It looks like the plague

It looks so gross and it feels even worse.  Pants for me until they go away.  I put a quarter in the picture so you can tell how big some of them are, eww.

The pain, the pain

I'm so very annoyed right now. I forgot to put on bug spray the other day when I went to Steph's. I got bit so many times that I look like I have some horrible infectious disease (I don't). I am now convinced that I'm allergic to mosquito bites. There are fifteen on my right leg and thirteen on the left and they are all weirdly swollen and angry red. They all also itch and hurt at the same time. Its making my asthma flare up and do this weird thing were my throat is trying to close on me. That made eating breakfast this morning a fun experience. I kept gagging on my cereal, which is sad since I only eat soggy cereal. I took some benedryl hoping for some relief, I'm praying it kicks in soon. Maybe I'll get Matt to take some pictures of my legs tonight so I can scare everyone with them.

On a completely unrelated matter, why do some people have to go out of their way to make everyone believe how wonderful they are? Pretension annoys me almost as much as mosquito bites. I just don't understand putting that much effort into being something that you're not. Or even why you would care. If you truly are an amazing person the people that matter to you will already know, you don't have to prove yourself. The people who can't see it aren't worth being friends with anyway. I'm sorry it just makes me sad that I know someone who spends all their time putting up a front when really the person is great anyways. *sigh*

mmmm, tasty

I have a problem with bug bites. I guess I must taste very good to the insect population. I was encouraged to visit the doctor yesterday after a new bite grew to alarming proportions. It was dime sized on Sunday night but when I woke up yesterday it had grown to about the size of a half dollar and it was radiating heat. Fortunately, it was not Lymes Disease as several people had suggested. Not that the doctor knew what it was. To quote him, "That looks really weird". Thanks, Doc. He drew a line around the bite area and then another line so that I could track the grow.  If the bite reaches the second line I'm supposed to run back to Student Health, great system unless you like bathing.  I've included a picture just so nobody thinks I'm being a hypochondriac.

Matt and I have settled on a place. We are going to move to a larger apartment in the same complex he's already at. We picked the two bedroom town home which boasts a good sized 1,116 square feet. We're both already swooning at the idea of arranging the furniture. Of course, I'm doing it because I'm so excited and Matt is swooning because he'd rather flip flies than arrange the furniture. Thats why we have friends. He is much more excited by the prospect of Steph and Linda coming over to help than doing it himself. We'll let everyone know when we move and the new address to send presents to.

We had a smallish BBBQ at Steph and Linda's last night. Poor Matt didn't get to go because he has lab meeting on Wednesday and needed to get things in order. He did show up later to join us at Jess's for a couple of rounds of Rock band. Steph is an awesome singer and Matt says I did a really good job of "Dead on Arrival" by FOB and "Celebrity Skin" by Hole. Here is the band:

Stuff is tiring

Sunday night, I'm kinda tired. Matt and I spent the day looking at apartments yesterday. I think we must have looked at about eight places. A couple of places we crossed off the list right away. Its nice to be able to look Matt in the eyes and know he's thinking the same thing I am. Timberhollow had the weirdest layout with several random spaces that were nearly useless. Camdon Governor's Village was way too expensive and too far from campus. Knowing how my blood sugar gets when I'm running around I packed myself a little snack. I put a couple of ice packs in my Dora the Explorer lunch box along with some Farmer's Cheese from the local dairy, red pepper and basil hummus from Trader Joe's, some garlic pita chips, and sugar cookies. I managed to snag a couple of bottles of ice cold water from the various apartments that we visited. It was good because it was some tiring work being fake friendly with the salespeople and then walking around the many apartments. I felt like when you're with someone with ugly or stupid children. You can't come out and say it so you kind of dance around the subject. "Oooh, you're right. It is unique the way there is a half wall in the middle of the room." In the end though I think we are going to be staying at Shadowood where Matt currently lives. They have very nice layouts for a two bedroom garden and two bedroom townhouse. Not sure which we're going to take just yet, I'm leaning toward the townhouse because it has a huge living room which is where we spend most of our time. Matt wants to check to make sure that all our furniture will make it up the stairs, which, of course is the right thing to do. It is awesome that Matt is so practical. I get caught up in things a lot and I have Matt there to remember the important stuff say for instance if our very large, very heavy, oak furniture can make it up the stairs. We'll let everyone know as soon as possible what our new address is. We still have to talk to the management at Shadowood to find out when our new place will be available.

Maureen's shower was today. I, obviously, did not attend but I was able to talk to many family members. My "bag of bags" was quite a hit. It was passed around and caused Nana to give me a call which I missed. I called her back and after I said, "Hi Nana" she replied with, "Hi, this is Nana." *sigh* Maureen liked the necklace and bag and Elisa wants me to make her one of each. Goodness know I have enough plastic bags. Of course if any of my readers wants to save plastic bags to send me or bring me on a visit or I could pick up on a visit that would be super awesome.

The necklace I made for Maureen (crocheted wire)

Dan (Matt's brother) and Caroline (Dan's girlfriend) came over for a family dinner, yay. I made rice, beans and steak picado (Pikachu). The rice was a bit bland but as far as I know everything else tasted superb. We served a white and a red wine. I'd tell you what but the bottles are too far away to read and I don't feel like getting up. The four of us had a nice chat, sadly they had to leave to continue unpacking since they have recently moved into a new apartment as well.

sorry for the long post

Hello weekend

Yay Friday! Its been a bumpy week. Matt and I are planning at looking at some apartments this weekend. No decisions just doing some window shopping so we can sit down and figure out what is out there and what we're willing to pay. I am really looking forward to having a kitchen that can fit more than just me and a mouse at the same time. I love to cook but my kitchen makes me want to order pizza instead. It should be interesting trying to fit all of our things together... ok I might have slightly more stuff than Matt does. I'm very excited about it. At some point I'm going to have to go look for a dress for Maureen's wedding. Bleh, I don't feel like trying on clothes

I've lost track of time

Its been a while since my last post, sorry. The CA parents were in town for a nice visit. We didn't get a whole lot done, which was nice. Slept in a lot, went to the farmer's market, ate a ton, typical family stuff. Matt and I also introduced them to pictionary, which neither had ever played. Those who know Tom will understand that the game frustrated him quite a bit since him and my mom had a hard time conveying messages in picture format. I saved a few of the drawings that were produced, we'll see if you can guess what the word was.
While they were here I also managed to pick up some food poisoning. So I've been out of commission for the past couple of days. Not sure what caused it but my poor tummy will be happy when we're back to normal. Of course I did not mind the staying home and sleeping all day. The horrible wounded feeling in my intestines I could have done without. Tom injured himself while he was here as well. Something about his rotator cuff being out of place. Mom was little hazy on the details but it didn't sound very pleasant.

I post more tomorrow or tonight when I get near Matt's camera.

Sleeping in rocks

It is the second full day that my mom and Tom are here. I worked yesterday which was good since they uncharacteristically slept until 1pm. Crazy! We did Momma Dip's for dinner last night. mmmmmm, good. I convinced Mom to try something different this time since last time she got some sort of beef thingy that she really didn't like. It wasn't really surprising thought since she doesn't like a lot of beef or pork. This time everybody, minus me, ordered fried chicken. It looked very tasty and everyone seemed to like it. We also had an appetizer of fried pickle spears and fried green tomatoes. *sigh* The cobbler of the night was blueberry and in case anyone was wondering it was scrumptious. After all that good eatin' we decided we needed a walk around the block which helped quite a bit.
We spent the rest of the evening playing guitar hero. Tom has never played before so he was pretty excited about trying it. He was pretty good for a first-timer. Then Matt blew everyone's mind by playing Dragonforce. Poor Matt had to leave to get to bed on time. I stayed up for a long time chatting with Mom and Tom and showing Tom how to box and make a mii. I got to hear all about some of my mom's friends growing up including everybody's favorite chola, Birdie. Tom is going to help me make my plastic yarn so I can make more bag of bags and get rid of the monster pile of plastic bags that is taking up the spare 'oom.
I think we're going to do wine tasting tonight and the farmer's market tomorrow. We'll see I'm just glad that they're getting a chance to rest for once. And by rest I mean Mom slept in and is now cleaning my kitchen.

Just call me Rosa

I'm very excited to have family visitors coming this week. YAY!! Mom and Tom are coming to visit for a couple of days *counting* four of them actually, and five nights. Well, sort of. Their plane is arriving at 1am on Thursday morning. I haven't had family come to visit in way too long. I get homesick. Luckily Matt's parents came to visit recently which helped with the homesickness. I do need to get on the cleaning. Not that my place is dirty but its not Mom clean. So I'll be bustling around tonight and tomorrow night like a little maid making sure everything is wiped down. Hopefully it'll leave me with enough time to take a small nap since I rarely see 1am.
I haven't set up an entire itinerary yet but here are a few things that I'm thinking about:

1. Wine tasting with the Peifer Lab and adjunct members
2. Mama Dips (jealous? you wouldn't be if you came to visit more often, sir)
3. Bar-B-Que Joint, I of course can't eat the meat part but they have a surprising selection of veggie options, plus Chris said it was amazing
4. Swap meet or thrift stores
5. dinner cooked by mom (hehe)

On a side note, I am completely covered in bites. I think that both Matt and I have some sort of biting insect at our respective apartments. His leaves very large bites mine are tiny but there are more of them. Poor Matt has three in a row on his finger. I'm itchy. Now back to work.

Battle for all time

Last night Matt and I had the crew over for a friendly game of Heroscape. The Heroscape crew consists of Jess, Jacob, Steph, Linda, Doug, Nathan and of course Matt and I. Everyone was very punctual and showed up at the same time of eight o'clock. Too bad for me since I hadn't finished cooking yet. And because I am my mother's daughter I cannot help but always make way too much food, last night was no exception. I was going for snack foods and the menu consisted of:

1. garlic bread
2. stuffed mushrooms
3. poppers
4. guacamole
5. ranch dip
6. cupcakes
7. chocolate chip cookies
8. mini cheesecakes
9. drinks galore

Everything except for the poppers were homemade. So yes, I might have overdone it since there were a total of eight of us. *sigh* At least everything was very tasty. Jess and Jacob also brought "us" a very lovely cheese that nearly made me swoon. Steph and Linda made an amazing bruschetta made from tomatoes and basil from their garden. Both dishes I am eating as a lunchtime snack. The game, as always, was not a quick affair. Our best soldier, Krug, was knocked out early by a determined Jess. For a while it was two separate wars; Matt and I vs. the Sawyers, and Steph and Linda vs Doug and Nathan. Finally the two wars converged and we managed to wipe out the last of Doug and Nathan's army before falling to Linda's dice rolling prowess. She and Steph were the ultimate champions and they took home our traveling trophy, the Human Champion, with the stipulation that they must add something to him before our next battle. The Human Champion is this ridiculous trophy that Matt ended up with after Adam's white elephant party back in December. It was a soccer trophy that looks like a silver person in a soccer uniform kicking a soccer ball except that it also has a soccer ball for a bobble head. Its actually a little creepy. Why would he be kicking something that looked like his head? Well, we took the label that said "coach" and replaced it with lab tape that reads "Human Champion", much better in my opinion. We also kept ourselves amused when it wasn't our turn playing videos on You Tube. It was kicked off by "I kissed a girl" by Kate Perry, which, if you haven't seen or heard yet you should at least check it out. The song is completely ridiculous but horribly catchy and NPR tells me that it is the number one song in the country, yeah, NPR. I seriously think that NPR is using youth radio to bring up things that they couldn't normally talk about. But thats different rant altogether. Our play list was mostly dominated by video game and anime songs, because we're that cool. Nothing better that hanging out with friends, playing a game that involved a twenty-sided die and listening to video game songs.

Our board about halfway through the game.

Nathan and Steph do battle

Matt

The Sawyers give a high five after Jess takes someone out

Krug drowns his sorrows in a bottle of Yueng Ling

Official Carolina Girl

I spent most of the day yesterday running all around becoming official. I went down and got my own car insurance. Then I drove to Hillsborough to go to the dmv with a quick stop at Taco Bell. Yummy, yummy Taco Bell. Then I went and got my North Carolina driver's license. I actually took quite a good picture. I may or may not have spent a bit of time grocery shopping at the Walmart Supercenter in Hillsborough. I also managed to get to the Licensing office to register Milo and get him North Carolina plates. He looks so cute, plus, Matt pointed out that Milo is now blue with red lettered plates and Audrey is red with blue lettered plates. Too cute.

Tonight Matt and I are hosting a Heroscape night at his place. I've already made too much food but I'll take some pictures so everyone can see them.

--science update--
I ran my western today and from my preliminary results everything looks great!

Best Western

I've been screwing up the same experiment for nearly two weeks now. I tried everything I could think of to fix it. "It" is a western (an experiment to look for presence/ absence of protein and a rough estimate of levels of protein). You have to make a gel that you put your protein into and then run electricity through the gel causing the protein to move down the gel. Depending on the size of your particular protein, it "run"down the gel at different speeds. Bigger= slower, smaller=faster. Anyways, my problem is that mine keeps running funny. It makes a frowny face and the first lane that has several colors in it scrunches up on the top and then spreads too far out about half way down. I had a new idea on how to fix it so I'm going to try again in about ten minutes. I'll let you know how it goes.

--update--
Catarina just ran a gel independent of all of my reagents and the same thing happened to her. I might hate science today.

--update the second--
It looked fine which makes me annoyed. I guess I can go ahead and do the real experiment. Hopefully my luck will last that long.

Lovely weekend

Our super exciting Fourth went as follows: We slept in, went to work, went to Michaels/Target, played Maple Story, and then met Steph and Linda at He's Not for a holiday blue cup. I had a blast talking with her family and then Steph's brother Chris correctly predicted a rainstorm. So we went into the newly painted downstairs and I helped my team win two games of darts. The party started breaking up from there and Nathan, Matt and I ended up discussing the pros and cons of life, grad school, and MMORPGs. No matter what Nathan says, we are not joining WoW.
It turns out that the lovely storm took out some nearby power lines and along with them my power for nearly 24hours. So we spent a lot of yesterday bumming around enjoying Matt's air conditioning. We drove by later on and since we didn't have a camera here is an artist's rendering of what the power lines look/ed like:

Before:
After:Thats pretty much it for our weekend escapades. I think I'm going to take a day off this week to handle car stuff. Oh yeah, I've been approved by UNC as a official NC resident. I don't know who was happier, Mark or me. Probably him since I just saved him $20,000

No plans for the Fourth

Last year we had a lovely Fourth of July. Trent hosted a BBBQ at the cottage and then the whole group went down to Kenan for a surprisingly good fireworks show. It wasn't Disney caliber but it was still very good. This year both Matt and I have to work. Stupid adorable flies. Hopefully we won't be in for too long, maybe only a half day? Steph's brother, sister, and soon to be brother-in-law are in town as of 2am this morning and we were going to do wine tasting at Southern Season tomorrow night. They're still having their awesome storewide sale right now so it'll give me a chance to make sure I buy everything I really "need".

Matt and I watched this adorable movie last night called Quinceañera. Its about a girl who finds out she's pregnant just before her fifteenth birthday. I love that she had ninos for the dress, dj, cake.

first post

oooh, first post. I don't know how often I'll be posting here but since I don't get to talk to most people (except for Matt and Steph) on a daily basis maybe this will help me keep in touch. I'm really bad at calling people and writing people but maybe I'll get a couple of minutes a day to let y'all know what I'm up to. I've actually been thinking about doing this for a long time but never got around to it. Not to mention that grad school is a very busy confusing time. Well, anyways, I'll try and keep up.