Thanksgiving in NYC

I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving!

Mine was pretty good, with a few snags. Somehow I managed to screw up my back the day before I went to NYC. So I had to take a lot of breaks to lay down and/or do back exercises when I was in NYC. Also, it guaranteed that I would NOT get to see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, as the thought of walking across Central Park and standing for long periods of time sounded like torture. Still, Thanksgiving was great. I brought a bottle of Rhode Island Red from the Saktonnet (I"m sure that's not the right word or spelling, but it's similar...), and Dave and Sara loved it, so that may become part of their Christmas present as well. :) Dave and I went to see American Gangster one morning and later walked through Central Park and talked for a couple of hours, catching up on each other's lives, particularly school and work, since those take up the bulk of our time.

Saturday we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out some new exhibits on Dutch Renaissance paintings and silversmithing. Then we went to this great Irish pub that had large portions of good food at reasonable prices , and served quickly. I forget the name, but if anyone's going to NYC soon, you must check out this pub. I could always get the name from Dave and Sara.

So overall, I had a great Thanksgiving. Sounds like most people I talked to had a good Thanksgiving too. :) Christmas is just around the corner people!

In other random URI news, my thesis has changed AGAIN. But I'm optimistic because at least this data looks good, even if it is only 7 runs for my whole thesis. Also, Erin Ryder, the girl I worked with when I did my internship in Maryland, has offered me 5 or 6 cephalopod books because one of the guys in the lab just retired and did his PhD work in cephalopods. So I get free books! 3 of the books I've either read or checked out of the library for reference, so I'm excited about that. I did offer to pay for shipping, since she offered the books to me before anybody else. :)

Good Weekend

So last week was frustrating. I got the news that nobody was catching any Dosidicus on the cruise, we got bitched out at our T.A. meeting Thursday night (a long story I don't want to tell again. Let's just say there were some communication problems that needed to be worked out), and the analyses I tried to do on Thursday and Friday took three times as long as I hoped. Plus, the nice man who was helping me said some discouraging and frustrating things to me. He didn't mean anything by them, but everything sort of built up throughout the week, so I was very frustrated when Friday rolled around.

Luckily, I was not the only person who needed a break. I went to see the movie Dan in Real Life with some other grad students Friday night. It was really good. It's definately a romantic dramedy, a.k.a. a chick flick with deep moments. But, even though the plot felt familiar, the acting was really good. And there are some truly tender moments. Also a few really annoying moments. Like, if I had known Carol (Steve Carell's middle daughter) in real life, I think I would have killed her so she couldn't scream about her adolescent angst 24/7. Luckily, Juliette Bincoche and Steve Carell make up for the super annoying daughter.

Saturday night I went to a pot luck supper at Chessa's house. The night started out as an adventure (Chessa lives in the woods in the middle of nowhere, where apparently they don't belive in street lights. Or street signs.) But the evening was fun once I actually stumbled across the house. Dinner was good and definately eclectic (one girl doesn't like dairy, another was a vegetarian, so we had some interesting dishes). Plus, Chessa has a fire pit so we got to make smores and chase her huge black dog, Riley, around.

Plus I got more good news. First, I got my tickets to NYC for Thanksgiving (yay!! possibly my last one, since I have no idea where I'll be next Thanksgiving). Plus, Whitney called and told me she'll be home for a week in January, so I quickly changed my plans so I can stay another 5 days in Huntsville and see her. And my roommate Dipa had some credit with Southwest Airlines, so I saved some money on my tickets home for Christmas, although I do need to fly into Birmingham to get the savings. But that's okay because Amy is going to pick me up and we're going to do a Secret Santa/sleepover thingy with Amy's group of girls from Spring Hill. So it should be an eventful Christmas break. So basically, my awesome weekend made up for my frustrating week.

2.5 Years of Work = 8 Possibly Useable Experiments

So last week I emailed Brad to see how the cruise was going, experiments, etc. He emailed me back today stating that there were some ups and downs. Downs being 1) lots of equipment problems and 2) they haven't caught a single Dosidicus yet. Which means no blood experiments for my thesis. Brad said I shouldn't wait for data from him, but should start writing now, focusing any good curves that I have or that Brad gave me. I'm not even sure any of my curves are good, and Brad never gave me any because he said he couldn't trust the ones he did this summer. So, there you have it. In Brad's words, my thesis will be mostly theory, and data poor. Man, I sure hope it's still considered defendable by my committee.......Who knows, this might be good for me. I seem to be better at book learning than doing anyway, so maybe focusing on theory will not be horrible. But I really wish I had some good, viable results. I mean, I've spent two and a half years on this project, and I have precious little to show for it.

On that note, when I get a job after graduation, I really don't think I could work in Rhode Island. There are some beautiful places in Rhode Island and possible job opportunities, but really, I think I'll always associate this state with frustration and failure; utter, utter failure.

Good News!

Good news gang! My folks found a house!! They've been in an apartment since the summer, and since my folks haven't lived in an apt in over 25 years, it was kind of a difficult adjustment. I mean, they were used to so much more room. Well, now they've found a house in the Hampton Cove area, apparently near a lake that we can walk around. They're closing on it in a couple of weeks, and they plan to move in the weekend of Thanksgiving, so we'll have Christmas in a house! A small, one story house that still won't have enough bedrooms...but it's still better than a cramped apartment!