No time!

I'm trying to finish up corrections on my thesis, and get ready for my defense. I have one week from Friday. I'm getting nervous about my talk - I still have to put part of it together. It is good that I have already given several talks about my work, so I have intro and methods parts finished. But I have to figure out how to make my discussion and my summary really kick ass.

I have spent so much time in the past two weeks working on my summary figure. I hope it is going to turn out spectacular. I just had to re-do it this morning to put in even more data, but this should be the last time I have to change big things.

I also made an appointment with the lady at the graduate school who goes over formatting. But that is going to be the Monday after my defense. I can't deal with more before! I'm already leaving the house messy.

On a completely different note, I am enjoying this winter so far. Just in the past two weeks it has gone from mild fall to chilly winter! The high today is not supposed to break 10 above zero. I walked to work yesterday morning through snow on the ground and the brisk air was invigorating. I'm happier than last year because (1) our house is much better insulated than the place we lived last year, so I'm warmer, and (2) I am not having morning sickness every day, which really put a damper on the holdiays last year. I'm looking forward to enjoying baking for Christmas this year! And decorating the tree, and wrapping presents for my baby, etc. Alltogether this year is much more fun.

Pie picture

I promised a picture of my lemon meringue pie. It was only beautiful until it cooled. Then my meringue shrank. Everyone suggested I didn't use enough. I'll try again sometime.

Picture of the week Nov 27

This picture, taken this past July 30, is of the fire weather from the Paradise Complex wildfire in the Paradise Valley, MT. We actually drove through the Paradise Valley the next day down to Yellowstone, and the smoke was fairly bad. In a few spots we could see flames. The smoke in Bozeman got much worse around Labor Day, and I have pictures of that too which I will post later.

Happy 100th post!

Wow! 100 posts in about 2 years. I started this blog back in November of 2004. It seems like so long since then! I've gone through a pregnancy and 4.5 months of my daughter's life. I've also passed my comps and written my thesis. Reading my old blogs is a trip!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I made a lemon meringue pie for the first time ever this year. I will post a picture of it later because it is beautiful.

Have a nice holiday, everyone!

Scheduled

My thesis defense is scheduled. I have 17 days to prepare. I still have to fix my summary figure and my discussion a little. And practice the talk.

Now I have to care for my baby. What's new??

Picture of the Week - Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving week! I hope you all have wonderful plans for the holiday. We are having dinner here at our house with two of our best friends. And our daughter gets some babyfood sweet potatoes. Mmmm.
This week's picture is me reading a paper by our cozy fireplace - in our previous house. This time of year we really miss the fireplace.

Funny Labor & Delivery Anecdote

As I promised...

Our daughter Z was born at 6:15 in the morning after a night at the hospital. We had all previously agreed that Danny would cut the cord. So the doctor gave Danny the scissors and he cut the cord. Then the doctor continued with the rest of the birthing process. Danny still had the scissors and he asked the doctor what he should do with them. "Just throw them on the floor", was the doctor's reply. Danny looked down and saw other flotsam and jetsam from delivery on the floor, and obviously they scrub those delivery rooms pretty well. So he did throw the scissors on the floor. But not until after considering that he had bare feet, and hadn't been wearing his shoes since before midnight!

We laughed at this later that day and again when we told my mom.

I should be asleep

Yes my bedtime is significantly earlier than it was when I was not a mommy. Actually, that is a lie. I just tend to go to bed early. I have for my whole life practically.

I drank coffee this afternoon, which is turning out to be a big mistake. I am tired but not sleepy! AAGH! Sleep is precious and I'm missing it!

Tomorrow... funny labor anecdote. I promise!

Hmmm...

For those of you with keen eyes, you will notice that the Picture of the Week on my sidebar is not the same picture as the one in my blog text. They are *almost* the same though!

Picture of the Week

I started using Blogger beta and you can add pictures to your blog super easy, so I've added a Picture of the Week. I'll post it too, so readers who use readers (heh) can see it.

This week's picture is of Swan Lake in Grand Teton National Park. Taken by Danny.

New look, new thoughts

I hate it when people give up their blogs for a long time and then start posting again. Wait... That's what I'm doing! To those of you who might have me on Google Reader or Bloglines or another reader, I apologize for the long absence.

For me, it has been impossible to write these past few months. Learning how to get along with my child has taken up most of my time. Then there was/is that thesis I have to turn in. I am giving it to my committee members tomorrow! Which means my defense is coming up. I'm only getting a Master's but I still have to do all this stuff. Thankfully it is almost over.

Sure there are tons of things to post about when you have a new baby! But who really wants to sit down at the computer and write about something when you could be either hanging out with said baby, or taking care of the myriad other things that don't get much attention when you are a new mom (e.g. house cleaning, dishes, husband, self). Instead of posting I had to work on my thesis. Now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I want to post again. So I will. And if you are still reading my blog after the hiatus, THANK YOU!

Everything has changed

We had a gorgeous baby girl born on Saturday, July 1st at 6:15 in the morning. And she is the reason I haven't blogged since then. But she's a good reason. This is from the day she was born. She looks a lot older now that she's two months already!

So many things have happened in the last two months! I don't even have time to recap. I am immersed in my kid and my thesis. I have to have the draft completed by Monday the 11th (my own deadline) to get it to my advisor. I'm giving her over two weeks with it, then I'm getting it to the rest of my committee. I want to defend in November, so I'm hoping this is enough time for them. I still have to set the actual date for my defense, which I'm going to do next week.

In other news, I successfully did a poster at AMQUA when my baby was 6 weeks old. It was not a fiasco! It went really well. And I went to see a couple of talks including Bill Ruddiman's talk about his anthropogenic greenhouse hypothesis, while my husband hung out with our daughter in the lobby.

Now I'm keeping a baby book after deciding not to keep one and then changing my mind about a week ago. My mom suggested I keep one to write down interesting baby stuff in, and at first I thought it was not my thing. Then I realized that I was already forgetting stuff about the first weeks of having a newborn. Then I figured it was a good idea. And we've been taking oodles of pictures of course.

More to come in the future. I promise!!!

Trying to avoid work

It is after 3pm and I haven't done too much in the way of work yet today. I feel like I'm trying to avoid it even though I keep telling myself I'm not. Why?

I have a good chunk of thesis written. This week I finished the two gruesome tables I had to include. Just today I DID install Adobe on my computer so that I can make my figures. I have a list in front of me of the figures I need. This week I also finished the results section. Now on to the discussion. Which is what I think I am avoiding writing. That and one more section of my introduction that I don't want to write. I must get to it though! I must overcome!

In my procrastination I started reading thehomelessguy's blog (linked from She Falters' blog). I like it! It reminded me of times I've been confronted by homeless people. Most of the time I'm pretty leery of homeless people because there were many crazy ones where I grew up that were just scary and young women wanted to stay far away from them. But there were a few times when I got to know a homeless person a little. One guy I met in Laramie, WY, played the balalaika. And I have a sneaky feeling that one of my former employers is now homeless or close to it. He was my best friend for a while, I knew him pretty well. I hope he is ok.

Finished! (with my book)

Yay! On Sunday afternoon I finished War and Peace. It was a nice experience in my life. I believe that my favorite quote (at least that I can think of) is the one I posted before. Yesterday afternoon I picked up Skeleton Crew and read The Mist, a story I hadn't ever read before (I've had the book for years but hadn't read every story). I got completely sucked in and read the whole 155 page story in one sitting. It was really creepy outside too - thunderstorms and rain. That always makes King more intense.

I've read a lot of Stephen King in my life; the last book of his I read was Bag of Bones, around December 2004. Incedentally, that book scared the daylights out of me. But, after not having read him for a while, it was nice to get involved in a story of his style. I love the way he writes. I know it is probably simplistic and too mainstream for literature lovers, but I like it.

Life

"We imagine that when we are thrown out of our accustomed grooves that all is lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins."

-- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

I love this book. It has to be one of my all-time favorites. It has taken me quite a while to complete it. I'm actually not done yet, I still have about 100 pages left. But if you know War and Peace, I'm super close to finishing. Perhaps I will finish before I give birth...

I *heart* friends

Did you ever have one of those days when all of your friends seemed to email you at approximately the same time? I'm talking about the friends that aren't in the same geographical area as you, the old friends. I had so much fun today replying to emails and thinking about my old friends. One might even be moving somewhere close to me within the next year or so maybe!

One of my friends from here got back yesterday from a visit to her parents, and she stopped by to chat for a while. I've really been missing the girl time lately. I spend lots of time with my husband and no kidding I love it, but lately I've been needing to hang with girls a little. Probably this impending motherhood thing. So that was really nice.

Back to writing thesis

I've been playing around with data some more, so no actual writing has gotten done in about 1 week. I have a good methods seciton done, and most of an introduction, and background. I'm feeling good about what I've written so far and what I still have to write. I just got done meeting with my advisor and looking at my pollen data. I have just a teeny bit more data analysis to do before I can look at it all and write the story. I'm pretty confident that I can do that well too, without too much hassle. My data looks pretty interesting.

I must say this now - there are some times when I absolutely love my advisor. Today I asked how different my actual thesis should be from the pub that I'm writing it for. She says, "no different, try to make them as much the same as possible. Doesn't the grad school offer a publication option?" No, our grad school does not offer a publication option. But I don't have to explain every laboratory method in detail, I can cite others that actually explain that sort of thing. And my thesis doesn't have to be ultra-long. Ah, sometimes my advisor really is cool. Plus, as I was just ruminating over on my walk to my office, she has been pretty supportive of my pregnancy. She's not overly excited, but she hasn't given me any shit about pregnancy things, or even scheduling things after baby. For example, there is a workshop at Grand Teton National Park that my work should be presented at, coming up on September 19-20. One of us should really go because we got all our funding from the Park and from the other "entity" running the workshop. She asked me today if I think I'll be up to going. I said yes, but with the caveat that I must take my husband and baby. She says that's cool, I should just talk to the lady organizing the workshop and let her know what's going on. She even said maybe I'll get the top-of-the-line accomodations. So, I'm feeling blessed right now.

I am off to make a to-do checklist for myself and see about getting some food. My baby is dropping into my pelvis so there is definitely more room in my tummy for food now. Sometimes it's really awkward to eat because the baby is so squirmy though! It is such a weird feeling! Less than 4 weeks now!

Countdown!

It's time to start the clocks. The due date is in approximately 5 weeks. Babies can come without hesitation within 2 weeks of the due date. This means I could "go" safely starting the 23rd of this month. Aah!

My Dicentra spectabilis

This weekend we did get to go to the nursery, and I got a bleeding heart! Here it is. No blooms, and it probably won't bloom this year, but next year it will.

We also got some tomato plants and some seeds. The seeds won't come up for a while, but that's ok. We're not sure when we're going to be in the hospital, and who will water our plants while we're there. I suppose D could come home to water them. That might be silly though. I guess we'll hope for rain.

We just got back from shoe shopping and treats. We bought D some Birkenstocks! These are his first expensive shoes. Maybe in his whole life! The most expensive he's had before are $40 Chuck's. We've been getting the super cheap $5 "fakenstocks" from WalMart for the past few years, but they wear out in a month or so. The ones he had prior to this shopping trip lasted 3 months total, and yesterday the entire "rubber" sole came off and started flapping around. He's been afraid of losing an expensive pair of shoes in the past, but he's never lost a pair of shoes in his life. So we went with the good-investment shoes. I love my Birks, and now he gets to start loving his. How cute!

We also had treats, and I had a huge rootbeer float! MMMMMMMM! I haven't had a rootbeer float in a few years! It was sooo good. D had this cool concoction that is basically an italian soda with ice cream instead of ice. So kind of like a rootbeer float but whatever flavor you want. He had orange, and he said it was good. My baby must be enjoying that rootbeer and ice cream now because it's squirming all over the place. Heh.

References

I was just working on compiling all my references in one file. I don't have any cool software like EndNote, so I'm just putting them all into Excel. I have lots! It's nice to get them all in one place. I needed it earlier this year when I was writing a progress report. Oh well. Now I have the list for the future.

I'm starting to write my thesis! This references thing was part of that. I don't have much done so far, and this afternoon I get to learn how to process pollen data. I'll be making graphics and stuff like that along with writing for the next couple of weeks. I also have to put together a poster for AMQUA, but that shouldn't take too long. I spent so much of this last semester talking about my charcoal data that I think I can make a poster in a jiffy. I'll have pollen graphs to add to it which will be cool. That's the last step before I can actually come up with conclusions! Yippee!

It is so nice to have the internet at home! I'm actually at home right now, wow! If any of you enjoy "modern rock" check out Woxy. You have to be a member to get the high-quality stream but it's worth it so far. Woxy is cool. There's my shameless advertising.

This weekend hopefully we're going to fix up a bit of garden by our patio. There are a couple of plants growing there now, and we wanted to add some tomato seeds. Last year we grew a tomato plant in the ground and it succeeded. I really want to get a bleeding heart plant for out there. We had one where I grew up next to our deck, and every year it grew and it was huge by the time we moved out! It is supposed to be nice and warm this weekend so hopefully we can go to the nursery and buy some plant stuff! That's always been one of my favorite things about summer.