So, I worked half a day

I had arranged to get a ride home with Buebbles because Matt might be working late tonight, but Buebbles went home sick at around 1:00, and I went with him. My sample isn't working anyway, and it's a holiday. What does the university expect from me? I really don't know how I'm going to make it through June, July and August with this project.

I had a lovely chat with Jess, who, along with Robbie, was at Penn State this weekend visiting Tizzed. They had a good time. Jess and Robbie will be here in ten short days! It seems we're going to do a lot of eating. Luckily, the food that they miss most in Santa Barbara is the food that I like the best, so I'm excited for the excuse to go to all of our favorite restaurants in one long weekend. I told Jess that they might as well not pack bathing suits because the ocean's too cold to swim in and we have no pool, and she reminded me that you're not supposed to swim within an hour of eating, so there wouldn't be much opportunity during their visit, anyway. I thought that that was an excellent point. We then discussed when I should lay the cement for the vomitorium. This is going to be the best graduation weekend ever.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Mine's been OK, how about yours? Yesterday I got my hair cut, but that's not interesting. What is interesting is that I got my hair cut by a person other than Jenny, the only stylist in Santa Barbara ever in six years to cut my hair. I desperately hope that she doesn't read this blog. I'm hoping just to fade out of her life, a happy memory, no goodbyes. She's a nice woman and, I believe, a competent hair stylist. But she doesn't have vision, and that's what my hair needs these days. I've wanted a change for a while, and with Jenny, it just doesn't happen. I tell her I'm tired of my hair and she looks concerned and says she can either cut it short or add layers. I bring her a picture of what I want and she gets quiet and upset-looking and cuts my hair so that it looks exactly like it did before I showed her the really cute picture. I think she's afraid that if she changes anything, I won't like it. But I'm to blame for being a passive victim; after each haircut I tell her how much I like it and how I'm looking forward to seeing her again in three months and then give her a decent tip. And two and a half months later I start to fret over going back because I need a haircut, but don't want to face the inevitable disappointment. This time I fretted for longer than average before calling for an appointment, and was rewarded: Jenny was on vacation until June 1. What a perfect excuse to take my frizzy head elsewhere! So I asked around to the extent that a woman who works in a physics department can, and ended up going to the place that Dr. J recommended. The woman (Sarah) who cut my hair was young and hip, and took charge when I told her I wanted something different, but couldn't offer specifics. She trimmed, she added shape, she angled the front sections, she layered the back. The result is not dramatically different from what I had, but it does feel good. I anticipate having one more haircut in Santa Barbara, and I'm going back to Sarah.

Other than that, yesterday we went for a lovely walk on the beach with Helen and Buebbles. We then rented Love Actually, ate spaghetti and meatballs at their place, watched the movie and came home. This morning Matt went to judo and I stayed home, read, talked to my sister Kate and did the laundry. Matt came home for lunch and we decided to walk to The Daily Grind to split a sandwich. Then Matt headed to campus for the afternoon, and I settled back in with my book. I then went for a very nice run with Helen and Buebbles. Helen and I started running last weekend, and I like it a lot. I used to hate running, but the path where we run is right along the beach downtown and is very flat, which I'm pretty sure makes a big difference. This is the third time we've gone, and each time we run just a bit longer before we stop and walk. I never thought I'd say this about running, but so far, I've enjoyed it. Now I am starving and wish Matt would come home with groceries so that we might make dinner! Tomorrow, I'm working in the lab. Yeah, not much of a Memorial Day, but I don't have anything else to do anyway. If Matt didn't have the FEL, maybe we could have a little barbecue, but he does, and we won't.

So,

I went to colloquium yesterday and sat next to Matt Lippert, who was all, "So, I read your blog. I see you've planned your trip across the country. You're not leaving until October, right? Yeah, we're leaving in August and we haven't begun to start thinking about the trip. . . ." This conversation, while not unpleasant, did make me wonder exactly how lame I am to be so excited about something that won't happen for at least four and a half months. It also made me wonder what Matt spends his days thinking about if not moving to Kentucky. Oh yeah. He probably WORKS.

Coffee break

I was going to write a boring, useless post, but I received word from Buebbles that he is interested in joining me for a UCen mug refill at the Engineering I coffee cart. Bye!

The big move

Matt is back from San Francisco, and we have started talking about a driving route for our move next fall. I'm excited about that. He wants to go to Bryce Canyon and I want to go to Dinosaur National Park, and luckily for us, they're both in Utah and will be easy to incorporate into our trip. We figure we'll drive to Las Vegas the first day, which will be a nice easy drive, see the Hoover Dam and head to Bryce Canyon the next day. I don't know how long we'll spend there, but then we'll continue on to Dinosaur National Park, and spend a day or so there. From there we tentatively plan to cross the Rockies, continue into Nebraska and eastward, visiting as many people along the way as will have us in the following cities: Omaha, Chicago, Ft. Wayne, Pittsburgh, Washington, DC. This is all supposed to happen in mid-October, so get your calendars out, people! In celebration of finally feeling ready to start planning this trip, I think I will buy myself a new atlas. The one that I have now is the one that I first crossed the country with six years ago, and it's seen better days. Also, thank you once again to Jess and Robbie for the beautiful National Geographic guide books that they gave us for Christmas--they have been instrumental in our planning.

In other news, last night we saw The Triplets of Belleville. Though I did laugh in a few places, I found the movie on the boring side. I agree with Matt that it would have made a perfectly fine 15-minute short, or something like that, but I had a hard time appreciating the animation with so little actually going on. I wouldn't say I disliked the movie necessarily, but since I had read a lot of positive hype, I think I set myself up for a disappointment. In any case, it was free for UCSB students and I got my ticket for $5, so I certainly can't complain about the price.

Today Matt has been working on his thesis and I have been a domestic goddess. I did the dishes, the laundry and cleaned the front patio. When we first moved into this apartment, the patio was one of the things that we anticipated enjoying the most. We soon found, however, that the plantlife surrounding the patio overruns all usuable space with such abandon that without constant upkeep, there basically is no usable space. So, that's OK. We never sit out there like we thought we would, but it's still a nice entrance to the apartment. I try to sweep it every weekend, though, otherwise people track leaves inside, which I hate. I mean, I do it, too. It's basically unavoidable. So today I swept and trimmed the vines that grow all over the fence. They're pretty, but they grow entirely too quickly, which gives the patio a bit of a jungle feel, which I don't like.

OK, it's time for me to be off. I have to get the last loads of laundry from the dryer, and then Matt and I are meeting Helen and Buebbles to play catch and kick a soccer ball around. Now that we've been living here for around six years and are moving soon, we figure it's time to seriously take advantage of the beautiful weather and ample park space that Santa Barbara offers.

Just because I don't want to have one of those blogs that gets updated every three months, not because I have anything interesting to say.

This week is going by slooooowly. Much like last Friday. I had a very nice weekend, but then work started up again bright and early Monday morning, and life resumed its course in slow motion.

Also, I am horribly sore. I went to pump class yesterday, as I often do on Mondays, but something about this class seems to have kicked my ass, and I've been limping since I got up this morning. I went to Step Zenergy this afternoon, thinking it would be the usual relaxing, stretching, lengthening, rejuvenating experience I've come to expect from a class with such a ridiculous name. But it wasn't. The teacher decided to do cardio intervals instead. This activity tortured my muscles, and I fear a bit for tomorrow. But tomorrow is Big Wednesday, and not only that, but it's my week to talk to Dr. J.

Now I'm going to try to go to bed. I have a hard time relaxing in the evenings because Matt is not here, and I'm not used to that. So I've been staying up late reading the past few nights to help myself sleep. And then I don't exactly hurry in to the lab in the morning. But tomorrow I'd like to get a decent amount done in the cleanroom before my 11:00 phone date, so I want to try to go to bed by 11:00 tonight. I don't think that will happen since it is 10:23 and I'm drinking a Coke. That may have been a tactical error, now that I think about it.

I'm not sure this day could get any longer

I want to work, but the guy who has our new semiconductor substrate has been sick for the past few days, and nobody knows where he put it. I'm also working on my internship application, but what I've produced so far is the crappiest piece of crap I've ever written, and I can't seem to move beyond it. And I still have a half hour until lunch. At leat it's Friday, and this is a weekend that I'm actually spending in town, at home, more or less. Matt is leaving for a conference in San Francisco on Sunday, which makes me kind of sad. He's coming back on Friday.

Let's see if this works

Do you want to see our Catalina pictures?

An up-and-down kind of day

Today has been so weird. I don't know where to begin. Sorry for the cryptic opening to this post--it really isn't all that interesting. In any case, I haven't been feeling great. Yesterday I stayed home sick, and today I was better enough to want to come to work, but I'm still low on energy and dealing with a sore throat and stuffy head. And Matt and I had this unpleasant discussion this morning about the relative pros and cons of my applying for an internship to begin in September or waiting until January. And that kind of sucked, but Big Wednesday was fun. And then I got back to the lab to find an email from my advisor saying that one of my papers got accepted by a nice journal. I was really excited by that. And as you know, I was also pretty excited by Blogger's new options. So I was having a decent afternoon, when my boss came to the lab to tell me that it turns out that she can only pay me through June. And that's next month. That was kind of a problem, but I wasn't really upset because there was a chance that I could get paid through the university to do something different from research, which I thought might be a nice way to spend my last months in Santa Barbara. The pay would be less than what I make now, but it would be enough to live on. Then I talked to Matt, who only seemed to see the financial hardship inherent in the situation, and, as a result, was kind of upset. And then my boss returned to tell me that she was wrong--there is enough money to pay me through August, as we had originally planned. But absolutely no longer than that. So in one sense, I'm relieved, but I'm also a bit disappointed. Matt is just relieved. And I guess I'm applying for the internship in September, even though I had pretty much decided, for about 100 reasons, that waiting until January made more sense. So, I guess that's the plan. Applications are due June 1, so I'd better start working in earnest on mine soon.

In other news, I had a really nice time at Debbie's wedding. It went off without a hitch, although there were some uncomfortable moments near the beginning, when the reader was missing. I'm trying to get access once again to my university webpage so that I can post pictures, but I'm not having any luck with that. Hmmm, I think I can upload them to Shutterfly, which is probably the best solution. I'll let you know. In any case, the wedding was nice, Debbie looked beautiful and the reception was fun. The DJ took requests, and I have the feeling that only one or two other people in the entire reception made any, because he'd almost always play ours within one or two songs of the time we asked him. And we requested some great ones, of course (The Gambler and Another One Bites the Dust, for example). And I got to take a centerpiece home to give to my grandmother for Mother's Day, which was an excellent bonus. My sole complaint about the weekend was that I was not wrong to worry about getting from place to place. We did manage to get everywhere basically on time, but there were some rough moments involving missed turns and absent highways. However, we ended up giving Liz a ride from Albany, which more than made up for any unpleasantness that I experienced due to being lost or worrying about being late.

Experimentation

I'm not sure what's going on with the comments. It seems that Blogger now has its own commenting capabilities, so I don't think I need Haloscan anymore. But I definitely lost all of my old comments. I'm going to keep creating posts until I figure out if I like this new template and how the commenting works.

Oh, wow! Blogger has new templates! What will I choose, what will I choose?

After I choose, I'll write about the SOCIAL EVENT OF THE YEAR.

Something I've learned about myself over the past few years

I get freaked out by weddings, and it seems the less involved in the wedding I am, the more I freak out about it. I didn't freak out about my own wedding. Sure, there were a few tense moments when it looked like the flower arrangements weren't going to work out, but I think in general, things were fairly under control, and I was calm.

I was a little antsy about Jess and Robbie's wedding (I was the maid of honor), but that was largely because I had never been to a wedding in my adult life, much less been in one, and I didn't have a solid handle on my responsibilities. It turned out to be one of the nicest weekends that I can remember, though, and it was when I discovered that I love weddings.

Next was Julie and Tobias' wedding, where I was the only bridesmaid. That might seem like a lot of responsibility, but Julie had enlisted the aid of tremendously talented support staff, Jess (church team leader) and Helen (reception site team leader). In fact, one of my fondest wedding memories of all time was when Jess and I were helping Julie dress for the wedding and Helen called Jess to ask if there was supposed to be a cake at the reception site. Um, yes, there was supposed to be a cake. As I recall, a certain amount of internal freaking out did ensue, but to my knowledge, Julie was never informed until Helen found the cake safely in the refrigerator, just where the baker had left it. So that worked out well, nobody worried too much, the wedding was beautiful and the reception was great. As was the cake, I might add.

Now fast-forward to last July, when Helen and Buebbles got married in Brooklyn. I was a reader, and had very little responsibility. Actually, I was sharing a reading with one of Helen's college friends, so at most I was a hay-reader. But, boy, did I freak out. Matt, Julie, Tobias and I stayed at Matt's parents' house the night before the rehearsal. I absolutely could not sleep, I was so worried that we were going to get lost and mugged, which would cause me to miss the rehearsal and ultimately ruin not only their wedding, but probably their marriage. It turned out that it takes way less time to get from Allentown, PA to Brooklyn, NY than anyone anticipated, and we arrived an hour early for the rehearsal. And then got yelled at by the priest for talking loudly outside the church, where there was a service going on. But the rehearsal went fine, the rehearsal luncheon went fine, everything went fine, but I could not stop FREAKING OUT. The freaking out culminated at the actual wedding when I almost died of a panic attack before my reading. I guess I was more nervous about it than I thought I was, because I felt a lot better after it was over. Oh, and did I mention that it was probably 97 degrees in the church? But it was another beautiful wedding and fun reception, and it was so, so hot and the wine was so, so cold (and Jess says that I broke the artificial flowers in the women's bathroom, but I say I didn't).

And this weekend we're going to Debbie's wedding in Boston. I am not in the wedding, and have no responsibilities whatsoever, except to co-navigate to the rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception and post-wedding brunch. I am delighted to be invited to these events, by the way, and look forward immensely to all of them. But for the past several mornings, I have woken up early, freaking out about how all of this is going to work out. I don't know the area, and our hotel, the church, the reception site and the rehearsal dinner are all in different towns. Plus we're hanging out in Cambridge and might get together with some of Matt's friends on Saturday morning before the wedding. I think my mind just can't stand the uncertainty of not knowing where these places are and how we are going to get between them. So last night I spent considerable time on Mapquest, planning out our possible routes and making an itinerary. And that seems to have put my mind somewhat at ease because I managed to sleep in this morning with no problems. I know it will be a fun trip and I'm excited.

(As a wedding-related aside, I think it's only fair to warn you that if anybody out there wants me to be a bridesmaid in your wedding, I require two escorts. It's a condition that I've grown to accustomed to, and I simply won't do it, otherwise.)

Boring, boring, boring

I haven't written anything in a while because nothing much has been going on. Well, Catalina was a lot of fun. The hot tub was every bit as wonderful as I thought it would be, though the continental breakfast left much to be desired. We went on a nice long hike on Tuesday--I might post some pictures tonight. It was really, really hot out that day. We wanted to hike even further than we did, but we were afraid that we'd run out of water and I think I had already started to die of sun exposure. We did get to a point where we could see both sides of the island at the same time, which was beautiful. We felt accomplished because we could see where we had started out that morning and it was not remotely close to where we were. On Wednesday we had to check out of the hotel in the morning, and we spent the day hanging out in Avalon (a town one square mile in size), watching boats and people. We amazed ourselves with our ability to be entertained that simply for so long.

Ever since we got back, I've basically been working. I had goals to accomplish by the end of Wednesday that I somehow managed to complete by Monday. So today I took a really long coffee break, followed by lunch. Then I worked for a little while and had group meeting at 2:30. Then I was going to go to colloquium, but I got there a little bit late and they had already started and I didn't want to make a scene trying to find a seat. Plus, I'd have to leave a few minutes early to get to aerobics on time, and that would involve making another scene climbing over people to get out. So I went back to the lab and played around on the internet for a while, and now, here I am. Lord knows what I will do tomorrow. Well, I'm talking to Julie, for one thing. And then on Thursday Matt and I are flying east for Debbie's wedding. And that should be our last trip for a long time. Well, mine. Matt is going to be gone for another week at the end of May for a conference in San Francisco.

Oh, we saw Kill Bill Volume 1. I place it firmly in the so-so category. I was entertained at the beginning, but found the last half pretty boring. I hear Volume 2 is quite different, and I hope it is funnier and less violent than Vol. 1.

Oh, I should add that Matt and I had a lovely breakfast last Friday with Tizzed and his sister Erin. It was a lot of fun seeing Tizzed again. I hope that he is still in State College when we move to Washington, DC, though I suspect that he hopes not. (Not because of us. I mean, Washington is a big place--if he wanted to go there and not see us, I think that would be totally doable. I meant for professional reasons.)