Wedding! and Work!

This week we made so much progress on the wedding! I have a clear picture of it now, which makes daydreaming about it so much more fun! We made decided on the colors, the location, the time, the date, the officiant, the flower girls, my bridesmaids, the ring bearer, the bridal processional music, the musicians for the ceremony, the photographer, the centerpieces, the food, and lots of other little details!

I also made a lot of progress on the dress. I really had no clue what I was looking for. But I went to David's Bridal on Saturday with my mom and Daniel's mom and tried a wide variety of styles to see what I liked. Here's what I learned: I actually really like lace, I definitely want beading, I want a train, a fingertip veil, V neck or sweetheart neckline, deep V in the back, trumpet, or A line silhouette, and that I don't need to lose weight because undergarments work miracles! I didn't really want to try on wedding gowns because I wanted to lose 10 pounds before I did. But my mom and Julie convinced me to go look, and I was pleasantly surprised. I also really didn't want to go to David's Bridal because I wasn't impressed when I went to shop for my prom dress. But we had a fantastic surprise!

I wasn't able to get an appointment on a Saturday on such short notice, so we decided to just walk in and browse. If nobody was able to help us, oh well at least we can look. So we walked in at about 10am and they told us they had an appointment available at 1pm. So I took it! In the meantime, we browsed the racks and wrote down style numbers to try on later. While we were looking at bridesmaid dresses, a girl came up and asked questions about what we were looking for. We explained that we were here to look at a wide variety of gowns, and started asking questions. She looked at the style numbers we wrote down and gave us some good advice. We asked if she would be available for my appointment later that afternoon and she explained that she's just in training. But she asked her supervisor, and her supervisor told her it was okay to start right away! So she pulled gowns and took down my information and I started trying on dresses. It was so much fun! She was the sweetest girl, I felt no pressure, and she had great ideas. She treated me so special. I told her that I was hesitant to try on a mermaid style or trumpet style gown because I'm not really comfortable with my body, but that my fiance likes it a lot and likes that style. She told me "of course, he likes your body, he loves you!" And she told me repeatedly that I didn't need to lose one pound, and that the dress should fit my body, not the other way around. It was so much fun and completely changed my mind about David's Bridal. Every dress I tried on was under $1000 and they were all gorgeous. There were 3 that I absolutely loved equally. I took pictures and sent them to my sister so I could get her input as well. Daniel is dying to see the pictures, but I won't show him any. Now I am so excited to try on more dresses! Though I loved all 3, I think that none of them was "the dress." I really want to go to Demitrios in Scottsdale. I have looked at their dresses online and they are really beautiful.

Today was my first day full time at work. It was strange, but really fun. I love the people I work with. And now that I'm full time, I think I'll really get to know them better. I heard that last week a transformer at the power plant here in Denver blew up. Like literally, exploded. So the power went out for about 4 hours at our house and at the lab. When that happened, Judy (my supervisor) was in the middle of an ELISA so it kind of got messed up. Today we repeated that ELISA. In the middle of it, the fire alarm went off! So we evacuated the building and had to just leave it there. Luckily it didn't mess it up too much. We picked up where we left off. Then, around 3pm, the power went out! That is really really bad in a research lab. Almost everything we do requires a computer or centrifuge, or some other machine that requires electricity. Not only that, but every freezer and refrigerator and incubator lost power. So immediately every machine shut off which made this deafening silence. There was no hum that is usually there when tons of machines are running. Then almost immediately after, lots and lots of beeping. Every freezer is on an alarm so if it looses power, or warms up by more than 1 degree Celsius, it starts beeping. And it is set to automatically call the emergency contact in the lab. So everyone's phone started ringing too! Every sample in the freezer started to thaw, every cell line growing in the incubator started to die, and every reagent in the refrigerator started to go bad (like milk would without power). It was bad. We were so frustrated because we just wanted to get this ELISA done that got ruined because of the last power outage! Judy told me I could just go home because there was nothing we could do and who knows how long the power was going to be out. What a strange day.

Today was also the first day for many of the other student interns. I'm finally not the bottom of the totem pole anymore! Since I have already worked there for 6 months, I'm way ahead on my project and just knowing everybody and where we keep everything and how we do things. Laura even told me that I could make the other students label my tubes! I won't do that though :-) Today another student tagged along with me and Judy because he needed to learn how to do an ELISA for his project. He's never worked in a lab before, and never done an ELISA before. Yikes. He's one year behind me in school, and hasn't been to Denver since he was 6 years old so he doesn't know anybody here. I told him a lot about the lab and my project and ELISAs. We really spent a lot of time together so we got to know each other pretty well. I really want to meet the other students. I'm sure I'll get a chance in the next few days. I think this summer is going to be great!