Trashy!

I think this site is hilarious. Warning though - I found it while lingerie shopping for a friend's bachelorette party. Who buys this stuff? And why don't they have a store so I can try it on?!

Couches. Finally!

So the headache has mostly abated. I don't think it was actually from caffeine deprivation as Ab suggested because I try to keep the caffeine to a minimum exactly so it will solve my headache problems. Another thought I had was that maybe it was because of how tight that helmet was? Just another bogus theory for the Institute of Presumed Science.

Laurel, in the type of fit of procrastination that could only be acheived by an impending deadline (her defense!), got on Craig's List and got us some couches. So now, after a mere 8 months in our apartment, we actually have furniture for the living room. Chris is thrilled. He was tired of sitting on my bed to work at my house. That gave him a backache. Here's some photos of the new decor.



In the above photo you may note the lovely box end table, cleverly disguised with an old bathmat. The couch was so dirty we had to cover it with something - right now it's covered with some old sheets. I think they look pretty nice though. We're contemplating having the upholstery cleaned but we don't know how much that costs.



You can see our other new couch on the right in the photo above. Laurel was telling us how she brought it home on the roof of the car and even managed to carry it in on her own. When she told us that it was also a fold out bed Chris and I were confused - usually those are really heavy! When we figured out the mystery we had to laugh. In college there were these chairs that a lot of people had in their dorm rooms that were kind of awkward to sit on but were entirely made out of foam so you could unfold them and they made an extra little bed. The universal college name for this type of chair is a Flip-and-Fuck. And it so happens our new couch is essentially a glorified Flip-and-Fuck. What a laugh. I guess we're still college students after all.

Also, here's a photo of the baby blanket I crocheted for Brandy. Don't tell. I doubt she'd ever find this page so I'm not worried...



Special thanks for Abigail for teaching me to crochet when she was visiting and making up this design for me and helping me pick good colors. I've moved on to my second project now - an afghan for Chris. It's made with the Q hook (Q for quick!) and done with 2 strands simultaneously. I'd be working on it right now except I left the project at the cabin in our rush to leave last weekend. Boo hoo. Good thing we're going back this weekend.

Caffeine

Caffeine is such a drug. I used to never have any caffeine except the little bit that was in iced tea. Sometimes. Then I started dating Chris and he has a coffee/coca cola addiction. I started taking sips of his coffee and kind of liking it and drinking soda (usually diet and caffeine free) when we went out to dinner. And I discovered that when I had a headache, which I often do, if I take a couple of ibuprofen and drink a cup of coffee (where by coffee, Chris and I always mean mocha - who can drink such bitter stuff straight?) my headache goes away and is replaced with a sense of euphoria. That happened this morning too. I've had a headache since Friday (I'm not sure why) and was just barely surviving this morning. And then had a cup of coffee. And now life is good again.

I don't know why I've had a headache since Friday. Usually stress causes them but I was on skiing vacation. Chris and I theorized altitude sickness (I don't usually get that while skiing), dehydration, or lack of sleep. We go on these vacations where we come back needing vacation to recover. Yesterday for Easter we had brunch with some friends and I was half asleep through the whole thing. When we got back I napped for almost 3 hours and then slept another 9 or 10 last night. On Saturday we got up at 6am to get to Heavenly right when it opened. The skiing there on Friday and Saturday was great. But busy. I've not had to stand in such long lines all season.

I read the book Kite Runner yesterday. It was really good. Kind of intense but very good.

Oldish Photos

Here's some kind of older photos from eating at Paxti's awhile ago. I can't remember how it was that we all got together, but Steph had her camera and one thing led to another. Of course you can't see it because the photos are all headshots but Brandy was just starting to show when we met up. I haven't really had any friends be pregnant before so it's interesting to notice all the changes happening. Like on this particular day I really noticed that her boobs were enormous. I'm sure she'll appreciate that comment. :)

Yummy powder

I say yummy powder, but actually I don't like powder very much. I can't figure out what to do with it - all the ski techniques are backwards.

Anyway, I'm here in lovely Lake Tahoe. Heavenly is reporting 7 feet of snow since last Saturday. This is amazing considering that 2 weeks ago I was skiing here and it was like 60 degrees and all the snow was melting and I was totally sad that it seemed like the season was ending.

We were at Squaw Valley today - it's definitely a harder hill. They have steeper terrain and they don't groom it as avidly as Heavenly seems to. It's good to have some challenge but I like easy stuff too. I hate going out skiing and feeling like I hardly have learned anything because I'm falling down and going really slow.

I tried out my new helmet today and it was horrible. I think it was just too small. It was pressing my ears to my head which made them really hurt. The day improved drastically after I left the helmet at the bottom of the hill. I guess I'll have to take it back to REI and try again.

I'm also enjoying my cute new swimsuit. I tried it out in the hot tub - I got it on sale from Lands End. I couldn't resist after I saw how great my virtual model looked in it. Ha. Just kidding.

The drive up hear last night took forever. Well, 6 hours. We had to put on chains going over I-80 and then we left them on because we were convinced we would need them to get up to the cabin. And then it turned out the road to the cabin was dry. Ah well. Now we're here and having fun!

Go daddy go!

Here's a photo of my dad finishing his first half marathon:



Good job pop!

Virtual Me!

I just found the coolest thing. If you go to the Land's End webpage you can make a virtual you and use it to try on clothes. I may buy all my clothes this way now! I didn't have to go to the mall and I didn't have to spend lots of useless time putting clothes on and off. So fun! It's like a Teresa Barbie. He he...

So many travels, so little time

This year I am going to:

• Austin - Jill's Bachelorette party - April
  
• Princeton - Reunions - May
  
• Austin - Jill's Wedding - June
  
• Oak Ridge - High school reunion - June
  
• Denver - Ed's wedding - June
  
• Prague(!?) - Conference and fun - July
  
• Idaho - Rafting, maybe - August
  
• Chicago - Jaime's wedding - September
  
• Florida - for a cruise - December
  
• Idaho - see Chris's family (presumably) - December
  

It's going to be madness. But think of all the frequent flier miles! No one else is allowed to get married. Or plan anything fun that I want to attend.

Also, isn't it weird that an aerospace engineer is kind of afraid to fly? I hate it when we're coming in for a landing and the pilot is banking the plane really hard and decending really fast and the wings and engines are making all that decelleration noise... whew!

Skiing and fame

Woo hoo! I'm famous! You know... kind of...

Skiing this past weekend was really fun. It's still 60 degrees up there but freezing at night so the snow is either slushy or frozen. On Sunday I got to take a free couple hours on a pair of demo skis. This had the (of course intended) effect of making me want new skis. Badly. The demo skis were a lot heavier but boy were they better. The sharp edges held the ice really well and they were so fast and stable. It was awesome. (The K2 webpage, by the way, is an example of ridiculous web design. They need to have a "no gimick" option for browsing.)

I was kind of the mountain guide while I was there. A bad mountain guide. I took the guys through the terrain park and was taking photos of them all going over jumps when Jim did something bad on a landing and dislocated his shoulder. Owee! He was sure not enjoying that toboggan ride down.

I was telling my dad on one of the lift rides up that I thought it was interesting that I was somehow in charge of what runs we were doing. At the top of every lift the guys would turn to me and say, "What next?" His comment was "Well, they're all married." He he.

Tahoe

Just got back from Lake Tahoe. The skiing there was a little slushy but great! It's really warm up there. I love the temperatures but I can't help but think about global warming when I'm skiing on a 55 degree day. Apparently it got up to 80 here in Palo Alto.

Chris and I skiied some scary stuff today and I got to think about the psychological aspects of skiing. I haven't had to do that in awhile - used to be blue runs were scary for me so I'd have to concentrate really hard on just making the next turn and not freaking out. Today I went on a really scary black diamond (KT-22 - G.S. Bowl at Squaw for those in the know) and had to keep reminding myself to just make the next turn and don't think about the ones after.

Women and Men and Engineering

I heard a talk yesterday by a very successful female recent Ph.D. graduate. She said that any woman who said they hadn't had troubles with being a woman in engineering was either clueless or lying. I had an interaction today that would have been different (I believe) if I had been talking with a woman.

There's a guy in another department who is doing research very similar to mine. I didn't realize how similar until I talked with him today and realized that it's very similar. Practically identically similar. I lack confidence in my work so I hate reading conference papers because I always freak out thinking, "Omigod! Someone has already done this research!" I used to be worse about it - I would go to Tim and say "Look! This person is doing exactly the same thing as us!" He would always scoff and point out some small but very significant way we were different and then I would go away feeling better.

Anyway, talking to this guy was freaking me out a little for a similar reason. But he was all Mr. Confidence "This is how this works." Honestly I thought some of the things he said were wrong and I would say "Oh, are you sure? Because I thought they were more like this. You know, I'm not positive or anything." And he would realize I was right and continue on unphased. (Maybe this is a me thing and a confidence thing, not a men vs. women thing.) I can't help but think though that if he had been a woman we would have been working now on ways to collaborate and distinguish ourselves instead of me sitting here all afraid writing this blog entry.

Confidence T. Have confidence. Anyway, this guy recently passed his qualifying exams by presenting the research he's done. So at least I know my research is more than ample to pass Mech. E. quals.

Randomness

Brandy is having a girl! I ran into her while out geocaching the other day and she gave me the good news. I asked her if little Zelda Zoe is doing well (she and Yasha have a thing for z-names) and she tells me that when faced with the reality of having a girl Zoya just doesn't seem like that great of a name after all. We'll see. What about Zeresa guys?

There must be something in the water because everyone is going through huge changes. Stephanie and Bruno are moving and marrying, Stephanie and Rafael are changing jobs, Michele and Andy are moving to Michigan (sadness), Brandy and Yasha are moving and having the baby, and on and on. Of course I would be changing jobs if Chris hadn't reminded me (when I threatened to quit in February) that I always get ansy in February and it just wouldn't be fair to quit then. Given some time, I think I'll hang in there awhile longer. It's not like I have something I want to do more.

In other news I'm going to share the title of Chief Medical Officer for Brandy and Yasha's "Institute of Presumed Science." Requirements for officership in this institute include accute hypochondria and lots of bizarre quasi-scientific theories about lots of things that have no actual basis in science. Like my theory that in March I'm sleepy because I have allergies. I'll try to post other theories here as I remember them. I'm going to propose this image as our logo to go on our lab coats:

The Wedding Date

I saw the Wedding Date with Laurel last night as Chris was working his butt off on some paper. I liked it! The plot was pretty unbelievable, but if you don't think too hard about that then it was really good. I want someone to explain to me how they could have fallen in love so quickly and what their argument with the money was about. Apparently it's based on a book by Elizabeth Young called Asking for Trouble. Maybe I should read that for more possible explanations.