Day Nine Hundred Sixty

Okay, so I can't blame SXSW for my lack of posting these past 10 days. To make up for it, I'll make this a picture post! And I promise to do better...I promise.

Rodeo Austin! This is what I did instead of SXSW. You can see
how calm and serene the bull rider is on the big screen.

Katelyn and I at the rodeo, being excellent box-seat fillers.

Amanda's wedding photos are here! Here we
are looking adorable.

And here we are being completely normal.

The bridal party.

Here's a shot of part of the Shear Lab (including the boss-man, Dr. Shear)
at the Recruitment Weekend poster session last week.

I took the chem department recruit I was hosting to a UT baseball game, and
we snuck in to first row seats behind home plate for the last two innings.

It was basically like we were on the field with the team.

And this is just something random that happened
today when camels appeared on campus.

Day Nine Hundred Fifty

Let's all blame my lack of posting on SXSW. I didn't actually go to the festival, because I don't have a million bajillion dollars, but I did have to constantly figure out how to navigate around the horrible traffic it causes. But guess what? Today was the last day! The roads can now return to their normal state of bad Texas driving.

This past week was also spring break at UT, which meant a blissful week of work with no undergrads clogging campus. My research did its best to ruin my good mood, but I've gotten used to it rarely working at this point. There's a reason it takes as long as it does to get a PhD. Cross your fingers that this week brings greater success!

As far as fun things go, I've enjoyed both Rodeo Austin and some Texas baseball this past week. The rodeo is always lots of fun, and always reminds me of how different Texas is compared to where I grew up. There's nothing like watching grown men try to ride bulls or throw themselves off horses so they can tackle and flip over a steer. And the best part of it all is we got to watch all this happen from 4th row box seats! Our section of the bleachers (because I'm not willing to pay the amount of money required to get box seats) was chosen to be seat fillers until the rich box seat people showed up, that way the rodeo looked filled to capacity to people watching on TV. We got lucky and the people whose seats we took never showed up! Best surprise ever. I'll post some photos tomorrow when I'm writing my blog post from my laptop and not my phone.

I also took in a UT baseball game yesterday, because I'm hopelessly addicted. We lost, which we're doing with surprising consistency this year, but I still love them. And I got to take a friend of mine to her very first baseball game, which made it even more fun.

Tomorrow.......back to work. What a drag.

Day Nine Hundred Thirty Six

I've learned over the course of living in an apartment building that you get first whiff of your neighbors strong-smelling food choices.

Neighbor making spicy noodles at 11:30pm, I will not miss you.

Day Nine Hundred Thirty Two

I know, I disappeared for a while. I've been battling the cold that just won't quit, and thankfully I seem to be at the very tail end of it. I think I can speak for my entire lab when I say we all can't wait for my sinuses to get back to normal.

My past 10 days have included lots of catching up at work after being in Washington for 6 days followed by being sick for a week. I've successfully overcome a research hurdle that's been plaguing me (yay!), gone to my first baseball game of the season (UT lost real bad), had a mental breakdown over grad school (the semi-annual "what have I don't with my life, I'm never going to get out of here" moment), gotten a massage (it seems I'm tense?), and tutored some young'ns in the basics of chemistry (where I remind myself that I'm not as dumb as I feel sometimes).

I also went to a baby shower for my cousin Emily, where I made a chemistry-themed baby block because you cannot sneak attack me with crafts and not expect me to immediately revert to my comfort zone, molecules. It was for this baby shower that I went shopping for a picture book to gift Emily, and was reminded that people will publish kids books about literally anything. Some favorites were "Who Flung Dung?" and "My Mother is a Foreigner, But Not to Me." I ended up going with "Shamoo: A Whale of a Cow" - the inspiring story of a cow who becomes best friends with a humpback whale and realizes his dream of living and swimming in the ocean. This is not even a joke. Clearly if this whole grad school thing doesn't work out, I can go in to the field of children's literature. Because they will publish the weirdest things ever.

Day Nine Hundred Twenty Three

Two days after returning from Washington, my immune system decided it would be a splendid time to succumb to a horrific cold. The past 4 days have been spent sneezing, coughing, and generally sounding (and feeling) like the most disgusting person ever. It's been a dream. So this post will be dedicated to reminiscing over my visit to Washington a week ago.

First up was a trip to my alma mater, St. Martin's, to give a grad school talk. As far as I know it went well, and it was surreal/wonderful to be back on that small, quaint little campus. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I went back. The evening ended with dinner at one of my favorite restaurants (Budd Bay Cafe) with some of my favorite people, Greg and Laurie Creighton. Thank you for the delicious salmon dinner!

Next up was traveling to Puyallup, where the wedding festivities commenced on Saturday morning. Here we are at Amanda's mom's house doing hair and makeup for the big event later that evening. It was a time of many curling irons and much hair spray.

Once we were all pretty, we got all dressed up for photos. The bridesmaids dresses looked great, but let me tell you...it was an adventure to travel with that thing between Austin and Seattle. Because it was winter in Washington, Amanda kindly supplied us all with fur wraps to keep us warm while we gracefully waltzed around Tacoma taking pre-wedding photos (and when I say "gracefully waltzed", I mean "awkwardly got out of cars while simultaneously trying to hold an umbrella and our dresses and trying to prevent getting the pale pink satin dirty with mud").

My old friend Mary and my new friend Annie at the wedding.

My roommate from freshman year at George Fox, Emily.

And finally, the beautiful bride, Amanda.

My time in Washington ended with gallivanting around Olympia with one of my other best friends, Abbie. We went by my favorite used book store, walked around the harbor, and ate at my favorite restaurant downtown. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip.

Day Nine Hundred Sixteen

I spent the last week in Washington and filled up all of my time there with people and places I love. I'm exhausted and overly emotional about having to leave what I consider my home state, but it was an amazing trip - with a highlight of getting to stand next to one of my best friends as she got married on Saturday. Amanda, I love you to pieces and am so honored that I got to be a part of your wedding. To many more adventures in the future!

Photos from this past week to come soon.

Day Nine Hundred Two

Today, I spent most of my work day with a delightful German man named Claus. I've learned that in grad school, at one point or another everything in your lab breaks (literally everything, including grad students). And when that item is your $17000 microscope, you get to meet repairmen like Claus. In his own words, the inside of our microscope was "so dusty you could plant a potato garden." Now you understand what I mean when I say the man was delightful. He flipped our microscope on its head (which made me very nervous, but he seemed totally comfortable with) and worked some kind of magic involving hammers, Allen wrenches, sand paper, and lots of grease to make our vintage scope work like new again. He even polished it for us while telling me about one of his upcoming service trips to a naval base in San Diego to fix a submarine periscope. In short, Claus was the coolest.

The rest of the day was spent having an office hour to which nobody came, going to a seminar about catalysis where I understood about 20% of what was said, and polishing up my grad school presentation I'll be giving next week at my alma mater. Because guys, next week I'll be in Washington. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

I also replaced a (very) small but (kind of) important part on the interior of my car today! All by myself! Granted it was just the little piece that the sun visor clips in to, but I was still pretty proud of myself. I accidentally snapped the original one in half last week when I apparently got a bit overaggressive with the visor because it was way too sunny out for the middle of "winter." This resulted in the clip flying toward the windshield and the visor flying back toward my face, which made my drive home on the highway ever so exciting. Atleast it only cost $3.50 for the replacement part.