T-minus 6 hours until break!

I guess I am not the best blogger, sorry I never update.

So what's new? I would have to say a whole lot of nothing. I had beam time (a.k.a experiment time) at the end of October and it went pretty well says my boss, I am not sure if I completely feel the same way. But after that my motivation went to practically zero. I guess with the holidays getting closer, I didn't really feel like doing much of anything at work.

I did give my first Progress in Research presentation. It went pretty well, minus the fact that I couldn't get my computer to connect with the projector. I wasn't really that nervous, the talk went pretty well, I was able to answer most of the questions, and my talk was actually the correct length (I didn't talk too fast). One big mistake I made was calling the element Rf (Rutherfordium) Rutherford for a majority of the talk, only correcting myself at the very end. I swear these element names are killing me! Why are they so hard? And why are there so many?

Ray and I finally reclosed on our house. My parents are off the loan and we were able to get a loan with a lower interest rate and went with a 15 year mortgage instead of a 30 year. The coolest part of all this, is it happened on Ray's 25th birthday! Oh and that day I made a big change, I change my signature, now I include my middle initial. This is a pretty big change, now my signature in my opinion looks like a adult's signature and it forces me to pause between my first and last name.

Lastly I guess I might as well discuss my upcoming birthday. Most people who read this probably already know, my birthday is on Christmas. I would say for the most part it is not that bad. I will never have to work on my birthday and I will get to spend it with family. But I am starting to realize that there is a new negative to my birthday being on Christmas. It is about to start ruining Christmas, now every year Christmas will be associated with getting older. Which when I was little this was fine, but now when really I don't need to get any older than 25 it isn't really that great. I am going to have to turn 30 on Christmas! Which comes to I guess a more important topic, what is considered old?

Personally I am really enjoying being in my early 20 and being fresh out of college. I know grad school is still college, but it is not the same at all, it is more like a job. I am not really fresh out of college though, I have already been out for like 2 and half years! I also don't like how much my life is in limbo. I didn't think my life would be in limbo while owning a house and being married. But the fact is I will not being staying in Bryan/College Station my whole life, I will be moving. And where to is a big question. Also when are Ray and I supposed to start a family? I mean even if my life wasn't in limbo, I wouldn't want to have kids right now, I would probably wait at least 2-3 years if not more. But considering how things are right now, in 2-3 years I will be finishing my Phd. Then there is a possibility I will do a post-doc (2 years) and then a job would hopefully be next. I mean once I finally get a good job, I should wait at least a year or two before having kids. So it looks like I would be able to start a family for at least 5-8 years. I hope I can have my first kid around the time I turn 30, and OMG that is only 6 years away! So maybe I won't make that deadline.

And then the question of where this job would be still comes up. I really would like to stay in Texas, Austin in particularly. But there really isn't that many chemistry jobs, let alone NUCLEAR chemistry jobs in Austin. Sometimes I really wish I had consider some sort of engineering degree for undergrad, but if I actually had done chemical engineering I probably wouldn't have a job in Austin. So I guess staying in Austin is maybe not in my cards.

If you know me at all, you know I am a planner. So all these unplanned things really get to me!

ACL WAS AWESOME

So this year was the first year I went to ACL for the full 3 days since 2007 and it was so worth the price even though I had to pay scalper prices. To be honest no ACL has beaten the 1st ACL I went to in 2006, but this one finally did. For the first time I actually stayed for the entire Sunday headliner band, I know many people who complained about The Eagles, but The Eagles were amazing and seeing Hotel California live definitely crossed something off my bucket list.

It is hard to say which day was the best, ever day was just so different. In my opinion Sunday won, it had the nicest weather, my sister and her boyfriend came, cell phones actually worked, and I saw Yeasayer, Rebelution, Flaming Lips, and The Eagles! I wish Flaming Lips played more song I knew, but that last song was amazing and will go down in my ACL history as one of the greatest moment. And then my parents showed up to see The Eagles, I bought them tickets for Sunday and they proceeded to only go for the very end (what a waste)! I have never seen my dad and mom dance so much, at the end we all danced with our significant others to Desperado. It was perfect, another greatest moment in my ACL history.

So I will be going to ACL next year, it is the 10 year anniversary, I am not going to miss it. I tried to get 50 dollars tickets and I seriously missed it by a couple of second, stupid group meeting! I will get the tickets that are going on sale next week. It is really hard to buy tickets when the line-up isn't even out, but I guess if it is really horrible (which is won't be) I can always sell them.

So now that ACL weekend is over, it is time to get some work done. This weekend my parents are coming to help me make my garage into a carport. The weekend after that Ray and I are hopefully going to Arlington. And then October 26th will be the start of a 6 day beam time, guess I won't be celebrating Halloween this year :(! I think trading Halloween for a PhD is worth it.

Getting a New Roof

So how have things been going? I am super excited about going to ACL for 3-days, that was nice surprise. I love how my iPhone allows me to buy things that I don't think I can afford sober but once I am a little drunk I change my mind. I am super excited to see Broken Bells on Saturday and Spoon on Friday, biggest reason why I got the 3-day pass. So I need ideas on what bands to see for ACL on Friday and Saturday. Sunday is set with Rebelution, Yeasayers, Norah Jones, The Flaming Lips, and The Eagles.

Ray and I are still trying to get used to waking up before 8 in the morning. What times do people go to bed when they have to be at work at 8? This is something that is taking a little getting used to and Ray made the mistake of taking two classes at Blinn. I so told him not to do that! And if you think I am not a morning person, trust me Ray is less of a morning person.

So Ray and I are now the proud owners of a new roof, which looks pretty awesome if I say so. We went with a 30 year roof, which is rare in our neighborhood so hopefully that will be a selling point. Funny thing about a 30 year roof is at least for my house it was only like 300 dollars more, and when you are already spending over 3 K what is another 300 dollars? Just a word of advice for people out there when you are buying a house it is very important to consider the quality of the windows, heater and air conditioning, roof, and flooring. If you have to replace any of these it is going to be quite a penny, unless you replacing carpet (which trust me carpet is gross and the general trend is no one wants it except for MAYBE the bedrooms). This of course if after you have considered location. Also don't forget about the school districts you are in, even if kids aren't in your near future. I think I have been watching TLC and HGTV too much, sorry.

Life is Good

So Ray officially has a day job. He started working days at the beginning of this week, lets just say it is taking some get of use to. Ray and I are not morning people at all, and also I realized I haven't been waking up before 8 am on a regular basis since elementary school. I think in the end all this will work it self out, I just need to go to bed before 1:30am (and trust me that is actually early for me).

I am finally getting motivated about grad school. I haven't skipped a day of work in over a month, I know for some this really isn't that big of a deal, but for me it is. Ever since grad school has started it has been hard to find enough work to do or motivation. I made the mistake of joining a brand new research group, I am Dr. Folden first grad school. If you ever go to grad school be careful about joining a brand new research group, it really makes something difficult like grad school even more difficult. But at the same time is really nice and rewarding to see a group start from the ground up. I won't lie but ever since I moved to Bryan, TX I have been a little in the dumps and it has hard to get out of bed, change doesn't go too well for me and I really really really wanted to stay in Austin. But things are getting better, I am starting to see a very small light at the end of the tunnel that is grad school.

So I officially am becoming a little bit of a engineer. I have learned a program called Solidwork, it is CAD (computer aided design) program that allows me to make 3d object. Also I have learned how to STAR CCM+, this is a CFD (computational fluid dynamic) program, which allows me to model air flow through a object. I really hate the learning curve on engineering program, the biggest problem is that the programs can do so much and only want to do so little.

Lastly because I am starting to master some of these crazy program I think it is time to upgrade my computer. I have a MacBook with 1 gb of RAM, which is pretty pathetic considering the programs I am running. So soon I will be increasing my RAM to 4 gb, this should be an exciting day and Dr. Folden is paying for it!

NICE boring weekend in Bryan

This past weekend was pretty nice and relaxing. Ray and I spent most of the weekend in Bryan, doing a whole lot of nothing. We did go to Houston on Saturday night from my great grand aunt's 90th birthday party. (I just looked on Wikipedia, she is my great grandmother's sister so that make her my great grand aunt. Did you know that?.....NOW you know!) I can't believe she turned 90 and still doing great. Her husband is 92 years young and he is also as fine as can be for that age. I mean not more than like 6 months ago they were still living on their own together in a house and her husband would still drive short distances! She broke her hip though walking a couple of months ago to give one of her friends a wedding present and currently is living at her son's house. They might still move back to there house soon. I swear I have some good genes, my great grandmother has another sister who I think just turned 93 and she still lives on her own.

Now that question I must ask, is do I really want to live into my 90s? The idea of death I am still not cool with, the older you get the cooler you supposedly get with it. Which I guess is true if you were to compare how I feel about death now than how I felt about it when I was like 8. As long as I don't lose my mind/memory, I think I would be fine with living into a very old age. But enough on that topic.

Houston really pissed me off though, my Iphone's GPS told me to get on a toll road and of course like always we didn't have any cash. So I told Ray to go through the EZ tag thing and we will get a little bill in the mail, just like we do in Austin. Well I found out that is not the case and they charge you like 18 dollars and we went through two toll things. Not too happy about this, hope I can call them an they will waive the fee for stupid out of towners.

I still can't believe summer and this year is already half way over, time is just going by really fast. Which I guess is a good thing since grad school is driving me insane. I am really sick of my project right now and it is really hard to find the motivation to get out of bed in the morning!!! Hope things start turning around soon.

CARPE DIEM

So I haven't updated this in a while. So what has happened?

Well I registered for my first semester with only research hours. I am starting to discover that maybe I don't like research as much as I thought, it is too self-driven.

Murray is doing awesome. He has completely changed Ray's and my life, for the better. Considering I haven't had kids yet, I can't believe how attached I gotten to him and it has only been two months. Last week Ray and I thought we had lost him, but it turned out he by mistake got trapped Christina's old room. The emotions I was feeling when we were freaking out looking for him were new for me and horrible.

Christina has moved out. Not sure what we are going to do with the empty room. But Ray and I are really considering not getting another roommate. It is really nice to have the house to ourselves. The house stays much cleaner, more organized, and we have the refrigerator to ourselves. It didn't make sense why Christina got half of it and Ray and I got the other half, but whatever.

My family had a horrible medical scare, that really put things into perspective for me. In the end it looks like things are going to be ok. But I really hate the C word with a passion. Also being in the science field in my opinion kinda sucks when it comes to things like this, because I know a lot more than the average person about this topic. Cancer sucks and it is evil, it makes you wonder why God would create such a thing.

On a much lighter note, Simon and Garfunkel in New Orleans was amazing. New Orleans was amazing and has made me realize that Ray and I need to take some serious road trips before we start making babies. We will not be making babies any time soon, ok EVERYONE!

Lastly this past weekend was so much fun. I got to spend some quality time with friends and family and it reminded me how awesome life can be. I have awesome friends and a even more awesome family!!

Ray and I have the best dog in the world!

Ray and I are happy to introduce to the world the newest member of our family..........MURRAY!!!! He is a Golden Retriever mix, his foster mom said maybe with Border Collie and I think it a Shiba Inus. I can't say for sure though, because the bred is a little on the rare side. But he has the tail and the facial features of a Shiba Inus. Also he is full grown and only about 50 pounds, which is too small for a purebred Golden.

We adopted him from the Golden Retriever Rescue in Houston. We left our house before 9am last Saturday to drive to The Woodlands. We showed up to the "meet and greet" to see Murray and Wyatt. Wyatt is a purebred and only had one kidney. But was probably born with one kidney, so it isn't that huge of a problem. Shortly after we got there Murray showed up and it was love at first sight!

He was smaller than a normal Golden, which I was very excited about. I was really hesitate to get a Golden in the first place due to there size and this dog needed to be able to go with us to Austin once or twice a month. Also he was very chill, during the "meet and greet" he actually laid down on the ground numerous times! After like 15 minutes with him he was already laying on my feet.

He is also very well trained. We have had him in the house for 3 days and he listens very well to me and Ray. Hasn't pottied yet in the house or chewed up anything he wasn't supposed. He even wants to play with Spencer, but since he is twice his size sometimes it is too rough.

Overall we are very happy. The family and in laws came to visit for a Easter dinner with the two uncles (my parents and Ray's parents have Goldens of their own). Everyone was so happy to visit Murray. I love my new dog!

OMG I PASSED!

So one more hurdle of grad school is over! I am not going to lie, it was HORRIBLE. I really am fine with teaching, but for some reason seminars are completely different.

Now I feel a lot less stressed out. I feel like I can enjoy normal things with out thinking about this seminar. Saturday Ray and I are going to get a golden retriever, hopefully! And on Easter Sunday Ray's family are coming to visit. My family might come too, it should be fun. I really want to go to Austin, but I guess I will have to wait another week :(.

Greenburg looks like a interesting movie. But it isn't playing in College Station/Bryan, so annoying!!!! Of course it is playing in Austin. Oh and today brown water was coming out of the faucets in my house. SERIOUSLY, I am trying to like College Station/Bryan but this really isn't working.

SEMINAR TOMORROW

I am not as nervous as I thought I would be with my seminar less than 24 hours away. At the same time I am slightly worried I won't pass. Everything that can be done to prepare has been done. Outfit has been picked and washed, laser pointer was bought, presentation is finished, food was bought, extra slides for question has been made, I bought the special adapter to hook my mac up to the presentation thing. Everything is done, now all I have to do is practice my slide, which I have been doing for like the past week and half. I guess all I can say is I hope I pass!

Graduate School Version of Spring Break

Life has been going. Hasn't been great but hasn't been bad. I am still really nervous about my seminar I have to give in about two weeks. For the most part the slides are finished I just need to figure out what I am going to say during the seminar.

Last weekend was fun, some friends came to visit. Overall it was a great weekend of good food, wine, and fun.

As a graduate student I don't really get Spring Break off and Ray has to work during the day early. So this Monday we were both up at campus before 9am. At least we both get Thursday and Friday off, a nice four day weekend. I still have to finish this abstract for the seminar I am giving in two weeks. Overall this is a really time consuming hoop that I have to do for graduate school. Graduate school has really just been just been a lot of hoops I have had to jump. Officially I haven't failed at any of them yet, which is a good sign. All that class I have taken I have at least passed with a B. I completed my teaching requirement. And most importantly I have passed 5 CUMES! Good news this is the last stupid hoop before I can finally only work on my research.

Ray and I have been qualified for to adopt a rescue Golden Retriever. We are very excited and plan on getting one as soon as this literature seminar is over! I will be so much happier after this seminar is over, just two more weeks to go.

I HATE 681 SEMINAR

So as a second year graduate student I am supposed to give a HUGE 40-45 minute literature seminar for the chemistry department. I thought I was a good public speaker, but in the past year or so I have found out that I am not.

I have put in some good work in the presentation. Almost half of it is done, but it was the easy part, the introduction and background information. Now I have to start working on the important stuff from the literature I have read. I am giving this presentation March 29th, so I really have plenty of time to finish it. But my PI would like to see a somewhat finish version of the presentation in about a week! I have barely done any work on the second half and I still need to finish the first half.

I swear I have been so lazy about working on this presentation. There is a lot of researchy stuff that I would so much rather do. Also people who are considering coming to Texas A&M for graduate school are coming to visit this weekend and I am a mentor and my PI wants a new poster! And to top it off the deadline for a travel fellowship was today so I had to write an abstract, write a paragraph essay, and fill out the application. My PI is a little crazy and I am not the best writer, so he had to check it twice to make sure it was good enough to have his name associated with it. On a quick side note, I will be going to the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston during the month of August to give a 20 minute presentation on my current research. Super exciting, I am becoming a real scientist.

I know I am making a million excuses. Everything research wise that I needed to order and do were done today. So the good news is I think for the next week I can take a break from research and work almost solely on the presentation. I hope I can get through this, graduate students every year get through this, I WILL TOO!

We adopted a dog for 3hrs

Wednesday afternoon we drove to Austin to pick up a new part of our family.  His name was Rocky, and we though he was perfect.

First thing we did was take give him a good bath, he smell like the pound and had crap on him.  Then we took him over to my parents house so he could meet Stricker, my parents' Golden Retriever.  Well it didn't work out so well.  He attack and bit Stricker, multiple times.  Ray's parents have a Golden.  And our roommate has a dog as well.  We could not adopt a dog that didn't like another dogs.  Also he attacked his refection in the mirror, multiple times.

So three hours after getting, we dropped him back off at the pound.  Had to lock him up in a cage and leave him whimpering.  It wasn't easy, of course I cried.  But we can't have a dog that doesn't like other dogs :(.  So now we have all this dog shit and no dog!  We have decided we are going to adopt a rescue Golden Retriever that is between 2 and 3 year old, he better like car rides to Austin.

To get a dog or not to get a dog, that is the question.

I know it may seem a little impulsive that Ray and I might have a dog by the middle of this week. But that is how we do things.

Ray and I have talked about getting a pet especially since our roommate who has a dog will be moving in May, but it was never serious. We considered a cat, but I am not a real fan of them, I want something that actually pays attention to me and knows its name. And I am pretty sure I am allergic to cats. A dog is really what we wanted. Both of our parents have Golden Retrievers, which is what Ray and I always thought we would get and of course it would be a puppy. But in the stage of our life I don't think we could handle a Golden Retriever, let alone a Golden Retriever puppy. So when ever I would seriously consider getting a dog I would talk myself out of it.

Once I started considering a dog that wasn't a Golden Retriever or a puppy, it made me realize maybe we could handle this. Financially Ray and I are a lot better than 3 months ago, the wedding is over with and paid for and we have finished paying my parents back. Also I started noticing a lot of our friends with full time jobs have dogs and some even live in apartments. So on Saturday morning I decided we were doing this!

We went looking at the Town Lake Animal Shelter on Sunday, this was not serious looking just seeing what they had. We had looked at all the dogs except for like the last 10 and there he was! His name is Rocky, he is about 5 years old, and he is a corgi mix. He has nice longish hair, which I noticed not too many dogs in the pound have. He is owner surrendered, his past owners were too old and sick to take care of him so he should be pretty laid back. Ray and I need a laid back dog, we are laid back people. So Monday morning we called to confirm that we will adopt him! We still have a few days to back out, but I don't think we will be.

Crunching Numbers

So I am back to working during the day. I actually have been waking up early these past few days, it is really weird. When I say early, I mean before 9 which is early for me. Today I actually woke up at 6:45 and started taking care of things around the house. I am really excited about going to Austin this weekend, finally a break for this hell hole called Aggieville. I really need a massive amount of alcohol ASAP based on how this past couple of weeks have been going.

At work I have been crunching numbers trying to understand what the heck is going on with my groups experiment. I just sit looking at excel spreadsheets doing nothing for half an hour, then an idea pops into my head I work for like 15 minutes and then it just repeats. Nothing is really working the way we expected, but whatever I guess that is science for you.

The Olympics have been interesting. For someone who really isn't that physically coordinated it is amazing to see what people can do with their bodies. Especially the skiers considering I have never gotten past the bunny slopes.

Trying to Fix my Sleep Schedule

So it is about 4 in the morning and I am in up sitting in bed trying to switch my sleep schedule back.

Today I was at the cyclotron until about 10:30am, the experiment is over. I came home and was asleep by noon. My PI promised the whole group and significant others a steak dinner at Texas Roadhouse when the experiment was over. It was at 6pm, which is really too early in my mind to be eating dinner but whatever. So waking up after only 5ish hours of sleep was not easy. Ray really wanted us to bail and I am so glad we didn't. Of course we ran late getting to the restaurant, but really only by 10 minutes. So we were 2 minutes away from the restaurant and I get a text from my PI asking if I forgot about the dinner. I responded "Sorry, running a little late". When we got there he is waiting all by himself. The other two group member really did FORGET! So our table for six turned into a table for three, I felt so bad. What graduate student forgets about a free meal, let alone one that your boss invites you to. Overall the dinner was nice, there really wasn't too much awkward silence once I started drinking my margarita. My PI really hates ice, he got his margarita on the rocks without rocks.

Came home at passed out before 10 watching TV.

Last Day of Beam Time

Back at the cyclotron for one last day of beam time. This experiment has overall been going alright. We should have enough good data to write an article. Finally I would be a published scientist. Just thinking about this makes me so excited!

So how did my Valentine's Day go, well it started off with leaving the cyclotron from my Saturday night over night shift at 9am. Ray and I decided to celebrate Valentine's Day in the morning by having a yummy breakfast at Denny's. Then the crazy scientist in me wanted to go back to the cyclotron to talk to my PI about the experiment. This also gave Ray a chance to buy me flowers and white chocolate covered strawberries, which was very sweet. I love being married! I feel bad saying this and I love white chocolate, but regular chocolate covered strawberries are better. After all that we finally got into bed around one to get some sleep for our night shifts.

Woke up around 9pm and it was cyclotron time.

Stuck at the Cyclotron

I have decided to start writing a blog. Mainly because I have gotten somewhat addicted to reading other peoples' blog and I think it is unfair to read blogs without having one of my own for other people to read. Hopefully this will give me something to do, Ray says I don't have enough hobbies.

So where am I on a Saturday night at 12:50am? Sitting in the cyclotron babysitting an experiment. Where was I Friday night? Sitting in the cyclotron babysitting an experiment. I have been working on the night schedule since Monday of this week, and I can't stand it. I don't know how Ray does it week after week at his job. I am supposed to be in Austin right now having fun, but graduate school got in my way.

A couple of days ago Ray and I drove about 30 minutes to see snow in Hearne, TX. I didn't realize I was driving in snow until turned back into rain. We ended up eating at a Pizza Hut in Hearne before turning back. There was snow on the ground, so it was worth it. I am still very jealous of the people in Dallas with their foot of snow and the 3 inches Houston got in December. Winter is not over yet, so I can still hope. Snow still makes me feel as excited as it did when I was a kid, but thats what you get with you live in the south your whole life.