Happy Birthday

And a Happy birthday to baby D.

Pillow!

So today despite the snow, I took Sewing 101 at The Needle Shop. Besides it taking me 30 minutes to find a parking spot I could get into, out of and not towed because of the snow and it taking me 30 minutes to find the cell phone that I apparently dropped into the snow once I got home, my day was great. Below is my finished pillow, zipper included. Now I just have to buy a sewing machine to finish up the other one.

Chicago on Film

So Mike is out of town. He is on a road trip of sorts driving to California with his old roommate. So long story short, I’m home alone. What does a girl do when her boyfriend is out of town and has the apartment all to herself? Well, eat popcorn and watch the most girlie movies I can get my hands on of course.

I am currently watching My Best Friend’s Wedding. Apparently it takes place in chicago, didn’t remember that. It is really amazing to me how many movies take place here and I get overly excited to see my city on film. I really do love Chicago. In addition, I take pride in being so “Chicago” and knowing my city well enough to get piss off when the exit they take in a movie does not match where they end up.

Other Great Chicago movies:
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Adventures in Babysitting
While You Where Sleeping
The Blues Brothers
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
High Fidelity
Home Alone
Kissing a Fool (no one likes this movie but me)

Anyway, back to the movie.

I'm Not Working

So it's the Monday after the holidays and my first day back at the lab. Am I doing doing any work?? Judge for yourself.....



This is a video I put together with clips from our trip to visit the family in Maryland. I am absolutely enamored with my nephews. I know that I am totally biased but they are truly the most amazing kids. Sam has more personality than most adults I know and he also has negotiation skills that could rival any UN mediator. David is beautiful, his big brown eyes could melt anyone's soul, not to mention he holds his own pretty well against Sam (second born are always tougher and less documented).

Anyways, I hope you enjoy the video. Let me know if you have trouble watching it. You should expect more video posts in the future, the new little Flip my mom got me for Christmas is pretty fun.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Happy holidays

Sorry for the lack of posts the past couple of weeks but the holidays kept me pretty busy. I'll try to upload pictures/videos to share.

16 things.

'Here are the 16 things that I have spent more than 16 hours thinking up. 16 random things, shortcomings, facts, habits or goals.The deal is, if you read them, you should write 16 of your own. Maybe we will get to know each other better or maybe it will be cathartic?'

My sister tagged me with this on facebook but I though my blog was a better place for this list.

1. Since seventh grade, or perhaps before, I’ve been setting my alarm clock so the last digit is always a 3.
2. I will always remember the first time I met my nephew Sam as the moment that I realized that ‘Love at first sight’ could really happen.
3. I have a extremely hard time initiating communication. This translates to pretty bad phone anxiety. Calling anyone, except my sister, mom, dad, Mike, Courtney and Elizabeth, gives me at least a slight twinge of anxious butterflies in my stomach and sometimes makes me procrastinate phone calls (and even emails) a lot longer than is reasonable.
4. I’m as sure as you can be, that I will be with Mike for the rest of my life.
5. I enjoy making things; food, crafts, messes, it doesn’t really matter.
6. I have low self esteem in regards to my own intelligence. I am perpetually afraid to make mistakes because people might find out that I am not as smart as they think I am.
7. I am a big day dreamer. At any given time I have at least 3 fictitious scenarios playing out in my head.
8. If you ask me a direct question or for my opinion, I will give it to you (even if I don’t think you want to hear it). If you care enough to ask, I’ll tell you anything.
9. Spell check is truly the greatest thing to ever happen to me. If it weren’t for the red squiggly line telling me that a word is wrong, I wouldn’t be able to communicate and about 1/4 of all words in this post would be misspelled.
10. Hulu and full tv episodes on network websites have the potential to be my complete downfall.
11. Chips and dip are my kryptonite and UTZ sour cream and onion chips are my crack equivalent.
12. I’ve been told on multiple occasions that my brush stroke while brushing my teeth is ridiculously fast. But when I try to slow down, I feel like I’m not getting quite as clean.
13. I love earlobes and I always have. I find comfort in playing with them.
14. I am terrified of house fires and hate the sound of the any fire alarm. I can trace this fear directly to a video they made us watch in the 3rd grade where they showed a black screen and said ‘this is what you see in a fire’.
15. I love lattes, especially when Mike makes them, but I never drink the last sip.
16. I hate the feeling of being late, so I’m usually at least 5 minutes early for everything.

Other People's Crafts

It seems a little off calling the event we went to on Saturday a craft fair, but I guess that’s what it was. Craft fairs, especially during the Christmas season, conjure up images of overly crowded gyms filled with old women looking at over flowing booths containing cutesy-wootsy, potpourri smelling decorations that people with names like Bambi or Candy put out for every different holiday season. The Renegade Craft Fair Holiday Sale, however, is basically the opposite of almost everything I associate with the stereotypical craft fair. First of all, the event had the highest concentration of people from the Indie crowd that I have ever seen in one place. Mike and I both felt that our jeans weren’t tapered enough, because they weren’t at all, and that our shirts didn’t make ironic enough of a statement. We basically felt totally uncool. Second, instead of household decorations, the booths were mostly filled with screen print t-shirts, hand-made jewelry, and other things similar the stuff you can buy on etsy and manned by people with multiple tattoos and piercings. To top it all off, the whole affair was in the Pulaski Park Field House, an incredible building from 1914. Anyway, I really had fun and got a few people checked off my Christmas shopping list.


Here are some of my favorite vendors:

(family, be warned; looking at some following links may give hints of your Christmas presents)

http://www.shoporangeslice.com/ - This is like the fourth indie craft related thing I’ve seen that includes orange in the name. Orange is the color of indie.

http://tugboatprintshop.com/ - Cool prints, they just ask for storybooks to be written around them.

http://theneedleshop.net/ - my first stop after I get my new sewing machine.

http://www.sosillystuff.com/about.html - cute kids clothing.

http://www.nomadicant.com - neat looking earrings, but some of posts looked a little thick and heavy.

http://ellembee.etsy.com/ - hand printed clothing, mostly organic looking prints.

http://www.freshieandzero.com/index.html - I like the simplicity of the things here.

http://pacificpuzzleworks.com/ - Awesome puzzles, beautifully crafted, but a bit out of my price range.

And of course, I have to give a shout out to the only storefront of the Renegade movement, Renegade Handmade.

My boyfriend is better than yours

- On thursday, we watched a musical on Netflix, he actually liked it and I liked it because Mandy had a small part.
- On Friday, Mike took me to see Twilight without complaining too much.
- On Saturday, we went to a craft fair and it was his idea.
- Today, we took my grandparents to a see ‘The Norwegian Singers’ and then had more of my family over to our place.

AND to top it all off, I think we both had a fun weekend. Man, I’m lucky.

Split Personality

From reading another blog, I found a website that, through some unknown method, analyzes your blog entries and determines your blog’s Myers-Briggs personality. According to this site my blog in an ESTP or an Extraverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving person. I wanted to see how accurate my blog represented me, so I went to another site and took my own Myers-Briggs. According to this site, my blog represents my personality’s polar opposite. This sites says that I am an INFJ or an Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging person. I find it interesting that our of 16 possible personality types that my blog and I did not share a single common trait. Am I not representing myself well on my blog? or is my inner voice that different from the outer? or is all of this just hooey?

Waking up from the Turkey Coma

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Great food without the stress of christmas gifts. Mike and I hosted a fried turkey festival at our apartment for those who had nowhere else to go. We ended up with about 20 people at our place, with a majority foreign grad students. However, we had a better american showing than last year, I think there about 5 of us. Where as last year, Mike and I were the only ones who actually celebrated Thanksgiving.

Fried turkey is wonderful and not quite as dangerous as many youtube videos make it out to be. The turkey friers you buy in the store have more safety features than your average car. First, you have to pass an IQ test to properly put it together. Second, there is a max-fill oil line on the pot that helps remind you that you have to account for the volume of the turkey and the expansion of the oil. Finally, the gas valve to the system has an automatic shut off valve to ensure you don’t leave the turkey unattended for more than 20 minutes. That being said, I can still see how many people can burn down houses with the apparatus. Case in point: our neighbor saw us getting the frier set up and came over to make sure that we knew that you shouldn’t fry a frozen turkey. He then proceeded to tell us that he thought it silly of us to fry the turkeys on the cement patio in the back of the building and that we should just do it on the deck of our place. He also recommended that we cover our deck with tinfoil incase there is a spill, just to be safe. He then asked us if we “liked to party” and said that he had many flavors of marijuana in his apartment if we wanted any. We graciously declined his offer and his advice. Moral of the story, frying turkeys is dangerous if you do it while high on a tin foil covered deck, but not very dangerous if you are sober, responsible, engineering/physics grad student.

Happy Holidays.

The subtle sexism of conferences

After waiting in a sea of the stereotypical engineer on the first day of the conference to register, I finally got a program of the talks for the week that resembled a small town’s phonebook and my name badge. As I tried decide the best place to clip the over sized badge to my shirt I came to the realization that those types of badges are really meant to be worn by men. They clip perfectly to suit jackets or the front pocket of a men’s collar shirt, they did not however clip well to any of the outfits I brought for the week (with the exception of the suit I planned to wear to my talk). As someone who is a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl I find it hard enough to put together a week of business-ish, conference appropriate attire. I only own one suit and I really don’t have the need (or money) to buy another one and I don’t want to be the stinky girl who wears the same suit all week. So not only was I stuck in heels for four whole days but I also spent the week trying to find the perfect place to display my name. BAH.

Fig 1 - yup, I look dorky. Stupid name tag.

I'm Crafty

So the past month or so I've been flexing my fine motor skills by crocheting what seemed like a million potholders. This week I've finally stitched those potholders together to form a full afghan. I will admit that I'm pretty proud and impressed with the end product. Crafting, in general, brings me pleasure and a big sense of accomplishment.

The yarn dust is just starting to settle on this project and I am already trying to figure out what my next project should be. I'll admit that my reinvigorated interest in making 'things' is getting a little out of hand. Proof: I really want to buy a sewing machine, soon.

Well anyway, no crafting for me this upcoming week. I'm headed to Philadelphia tomorrow for a week long conference. I'll let you all know how the cheese steaks are when I get back.

Blogonymity

So I’m having a little trouble with this whole blog thing lately. I started this blog as a way to share my ideas, my opinions and daily life with people who want to get to know me better. But what happens when my opinions and daily life involve negative views of work, of the scientific community and of social interactions? I feel that if I write honestly about my feeling that somehow it will come back to bite me in the ass. I can’t vent my frustrations about my research or academic interactions in this forum because a future employer might stumble across this blog and not like what she reads. We all feel a false sense of anonymity sitting in front of a computer. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t feel like I can be a hundred percent honest with this blog and I don’t like it.

Now where's my sticker?

I voted and all I got was this lousy piece of paper. Well, this piece of paper and hopefully Sen Obama as our next president. But I honestly do miss having the "I Voted" sticker to display to the world. I even chose my outfit today to with the sticker in mind. Well, regardless, I love voting and today was no exception.

Lucky for me, Illinois is not only the land of Lincoln but also the kingdom of Obama. Chicago has been the perfect place watch this election unfold and I really hope that the 'party' in Grant park tonight will be a joyous conclusion to election season. Mike and I don't have tickets to the actual rally but I think we are going to head down town to just see. Hopefully, I'll have pictures to share with you all tomorrow.

Things I am looking forward to this week:

1. Making a big pot of chili today and watching Mr Smith Goes to Washington
2. Voting. Hopefully my 0-3 voting record, 2 presidential and one primary, won’t continue and the person I vote for will actually win
3. Making progress on the afghan I’m crocheting (only a few more granny squares to go)
4. Mike’s mom coming to visit
5. Seeing Jersey Boys
6. More beautiful weather