Now in Tennessee

On Thursday Chris and I left California. He went straight to Boise without a hitch, and I flew to Chicago where they had the nastiest snarl-up of airplane traffic I've ever been involved with (owing to all the snow in Denver I suppose). I ended up flying stand-by on a flight to Nashville and having my mom pick me up there. My luggage rejoined me today. This is not the worst travel story I've heard recently by a long shot. Chris's sister was trying to fly from Chicago to Boise via Denver. She ended up flying Chicago to Denver to San Francisco. Taking a car to San Jose, then buying a new ticket on Southwest and flying from San Jose to Reno to Salt Lake City to Boise. She should win some prize for most states visited inadvertently. I mean, I think she has been to more states and traveling longer now than if she'd just gotten in a car and drove to Boise.

Now I've started meeting people involved with the wedding - the caterer, the photographer, soon I'll meet with the priest, the make-up lady, etc. They keep asking me how I want to do certain things and I just have no idea. What size table should the guest book go on? 54 inch round? 72 inch round? small square? Why should I care?! I'm sure it'll all be nice.

When I'm not doing that stuff I'm doing stuff my family has always found fun. Working puzzles, watching White Christmas, eating. Lots. We re-covered a set of chairs that my mom got from my grandmother. That was fun and felt very productive. My parents' new house is totally amazingly beautiful. I'm just rambling. I'll ramble more later.

Bachelorette on the Loose

The above title was what was written on the giant crown with veil that I wore to breakfast on Saturday in my brand new pajamas with 10 of my best girlfriends. How fun! They came and kidnapped me at 10 on Saturday, we ate breakfast, went hiking and geocaching, and went to one of the coolest knitting stores I've ever seen where I taught everyone how to knit and we collectively made a scarf. What fun! Brandy organized everything and it was fun to have all my worlds collide with all my friends from different groups meeting each other for the first time. The few I have talked to said they were very glad to meet each other (I've heard tales of worlds colliding and friends hating each other). Anyway, I had a blast!

High IQ link to vegetarianism

The BBC reports a link between high IQ and vegetarianism. Don't you wanna look smart too??

Finished Sweater

So I finished that sweater I was working on for ages. Chris has the most amazing talent for taking unflattering photos of me, so here's the least of all evils:
And another kitty photo from that same day:
Chris took off for Aspen this morning for his bachelor party and I'm looking forward to this weekend when Brandy has planned a bachelorette event of some kind that's totally secret from me. Meanwhile I've been working on the research for my journal paper and making some final wedding phone calls and getting really really excited!

Wedding beautification and a journal paper

Last weekend I went to Kabuki with Steph S and had a facial. I love Kabuki in the winter especially because I can sit in the sauna for a half hour and finally finally warm up. On Wednesday I went to the dentist and got my permanent cap put on. It looks really good - it matches my other front tooth very well. (Unfortunately the dentist said I'm probably eventually want to have the other main front tooth capped as well because the caps don't discolor and my teeth certainly will... blegh...) I've not picked at my nails in two weeks, although the hammer incident last week messed up a couple of them. I've resolved to not try to pick up the cats outside without leather gloves to allow the impressive scratches on my arms to heal. And this morning I stepped on the scale to find I'm the exact weight I wanted to be before the wedding. I'm ready!

Chris finished making (yes, making!) his wedding ring last night. We learned that Shreve & Co was going to charge $3600 for a platinum ring of the size he wanted and both left the store thinking about a friend of ours whose fiance made her a beautiful shiny engagement ring out of Stainless Steel. So we asked the friend who made the ring if he would help Chris make his wedding band, and last night they finished. We compared it to my platinum ring and certainly neither of us can tell the difference. His wedding band cost 2 people about 12 hours of time, and about $3 worth of materials. Pretty cool.

In other news this week I got an e-mail from the organizer of the conference I went to in Germany. He has invited me to submit and extended version of my conference paper for a journal that he's guest editing. A journal paper! This is like the holy grail for grad students! Most grad students (in my lab anyway) turn their thesis into a journal paper, and that's the first journal paper they get! Things are looking up!

Finally, from the files, some more pictures that I've been meaning to post for ages. These are from last December when I went sailing with the lab.

We passed this ship as we were sailing around in the bay - there was a wedding happening on the deck and all the guests were dressed in old timey clothes. It looked really fun!

More kitten photos

People claimed to really like the photos of our kittens, so here's some more.
Marie is really good at what Chris calls "prairie dogging." She can stand up on her back legs for quite awhile. Also notice in this photo her giant paws - she's polydactyl!
Aren't they sweet? Isaac is in his favorite spot in the back of this photo on top of the cat tree donated to us by Julia & Shannon.
Here's a better view of Isaac on his watchtower.
The cats get the biggest kick out of the simplest toys. They must have spent hours playing with this paper bag in the corner.
Are they cuddling or are they biting each other? Sometimes it's hard to tell...
We're trying to harness train the cats so they can go out on walks. So far it hasn't been much of a success or a failure. Marie seems to like it but is pretty timid. Isaac bolts for the nearest cover and hunkers down in terror. Oh well.

My favorite baby

I don't mean the kittens this time (although every cat sitter I contacted called the kittens my babies). Here's some photos of Amelia, now at about 16 months old and such a sweetie.
Amelia with her Grandma
Amelia with her Ma
Amelia beautiful all on her own

Roofing

For Chris's birthday yesterday I surprised him by taking him to do something that he had never done but always wanted to do. (I gave him these clues and he was totally unable to guess what it was... especially since I next told him it was in Brisbane.) We volunteered for Habitat for Humanity yesterday and were assigned the job of roofing. Chris was really excited when he found out what we would be up to, so that was a total success. We spent all day cutting and nailing shingles and managed to cover about one and a half porch roofs. Unfortunately I am really untalented with a hammer and managed to hammer my thumb over and over until eventually it was bleeding and Chris wouldn't let me hammer any more. Chris is so easy to please - how many people would be excited to do 8 hours of manual labor as a birthday present?

After that, we came home feeling beaten with hammers ourselves, and then went out to dinner with friends to Chris's favorite Chicago style pizza. All in all I'd say it was a fun day.

Thanksgiving and so forth

We had such a fun Thanksgiving. Chris and I went to Boise to see his family and just hung out and ate and slept and then ate some more. It was so relaxing. The kittens didn't seem to have missed us when we returned. The daughter of the downstairs neighbor stayed in our apartment while we were gone and fed them and played with them. I'm not sure they even noticed our absence.

Before I left I had this great meeting with my advisor. I had been working on this idea that I thought would be right in line with the "hard problems" he's always wanting me to think about. We talked for like an hour with me explaining, and him coming up with problems with the idea, and me (practically ranting) explaining to him why he was wrong and those weren't actually problems. After about an hour he said he needed a break. We met again in another hour and he had regrouped somewhat, but I was still able to tell him all the reasons his problems with my idea were wrong, and then after another half hour he sent me away because he said his brain was full. Ha! This is such a sharp contrast to all the meetings I had with him when I was first starting out where I'd propose an idea, and he'd tell me what was wrong with it, and I'd leave the room practically in tears. Maybe I will graduate one of these days after all...

Epic Kitten Battle

More cute kitten overload. Did I mention our kitties are locked in epic battle? Here's some examples of their more recent struggles...



Who could hope to beat such a feriocious beastie?
Unfortunately his ferocious appearance is somewhat diminished when he's spotted carrying around a neon pink-haired My Little Pony.The kittens are so fun...

Matt, Carrie, Wedding Dresses and Veils

So Chris's brother Matt was out visiting with his girlfriend Carrie this weekend. They're one of the few people I've ever known to actually be spontaneous and take an airline up on one of those crazy last minute flight offers. Here's an example of the type of exciting things Chris and his brother do together: Mac Party! We also went to the Ferry Building in San Francisco, Chris and I
finished our last marriage counseling class, and we went and saw the movie Stranger Than Fiction (I recommend it). That was all Saturday.

On Sunday the boys did a ridiculous bike ride, and girls went and helped my friend Stephanie pick out a wedding dress. Here's the first one she tried: Next I hung out with some friends and we made hair combs to go with my veil and wedding attire. Here's some photos from that:



Notice anything in one of those photos? Like maybe my new teeth?These are my teeth post whitening but still with the old temporary cap on my right front tooth. Looks pretty nice huh? Even the temporary cap isn't as jankey as the old tooth.

Cute kittens

Cute kitten photos for you. Lots of stuff happened this weekend and I have lots of photos to post, so I'll do it a little at a time so you don't get overloaded. Ha.
Isaac loves to curl up on my knitting chair cuddled up with the sweater I'm knitting. I'm lucky he doesn't particularly seem interested in clawing it or playing with the yarn. This weekend I finished the body of the sweater and started on the sleeves. I should get a photo of that too...

Last Wednesday we got our first wedding RSVPs, and last Thursday we got our first wedding gift. Here it is - a set of four cute plate/bowl sets for soup and sandwiches. The stuff came with so much packaging that the kittens were sure it was their birthday come early - especially Isaac. He kept throwing his green mouse toy into the pile and it would make a loud rustling noise and then he'd have to tear up the packaging to attack it. Funny kitties.

The price of vanity...

...apparently is 400 bucks, 2 hours of being rather uncomfortable and at least 24 hours of being pretty acutely uncomfortable. Whatever that whitening treatment was it made my teeth hurt so badly. They're really white now though. Too bad I don't feel at all like smiling.

Pestilence, Udon, Amazing Music and Disgusting Dentistry

Lots of stuff happened this past weekend. First off, Friday we were visited by numerous nasty visitors. Chris noticed Thursday night that Isaac was missing some hair on his tail, and he thought of a reason that would account for that and also the unusual ring shaped itchy spot on my arm. That would be ringworm (don't panic! it's not a worm! it's the same fungus as athletes foot). So we had to drop the kitties off at the vet on Friday for a ringworm bath and I went to buy ringworm cream. Also, when it starts raining in California the ants decide to come in the house. We'd been fighting a recent infestation our normal minimal kill way, which is to vacuum up the ones in the house and spray ant spray around the hole they're coming in. Only this time they were coming in through cracks near the tub and every time we sprayed they just found a new way in. (Friday morning I woke up and there was an ant highway so dark that it looked like someone had spilled coffee on the rug.) Friday evening we got ant bait that they take back to the hive and it kills all the ants, and at first there was an absolute explosion in the ant numbers. We're talking scary ant numbers here. Numbers that caused us to talk about a story we'd heard of friends in Africa who, when the army ants came, put their bed in the front lawn, put all four legs in kerosene, and just watched while the ants ate everything even remotely edible in sight (we were a little worried for the kitties). When I closed my eyes I saw ants. Whew. I hope never to see that many ants again. Anyway, eventually the bait worked and now there's no more ants. Blegh.

Saturday we went for a Catholic marriage counseling class in San Francisco. It wasn't any big deal and we didn't learn anything we didn't already know (except perhaps that I want kids sooner than Chris, but whatever). The class makes me really glad I'm marrying Chris and not any of the guys who came before. Anyway, the class is right near Japantown, so afterwards we went and had delicious Japanese lunch (udon with vegi tempura! yum!). After that we went by the Giants' stadium, where they were having, of all things, a ski jump competition. We watched for awhile and saw some amazing falls - the snow was really bad (read, slow) and so we saw some horrendous falls - especially for the girls who were lighter weight and didn't quite get enough speed going. One girl fell in the netting between the jump and the landing (like a 30 foot fall!), another girl landed switch, skied off the snow onto the two by fours along the side of the jump (what were they thinking??) and eventually off the jump. She had to be taken away in a stretcher. Scary really. We also got to see Tony Hawk in the half pipe. He was rad, man.

After that I met Brandy in Berkeley for an unusual no boys no babies night. We went and saw one of our favorite artists, Rachel Garlin, give a fabulous performance at the Freight and Salvage. I'll be so excited to hear her newest album! It was great to get to spend some time just chatting with Brandy too.

Sunday was an especially long bookclub with an interesting life modification component. We all wrote on a piece of paper one thing we were going to do between now and the next book club to improve our life (or generally keep it going well), and then each of the other members wrote something they suggested we do along the same lines. It was easy to see how well my life is going by comparison. Mine were things like: finish knitting sweater, write vows/sweet letter for wedding. One poor girl's was things like: sleep at least 8 hours, 4 nights per week. Eat at least one vegetable per day. Exercise at least 3 hours per week. She's having a rough time. Anyway, it was unusually constructive compared to our usual gossip/rant-fest.

And now the last part of my title: today I went to have the first appointment for getting my tooth capped. The dentist (who had a much lighter touch on the novocaine than the last dentist) filed down my tooth and then as long as he had the drill out offered to file down some of the unevenness on my other teeth. He got out the mirror to show me what he meant and I got a glimse of the filed down tooth that is to be capped. Oh man. You have never seen such a hideous tooth in your whole life. It was filed down to a little stubby cone shape. On top of that, that tooth is kinda greyish brown because of the dead nerve, and the worst colored part was the part that was left in my mouth. And on top of that, the poking around and drilling bruised my gums a little bit, so what I saw was a disgusting stubby, grey-brown nasty tooth stuck in some really disgusting gums. We're talking Dr. Bukk's special. The dentist had to stop drilling while I laughed my ass off. I wished I had a camera because it was hysterically nasty.

They made a temporary crown and I'm going to come back on Wednesday and have my teeth whitened. I'm finding I'm unbelievably vain and they match the color of the crown to the color my teeth are right now and then the crown doesn't ever change color. So I wouldn't be able to get my teeth whitened later. Then after that they make a permanent crown to match the color of my freshly whitened teeth and when it's done I come back and have it cemented in. I may take a photo of the temporary crown because even it's kind of weird and Dr. Bukk like. But it's a better color than the old tooth at least.

Elective dentistry

Chris and I both went to the dentist today for a regular cleaning. (Well, Chris hadn't been in ages so he gets to go back for debridement - which means cleaning the tarter off his teeth so the dentist can see them.) While I was there I asked about what I can do about this front tooth that's still discolored (I talked about this with regards to the root canal back in April here and here). Here's a photo: So I talked with the dentist today about what I can do to make this tooth the right color again. Maybe I'm vain, but it just drives me crazy that in all these photos I have it doesn't match the other tooth and I don't want a zillion wedding photos with this tooth I hate. The only real option they offered was a crown, which is expensive and requires two office visits (and two novocaine shots - ouch!) but I think I'm going to suck it up and do it anyway. Apparently root canals (well, the dead nerve that necessitated the root canal) weaken your teeth and eventually you're likely to have to get a cap. Blegh. Dentists.

Home Again

Well, I survived the road trip. 2400 miles in total, all of which I personally drove. I'm trying to sort through the photos and video (yes, video) that I made on the trip to make an interesting DVD that will be enjoyed by all (by which I mean, by my dad and I). In the last couple of days of the trip we drove back across Montana and into Idaho, dropping down from Missoula and staying at Chris's parents' cabin for two nights, which was, as usual, delicious. If you knew how great that cabin was you would all be brownosing and bribing me to get on my good side to see if I could get you an invite to the cabin.

All good things must come to an end though, and now I'm back in California enjoying the warmth but not really the going back to lab part. Oh, and the kittens are still adorable and Chris is still marvelous. That's all.

The Dakotas

More photos today (posted from Butte, MT) of our adventures in the Dakotas.
Duh... you know this one...

So after seeing Mt. Rushmore we drove through South Dakota, into North Dakota. Stopping at the state line - here's a view of what that line looks like (and what I drove through for hours that day). Exciting, huh?When we got to the state line sign we pulled over at the extremely convenient turnouts, and the next car behind us pulls in as well. That whole car piles out all excited to be at one of North Dakota's biggest tourist attractions: the sign at the state line! But that means we got photos of my dad and I together at these state line signs (and somewhere out there in the world are some nice people with their whole group photographed).My state #42, his #48.
My state #43, his #49.

We camped in Theodore Roosevelt National Park - an area so exciting it made me come up with a new state motto for North Dakota: Why Bother? We spent a cold night there then drove back through Montana today. Along the road we saw signs for another National Monument, Pompeys Pillar. It's this not totally impressive rock formation (we're so jaded, coming from Devils Tower) that has a kind of nice view of the Yellowstone River. Also Clark (as in Lewis and Clark) carved his name on it.

Devils Tower

Here's my dad at Devils Tower in Wyoming. Some of you may remember it as being featured in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. Those of you that don't remember it can meet it for the first time in this photo! A giant (800 some foot) tower of random volcanic rock sticking out of north east Wyoming. We stopped by on our way from Billings, MT to Rapid City, SD. The road flies by underneath me... we've already been more than 1000 miles.

Possibly I failed to mention that I'm on a road trip with my father to see 4 of the last 5 states he's never been to: Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota. We started by both flying into Boise (my poor dad arrived 24 hours late due to a horrendous streak of bad airplane karma that I won't go into lest you lose your desire to ever fly again). We borrowed Chris's parents' giant truck and headed east.

In case you're curious, my dad's 50th state to visit will be Hawaii. After this trip I will have seven states yet to visit: Alaska, Hawaii, Utah, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

Yellowstone

Hello from Yellowstone! Not much text for this one, just some photos.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Note the snow. It's been snowing for more than 24 hours now.

A view of the lower falls in the grand canyon of the Yellowstone.

By Mammoth Springs. More snow in this picture you might notice - the cold weather really brings out the steam.

We saw lots of wildlife - both elk and bison have stood in the middle of the road completely uncaring that there was a giant truck right next to them.

Wyoming is the 41st state I have visited.

Kittens and sweater

Aren't they adorable together?
This is a funny perspective of Isaac
Isaac curled up with us to watch a movie
This is the beginning of the sweater I'm making for myself. You can see a small picture in my lap of what it will look like finished.

Wining

I love funny little tidbits on the web. Today I searched Google for "wining", because I was trying to make sure it was the correct spelling of that word (as in "Wining and dining"). Here's the first hit. What a laugh! How many medical journal articles have funny pictures of the doctors associated??

More kittens, and the plague

Here's some more photos of our little kitties. They've been pretty sweet recently except the wet cat food seems to disagree with their little bellies, resulting in bad aromas.

The plague has come to our house. Chris's advisor had something he called the 12 hour flu, which his whole family had and then Chris had last night. He ran a fever for a couple of hours, generally felt bad for about 12 hours, and is now at home sleeping it all off.

Over the weekend I went to the air show in San Francisco and started work on my first ever sweater for myself. I'll show pictures shortly... oh, and also on Friday we threw a really fun part. Actually, it was at our house but Chris Carlson made most of the food. He's such a good cook.