2010/2

How is it almost June, that's what I want to know. 2010 is almost half over! Well, it's 5/12 over anyway. The first 5 months of the year have gone by really quickly, but really slowly when you look at all the things that happened during those months. It's hard to describe the feeling...

Research is going pretty well so far and I'm enjoying getting my hands dirty, so to speak. We've also spent awhile cleaning out the lab, making room for the new students who are coming in this fall and also just sorting through all of the stuff. I feel like I know more about where stuff is in the lab and also that I'm more familiar with our resources.

Last weekend we had another girls' night, making the most of Triangle Restaurant week by going out to a restaurant called piedmont. During Restaurant week all these places sign up and offer 3 course meals for $25 (which is a good deal compared to their usual prices). I had the salad, goat cheese ravioli, and the lemon panna cotta, mmmm. Here are all the ladies who went out!




Then on Saturday was Emily and Kyle's wedding! I had such a good time and it was really nice to attend our first wedding as a married couple (almost one year after our own wedding). They were so happy and it was romantic just to be there to witness them getting married :-D





Finally on Sunday was the Raleigh Ringers concert at my old stomping grounds, NCSU. The concert was so cool! I wish I could have stuck around to see more about the bells and everything, but I'm glad I was able to at least go to the concert.

Essentially this week has been spent sending my final draft out, looking at my polymer stuff, and waging war against the lab (aka cleaning). The week sort of flew by and I'm not sure what happened!

Prior to our vacation the last week of June I'm hoping to:
-give the house another thorough cleaning
-successfully photograph my samples, looking at various parameters
-stake out my bench in the lab and get everything organized
-start work with my Master's student, trying to get her settled into another project that is tangentially related to mine
-submit final draft for publication in JBMR
-book flights for Austin for BMES
-pick up with my "new recipe per week" plan (starts with fettuccine alfredo tonight!)
-hit Barnes and Noble for a few new books I've been meaning to read (to continue with the "book for pleasure each month" thing

Austin City Limits!

Keegan and I are officially going to the Austin City Limits Music Festival! SO EXCITED. Here is a link to the amazing line-up confirmed for this fall!

I will (presumably) be doing BMES-related activities through Saturday, but Keegan will be there for the entire festival and we'll go together on Sunday. He'll be flying out later than me though, and the hotel I'm staying at for the conference is already full (crazy!) so he's staying at a different hotel once he gets to Austin. I'll be there 2 days before him though, so it's not like we'll be in the same city but in different hotels :-) Then we'll fly back on that Monday! I think this will serve as Keegan's 25th birthday celebration :-D I think I'll pay for his flight or something, we'll see. That's what I would have done if we had decided to go to Las Vegas (somewhere else Keegan really wants to go) and he might have even more fun at Austin City Limits.

In other news: I had a great time going to Virginia Tech last weekend to see Sara's graduation; it was nice to see the campus and to meet some more of her college friends :-) Also, I got final feedback on my paper so I should be able to submit it by the end of May!! I met with Monty to essentially plan out the rest of my graduate career and it feels good to have a plan of attack. I'm starting to mess around with this polymer I made, so it'll be nice to have some sort of experiences actually trying to make what I want to make. We had a lovely girls' night on Sunday and we're having another tomorrow night to make the most of Triangle Restaurant week. Saturday is Emily and Kyle's wedding, and Sunday we're going to see a friend play in a handbell choir, then also perhaps partake in another Triangle Restaurant dining experience. What a great weekend! And tonight are the season finales to 3 shows Keegan and I watch: Bones, Fringe, and Grey's Anatomy (although admittedly I just sort of leave Grey's on in the background now). And it's not raining anymore!

The lovely ladies!

Birthday surprises

24 doesn't really seem too different from 23, but it is a bit. 23 is still safely between 20 and 25, but at 24 there's really no way to pretend you're not close to 25, which by default is close to 30. I know 30's not really that close and I'm always thinking of time in terms of how long Keegan and I have been together. Today is our 4 year anniversary, 1/6 of my life, and I feel like we have always been together :-) 4 years is a long time, but in the grand scheme of our entire lives it is not really such a long time. By keeping healthy, we can reasonably hope for 50(+) years together, which is going to be quite a period! That is what I keep telling myself whenever I feel irrationally sad about being a year older! 24 is very young, and I know all the best things in life are yet to come (having kids, buying a home, taking more trips, having grandkids, retirement, etc) but I'm still a bit wistful thinking about getting older.

Monday through Wednesday were spent in Beaufort, NC at Duke's Marine Laboratory for the BME retreat. I had a lot of fun meeting more of the people in the department and hearing presentations about what all is going on in our department. BME is a really broad field and I'm a bit ignorant about all the ways BME is being put to use at Duke. Plus I was able to socialize with people that I only know by sight, learning their names and just more about them in general. The trip was pretty whirlwind, so I'm a bit tired (I slept more last night than I did on Monday and Tuesday nights combined) but it was so worth it :-) We -- Cindy, Emily, Alex, and me -- left around 11 on Monday morning, drove down, then went to the poster sessions and first talks. That night there was a social thing at the campus, then we went out to the bars in Beaufort to continue the socializing (aka watch our peers drink a lot). Tuesday had many more talks and other poster session, then one of the professors in the department graciously offered his beach house on Emerald Isle for a party. We took a pretty awesome party bus from the campus to his house (think disco balls and flashing lights) and just hung out. As a special surprise the BME department had gotten cakes for me and another guy, Ali, whose birthday was May 11. It was nice to be sang to by 80 some odd people and it was the first birthday party I've had since I was 18 (no joke). Even though it wasn't technically a birthday party :-)

Ali and Alice on the party bus, then at the party being serenaded!




When I got home yesterday I pretty much just crashed on the couch. Keegan brought me the most beautiful flowers, which I'll post pictures of once I take them off of my camera. He said he called the florist and told them that I like blue and calla lilies are my favorite flowers but the arrangement has a lot of different types of flowers in it. There are some callas, stargazer lilies, irises, and what I think are snapdragons, along with some other mum-looking flowers. :-) Those are my birthday/anniversary present, as well as an iPod shuffle. He knows I've been wanting to start running more outdoors and thought an iPod might help me start running farther distances. I think it works well for me to be distracted and not realize how far I've gone because I'm just thinking "Wow, I really like this song!" Let's see how that theory pans out... For our anniversary I surprised Keegan with a Hard Rock shirt from Seattle (a special edition shirt with The Who on it) and then just some tasty goodies that I know he likes. I guess now the main anniversary we'll be celebrating is June 20 but it's still nice to acknowledge May 13 :-D

We can't believe it's already been a year!

Keegan and I have been discussing taking a trip for our anniversary for awhile now and yesterday we finally booked the hotels and planned the dates for the trip! His dad's family has a huge reunion in Vermont the weekend closest to July 4 every year and since we knew we wanted to go to Newport, RI we decided to plan it so we'd be able to stop at the reunion on the tail end of our trip.

We have visited the Biltmore House together and really enjoyed it, which is how we decided to take the trip to Newport to see all the "summer cottages" there (some also owned by the Vanderbilts). He has never been to Newport either, so I'm glad we're not seeing something he's already seen!

Our trip is going to start on June 28 with the drive to Newport (lots of time to chat in the car!). We are excited we're able to stay in a nice north eastern hotel, the Hotel Viking. I think it'll be a romantic trip :-) We'll spend all of Tuesday and Wednesday morning touring homes in the area, then we'll drive to Chemlsford, MA on our way to Acadia National Forest in Maine. In Maine we'll be staying in Bar Harbor at the Harborside Hotel (for those Murder, She Wrote fans, think Cabot Cove-esque). Keegan has family in Chelmsford so we'll be able to visit a little bit and break up the drive nicely. After spending Thursday and Friday in Maine, we'll drive to Vermont on Saturday for Brochufest!

It may sound weird that for our anniversary we're going to Rhode Island and Maine, but they are both scenic and simple and we've never been to these places. It'll be nice to be somewhere more remote, enjoying each other's company and spending time also seeing more of what the US has to offer. I know I am one of those people who gets so excited about seeing the rest of the world that I don't take advantage of all the things there are to see/do here in the US! Plus we'll get to eat in some nice restaurants, and perhaps do a whale-watching trip from Bar Harbor. I think us being on the coast will also bring back some memories from our honeymoon even if it's not a tropical locale this time. But taking a week off for Keegan is still a lot of time, so we work with what we have! Plus this way we were able to save a bit of money through some deals and the fact that we have relatives there to stay with a few of the travel days. :-)

#14: Guacamole

I've been slacking off in the new recipe department lately, but I'm hoping to get back on track soon. Last weekend I made some guacamole for Keegan; I'm not a big fan of avocados, but it was still pretty tasty! I also bought him some pita chips to eat with him yummy guacamole :-)

Texas?

This morning I submitted an abstract to BMES (Biomedical Engineering Society) which is going to be in Austin from October 6-9. How exciting! I've never been to BMES, but I've heard it's a lot of fun. It'll be like a Star Trek convention -- we're all nerds and no one understands us but each other (at least that's my theory...). What is also crazy-ridiculous-awesome is the fact that the conference is being held at the same time as the Austin City Limits Music Festival *drool* Maybe I can find a way to spend the whole week there! Such are the joys of not having class! But I don't know that my abstract will be selected, so I guess I shouldn't count my eggs or whatever...

Sidenote: it just hit me yesterday while proctoring the final exam for the class I TAed (PAST TENSE!!) that this was the first semester I haven't had a final exam since 2004. I will most likely never have another final exam to study for, just the two largest exams of my life, my prelim and defense. But I'll cross those bridges when I get to them.

This coming weekend is going to be pretty busy with family events and then leaving for the BME retreat on Monday. This weekend we'll be seeing our mothers for Mother's Day and Keegan's mom also wants us to come over there for her to cook my birthday dinner (gah, oldness approaching...). Although I accomplished much cleaning there is still a lot that I could do to feel better about myself, so I'll be working on that too. And I feel like there's something else really important that I'm forgetting, but oh well. Monday I'm headed to the beach for our departmental retreat and I'll be back on Wednesday some time. I think this retreat will be much more enjoyable than the first one because (a) it's not in October, (b) it's not right after my big week of midterms where all I want to do is sleep, (c) it's not on fall break, (d) I know the people in my lab/program a lot better now so I won't feel like quite such a loner, (e) there's some sort of house party thing involved, (f) it'll be on my birthday so I can spend the morning of my bday with my friends and the evening of it with my loving hubby, and (g) I'm driving myself up instead of riding a bus.

Last night Keegan and I were able to go out with my labmates to watch Monty's league hockey team win their championship! It was pretty exciting but there were 7 of us there cheering, and maybe that many other observers total. Monty's team got a lot of love. We had a nice time eating dinner together then cheering together. Bonding :-) I'm really happy to have gotten to know everyone a little bit better and I feel a lot less lonely than this time last year.

As per my previous post, I have many things left to accomplish this month, but I'm excited to be really doing something in lab tomorrow/Friday (depending on when all my materials arrive). Also putting the final touches on my paper once I receive Dr. Craig's feedback and submitting this invention disclosure stuff.

Happy May!