We're sending out, a major love, and this is our message to you

Oh Michael.  Last week was a long one.  Matt was gone to a conference in Boone, NC, I finished up my thesis, and one of my childhood heroes died.  I know for people who weren't big Michael fans think its kind of weird that some of us are so upset by his death.  Matt doesn't understand it either.  I know he was weird but I still love the MJ I knew growing up.  His music was a huge part of my childhood.  I still remember when the music video for Thriller came out and I was not allowed to watch it but I hid behind the door and saw part of it and got freaked out.  (sometimes parents do know what they're talking about)  I had a red leather jacket when I was five or six that had all the zippers on it, I thought it was so cool.  I had a sweatshirt that had him on it in a yellow sweater vest and had matching clip on earrings.  I can't even tell you how many time I've seen Captain Eo.  I was incredibly upset when they decided to replace it at Disneyland.  It just feels like a part of my childhood died.  I always had this hope that Michael would make a comeback and be who he was when I was a kid.  Thats the Michael I'm going to remember anyways. 

Like I said, Matt is back which is wonderful.  I hate it when he's gone.  Its so boring and lonely.  We did a lot of cleaning/tidying yesterday.  I washed all of his clothes that he brought back from the conference while he went to do the grocery shopping.  I finally got around to vacuuming the living room.  I also put all of Zelda's things away in her very own drawer, hung up her clothes and set out her bed.  I think the closer it gets to her coming home the more nervous Matt and I get.  I'm sure there will be lots of pictures on Sunday of her first day at home.  I don't know how I'm going to make it through the week until then.

Finally, I finished writing my thesis.  Mark has okay'd it and I'm going to pass it out to my committee today.  Scarey!  Which means that I need to put together my talk this week.  I have my defense a week from Thursday, which is July 8th at 2pm.  Thats a scarey thought too.  I just want it to be over.  Its going to be a stressful week and a half.  Matt has to give joint lab meeting the day before my defense and he always gets stressed out before he has to do that.  Hopefully we won't start throwing things at each other before the end, lol. 

What's new pussycat?

Its Thursday and Dave has gone to the Wnt meeting in DC for the next four days.  Which means, I'm all alone in the Maroni Lab.  *sigh*  At least nobody is here to hear me talking to myself.  Its is 23 days until Zelda comes home.  I've been badgering her caretaker to send another picture because its been too long since we've seen her.  Scariely enough, I think we have gotten almost everything we'll need when she comes home and a couple that she doesn't *need*.  The main thing thats lacking is her food but we're waiting on that so it doesn't get funky before she gets here. The only really big job left is to get a list of questions that we want to ask the vet as first time parents and finish puppy proofing the house.  The upstairs minus spare 'oom is almost ready.  There are a few more tidying/blocking from puppy's reach things that still need to be done.  The downstairs is another matter altogether.  There are quite a few things that won't be able to be moved so we're going to have to watch her all the time.  Its not bad, we're supposed to be doing that so potty train her anyways.  Matt and I have decided that she's going to spend her first week or so only upstairs.  The puppy book and the messege boards I've read have said to keep the puppy confined to a small room or room for a while so she doesn't get overwhelmed.
On other non-puppy related news.  Matt is going out tonight with his lab.  They're celebrating a paper.  I'm going to drop him off and then go back home and watch So You Thing You Can Dance.  Its kind of a bummer because two nights in a row we won't hang out together.  Tomorrow is Doug's last day and we're going to He's Not to celebrate his time in the lab with a few blue cups.  Or if it rains, some fried pickles and garlic fries at PT's.  Matt won't be joining us because he's reviewing a paper and it needs to be finished by Monday.  Which brings me to my next topic.  Saturday is our first D&D game.  Yipee!!!!  My character was the last to be finished and she still needs a last name and I need to write out her background story.  She is a half-elf bard named Laeriel, which means "daughter of song" in Tolkein elvish.  Because I'm a nerd like that.

EEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Well, we're back from Eastern North Carolina. It was a wonderous morning. Matt and I met our puppy this morning. So much to say about it. First, as I was hoping, Matt fell in love with her as soon as she came into the room. He liked her so much he let her knibble on his fingers. I knew she was tiny but I guess not having anything for a size reference I didn't realize just how small. As you can see in the pictures she's a tiny little thing. Don't let the pictures fool you either, she does not stay still for more than a couple of seconds at a time. She loved the taste of my shirt but she loved Matt's watch even more. At some point she figured out that she could "dig through" Matt's shirt and was trying to wiggle her way around his back. Mary (her surrogate mom) told us that she's the most rambuncious of her litter. Boy did she show it. Normally pups are a little shy and stay still for a couple of minutes with people they don't know but she took to us right away. She also has a little cowlick on the back of her head. It was worse a couple of weeks ago but apparently its gotten better, I think its pretty darn cute. I wish we could have brought her home today but she needs more time to grow before we can do that. We did manage to pick a date though, July 5th. Thats the day she'll come to her foever-home. I'm a little exhausted from all the excitement so I'm going to take a little nap but I leave you with a few pictures of our darling little girl. Enjoy.

Week three--Start!

I didn't mention it in my previous post but in an attempt to be more healthy, and since all of the rest of our exercise comes from walking to and from the bus, Matt and I have started working out.  Our apartment complex has a gym and its only a five minute walk from our apartment.  So far we've been doing a pretty good job of going, even when we don't really feel like it.  Its only the third week but already we're starting to see changes.  Matt is building muscle and I don't pass out after running for five minutes.  Yay us!  As an added bonus, our health insurance offers and incentive program for working out and eating well. 
We had a relatively quiet weekend.  Nathan had a birthday party on Friday night so we hung out with everyone to celebrate for a while.  I made bruschetta that had way too much garlic, as if that is possible.  I also put some roasted tomatillos in it to mix things up.  It seemed to go over well.  Besides that though, not much happening.  I was feeling under the weather on Saturday and Matt is in the middle of writing a paper so things were pretty quiet. 
On the science front, I managed to complete an experiment last week.  I having been planning to do a northern for a couple of months and with Paul, the tech from the Searles lab, I finally did it.  I even got it done without getting an radiation on myself for any place else that wasn't supposed to have it.  Bonus!  I also got it done right the first time.  Now I just need to repeat it one more time and I can check that off my long list of to dos.
Matt and I are super excited because our newest family member will be delivered tomorrow.  After nine days of waiting and over a year of saving, it will arrive tomorrow!!!  Maybe we'll take a picture of the three of us and post it later this week.  I can't really think of anything beyond that. *sigh*

Actually I believe it is pronounced "new-cle-ar"

I think I was raised by some pretty intelligent people.  I was raised with a definite left leaning philosophy but I was also taught to evaluate ideas and people based on the available information.  I never had anything against John McCain, I was never a crazy Obama fan either.  Having said that, I think John McCain has very quickly lost his mind over the time of this campaign.  Whatever made him think that Sarah Palin was a qualified running mate proves it.  The idea of that woman being a heartbeat away from the presidency is a truly frightening thought.  This whole idea of voting for her because, "Hey, she's just like me" is ridiculous.  I'm not qualified to be president, most people I know aren't.  Thats not bad, I'm not qualified to be a physician or a physicist either, some might argue I shouldn't be a scientist either but thats another story.  I can, however, name magazines and newspapers that I read, I can also tell you about several Supreme Court decisions that I don't agree with, and I don't count refueling stops as having visited a country.  *sigh*  Sorry this election is getting to me, I wish we could just elect Obama and stop having to hear about the idiocy of Sarah Palin.

Enough of that.  We have an action packed weekend.  Tonight we are headed over to Mike and Erin's for a little fondue and some gaming.  We don't get to see them often enough since they live aaaalllllllll the way over in Apex.  Back when I lived in LA or Vegas driving 45mins to see someone was nothing.  Now that everyone I know lives within ten minutes it seems really far.  Tomorrow is the semi annual wine show at Weaver Street.  We're going to that and then heading over to Steph and Linda's for some good food and good friends.

Hi ho, hi ho, to live at work I go...

Sorry there hasn't been much in the way of updates lately. Our lives have kinda disappeared in a large amount of work. My schedule has been going something like this:
6:30am wake up
7:20am catch the bus
7:40am start work
7:00pm go home (finally)
7:15pm-9:00pm make dinner, eat dinner, clean up
9:00-10 or 10:30pm unpack/organize the house
10:30pm go to bed

I'm kind of exhausted. It also doesn't allow for a lot of time to just hang out with Matt which makes me sad. He gets up at 7am so I get up get ready and eat and we have time for a quick hug before I run to catch the bus and he hops in the shower. This will be the first weekend since we moved in that we have the whole time we can dedicate to unpacking and organizing the apartment. Well, sort of. We both need to work most of Saturday and ND plays on Saturday afternoon. Sadly they aren't broadcasting the game locally so depending on what Matt wants to do we might go to a bar to see the game, if we get done with work on time.

On an even sadder note than the Fighting Irish game not showing here. I found out yesterday why I was having problems with this experiment I've been trying to do forever. I was trying to take pictures of some fly embryos and look at a particular gene pattern in my mutant. I know what the pattern is supposed to look like like but I could never see it. It is supposed to outline all the cells and then show up in some cells so it looks like the animal is striped. I could never see this, for months I've been looking and only gotten meh pictures of it once. I finally sat down with someone else in the lab and we went over a bunch of things I could try. I was about to leave when Jess, the person I was chatting with about it, asked me how far I turned down the laser. The short answer is I don't and was never told that I should and the laser is basically killing the signal of before I can even see it. The laser is used to excite the special tags I put on the proteins I want to look at. At which point they glow different colors. If the laser is on too high, they will bleach and no longer light up. Here is the before and after I fixed the problem. Yay science!

Goodbye Hanna!

Our plane to Chicago and subsequent drive to somewhere in Indiana is this evening. We'll be gone most of the weekend which means we will not get to meet Hurricane Hanna. According to news reports this morning she has turned and is heading straight for the Carolinas. Not to worry though, while I won't be here for my first real look at a hurricane the weather people say that Ike and Josephine are headed in the same direction. Ike is currently a category 4, yikes! Matt and I both managed to pack everything up last night and he'll be driving my car into work today. I'm kinda bummed though because we had such a hard time packing since most of our things are hidden in various random boxen throughout the apartment. I still don't know where my brown yarn that I just started a blanket with is. So I'm brining some other projects and several journal papers.

Here comes the last weekend

I'm very sorry that my posts have been erratic lately.  The combination of moving and craziness at work have kept me away.  Steph and  Linda helped us move almost all of the rest of the stuff left in my apartment last night.  We really owe them something nice, I offered to cook them a nice dinner.  Matt and I will get the last few boxen tonight and clean up tomorrow.  I would really like to turn in the keys tomorrow so I don't have to take time off on Monday to do it since the office isn't open on Sundays.  It all depends on how tired we are.  Going full out for a week and a half straight has a way of tiring a body out.  Back in June I won tickets to the first home football game of the season when I gave blood.  I also won a autographed UNC football from Butch Davis.  I called his office last week but they hadn't gotten the tickets yet and I'm hoping that with the game tomorrow they might have my tickets now.  On a kind of down note, I'm having a rough time at work right now.  I feel like I'm floundering.  I had a talk with Mark the other day and he says I need to start working a crazy amount of hours and on the weekends so that we can get this paper done.  I know I'm up to the effort (and so does he) but the implications are that I'm not going to have any down time for many months.  It makes me sad.

Sick and tired

It is nearly a week since my last post and as I look around the new apartment from our almost-too-big-to-get-into-the-apartment couch, I am glad that is almost over.  Matt and I moved him out of his place, no help in two evenings.  My place, not so easy.  Luckily we have a bunch of super awesome friends.  Steph and Linda came over to my place on Saturday to come help pack.  They are a powerhouse moving team.  I think we moved about 75% of my stuff before the four of us lost nearly all ability to move.  There was enough time to take a quick and much needed nap before showing and heading off to Jess and Jacob's.  They were having a get together that consisted of playing Rock Band and watching The Explorers and Flight of the Navigator.  There was a ton of amazing food including Jacob's Mexican thing that had beans and sour cream and doritios, the wonderful blue cheese that Dan brought, and the lovely caprese salad that Jess made with buffalo mozzarella.  mmmm, cheese... Sadly we only made it through the first movie before Matt and I were ready to pass out.  Sunday morning we took a quick jaunt to pick up the U-Haul.  We had originally planned to hire movers to get all of my incredibly heavy furniture out and in our new place but Dave, the post doc that I work with convinced me that him and a couple of other guys could handle it no problem.  So true to his word Dave showed up on Sunday along with Jacob, and Matt's brother Dan.  If you have ever seen all of my furniture you will understand that it was no small feat but the four guys managed to get it all into the U-Haul and into our new place in a matter of hours.  Not everything has made its way out of my apartment, largely due to the fact that I caught a rather nasty cold on Sunday that finally got me down enough that I had to take a down day.  I think it should be down by Thursday, I think.  Then we can get around to unpacking and making our new place feel like home.

Wedding pics until I can actually post about it

Sort of short week

UPDATE!! I posted the pictures. I'm sorry that the first hair picture looks like a myspace picture but the others Matt took made me look funny.

The weekend is over and even though it was quite busy I am sad to see it go. I haven't yet found a dress for Maureen's wedding and I'm not really sure when I can fit that in this week. I guess there is always Friday which is sad because I just wanted family time. Oh well. Derek's party was lovely, his house is so beautiful I could almost cry. Very yummy tasty snacks as well. I made s'mores brownies as per his request. I think it might be one of the best recipes I have. Then again I'm a bit of a sucker for s'mores. Steph has had really bad allergies this weekend so after helping us pick out a lovely new mirror, picture frame, and coasters she was not up to going to the party. :(

Matt and I spent the day at Kure Beach yesterday. It was so lovely and peaceful. Thankfully the water wasn't nearly as warm as I was told it would be. That would have been awful. It was just like I'm used to a little chilly at first but perfect after a couple of minutes. The part that I couldn't understand was the sand, it is so different from the beaches on the Pacific. Or at the least all the ones I've been to. The sand is more like very tiny, flat pebbles that stick to your body. UGH!!! I'm used to sandbox type sand. Fine, little...sand, you know. Sure sand usually gets everywhere but after you dry it is supposed to just brush right off. I ended up having to scrub the sand off me when we go home last night.Matt's favorite picture, you have to look closely at the sign to see why

I'm leaving work early (don't worry I got here very early today, I beat everyone else by nearly two hours!) I'm getting my haircut and goodness knows that always takes about four hours. If it goes well I'll post a picture later of my new 'do. I'll try and post some pics from the beach too. Check back later!

Another busy weekend

We have another busy bee weekend planned. It is the annual tax free weekend. I'm not really sure we'll be taking advantage of it since it really has to do with back to school items. We do have some shopping planned, or at least window shopping. Kirkland is having a 40% off sale this weekend as well. When Matt and I were looking for his apartment back in December one of the office ladies told us that was where they got all the things they used to decorate their model apartments and that they were super cheap. Steph and Linda expressed interest in joining us in that adventure which looks like might be happening tomorrow. Matt and I both need haircuts but while his is going to get done tomorrow mine will not be until at least Monday. One of our friends, Derek, is having a house warming parties tomorrow night. Boy Saturday will be busy. It will mostly be the Peifer and Rogers labs attending with some of his and Ryan's other friends. Which means time with the Heroscapin' crew. Matt and I have been planning to visit the beach for nearly two summers now and Matt proposed that we just break down and do it this weekend. So it looks like weather permitting we will be taking a stroll down to the beach on Sunday. w00t!! I'm very excited. We also have to go dress shopping since Maureen's wedding is in a week, not so exciting.

On a side note, we joined Nathan, Willow, Steph, and Linda in watching Momma Mia the movie last night. Debbie had taken me to see the musical when I still lived in Vegas and I really loved it. I thought the movie version was pretty hilarious but I have a feeling that it might have been more of a girl thing because Matt didn't really like it. Usually the girly movies we see hold some interest for him too but I think this might have gone too far into girl minds what with the silly singing and dancing and ridiculous love triangles (trapezoids?). He said he just didn't really get it but that he didn't mind going. Yay, Matt is awesome!

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