Life

Life is good.  Work/school?  Not good, but not awful.  Still struggling with whether I should be doing this shiz.

Had a presentation today.  We have a yearly graduate/postdoc symposium, and I really, really did not want to do it this year.  Hardly anyone from our year participated since we are in the middle of general exams, and no one from my year or department did.  But, alas, I do agree with my mentor that I need as much practice as I can get, to get over my ridiculous stage fright.  So, on I went.  Same problems as always, I talk far too fast because I'm so nervous.  But, my postdoc did mention that I did far, far better than last year's symposium, so that's pretty good.  I didn't turn bright red and get all sweaty, I just talked too fast and my voice shook a little.  At some point I'll be a pro! (I guess)  I just hope I can get my shit together for the international meeting next month.  Eek!

I got my proposal turned in.  It wasn't entirely done, but as one of my committee members said, a grant is never done, you just finally give up.  I was angry with myself when I realized I never explained one of my experiments, but we get one rewrite, so I'll just wait for my paper back from my committee covered in red ink.  I was in lab until 3:30am Sunday night finishing it.  Fun times.

We are moved in.  I haven't gotten all of my things from my old apartment, but the apartment Derrick and I were in is done.  Now we're staying in a new house filled with boxes and we have no idea where anything is. So, we've made a deal that every night before we chill on the couch we have to do a minimum of 30 minutes of unpacking.  Which turned into way more than that last night.  I was working on 3 hours of sleep from Sunday night.  Got home yesterday and Derrick and I went for a nice, lovely, long bike ride because the weather was beautiful and we knew it would be shitty for the next few day.  Ended up walking along a dirty creek bed on Portland and then riding over to eat at Gopuram, where we ate waaaaay too much Indian food and drank waaaaay too delicious mango lassis.  So, since we had to make the dreaded bike ride home when we could barely walk, we spent a ridic amount of time wandering through Dollar Tree to let the food settle in.  D was very pleased to find some bamboo windchimes, he had been admiring the neighbors' and my mother's and decided we needed the pretty noise around the house.  Got some air fresheners because our new house still smells like old people from the last tenants.  That should go away once we get the kitchen together, since all Derrick's homes end up smelling like delicious spices. (or as some people put it..."cooked food")  Then we headed home and listened to my old college mix CDs and unpacked until I realized it was midnight.

Finally got the gas turned on, we should have hot water today!  We haven't had a regular shower schedule for over a week now...just getting them in when we went to the old apartment to pack.  It will be nice to change to clean sheets and fall into bed after a hot shower again.  The joys of moving!

I want to keep track of the house things we do.  We are so excited about having a house all to ourselves with a real live backyard, I'd love to keep track of the progress.  Of course, I need a better phone to actually get good pictures with, but hopefully that's coming soon.  Gardening blogs soon, people!

After these last few crazy, tiring weeks...my birthday is coming up this weekend!!!  And to celebrate, we're taking a long weekend trip to Beaver's Bend State Park down in Broken Bow.  Its in the far southeast corner of the state, which I've never really been to.  We have a cabin and I plan to get this African boy on a horse.  I haven't ridden in soooo long and the first time he ever even touched a horse was just a few weeks ago when we pulled over to the side of a random dirt road to pet some.  It should be amazing, the highs are in the 70s all weekend and the lows are in the 50s.  A far cry from this rainy, cold ass day today.  We were going hiking every single weekend for months, but with my proposal and moving we haven't been in quite a bit.  Its exactly what we need right now, we cannot wait.

Ok, that's enough for now.  Other than the stresses of work and school, my life is amazing still.  Now I'm going to head home and get some more unpacking done, and dream of nicer weather so I can get on my bike again.