First week at UCDenver

It's been one week since we moved into our new lab, and very little progress has been made. We still don't have any instruments set up and ready to use. We have most of the supplies we need, but not all of it. There was very little for me to do last week. I had the obligatory online training that took me a couple hours one day, and we had two meetings on Thursday. Besides that, I basically just passed time at my desk.

My favorite part about the new lab is my desk. It is so quiet and peaceful. Right now nobody is working on the bench, so all the PhDs are in their offices which is through 2 doors and down the hall from where I am. So I'm all by myself next to a big window that looks out to the Rocky Mountains. I haven't even been bored. I have kept very busy finishing my graduate school application and planning our honeymoon :-) I officially "e-submitted" my application this morning. It cost me almost $300 which is mildly irritating. We don't really have $300 to spare, but we'll find a way to pay for it. It's important enough. And Daniel and I figure we just have to make it until March and then Daniel will get a full-time job and we will be able to pay off any credit card debt we accrue between now and then, if any. But I feel very strongly against having any debt at all. The only debt I personally have ever had is student loan debt. We don't make payments on our cars, and we don't even have a mortgage, though I would be fine with that kind of debt as well. It's really just credit card debt that I am opposed to. I just feel that you shouldn't spend more money than you can afford. Period. Even though we are making so little money right now, we have to live within our means. So I really don't want to carry a balance on any credit card if I can help it. Daniel feels a little differently about that, probably because he knows more about finance, business, and the economy. He thinks it's worse to have cash sitting in the bank doing nothing than to carry a small balance on a credit card. I like to have a little cash sitting in the bank. It makes me feel safe.

So I had so much extra time last week I couldn't avoid writing my graduate school application essays anymore. I had to write 3 total: 1) my motivation towards becoming a PA in 5000 characters or less, 2) my life's history and experiences in 3200 characters or less, and 3) a stressful experience in my life and the resolution in 1600 characters or less. The first essay I wrote months ago and it's way under the limit. The second and third I wrote last week, and I had such a hard time keeping them within the limit. 3200 characters is about a page, and 1600 characters is about a paragraph. Try writing a story about a stressful experience in a paragraph! It's not easy. And the prompt about your "life's history and experiences" is so broad, I didn't even know where to begin. I was so grateful to have my sister's help. We're still so in sync with each other, I can practically predict what she's going to say before she says it. Just yesterday Daniel and I were talking on the phone with her and she made an argument that was almost verbatim what I had told Daniel weeks ago. It was so funny sitting there listening to her say exactly what I said before. Even though we've lived in different states for 4 years, we are still right in sync with each other. I think it's a twin thing. I hope we never lose that.

As for the honeymoon planning, I am making lots of progress. The final details of the wedding day are coming together, so I can focus on the trip now. It's funny that you spend so much time and effort on that day, you forget there's a huge vacation the day after. We booked our flights and got what I think is a great deal. We have been looking for weeks and finally found a Delta flight around the time that we wanted for $720 roundtrip for each of us. We were ready to book it, but Daniel's parents asked him to wait a few days because they're paying for his flight as a graduation gift. By the time we got around to booking it, we found a US Airways flight at almost exactly the same time for $625 roundtrip- Score! I booked both of our B&Bs that we're staying at on the Big Island, and researched some fun activities. We're going to go horseback riding at sunset, snorkel with manta rays at night, and go stargazing at Mauna Kea Observatory. The stars must look incredible when you're on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I think it sounds so romantic. And I bought a new bathing suit this weekend! I think it's a rule that you have to get a new bathing suit before a trip to Hawaii. I know, all of this sounds very expensive. I'm pretty concerned. But, if worse comes to worse, we can dip into our savings. We have almost $5500 saved up. We're hoping not to use any of it, but if we have to then that's the way it goes. It's hard to plan when you don't know how much gift money you're going to get. But I'm trying not to worry about it. The part that's going to cost the most is the rental car. We have to get a 4-wheel drive to get to some of the beaches and to go to the top of Mauna Kea. That will cost us close to $800 for the whole trip- and that's with USAA waiving the $25/day underage fee (thank goodness!). I really don't want to blow that much money on a stupid car, but we don't have a choice. All we need is something to get us around the island with 4-wheel drive. I would much rather spend $800 on an incredible experience, nicer hotel, or something super romantic- not something so practical as a rental car.

Well now that the honeymoon is planned and my grad school application is finished, I'll have to find something else to occupy my time until the lab is up and running. Any suggestions for wasting about 6 hours a day on the computer? I've got another week or 2 until I'll actually be able to do any work.

The big move is underway

Work has been crazy this week. Yesterday was our official move date. We spent all Friday packing up everything from our old lab at National Jewish. The lab was filled with boxes. I didn't have that much to pack up because I didn't even get a desk until about 5 weeks ago. I purposely didn't settle in because I knew we would be moving very soon. For the past 2 weeks we have been ordering lab supplies to be delivered to the new lab and our lab manager was unpacking boxes and setting things up. But now it's day 2 in the new lab and there is very little supplies here. So little that we can't actually do anything. Yesterday we each gathered supplies for our own bench from the larger store that the manager set up. We also got our brand new computers and set those up. We hired a professional moving company to move all our boxes and freezers over here. We unpacked as much as we could, but there isn't much to do yet. We need computers for just about every instrument and we still haven't gotten those. None of the PhD offices have permanent furniture in them, just tables to use until October when the real furniture comes. My desk in the lab had no chair so I was sitting on my desk until this morning. The biggest job was moving all our freezers. We had about 10 minus 80 freezers that had to be moved, as well as 2 minus 20 freezers and 2 4 degree refrigerators. Even though it's only a few miles from National Jewish to the University of Colorado, it's super important that everything stay cold. They had to be moved as quickly as possible to keep everything inside from thawing out. The freezers are full of our samples that would be ruined if they thawed and re-froze. So all the freezers are here, but we're still waiting on one refrigerator. All our files and notebooks are also moved, but no computer data. We have one guy who is in charge of copying everything onto a giant hard drive and then moving it to our new computer system. It's taking much longer than anticipated since we have over 1 TB of data to move from lots of different hard drives.

I am really enjoying the new lab so far. We split it in half and put the researchers who work with human samples on one side, and mouse on the other. I am the only tech who works with mice (everyone else is a PhD or MD) so therefore I am the only one with a desk on this half of the lab. When I'm sitting at my desk, nobody can see me and I can't see anyone. It's actually kind of peaceful. But on August 15 our new mouse colony manager is starting, and she'll probably have a desk at least near me. I also get a lot more space in this lab. We have only filled maybe 10% of the shelves and drawers so far. I can claim as many as I want until we hire more people and start filling up the space. So right now I have 3 desks completely to myself. I also get my own phone extension at my desk. All of this may sound mundane to some people, but I'm excited. It's just more independence and responsibility. I just wish we could start doing actual work. I have a long list of experiments to do, but I can't do any of it until our instruments are up and running. I have no idea how long that will take, but probably at least the rest of this week. Until then I can pretty much do whatever I want. I completed a bunch of online training about sexual harrassment and disposal of hazardous waste. I'm glad I got that out of the way because it is so boring. I'm planning on finishing up my graduate school application this week as well. I have already written my first draft of my autobiographical essay, but it has to be cut way down. I haven't began my stressful experience essay.

This will be a nice easy week, but exciting too. It's like Christmas getting all brand new supplies! I hope I don't get too bored.

The Future of our Family

Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I have wanted to be a mother for a very long time. Pretty much since I was 16 I've been going through life waiting until the most responsible (and socially acceptable) time to have children. Not to mention waiting for Daniel to be ready. Because as badly as I want to start our family, I definitely don't want to do it until Daniel is on board. It wouldn't be very much fun if Daniel wasn't excited about being a Daddy. So I have been living my life, doing everything I can to work towards the day I can have children. Of course there are many things that must be done first, in my opinion. Finish college, get a job, become financially independent and secure, and get married. Well as I sit here I have completed the first two, am well on my way to completing the third, and in 4 1/2 months I will have completed the fourth. Which means that technically I am ready to start our family.

Up until now, Daniel has not been ready. He loves kids, and wants to have a family, but there are lots of other things he wants to do first. He wants to travel, own a beautiful home in a great neighborhood, start his own business, and make lots of money. All of these things were much more important to him and in his opinion, impossible to do with children. In the past 6 months he has made huge strides towards all of those goals- namely, starting his own business. He spends hours researching similar businesses and asking friends and families for advice. He attends every business class looking to glean information that can help him start his business. And all of this means he has spent exactly zero time looking for a job, or thinking about what kind of job he is going to get when he graduates in March. He will have a master's degree in business administration. Here's where the conflict began.

Every time we talked about our future, we were in serious disagreement. Daniel wanted to start his business immediately when he graduates in March. He thinks he will make enough for the first year or two to pay our bills (his estimate was about $30,000/yr), and we'll just take out more loans to pay for my graduate school. Then, when I finish graduate school 3 years later and get a job (starting pay is $70-80k) we can start thinking about saving for a baby. After we pay off student loans of course.

My plan was significantly different. I was thinking that once he graduates in March, he will get a great corporate job that will make at least double what we are now (I think that's pretty reasonable with a master's degree). It will be enough to support us and pay for at least some of my graduate school and pay off our student loans. After a couple years of his much higher salary, we should have enough saved to have a baby. The best part of this plan is his getting a corporate job that pays significantly higher than what I make now. I am tired of being poor. I feel like after 4-5 years of school, we have invested enough time, effort, and money to make much more than we are right now. Which is why I'm going to get my master's degree. But part of my expectation is that Daniel will use his master's degree to support us while I am working on mine. I was so thrilled a few years ago when Daniel decided to get his MBA because I thought that meant financial security for our family. And it felt to me like he was pulling the rug out from under me when he declared that he wanted to start his new business right away and that meant another 3 years of barely paying our bills while continuing to accumulate student loan debt. And then after those 3 years, it's ME supporting our family. Which makes it kind of hard to start a family.

So we have been going back and forth between his plan and mine for 6 months now. Every time we talk about it, I feel like my dream of being a mom gets pushed further and further into the future. And I feel like Daniel is putting his dream of starting a business before mine. Every discussion ended with hurt feelings for both of us and we got nowhere. Until yesterday.

Daniel basically told me that he thought about it and he liked my plan. Sort of. His idea was to graduate in March and get a job. He can continue to work on his business plan and start it up slowly on the side. Meanwhile, he'll be making enough to pay our bills so that I can go to graduate school. The program I want to go to isn't really expensive; it's only about $10-15k a year for 3 years. Depending on how the first year or 2 goes, we would like to have a baby between my second and third year of graduate school. I have spoken to 2 of my friends who are in the program now and they both say it's very much like undergraduate. It's not 8am-5pm in class every day. You have many afternoons off, and sometimes whole days off. You still get Christmas break, summer break, and spring break. So if we planned it very carefully, I could have the baby in June and go back to school in September. I think that after my first year I will be able to tell if I could handle that. Then when I finish the program I can work full time with a toddler a home while Daniel starts up his business. Our income wouldn't change a whole lot if Daniel quits and then right away I start working. I know there are a lot of pieces that have to fall exactly into place to make this work, but the important part to me is that Daniel has agreed to get a job in March. I feel like we only have to get through the next 8 months living paycheck to paycheck. That's such a relief.

What a great exercise in compromise. I think this proves that we have a great foundation for our marriage.

I have had an incredibly busy few weeks. We had guests staying in our
home the last two weekends, and then this past weekend we went up to
the mountains for our mini summer vacation. It was fun having so many
things going on, but I'm completely exhausted. I am really looking
forward to this weekend, when I have no plans at all.

The last weekend in June, Daniel's childhood best friend (Patrick) and
his dad came to stay with us. Patrick's little brother was in a
lacrosse tournament here in Denver so they wanted to come and cheer
him on. Patrick's Dad was incredibly generous. He took us out for
many meals and wouldn't let us pay for anything while he was here. He
also took Daniel white water rafting on Monday. I couldn't go because
I had to work. I'm so glad Daniel got a chance to spend time with
Patrick. They hadn't seen each other since high school when my
family, Daniel's family, and Patrick's family all went on a cruise to
Alaska together. We are inviting the whole family to our wedding and
it seems like they might make the trip out to Phoenix. Patrick and I
really enjoyed talking about science. He just graduated with an
engineering degree and got a great job in Boston. He is considering
medical school and was very interested in the research I'm doing.

The following weekend my Dad came to stay with us. He was on his way
to our favorite family vacation spot, Estes Park. We have gone there
every summer since I was about 4 years old. This year he had to go by
himself because the rest of us were scattered across the country and
couldn't get time off work. The first thing we did together was go to
a Rockies game. After the game there was an amazing fireworks show.
My Dad got us really good seats too. I practiced some calming and
de-stressing techniques and was able to watch the fireworks without
even covering my ears. I was still very tense, but I was able to
enjoy it without aching arms and ears. Over the weekend he also took
us shopping for our wedding gift- a new kitchen table and chairs! I
am so happy because I've been wanting to replace ours pretty much
since we moved into our house 2 years ago. It was given to us by
Daniel's family and it was the table that he sat at when he was a
little kid in the 1980s. And it shows. So we were very excited to
get a table that reflects our style a little better. And now we're
inspired to change all kinds of things in the house. We don't have a
ton of money right now, but we're going to save up and change things
little by little. Also while my Dad was here we picked out our
wedding rings and ordered them. I finally found one that looked good
next to my engagement ring. Daniel has known what he wanted for
months so it was just a matter of ordering it for him. And finally,
we started our registry! My Dad helped us pick out some things he
thought we might need/want for the house and kitchen. We went to
Crate and Barrel and got fantastic service. An employee took us
through the whole store giving us tips on what things family members
like to buy, and the products themselves. She spent a lot of time
telling us about the dishes and the materials they're made out of.
She also had answers to all of our concerns like how to get all our
gifts back to Denver, and how many sets of dishes and glasses and
things to register for. It was so much fun to go through the store
and pick anything we wanted no matter the cost! He left on Monday
morning, the 4th of July. I went into work for a few hours on the
holiday so that I could come home when the furniture was delivered on
Wednesday. I'm so lucky my work is flexible. That's why it pays to
be on salary and work in a professional environment. My supervisor
even told me she doesn't care if I have to leave or anything, as long
as my work gets done. :-)

Speaking of work, it's been going really well. Things slowed down a
lot last week so I haven't been nearly as busy. On July 1 I
officially became an employee of the state. I now work for the
University of Colorado as a research trainee. That means I'm on
salary with full benefits (including matching up to 10% on my 401k!).
We got to go over to the new lab and see what our workspace will look
like. It's the same size as our current lab now, but with half the
people! We also have extra rooms around the perimeter of the lab that
frees up some space in the lab itself. We will officially move July
18th if everything goes as planned. This Wednesday is our orientation
so I'm really excited to learn about my benefits and enroll.

This past weekend Daniel and I went to Estes Park. We picked up my
Mom from the airport and met my dad up there. It was a very short
trip, but really fun. I just love the mountains and it was so nice
and cool up there. We went on a very steep hike and I'm still a
little sore from that. Jackson loved sniffing and exploring the
wilderness. We also spent time with our family friends, the Cylwiks.
They meet us up there every year. Eric and Scott both brought their
significant others, so with them and Daniel and I we actually
outnumbered the parents for the first time. It was interesting to see
the dynamic shift from the parents taking charge to the kids. We got
back last night and I'm back at work today. I am looking forward to
having Daniel all to myself this weekend! And then in 2 weeks, we'll
have another house guest for 2 weeks, and then my Mom is coming to
visit again. I love having so much to do this summer. Our whole
lives feel like vacation, but better because we get to sleep in our
own bed.

My New Job

Wow the last 3 weeks have gone by so fast, I just haven't had time to blog at all. The new job has been way more work than I ever imagined. I worked full time last summer (well, sort of- I would leave early often if there wasn't any work to do) so I figured this would be just the same. But it's not. I am incredibly busy from the moment I step into work until the moment I leave. And I never leave on time. This isn't the kind of job where you have certain hours and once your hours are up you get to leave. Not even close. I've been working 9-10 hours 3 or 4 days a week for the past 2 weeks. Luckily I get to come in fairly late at about 9am. I guess researchers generally aren't morning people. But I usually don't leave until 6pm and once or twice it was 7 before I could leave. We have been doing massive mouse harvests of 16-20 animals in one day. That is a lot of work and it all has to be completed immediately. If you leave samples overnight to process the next day, the RNA can degrade so the samples become useless. Which means you have to just stay and get it done no matter how long it takes. Somehow I am the one who has been designated to do all the processing of the samples. So we (me and 2 other people) spend 9-10am preparing for the harvest, all 3 of us spend 10am-3pm harvesting, and then I get to spend 3pm-6pm processing while the other 2 sit in their office or go home. I'm not really sure how that happened, but I really shouldn't complain. I prefer a really busy day over staring into space for 8 hours. It just means that I have a million things to do and I can get overwhelmed sometimes when I have 5 thousand emails to answer and hours of benchwork to do.

All this mouse harvesting has given me lots of practice. In the past 2 weeks I've learned to bleed the mouse perfectly. This was extremely frustrating for me at first. You have to stick a needle directly into the heart without opening up the chest cavity. So you have to learn where to stick it exactly right. If you don't get it right, then the blood clots and you can't get any out. You can also end up puncturing so many holes in the heart that the blood just pools inside the chest cavity and makes a big mess when you try to take out the lungs later. After practicing on 5 mice, I finally got it. I'm still really slow compared to the other 2 researchers who help me. It takes me about 15 minutes to do one animal, while it takes them 8-10 minutes. I also learned how to tie a suture while working on the mice. Maybe that'll come in handy some day when I'm working with humans!

The only disappointing part about my job has been the pay. I got my first paycheck yesterday and it was surprisingly little. It's really scary for me. This is the first month that Daniel and I are paying our own bills out of our own income. If our income together isn't enough then we won't be able to pay our bills. We both believe in living within our means- which means no credit card debt. Neither of us have ever gone into debt (except for student loans). I would hate it if we couldn't pay off our credit cards this first month. But I realize there may be a small learning curve. And I'm still on my ridiculously low $8/hr student pay until July 1 so my income will go up at that point. Though working 9 and 10 hour days is much more attractive when you're on an hourly income.

Another benefit of working full time is that for the first time I get to see all the bureaucracy that goes on. Until we are able to hire a mouse colony manager, I am sharing the mouse duties with a graduate student in the lab. This means that I get tons of emails about food, housing, sick and dead animals, ordering, etc. etc. I'm slowly learning how to handle all these decisions and extra responsibility. With the whole lab moving to the University we have a lot of paperwork to take care of as well. I've had to submit a letter of resignation to National Jewish, I just got my offer letter at the University, and I've had to sign up for a new employee orientation. To work with animals in the new facility there is a whole other set of paperwork and doctors visit and meetings and training to go through. It's all very confusing and it seems like so much work. But when you're dealing with the welfare of animals, I guess I would hope that there were significant regulations involved. You don't want any old person walking in and experimenting on animals. Our move date is currently July 18th. At that point I will be driving to the University of Colorado every day instead of National Jewish. The commute is about 25 minutes with traffic and everything. That's 10 minutes longer than I'm driving now, but it's still not that bad. I'll also have to pay $57/mo for parking! I think it's ridiculous that we have to pay for parking at our own job. (by the way, a bus pass is something like $75/mo so I wouldn't be saving anything by taking the bus to work).

So, to summarize: I love my job. It's really hard work, but very rewarding. I come home completely exhausted every day. I make very little money. I love my life right now!

Graduation continued

So after I opened gifts, the party started. A bunch of our friends came over. It was great because our family got to meet some of our closest friends. One of them came into the front door, looked at Nicole and said "Hi Rachel!" Daniel laughed and then she saw me and realized what happened. It was pretty funny. It doesn't happen too often anymore that we get mistaken for each other. So it's really fun when it does happen. We sat out in our backyard and watched the sun set. It was a beautiful evening. Warm, but with a cool breeze. We ate cake and had a champagne toast for all the graduates. My family and my friends got along great. I was so grateful to my friends for coming. I'm sure they were just as tired as I was, and had lots of graduation parties to go to, but they came to ours anyways. We have some really awesome friends. But everyone was tired, so the party ended early. By 11pm everyone had left and the whole house was cleaned up. There was so much leftover food it kind of made me anxious. It's hard to explain why leftovers make me anxious. I think because it was all junk food and perishable. And Daniel and I hate throwing out food and we try to eat very healthy. But it's three days later, and most of it is gone already.

The next morning Daniel and I drove Nicole and my mom to the airport (in our new car!). They flew from Denver to Barcelona for their cruise. We spent the rest of the day with Daniel's parents. The rest of my family all left to go home early that morning. Daniel's dad used that time to interview us on video for our wedding slideshow that he's making. It's a little awkward speaking into a camera lens about the first time you met and everything. But I'm sure the end product will be well worth the effort. Daniel's parents left by 2pm and we both collapsed on the couch in the basement. We took a nap, and went to bed fairly early as well. I wanted to clean the house because after so many people came over the floors were sticky and dirty and gross. But I was so tired, I just let it go. And I was pretty nervous for my first day of my new job. I didn't really know what to expect.

There was no need to be nervous because my new job is going fantastically. I hadn't worked full time since last summer, and even then it was more like 30-35 hours a week. I left when the work was done, which usually didn't take the full day. This time, I have to stay a full 40 hours a week because I'm on salary. I also have never worked independently before. For a year and a half I have come to work and asked my supervisor "what do you want me to do?" I have learned in the past few days that it is completely different when you are expected to make your own schedule. On Monday morning I met with my supervisor and she gave me a long list of projects to do. We discussed what had the greatest priority, and set some goals for this week. That helped me get organized, but I was a little overwhelmed. After speaking with her, and then some of my co-workers who asked for my help with some of their projects this week and next week, I couldn't keep track of it all in my head. Sticky notes have been very helpful. I just started writing everything down so I could organize it. I made some plans (which have since completely changed, but I guess you have to be flexible) and started tackling my to-do list.

This involved rooting around in the -80 degree Celsius freezer for a good chunk of the day searching through hundreds of plates looking for 5 specific ones. -80 is REALLY cold (it's -112 degrees farenheit!). So cold that even with really thick gloves, you can only handle things for a few minutes before your fingers start to hurt really bad. And the freezer alarm starts going off if you leave it open too long. And the plates I'm searching through can't thaw out so you can only take them out of the freezer for about 30 seconds at a time. But you need more than 30 seconds because everything is covered in a layer of frost which you have to scrape off to read the label written on the plate. I shouldn't be complaining- this is my job. And to be honest, I love it. I love the independence of having a list of things to do, and tackling them in my own way.

I've also spent a lot of time working with mice the past few days. I've learned some new techniques that involved putting them to sleep and performing surgery. It's pretty frustrating and I still haven't got it down completely, but next week I'll get more practice. We accidentally killed one mouse that we left in the gas for too long. Instead of going to sleep, he just died. I also accidentally slit a mouse's throat from the inside when I was trying to insert a meal piece down its trachea. But it's all part of the learning process.

So overall I've been pretty busy and enjoying my new job. It's hard to believe that this is my new life for the next year. But there are lots of exciting things coming up. In a month our lab will be moving to the University and then everything will change. In 6 months Daniel and I get married! And soon after that, I'll start making plans for graduate school. Exciting things are coming!

My memory of Graduation

My first blog as an alumna (thanks Chris) of the University of Denver! What an exciting weekend. It still feels kind of surreal that I won't have another class, homework, lab, anything for a whole year. When I deleted all my old school stuff off my computer, it felt very liberating. I also threw out many of my papers, but I still need to go through my notebooks and textbooks and figure out what to get rid of.

The weekend started on Friday with lunch with my co-workers. They wanted to take me out to celebrate my graduation, and my co-worker/mentor/best work friend Laura to celebrate her last day here, and the beginning of her MD/PhD program at CU. Soon after lunch, I met up with Daniel and my Dad who had just driven our new car from Nicole's apartment in Columbus all the way here to Denver in 3 days. It was great to see him again, and I was so grateful that he did that for us. Dad and I went grocery shopping to get supplies for dinner. Around 2:30pm, Daniel's parents showed up at our house in their rental car. We showed them around our (their) house and they were very impressed with how clean and well-kept it was- especially the yard. All that yard work last week paid off! A few hours later, my grandparents, Aunt and Uncle, and mom showed up. They took 2 days to drive from Phoenix to Denver. We promptly showed them around the house (Grandma and Grandpa are the only ones who have never seen the house). Then we started dinner. Daniel had the brilliant idea to have every person make their own personal pizzas. He even made a bunch of pizza dough the night before so everyone could toss their dough and make it into a pie shape, then top it with whatever they wanted to. I thought this would be a big mess, but everyone loved it. Score one for Daniel. After taking a sub-set of the family on an emergency trip to Target (everything takes 5 times longer with people over 50!) we drove to the airport to pick up the last of our crew, my sister. When she came back my Mom gave out the first graduation gift- a beautiful quilt for Daniel. She and my sister spent hours measuring, cutting, and sewing to create a queen-size quilt out of Daniel's old DU and Theta Chi T-shirts. It was a one-of-a-kind gift and Daniel loved it. He was speechless. He knew they were making it, because he packaged up all his old shirts. We brought them a box of 20-something T-shirts last winter and they've been working on it ever since. Every time I look at it, I remember where each shirt came from and remember all the great times we had while Daniel was wearing them. Such fantastic memories all put together into one blanket. I also got to open one of my gifts- a brand new kindle! I gave my old one to my Dad. The new one is way better- lighter, smaller, better resolution, longer battery…. I love it. We all said goodnight because we had to be up bright and early the next morning.

I woke up at 5:30am and I wasn't even tired! I was so excited for the day ahead. We picked up the family at the hotel and had breakfast on campus. We took a million pictures that turned out fantastic and then Daniel and I had to assemble for the big ceremony. We assembled in a small gym and with 900 or so graduates, it was crowded, hot, and claustrophobic in there. It was fun to see all of our friends all dressed up though. We were all so excited. The processional in was my favorite part. Coming into the arena, seeing thousands of people cheering, surrounded by my friends and classmates from the last 4 years. I felt very proud. I thought the speaker was terrible. He lost his place many times and was so old his voice shook. But everyone else seemed to like his speech. I couldn't find my family or Daniel until halfway through the ceremony when Daniel stood up to get in line to receive his diploma. We waved and I blew a kiss to him. He pointed out the family and when we finally made eye contact, they were so excited. I waved and waved until Grandpa finally noticed me too. When it was my turn to receive my diploma, I really wanted to express my gratitude to the chancellor. He shook everyone's hand and said "Congratulations, Ms. Burton" when I took my diploma cover from him. The second half of the name-reading seemed interminable. Name after name…. The whole ceremony took less than 4 hours so I guess it wasn't that long. Afterwards, we met up outside and had orange guava champagne (once again, this is what my $40K a year tuition is paying for). The whole family went out to lunch and we discussed our impressions of the ceremony.

After lunch most of the family went back to the hotel while the Rosens, me, my mom, and Nicole went to Costco to get food for our party that evening. I was feeling pretty tired by this point, but I pushed through. We prepared all the food and by 5pm we had a chance to sit down. The family came over around 6pm and then it was time to open presents! I got a beautiful pearl necklace from my grandparents. They bought it in Spain in 1994 when they were there. Grandma actually gave it to her mother, my great grandmother. When she passed away in 2005, Grandma got them back and now she passed them on to me. Instantly I knew I wanted to wear them at the wedding. They will look beautiful with my dress. Then I opened the gift from George and Shirley and they were the most beautiful pearl earrings I have ever seen in my life. Again- I knew instantly I wanted to wear them for my wedding. I put them on and I looked so sophisticated. Everyone loved them on me. I wore them the rest of the day, and then packaged them up. I won't wear them again until December 4!

Okay, this blog is getting long, but I don't want to forget anything! I'll finish later.