Acorn

You know when you're truly blessed when you can appreciate the small things of life. Fall always makes me thankful that I can hear the leaves blow around, see the vibrant color of the leaves, and feel the chill of the first real cold blast from the North.

I was packing up my personal things from my office when I found an old small acorn (about an inch and a half tall) that I've had for about 6 years now. That acorn is important to me because it reminded me that no matter how bad my day is, or how much I've been through, I can always get through it and see that tomorrow still has promise. I've almost always been an optimistic person, and during the one time in my life when I wasn't, this acorn was a small thing I noticed one day after realizing that today was better than that yesterday. Which at that time was a huge deal. I felt like I had broken the cycle, or at least interrupted it and that I knew I was returning to myself again. I was able to appreciate life's little treasures again, and that's why I would have found the acorn on that day but may not have found it the week before.

I've kept that acorn because it reminds me of where I've been and how I made it through it.

Challenges

Everyone faces challenges in life. To me, to be challenged in my life is to remind me that life isn't easy and also that I'm going through this to prepare me for something else in my life. That isn't always easy to swallow, depending on the situation. There have been times when I couldn't see anything but down where the phrase "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" or "God doesn't put you through anything you can't handle" would actually put me in a fit of rage. I know that's hard for some people to understand but when you are way above your personal limit for what you can deal with at a particular time that's what it feels like. And for that reason I try not to say those things to people because you never really truly know what someone is going through. Fortunately I'm way past that point in my life, that was a long time ago, and I hope I won't ever be at that point again.

Right now I know the most important thing for me to do is to keep believing in myself. Sometimes when your goal is so close to you it feels like you're looking at it from very very far away. What's interesting about seeing what's going on with my project right now, I feel like I can take it. Regardless of the result, no matter how I have to write it up to get published (as in altering my hypothesis to fit the model, not alter the data), I can do it. I will be successful. And then I'll have earned it. And even in if the whole project goes down the toilet, I'll still have done something worth doing by working on this project.

So with that said, can I just fast forward 6 months? :-)

All I Want for Christmas

Dear Santa,

I know it isn't even Thanksgiving yet, but here's my Christmas wish list.

1)   Peace on earth.

2)  Obtain a good job or good chance at a job for my life as I leave grad school

3)  Finish all (or as much as possible) experiments required to write my paper and the thesis

4)  Have positive progress on building our house

5)  Help me to relax and enjoy the holidays so I don't stress out my husband

6)  Keep as many people safe this holiday season.  No one likes to hear bad news during the holidays.

I'm sure there's something else important but can't think of it right now.  I'm in the midst of Christmas shopping. :-)

Pending Sale :-)

Well, while I was at my conference in New Hampshire presenting my poster of my life's work, we received and accepted an offer on the house! It sold about 35 days after it was placed on the MLS so we're thrilled about that. And it gives us money in the bank so that we will have it for closing when we find a house in the Indy area.

The sucky part starts this week. We have a PODS container coming on Tues for all of the furniture that we're not keeping with us during our temporary living space period. So it will be interesting to see what that thing looks like with our stuff in it. I figure I'll take pictures and post them (assuming I remember to do the latter).

So we close on Aug 11. Have termite inspection on July 29, and just need the appraisal and we should be set. Assuming that the buyer's financing is progressing, we should be good. They just sold their house and should be closing near to when we're closing on our house with them, so I would think that they should have the financing especially since they were pre-approved. No guarantee but better than nothing.

Reception pictures

I have the pictures back from our reception in Champaign. If you wish to see them, please drop me an email and I'll send you the link. They turned out pretty good and I'm happy with them.

THE poster

Well I've been in grad school longer than I care to admit but it looks like things are actually turning towards a freaking PhD. Yes I do realize that stands for Piled higher and Deeper just like a BS stands for Bull S*&@.

I'm going to a Gordon Research Conference in New Hampshire at the end of June and I'm torn between being excited about it and being scared out of my wits. I'm presenting research in the form of a poster that summarizes the work I've been doing since I entered my research lab. Needless to say it has a lot of blood (although not mine), sweat, and tears. Since I work in studying how a blood clot forms, that's where the blood comes from and since it is against good research practices that you work with your own blood (or things from your own blood) that's why the blood is someone else's. ok, I get it, TMI.

The cool thing about this research is that it is making a lot of people step back and question the current "this is how things work" theory. The scary thing about this is that a lot of people have a personal interest in the theory and I'm more than likely going to step on a few toes just presenting the work suggesting that the current theory needs to be modified. I'm not saying people are wrong but that if you look at it from a different perspective that you can come to a different conclusion than what the current theory states. Last time my adviser presented research similar to mine, a scientist jumped out of his seat and ran to the podium shaking his fist at my adviser because he was so mad at my advisor's work and declared that it couldn't possibly be correct. Ten years later, this scientist published a paper supporting the research my adviser presented without giving any credit to my adviser about the idea. (Although others had already given my adviser credit for the idea and it had become the new "this is how things work" theory.) I'm just hoping to keep my cool when I need to and be able to defend my work and not be intimidated by someone that's got 30 years experience in the field that's never tried the experiments I've done (in at least triplicate) with the proteins I've made. And for the first time I actually feel like the scientist that I am. (Took long enough)

As usual, I can't take the easy route and must do things my own way. If you don't believe me ask my friends, my parents, or even my hubby. I'm sure that's one thing (if there's not others) that they can agree on.

Wish me luck!

Back and married :)

We had a great trip to St Lucia! We went to Sandals Grande St. Lucian and loved it. By staying in the Concierge level room we were able to get free room service 24 hours a day and also had a bar in our room stocked with various liquor, champange, soda, bottled water, and juice. It was nice being able to take bottled water with us to the pool if we wanted to do so.

The wedding coordinators were great! My only real complaint is that we felt a bit misinformed about the layout of the ceremony and would have preferred a generic practice, even if it was just with the wedding coordinator. Little things like I didn't know that we weren't going to take the wedding bands at the same time. Not a big deal but I would have been a little more comfortable having a generic rehearsal when we met the wedding coordinator the day before. Also, Gene didn't realize that he was going to have to give a toast to his new bride which kind of left him a bit out of place but he managed to get something off that we'll laugh at for years to come. All we were told for this part is that the groom would say something. Guess we should have asked more questions. All of this was very trivial and honestly the wedding went off without a hitch. Just things I wish I had known in advance.

We're definitely planning on going back to St. Lucia at some point, maybe to stay in the same resort. The resort was full but we didn't feel like it was overcrowded which is what I was afraid of when I realized that the resort was full before we left. Plenty of beach chairs by the beach and pool. Towels weren't too big of an issue. Usually you could get one about 30 min after they ran out because they had just come back from the laundry from being washed.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to write more at some point. Had a fabulous time and can't wait to go back!

Trip booked!

We booked our trip to Sandals Grande St. Lucian resort today for January. Airfare wasn't too expensive but we haven't really tackled the stuff of the wedding yet. Definitely have narrowed the finer details down though which is a plus. At this point I'm ready for the beach. Oh well, only a few months to go until the beach vacation!