FYI

The wedding is in the 10 day weather forecast. Wedding forecast? Whoooooooooooa.

Salt?

Yes, salt. Go with it.

Image from here.

Sending virtual love to my now-married, now-in-Peru pal from my old neighborhood.

Oh you know, just a typical Saturday planting 17 mini-deserts.

Wedding planning closer

In case you were wondering, in the past 18 hours I have:

1. assembled, addressed, stuffed, stamped (2x!) 75 invites
2. concocted, purchased, assembled thank you notes
3. acquired my, how do they call it, foundation pieces
4. gotten fitted for my gown by Lina who says, "you will come back. You will be happy."
5. chose shoes for my gown

Sometimes, you just gotta be a closer.

A Good Sunday

From here.

Sometimes, when I'm totally losing my mind over work and weddings and whatever else it is that I lose my mind over, the Fella is justrightthere to make me stop and realize how good things are. After I left work tonight, we hopped on our bikes, grabbed some sushi and wine, and went to watch Shakespeare in Schiller Park with our impromptu picnic. It was a good Sunday.

And Bottom the Weaver totally killed.

I'm still alive!

...but just barely.

This whole "being a scientist" thing kills me sometimes.
Current things I'm freaking out about/ to-do list:

1. Resubmit 2 papers
2. Plan a wedding

Wait, that's not enough? Wrong. It is. But for kicks I'm also finishing the super secret wedding present (bonus if I send it to them before they get back from the honeymoon.) At least J and J's wedding was a sweet respite from the lunacy- see above.

Where I've been...

This was the view outside my hotel window. Eat your heart out.

...Amsterdam! This past week I was lucky enough to attend EuroPneumo (yup, really what it's called). It was 4 packed days of pneumococcal disease - and I was stoked.

Of course it wasn't all rainbows and canals. In true cursed-me form, the traveling was a nightmare. Notable hiccups in chronological order:

- leaving my poster at security

- having my plane from Columbus delayed 1.5 hours

- consequently having my layover in Detroit reduced from 1.5 hours to 0

- alternately sprinting and heaving in the Detroit airport

- leaving my passport on the airplane in Schipol (seriously, who does this?)

- not being able to find the baggage carousel

- finding the baggage carousel and realizing my bag was not on it

- realizing I'd lost the claim ticket for the bag when I left the passport on the plane

- realizing the bag had the Fella's identification information on it instead of mine

- being hoodwinked by a Dutch cab driver/arguing with a Dutch cab driver

- realizing that not having luggage also meant not having pajamas (bonus points since sharing a room with my boss)

- finding out there were mosquitoes in our room and waking up to a quarter-sized itchy red bullseye on my forehead

- remembering no luggage also means no makeup

and that was just the first 24 hours. Huzzah! But seriously, never travel with me.

Moved!

Pardon the phone pictures. But obviously the camera and the cord are still hiding. In the meantime I'll be knitting and listening to records. Because obviously unpacking the record player was a priority... I'm kidding. It's just the closest thing to technology we have. No tv or internet yet, just boxes and bikes. And records.

Knitting snub

So I made this. I packed it up all nice and pretty.

It was for the Fella's friends' little creature. I even wrote a card. And yet, I received nary a thank you or even a "this will make a great rag for toilet cleaning." I'll just pretend having a newborn is difficult.

Super secret knitting project: commence.

Photo by my sister.*

After a horrible yarn disaster that left me with about 3 pounds of mottled blue yarn (more to come on that debacle), I've decided that I just have to try and get something knitted up in time for J and J's impending wedding.

Book available here.

I've decided on a pattern from my go-to book, "Leisure Arts Big Book of Quick Knit Afghans." Despite every effort to make the projects look terrible by photographing them on a rainy day in a cottage in 1975 (bonus points: several feature a cat and/or reading glasses and/or cups of tea), this book has so far served me well. It provided patterns for my sister's Christmas gift a few years ago (seen at the top) and C and S's wedding blanket two summers ago. And most importantly, as promised, they really are quick knits. All are knit on size 15 or 17 needles, so each stitch literally goes a long way.

I think I've chosen the pattern called, "Exquisite." I won't show it to you in the off-chance that J or J even knows I once updated a blog periodically... Anyway, it looks like I can easily dismantle the pattern into four packable strips. I know, I know, you're thinking, "why would you introduce seams and therefore SEAMING when you don't absolutely have to? You are crazy." But I can justify 3 seams if it makes me more able to knit on the plane to Europe. (did I mention I'm going to Europe?) The only other modification I'm anticipating is lenghthening it since J and J are stupid tall.

*underneath that delicately draped blanket is my sister's friend hiding in a bush to make the blanket drape delicately. Isn't my sister the best?

Back. Again. Maybe. Whatever.

Every time I stop writing/documenting/musing, I think, "shame on you, self, you've not followed through on another project." This is a recurrent theme not only in my half-assed blogging, but also knitting, cleaning, and most other hobbies. I'm committed and excited, but only in spurts.

So here I am once again (I think this is about my 4th time recommitting) promising to, well, try again. I have lots of big changes on the horizon, and maybe it wouldn't hurt to move the tumult from the recesses of my brain and leave the weird random brain-thoughts here in the safe comfort of google.

Big changes/projects(!):
1. Moving to our new apartment
2. Furnishing said apartment to not look like a frat house
3. Finish planning post-wedding vacation
4. Finish planning wedding...
5. Write dissertation (ha!)
6. Get off my behind and knit a wedding present for J and J

With some amount of motivation or, more likely some amount of procrastination from doing the things on the above list, it's my hope to share a little bit more about all of the above. (Did that even make sense? It did to me.) So for the next few months (hopefully!) things here will be more like "science, science, moving, decorating, wedding, vacation, knit." Unless this is just a mirage and I don't post again for another 6 months. And I'm perfectly okay with that, too.

Feeling festive

We finally decorated the house for Christmas, and I think it looks pretty darn good. Mostly it's last year's decorations but it still looks nice.

Chiristmas shopping, hello, goodbye.

With my big work project off submitted to the great gods of science (i.e. just waiting over here), it seemed like a good time to finally start my Christmas shopping. So I braved the insane cold, to get my shop on. I don't know if it was the weather (it totally was) but the stores were pretty darn empty. In a mere few hours, I both started and finished my shopping. No denying that my list was short, but it feels good to sit back, relax and huddle under more blankets.

Grown up final exams

Although I'm often confused for a high schooler I'm actually a bona fide, college-graduated, grown-up. So the stress of final exams and getting ready for Christmas should be a thing of my past, right? Hardly. I have 3 major deadlines coming up and that mentality of "just have to survive until next Friday" is kicking in.

So if you'll indulge me in a short rant, and forgive the photo-less post, I'll be sure to make it up to you.

- I have a huge experiment going on. It's the kind where in at 7:00 a.m., mouse-wrangling until 10:00 p.m., and working most of those hours in between. And one of my mice was missing an eye and it was gross. Ugh all around.

- My manuscript resubmission is due by next Friday. I don't have all my results (ahem, see above) and I have boatloads of edits left. And I kind of need this to get published.

- I have to give a big presentation to my department on Wednesday. Who has TIME for this?

Ok done. Thanks. So as of next Friday, I'm on cruise control until Christmas. I just have to survive until then.

My world is so small...

(from here)

...that I got laughably excited about the newly described bacteria that can utilize arsenic? It's called GFAJ-1 for now, and (sadly) I required Wikipedia to find the original article that went live today in the journal Science. Sadder still, I don't have access to the manuscript from home but from what I can tell - biology just sort of changed here people.

Not to be outdone, Nature has a nice story posted today on the same subject wherein they refer to GFAJ-1 as an "oddball" (probably jealous that Science got the exclusive). But basically, it looks as though arsenic might be taking the place of phosphorus in all of the important molecules: DNA, RNA, cell membranes and ATP. This is different from every other known living organism in the universe. Who wouldn't be excited about that?

Giving thanks.

Thanksgiving is all about memories. Memories of my knit corn and turkey leg. Memories of this.

Oh the bounty!

Blog-spiration

My lunchtime blogroll is a smattering of knitting, design and wedding blogs. And lately, they've been throwing mucho inspiration my way.

I found a great clothing store called ModCloth (admittedly, I haven't ordered from them, yet) that features about a billion things I want to own. I came to it from BraveBride, where she thought it would make a great place to find bridesmaid dresses. I concur.

One of my newest obsessions is Springpad. It has saved me from my gmail wedding organization chaos. My previous system involved emailing myself a link to something I wanted to remember, and trying to put an adequate label in the subject line. Seriously, that was my "system." Suffice to say Springpad has saved me. I can organize bookmarks in "notebooks" with searchable tags, and photos from the website. For what it's worth, it will also save other useful things, like recipes, calendars, maps, and it will sync with smartphones (not like I have one...) I came to this site from 2000dollarwedding.

Last for now comes from How About Orange; it's a great resource of affordable original art at Thumbtack Press. As my move to a real grown-up house is fast approaching, I'll be needing real art to decorate the (presumed) drab, carpenter-white, rented walls. Feel free to buy me this print called "Fishlamp."

So that's what's been consuming my time... Any other distractions I badly need?

Barely too early for Christmas?

I cleaned the house over the weekend so it would be ready for Christmas decorating next weekend. Which got me thinking.... I'm not too old for Christmas presents. My Christmas picks for today are 100% nerd-approved: books, boots, and a cake stand (for good measure).

1. Books. The 15-book boxed set of Roald Dahl's brilliant children novels. So colorful and full of genius.

2. Duck boots. Bonus points if they're from L.L. Bean. Extra bonus points if they're size 7. I think these duccasins are awesome in classic leather and navy.

3. Cake stand/serving tray. Ok, stay with me- the "geek" of this is that it works as a cake stand, or flipped over as a chip dish, which can also hold the lid to make a punchbowl.

Top 5: Thursday edition

Top five things that are making me happy today:

1. It's finally cold enough weather to wear hats!

2. Springpad: resource for life/wedding organization.

3. My heaty corn bag foot warmer.

4. The show Iconoclasts on the Sundance Channel. Seriously. Brilliant.

5. Limitless web resources covering Prince William and Kate Middleton's engagement.