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