanut butter combo) were life-savers this year! It made everything so much faster and easier to clean up. Also for several recipes the only moisture is the butter and that is a PAIN to stir by hand.


This year's baking list:
-Oatmeal scotchies
-Chocolate and sea salt shortbread cookies
-Peppermint bark
-Puppy chow
-Peanut butter pie
-Cheesecake (made with my grandmom's top secret recipe)
-Mint chocolate chip cookies
-Cheese straws

2010 in review

I know it's not the end of the year yet, but I'm in lab, running experiments, and this stage is about an hour of just waiting around for my surfactant to dissolve, so I figured I could do my usual summing-up post about all the stuff that happened this year.

January:
-Was the coldest I've ever been in my life while going on a trip to Boone with my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law. The trip was really fun but so cold that we didn't actually get to do any of the things we were planning on doing. The zip line and snow tubing were both closed due to the wind chill so basically we just sledded.
-Started 4th semester of grad school and TAing my first class

February:
-Don't really remember anything exciting happening in February, but I did get my first credit card (wooo) so I can be building up my credit score before Keegan and I attempt to get a loan to buy a house.
-Was duteously following my plan to make a new recipe every week

March:
-Entered the lottery to win tickets to the Final Four and then actually won tickets to go to the Final Four!

April:
-Was the busiest month I've had in a really long time
-Spent essentially the entire Final Four weekend either in Lucas Oil Stadium or in its parking lot -- was SO WORTH IT to see Duke win the 2010 national championship! I'm so glad I signed up to go last year when they were such a long shot because frankly if they go again this year (2011) it'll be a mad house and EVERYONE will apply to win tickets in the lottery so my chances of winning again are dramatically decreased
-Went to Seattle to present at the Society for Biomaterials conference. This was my first big conference (I don't think regional symposiums really count) and I really enjoyed it. Seattle was an awesome city and the farmer's market was a lot of fun. I was also able to talk to some folks at the FDA and other people who are working on encapsulation about my work and received some valuable feedback

May:
-Started planning a trip for our one year wedding anniversary! :-*
-Went to the Azalea Festival in Wilmington, NC with my mother-in-law and my aunt... in-law? Keegan's aunt and uncle have moved to Wilmington, so we were visiting them and touring some of the old homes in the downtown area
-Duke BME had their retreat and it coincided with my 24th birthday
-Attended our first wedding as a married couple!
-Starting working on polymer synthesis in the chemistry department so that I could begin work on my project

June:
-Celebrated one year married to Keegan!
-Went to the Outer Banks for our actual anniversary, to attend another wedding
-Started our trip to Newport, RI/Bar Harbor, ME :-)
-Got trained on the SEM so I could start imaging my samples
-Started and stopped P90x after deciding it was really not worth my time (but signed up for a weight training PE class at Duke)

July:
-Finished our anniversary trip by attending Brochufest 2010
-Met with Duke's nutritionist to learn more about structuring my meals and balancing my diet and exercise. Mainly this was for me to start getting in the habit of eating healthy now so that when Keegan and I decide to start a family I will already know how to take care of myself and will be in better health going into pregnancy

August:
-Started my third year at Duke (how have I been here for 3 years already?!)... and that's pretty much it
-Did meet with a director of R&D at Ethicon, Inc who is excited about my project and agreed to donate materials for my research purposes. Awesome :-)

September:
-Keegan made his first trip up to the Cambridge, MA office
-Keegan celebrates his 25th birthday!
-Booked our trip to Costa Rica with Caitlin and Zach :-)

October:
-Completed(/survived) graduate student campout! Didn't win tickets though... boo.
-Presented at BMES in Austin, TX where I received even more feedback than from my presentation at SFB in April
-Went to Austin City Limits! Definitely going to make it a plan to go back there for ACL or for South by Southwest. Or both. Already on my agenda to go to Jazz Fest this year!
-Review paper (finally) accepted for publication! (Was submitted in May, and it took this long for me to hear back)

November:
-Went to see HP7 at midnight! When I had a test that day! Movie was awesome, so worth it. And I got a really good grade on the test. Maybe I should do that all the time...? Oh wait, I have no more exams to study for!
-Ran my first 8k! When I signed up I thought it was a 5k... only to find out 3 days before hand that it was actually 5 miles
-Began tracking the miles I run every day; goal is to run at least 20 every week

December:
-Got our Christmas tree!
-Finished my last classes and my last TA-ship! Bring on the experiments and labwork!
-Review paper appears online (woot!)
-Finish out my last semester of classes at Duke with a 4.0

And then just because I always track where I've been in the year:
North Carolina
Virginia
West Virginia
Maryland
Pennsylvania
Delaware
New Jersey
Connecticut
Rhode Island
Massachusetts
New York
Vermont
New Hampshire
Maine
Kentucky
Ohio
Indiana
Minnesota
Washington
Texas

That's a pretty impressive list for one year! The new states visited were Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota, Washington, Rhode Island, and Maine :-)

2011 is definitely including at least one new place -- Costa Rica! We could also be going to England and Wales because I'm applying to present at the International Conference on Self-Healing Materials in Bath, England in June/July. Since I'm also planning on Jazz Fest with Cait, that would at least give me Louisiana as a new state visited, and perhaps Alabama and Mississippi depending on where we fly and if we go to visit her dad in Alabama. I'm not sure how else I would go to those states unless we decided to drive to Texas for Keegan's cousin's graduation... which would be unpleasant hah.

December pleasure reading

I am continuing to read The Chronicles of Narnia, and last week I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. They don't really take that long to read obviously, since they're only a couple hundred pages, so now I'm on to the third book in the series.



The book was nice to read, but I think the thing I enjoyed the most was actually the dedication. I didn't know that C.S. Lewis's goddaughter was named Lucy and the book was written for her :-) I thought the dedication was cute/funny.

I don't really have anything that deep to say about the book, although I'm pretty surprised it is considered a "childhood" story since it's got a fair amount of violence in it. But then again I guess one could say the same about Harry Potter. I'm also always surprised at how simple the book is compared to movies that are made based on them. For instance, I don't remember much about the movie and I'm not even sure I saw the whole thing, since it was just on TV, but I know the battle scene took up like 1/3-1/2 of the film time while in the book it was literally one line that didn't even specifically say that Aslan had killed the White Witch. It was only stated a few lines later that the witch was actually dead. I know those are the scenes that make the most money and make the movie more theatrical, and I'm seriously looking forward to some HP battle scenes in HP7p2, but it's still interesting the way Hollywood changes things.

Good news or bad news?

I'm pretty much over having to study for this exam. There are several parties tonight that I wanted to go to (such as Keegan's office holiday party and then a guy in BME is also having a party). But today I also realized that I really didn't want to study because there are a lot of experiments I want to run in lab. Yes, yes, you heard me, I don't want to study not only because I don't want to study but because I'd rather be working in the lab. Does this make me a true grad student now? Or just a loser...? I mean, maybe both. But anyway, I never thought this day would come *sniff sniff* and I'm so proud.

November pleasure reading

My book of November was The Magician's Nephew, the first book in the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. I decided to start this series because I saw one of the movies was being aired on ABC Family or something a few weeks ago and I realized I'd never read them all. I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I was in elementary school but I literally remember nothing about it other than the fact that I read it (so that's the book I'm currently reading).



This book was really easy to read since the whole series is geared towards younger kids, but it was still something simple to occupy my limited free time. I think it's just meant to introduce the rest of the series really, and how this land of Narnia came into existence. In that regard the book is just sort of filler that's not really necessary to know when reading the other books (I mean, obviously it's not important if they didn't even bother making it into a movie :-P) I guess I just read it for completeness. But still, it was a nice little story even though I'll never read it again.

I want to check out Duke's library for more adult and current books, so I'll probably do that once the undergrads have left and my exam is over. I think the reason I gravitate towards autobiographies and books for teens is that I don't have to concentrate when I read them and that's something I like. I don't always feel like reading things that I have to concentrate on really intensely to understand when I've spent all day reading papers, doing experiments, working on my TA duties, and going to class. But in the spring, when I don't have classes for the first time in 19 years, maybe I'll feel more like reading grown-up books :-P

I'm very sad because the name Keegan and I have picked out for our first daughter (yes, I know it's a ways off) has just entered the top 100 names this year. Damn! We want a name that's unique but not weird, and now it looks like our name is on the upswing. Back to the drawing board I guess...

Drop sets

Gearing up for next semester and keeping up my weight training (at least to some degree), I tried out a new workout today that I planned last week. To continue getting stronger and more toned I decided to incorporate drop sets into my lifting to challenge my muscles more but without causing me to bulk up. For example, for the past 3-4 weeks I've been doing 3 sets of bicep curls, each with 15 reps, with 12-pound dumbbells in each hand. Today I still did 3 sets of bicep curls, but I did 15 reps with 10 pounds in each hand, 13 reps with 12 pounds in each hand, and 11 reps with 15 in each hand. I applied this general concept to my hamstring, triceps, shoulder, and quad exercises.

It's a little awkward because they just don't make dumbbells with certain weights, so I may need to switch to using a bar for some of my exercises. I would have preferred to do 12/10/8 reps with 12/15/18 pound weights or something, because there's no way I can do 20 pounds with bicep curls, but oh well, I guess the stars won't align for that. The idea is that you challenge your muscles the most when they are already tired, and I can definitely feel it already, especially in my poor little triceps.

I kept all of my actual exercises the same, and I just varied the weights and reps, but I have already picked my new exercises that I will probably start to incorporate in Thursday's class. I'm going to start do lat pull-downs instead of the lat rows, and there's a slightly intimidating V-machine that I'm going to use for my quads/hamstrings as opposed to the lunges, split squats, and straight leg deadlifts I'm doing now. I'm also going to try to do some rear deltoid raises and maybe throw some push ups in there too. We'll see how I feel I guess :-)

October pleasure reading

Well I started reading several books in October and I finished one of them and I'm currently reading the other two. Of course, in preparation for the release of HP7, I had to re-read the book, just to make sure I wasn't going to miss anything when I went to the movie :-P Psh, like that would happen. Anyway, I read the British version and it only took me about 3 days. I get a lot of reading done before bed and when I go to the fitness room. It's really easy to run a few miles, then walk uphill for another mile or so at a slow speed, and I get another 20-30 minutes of reading in.




The books I'm still reading are Millionaire Women Next Door (lent to me by my mother) and Smart Women Finish Rich, which I bought for myself a long time ago and have been slowly reading as I find topics I want to read about.

September pleasure reading

So this is a bit delayed, but whatever. I started watching a show called Castle on ABC that's about a detective who works with a mystery writer and I find it pretty amusing. The mystery writer is partnered with the cop so he can get inspiration for his new novels. As a joke, Keegan bought me a book (Heat Wave) that was "written" by Richard Castle, the author on the show. Obviously it wasn't one of those life-changing books but it was still pretty entertaining and I didn't figure out who the murderer was until the end. I guess I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone unless they really like the show, and even then I could only see the actors when I read the story, and I like the roles the actors play. I'm not sure how I would have liked it if I didn't already watch the show when I read it.

#25: Sourdough bread

So I've been really awful about keeping my resolution to make a new recipe every week, but I should finish out the year having averaged a new recipe every other week. That's pretty good, right? At least I made some new things! I'm hoping to make some things using our Crock Pot soon, since I've never used it, and that should open the door to a lot of new recipes. I'd really like to make some stews now that it's (sort of) cooling off.

Anyway, the bread was very tasty! I made it one night about a month ago when we had alfredo for dinner, and then I ate it the next night with some soup. The soup night was one of the weeks Keegan was in Massachusetts, so I got to eat the rest of it on my own :-D Mmmm. One of my friends gave me her old breadmaker and that was my first experience using a breadmaker. It was pretty awesome I have to say, just to mix everything in there and walk away for 3.5 hours.

Born to run! (... sort of)

Last week I said I would run in a Turkey Trot race on Thanksgiving morning with Keegan and a few of his siblings. I signed up thinking it was a 5K only to find out on Sunday that it was actually 5 miles. Whoops...

For the past month I've really been keeping with my running, consistently going at least 5 times a week. I got off track when I went to Austin but since then I've progressively working my way back up. It took about a week for me to be able to run 1.5 miles each day, then I moved my way up to 2, and now I run 3 each day. On Sunday I ran 4 miles but that was the farthest I'd ever run at one time. On Monday and Tuesday I ran 3 miles each, then I ran 2.5 miles on Wednesday. I was a bit nervous on Thursday and I was pretty confident that I'd have to walk the last mile. There were several large-ish hills on the route we ran, and it was outside (obviously) which is something new for me because I always run on treadmills and occasionally the indoor track in Duke's gym. But I did it! My pace on the hills was quite slow, but I wanted to pace myself so I could keep running the whole way. My time was 52 minutes and 9 seconds, which was much better than I was hoping for. I usually "run" (read: jog) at speeds between 5 and 6mph, so 5 miles would have taken an hour at a 5mph pace, so I averaged my faster speed for this race. I think it will help me a lot with running now because when I'm getting tired at the 3 mile mark I can always think "Hey, you already ran 5 miles, you can stick out the rest of this!" I know 5 miles is not really that far (especially considering 5 or 6 of the kids in BME ran a half marathon a few weekends ago) but I still feel proud. :-)

Once I started the weight-lifting class I gained 6 pounds, but since that time I've lost about 9 pounds. So I'm 3 pounds lighter than I was when I started the class, but I know that I'm a lot stronger and more muscular. My clothing is also starting to fit better, so that's a plus. I'm hoping to reach my target weight before our trip to Costa Rica, which is in about 3 months. I think that is plenty of time for me to slim down a little bit, and my gym teacher is really helpful and is already helping me plan my workout schedule for next semester. I don't want to lose all of my progress!

Siamese couples

I saw this article in one of my random news searches and I thought it was interesting because I did notice a lot of these things during my first year of marriage.

I think the most interesting one is the 7th point --
"7. THE SHOCK: You won't want to spend every moment with your new husband.
Your spouse may be your best friend, but he won't suddenly become your only friend.
WHAT'S A COUPLE TO DO?
"My husband and I have no problems maintaining individual friendships," says Meghan E., 29, of Richmond, Virginia. "The poor guy shouldn't have to be dragged to every new chick flick simply because he's married to me." She's right. Go out with the girls, and give him nights with his guys. You'll come home and swap stories—and your marriage will be the better for it."

Couples that have to spend every moment together are (in my opinion) absolutely pathetic. There's something fundamentally wrong with your relationship if you have to go on all your errands together, eat lunch together every day, and have all your extra activities together (play on the same sports teams, hang out with all mutual friends, etc). I also think there is something wrong with you if you want to do all those things together. I think the real question in those cases is why can't you spend any time apart? And don't try the "we just love each other so much!" bit because are you honestly going to be a better couple because you watch your husband buy a book or he watches you buy groceries? I think that's a sign of insecurity with the relationship and slight obsession to try to force it so that you're together all the time. What, do you have no friends? Everyone needs private down time, no matter how much you love your spouse. (Or maybe you don't want down time and your spouse secretly does and won't tell you... more food for thought for those couples).

Keegan and I have been married for almost a year and a half now (!!!) and it does bother me a little bit when I go out with friends or something and I'm asked "What, no Keegan tonight?" Since when does being married mean that we can't have our own friends? That's not to say that we don't also have many more nights and weekends where we hang out together on our own, I just don't understand the mentality that married couples can't still be two people. Most annoying are the other judge-y couples who think they are superior because they do spend every waking moment together. Nope, definitely not superior, just sad.

Fall cleaning

Traditionally I hear of people doing spring cleaning, but this past weekend I did some MAJOR fall cleaning. Our house had been becoming progressively more sloppy and I would just do the bare minimum to straighten everything up because, as the previous post indicates, I've been very busy lately. But this weekend was the first that I didn't have something really big going on and because Keegan has been working weekends (booo) I had a lot of time to do some deep cleaning. Just walking into our house I feel SO MUCH BETTER because I'm usually exhausted when I get home from work/lab/TAing and then walking into a house that was just completely disorganized and a bit grimy was really not all that relaxing. Plus I can see a big difference in how it looked before and just seeing the difference makes me feel accomplished.

I started out just by going through like 3 months of mail that had been piling up. I mean, we take care of the bills and everything right away (but now most of them are posted online anyway) but there was the random junk mail, credit card ads, and Crate and Barrel magazines (which are much more entertaining since I began looking at Catalog Living over the summer!). Once all of this was off of the floor/coffee table/end tables/kitchen table, I moved on to picking everything up off the floor so that I could then dust and vacuum everything.

The next big project was tackling the kitchen floor. This involved going out to buy a bucket to actually fill with water + floor cleaner to scrub the floor, on my hands and knees, being overcome with the smell of "cleanliness". This is the area where I can see the biggest difference because even though I sweep the floor regularly it really just needed to be scrubbed to be really clean. I also cleaned all the counters and the stove-top.

The bathroom floors and showers also needed to be scrubbed, so I did the same thing upstairs as I did in the kitchen, and then also cleaned the mirrors, sinks, faucets, and toilets. Woooo. I got a lot of other small things done this weekend too that had been nagging me. Like doing a load of towels (we were waiting until we had a bunch to wash instead of only a few) and cleaning my car. Buying Halloween candy, a pumpkin, and some chrysanthemums.

Lesson for next time: keep on top of your cleaning.

Campout, BMES, and Austin City Limits 2010

It has been a long time since I have updated! The last three weeks have passed in a haze of tiredness, but things are calming down a little bit now. The first weekend in October was basketball campout. Unfortunately I didn't win tickets (but that increases my chances for next year!) but I still had a lot of fun. I tented with the BME crowd, which was loud and insane and everything I expected it would be. I went into the weekend knowing that I wouldn't sleep and I would most likely be in a very bad mood by Sunday, but it really wasn't that bad. I guess now I know I should just approach these things with very low expectations so that I'm always pleasantly surprised. The first night I slept about 4 hours, and it was actually these non-BME jerks in the tent next to me that kept me up with their insane techno music. I mean, c'mon. TECHNO music? I can ignore things that have regular patterns, but there's just no hope for blocking that out. But again, I expected it and wasn't really disappointed. The second night I only slept for about 1.5 hours and I had a running countdown going in my head of how many hours I had left to endure.

I left for BMES on Wednesday after campout, and at that point I was still tired then I spent 5 days in Austin having a ridiculous time. The crowds there were amazing -- Franklin Street has absolutely nothing on 6th Street. The first night in Austin I relaxed, but the rest of the nights we went out and explored (the bars, live music, and UT's campus). The conference was really good too; I had about 10 people talk to me seriously about my work, and two of them even asked for my contact information so that I could explain more of what I do with the encapsulation procedures. It's weird! Now all of a sudden I'm someone who people go to with questions?

Keegan and I went to Austin City Limits on Sunday, and there are really not words to describe what it was like. A HUGE park with 6 or 7 large stages with simultaneous concerts and 70000 attendees. The weather was pretty much perfect, and we were able to enjoy music by several new groups I hadn't heard of, as well as some of the bands we already knew we loved. Bands we saw included Blind Pilot, Portugal. The Man, The Relatives, The Constellations, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Foals, Robert Earl Keen, Midlake, Rebelution, The Flaming Lips, The National, and of course, The Eagles.

We got back to Raleigh on Monday night, then on Tuesday I had class and I needed to run a bunch of errands (oil change, renew passport, etc) and I had a test in my polymers class on Friday to start preparing for. I missed two classes right before the test, so there was a lot of me to catch up on. I think the test went well, but I'm still very run-down from all of the events from the past weeks. I've slept a bunch this weekend and I even took a nap today but I'm still a bit under-the-weather.

There are many other things going on with me now, but I guess I'll have to update on them later because I'm ready to fall asleep at my laptop.

Same ole, same ole

I haven't posted in awhile, but a lot has been going on! Classes, TAing, and labwork are keeping me really busy, but it's a good kind of busy. Unfortunately the labwork has also been going slowly because I've been waiting for some material from our new collaborator in industry. Luckily last week he contacted me with some paperwork to fill out (agreeing I'm not going to distribute their stuff, etc) so I'm hoping to have the material next week or after I get back from BMES (which has seriously sneaked up on me). I need to finish my poster today so that I can get Monty to look at it quickly so I can send it to be printed tomorrow. That way I can be sure to get it in time to leave on Wednesday! I'm pretty thrilled to be going on this trip, but so much as been occupying my time that I haven't had time to really think about it!

The gym class is also going really well -- I'm MUCH stronger than I was 4 weeks ago when the class started. The first time I lifted I was only doing 3 or 5 pound weights for my arm exercises (the ones with free weights anyway) but the past week I've been lifting 10 pounds always, but 12 pounds for one or two of my sets. It's pretty exciting to actually feel stronger and Keegan says he can already tell a difference in the way I look. I can see a difference in my legs and upper back, and although my arms feel stronger they don't have that defined look (yet). I might do more sets to increase my muscle mass there, but I haven't decided for sure. We've spent the past two weeks learning more core and ab exercises, so I'll definitely be doing those at least 4 times a week. I also get to class and run 3 miles before going to do the 45-55 minutes of weight training, so it's no easy feat. I also run 2(+) miles on my off days because I enjoy it. I'm running faster (which is really not saying much, because I just jog really) but hopefully I can work my way to consistent 8 minute miles instead of 10-11 minute miles. I'm not in it for glory (like racing) but I guess more for endurance, running for 40 minutes straight or something means more to me than running 1.5 miles at a 7mph pace. I also walk (and sometimes run the last mile) on an incline.

Last week Keegan was working in Cambridge, MA for the branch of his office up there. Although nothing is official, he is most likely going to be transferred to that office in the coming months, at least for a temporary assignment. They loved him there but his boss here is reluctant to let him go (they should get into a bidding war over him! pay him more money to stay here!) He really likes the projects they work on in that office and because there are few engineers there, his work would stand out more and he could start making (even more) of a name for himself at the company, moving up quickly and having more independence (although he does almost all of his work with minimal upper-level input anyway). So I guess I'll keep everyone updated on that too. I don't want him to be away from me, but if this will help him advance his career and make him happier at work then I definitely want him to pursue it. He also said that the Philadelphia office was looking to recruit him too -- my man is in high demand and I'm so proud of him :-D

Candy corn

I love candy corn. I just finished my first bag of the Halloween season, and Halloween is still more than a month away. I know a lot of people don't eat candy corn, and to tell the truth I'm not really sure why I like it. It doesn't have a distinct taste or anything (other than painfully sweet), but I guess I was trained to like it from a young age (my poppop used to always give me candy corn when I was little) and I just never outgrew it. I mean, it is "made with REAL honey!!", a ringing health endorsement if I ever saw one.

It's okay though, I'm still running my 3 miles/day so I'll work it off. Or build more muscles to help me burn the extra calories.

#24: Tuscan chicken

A few weeks ago I made some angel hair pasta with chicken that had been breaded in some "tuscan" seasonings, whatever that may have entailed (that's just the seasoning that I bought). I also put some sun-dried tomatoes in there, and then a bit of olive oil. It was super-tasty and I'm looking forward to making some more grilled chicken + random seasonings. I bought a bunch of chicken at the store a couple weeks ago when it was really on sale and I just froze it. I always do this, but right now we've got like 15 chicken breasts in our freezer, so I have plenty of meals I can plan.

I've been slacking on the goal to make a new recipe every week, but I'm still keeping up with the spirit of the "resolution" which was to add more variety to my(/our) diets. That's really what I was going for when I made that "goal" anyway.





Next I want to learn how to make some sort of stuffed chicken meal because those are always quite tasty and will be even MORE tasty when I can choose exactly what to put in them. Mmm, I'm already excited.

Things that make me sad

... seeing baby undergrads wearing Duke 2012 shirts and realizing they will be gone before me. Le sigh.

That's mainly it for now. I just saw several kids wearing that shirt when I was in the gym today and it was a bit of a downer.



The gym class is going really well though! I've only had it two times obviously, but I think the instructor is going to be very helpful and I'm glad to have at least 2 days a week when I'm guaranteed to be in the gym. I've been to the gym (/on a run) every day for the past 2 weeks, so I'm keeping up with the exercise for now. I'm sure once my TA duties ramp up and my courses get more involved it'll be more of a challenge for me to get there every day, but I'll do my best.

The instructor said she was going to teach us how to make our own lifting schedules and then we'll be able to tailor them a bit more to what we each want to accomplish. She said most women are there to tone and firm their bodies, which is mostly what I'd like to do too. She told us that we'd probably gain 2-5 pounds in the class because we'll be building muscle, but that overall we'll be smaller (typically). She also said that women who had never done any sort of weight training class would see the quickest improvements in terms of strength initially with how much they're able to lift and the number of reps they're capable of. That's nice, I'd like to see some sort of results to encourage me to keep going. So far I've been going for a run before class so I've been getting my cardio in that way.

I'm not sure that I'll be able to physically see a difference other than just knowing that I'll be capable of lifting more. I guess I could measure my arms, chest, waist, hips, etc now and again in December? I'm not sure Keegan would be the best critic either, since he'll just say I look good all the time (perks of having a husband required to say nice things!). I don't want to have crazy Madonna man-arms or anything, but it'd be nice to have a little definition. Another "side effect" of the class is smaller boobs (damn! sad) but I guess that's something I'd be able to notice.

I'm really enjoying the UNC class too, it doesn't seem very difficult so far, but I'm (re)learning a lot for now. We'll see how much more challenging it gets as the semester progresses. It's a bit annoying to drive to UNC three times a week though.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL BEGINS TONIGHT!! That is all.

#23: Baked ziti

So I got this recipe off my friend's blog (the same one who I got the chicken pot pie recipe from) and I also made two this time. One of them is still in the freezer, but I'll probably heat that one up sometime soon. It was good, but not like what I'd get in a restaurant. It was more just a casserole than anything else. And there were too many onions in it. I'll know better for next time. I also feel like it needs some ricotta cheese to make it tastier. Man, I'm a big fan of stuffed pastas and ricotta cheese. (Incidentally, there was ricotta cheese on the pizza our lab ordered at Lilly's pizza last night. Auh-mazing.)







Also, I don't know how to rotate these pictures. I don't know what's been going on with Blogger, but their uploading features and general posting features are really lacking now. I can't even use bulleted lists anymore. Jerks.

#22: Chicken quesadillas

The only new about this recipe were the ingredients I used. I shredded all the cheese on my own and I decided to put some green peppers in there. I also seasoned come grilled chicken myself, just picking out some random Mexican/chipotle flavors and mixing them all together in a bag before adding them to the quesadillas. They turned out really well though!

#21: Grilled chicken ravioli

I didn't take too many pictures of this meal, but it was very tasty. I'd never had ravioli with olive oil sauce but it was really tasty :-) Sorry I don't have too much to say about these recipes, but I made them a while ago and I don't remember them all that well...

Distressing news!!

So I've been looking at the syllabus for the synthesis of polymers class at UNC to try to figure out what all I'll be learning. Based on their schedule from last year, there will be 3 exams and a final, and the last of the regular semester exams will be on the Friday before Thanksgiving break. Now, for those of you who know me and my love for Harry Potter, the first part of the Deathly Hallows is going to be released that Friday also (oh the horrors!!). I've been committed to seeing the midnight show for this movie since the dawn of time, so I'll BE THERE. I guess I'm just going to be really tired at my exam. Not very responsible, huh? Maybe Warner Brothers will decide to release the movie on that Wednesday instead, to boost their "weekend" sales. Fingers crossed! I'll be at HP no matter when the exam is, but I'd prefer to have some recovery time in there...

Also, the new students have made appearances in the lab and I even though I've known we were going to have two new students for like 3 months, I was still not prepared for the realization that there are now 4 students in the lab that are more junior than me. How did that happen?! Maybe I'll just find solace in the fact that 3 of them are born the same year as me and one of them is 2 years older than me. That, and there are still 2 grad students (and a post doc) that are more senior than me. I think I might cry when Matt leaves though, and I'm the lone senior grad student. Of course I also like Matt, so I won't only miss him because then I'll be the oldest.

Nothing else new to report really, life is good, lab is busy, and I lost 3 pounds in those 2 weeks when I was looking at what just modifying my eating habits would do to my weight. Looks like it helps a bit but I think it will take some time to see how it really affects me :-)

Couponing

This will be a boring post.

I've always been a frugal person. When grocery shopping I usually rely on MVP/VIC savings to save money on our food/household stuff, but lately I've been trying more to pair these sales with coupons. I've always clipped coupons but I don't always use them effectively (ex: they expire before I think to use them, I forget to take them to the store, etc).

Today I went to both Food Lion and Harris Teeter, to make the most of the sales and coupon combos I had. Since they're only about 3 miles apart, it's not really that inconvenient for me to go to both stores. Here are some of my more impressive deals this week:

- 6 jars of Ragu pasta sauce: regular price 3/$5.98, on sale 3/$4 with two coupons for $1.25 off on 3 (final cost $0.91/jar compared to $2/jar usually)
- 2.5 pounds of green seedless grapes: regular price $1.88/lb, on sale for $0.99/lb
- 5.7 pounds of boneless chicken breast: regular price $3.99/lb, on sale for $1.97/lb

I bought several other things at Food Lion, but those were the highlights. I spent $50.47 and saved $31.22 for a savings of 38.2%.

Now this week Harris Teeter is having a crazy sale on Kellog's brand items. They're all 50%+ off and if you buy 10 Kellog's items you receive a $10 coupon off your next order. On Thursday we bought a bunch of cereal so we were able to get one of these coupons. A few of my exciting deals:

- 2 boxes of Special K cereal: regular price $3.49/box, on sale for $1.75/box with a coupon for $1 off on two boxes (final cost $1.25/box)
- 6 boxes of Fiber Plus cereal: regular price $3.99/box, on sale for $2/box with two coupons for $1 off on three boxes (final cost $1.66/box)
- 4 Dannon Greek yogurts: regular price $1.39/container, with 2 coupons for $0.75 off on two yogurts, but HT multiplies all coupons with a value of less than $1 (final cost $1.01/container)
- 2 boxes of NutriGrain bars: regular price $3.55/box, on sale for $1.77/box with two coupons for $0.75 off on one box, then multiplied by HT (final cost $0.27/box!!)
- $10 coupon from previous visit to HT

I spent $15.10 and saved $40.19 for a savings of 72.7%

My total grocery tally this weekend: I spent $65.57 and saved $71.41 for 52.1% savings. My goal for the year was to save a month's rent by smart shopping. After this week I'm almost there!

August pleasure reading, part 2

Since the Duke library was taking its sweet time bringing me Ender's Game, I was able to borrow it from one of my friends (thanks Emily!). I finished it in 4 days -- I really liked it!



It's hard to explain exactly why I enjoyed it so much, but just the whole concept was really interesting to me. I was also surprised to find that some of the story took place in good ole NC. It seems like this story was a bit ahead of its time, writing about alien invasions and everything and I wonder what time this story was supposed to take place.

Reading about how the kids were trained from such a young age makes me think about how kids learn now. With more and more students trying to get in to the best schools, the pressure seems to be placed on them at younger and younger ages. I don't remember any of the stress in elementary school that I see kids dealing with today; I didn't even really care about applying to the super schools or anything. I knew what I wanted to study, and what my family could afford to pay for my schooling, and that's what I worked with. But now kids are thinking about colleges when they're 10 and 12 years old, majors, and jobs, and how to get ahead in the world. Parents send their kids to high schools far from where they live to get them access to all the available AP classes, and kids will take 8 AP classes each year. Does that really help kids at all? I don't think so, because students do not have interest in all those AP areas, they just take the classes to boost their GPAs. Why take AP Psychology if you have no interest in it? Why take AP Calculus if you want to study something in college that has no math requirements? I mean, it pushes kids to do well (or it pushes them to go beyond what they're actually capable of), but how much is it really helping them to fill up the advanced classes with students who have no genuine interest? And really, I know a lot of kids who took the all-AP route or went to schools like NCSSM (by choice, not because they were from rural counties) who are frankly not that smart. I am bothered by parents (and students) with elitist attitudes about where they (or their kids) went to school and treat other students like they're idiots for going to public schools. I went to public high school and a state college and I think I turned out alright.

I believe there are other books in the Ender's Game series, but I'm not sure if they're as good as the original or if they're just sort of afterthoughts. Maybe I'll look in to reading those also...

August pleasure reading

This month I read Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I really enjoyed this book and I'm glad I chose to read it first out of the giant book of Jane Austen novels I checked out of the library. I think next I will read Persuasion.



I think Sense and Sensibility had the same level of "scandalousness" as Pride and Prejudice (especially considering they were written by a woman in the early 1800s) but it also had the same (relatively) happy ending. It irritates me to read a story that ends badly (ex: Lord of the Flies) because I feel like I wasted my time. I know not all stories have happy endings, and it would be really boring to read only happy stories, but if I'm going to pick my way through all that period writing, there damn well better be a happy ending. Plus there's a difference between good endings and happy ones. But it was a good book and I read through it in a week, which is pretty quick considering it was at school the whole time. I mainly read it while doing all the various training that required waiting for vacuums to pump down for 45-90 minutes at a time. I also read some on the weekend when I was here for those 6 hours stretches letting stuff stir/dissolve. I finished it today in the chem lab while I was watching my polymer distill (that sounds as thrilling as it was).

I'm also currently reading Ender's Game; I read about 100 pages the first night I had it at home, but I haven't been able to read much of it since then. It's pretty likely I will finish that this weekend though :-) I'm also currently reading the British edition of HP and the Order of the Phoenix (but I don't even bother to count HP books in my monthly readings).

Baby mania

It seems like all of the newly-married (and not-so newly-married) couples I know are having babies. While I am so happy and excited for them all, and I am really looking forward to having a family as well, I also wonder why they rush in to having kids. One of my friends from high school was engaged in February 2009, married in October 2009, and his wife had a baby about a week ago. I just don't understand the hurry to go from a two person family to a three, four, five, etc person family. Don't you want to spend any time getting to know your new spouse? How can you create a good family environment if you really had no time to be a family before the kids come along? You wouldn't even know each other as two people, because if you get pregnant right away you're not really ever only two people, you'll always be thinking about the baby + wife instead of just your wife. You're parents from day one. Also, how do you even afford kids when you've only been married for 9 or 10 months?

Keegan and I would still like to be young parents, but maybe after 2.5-3 years of marriage rather than right now. And even being married for that amount of time may still seem like we jumped in to having kids; we'd like to have our first child while I'm in grad school, since we'd like to have a big family but I don't want to be 35, 40 and still having kids. And the hours are a lot more flexible. Maybe I'll be like one of my other friends and have many kids in a short time span (3 in 3 years)... only try space them ~2 years apart or something. Who knows.

So anyway, kids are wonderful, but what's the hurry?

Daily nutritional values, round 2

Today I went back to see Duke's nutritionist for the second time; she was just as helpful as last time and patiently answered a lot of my questions about portion sizes, what constitutes a "good" meal, etc. We also went over my food log to talk about the meals that I've been eating since visiting her the first time. I think just writing down everything I ate, knowing that someone other than me was going to read it, was a motivating factor in eating better. Accountability or whatever.

Essentially what I've changed about my diet is eating a good breakfast and planning more efficiently for lunch. I always had the idea that lunch was some sort of sandwich or something, fruit, and something crunchy. But actually it doesn't matter what the individual items are as long as they have the necessary nutritional value. For example, eating a CLIF bar, then some cheese, and an apple is a perfectly balanced lunch, even if it's not really the norm for lunches. And not that I'd want to eat that all the time, but it's nice to know.

Even though I don't have another appointment with the nutritionist scheduled, I'm going to continue with writing down what I eat to see how that helps keep me in check. Things I noticed in the past two weeks:

-I eat breakfast, have a morning snack, then lunch around 1, but then nothing until dinner at 7. Keeping track helped me realize that some sort of afternoon snack would prevent me from being starving when I get home, unable to wait for Keegan to get home from work to eat dinner
-I stay longer at work and get more accomplished; when 4:30 rolls around I'm not getting ready to leave because I'm hungry and tired and just want to lay around. I leave closer to 6 most days now and I'm not dying when I get home
-Easier to stay focused in general
-No crazy binge-snacking (ie eating half a box of cereal or Cheez-its)
-I make more conscious eating decisions; for example, the weekend after my first meeting with Nancy I bought some flavored Triscuits and I still have the same box. They're really tasty but have more fiber and I eat them with cheese or craisins or something so I'm not just eating a lot of nothing.
-I sleep better
-I pay less attention to total calorie consumption and more on what individual things I'm eating at each meal/snack
-I'm not hungry for random junk after dinner

Anyway, I think today I'll weigh myself and then see how/if my weight changes between now and two weeks from now to see how my weight is influenced by these new eating habits.

I have a stomach bug. It sucks.

July pleasure reading, part 2

A few days ago I requested Ender's Game through Duke's library, and although I haven't heard anything from them about when that will be there, I did check out The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I saw that Orson Scott Card had complimented this book so I checked it out.



This book was very different from the Twilight series, and I'm happy about that. This book is her novel "for adults" and essentially it's about this alien population that takes over the planet by being implanted into human bodies. I know that sounds pretty stupid, but I also didn't even know what this book was about when I started reading it. After these "souls" are implanted, they retain all the human's memories and everything, but the reason they came to Earth is because they felt that humans were barbaric and basically couldn't be trusted to run their own lives. This story was told from the perspective of the soul and the human it took over, because the human refused to be taken over completely. This soul/human searches out other native humans to live with to help protect the "native" human way. In the story the soul comes to realize that they shouldn't have wiped out the human race because not all humans are vicious, cruel, war-mongering types.

Anyway, the story line was creative and it kept me interested but it's not like the story really made me think or reflect or whatever it is good books should cause their readers to do.

I also checked out the works of Jane Austen on Thursday when I checked out The Host. I've only ever read Pride and Prejudice (which I should read again because it's been 6 years) and I loved it. So I want to check out some more of Austen's work. I know the book contained Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park, but it may also have contained Northanger Abbey. My next books are going to be Jane Austen books, and I guess Ender's Game whenever I hear from the library :-)

Arizona immigration law

Reading on the news sites today I came across this article. I particularly like this quote:

"Everyone is selling up the little they have and leaving," said Villasenor, 31, who is headed for Pennsylvania. "We have no alternative. They have us cornered."

You are ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, what do you expect? To not be affected by this law? Maybe try entering this country through the proper channels if you want to avoid this situation.

Also, when reading this article I was interested by this statement:

"Opponents say the law will lead to racial profiling and trample on the rights of the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants in Arizona."

What exactly are the rights of people in countries illegally? I would think that you understand when you decide to sneak into a country ILLEGALLY that there is a significant risk that you will be subjected to whatever punishment is associated with that crime if you are caught.

I do not understand the drama associated with this law. A law like this was bound to be passed at some point or another, especially given our completely ineffectual president. A state's gotta do what a state's gotta do.

Things I always want to say (but shouldn't)

Today I was just getting to the top of that hill near the student health center and one of the entrance to the gardens when this woman puffing on her cigarette cuts in front of me while talking on her cell and, I swear, if she were walking any slower she would have been going backward. I realize that it's her right to smoke and everything, but a little bit of consideration, please.

So anyway, I'm semi-out of breath from walking at a quick pace through the gardens and up that hill and even more irritated by my fresh air being tainted by this person. And she was not a slight woman, so I had to wait for the right opening to be able to get around her bulk at all. There were so many things I wanted to say to her, but I held my tongue and just thought about all the things that I really want to say to people sometimes.


To large people smoking: You're still fat, and now you have lung cancer.

To perfectly fit people who use the handicap parking permits of their relatives/friends/whoever: A mental handicap (i.e being a dumbass) does not qualify you for special parking.

To people who hit those little handicap door opener buttons when their hands are completely free: How lazy can you possibly be? Is the energy you spend pulling open that door really going to strain you?

To Croc-wearers: Oh my god, did you even look at them before you bought them?

To non-farmer/construction drivers of gigantic F350 trucks: Compensating much?

To large people who supersize their meals in fast food restaurants (or even eat at fast food restaurants at all): Are you sure you want to be doing that?

To young people who bitch about the "unfairness" of there being rich people: Get a damn job. See how you feel about the government taxing the "rich" (i.e. anyone making more than the poverty line, including graduate students) when you're the one losing significant portions of the paycheck you worked hard to earn. Of course, generally those who bitch about the "injustice" are not the ones that actually work for anything...


Well now I look like I need some sort of anger management program. But I feel better :-)

July pleasure reading

I've just now started using Duke's library to check out books for pleasure reading. I have (no joke) 15 books checked out right now, but they're all for research purposes. Last week I put a request in for a book and I was able to pick it up on Thursday. It's called Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert. She's the author of Eat, Pray, Love, which I read earlier this year. This book wasn't like her first book; it was autobiographical, but not in the same sense as EPL. In EPL she's just gotten divorced and decides to take a year to travel to learn more about who she is, and at the end of her year of travels she meets a new man and falls in love. In the years between EPL and Committed they had agreed never to get married, but because he is not an American citizen they're not able to live together in the US. He's eventually denied entry into the US and they're forced to get married so he's able to enter the country again. It takes about 10 months for everything to get straightened out, so they pass this time sort of roaming Southeast Asia, waiting for his fiance visa to be granted.



This book was pretty interesting just because she spent most of the book describing more the history of marriage than stories about her own life. She did write about how on their travels she would speak with local people and learn more about how marriage is perceived around the world to help her try to figure out why she's so wary of the whole institution. It did actually give me a lot to think about with regards to my own marriage, and I think it's good to reflect periodically.

One of the best things that she talks about in the book is the way that she describes how marriages fail when you begin to look outside of your relationship for things you should be looking for inside your relationship, when you find yourself confiding in other friends things that you used to share with only your spouse (here she references work by Shirley P. Glass). I think this is sneaky and I can see how it would happen easily. While Keegan is the only person that I share everything with, sometimes I miss when I had a several close friends that I felt I could talk to about anything. There's nothing I can't talk about with Keegan so I have no need to confide with a friend about anything, but I still think it is nice to confide in friends about at least a small number of the things you also confide in your spouse. I think there's something almost stressful about making your spouse your ONLY friend -- plus, sadly, there may come a time when your spouse is no longer around. I know with the prospect of Keegan working in another office I'm a little intimidated about what would happen if I had an emergency and I really needed someone to be there for me. I love the folks in my lab, but I don't really get the feeling that if my car broke down, I had to go to the doctor/hospital, or a close relative died that I would be able to rely on them for anything. Maybe this is a cynical view, but although we hang out together sometimes, I'm not sure if there is a line between being friends and being coworkers. Then again, I'll spend five years of my life surrounded by these people, and I'm not sure you can spend that long with anyone and not end up their friend :-)

There was a quote in her book that I found interesting; when she asked her friend why she wanted to get married and she said that a wedding "will unequivocally prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I am precious enough to have been selected by somebody forever". Isn't this sort of the wrong reason to get married? I think that is true with all people who get married though, at least to some extent, they let the whole world know that they are loved enough to be loved forever by one person. But isn't that a bit selfish/prideful? Should it really matter to us if "everyone" knows that we are loved?

She also dedicated a section of the book to looking at the relationship between infatuation and love. She writes, "Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job". This is so true, just looking back on my previous relationships that were sort of whirlwind in nature -- it's easy to get wrapped up in the superficial things and then sort of gloss over the rather dark details of a person.

It was also interesting to see her perspective on how religion/Christianity shaped marriage, essentially that Christianity initially tried to stomp out marriage but that in more modern times the faithful have taken the view that Christianity is the only pathway to a loving and stable marriage. She has some citations for that claim and I found this highly interesting as well. Another interesting topic she brought up was something called the "subversive" family, in that a family unit is something that no government can control. Try as they may, a government cannot monitor what is said/done in the home and the conversations that go on between family members/couples behind closed doors cannot be censured or controlled in any way. I think this was also related to her point/citations about religion, that although many religious institutions seek to control private life there's really nothing they can do to control an independent family.

All-in-all an interesting read. Since I read it in 3 days, I might re-read it before I turn it in, just to go over the finer details again :-)

June pleasure reading

On our trip I read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as well as a bunch of National Geographics. It was a crazy month and even though I did get to read HP for fun, that was nothing new, I just took it with me so I'd have something to occupy my time in the car that didn't involve paying a lot of attention to what I was doing. :-)

Daily nutritional values

Today I had an appointment with Duke's nutritionist and it went really well! She is very nice and approachable, so that is good. She was also filled with helpful suggestions for improving my diet to help me get back on track with my eating habits and everything. I figured since sometime in the future Keegan and I would like to have some kiddos that I should get in the habit of eating well now so that when preggo time rolls around I'm not scrambling to learn how to eat better and how to raise a baby at the same time.

Anyway, her first recommendation was to start with breakfast. I never eat breakfast, generally because I'm one of those continuous snacker types that will just munch on stuff all day even if I'm not hungry. So I sort of avoid that situation by just not starting to eat until later in the day. But I'll start off tomorrow with her recommendations and move from there. I'm going to have to add a bunch of stuff I don't buy that frequently to our grocery list, but hopefully my working with this nutritionist will also help Keegan :-)

So for my breakfasts I'm going to go with different combos of cereals/milk, yogurt, fruit, nuts, and cheese. (Sidenote: is cottage cheese good? Does anyone know? Do you eat it plain or what?) Hopefully by starting out my day better I'll have more energy to exercise when I get home from work (or I can try to start going in the mornings again). Also this fall I signed up to take the weight lifting for women gym class; I will need to have lots of energy for this class I'm sure, and I'd like to be able to extend my gym time by running after the class. This will be a bit weird, for me to be at the gym in the middle of the day when I'll need to be in lab, but I will definitely be able to make up for this class time by staying later/arriving earlier. Plus since I have to take another course hour to be able to take the class at UNC that I actually will find useful, I have a legitimate reason to be at the gym.

One thing I did notice about this fall is I will have to be on campus early 4/5 days every week. MWF I will have the class at UNC at 9a.m., which involves catching a bus at Duke at 8a.m. and Tuesdays I have class at Duke at 8:30a.m. Well, whatever. I'm most productive in the morning anyway. Like today for instance, I was here at 8:15 and I was able to plan experiments, meet with the postdoc in chemistry to devise how to do the experiments, submitted my revised review paper, and had the appointment with the nutritionist. And in 30 minutes I'm going to actually start the experiments over in French. Good day all around.

Recovery?

Wahoo! My IRA is again worth more than I put in to it (finally)!! This is pretty dull to update about, but considering at one point it was worth about $1800 more than I put in, it's nice to be on the green side again (even if only by $130). Our joint mutual fund is about $40 shy of being worth what we paid for it, so I guess that is good too (especially since we'd like to use that money to buy a house in a few years).

I would like to open an individual mutual fund so I'm not just leaving a bulk of my savings sitting around in a money market account that earns no interest, but I haven't really had the time to sit down and decide which might be best for me. I don't want to go with the same fund that Keegan and I have money in because it just seems a little too much like putting all my eggs in one basket. Or whatever. I'm painfully ignorant of all the investment options out there, even though I'm probably doing more than other people my age (stocks, mutual funds, IRA, etc). I'm not sure how much risk I want to take now, even though now is the time to be taking investment risks because I have plenty of years to build up wealth, but I also want to have money available for the house, a new car (when mine passes on, hopefully not for another 7-8 years), babies, and vacations. I'm worried that if I make risky investments now that I won't have time to replenish my savings when I(/we) do need it.

Are there any good books out there that really help young people diversify their savings? I read "Smart Women Finish Rich" but I think there are probably more detailed books out there that help someone dive into investing without spending ages learning the jargon. I dunno, maybe I'll just have to spend some quality time in Barnes & Noble, loitering around the investment section.

I have so much to do this weekend. Our vacation was wonderful, but now there's a lot that needs to be done around the house to get it back into some semblance of a place that people can actually live in.

My weekend to-do list:
- Clean house
- Do laundry (seriously, our room is filled with dirty clothes that were dumped unceremoniously from two large suitcases)
- Clean showers (I did this fairly recently, but I think we have hard water or something that leaves a lot of iron in the bottom near the drains)
- Print pictures from our trip to put into a photo album (I have already been asked by several relatives to bring pictures to show them. Because it's not like I have to go to work and catch up or anything)
- Find the dishes I bought and took with me to undergrad so I can give them to my sister, who wants to use them when she goes to school (I know they're somewhere in the attic, but there's a lot of stuff up there and the thought of going up there when it's been 100 degrees the past few days is pretty uninviting)
- Go to the at&t store to get my SIM card moved to Keegan's old iPhone (If it will fit -- this is actually very good timing because my phone has taken to cutting off randomly and it loses battery power extremely rapidly. One 10-minute conversation and it's got no bars left and beeps at me incessantly, I'm not exaggerating)
- General errands (groceries, etc)

We are also planning to hang out with some of Keegan's friends from undergrad, but I'm not sure when that is going to be. I'd also like to be able to go to a girls' night with some of the BME ladies, but I guess I'll have to see when the other social activities are taking place.

I received feedback on my paper, so I'm making the revisions for resubmission. I'll almost finished because there wasn't a lot that was suggested for changing (yay!). Also, I was able to successfully image my capsules (which are indeed capsules!) so now I can progress to altering the protocol to fit my needs. I'm also looking at branching off in another direction, so we'll see how that goes. The post doc in chemistry I've been working with seems genuinely excited by my idea and says he gives it his "enthusiastic endorsement", so that makes me feel good.

I want to begin making lists of the meals I plan to make each week. I used to do this the first few months we lived together, but I've since stopped planning. I think it will help us to eat healthier and more cheaply because we'll be less likely to just get Subway or pick something random up at the store if we've already got a schedule of the dinners I'm going to make in a given week. That will help with making the grocery list too, so it's better all around! Tonight we'll be having Zatarain's yellow rice with grilled chicken and green beans. Mmmm, I can taste it already! I guess I'll need to pick out a few new recipes also. I plan to restart P90x this weekend too, since we'll be around for a while now and I won't have any excuses not to stay on track :-)