Greece photos!

What you've all been waiting for! My Greece album, in two parts.

I finally assembled a webpage from the photos from Greece. The 9 of us with 4 cameras took 1200 photos and I pared these down to only 550 or so to post online. I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I have!

Sushi/Saturday

Ok, back in time a little further. Last Friday I hosted one of our now infamous sushi parties. I get fish and veggies, make rice, and everyone comes and rolls their own and drinks sake. Steph had never made sushi before but seemed excited about it at the time. She even claimed to like how it tasted - the vegi kind - when she had made it herself. It's like food and crafts combined! How can you not like that?? Notice the orchid in the photo below - a gift from Matt, Anne, Shannon, and Chris C. It came with some gift certificates to Cold Stone so I can take my family next time I'm home.


On Saturday, as already mentioned, I went to the hottest wedding ever. Chris's former roommate Nick got married to Stephanie. (Yet another Stephanie.) It was in an un-airconditioned church and the thermometer at the front read 105. Oh, and everything was running very late and it was one of the longest weddings I've ever been to. Sounds like fun, huh? For that I missed Amelia's 1st birthday party. I didn't feel too bad though because I spent her actual birthday hanging out with her and Brandy and Steph.

Here's what I wore to the wedding:
Know what that is?!?! That's my peacock feathers shawl I've been knitting on for 100-150 hours now! I finished it on Friday and blocked it and tastelessly wore white to a wedding so that I could show the thing off. The blocking process was quite amazing. It's this little delicate thing and they say to stretch it to like 5 times its size, and you get it a little wet and it stretches and stays! It's like magic!

Back to the present now - last night Chris and I went to a dance held by Katherine and Jonathan, who are getting married this weekend. It was really fun - we got to practice lots of waltzing and kind of taught ourselves lindy. The rest of that wedding is this weekend - we're looking forward to more fun dancing and I'm trying to decide if it's a bad idea to wear a bridesmaid dress for a wedding I haven't yet gone to. I have this really cute dress for Ken & Kendall's wedding and I want to wear it to the wedding tomorrow... any thoughts would be appreciated.

Oh, also an announcement regarding my engagement: I'm not. All readers of this blog will almost certainly find out about it some way other than via blog. And in my blog I won't be oblique about it, I promise. An astute reader did notice that I'm wearing a ring on my left finger now: it's a lovely blue apatite ring that Chris got for me in Greece when I was admiring it. I didn't want to stop wearing the garnet on my right hand and the left was unoccupied.

I've been working a lot more than usual this week - trying to work more while I'm home to make up for when I won't be. In a meeting with my advisor this week I found out that he thinks the controller I've designed is a contribution (!!! - Ph.D. speak for "major contribution to my field, without at least one of which I cannot graduate") and he wants a timeline for a demo of a robot climbing with my controller, to show how great my contribution is. So I've been working hard on that - I'd like to graduate sooner, rather than later. I expect to have a pretty fun demo in a couple of weeks or so.

Last Sunday in San Francisco

So we're gradually working our way back in time. Last Sunday Steph and Chris and I all put our bikes on the train and rode up to San Francisco to escape the heat (it was an unbelievable 104 degrees in Menlo Park this weekend) and to have lunch at the Ferry Building with a friend of Steph and Troy's. Steph had never been across the Golden Gate Bridge before so we biked on over there as well and biked the majority of the bridge.


Here's Steph and I on the approach to the bridge.


Here's an unnamed tourist, too pooped to pop.

For dinner we went out with most of the Greece crew to Evvia - a really fancy Greek restaurant in Palo Alto. This group of friends has a charming tradition of when one person graduates and gets a job, that person takes everyone out to a nice dinner. Sara was the graduate in this case - she recently completed her residency and got a job as a OB in the east bay. Sadly that meant that she and Eric moved. Anyway, the dinner was great. The whole day was really fun, in fact.

Teresa's got a brand new bag

So I'll try to catch everyone up on what's been happening by working in reverse for maximum confusion. My sister was visiting all this past week and one project we had decided to work on was sewing a needle case for my large collection of double pointed needles. I wrote to my friend Lis to see if she would loan me her sewing machine, and she responded that actually she really wanted to give away her old sewing machine to a loving home. (She called it an "early used wedding present." Heh.) We went and picked it up and my sister tells me it's a really great machine. To teach me how to use it we decided to do a project - something simple like a bag. I got the materials and the result is pictured below. It's a great bag - much bigger than I expected it to be. Very sturdy, good looking, and now I kinda know how to read patterns and use my sewing machine. Just one of many fun projects and activities my sister and I did while she was here.

Life Happening

It's been one of those months where so much life is happening I don't have time to write about it. I think things will calm down here shortly and then I'll be able to relay all that's going on. In the meantime, here's a photo of the world's cutest baby on her 1st birthday party (which I couldn't make it to because I had to go to the world's hotest wedding instead). But my sister went to the birthday party as my emmisary.

Photos from way back when

While at home my mom had me go through the photo albums looking for photos from our times at Ocean City, Maryland. My grandparents own a condo there and as kids we went over frequently for vacations. Now my uncle is remodeling the place and wants some nice black and whites to hang on the walls, so I went down to Wallgreens and used the scanner/printer (good setup, by the way, it was really easy to make these prints). I liked some of the photos so much I had them burned to disk so I could share with my blog readers.

My sister and I


My mom says that after a day at the beach I always found some place quiet to hide, like on the shag rug under the coffee table.


Me


Me and my mom and sister. Hard to believe my mom was about my age now in this photo.

Family Photo

Here's a family photo for you. My mom, sister, dad, me, and Aunt Teresa. (I'm her namesake.)

My dad is out of the hospital, thank goodness. I feel sick just being in a hospital. I think he's a little bored at home though - he's used to going to work every day and you just wonder what to fill your days with when you're not doing that. I've heard this happens when people retire without a hobby. I'll be home on Sunday - I've missed home.

Greece Teaser

Greece was wonderful! Here's a photo just to tease you, until I get a full on webpage up.

At the moment though I'm in Tennessee to spend time with my family, as my father was just diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. More on that later too, probably.