2011 in review

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

January

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

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

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

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

- Began work at Ethicon with some really awesome folks

February

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

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

-R21 Monty wrote with my data receives funding!

March

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

-More work on my thesis

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

April

-Successfully defended my MS thesis!

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

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

-Celebrated Easter in Hilton Head with Keegan’s family

May

- Celebrated my 25^th birthday!

- Celebrated 5 years with Keegan!

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

June

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

July

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

August

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

- Submitted first draft of my first research paper to Monty

September

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

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

October

-More work, mainly a blur

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

-Starting training new MS student to work with me

November

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

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

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

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

December

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

- Set prelim date- yipes!

- Started applying for internships

- Will leave to go skiing for the first time

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

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

North Carolina

Costa Rica*

Florida

South Carolina

Alabama*

Mississippi*

Louisiana*

England*

Wales*

Connecticut
Georgia

* indicates locales that were new for the year!

Frustration

For the past week I’ve felt very frustrated and I’m not really sure why.  I think it is because for the past 4 solid months (minus the one week hiatus while I was on vacation) I’ve been doing ridiculous amounts of work and running a lot of experiments and now that I’ve defended my Masters I’ve sort of hit a wall where I’m figuring out what needs to be done next and preparing to submit a paper for publication next month.  I think I have all the data I need to submit, based on the other papers by researchers in my area and what is included in their characterization papers, and it’s all written, I just need to extract it from my thesis and organize it into publication structure.  I think I could do this in a fairly reasonable time frame, probably before I go to Jazz Fest, but I want to meet with Monty to make sure he’s on the same page.  I feel like I know how I want my research papers to be structured but I’m not sure how to make sure they line up with his expectations other than to just ask (although that makes me a little worried about what I might hear!)  I also want to know what he expects of us before we prelim because all he has specified to date is that we have to have a first author research paper.  I already have one paper, but it’s a review paper, so by the end of the summer (fingers crossed) the paper I’m preparing will be submitted and accepted so that I’ll be able to prelim in the November/December time frame.  I’m not sure how this fits into the Monty grand scheme of things…

I’m tired of reading, but there are several things with my work that I am thinking about tweaking but each one requires a ton more background reading.  Since I’ve been doing so many experiments lately it feels weird to now spend like 80% of my time reading and only 20% on experiments, but I can’t do the experiments until I read so… sort of stuck where I am.  This perceived drop in productivity also makes me feel really guilty about going on some of my weekend trips coming up, and I feeling really weird about taking off because I feel like I should get a bunch of work done, and have a bunch of data to analyze so that when I go on the trip it’s a slight pause between the experimenting and the subsequent data analysis.  Instead I feel like I’ll be leaving my reading and coming back to more reading, not like I “earned” the weekend by getting a lot of results.

I’m not sure why I put this crazy pressure on myself -- yes I want to finish my PhD in a reasonable amount of time and if I’m here for 6 years it’s not the end of the world, but I’d like to graduate in May 2013.  When research is going smoothly I feel like this shouldn’t be an issue, but when I’m sort of mulling things over it feels like I’m going to be here forever.  I’m not really in a hurry to leave because I love the people here and Keegan has a good job in Raleigh, but it sort of feels like all the big things that come with being married and growing up (having kids, buying a house, etc) get put on hold or at least are very difficult to finagle and afford when you’re in school.

Other areas of my life are less frustrating though (yes, I have other areas of my life than school!  Sort of.)  Keegan and I have been spending a lot of time with his friends from undergrad and it’s really nice to get out and do things with people our own age that we don’t see at work.  In fact, one of his closest friends is South African and invited us to come with him next spring when he goes home to visit again!  This is very tempting since we would both love to go on a safari and spend time meeting Glen’s extended family and seeing the country from a native’s perspective, so we’ll have to see if we can plan that to fit into our schedules and most importantly, budget.  Going with a friend will save a ton of money though, when we’ve been invited to stay in his family’s house :-)  A bulk of the trip cost will be just getting there!  Maybe that will be our last hurrah before babies are in the picture.

My weight loss is also going well.  I weighed in at 133.8 this morning, so even though I’m not dropping lots of weight every week I seem to still be decreasing.  I haven’t changed anything about what I actually eat, I just changed the amounts of what I eat so I eat less of the sweet stuff and more of the green stuff.  I have been going to the gym every day for months now missing maybe one day every 3 weeks or so and although I’ve only been running (or walking at a huge incline) I think it’s making a difference.  All I did in undergrad to lose weight was run, so hopefully the difference in my 21 year old body compared to my 24 year old body isn’t tooooo much…

I'm also getting a lot of fun reading done -- you would think after spending the day reading at my desk I wouldn't want to go home and read, but I am enjoying reading things unrelated to school and it's nice to not think for awhile.

The Week of Good Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Costa Rican adventures!

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

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

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

January's third new dish: black beans and rice

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

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

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



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

My hobby:

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

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

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!

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.

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

Anniversary adventures!

Keegan and I spent the past week on vacation, partly to celebrate our one year anniversary, and partly just because we wanted a vacation :-) Luckily we were able to plan this trip around attending the big Brochufest (my name for it, not the official title) in Hardwick, VT that is always held the Saturday the weekend near July 4.

Weekend/Monday travel day
Our adventure started on Friday, June 25. Keegan and I left around 5 to drive to my dad's house in Hillsville, VA. We hadn't been able to see him in awhile and since we were already driving up north anyway, we were able to stop in a visit a bit. It was nice to just hang around, watching TV (the World Cup and NCIS marathons), chatting, and generally having a good time. We also played some mini golf and toured around the area a bit, visiting a nice home-made candy store.

Also my dad does live in VA, he lives in western VA, so our trip to Rhode Island on Monday wasn't shortened by starting at his place rather than ours in Raleigh. We got up at 3:45 and were on the road by 4:15 on Monday morning. We're aware this is extreme but we wanted to be there to enjoy our first evening of official vacation! We arrived in Newport around 5 p.m. and got all checked into the hotel. Our room was small, but we weren't expecting a giant room in a hotel that was a historic building. In fact, the bed filled most of the room, but MAN, it was comfortable! After arriving, we set out to explore the town and find something for dinner. There was a crazy thunderstorm that only lasted about 10 minutes and we were able to watch it from inside the pub we found for dinner. After eating dinner, we (naturally) found the first creamery in the place and had some very tasty locally-made dessert, mmmm. (Side note: we had decided the end of May that we wouldn't be eating any more ice cream until we were on vacation because we'd been entering the dangerous "Let's buy some ice cream -- I mean, it's half price!" region) While we enjoyed the treats we walked down to the coast line to take in the Rhode Island coastline. Coming from North Carolina beaches, it's insane to see a coast that has no sand and is all rocks and cliffs. I knew it would be like this, but it was still neat to see it first-hand. We wandered the town a bit more then worked our way back to the hotel.


Tuesday
We started out the day on Tuesday by wandering the town some more on our way to see The Breakers, one of the big Newport mansions we had come to tour. As a couple who has been to the Biltmore, we can certainly recommend these houses to other people who enjoy touring old/obscenely opulent homes. The house, grounds, and view were gorgeous! Also, since The Breakers is the most popular house to tour, The Preservation Society of Newport provided audiotours to this house so people could walk it at their own pace, lingering where they wanted. There was also a lot of extra info on the audiotour that you could spend more time listening to. It took about 90 minutes for us to walk through the rooms on the tour and listen to all the extra information.

After exploring our first house, we walked about half a mile down the Cliff Walk to the The Chanler Hotel where we had lunch at their restaurant on the cliff face. The view was stunning, and that's really why we went there, but the food was also quite tasty! We were definitely in need of some sitting time after standing stiff and mostly still for such a long time in the house.

The passes we bought (the "Newport Mansion Experience") were $31 to tour 5 homes, which was an insanely good deal considering just a ticket to The Breakers is $19. Also, the tickets never expire, so we could have come back in years and still been able to go in to any of the houses we wanted. For our second house, we toured Marble House, another ocean-front home. The inside of the home is ENTIRELY marble, which was beautiful, but a bit overwhelming also. This house (and others) also had a room where gold leaf had been used on the walls instead of paint or paper or plaster. It is was it sounds like -- thin leafs of 24 carat gold were used to cover the wall and all of the sculptures worked into the ceiling and along the walls. This house also had an audio tour, since it was pretty popular. There was also a little asian prayer room type thing that the owner had put right on the water, which was neat, but looked a bit ridiculous and out-of-place. But whatever, when you've got so much money you have to cover your walls in actual GOLD I guess you can do whatever strikes your fancy.

The third and last house we toured on Tuesday was called Rosecliff. This house was also very grand, but didn't have a guided tour. It had been owned by a variety of people but all the interior decorations that were original to the house were sold off during the Great Depression, so it was a bit of a shell of it's former self. The preservation society has been able to restore some of it's glory and fill it in with stuff from other homes and stuff that has been donated.

After touring this last house, we hiked the Cliff Walk, which is something I wanted to do even more than touring the houses. The walk was a lot longer than we thought it would be and it took FOREVER, but the views were absolutely amazing. I've never seen anything like that in my entire life and I can't wait to get the pictures off my camera so I can post them on Facebook for everyone to enjoy! We were able to see the sunset at the very end, which made it even more beautiful. The houses on the water are so spectacular and it was neat to be able to see the more residential side of the town than the side that's geared towards all the mansions' visitors. There was then a 4.5 mile walk back to the hotel after the end of the 3.5 mile Cliff Walk, so we easily walked 10 miles on Tuesday. Which we celebrated by eating our weight in more locally-made ice cream :-D

Wednesday
On Wednesday morning we saw our last two houses. My favorite house that we toured, The Elms, also had an audio tour and while it was spectacular also, it was less in-your-face about it. There was still marble and gold accents, but it was much more subdued and instead the house was filled with windows that let in the light and the views of the huge garden in the back. It seemed more like a place someone would actually live (granted someone ridiculously wealthy) and it was less crowded than The Breakers so I could linger looking at everything I wanted to see. :-)

The last house we toured was called Chateau sur Mer and it is the oldest of the houses we saw. This tour was nice and small, which was good, and the house also still contained a lot of its original furnishings, making it even more interesting.

Keegan and I highly recommend visiting this town if you're interested in this sort of stuff! After finishing our tour, we drove to Chelmsford, MA, about 2 hours away, to spend time with Keegan's aunt, uncle, and cousins on our way to Bar Harbor, ME.

Thursday
We hit the road on Thursday morning around 5, trying to make it to Bar Harbor with plenty of time to take in part of Acadia National Park. We got there around 10:30 and then we drove the Park Loop Road, a 20 mile loop that circles Cadillac Mountain (among other things). We were able to park and hike a lot, right along the coast, which was really nice after spending all that time in the car. Plus it was only 70 degrees and completely sunny so it was really easy to just stand there and take it all in. We spent about 6 hours in the park exploring this road and the trails around it. Then we went to Bar Harbor to check into our hotel and look for some dinner.

For dinner we found a little Italian restaurant where I had -- no joke -- the best pasta of my life. I'm really drooling about it right now just remembering it. It was chicken broccolini, but with garlic and some sort of four cheese sauce that most likely took 5 years off my life, but oh man. Keegan and caprese chicken that was also amazing, and we shared some herbed goat cheese brushetta. Then, of course, we found some more local ice cream about 4 hours later for a late treat. We were able to look into the local shops and take another little walk called the Ocean Walk that just went around the harbor a bit.

Friday
On Friday we had breakfast at our hotel and then went to hike around Cadillac Mountain before making the drive to North Conway, New Hampshire. In the winter months, the Cadillac Mountain is the first place in the United States to be touched by sunlight, which I found pretty interesting. The views of the ocean and surrounding park from the top were breathtaking and just going to this park has even further intensified my desire to visit more national parks. After taking that trip with my grandparents a few years ago, I knew I wanted to explore more of the United States, but after seeing Acadia I'm already plotting family vacations in my mind... a bit premature, I know, but I can't help it!


Last weekend and drive home
We drove to North Conway, NH to spend the night before heading up to Hardwick, VT for Brochufest on Saturday. We stayed in North Conway so we were able to drive the Kancamagus Highway in the White Mountains on the way up to the reunion. The drive is very scenic and we'd heard about how beautiful it was from Keegan's family and some of the members of my family. We were able to hike a bit and enjoy more of the 70 degree weather before spending the day with his dad's side of the family. After the reunion, we drove to Gloucester, MA to spend time with one of Keegan's cousins at Keegan's aunt's family's (whew!) beach house. We were able to just relax on their porch, walk the (teeny tiny) beach, and spend time with some of Keegan's cousin's family on his mother's side. They were all really friendly and with the house having 9 bedrooms, there were a lot of folks around! We watched Boston's insane fireworks show and then hit the road Monday morning at 6a.m. 15 hours later, we were home!

2877.5 miles from Raleigh to Raleigh and 13 different states visited. What an adventure! Our trip was rather whirlwind, but it was still relaxing because we were together and not worrying about all the stuff going on in our lives back home. Now I get to tackle the laundry we brought home, and eat through all the preserves and taffy we bought in Maine (MMMMM!!!).

BMES and P90x pause

I found out yesterday that I'll be presenting a poster at BMES in Austin in October! I was already going to go to Austin since I bought tickets to ACL, but now I get to go for free (at least the flight, most of my nights in the hotel, and most of my meals). Keegan will be there after the conference to go to ACL also, so he and I have our own room for after the conference is over. I'm a bit concerned about missing class for the conference, but I'm sure teachers will understand.

I have been trying to sign up for this class at UNC, synthesis of polymers, but in order to do that I have to have at least 3 credit hours at Duke because I can't take more hours at visiting institution than I'm taking at my home institution; the course I'm taking this fall is only 2 credit hours, so I need to find another seminar or 1 credit hour class to take so that I'll be able to take the class that I really want to take. It's a vicious cycle. I only need 3 more hours to be finished with all of my required coursework, and I really want to take this class at UNC, which essentially means I have to take 6 hours guaranteed. Oh well, at least these courses will be useful to me down the line.

I've also been keeping up with P90x pretty well (missed 2 days but at least kept the order of the workouts) but I'm going to have to probably restart the whole 90 days after Keegan and I get back from our anniversary trip. Today through Friday I'll be house/pet-sitting at my family's house in Raleigh and although I could take the DVDs with me, Keegan also needs them and I can't really take all of my weights and mat and pull up bar with me. Then Friday-Sunday we're going to a wedding at the Outer Banks, then next Saturday we leave for our trip. I will just be so messed up with the schedule that I might just want to do what I can, then really start over from the beginning. I could be hardcore and take these things on vacation with me, but I'd rather enjoy our anniversary trip and just go running in the hotel fitness centers or something :-) I think for now I'll just do the ones I don't need any equipment for, like the yoga and the plyometrics. Maybe I'll take one set of weights with me to do the arms workout while I'm at my family's house, but we'll see.

I'm super-excited to go to the Outer Banks this weekend to see Jen and Philippe get married! And on the day before our wedding anniversary! How romantic :-) I also can't wait to take an entire week to spend time with Keegan in relaxing locales! It will be wonderful to see some beaches that aren't 95 degrees (but then I will probably be cold, but oh well) and to see a part of the country I've never been to. I'm sure there's a lot of history there for me to soak up :-)

This year's confirmed new state tally:
Kentucky, Indiana, Washington, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Maine, Texas

I'll be 32/50, only 18 from my goal (assuming I don't go to any other states this year)!

Ahh, what I'm looking forward to:

Newport, RI




Bar Harbor, ME

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!

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. :-)

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!

Society for Biomaterials 2010

From Wednesday to Sunday I was in Seattle for the Society for Biomaterials' annual meeting. I presented a poster and was able to make some good contacts at the FDA and I was also able to learn a bit more about what all is going on with fellow biomaterials enthusiasts. Although it sounds like it would be a very focused conference (which it was, to some degree) the different fields of work represented were very diverse. I was able to see all the posters and attend some really interesting presentations. I mainly stuck to the orthopedic stuff, but I attended some dental material talks and also a few on bone regenerative materials.

The most enjoyable part of the conference was actually when I attended a panel discussion about the grand challenges in biomaterials. Monty introduced the speakers, but it was moderated by Buddy Ratner (!!! -- if you are in BME, you know who this is). There were 6 speakers, all of very high esteem and are well-known for their work; they each focused on a different challenge that they see in biomaterials. Drs. Buddy Ratner, James Anderson, Art Coury, Allan Hoffman, Cato Laurencin, and David Tirrell were part of that discussion and the questions from the audience that followed were also very stimulating. I'm so glad I was able to attend this discussion!

Also being at this conference helped me realize what a big deal Monty is. I knew he was well-known, but as soon as people found out I was in his lab, they started treating me like a celebrity! At least 6 people introduced themselves and said they wanted to come post-doc in our lab and they all wanted to know if he's really as nice/laidback as he seems. Seeing him just hanging out with all the big wigs of BME was really neat.

Seattle was also a really neat city, very vibrant with much to see. On Thursday, our first full day there, Lucinda and I were able to go to the Space Needle and we ate lunch in the revolving restaurant at the top. The views were amazing and even MORE amazing -- it didn't rain! Only once during all the days we were there did it sprinkle a little bit, but as we were in presentations, it didn't even matter. I saw sun every single day, for a majority of the day :-) Anyway, back to the Space Needle. The views were gorgeous although I still couldn't see the Pacific Ocean (darn). While walking back to the hotel we also stopped to walk through Seattle's Pike Place Market. For anyone who goes to Seattle, this was the best thing I saw there. I could people-watch and enjoy all of the stuff going on -- the musicians on street corners, vendors tossing fish around, insane amounts of flowers, pastries, coffee, crafts, handmade soaps/lotions/candles, etc. I went back to the market 2 other times without Lucinda (she had to work :-( ) just to look around some more. Also, it's located right on the waterfront, so I could enjoy looking out over the water while I was walking around. The very first Starbucks is also right on the market, but as a non-coffee drinker it was hard to get very excited about that. I did go in, just to say I'd been there, since I was in Seattle. I also wandered around some absolutely enormous stores, like 6-story Nordstroms, 3-story Old Navy, GAP, American Eagle, etc. This was also to kill time before sessions and because I like to people watch but I didn't want to wander too far from the hotel. The market was about 6 blocks from the hotel so I tried to stay in that general radius.

Essentially I made good contacts, ate really tasty food, met some cool people, and explored a neat city.

Epic-ness

So unless you've been taking refuge in some hole somewhere, you're aware that Duke won the NCAA Championship game and that I was there!! The whole trip was so worth it, the ridiculous standing marathons, sleeping in a hotel room with 10 grad students, "sleeping" on the concrete outside Lucas Oil Stadium (in a thunderstorm, under a tarp, huddling under the ticket sales overhang area), driving 10 hours a day, a variety of cramped situations, everything. ALL worth it! I'm so glad I went with a super-hardcore group because that resulted in my being able to sit front row of the student section for both the West Virginia and Butler games, best seats in the house! Also the folks I went with were really nice and funny, and it was good to spend time with some students that weren't in BME. But I got to visit plenty with the BME-ers while we were all in line :-)

Indy is a pretty cool town, not that I got to see much of it, but what I did see was neat. Maybe some day I can go back when I'm not entirely focused on basketball and the city isn't overrun with fans. Of course, this made the trip even better because we were constantly hugged, high fived, and cheered at by strangers who were also Duke fans. (Of course on the way to the liquor store while we were waiting in line one of the guys in the group said in the 10 minute walk to the store he got 3 "Duke SUCKS!!" and a water bottle thrown at him so not everyone was so welcoming)

Funny stories:
-On the way there we took an unintentional detour; we were waiting to pass into Ohio so we could switch highways so as the exit numbers start counting down to one, we're getting excited about being closer to Indy and making it there in time to see the team practice. We pass exit 1, go over the top of a hill, and see a "Welcome to Kentucky!" sign. Us: "What the hell?! I didn't think we were driving through Kentucky..." Only to realize that we missed the turn like 100 miles ago. Luckily all we did was drive north, west for awhile, then north again instead of driving really north then west. It didn't take us much additional time and I was able to cross another state off of my list of states to visit!

-During Hurricane Lucas Oil Stadium we were forced to sleep under the awnings for the ticket sales areas because we weren't allowed to put up "structures" like tents because they were against Indy city ordinance. Major storm -- crazy lightning, thunder, terrifying winds that caused gigantic metal oil drum trashcans to be thrown across the parking lot, etc. There were two overly full port-a-potties near the lines for students which were disgustingly full from the previous day's students waiting to get in to the Final Four and we could hear someone yell, "DON'T GO IN THERE, IT'S OVERFLOWING!!!", but we couldn't see them because we were bundled under our tarp fortress so we had no idea what was really going on.

-Related to that previous story: there was a gigantic trash wheelbarrow-type thing that was used to collect like 200 trashbags from around the stadium. It was empty so the undergrads near us decided to turn it on it's side and drag it by us to use it to block the wind/sideways rain. I remember sitting straight up and yelling, "What the hell is that?!" thinking that perhaps the toilets were falling over or something. Ahh, awesome.

-One of the guys in the group in front of us was giving an interview the day of the championship and when asked what he did during the storm he said that we went to take refuge under the ticket roofs while the Butler kids went home crying to their moms (or something along those lines)

I'm so looking forward to campout this fall and basketball next season! I can't believe that the season is already over, boo. I'm so glad I went on this trip this year because I think if they go back in the time I'm here it'll be a lot more difficult to get tickets because students will have this victory fresh in their minds. I think not as many people entered the lottery this year because they didn't think Duke would actually make it there. But they did! And I saw it!! From the front row! I think that if Singler and Smith both stay with the team they'll have a good chance at doing well in the tournament next year too. Especially with Seth Curry, the leading freshman scorer in the nation and the player Coach K calls the best shooter on the team, and Kyrie Irving... repeat baby! '91 & '92, '10 & '11!! Let's hope next year I go to Houston ;-)

Today I'm presenting at the Kewaunee event at Duke, so it'll be good practice for Seattle in less than two weeks! Ahh! 4 new states all in one month :-)

Definitely Final Four-bound!

I'm so pumped for Indy this weekend!!! But I have an alarming amount of work that needs to get finished before I leave, like finishing the poster for the Kewaunee presentations on April 8 (and for SFB in 4 weeks), leading a bunch of labs/office hours for the class I'm TAing, and working on encapsulation stuff. Amazingly, one of the gurus in the self-healing field emailed me back in response to my questions! She was the corresponding author on a paper I was interested in learning more about so I asked her if she could direct me to someone (ie a grad student) who would be able to field (put up with) my questions, and instead she told me she would be happy to answer them! This is pretty amazing, as her work is mentioned in every single paper on self-healing. :-D

I still can't believe I'm going to the Final Four! It's amazing -- I'm going to see someone win the title (fingers crossed for Duke!!) and whenever I think about it I want to jump up and down with excitement! Man, I hope I can keep myself under control until we leave on Friday! I think I can also attribute this increased level in excitement to running more. I have finally gotten back into somewhat of a routine, steadily running 2 miles then walking at a steep incline for the third. I always feel like I have more energy when I've been running and it makes me feel better about myself. I guess I could say I'm working for the summer 2010 beach body, but seeing as how I rarely go swimming that's not really true. But whatever.

Okay: review lab manual, finish HW for TAing so I can answer questions in office hours, hold 3 labs, meet with Leslie (undergrad working with me), hold office hours (by the end it's 5), work on poster, go home, go running, shower, make dinner, clean house, watch House, work on poster. Go to bed. AHHH!

(Potentially) Final Four-bound!

I have tickets to the Final Four and the National Championship!! Of course, this assumes that Duke makes it to the Final Four... but I'm optimistic! It's nice to have something mostly spontaneous to do :-) It'll be nice to spend more time with the BMEers here too. And I'll get to go to Indiana! And perhaps Kentucky, depending on the driving route. Two more states down! And even if Duke loses this weekend (sad) I'm still going to Hilton Head for Easter, which was my original plan and is a damn fine consolation prize :-D

In other news, my review paper is finished! We're sending it to reviewers, then we'll submit it for publication. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I've also found a method that I want to attempt for encapsulation that looks promising... but I guess I won't know if it actually is promising for awhile. I'm presenting at a poster symposium thing on April 8, so that will be a nice practice run for Society for Biomaterials. Less than one month until Seattle! Spring is amazing. So begins the weeks of travel. High Point, Hilton Head/Indianapolis, Wilmington, and Seattle all in less than a month! Which reminds me -- I need to make a cheesecake tonight for my granddaddy's birthday. I won't have time to make it tomorrow because I'll be going out with the group of recruits and it needs to set.

Poor Keegan has been working a lot of overtime (I guess it's not really overtime since he's not paid for it... so just working a lot) and he probably won't be home until pretty late tonight. I guess that will give me plenty of time to take over the kitchen with cheesecake-related items. But I still miss seeing him for dinner :-( He told me that one of his coworkers was let go this morning, one of the engineers this time. As there are only 8 engineers (now 7) at the Raleigh office, this is a big deal. Today is their "town hall" meeting, so I'm guessing he'll have more info for me the next time I talk to him.

Well, I'm going hunting around the lab for materials that I need to use this new technique to see what I need to order. Then seminar. Then fitness room! Then cheesecake preparation, mmmm.