Pop the cork....

HE PASSED!!!!!!!!

Greg said the whole thing went really well and everyone was very complimentary. They gave him some minor revisions to his written thesis which he can fix quickly and easily. Now he has one class night in June and he is officially graduated.

We are both so excited and Greg is so relieved to be done with the hard stuff. The whole grad school experience has had its ups and downs but the Lord has been faithful to provide all Greg needed to succeed.

Greg says it feels like his life can start again or restart with his graduate work done. We are taking the week off and then starting our next big project, looking for a new place to live!

Thesis Defense Today

I hope you all had a great weekend. Greg worked really hard practicing his thesis and I lounged around the house. It was a great weekend of sunny weather so we threw open all the windows in the apartment and aired the place out. I also got a chance to read for fun! Haven't done that in a while.

Greg is defending his thesis today at 3pm (eastern time). Please keep him in your prayers as he delivers his 40min presentation from memory. We don't know exactly how the process works but we hope that they will grade or pass him today at the defense so he can truly be done with his graduate studies (of course he has one class night in June to be truly done but that is no big deal).

Thanks everyone for your prayers and support over the last 2 years!

T.G.I.F.

First some updates:

Sewage Problem-Apparently ConEdison (or power company) was partly to blame for the sewage problem. This week they replaced a sewer pipe next door. Now we are just hoping they finish the job in a timely manner. Someone finally cleaned up the pool of goo in the back of the house.

Thesis- Greg is scheduled to defend his thesis next Tuesday at 2pm. He will be spending the entire holiday weekend finishing his slides and practicing. He is SOOOOOO close to being done. I am getting excited but I think he is still stressed.

Yesterday we had one last girls night out with my friend Karen who is moving to Maine today. She is 7 months pregnant so that limits the kind of fun we can have! We opted for manicures and pedicures (I threw in a leg wax too) at a salon near work. Here are some shots:
Not a day too soon. Today it is over 90 degrees and I finally broke out the capri pants and sandals. Now I have cute toes, smooth legs, and clean fingernails. I love it. It is hard to say goodbye to friends. That is the nature of the lab and of New York City. People come for a few years and then move on. But I am really excited for Karen and her new adventure. I remember how scary it was to move to New York and leave behind all my friends and family and have only my husband to rely on. It was scary but really exciting at the same time. My hope is that she fully embraces the change and makes the most of it. Of course I have to make a trip to Maine now to visit her and her new baby (and William the famous party baby!).

Do you have big weekend plans? For the holiday weekend we are hanging around the house. I have a pile of ironing to do, some housekeeping, some scrapbooking to finish, and some relaxing to do. I may coax Greg out of the house one day for a walk around the botanical garden or something outdoors. He is planning to do thesis work all weekend. Until next week!

Happy Hump Day!

Goodness gracious it has been a while since I posted. Where here are some random thoughts:

It took me 2 hours to get to work this morning! The trains were all messed up and I had to take 3 trains to get to work. Yet another reason to move.

They shampooed the carpet in my office and now it smells like sour milk. It is really gross and extra pungent in the morning after my door has been closed all night. YUCK!A couple weekends ago Greg and I got all dressed up and went to the members dinner at church. I meant to post this earlier and forgot. I snatched this lovely centerpiece on my way out (they told us to take them, honest!).

I have been making a photo album for a co-worker who is moving away and I went through the photo archive on the lab computer to find pictures. Suzan in the lab is really good at shooting our events and parties and stuff around the lab. Well I found some photos I had never seen before:

This one captures my obsession with DSW and shoe shopping. I used to go weekly. I don't even remember her taking this one. Another shoe photo. This one highlighting the day my favorite flip flops broke. Check out the hair! This one proves I used to do lab work back when I was a technician. I am setting up a real time PCR reaction. Here I am grinding plant tissue with liquid nitrogen. I must have been training Maricela since she is wearing a lab coat and safety goggles. Notice I am not wearing safety equipment.

Here I am explaining to Rodrigo why he was cheating at pictionary and how speaking english as his second language is not an excuse (our Christmas party).

I love this photo because it was taken at work yet it looks like I am at a slumber party. We had basement clean-up day which explains the horrid outfit (only wear stuff that can get ruined). We were pretty hot and sweaty and tired by this point. It is about 100 degrees in the basement.

I found this great picture of the park next to my building. Washington Square Park. Suzan took it from atop the student center. This really is a great place to work!

Blogger just crashed and would have lost this whole long post except that there is a new auto safe feature! Thanks Blogger!

Misc Musings

I have been working from home the last couple days which means it is hard for me to post pictures with my slow dial-up connection. We were planning to get high speed but then decided we wanted to move this summer so it seems silly to go to all the trouble now.

I recieved a scrapbook kit in the mail last week. You may remember I was in this club for several months. I re-enrolled to give it another chance and got this kit for May. I am not super excited about it. It features all Jenni Bowlins own products. Which is cool but it seem that in the past I got way more stuff (and more interesting variety) than this kit. Plus it seems like less volumn and since she is making 100% profit with this stuff I hoped she would at least keep the amount the same if not more. Perhaps I won't be a member much longer.

Featurs: paper, cardstock, mini paper, journalling cards, rubber stamp, ribbon, sequins, felt flowers, rub on alphabet, and more journalling stickers. I really wish I did more hand journalling. I may need to think of some other way to use all these journalling cards.

Another think I got in the mail last week is this:

My new Blackberry. I am still figuring out this baby but it has been very nice getting my email without having to get on line which as I mentioned previously is a bit of a pain! My last phone was the total strip down Nokia with no bells no whistles, no color, no nothing (Greg got the fancy phone last time). This phone is much more high tech and fun. Now if you email me I can reply at all hours of day or night!

Well today I am home taking the day off and working on a last minutes scrapbook project. I was up all last night working on my photo order and today I am going to get the layouts started. I only hope I can finish it on time! More on that later!

Power Outage

I know I disappeared at the end of last week and I am sorry. Last Thursday we had a planned power outage at work to fix a problem in the basement next to the main power bus. As you can imagine in a lab that is not a good thing. We have 12 small freezers, 2 large refrigerators, a cold room, 2 large ultra low freezers, and 10 growth rooms/units. That is a lot of stuff that requires constant power. In the end they allotted us 5 small freezers, 1 ultra low freezer and 1 large refrigerator to run on emergency generators. So we spent the entire day on Thursday cleaning things out and throwing away samples so we could consolidate all our units in to those few units that were allowed. Of course we couldn't just turn off the empty freezers since they are full of ice and would melt into a giant mess. We also spent the day defrosting the freezers and chipping away at the ice in a controlled way.

We were all exhausted by the end and had to stay late to wait for the electricians to come and switch us over to the emergency generators. When they showed up they couldn't figure out how to cut our power. One of my employees had to show them where our electrical panels were in a closet down the hall. When they went in there they realized that our lab wasn't connected to the power bus that was being repaired. WE DIDN'T HAVE TO LOSE POWER AFTER ALL!!!! What a waste of time. It is good to throw stuff out and purge but we probably wouldn't have sacrificed as much as we did if we didn't need to. My boss was not thrilled.

On a happy note the building was closed on Friday due to the power outage so my friend Suzan and I went up to Woodbury Commons Outlet Mall and shopped all day. I found lots of cute stuff for me but I also found tons of stuff for Greg at the American Apparel Outlet (the only store he lets me buy stuff for him from). I also got Father's Day gifts and some baby gifts that I needed to get. Plus I had a great time hanging out with Suzan for the day.

I do have stuff to blog about this week and I hope I will have time. So more to come.....

Sewage Sucks!

This is the lovely sight in our backyard right now. Our neighbors who share our driveway have a sewage backup behind their house. Now when I say sewage I use the term loosely. It is waste water but we don't know if it actually has human waste in it. Never the less, it has been like this for over a month and is beginning to smell like a water treatment plant (when did I move to Tukwilla?). When it rains the flooding gets really bad and floods the basement apartment over there (you can see the carpet they ripped out after the last rain storm to the right.). Sometimes the puddle swells to 10-15 feet even when it doesn't rain. We joke that it happens when they flush the toilet but it could be the washing machine which drains through the white pipe on the left. Our landlord called public health this week to file a formal complaint. This is yet another reason we have decided not to grow anything in the garden this year. Between this and the neighbors draining their pool into our yard we don't trust the soil content any more.

We are actually looking for a new place to live (this is only one reason why we think it is time to move on) so if you know of anything in the NYC area let us know!

Scrapbook Update

Here is layout number 2 from our ski trip. Pretty much the same elements as the other layout. some flowers, brads, and paper. Sorry the picture is kind of blurry. I have been really busy at work this week. We had a big symposium last week that I was in charge of organizing and I put off all my regular work to make it happen. Now I am playing catch-up. It is 8pm and I am still at work.

I do have more blog entries planned so stay tuned.

Cupcake Love

To help celebrate the birthday of a friend and co-worker I whipped up some cupcakes last night in the hour before Lost came on. I own a little vegan cupcake cookbook that I have never tried (though I read it often and drool over the pictures). This was my first attempt at one of the recipes and they turned out great! I made Mucho Margarita Cupcakes. They are flavored with lime juice and a little tequila. I decided to bring them to work naked and decorate them here so that they would survive the hour long subway ride better. Of course I had to frost and eat one this morning just to ensure that they turned out OK. I can't show up with mediocre cupcakes! These were moist, not too dense, and the frosting was sweet, tangy and a tiny bit salty just like a real margarita. Oh, and cute too!

A taste of the Caribbean

Greg and I recently became members of the New York Botanical Gardens. They are right down the street from us and we seem to go at least 4 times per year which costs more than the membership. We went to the Orchid show in March which was amazing. Well last weekend was the opening of the Caribbean Gardens Show so we thought we would go and check it out. The flowers were very pretty but there was much less volumn than the Orchid show (which is so over the top). That made it a little disappointing. No matter, it was fun and free! This time I even remembered my camera.

Weekend Crafts

This weekend I didn't have a lot of time for scrapbooking. Partly because I got distracted with the above project. The necklace on the left I bought at H&M but it broke so I was restringing it on Saturday and then remembered that I had a whole bunch of black beads I bought way back in college. I had been regretting that I didn't buy a black bead necklace at H&M when I picked up the white one so I decided to make the necklace on the right. It is certainly nothing fancy but it was easy to make while watching one of my new DVDs.
I did manage to finish this anniversary layout. I had done most of the work the weekend before so I just needed to add some journalling. I also started another ski layout but didn't complete it. Sometimes a little crafting here and there is all there is time for but at least it is a baby step in the right direction. This layout features Crate Paper, Heidi Swap clock faces, brads, flowers, and a really old definitions stickers. When Definitions Stickers first came out I ordered the whole line and have never used even 1! I have had them over 3 years I think. I am such a sucker!

Scrapbook Update

Here is the layout I was working on when the chair broke. It is the first in a serious of layouts about our winter vacation in 2005-2006 to a ski resort. This is sort of an intro page and a pocket page to stash all the cute brochures and stuff from the trip. Next will be a ski layout, a layout about our cabin, and a layout about the reindeer we met that live there. It is pretty simple and uses some Chatterbox paper I had been hoarding (I am using chatterbox all the way through these trip pages), some brads, and some round tags. I am also going to use the detail where the paper is split and folded back on all the trip pages to unify them. Pretty simple page. The trickiest part was printing the journalling right on the page. My 12x12 printer is notorious for barfing ink all over the place (something to do with the time Greg dropped it on the ground!) so it is nerve racking to run a piece of cardstock through when you don't know if it will come out nicely or covered in extra ink. This one worked out great with only one smudge!

Ouch!

A funny thing happened to me this weekend. I was scrapbooking away and got up to get a drink. I went to sit back down and the stinking chair broke in half! I found myself on the floor laughing and crying at the same time. It's a little humiliating to break a chair and considering I only fell about 2 feet I still banged my butt and elbow pretty hard. But at the same time it was far to comical not to laugh so I of course had to grab my camera and take a photo.

The saddest part of this story is that this is the SECOND chair that I have broken by sitting in it! Apparently I need to exercise my big butt a little more! In my butt's defense these brown chairs were chairs we found on the curb in the neighborhood. They were being tossed out so we grabbed them and I recovered the seats. So they were pretty old and a little wobbly to start with....Just so you know!

Good Eats

We had what may have been our last homemade pizza of the season last weekend. If you read this blog you may have guessed we like to eat homemade pizza since I talk about it here all the time. I make it almost once a week and we love it. The weather has taken a turn for the better and we have had 70+ temps for the last 4 days which means that my baking days are numbered. The temps are supposed to drop back down but probably not low enough to keep using the oven. Good-by home baked pizza, we will miss you!

On a happy note we have a new favorite. Greg has been perfecting a simple carmel corn recipe and it is pretty darn good. I knew there was a reason I keep him around! It is made with a little Earth Balance Margarine, some cane sugar, a squirt of agave to prevent burning heated on the stove and then drizzled over popcorn made in the microwave popper. The best thing about this dish is that it is really light on the carmel so you get just a hint of sweet with a bit of salty. Plus it can be made without an oven so we can enjoy this all summer. If he ever writes down the recipe I will share it with you but right now he just eyeballs it.

Just a couple good things that come out of our kitchen!

The sign of the times

My latest project involves admitting that the digital age it here. My new favorite thing to do while I scrapbook is to watch DVDs on the computer which sits next to my scrap table. Unfortunately some of my favorite scrapbooking movies I only have on VHS (like Working Girl). I was on Amazon.com the other day ordering a DVD for Greg when I decided it was time to make the switch. I ordered DVD versions of all my favorite VHS movies. Well, all my VHS movies were my favorite so I ended up ordering a lot of DVDs! I also took the opportunity to get some other movies I always wanted to have copies of. The video cabinet which was filled to the gills suddenly has lots of extra room now that it is stocked with slim DVD cases.
We sent most of the VHS to work with Greg. They have VCRs in the patient rooms in the clinic and were really excited for some new movies (the nurses watch videos when things are slow, shhhh). Now, I am the first to admit that my video collection is 99% chick flicks and 85% from the 1980s and 100% movies I have seen 10+ times. When I scrapbook I can only play movies I have seen 100x because otherwise I will become distracted and actually watch the movie instead of scrapping. If I have seen it a 100x I can just listen and glance occasionally and still know what is going on. It is a system that has worked for me for years now.

Scrapbook Update

The rain has stopped. I think it is over and I hope that as the storm moves on it brings some real spring weather in behind it.

Over the weekend I had an opportunity to go to Michael's with Peh and Alice and pick up some craft stuff. One thing I found was a box of printed notecards for making cards. So I took the opportunity to whip up these bad boys using the printed cards and some rub-on expressions and lots of embellishments I had laying around. Fun, quick and easy!

The real reason I went to Michaels was to pick up some foam sheets. You know that ones for kids craft projects. I took the foam sheets and cut them into 1 inch strips (the sheets were 12x17 and my strips are 1x12) and punched holes in them and made them into album spacers. These spacers can cost $2 a pair at the scrapbook store. I probably made 40 for under $2. Plus I bought black foam to go with my black albums. I would highly recommend this if you have large stuffed albums and need some spacers to fill up the binding area. My albums came with 4 cardboard spacers for free but I think the foam are much nicer. I also made a huge amount of 8" ones for my mini books too. You can buy extender posts at the hardware store for a lot less than at the scrapbook store too in case you didn't know.

Rain Rain Go Away!

We are having a Nor'easter right now. It started on Sunday and so far has dumped 7 inches of rain on us. There is mass flooding all over the place. Today the rain has slowed a bit which is nice but they said on the news it was because we are in the middle of the storm and it is the head and tail that dump the most rain so we should expect more. This is a photo of our backyard right now. We have never had this much rain at once. The paths are completely filled with water (they are at least 6 inches deep). The water has receded a bit because yesterday the water covered the cement paths as well. I decided to work from home today so I could stay dry. Hopefully it will be over by tomorrow's commute!

Questions Questions Questions

Ok, I searched through comments looking for questions that have been asked. Here is what I found and my answers:

You like the Cure? Did I ever know that?-Peh
Probably not. I was a much bigger fan in high school and college since my best friend was a huge Cure fan. Greg and I still pull out their albums on a regular basis.

Do you have fake nails, yet? Can they do a French manicure of half chewed nails, like mine? Could you ask Eric is there is something good for hair and nails?-Mom
Fake nails are too high maintenance for me. Mine are all real baby. They can paint a French manicure on almost anything. They do it on toes all the time now and they are pretty short. The nails not the toes. When you come out next I think it is time to initiate you into the world of nail pampering!

As for supplements, Eric once suggested one to me but I can’t remember what it was. A friend of mine suggests Evening Primrose Oil, 400mg Magnesium daily, and a vitamin B complex. She has had good success with that but reminds you that a typical hair cycle is 2-3 months so it takes a while to see a difference.

The dorm I lived in my freshman year in Pullman, Davis Hall, had silverfish. They never went anywhere but the floor there. Do yours travel up onto the desk?-mom
For the most part my silverfish stay on the floor. Twice they climbed on my desk but one of those times I was vacuuming up their friends so it may have been a moment of distress (in the silverfish’s defense). I sucked it up with the vacuum. Bwaaahhaaaahaaaa.

Yum! Post your yummy ricotta filling sometime. -mom
See post here. It really is da bomb as far as fake cheese goes.

Where did you get the cute advent calendar?-mom
I inherited it when I said “I do”. It was Greg’s as a child made by his talented Aunt Linda.

Speaking of chocolate... do you know about max brenner restaurant where they serve chocolate pizza? –Alice
They put one of those restaurants in at 14th street right near my work. We may need to go check it out!

Since there weren’t a lot of questions once I went back and looked, I thought I would add a few here from an on-line quiz I found:

What’s your name spelt backwards?
Knahskiurc (and spelt is a grain!)

What did you do last night?
Made homemade pizza, watched LOST and worked on my laptop on grant management stuff. Did some dishes and went to bed.

The last thing you downloaded onto your computer?
I am taking a digital scrapbooking class online through Big Picture Scrapbooking. While I haven’t had time to do the assignments yet I did download the class materials today.

Have you ever licked a 9 volt battery?
What? Yuck!

Last time you swam in a pool?
On our Anniversary last summer the hotel we stayed at had a shorty pool and we went for a dip. “Hanging” in the pool isn’t as cool when you are an adult.

What are you wearing?
Wide-leg jeans, a black long cami, and a super cute brown jacket I picked up at H&M last time I was there. Oh and copper colored ballet flats. There is a big meeting today at work so I had to dress up a little.

How many cars have you owned?
I personally have only owned 1 car and that is my current Toyota Tercel. My parents were kind enough to buy me a Chevy Celebrity (Eduardo the Quick), a Chevy Nova (Super Nova), and let me borrow a Mazda B-2000 truck. If you could drive that truck you could manage any clutch in the world! All have great memories. I should scrapbook them someday.

Type of music you dislike most?
Well Greg redefines this for me regularly by bringing home lots of new stuff for me to hate. Right now it is Calypso.

Are you registered to vote?
Of course. For a while it turned out I was registered in 2 states at the same time. I am sure that is some kind of federal offense.

Do you have cable?
Nope, though TiVo makes me want to change my ways. We purposefully don’t buy it for self-preservation. If I had cable I would lose my job because I would never go to work.

What kind of computer do you use?
Is this some kind of secret marketing survey? I have a Dell desktop and my new work Thinkpad Laptop.

Ever made a prank phone call?
When I was younger my friend Ida and I would call a number and then I would make baby noises into the phone and she would get on and pretend to be the mom and apologize that her baby had called them by mistake. So ridiculous on so many levels but we thought it was hilarious!

You like anyone right now?
Ok, apparently this survey is for junior high school students. Yes, my husband!

Furthest place you ever traveled?
France or Spain. If I was not a total loser when it comes to Geography I would know which one was farther away!

Shower, morning or night?
Of course it depends on the hair. Short hair requires morning showers to prevent bed head. One nice thing about my long hair is I can sleep on it wet and it stays down. So right now it is night showers.

Favorite pizza toppings?
Black Olives and Follow Your Heart Vegan Cheese. YUM!

Chips or popcorn?
Candy!

What cell phone provider do you have?
Why does this matter? T-Mobil

Orange Juice or apple?
At home it’s always orange juice because it is calcium fortified! At church during coffee hour they have both kinds of juice and I always choose apple. Hmmm?

Who were the last people you sat at lunch with?
Huh? Junior High question again. I usually eat lunch at my desk while I work. No time for breaks.

favorite chocolate bar?
Riter Sport Dark Chocolate with Marzipan filling.

Have you ever won a trophy?
I have never “won” a trophy because that would suggest I was good at some kind of sporting event and I am not. I was given a trophy in bowling as a kid. I was in the Popsicle league. We got a Popsicle after every game. Of course we were really jealous of the kids in the pizza league!

Ever ordered from an infomercial?
Unfortunately many times. I have tried and returned many products in my lifetime but I am a bit less of a sucker now a days.

Sprite or 7-UP?
Water

Have you ever had to wear a uniform to school/work?
I did have to wear a uniform when I worked at Camelot at the mall. I really hideous shirt and khaki pants. At the hospital I wore scrubs.

Ever thrown up in public?
Yep and as an adult even. I had terrible food poisoning (raw cookie dough) and it hit me on the train. I got off the train and puked into my lunch sack. Then I caught a train going back toward my house and Greg met me at the station (it was 5am) and walked me home since we had no car. I threw up about every block into the gutter. I lived 12 blocks from the train so that is a lot of puking in public. I refused to take a cab because I didn’t want to throw up in the cab. I got home just in time for the puking to stop and the diarrhea to start. Fun memories! Only in NYC!

Where would you like to go right now?
Home

What kind of back pack do you have, and what's in it?
Ok, this is definitely for kids in Junior High!

Thanks for playing!

Scrapbook Update #2

Many years ago I my family had a dog named Mitzi. When she died in 1999 I made a memory book of her for my sister. I also made one for myself but never finished it. Most the photos had been glued to pages but I never did any journalling. Well I recently decided to re-do the album during my album changeover project (making them all black). I wanted to re-make the Mitzi album in my favorite 8x8 size using a line of dog products by KI Memories that was adorable. I offered to make one for Rachel too for her new dog Misha but she said she already had a dog album. I was able to finish the whole thing over the weekend. It is only 10 layouts which made it pretty quick. Plus the coordinated products made it easy. I didn't have many photos of Mitzi but I had lots of memories to record.

Scrapbook Update

I had a really hard time getting online over the weekend and over the last part of last week. I have been really chugging along at work with no time to post lately and when I try at home the wireless is not available.

Anyway, this weekend because of the Easter Holiday I had no BSF meeting which meant that Saturday (and part of Sunday) was scrapbook day. I managed to finish a couple layouts below and one medium sized project which I will show tomorrow.

This first layout is from Valentine's day 05. There are lots of fun embellishments on this page. Foam letters, chipboard hearts, a flower brad, leather flowers, and some giant brads I recently picked up.

Next is a layout about craft club highlighting the project we made and everyone working. I used my own handwriting on this layout and for once didn't hate it. Some little ribbons and a bunch of flowers. The background paper was a mocha color even though it looks grey in this photo.

Both of these layouts went pretty quick because of my sketches I did in advance but in both there were some mis-calculations that I had to overcome. On the valentine's layout I had miss added the photo sizes and had to swap some stuff around to fill the space. The craft club layout was supposed to have a photo of me on the left but then I realized I didn't have a photo of me so I had to improvise with a photo of the project. I am still loving the sketches and preplanning I did.