Bridge ices before road

I would like to begin with a quick statement in my defense. Having grown up in SoCal and Vegas, roads icing over was not a major concern. Its not really something I think about on a day to day basis. So a couple of weeks ago when we were trying to decide if we were going to try making it to D&D Matt gave me quite the revelation. I had always thought the sign "bridge ices before road" meant something like the bridge ices in the area right before the road. What it should really say is "bridge ices before the road does". I guess that would be a little long for a road sign but it would make so much more sense. Sure, now that he explained it to me it's clear. Obviously due to the smaller volume the bridge would freeze first. Now when I see the sign I insert the extra words. I don't ever drive when the road would be freezing but its good to have that cleared up just in case.

We are making our first joint trip to Michigan this weekend. I'm super excited about it. I get to see Matt's friends and family, where he grew up, and eat at a bunch of restaurants he's told me about a million times. I also have a super cute dress and a cute shoe to wear at the wedding. It should be a great time. The only thing I don't like about the whole trip is that we have to leave our poor little Zelda behind. Her Aunts Steph and Linda have plans for this Valentine's weekend so we are leaving her at the vet's office. :( Not that I think they won't treat her well. The women there absolutely adore our little Zelda girl. Last time we left her  they had here up front hanging out with them the whole time. I guess another bonus from Zelda's point of view is that they also have a couple of cats that live there that just roam around. She gets so excited that she nearly wags herself apart anytime she gets within ten feet of a cat. Its hilarious. Every time we go to Petsmart she tries to convince us to adopt a kitteh for her. There, I feel a little bit better about leaving her behind.

Hullo!

Its been almost a month since my last post, oops. On the bright side, I have been getting loads done in the meantime. My thesis writing is going swimmingly, I'm now working on the figures and Mark and I are going to talk about pictures tomorrow.
My darling friends Archie and Keiko were here visiting for the weekend. We didn't do a whole lot but we did eat quite a bit. We took them to Buns and Mama Dip's this weekend. Then this morning they tagged along to a Maroni Lab breakfast at the Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen. If Keiko doesn't gain weight from all that it is beyond me to help. We had a nice peaceful day yesterday. Lots of lounging around, lots of napping. This is the first time in three years that I've seen Archie. I'm sad to say that her accent is almost gone. No more "ber-gers" or "al-ooh-min-ium". I did fun have asking her opinion as a future doctor about all sorts of stuff. I made cheesecake for everyone on Saturday and while serving some yesterday Keiko cut her finger. I'm not really sure why she was using the giant knife to cut cheesecake but we've come to a consenus. The knife, now named Audry, has gotten a taste for blood and might be sentient. Just a warning to anyone who comes over and tries to cut stuff. The ladies were a big help this weekend with the cutting up bags. I've found that the rate limiting step to making the bag of bags is the making of the plastic yarn. They thought my giant plastic ball was very amusing.
Now, last but most certainly not least. I thought I would leave you with a picture. I should have lots more to put up on Saturday but until then you can adore this one.

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.

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.

The marathon is over, at last!

The moving part of moving is officially over.  Matt and I finished getting everything out of my apartment Sunday.  We spent several hours Saturday and Sunday scrubbing the place down.  We dropped the keys off at the office Sunday night with only a few reminiscing tears.  It is wonderful to be done with it.  Now we are concentrating most of our free time on unpacking.  Although at the this point it is literally just unpacking.  It mostly consists of Matt and I opening boxes and then walking and dropping them into the room where they should live.  As soon as we can get the living room rid of boxes then we can start to organize the rest of the house.  It is just too much to try and do the whole apartment at the same time.   So, for the time being, the place looks a little chaotic.  We even left work "early" yesterday at 5pm and spent the night unpacking after we cooked dinner together.  Not much of a holiday but time well spent I think.
Its going to be a short week for us anyway since this weekend Matt's best friend is getting married.  We are flying out to Chicago on Thursday but the wedding is in Indiana.  We're both really sad because we have to cut our trip short.  We had originally intended to spend a few days in Michigan with Matt's family.  Due to my aforementioned new grueling work schedule and Matt's new project for Sushmita's paper we really just can't afford to take the time off.  Just thinking about it makes me want to cry.  I was really looking forward to seeing where Matt grew up and all the places he's told me about.  He's consoled me by pointing out that we have the rest of our lives to get there and that now is just not the right time.  I'm lucky that he's so practical. 

Wedding pics until I can actually post about it

Time flies, and so do we!

Trip day! Matt and I are all packed and are ready to get outta town. Our flight leaves at 6:19pm and we get to LA at 10:35 (LA time). It shouldn't be so bad since I have Matt there with me. I'm not sure what we'll do about eating. I probably can't wait until we get to Houston. I did bring lots of snacks with me and crafting stuff and lots of papers to read and summarize. Its going to be a blast. I can almost taste the In-N-Out, Jack in the Box, and super awesome Mexican food now.

Mark is on vacation for two weeks so we decided it was time for a lab lunch. I decided for everyone that we would go to Buns, a new burger place just off of Franklin. OMG!! I know that makes me sound like a teenager on myspace but it was Fantastic. They have three kinds of burgers including an in house made veggie burger. Then you have your selection of toppings where you can choose brie or gruyere cheese. MMMMMMM, I think I drooled a little bit. I do love cheese. It was great. Keiko is coming to visit next weekend and I promised/threatened that we were going.

One more quick thing before I run off to finish tidying up before I'm gone for a few days. Matt and I got to see our new apartment yesterday. Its kinda dirty right now but they are going to paint and put in new carpet and they should have it done in about a week. I'm very excited!

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.