Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Life goes on

I'm almost finished with week two now. This quarter has been a breeze so far. I have so much free time during the day that I'm staying on top of the reading for all my classes, and keeping up with studying for anatomy. I'm sure that as the quarter goes on it will get harder. For now, I'm enjoying my free time.

The weather is really warming up now. Yesterday we hit a record high of 82. The last record for that date was 81 set in the 1880s! It was so nice to feel the sun. With the warm weather comes Jackson's shedding. His hair is getting everywhere. We have little tumbleweeds of black hair, and every time I pet him, I end up with hair all over me. Daniel and I have been sweeping and vacuuming twice as much as we normally do, and brushing him every few days. He really hates the slicker brush, but it gets the most hair out. So Daniel holds him down while I brush him as much as I can before he squirms free and runs out the doggie door. I don't know why he hates it. It can't possibly hurt him that much.

Yesterday I got done with class at noon, and I didn't have to go to work, so I had all afternoon with absolutely nothing to do. Normally I use that time to read and catch up on homework, but I decided to take a nap instead. It felt really nice at the time, but when I woke up I felt really guilty about it. It feels like wasted time. But I can afford to lose a few hours.

Tomorrow I'm leaving to go to Phoenix. I am much more excited and less stressed. I have no homework this weekend, and I already did laundry and swept the floor. I will be missing one hour of chemistry and all day of work, but that's not a big deal. It's nice that work is a luxury right now and I can afford to miss it. Grandma and Grandpa take care of me. I think it is so important to take advantage of every opportunity I have to visit with my grandparents. It scares me to death to think about it, but I don't have that much more time with them. They are approaching 80 years old. I know that once they do pass away, I am going to wish I had spent more time with them. My biggest fear is that something happens and I hadn't seen them for 6 months or a year. So over Easter I am going to enjoy every second with them.

Yesterday I was packing my bag for Easter, and I packed this really cute summer dress I bought last year. I wasn't sure what shoes to wear with it, so I tried it on with a couple different pairs. And I couldn't zip up the dress. After Daniel worked on it for a few minutes and finally cinched me in, we decided it was too small. :-( This is the first time in my life I have gained weight (without gaining height). It sucks. I really liked that dress and now I can't wear it. I feel fat. I've gained about 10 pounds since last summer. Daniel insists I don't look fat, but I think that's just him trying to stay on my good side. It's a good thing too; we don't want to know what would happen if Daniel told me I actually looked fat. My nutrition class is making me hyperaware of what I'm eating, and I really am trying to cut back on calories. Today, my professor brought in some snacks just to see what we all would pick. She asked us why we picked what we did- was it packaging, brand name, familiarity, nutritional content? I picked chocolate teddy grahams- mostly because it had the word chocolate on it. Not the best choice, nutritionally, but I can't help it- taste wins over nutrition every time. And it's really not fair for my professor to bring in non-healthy snacks like that. She's just tempting me. I would never ever buy chocolate teddy grahams at the grocery store. I purposely don't buy packaged foods for that very reason. Instead, I bake my own junk food like cookies and brownies lol. I'm trying anyways. I am bracing myself for all the calories I will be consuming while I'm in Phoenix. I already know we have two steak dinners planned- one with the Rosens and one with the Guthries.


Sunday, March 28, 2010

My favorite poem

I stumbled across this poem in my English book senior year of high school. It's my favorite poem ever, and I'm going to post it here so I never lose it.
Sorting Laundry
by Elisavietta Ritchie

Folding clothes,
I think of folding you
into my life.

Our king-sized sheets
like tablecloths
for the banquets of giants,

pillowcases, despite so many
washings, seems still
holding our dreams.

Towels patterned orange and green,
flowered pink and lavender,
gaudy, bought on sale,

reserved, we said, for the beach,
refusing, even after years,
to bleach into respectability.

So many shirts and skirts and pants
recycling week after week, head over heels
recapitulating themselves.

All those wrinkles
To be smoothed, or else
ignored; they're in style.

Myriad uncoupled socks
which went paired into the foam
like those creatures in the ark.

And what's shrunk
is tough to discard
even for Goodwill.

In pockets, surprises:
forgotten matches,
lost screws clinking the drain;

well-washed dollars, legal tender
for all debts public and private,
intact despite agitation;

and, gleaming in the maelstrom,
one bright dime,
broken necklace of good gold

you brought from Kuwait,
the strangely tailored shirt
left by a former lover…

If you were to leave me,
if I were to fold
only my own clothes,

the convexes and concaves
of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras
turned upon themselves,

a mountain of unsorted wash
could not fill
the empty side of the bed

End of Week One

I'm recovering today after a very fun party that went really late last night. Some of Daniel's brothers decided they wanted to have a party at our place, so a TON of people came over here last night. It was a blast. There were lots of new people I didn't know, and some old favorites of course. Theta Chi just initiated three new brothers, and two of them came. The best part is that Daniel's best friend Jeff hit it off with Hope's friend Kristen. Both of them studied abroad in Italy, and they both love Glee, so they talked about that all night long. We are so happy for Jeff, because he doesn't have a lot of luck in the dating department, but he's so cute and smart. He really deserves an awesome girl, so we were thrilled when he got along with Kristen so well. When all was said and done, 5 people crashed here because there wasn't anyone to drive them back to campus. When everyone was finally asleep somewhere, it was about 4am. Everybody had a great time. I have been feeling pretty bad all morning, and Hope was nice enough to go to the grocery store and get me a banana, some fresh fruit, and a vitamin water. It helped so much, and I feel way better now.

The rest of my weekend has been spent studying. This anatomy class is going to kill me. It's been one week and I'm overwhelmed with the material. I had my first lab on Thursday, and it really helped me understand the material better. I spent 3 solid hours looking at tons of slides under the microscope. I am very good at using a microscope now! By the end, I was looking at slides under the microscope and hiding the name on them to test myself. I did pretty well. I've already started reading next week's material. It's on the bones of the skull. Well, not just the bones. We have to know every bump, line, hole and cavity in the skull: inside and out. This class is going to take a lot of work, but I'm definitely up to the challenge. I find every bit of it fascinating. After the end of the quarter, I want to go see Body Worlds. It's an exhibit that travels around the country, and right now it's in Denver. I saw it in Phoenix a couple years ago, but it will mean a lot more once I've taken anatomy. The exhibit is a bunch of real cadavers that scientists injected plastic into. The result is a perfectly preserved human body. They pull back different layers and show you all the parts of the body and how they work together.

My nutrition class is also really interesting, but it makes me feel really guilty. I am hyper-aware of everything I eat, and the software we're using to track our meals keeps telling me I'm eating more calories than I should. That is not good for my self-esteem. I already feel like I've gained weight and I'm on my way to being fat. I also feel guilty about every bowl of ice cream, every handful of M&Ms, every tablespoon of butter in my food. And even worse, every time I read the textbook, it makes me hungry! I think I'm driving Daniel crazy with my new initiative to use less butter and salt and more vegetables. He already thinks we eat healthy enough. Hopefully I'll relax a little bit as the quarter goes on.

This week I was talking to my dad and explaining how I'm not going to be able to see Grandma and Grandpa for a long time if I don't make it out to Phoenix or to Utah this summer. So he said we should find a time for me to go out there for the weekend. I suggested Easter and he agreed. So on Thursday night I'm flying out for the weekend! I am excited, and really stressed out about it. I'm excited because I have never missed Easter with my family before. I also haven't been to church in such a long time, it will be nice to see some friends again. And now Sarah is 21, so I really hope we have time to go out one night. I'm stressed because I have to fit in all my usual weekend activities (homework, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, laundry) on Thursday or when I get back. Hopefully Daniel will take care of some of it too. He can't come because he is playing the tuba at a church service on Easter morning. That's another reason I'm glad I'm going to Phoenix: Daniel is busy that weekend with rehearsal and performing. I'm planning on spending as much time with Grandma and Grandpa as possible, and I'm really excited to see Nicole too.

At work on Friday, I made another gel. This time I used the right agarose, but Laura (my supervisor) sort of sabotaged my effort the first time by giving me the wrong equipment. Even though it wasn't my fault, I still felt bad for wasting an hour. So I started over, and this time it seemed to be working. When I added the samples into the wells, it wasn't working the way it was supposed to. But I figured I would run it and hope it worked anyways. I wasn't very optimistic it would work. I imaged the gel, and it worked beautifully! Laura was very happy with the results. I felt a little reassured after that. I really can run a gel.

Week one, finished. Just nine more to go!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Snow Day!!!

It started raining around 4pm yesterday, then hailed around 5pm, then started snowing at 6pm. Two hours later, we already had 4-5 inches on the ground! It was snowing so hard, we couldn't see the neighbors' houses across the street. Last night many public schools announced they were closed for the next day, and all our evening activities were cancelled, so we went to bed praying for a snow day. And our prayer was answered! At 5am this morning (ugh) my phone rang and I immediately knew it was a snow day. And I was right! I kind of wish it had happened later in the quarter, because I don't have any homework to do. But I guess I'll get ahead on some reading, and just enjoy my day :-) I called into work too, because I didn't want to dig my car out of a foot of snow. It's such a strange snow too, it's sticking to everything. Every tree branch looks like it's made of ice and the fences are coated in an inch of snow. So absolutely everything looks white. It's beautiful! All these snow days are very unusual here. DU didn't have a snow day for something like 5 or 6 years and last year we had one snow day, and this is our third this school year. I think I'm getting spoiled!

Yesterday I had my third class, anatomy. I had the professor before as a lab coordinator, and she seemed really mean. But surprisingly she was really nice. She admitted that anatomy is really boring, so she told us to bring coffee to class. Though anatomy can be really dry, I'm very very excited about it. This is something that will be extremely helpful in my future career, and will help me in graduate/PA school too. In lab for that class, we will be dissecting cats. Each week we'll work on a different part of the cat. It's already been skinned for us (lovely) so we don't have to worry about that. I'm a little nervous, and also intrigued. As a scientist, you really can't be squeamish about that stuff.

I have decided to actually read the textbook this quarter. In any of my science classes, I have never read the textbook. I have used it mostly for reference and for practice problems at the end of the chapter in chemistry and genetics. But already this quarter I have realized the benefit of reading the textbook. I went into the first day of nutrition ahead of the game. I followed the lecture very well and I already had a good idea of what she was talking about. So instead of feeling like I was constantly barely hanging on and almost grasping the concepts, I was right there with Dr. Sadler. In anatomy, I didn't read before the first class, but I've already caught up after the first class, and I'm working on the reading for Thursdays class. We cover a lot of material since the classes are 2 hours long, so it's a lot of pages to get through. It's important for that class because there are a lot of pictures and drawings that you really have to sit there and study. We don't have time to do that in class. I may decide it's not worth it later on, but for now I'm going to keep reading.

Monday, March 22, 2010

First Day of the Quarter

Today was my first day of Spring Quarter. I had gotten used to sleeping in until 11:30am, so it was really hard to get up this morning. But I did, and I went to school. Daniel and I are both taking a very light course load this quarter. I'm only taking 3 classes and 12 credits. So today I had two of my 3 classes.

Chemistry of the Elements is my first class in the morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I had heard the professor was strict from other students. He didn't hold back on the first day. As he went through the syllabus he repeated over and over again that HE makes the rules and WE have to follow them. If we don't like them, there's the door. He's from India and has a very strong accent. He made a few jokes here and there, but mostly he was firm and clear that the rules would definitely be enforced. And during that first class, in the middle of his lecture, he looked up and asked a guy "do you want to leave?" And when he shook his head no, the professor said "well then zip it!" So.... I'm not sure how this is going to go. So far he does seem like a good teacher. He explained things in a very organized way which is quite different from my chemistry professor last quarter. One thing I don't like is that the lecture hall is completely filled. Not one chair was open today, and this hall fits over 100 students in it. So it's a very full class.

After that class I drove to work. I'm not thrilled about my schedule. It was so hard to schedule my classes and work, so I tried to make it work as best I could. I drive to school in the morning with Daniel, he only has class 10-11am. I have class at 9am so he has to get there a little early for me. Then I drive to work and get there around 10:15am, and leave around 1:30pm. This means I have to clock out for lunch, or eat in the car on my way back to school. It takes almost 30 minutes to get back to school and then I have class from 2-4 on Monday and 2-3 on Wednesday. That class is Nutrition. It's with one of my favorite professors, Dr. Sadler. She is so good at explaining things and really nice. I think that class is going to be so interesting. We are using software to track everything we eat. We have to write two papers analyzing two weeks of our diet. I'm a little nervous to see how my diet measures up to standards.

Unfortunately, Daniel has to wait around on campus from when his class is over at 11 all the way until I'm done at 4pm. So I juggled my schedule a little bit and I'm going to see if this works better. I will move my Tuesday afternoon lab to Monday evening from 6-9pm. Normally, I really try to avoid evening labs. But Daniel has to be on campus for chapter meetings from 6:30-8:30pm on Mondays anyways. Then I can work from noon until Daniel gets out of class at 6pm on Tuesdays and 10:15am-5 on Fridays. That will give me enough hours during the week, and I won't have to drive back and forth from campus between classes. I think it will waste so much gas and time with the driving back and forth. The main street that connects campus and work is always so crowded with traffic, it drives me insane! This will also allow me to use my meal plan for lunch on campus which will save us money on packing me lunch three days a week. And it means we can eat lunch together every day. So hopefully that will work out better for everyone.

Today at work, I was very busy and stressed out. Jen asked me to run a gel for her. This involved making up the gel, letting it set and then adding something like 150 samples to the gel. Jen told me the recipe for the gel really quick, and I tried to remember it. I did remember it well, but I had only done this particular gel once before so I was a little unsure of the process of making it. I had to microwave it so the agarose dissolved and then let it sit in a plastic chamber until it solidified. I used a multi-channel pipettor to add 2 uL of dye to 5 uL of sample. But, when I tried to pull 7 uL out later (5+2) I didn't have enough. That wasn't good. So I just used 5 uL and hoped it would still work. So, I added the samples to the gel. And another problem arose: sometimes, the samples just floated away and disappeared. Normally, you can see the dye settle into the little wells. I was nervous, but I just kept on going adding sample after sample and ran the gel. When it was done, I asked Jen to come check it and she said it looked good. So I had to lift up the gel and carry it to the imaging machine. I lifted up the plastic sheet the gel was sitting on, and took a couple steps to the machine. The gel slid off the glass and splat on the floor. It crumbled into a million pieces all over the tile with 5 people standing there. Nobody even batted an eyelash. They all said they've done it before a million times. And Jen reached down to pick it up and said it seemed a little fragile. She asked me what agarose I used. I didn't realize there was more than one type. So I went over to the cabinet and showed her, and she showed me the jar I should have used. Oops. She said it was no big deal, just trash it and I can run it again another time. So that was 2 hours of my day wasted. A little embarrassing. At least the RNA extraction went well. I hope. :-)

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Spring Break!

My spring break has been wonderful. My last final went much better than I thought it would. I was really glad I went to a review session the day before, because our professor basically told us that the study guide is the test- with different numbers of course. So I studied that, and I think I did fine. I'm still waiting for all my final grades to be posted online.

On Sunday, my first official day of spring break, I had to be at church at 7:30am to play bells. That means I had to wake up at 6:30am. And, thanks to daylight savings time, it felt like 5:30am (thanks a lot Ben Franklin!). So I was not a very happy person that morning. I was so tired that I was grumpy the entire morning. We play in both services, but we have 90 minutes in between. That's usually when I go home and get Daniel. This time I was dying to go home so I could jump in bed and get at least another 30 minutes of sleep. But some people in our group insisted we practice for the first 30 minutes of our break. I was so sick and tired of playing these pieces. We work on only 2 pieces at a time, so I get so bored with them. I can sight read it perfectly the first time, and I have to spend 90 minutes every Thursday night rehearsing and then on top of that the day we perform it, in between services, we have to practice it MORE?? I was not in the mood at all. But I sucked it up and held in my impatience until we were done. Then I raced home and jumped into bed and got a quick nap. After the second service, I went home and slept for about 4 hours. I didn't feel well at all, but I dragged myself out of bed just in time to eat a delicious dinner that Daniel made for me. He's wonderful.

After that, my spring break went great. Monday I worked for a few hours and got the online part of the animal certification training done. It was so mind-numbingly boring, but I got through it. It's all lawyer bureaucratic jargon. Pages and pages on ethics. What does privacy mean, what does informed consent mean, who are vulnerable populations, what justifies using animals/humans for research, blah blah blah. I was surprised that most of it centered on research with humans. It's completely different from the research we are doing on mice (obviously) so it didn't really seem relevent. But this certification will go on my resume and any lab I work in from now on will recognize it. So that's good. I'm not really sure what the next step is.

On Tuesday Daniel took his GMAT. He found out his score immediately, which was a 610. He was thrilled. That's the highest score he's ever gotten on a practice test, and 20 points higher than the average student who gets accepted into Daniel's School of Business at DU. That night, we celebrated! The four of us had homemade vegetarian enchiladas (made by Hope) and drank lots of beer. We even sat outside on our patio and ate dinner. The weather was so beautiful, we were really happy to just sit outside and enjoy it. As the sun went down we walked to the grocery store and bought some firewood and then we lit a fire and sat around it until all our wood burned up. At that point, Daniel was pretty sick so we called it a night. It's no wonder he got sick, he had a couple beers, a rum and coke, bailey's and butterscotch schnapps, and wine. How many different liquors can you mix in one night? It was still really fun despite the ending on Daniel's part. He had been saying that he was going to really celebrate when he was done with his GMAT, and he definitely did!

The last couple days we've been deep cleaning the house and re-decorating. I baked some bread last night that is delicious. And Daniel cooked a beautiful gourmet meal last night. It was balsalmic marinated steak with cheese melted on top, Parmesan mashed potatoes, and garlic olive oil asparagus. Sometimes Daniel surprises me with his cooking skills.

I'm already thinking ahead to next quarter. Today we went to Target to buy some school supplies. Most of my classes are up on blackboard so I've read through the syllabus and looked ahead to see what the first week entails. I'm really excited to take Nutrition and Anatomy especially. My nutrition textbook comes with this software where you input your meals and exercise, and it calculates the nutritional content of your food, how many calories you burn, your net energy intake/outtake, etc. It's really cool! I hope that I'll end up eating healthier, and losing weight too after I take this class.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Finals

Yesterday I took 3 final exams: Genetics, Human Physiology, and Analysis of Equilibrium Systems Lab Practical. Tomorrow morning I have the Analysis written final. The genetics test was really really hard. I studied human physiology by far the most out of all my classes, but I studied genetics a fair amount. This section was just so confusing. It was all regulation of genes. I kept getting eukaryotic and prokaryotic mixed up and transcription and translation mixed up. I'm just glad it's over. Luckily I did well enough on my first 3 sectional exams that I had some wiggle room on the final. My physiology exam went great! My professor is so amazing, she already graded them and put them in the biology office for us to pick up. Not only that, but she wrote our final grade in the class on the test as well. So I know that I got a 91% on the final, and an 87.5% in the class: a B+! I am very happy with that. The lab practical also went surprisingly well. I was so nervous for it. We were told that it would be similar to one of the labs we did during the quarter, but instead of being given pages and pages of instructions, we had to figure out how to do it on our own. That is very scary for someone like me who looooves to ask questions and needs to know every detail before I do anything. We were allowed to use our lab notebooks (with whatever we chose to write in them throughout the quarter) which turned out to be a big help. After a few mistakes in the beginning (and my buret breaking and spilling 0.1M NaOH everywhere) I finally got the hang of it and I think I turned in a very good report. I heard horror stories from people who took the practical earlier in the week, so I think mine went relatively well.

Today I got to sleep in. Daniel had to go to school for his tuba lesson, so I had to wait for him to come home around 11 before I could go to work. Technically, I could have gone to work before his lesson, but I would rather have an excuse to sleep in :-) And they don't care at all if I'm a few hours late. Today turned out to be a fantastic day at work. Judy, a post-doc whom I have been working with a lot in the lab, introduced me to my very own project! In the summer, a bunch of students will be starting in the lab and the more experienced ones are given their own project. Since I'm already working there, they are giving me a head start on mine. This is just one idea, and I can decide if it's really what I want to do or not. So far, it sounds sort of interesting. Judy sat down and explained all this stuff to me that was a little beyond my comprehension even with 3 years of college level science. But I feel like I learned a lot and I at least have a basic idea of what the project would entail. It has to do with the immune system in different strains of mice. In research labs, they use specific strains of mice to do testing on. A strain is sort of like a family: they all have the same or similar DNA. Labs all over the world buy their mice from breeding laboratories, so there are major strains that are found in many laboratories. At National Jewish, we do work with A/J, 129, C57, BALBc, etc. A scientist can do the same exact experiment on different strains of mice and each strain will have completely different results. Obviously, this is not good. It's hard to tell which results are valid and relevant to humans when every strain of mouse gives different results. So, her idea is for me to better quantify the differences. She is doing a project in which she is exposing cells from different strains to ozone. Ozone can really hurt your lungs if you breathe it in. She noticed that different strains of mice have different quantities of immune cells. Some of them had very high numbers of specific T-cells, while other strains had very low numbers. So the goal is for me to look at 5 specific strains and use flow cytometry to quantify how many of different kinds of cells they have. Judy said that hopefully at the end, I will have a PUBLISHED paper with MY NAME on it!! Like a real journal article! That will be incredible for my resume. My article would help scientists decide which strain of mouse to use for their own research. It doesn't sound like the most fascinating topic, but what's important is that it is definitely an attainable goal for me. So the first step is to get animal certification so I can breed, feed, sacrifice, and harvest my own mice. I also need to do research to make sure there isn't already a published article on the exact same topic I hope to do. And I need to look up what papers have been published that are similar to this. She already gave me about 50 pages of journal articles to read. And she gave me my own research notebook (to take notes while I do research) and my own lab notebook (to take notes while I conduct experiments). It's all SO EXCITING!

In the meantime, I need to finish up finals. I haven't studied hardly at all for my test tomorrow. I feel like I know a lot of the topics. The example problems he does in class are so easy. Unfortunately, I didn't do so well on my last exam, but I did really well on the first exam. So we'll see how it goes. I think I studied so hard for physiology that I'm just all final-ed out. Hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Feels like Spring is here!

It has been over 50 degrees for almost a week now. It seems like as soon as it hit March, God decided it was time we got some sunshine :-) We are definitely enjoying it! We've been taking Jackson out for walks, and the permafrost in our backyard has actually started to melt. It's kind of like there's a 3 foot by 20 foot ice rink in our backyard. After we got a few good snowstorms, it never melted. Jackson likes to roll around in it and slide around on it. But now it's rapidly disappearing! Our grass is getting greener too! Sometimes I look outside and I get this intense feeling like it's summer. It's the same feeling I had all summer long when I was in our house and looked outside. It's the feeling of freedom. Summer= freedom. Especially last summer when it meant moving into our very first house, going on a month long trip to Europe, and all those other independent things. So when I see the green grass and sun shining, it makes me so excited for summer! It's not even the warm weather I'm excited about, though that is definitely nice. It's about a time when school is out and it'll just be us living in our house, with our puppy, going to work every day. I already know I have a full time job for the summer, and hopefully Daniel will too. It will be a little taste of post-college life. And it's about remembering times that we had friends over and grilled burgers and laid outside in our cushy soft grass with baby Jackson running around. And working out in the yard, mowing the lawn and pulling weeds and that kind of stuff. This summer will be filled with planting! Daniel especially is excited about planting fruit trees and a garden. In Denver, apply trees are very popular. I think cherry trees grow well here too. But I really want an aspen tree! They are the quintessential Colorado tree and I think they're gorgeous. They turn bright gold in the fall, and have these little sand-dollar shaped leaves that look like they shimmer in the wind. We also want to plant a vegetable garden so we can harvest our own veggies for dinner. We want to plant lettuce, bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, and lots of other stuff! And I want to plant flowers in our front yard. I'm so excited for SPRING!!!!

Friday, March 5, 2010

Wedding Location

Yesterday Daniel and I discussed the wedding location for the billionth time. And this time, we decided to have it in Phoenix. While my Mom was here, we talked about it and she was very clear that if we had the wedding in Denver, not very many people would come. Probably just family and really close family friends. And of course our friends that live in Denver. The more I thought about that, the more I felt that we should have it in Phoenix. I know I will be really disappointed if there are only 50 people at our wedding. I have grown up with so many people surrounding me at church, and I really want them to be there when we get married. It's so hard for Daniel to understand because he doesn't have that church family like I do. The most important people to him are our current friends in college. But I am sure that in 10 years, we won't be in touch with over half of our current friends. The people that have been there to mentor me for 20 years are so important. I can't explain it. When I was younger, I always pictured them at my wedding. And anyone with young children will have a very difficult time traveling to Denver. It will be nearly impossible for them to come. And how many people would really spend the money for a flight and hotel just to come to a wedding? Not very many I'm sure. When Daniel and I talked about it, he was really stubborn at first. He said that he wants our wedding to be a party, with people our own age- not a bunch of people our parents' age. I can understand that, but I think that our bridesmaids and groomsmen will be enough young people to make it fun. Finally, Daniel agreed. He said that he could tell it was really important to me, and that was reason enough. He is so selfless and generous. That very night he began researching places to hold the wedding in Phoenix.

This is such a hard decision. Even I go back and forth! I wanted a snowy wedding, and like Daniel, I feel that we should establish Denver as our home. It feels strange to me to be spending the week before the wedding living at my parents' house, or in a hotel. I would much rather plan the whole thing from my home. But the truth is we both spent 18 years of our lives in Scottsdale. And there is nobody who would travel to Denver but wouldn't travel to Phoenix. Most of Daniel's family will be flying from Florida, so it makes no difference to them. And almost all of my family lives in Phoenix. We will be able to include so many more people. I hope we can stick with this and move forward with the planning and feel confident in our decision. No matter what, we won't be completely happy. But we will make the best of it.

I guess we should change the theme. Snowflakes wouldn't go so well in Phoenix. Maybe music notes? That's very appropriate for us. I still like blue though.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Indecisiveness

I can't decide if I'm going to travel to Phoenix for Spring Break. I'm done with finals on Saturday, March 13, but I play bells in church Sunday morning so I'd have to leave after that. Besides that, I have work Monday afternoon and all day Friday, and bells rehearsal Thursday night. Work I can definitely get out of, and bells practice I can probably get out of too. But I may want the money from work. My dad is paying for the flight, so that's not an issue. But almost all my friends will be in town over spring break. I'm sure there are going to be lots of parties and fun things going on. Daniel can't go to Phoenix because he's taking his GMAT on Wednesday of that week. Mostly, I want to go to Phoenix to see my grandparents and to celebrate Sarah's birthday. I have to make a decision soon though to book my flight.

My Mom is leaving in a couple hours. On Sunday we went shopping and she bought me a pair of jeans and tons of groceries. We bought some yeast and bread flour and she showed me how to use my bread maker. Now we have yummy cinnamon raising bread for breakfast. Tonight I think I'll make parmesan basil bread to go with spaghetti. I said goodbye to her this morning because I had class all day and she is going straight from her conference to the airport. It went way too fast. I wish she was staying for a whole week. But maybe if she did, I would say it's too long. Anyways, I miss her way more now than I did before she even came. So maybe that's another good reason to go to Phoenix for spring break- to remind me why I live in a different city from my parents :-)

I just finished my last genetics lab of the quarter. I got 100% on my final presentation, and my final lab report. Our lab grade is worth 25% of our lecture grade, so that's really good. Tomorrow is my very last physiology lab, and Thursday is my last chemistry lab. Next week I have a chemistry practical which is like a final exam for lab. I'm sure it will be easy because every single lab has been easy and I took good notes in my lab notebook. This quarter has been a breeze, and it's almost over! And on another positive note, it hit 60 degrees today. We haven't seen warm weather like that since before Thanksgiving! It is beautiful. And it makes me feel like spring is just around the corner! When I think of summer I remember moving into our house and how lovely it was to grill burgers in our backyard and roll around with Jackson in our soft cushy grass in the backyard. And I remember long days with nothing to do but lay outside in the sun and read a book or plant a garden :-) I am really looking forward to it!