Some catch up stuff

So we decided to name the cats Isaac and Marie (Sir Isaac Newton and Marie Curie). I had thought my sister might think it was weird for me to name the cat Marie (since that's what she goes by), but she seemed to think it would be fun to have a namesake. So Marie it is. What happened to the names we'd picked out before? Tycho and Tesla? Well, we met the cats and they didn't seem like good names any more. This morning it was hard to leave the house - they both curled up on my lap and were purring like crazy.

In other news, when I got back from Germany I found out my ginger had blossomed! In all the time I've had it it never bloomed. But I think we finally got a pot that suited it and now it has these wonderful fragrant blossoms.
I might have mentioned before I left for Germany that I got a haircut. I answered an ad for "hair models" and discovered that they meant people to have the new girl cut on to see if she was going to work out. Anyway, she cut my hair for an hour and spent another hour mousing and straightening and here's the result - very Jennifer Anniston I think. Doesn't look like that often though, since I spend about 3 minutes brushing and braiding in the morning and call it done.

Isaac and ....

Why get one kitten when you can get two, for twice the fun and trouble making potential? On Friday we adopted a pair of adorable kittens, over the weekend they were fixed (probably - the boy still looks like he has his... uh... equipment. Does anyone know if they just cut the connection? We expected they would cut everything...) and we picked them up at the shelter this morning. We got them from a shelter that rescues cats that are in other shelters and are supposed to be put to sleep. It was amazing to walk in there - there were hundreds of cats in cages all meowing and wanting to be petted, it seemed. It was a very different experience from all the cat fairs we had been to previously where they wanted us to fill out lots of paperwork and said they'd call us later to let us know our application had been approved. Those cat rescue places just didn't know the number of cats needing adoption... We picked our two kitties out of a cage of guys that all rushed to the edge of the cage begging to be petted. They'd been fostered so they all had very sweet personalities and these two seemed especially friendly. The calico is a girl and I haven't yet figured out a name for her. The other (gray?) is a boy and Chris has named him Isaac - short for Sir Isaac Newton. Aren't they cute? Here's some more photos.




On Saturday Chris and I went sailing in the bay with Prof. Cannon and a bunch of other folks from lab. This trip has become a yearly tradition and Saturday was a beautiful day for it. Unfortunately on Sunday I woke up with a killer headache and spent the whole day in bed pretty much. I theorize that there's a couple of muscles in my neck that when they get overused give me these killer tension headaches. The last time I felt like this I had ridden a road bike where I have to hold my head up to look at the road and wore out the muscles in the back of my neck. On Saturday while sailing I spent a lot of time looking at the windex at the top of the mast, and I think that made my neck muscles all messed up. Anyway, I feel much better today, which is good because I can play with the kittens and go to work and get out of bed.

Sorry I haven't posted photos from Germany yet. They're cool too and really should be posted, but life has been happening.

Guess who???

:-)

Thoughts from Heidelberg

Traveling is about food for me. We've eaten schnitzel and spatzl and gratin and went on a special trip to buy gummy candy at a store that sells about 100 different types of gummy candies. (We settled on gummy sour fruits with infused Vitamin C - so it must be healthy!) Then today I was in pursuit of these spherical, baseball sized pastries we had seen in shops. Turns out there's two types and we had to sample both. The first was schlosskugeln, which is kind of like a ball of dry angel food cake with nutella in the middle, dipped in chocolate. Then the other type is called schneeballen and is some type of deep fried crenelated doughball thing covered in sugar. I had to have two of those, they were so good. Oh, and this part of Germany is especially good because they're more wine people than beer people and if you ask for white wine in most restaurants they bring you Reisling, my favorite! Yum.

That above was written while I was in Germany - I had thought I would have another chance to hook up with the internet but did not. I'll post more thoughts on Germany soon, but first, a photo: This was at a wine festival and we wanted to take a photo of these guys because the lederhosen was too hilarious. Then they grabbed Ann and I and some really drunk guy hoisted me up on his shoulders and then after the photo ran around a bunch and pretended he was going to drop me. I was so traumatised. But it's very funny in retrospect.

Where has she been???

Nothing much going on so there's nothing much to write about. I'm going to Germany on Sunday to present at my first conference and I've spent this week making little movies and stuff for it. In fact, here's a movie (on YouTube) of my robot doing a pretty good job of climbing up a little wall. Isn't that cute? In the evenings I've been knitting (I finished another shawl and I'll post photos soon) and hanging out with Chris and reading.

Last weekend we went to a craft fair and to Lis's wedding and then spent a lot of time lazily hanging around. It was really good to just relax. Anyway, here's a photo of me riding pillion on Chris's bike. We learned this trick in Amsterdam where they do it all the time. Funny, huh?

Blood draw

A couple of weeks ago Chris had to go into our campus clinic to have his blood drawn. I asked him afterwards who had drawn his blood and told him that guy was a good stick. Chris replied, "Ok, sure. It hurt about as much as the other time I had blood drawn." I was totally amazed - did that mean he had only had blood drawn twice in his life that he remembered? Apparently, yes. I have had blood drawn countless numbers of times. Surely well into the hundreds. When I'm healthy these days I still have blood drawn twice a year. This gives me insight though on why he drags his feet about giving blood. I wish I could donate but I'm, alas, ineligible.

In other news, I bought a wedding dress this week and Chris came back from his 12 days in Taiwan and Japan. He has some really lovely photos from Taiwan especially. I may try to get him to post them. My robot is almost kind of climbing and I hope to get some video sometime soon. I'll probably post that too.