Under A Charmed Star

End of week one

2011-11-17T13:07:00.001-05:00

A very cool tree nearl Nu'uanu Pali Lookout

Hard to believe I left a week ago! It's been a pretty cool week. Here's a disjointed account of things I've learned about Hawai'ian culture that I'm pretty sure you wouldn't learn if all you did was stay at a resort. For instance, I didn't realize that Aloha shirts are worn by men all the time. That's what men wear to work. There is nothing kitschy abut it. I also learned that only 10% of Native Hawi'ians get a bachelor's degree. Out in remote areas, little kids might get on a public bus at 5:30 am to be able to get to a good school. It rains almost every single night. It's raining right now, but I'm secluded on my little lanai surrounded by vegetation. Speaking of vegetation, bananas and papaya are never tree-ripened. As they get ripe, birds eat them off the trees. So dont complain about green papaya and banana in the grocery store. If the tree was in your yard, you would pick the fruit and let it sit for days to ripen anyway! We have papaya off the front mountainside/yard tree ripening on the counter now! Tomorrow, the movers will come. That means everyone in the neighborhood will be inconvenienced for a chunk of the day. Not sure how they feel about it, but surely anyone who lives on the side of a mountain would understand that a moving truck will have to block a good portion of the road in order to make the move happen. Not sure how the move will affect my weekend plans to go tailgating and stay with Marie. Fingers crossed!

I did it!

2011-11-15T23:34:00.000-05:00

Since I can't post a lot of pictures, I picked the one that best represents my day. I rocked out some data crunching yesterday and today, and was able to submit another conference abstract. Woot! Woot! Talk about productivity. Tomorrow I will shift back to older data and try to finish a manuscript.

Right now we're talking dish washers. I don't know much about dishwashers except that I hate washing dishes. This is a fantastic learning experience. At first I tight $1000 was outrageous, but given that I really, really hate doing dishes it's starting to sound pretty reasonable. Id gladly fork over a dollar a day to NOT do dishes. In less than 3 years, the dishwasher would practically pay for itself! Who knew I would learn so much about dishwashers today? Did you know Kenmore is made by Kitchen-Aid? And evidently, Kenmore/ Kitchen-Adenis the best brand right now.

Google hates me...

2011-11-15T04:20:00.000-05:00

One heck of a fantastic weekend!

2011-11-14T02:04:00.001-05:00

I spent the weekend with my friend, Marie. It was not your average weekend in Hawai'i! Well...actually, I suppose it kind of was a pretty average weekend. It was not a touristy experience though. We saw Jack and Jill (not recommended), ate good food, ate more good food, ate papaya picked from a tree in her garden, and today we really crammed it all in. Started around 8am with a 12 mile hike. We were covered in mud, and I have a very sore bum from the tumble I took, but it was worth it for the view at the summit! This isn't the summit view, but it's my favorite picture of the day. A single wild orchid along the trail with the mountains and ocean in the back. Gorgeous! And...since BlogPress is still waiting for iTunes update approval, I'm pretty limited to the number of pictures I can post.

Tenting

2011-11-12T03:56:00.001-05:00

Now this is one of those things you just can't believe unless you've gotten to see it with your own eyes. Tenting. Because bugs are a bit of a problem in the Hawai'i climate, they have to do some serious extermination. Basically, an entire house is covered with tarps. They are even clipped to the ground some way. Then, the insecticide is pumped into the inside. Not really sure how long the whole process takes, but just getting an entire house tarped in the winds has to take some time. The house I'm staying in was tented before my adviser moved in. I would assume that between tenants would be the ideal time. Not sure how more permanent folks handle it. Crazy, right?

This image brought to you by my graduate experience...

2011-11-11T19:31:00.001-05:00

Aloha! Sadly, my typical blog app has a bug. The best I can do is to email a post and hope for the best. The picture is of the view from Nu'uanu Pali Lookout which is one of the Hawai'i State Park. At this historical point, King Kamehaeha and his warriors defeated the O'ahu armies. He basically forced them all over the cliff to their deaths. This victory of sorts united the Hawaiian Islands in 1795. The rest of the story is here: http://www.hawaiiweb.com/oahu/sites_to_see/pali_lookout.htm

New Adventure

2011-11-09T08:27:00.003-05:00

The blogging hiatus was a necessary evil. Things have been pretty cRazY. Just a few things to fill you in...

I've worn a different pair of earrings every day since October 3.
I had my first big interview.
I haven't heard whether I will get the position or not, because our lovely Congress hasn't agreed on a national research budget yet. So annoying.
I went to a great conference in Baltimore where I tried clam chowder and lobster pot pie for the first time.
Our department head was inducted into the Institute of Medicine. Pretty big stuff!
Baxter and I both got hair cuts.
I managed to get an abstract in for the Experimental Biology conference.
I had a nervous break down that lead to a great night with friends at our favorite pub.
I knit a gorgeous sweater for mom in 3 weeks. Knitting speed directly correlated with stress level.
My niece called me Auntie for the first time! She held out for just shy of 4 whole years.
Today I will see my entire family for said niece's birthday. Four is pretty big, you know!
Tomorrow I will spend a whoppin' 10 hours on an airplane. Hawaii or bust!

Yup, leaving for Hawaii tomorrow, and I will be there for a month. Time to put the pedal to the metal and get this dissertation done. Finishing a dissertation is never fun, but I'm pretty sure Oahu will be a wee bit more scenic than my office. We used to have a window picture frame with a beach scene behind it, but we don't even have that much scenery down here anymore. I'll try to be better about keeping you all posted on any adventures I have while I'm there.

Leavenworth, WA...was that a week ago already?

2011-10-11T21:53:00.002-04:00

There's nothing much better than autumn! Who doesn't get excited about pumpkin lattes, caramel apple cider, pumpkin patch, pumpkin bars, boots, scarves, and leaves? Mostly, I get excited about leaves! I got to enjoy the beginning of fall out in the Wenatchee National Forest. Sooooo inspiring! Some times, a girl just needs peace and quiet, a time to think, and time to remember just how beautiful the world really is. Here are a few pictures from the trip. The pops of red stood out to me more than anything.

And did I mention how cute Leavenworth is? Here's the owner of our hotel giving the daily alphorn concert on the balcony. Not the worst excuse to get to breakfast!

A few travel mishaps...

2011-10-04T10:03:00.002-04:00

Some days my life seems nearly (but not quite) as hectic as Annie trying to go grocery shopping. In stead of kids; I have deadlines, random meetings, split social personalities, etc. Mom says I'm well on my way to being a nutty professor. I usually just fake a big smile and hope no one notices all my goofs! Here are just a few things I've done in the last year that could have been really bad.

Last winter I was running late to the airport (pretty typical). When I got back from wherever it was I was going, I realized the window in my car was gone! Immediately, I thought the worst..."Oh no! Someone broke into my car!" Then, I quickly realized there was no broken glass. I just didn't roll my window back up after getting my parking ticket. My seat was a little wet with snow, but no major hard done.

This spring, I had to be at the airport around 5am. I don't even remember where I was going. It was still dark out, so I had to turn the dome light on to make sure I got all my crap. When I got back, my battery was dead. Turns out, the Indianapolis airport offers a free jump start service. The guy said they have to jump about 10 cars a day. Considering the number of cars in those lots, that's not really too bad!

Most recently, I left my keys on the trolly. I had to wait 45 minutes, and learned that there are 3 trollies on route. Later that same night, I lost my car in a parking garage. For real. I've never lost my car in a parking lot or a parking garage. First time...and it had to be the day I left my keys on the trolly.

So back to the airport jump start. I didn't have any cash, but I did have an empty Starbucks gift car. I gave the guy the card and told him I'd add money to it right then and there. That is exactly what I did...added $10 to the card. On the iPhone app, the smallest amount you can add is $10. Kind of a big tip, but it was 11pm and I didn't really care. Since it was a registered card, I could track to see if he ever used it. It's been months...nearly 3 months...and he never used it. I pretty much gave up tracking the card. It crossed my mind that after 6 months, I could transfer the money to one of my other cards. That would be so wrong though. So very very wrong. Not sure why I decided to check last night, but I did. He used the card! Woohoo! I'm so glad someone is finally enjoying that card and I'm still grateful for that jump start.

There's a lot to catch up on. In the last week or so I basically fell off the blog band wagon. Trust me...a lot has happened since then! You should really read Annie's blog about grocery shopping. It's hilarious. If you're a mom, you can probably relate even better. Show Annie some blog love for me!

Frenzy...

2011-09-29T09:23:00.002-04:00

I really do have a lot to write about, but there's just no time. Maybe this weekend I can get caught up on posting. In the mean time...

Purse dump

2011-09-19T10:19:00.001-04:00

Big hand bags rock, but can get loaded down so easily. Especially since mine is my "personal item" when I fly and my school bag during the week. All kinds of stuff ends up in there. My purse seemed crazy heavy lately, so I dumped everything out to see what was going on and this is what I found...

The following items don't need to be there:

3 koozies (2 were free last night at Central Market)
snacks from my flight 2 weeks ago
random jewelry
vegetable erasers
tickets from the Red's game we went to about 2 months ago
blister block
giant thing of Blink eye drops
Purdue window decals
3 dimes that can go in the change jar
stitch markers for my knitting
random post-it notes and receipts that can go in the trash

That should lighten the load! Big purses are great, but geesh...way too much stuff piles up in there. I should probably purse dump a little more often!

Oh perspective.

2011-09-15T10:40:00.003-04:00

I don't know what's going on, but everyone is kind of feeling meh around these parts. Not sure if it's the crazy weather, allergies, or what. I don't feel like blogging. I don't feel like doing much of anything. I think my instincts are telling me it's time to prepare for hibernation. Alas no. I have a to do list a mile long! Signing up for the Addison Oktoberfest 5K to support Wipe Out Kids' Cancer makes me want to quit complaining.

Here are some alarming stats from the WOKC website

About 46 kids are diagnosed with cancer every day.
1/330 kids will develop cancer by age 20.

Should be an interesting experience. Right in line with my tradition of signing up for 5Ks when I'm not in good shape! Haven't been in good shape for a 5K yet. No point starting now. If I could break 30 minutes, that would be awesome. Let's not get too agressive though, right?

Little Lucy is one of many kids dealing with cancer. She's not in Dallas, she's at St. Jude's right now. You might want to check out the blog her mom keeps. Lucy is just about done with chemo and has been doing great considering all she's going through! I've been following her blog for a while now and it's always a good reminder to keep life in perspective, and say "I love you" one more time. Go Lucy Go!

Bucket List

2011-09-13T10:40:00.002-04:00

I have a post about me and Marilyn Monroe, but I can't find the perfect words for what I want to say. That left me in the learch today. Thank goodness for a $500 Bucket List Giveaway hosted by J. Money over at Budgets are Sexy! He's giving away $500 to one lucky reader/contest entery to put towards your bucket through a contest sponsored by Life Insurance Finder". You get 5 entries for blogging about it, so it was perfect timing!

My bucket list for the near future includes the following:

1. Vacation in Hawaii. Not exactly a fair thing to put on the list, because it's actually happening very soon! So if I win the contest, the money will go towards this trip!

2. Spend a long weekend in New York City in the winter. Scarves, hot chocolate, ice skating...perfect!

3. Go to a monster truck show or demolition derby. Pretty sure this needs to be in summer so I can wear ripped up jeans, a wife beater, and cowboy boots.

4. I really want to go to India.

5. I also really want to go to China with my friend, Maggie.

6. I want to visit my friends in Thailand, and take naps on the beach.

7. Celebrate St. Paddy's day in all Top 10 Cities. Chicago and Boston...check!

I could probably think of more things, but those tare the big ones that came to mind. Maybe I should start a more formal bucket list. Not right now though...too many other things to get done!

Planning for Christmas

2011-09-12T09:56:00.001-04:00

Whoa! Seems like lots of bloggers are posting about Christmas already. I agree that it is a good idea to plan ahead. Christmas is on my mind because a) September is the month I start putting money aside for presents, and b) I got matched for the Christmas knitting swap I signed up for!

I am hoping that my trip to Hawaii will make Christmas shopping easier than usual. I have a few ideas already for a few people. It's all very exciting when you have something you really want to give. Our family really enjoys the present part of things. I could be wrong, but I think everyone in my family loves giving and getting presents.

From what I can tell, people have great Christmas spending plans. Here are a few I've seen.

1. Simply put aside a little money each month so that when it gets close to Christmas you don't break the bank all at once. This tends to be my method.

2. Save all your credit card cash back bonuses to buy gift cards to shop with. Great idea! I know a few people who do this. I don't spend enough to earn enough to really do this. My cash back bonus trends to supplement my Starbucks, Gap, and Banana Republic habits.

3. Use Swagbucks to earn Amazon.com gift cards to shop with. Good idea, but again...I don't earn enough swag bucks to make this happen. I have used Amazon gift cards that I've earned from Swagbucks to buy birthday presents on occasion.

4. Handmade gifts. Now please don't fool yourself. Most handmade gifts cost some money. Especially if it's knit! Some handmade gifts are pretty inexpensive and completely awesome! I wouldn't shy away from giving stuff like scrubs (hint hint to my sister! Could be a tradition!), soaps, etc.

So what are your gifting traditions? Do you have some great homemade gift ideas to share? If you do, I will try to post a list with links!

ETA:
The most I’ve spent this last week was on more plane tickets.
2. Today I am thankful a great morning! I went for a run, then a walk with my dog, spent the morning working in my favorite coffee shop, then had lunch with friends!
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was go to Germanfest. Way fun!
4. I will consider this week a success if I turn in my seminar outline.
5. My favorite game to play is catch phrase or canasta. Haven't played either in a long time though.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

September objectives

2011-09-09T10:39:00.001-04:00

I actually made some goals/ objectives for this month. Not sure how many will get done, but a girl can dream!

1. Knitting: the main goal is to start mom's sweater. She keeps buying yarn to make herself a sweater, but never actually knits it. I offered to knit one for her. All I need is for her to give me the yarn and the pattern. I'm trying to finish all my unfinished objects (UFOs), but that will take time. Last night we did a little pattern searching and I think we agreed on brown yarn for the sweater pictured below.

2. School: I'm giving a 45 minute seminar in October. By the end of September, I have to turn in an outline. My outline is already done. My actual objective is to have a draft of all the slides by the end of the month.

3. Exercise: I'm going to run a 10k when I'm in Hawaii, so this workout thing needs to happen. My objective is to workout for 30 minutes 4 days a week. Hopefully it will be closer to 5 days a week!

4. Fashion: Silly, I know. I really want to start wearing my cowboy boots more often. I really love them, but it always seems bold to wear them around here. I will wear them once a week for the month of September. Fun! Already wore them yesterday. They're great for fall!

5. Baxter: Poor Baxter. Sometimes he gets jipped, because my schedule is nuts. I will walk him 4 days a week (hopefully more), give him a bath 2 weeks before going to the groomer. Last night I finished getting all his tangles out. So far he's gotten a walk 3 days this week, plus a trip to the river!

6. Organization: This may be wishful thinking, but I'm hoping to figure out a way to organize my yarn stash. Last night I started making a list of yarn and the project it's meant for. A lot of the yarn doesn't have a project assigned yet. Some of it just needs to turn into pretty gifts for friends and family.

That's pretty good. Not sure I can manage much more than that this month.

Americana

2011-09-08T10:53:00.000-04:00

It's finally starting to feel like fall! I don't want to wish away summer and sunshine, but I'm happy with temperatures in the 70's and 80's. I love how Labor Day welcomes in fall. This past weekend was full of Americana. We went to the University of Texas vs. Rice football came. That was quite the experience! Got my picture taken with a giant longhorn named Oreo while giving my best "hook 'em!" hand signal thing. I felt like such a poser, but it was fun! The rest of the weekend was spent cooking for friends and then a minor league baseball game. So fun! Doesn't get much better! The only problem with the carnitas recipe we tried was all the chili powder. During the browning process, the chili got in the air and burned my nose and throat. I'm still coughing. It's bad. Flavor was amazing in the end though. Bummer that I forgot to take pictures.

Tomorrow I'll post about my September goals. I'm already working on one which is to wear my cowboy boots more often! Wearing them today!

Firefox Personality Quiz

2011-09-07T10:26:00.000-04:00

I took the Firefox personality quiz this morning so that I could webify myself. You can use this link to see all the explanations for the random stuff, but here are the highlights...

Knitting Needles

Ancient symbol of self-reliance, the Knitting Needle stands for your expressive individuality in the face of commercialism. With your own hands you create that which you desire, and make it purely your own.

Do they know I'm a knitter?!? And are knitting needles really an ancient symbol of self-reliance? I'll take it!

Puppet

Everything's better with a monkey in it. Monkeys are fun, smart, and optimistic. You got this crafty monkey because it reflects your own delightful optimism and playfulness. Or maybe you like bananas?

I'll give them the optimism and playful part, and I do like monkeys. In fact, I was born in the year of the monkey.

Energy Bar

Energy, nutrition, health — those are the things you value. It's good that you also like chocolate, otherwise you'd be too boring to be anointed with the EnergyBar — a sophisticated melange of sporting intentions wrapped in a candy-like execution.

Another creepy one. Do they know I'm into nutrition?

Action Figure

A significant cultural heroic icon looms large in your inner nerd psyche. Embrace it. (We really don't want to get into the whole trademark thing, OK?)

They called me a nerd!

Birkenstocks need repair

2011-09-01T08:00:00.001-04:00

My beloved Birks are shot. I bought them at the Birkenstock store in Dublin before this style was even popular. That was back in 2006, I think. Maybe 2007. The sole is wearing off and they don't look quite as nice anymore. For about $70 I could get a new pair. For $60 I can get them resoled at Resole America. I'm not trying to be cheap by saving $10. I just can't part with these shoes! They've been so many places with me. Here are a handful of pictures that brought back happy memories of my Euro days. In each picture, I either know I was wearing my Birks or you can see me wearing them. These pictures are in no particular order because Blogger isn't cooperating.

It was really warm for Oktobefest that year, so I was in my Birks the whole weekend. That was before I had a dirndl!

Wore them to Neuschwanstein Castle.

Wore them to the Paris Opera House when Mom and I went to the ballet.

Also wore them when Mom and I went to see Money's Garden in Giverny.

I bought my Birks right before my 2nd trip to Paris. We spent a lot of time wandering through little neighborhoods. Brand new Birks are not so comfortable, but the scenery was just lovely!

Obviously had them on while I was spacing out in Portugal. I think I got my hair cut that day too. Always risky getting your hair cut by someone who you can't communicate with very well! It turned out fine if I remember correctly!

So those are a few happy travel memories that don't even include all the more recent travels with these shoes. Hard to believe I've had them for at least 4 years. I can't possible through them away! So they are off to the Birkenstock hospital for a little face lift. In a 8-10 business days we'll be reunited and making more happy memories together.

Too much sleep...

2011-08-31T09:35:00.000-04:00

I wish I was drinking a beautiful latte!

I'm standing at the bus stop as I write. I did not get too much sleep last night, but I did oversleep. I still have sheet marks on my arms and my face. My hair is embracing the messy look. I'm the poster child for over sleeping. In undergrad, I'd probably have thrown on the closest pair of dirty jeans before running out the door. At least now I find clean clothes, wash my face and put on some make up. Maybe after an hour or so and a cup of coffee it won't seem like a bad morning.

Speaking of undergrads, I'm having trouble embracing their fresh burst of energy this year. Usually I love the beginning of the school year. The undergrads always seem glad to be back, they are cheerful, the have at least a little bit of motivation...I usually find it is contagious. Not so much this year. The undergrads are still all those things, but I'm not catching the bug. Mostly I'm just jealous of all the energy I can't seem to catch! Sigh...maybe I just need that coffee sooner than later. I'm not addicted. I'm just a nicer person after I've had it.

Yes, coffee is probably my best shot at a good day.

Weekly Money Check-Up

2011-08-30T12:29:00.000-04:00

I don't think I did a weekly money check-up last week. I actually really like the concept that MyPrettyPennies has going. It's a good reminder to look back over my finances and have a little accountability without having to divulge too much information. So here goes...

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on a plane ticket.
2. Today I am thankful for cooler weather. I don't want to wish away summer, but I'm looking forward to fall!
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was spend time with my sister and my nephews.
4. I will consider this week a success if I get the ball rolling on my literature review.
5. The thing I will miss most when summer is over pool time. I've really enjoyed spending time at the pool this summer.

I am a knitter!

2011-08-29T21:02:00.000-04:00

It's been a really long time since I posted about knitting. Maybe a few years? Anyway, knitting is a favorite hobby of mine. Right now I'm all antsy, because I have a finished project that has to block. For you non-knitters, that means you get it wet, lay it out flat and pin it in the exact shape you want it to be and let it dry that way. It takes way more patience than I have most days. Thus, a lot of my projects are barely blocked. Here's a detail view of my most recent knit, the Holden Shawlette by Mindy Wilkes.

Can you see all those pins holding the points in place? I'm going to leave it to dry for at least 2 days. Even though I really want to take a hair drier to it and see how fast I can get it dry right now! This is a small triangle shawl that I will wear as a scarf. You know...kind of artsy, gangster style with the point in the front. According to Ravelry, I'm one of 1839 people who have knit or are knitting this little shawl. That alone should indicate that there are a lot of knitters out there! It's a free pattern to you Ravelry folks!

Here are a few other things I've knit in the last year. Just a few of a many!

A Choo Choo Train Blanket designed by Brownie Knits.

A Lace River Scarf designed by Veronik Avery.

My next project is going to be a super cute sweater with eggplant and chartreuse stripes! Here's the picture from the pattern. I'm thinking I won't wear it with that hat, I'll make make it a little longer, and I'll add some ribbing at the waist band. Fun! Should be a great sweater for fall. The more I look at the picture, the more I wonder why anyone would want to knit it. It looks dumber and dumber on the model every minute.

The cost of being cheap

2011-08-26T07:59:00.000-04:00

Bottom line is I'm just too cheap to buy a parking pass for campus. I would buy a pass if I could park in one of the garages closer to my building. Not going to pay $150 for a pass that allows me to park in a lot 15 minutes away from my building though. It's a 30 minute walk from my house to my office. It's a 10-15 minute drive to the parking lots, plus a 15 minute walk from there to my building. So it doesn't even make sense to buy a parking pass.

I can take the bus for free. There's a bus that picks up fairly close to my house. Just a few blocks away actually. Thing is, that bus is NEVER on schedule. It's supposed to run every 15 minutes, but I've waiting way longer than 15 minutes before without seeing a bus. So, I have been walking to campus. I figure instead of waiting 15 min for the bus, I can just start walking. It's good for me to get a little extra activity in my day. On the days when I've needed to take the bus, it's usually because I'm wearing something that wouldn't be good for biking. White linen pants, for example. Foolishly, I've been walking in sandals that weren't meant for 30 minute walks in the heat of summer. That means blisters. Ugh.

Today I really needed to have my car on campus so I can run an errand this afternoon. That means I have to be on campus at the crack of dawn to get a coveted free street parking spot. If you arrive after 7:30am, you're doomed. Thankfully 7:25 was good enough today! Still, I don't see that happening too often!

What about biking? Well...I do that too. It's really the fastest. Takes about 15 minutes. Problem is, there are days like today when I need to be pretty dressed up. More than dressed up, I need to be NOT stinky! It's hard to be NOT stinky when biking in this heat! Next week I'll be back on my trusty bike and happy as a clam!

30 was the best year yet!

2011-08-25T07:45:00.000-04:00

A lot has happened in the last year. So far as I can tell, each year is a little better than the last. I have yet to figure out why so many people freak out about being 30 years old. I have yet to figure out why people freak about any age. Seems to me that most struggles can't be predicted, so getting all worried about a horrible situation isn't needed. Overall, each year is better than the last; even with all the struggles involved! I'm not saying my 30th year of life was all happy meals and chocolate milk. There were certainly some down days, I didn't accomplish every goal I set out to accomplish, I still have laundry all over the bedroom floor, Baxter hasn't been on enough walks, etc. Do you think I love telling people I'm 30 and still living at home? Do you think I love being bombarded about being 30 and not married? People look at me like I'm a freak half the time! I'm really happy with life just the way it is, so quit pushing all your social pressures on me! Ha! Just kidding! Not to be overly optimistic, but I'd rather focus on the awesome things that happened in the last year. Here are some of my highlight from my 30th year of life.

Two days in Taiwan

Two weeks in Australia with my mom

Learning to ski in the Austrian Alps over New Years (and not breaking any bones, I might add)

Christmas in Amsterdam

I passed my preliminary exams

Two of my best friends got married and I was honored to be in their weddings

Went to Oktoberfest in Munich again and this time wore a dirndl. Way more fun when you're dressed up!

A certain someone moved back to the US

Paid off all credit card debt

Saved enough for a respectable emergency fund

Ran a half marathon

If you ask me, that's a pretty good list. That's only the big stuff! That doesn't even touch on all the little stuff that made it such a great year. Doesn't touch on the rough spots that helped me grow. Well...happy birthday to me! Can't wait to see what the year has in store. I encourage everyone to eat cake and have a great day!

Putting the National Debt in Perspective

2011-08-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

Before getting to the guts of this post, let me say just a few little things...
1. This blog is not meant to be a political platform. No matter what your political view, my guess is you would agree that our nation has a bit of a debt problem.
2. I don't know who made this up. It was an email that was forwarded to me. I've taken a little poetic license, but props to whoever had the idea first!
3. You should have a budget, and I hope it doesn't look like this!

If you want to understand the magnitude of the recent debt and budget
reduction actions agreed to by Congress and the President, this
non-partisan example really puts it in perspective.

* U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000
* Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)

It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to.
Therefore, let's remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this
is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family:

* Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700
* Amount of money the Jones family allocates in their budget: $38,200
* Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding credit card debt: $142,710
* Recent budget cut: $385

I really hope your personal budget doesn't look like this! Debt can be completely overwhelming. Trust me, I know! It can be dealt with though. I'll end with this picture I found even though I've posted it before.

Happy Birthday Freebies!

2011-08-23T10:27:00.001-04:00

I got this picture online.

It's just about time to celebrate my 10th 21st birthday! I have a whole post about turning 30 for another day, but today is a good day to remind about birthday freebies. Have you signed up for all your birthday freebies? Here are a few that I've already gotten in my email.

Starbucks: You get a free drink of your choice. Anything, any size! You just have to go online and register a Starbucks gift card. Registering your card has lots of perks. Why anyone wouldn't register their cards, I do not know! Even if you aren't a big fan of Starbucks, at least you would get a free drink on your birthday!!

Panera: Sign up for the myPanera program. You get random free surprises and a birthday surprise.

Sephora: Last year I got mascara, eye liner, and eye shadow. Who knows what I'll get this year.

Noodle and Co: A free meal!

I'm still waiting to hear from Qdoba and a few others. Here's a link to a bunch you can sign up for!

Weekend of Food

2011-08-22T10:03:00.000-04:00

The final presentation.

This weekend was a weekend of food. Not just ok food...great food! I made Peach-Whiskey BBQ chicken. I think it's a recipe P-Dub will have in her next cookbook. I used fancier peach preserves, and fancier whiskey. It was so good. I love cooking. Love it! I wish I had the time to cook 2 hour meals every night!

I served the chicken with mashed potatoes (as suggested) and grilled zucchini/yellow squash. I used a cheese slicer thing to get the long ribbons. The guys seemed to think that was pretty special. Did I mention that my audience was all guys? Cooking for guys in nice, because if they're hungry enough they will eat just about anything. On the other hand, they get picky about "girl" food. There was nothing girly about this meal, that's fo sho.

After dinner, I was surprised with birthday cake from Nick and Sam's. Is that beautiful or what?

Hello yummy goodness!

This is what I learned from the whole dinner (it's almost budget related!)
1. Chicken breasts are so 1990's. Chicken quarters are cheap, delicious, and look really nice for serving. I've never had anyone complain about eating thighs and legs.
2. You only need about 2 good sized red potatoes per person when making mashed potatoes. I estimated 3, plus a few extra for good measure. We will be eating potatoes for a few days. Oops!
3. If you have something in the oven for an hour, you should do dishes while you wait. The kitchen was a complete disaster by the end of the night!

Just wanted to make you drool a little more!

Now on a completely different topic. That snooze app I blogged about...I had to delete it! It went off the next morning, I had to listen to the obnoxious beep while I logged into my account. Then, I didn't get an option to turn off the snooze, so it went off again at which point I just turned off my phone. I've been told that it's in a serious beta phase and that a new version will be coming out soon. I'll re-install when the new app comes out and see how it is. I love the concept!

Snooze Solution: Snooze for Charity app by LetGive

2011-08-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

I have a serious love affair with the snooze button. Sometimes I set multiple alarms just in case I turn off the alarm instead of hitting snooze. Usually laziness is a bigger problem than lack of sleep. I get so comfortable, I just don't want to get out of bed! So my solution is Snooze for Charity...an app that "donates" 25 cents of your money to charity every time you hit snooze. Might be more effective if it were a greater amount. I bet there are days when 25 cents is a small price to pay to sleep a few more minutes! But since the actual donation only happens once a month, maybe the big number will shock me enough to quit hitting snooze!

Here are my initial thoughts on the app. Good in theory, bad in execution. It's a free app, and I think it's a Beta version. On the other hand, there is a lot of room for improvement.

1. You have to log in every time you wan to set the alarm. It's not linked to your bank, so I don't know why this is necessary. To link to your bank card or credit card, I think you have to log in online. Not 100% sure. If you get up at the same time every day, it's not too big of a deal as the times are set to go off daily.

2. There are barely any instructions on the app. How do you pay up? Don't know. Pretty sure you have to do this online.

3. Unless you go to the LetGive web site, you can't review the charities. I thought that by clicking on a charity listed in the app, I would be able to see what it was all about. Nope...now I'm giving to Piper Theater Productions and I barely know anything about it. Which leads me to my next pet peave...

3. You can't change your charity of choice! I can't stand it when an app doesn't let you undo what you just did. Not good programming there.

4. Even on the LetGive website, you can't find out much regarding the charities. For Piper Theatre, there's a blurb and that's it. They don't even link the website for the actual not for profit organization.

5. There's very little commitment. You could consider this good or bad. Every time you hit snooze, it's actually a 25 cent pledge. The money isn't committed until you go online (I think) and enter your bank card info.

I don't want to sound too harsh. I think this app is actually pretty cool. It's such an easy way to get a few bucks for organizations doing great things. My main frustration is not being able to change the organization I support. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for supporting the arts! It's not the end of the world! But maybe my frustration will lead to me not wanting to hit snooze and pay 25 cents! A few programming changes could really improve the execution of the idea. Until these changes are made, I can't very well give this app more than 3 stars.

Epicurious App Review and recipe share

2011-08-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

This is another long overdue post. I made this pasta dish over a week ago. I ate it every day for 5 days with one day off somewhere in there. It was that good!

I found the recipe on Epicurus app. I love Epicurious for a lot of reasons.
1. They have legitimate apps for iPhone and iPad.
2. The recipes are generally from some of my favorite magazines
3. You can search by ingredient, dish type, etc.
4. You can create a grocery list from the recipes you choose. It costs a little more to do this for the iPhone and iPad apps. $1.99 I think.
5. Your account syncs to all devices!

So here's the recipe originally from Bon Appetite magazine

Castellane Pasta with Sausage, Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes, and Marjoram

I made a few mods:
whole wheat spiral pasta gave another awesome flavor
added zucchini, and think mushrooms and/or yellow squash would be good too
Used mild Italian sausage
served with lemon boy tomato. Yum!

End result was seriously amazing! I bought store brand sausage that was on sale and had most of the other ingredients on hand. Goat's cheese was about $4. Batch would feed 4-5 people, so all in all a pretty cheap recipe. It tasted good warmed up too!

I hope you love what you do!

2011-08-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

Sometimes when I get frustrated with school stuff, I remember that in all honesty there is nothing I'd rather be doing. All the hard work is going to pay off and I'm going to get to have a career doing exactly what I want! Yay! Last Thursday I spend the afternoon with a man who is doing exactly what he loves: breeding soy beans. For all my CC friends, you know who I'm talking about! Noose Your Yoodle! We thought we were pretty clever back then, because we could basically ask Mr. T about his soy beans and we wouldn't have to talk chemistry that day. He told me the other day, that he didn't care what we talked about as long as we were learning. Considering most of us barely knew what soy beans were, we were learning something new about soy beans every time we got off track. The afternoon was fantastic! I'm sure everyone has someone in their life who made a difference, but might not have been fully appreciated at the time. I really enjoyed seeing Mr. T's garden at home. The one he always talked to us about. Then, I got to see the farm land he rents to grow his beans. He even taught me how to hand pollinate the beans. It takes more patients than I have in this life time, but he just sits there peeling away the delicate petals of the flowers and transferring the pollen. I've never seen anything quite like it. It was cool to see exactly what he's so proud of. Don't you hope everyone can be so lucky to be doing what they want to do every day?

I was also reminded that rural Indiana is gorgeous! Could it have been a prettier day?!?

My baby mama moment

2011-08-15T13:38:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend with my friends BJ and Jessie and their cutie pie Canaan. He's seriously mobile and there's no wonder they have to baby proof everything. It took almost an entire day for me to figure out how to close one of the baby gates. I especially appreciated BJ pointing out that Canaan could close the gate all by himself. And of course when I realized there was a lock on the toilet seat, I had a serious baby mama moment. All but the pee in the sink part. I was finally able to figure out how to get it open, but it was NOT intuitive! Made me laugh and want to watch the movie again. All in all, it was a great weekend with old friends. Glad to know little Canaan won't be throwing things in the toilet anytime soon!

I know I still haven't posted about all the awesome stuff that happened last week, but it's going to be post-poned again.

Weekly Money Check-up hosted by MyPrettyPennies.
1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on tickets to the Cincinnati Reds game!
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was hang out with BJ, Jessie and Canaan.4. I will consider this week a success if I get my post-doc application turned in.5. If I had today off I think I'd find a park and spend the whole beautiful day there!

This will have to do...

2011-08-12T10:20:00.000-04:00

I had one of the best days ever yesterday! I wanted to write all about it last night, but I just didn't have time. Hopefully a Super Saturday post will suffice to make up for a lack of post today! Today hasn't been bad either.

By 8am I had my morning coffee and Baxter got a walk!
Got my teeth cleaned and I have no cavities!
Tonight I'm going to a Cincinnati Reds game!

More tomorrow!

Finding a morning routine is the worst!

2011-08-11T10:00:00.000-04:00

I am NOT good at mornings. I don't like waking up. I don't like getting out of bed. I just don't like the first half hour of the day. I'm trying to get better at it though. This is the quote I'm trying to remember when I wake up. I kind of want this concept to encompass the first 30 minutes of every day!

Seems like a new routine would make it all a bit better. So that's just what I'm doing! New morning routine.
a) set alarm 20 minutes earlier than usual and no more than one hit of the ol' snooze button
b) pick outfit, jewelry, purse (eventually this will happen the night before!)
c) put the coffee on
d) efficient shower
e) get dressed
f) put make up on
g) pour coffee
h) take Baxter for a walk and drink coffee, think about the wonderful things that will happen today
i) dry hair, smile at the wide awake girl in the mirror, run out the door!

Thankful Thursday

2011-08-10T10:21:00.000-04:00

I guess that right now I'm most thankful for being young. I doubt anyone likes to look at their investment portfolios and see the numbers jumping around mostly in the downward direction. Thankfully, I can grin and bare it knowing that I'm not retiring any time soon anyway! Whew! When it comes to the national economy crisis, there's really not much I can do. I can vote for folks I think will help, but even then there are a lot of confounders. I'm jumping on the self-help bandwagon! Paula over at Afford-Anything had a nice post about this the other day. She's a "firm believer that you should spend less time worrying about the nation’s finances and more time thinking about your personal pocketbook." So am I! A reader also mentioned Dave Ramsey. I can't say I have strong opinions about Dave. I've never read any of his books, but I've poked around on his web site. Whether you're a fan of his or not, he's inspired a lot of people to get the heck out of debt. Right now, he's got a whole campaign to encourage everyone to take personal responsibility for the financial situation: The Great Recovery. Can't say I'll be buying a Great Recovery t-shirt or bumper sticker any time soon, but the campaign seems like a good idea. I'd be curious to know what other people think about the situation. I'd always like to think 1 person can make a difference! Especially if that one person encourages another person who encourages another person. If you're reading this, be that one more person!

And despite what we're hearing on the news, let's remember to be thankful! Reality is, we have it pretty good!

Half way successful

2011-08-07T22:06:00.001-04:00

I'll consider this weekend half way successful. Remember the projects I was inspired to do this weekend? One out of two isn't bad, right? The super colorful and cute bracelet seemed like a bit much to tackle on my first go, so I went for simplicity.

Here's the link to the tutorial.

And the bracelet I made...

Here's the other side...

I'm excited. The beads and leather were already in my tangled mess of jewelry making stuff from days gone by. I had to buy beading thread. That stuff is expensive! $9.99 for 50 meters at Michaels. Luckily i remembered to print off a 40% off coupon, so it ended up being $5. I should be able to make 2 or 3 more bracelets with all the stuff i have now. I have a necklace pendant that actually matches the green of this bracelet, and I'm still thinking this bracelet will jazz up jeans and a grey t-shirt! Guess my jewelry will have to stay all spread out on my dresser a while longer.

Here's my weekly money check-up hosted by MyPrettyPennies.

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on an awesome black purse. I am excited about the purse and excited that it was in the budget. The other 2 purses I bought weren't exactly in the budget, but I moved some numbers around to make it work! No more purses for a long time!
2. Today I am thankful for slightly cooler weather, for all the encouragement I'm getting for applying to post-docs, for the dog sitting gig, and for air conditioning!
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was spending time with Baxter in the garden.
4. I will consider this week a success if I write a paper about nutrition and technology.
5. This time last year, I was about to turn 30. I was thinking a lot about why so many people freak out about turning 30, and wondering if eventually I would realize why and freak out myself. Then, I realized that life just keeps getting better year after year. Seriously no need to freak out! I was also nervous about a course in techniques for translational research that I ended up getting an A in. One of these days I'll realize that worrying doesn't solve problems!

Be thankful for what you have!

2011-08-05T08:00:00.002-04:00

I saw this quote the other day and it's been stuck in my head ever since. Generally when I see quotes like this my mind immediately goes to things like family, friends, Baxter, my car that works, zero rent living, grad school, 3 year old laptop that still works, and stuff like that. What about every day stuff though? So many people out there don't have stuff. Right now, the news is really letting us know about all the kids out there without stuff. Kids without cool clothes to wear back to school, kids without all the school supplies they need, kids without enough food outside of school. I bet some of these kids would love to have one of my bazillion backpacks and I should probably give a few of them away!

Ok, so I am NOT the queen of being thankful for what I have. Seems like there is always something out there that I don't have and really really want. That, and quite honestly, I love shopping! Tell you what though, the garage sale prep last week has been life changing! All this cleaning and organizing makes me realize several things.

1. I have too much stuff.
2. I have some really awesome stuff.
3. I should appreciate my stuff more.

I am really thankful for all the stuff I already have. Now I just need to maximize the use of it all. So despite the fact that I bought not 1 or 2, but 3 purses in the last couple of days...I've decided that I should work really hard to love the stuff I have and enjoy it more than usual. Here's what I've done so far.

These are my purses, and yes...I have plaid
wall paper and purple walls in my room.
15 yrs old will do that to you!

I bought a purse hanger thing so that my purses can be up off the floor. I think this will make me want to get rid of a few I never ever use, but also switch it up more often! I got the hanging thing on amazon for about $10 and it works so well! The black and white purse on the top right still has a water bottle and my iPad in it. Weight isn't a problem for this thing! Woohoo!

I laid out all my jewelry. I've already been having fun picking the jewelry to go with each outfit in the morning, because I can actually see it all! Brilliant!

My closet is pretty wonky and you're not going to see a picture! Basically it's L-shaped, but if you could really see it you would agree that it's more T-shaped. On one side there is a clothes hanging bar with 2 shelves above and 1 shelf below. The other part of the T is floor to ceiling shelves. I remembered that some of the shelves were removable. Took 2 out, added a new clothes hanging bar for short things like shirts. Again...brilliant use of $10! I can see what I have and it's way more fun to pick outfits. Plus, thanks to Pinterest, I have all these new outfit ideas utilizing clothes and accessories I already have!

So enough about me. What do you take for granted? What can you do to appreciate your stuff more? Do you have stuff to get rid of? Go hop to it!

Save Money: Pack Your Lunch

2011-08-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

Packing your lunch takes a few minutes, but does not have to be difficult. You don't need a gourmet lunch. You don't need a fancy lunch box, but I'll admit, I really like having one! I had a teacher in high school who was probably one of the most frugal people on the planet. Mostly, because he had to be. Anyway, he brought his lunch in a bread bag every single day. Perfect example of re-purposing something useful! My apologies for ever making fun of him out loud or in my head for that. It does help to have some leak proof containers on hand though. Baggies are fine for sandwiches, but let's face it....they are expensive and wasteful and I don't like eating sandwiches every day! Here's what I'm loving right now.

Zip-lock divided rectangle containers. About $2.00 in stores now!

Here's my partially eaten lunch from the other day. Nothing fancy: peanut butter and jelly, a few cheese cubes, carrots and hummus, and cherries. Today I forgot to take a picture, but I had watermelon chunks in the big section, cheese cubes in the smallest section, and baked ham chunks in the medium sections. Yum! Now I want more ham.

The best part is that the lid seals each section in a way so that if you have liquidy stuff, it won't run from one section to another! The other thing you have to be careful about it microwaving. If you're going to microwave your lunch, all 3 sections are getting nuked! It's all got to be cold or it's all got to be hot. So far, I've gone all cold. My friend, Dana, had a hot lunch today in one of these containers. We're both loving the container situation!

Here's my lunch container for tomorrow. It's a microwavable omelet pot made by Jo!e.

Basically, you put in 2 eggs, a tad bit of butter or oil (not sure if this is really needed), and whatever else you want in you omelet. Whisk (a fork is fine) inside the pot, and nuke for 1:30 and bingo! You have a little omelet! I confess that I bought this at TJ Maxx a long time ago and have never used it, but today is that day. I have 2 raw eggs wrapped in a paper towel to prevent breaking and some chopped up veggies and a little cheese in the pot already. I think it will be a nice, super cheap, easy lunch. Of course it would be an easy breakfast too, but I'm more worried about lunches right now.

Here's the picture off the website with a finished omelet.

It also says, "only available in Canada." Obviously that's a lie, because I got mine right here in Indiana at TJ Maxx! This company makes all kinds of pseudo unnecessary, but very cute kitchen stuff. I bet anyone who has been to TJ Maxx has seen this brand in the kitchen section.

I hope that the beginning of the school year is a good excuse to make a resolution to pack your lunch and save some cash! Or, as I'm fond of saying...not spend cash.

Tidying up Inspires Weekend Projects

2011-08-03T08:00:00.003-04:00

My jewelry on display

This weekend I plan to complete a few fun projects. My nephew is turning 2 on Friday, and I can hardly wait for his birthday party on Saturday. Sunday is going to be for a few fun projects. I've been organizing my room. I'd say re-organizing, but the truth is that it's been in a state of disarray and so I'm basically just organizing! I laid all my jewelry out on top of my dresser. Might be the most organized my jewelry has ever been, but obviously I need a system! This is the inspiration for a few weekend project ideas.

Project 1: Jewelry Holder

I'm thinking something like this wire and picture frame deal, but it's going to need room for more earrings than this one can hold. Surely I have an old frame and some wire sitting around that could be used for this. Next on the list will be something to deal with all the necklaces. Anyone have old wooden silverware trays? I need them!

Project 2: Beaded Wrap Bracelet

Hello cuteness! I'll have to search through my beads at home to see what I have and then supplement with beads from Von's. I have a few beads that might actually serve as the elephant, but a little metal animal or elephant would be so cute. We'll see what Von's has! This will add a cheerful touch when I'm in a jeans and gray t-shirt mood! I'm pretty much always in a jeans and gray t-shirt mood.

Loving Grad School

2011-08-02T08:56:00.000-04:00

Ninja over at PunchDebtInTheFace had a posted while back about grad school being over-rated. I rolled my eyes, laughed, and was inspired to write a post. After reading his post, I'm inclined to say he might have a narrow view of grad school. I guess I was happy to see that so many of his readers agreed with me. Anyway, the post made me really think about my education story, so I thought I'd share it with you.

I started school on my 6th birthday. That was probably not a good sign. Of course my mom had treats ready for the class. We made candy necklaces out of licorice laces and fruit loops! Who's the cool girl?!?!?! (Turns out, not me!)

First grade just plane sucked from day 1. I thought I could handle it, but as it turns out I only lasted about 45 minutes. We had chapel on the first day of school. I think my actual birth was announced during chapel on the first day of school when my sister was in 3rd grade. Anyway, after chapel I left crying. Mom took me for a milk shake at Stallard's Drug Store on Main Street (sadly, not there anymore). By the time I got back everyone was doing dumb worksheets and practicing writing their name or something dumb like that. My sister taught me to write my name forwards, backwards, and in cursive by then. I could tell school was not going to be good at all. Plus, Miss Garwood made me give up most of my crayons. She would only allow 24 crayons in your pencil box, so I had to pick my favorite 24 out of a likely color coded box of 64 new Crayola crayons. Dumb.

Second grade...well, that's the only year in my entire life that I got perfect attendance. I liked it that Mrs. Deitle let us color while she read to us after recess. We also learned hymns like Go Tell it On the Mountain and I still know all the words to this day. With Mrs. Deitel I mostly remember singing, learning about Jesus, being read to, and Brian Gravitt loved doing word searches. He also had the biggest feet I had ever seen in my entire life.

Third grade was the beginning of the end. I had a fantastic teacher, Mrs. Maurer. She taught me times tables. I've forgotten most of them, but at least I can still do the 9's on my hands. I'm pretty sure I was one of the last kids to finish memorizing the times tables. She taught us long division too. I think I'm better at long division than times tables. Where would I be without the calculator on my phone? We wrote haiku poems and learned the books of the Bible. I can still have to sing if I'm going to figure out the order of the New Testament. We got to play a spelling computer game called Word Chomper or something like that. We also got to play Oregon Trail. Mrs. Maurer read to us every day, but we were not allowed to color. We could read along, but it was much nicer to just listen. I think my favorite book was Mr. Popper's Penguins, but I also liked The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and of course Charlotte's Web. Socially, 3rd grade sucked. That's right about when the girls got mean. I cried a lot. Luckily, I started ballet around then and had friends at ballet. Ballet was my happy place.

Oh, fourth grade. I don't remember that much about 4th grade except that I went to overnight camp for the first time the summer before 4th grade and got a glow in the dark t-shirt. I probably cried for a week before school started because I didn't want to go. The alternative was homeschooling and that just wasn't going to happen. I think science started getting cool in 4th grade. We learned about the parts of a plant. I really don't remember much else about 4th grade. I thought Mrs. May was a good teacher. She was fair. I just don't remember what we learned.

Fifth through 8th grade were pretty much horrendous on a social level. If I hadn't been in ballet I would have switched schools. I had a science teacher who I did not get along with at all. Trust me, my love for science is not because of her. I have no idea why she didn't like me, but she didn't. I sure didn't like her and I was probably a bit of a smart mouth. She made me sit in the hall all the time. I probably learned just about as much in the hall as I would have in her class. I remember learning some Algebra in 8th grade. Mrs. Richeson taught us to write starting in 6th grade. Thank goodness! This blog is by no means a testimony to what she taught me about writing! I can actually write really well when I put my mind to it. She also taught handwriting which I loved. I think she may have the prettiest handwriting of anyone I know.

High school got much better. I finally had friends at school! Yay! Plus I had a great science teacher. He was a great teacher in a funny kind of way. Good ol' Mr. Taylor. Mostly, he just made us think. "Noose Your Yoodle," was writtin on the chalkboard quite a bit. I took earth space science my freshman year plus 2 years of chemistry with him. He may not have taught us all the book stuff we needed to know for college, but by the end of those years I wasn't intimidated by lab equipment, I could balance chemical equations, and I had curiosity! What more does a kid need?

College was rough a first. Not socially. Socially I was happy as a clam! I had fantastic friends and I was dancing my heart out. Literally. It was academics that weren't going so hot. I really just wasn't a fan of the pharmacy program. Some classes were cool, but I didn't have much desire to study the material so I didn't. And my scores reflected that lack of studying. By the end of my 2nd year I had to make some big decisions.

Decision 1: stop dancing. Sad. My body couldn't really take that level of dancing anymore. I was ruining myself day by day. No matter how much I loved it, the truth was I was so skinny my body couldn't function quite right. The real kicker was when my heart started going haywire. Heart meds got me through my last performance. I loved dancing so much that I had to quit cold turkey. I didn't have the discipline to only dance a few days a week. I only knew how to dance like crazy. A few days a week was just not going to be possible, so sad as it was I quit. It still breaks my heart, but I love getting to watch performances. A lot of little girls who I used to teach when they were 4 are now graduating from high school. Sandra Peticolas is an artistic genius. Without her, who knows what my life would have been like. Ballet was my escape for so long. I decided I needed to quit dancing in order to focus on my studies.

Decision 2: Transfer to the dietetics program. I didn't even really know what dietetics really was! Once I got into it, I was sold! I went from your average student to nearly strait A's. Not because the classes were any easier. I just LOVED what I was studying. Dietetics is a career I wish more high school students knew about. There are a million opportunities and it's a great career.

All of a sudden I was a dietitian working in a rural hospital. Talk about an adventure! I had so much fun there. I wanted more though. I knew that if I wanted a career in public health nutrition, I needed a Masters degree. Turns out one of my professors knew of the perfect program. I got accepted to a program in Ireland. Yup! That program included a stipend too, and of course I didn't have to pay tuition because of the scholarship. The program required for me to study outside of Ireland, so I spent 6 weeks in Portugal and 3 weeks in Germany. I also traveled all over Europe for fun since I was already over there. Initially I had no intention to get a PhD. Then one day I got a call from the program director suggesting I get a PhD. The rest is history. Now I'm back getting my PhD and loving it. It's like I'm making up for all the years that I didn't really like school in the past. I suppose I complain on occasion, but the reality is I like grad school way more than most. I like my project, my adviser, and my department. I've had opportunities to travel domestically and internationally. It may be super nerdy, but I'm excited about a career in academia. I hope I can give back by instilling confidence and passion in my students, while making a more global difference through research. Very exciting!

So there you have it. In my opinion grad school is far from over-rated. It may not be for everyone. Many folks can have seriously successful careers without going to grad school at all. So long as you do what you love and strive to be the best you can be, that's all that really matters.

Does under budget justify splurges?

2011-08-01T08:51:00.001-04:00

I've never really watched Suze Orman's show on CNBC before. I've heard she's a dynamic speaker, and I know lots of people are fans. So here I am, sitting in front of the TV and Suze is dishing out her opinion. It's more interesting than I expected! My favorite is when people call in to ask if they can afford something. Today's ridiculous scenarios included a 9 yr old who wanted to buy a $950 crystal bird, a mom with lots of debt of every kind who wants to send her 2 yr old to private pre-school at the tune of 25K per year, and a lady with basically zero savings who wanted to buy a $2,000 doll. Obviously she told all of them no. My favorite was the $25K pre-school. Really? For $25K they better be able to pass the SAT at the end of the year! Nuts. Just nuts. I guess it's a good reminder that a) what you spend money on isn't really my business and b) maybe I should re-evaluate what I think I want! I wonder what she would tell me if I told her I'd like to buy a $50 purse and showed her my money stats.

This month I splurged on some clothes. Partly because of a wedding I wasn't prepared for. Partly because that Patagonia dress was on sale. I knew it was ok though because I was coming predictably way under budget. Some might say I should have just put that extra money into savings considering I have a set financial goal that hasn't been met yet. I guess I'm more of the opinion that if there's no consumer debt, you've met your savings goal of the month to stay on the projected game plan, and the cash is still there...It's your call how you want to handle the extra cash.

So basically at the end of the month, I spent my last $5 on an amazing mocha at Grey House! Then, I went back to the impromptu garage sale that's becoming an annual event for me, Annie, and Sarah. We seriously pulled together an enormous garage sale in 2 days. We've got to be the most relaxed garage salers ever. Clothes were 50 cents and most everything else was $1. When we were too hot and tired to sell anymore, we posted a free sale on Craig's List. The best part might have been when some folks drove up and took everything that was left. Making money was good too of course. I ended up with close to $65!

Here's my weekly money check up hosted by MyPrettyPennies

Weekly Money Check Up

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on a window air conditioning unit. I can't sleep in this heat another night!

2. Today I am thankful the yard sale that lead to me cleaning and re-organizing my closet!

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was get a new hutch, dining table, and 6 chairs! Thanks to a professor who was upgrading. My next nest is one step closer to furnished.

4. I will consider this week a success if I maintain some semblance of sanity.

5. I dream about having my own apartment a lot lately. I can hardly wait to get my own place and decorate it just the way I want!

Baxter gets a bath

2011-07-29T08:16:00.001-04:00

I ended up taking Baxter to Buckle's Feed Supple for his bath. They have a self service dog wash. For $8, you get to use their dog tub, shampoo/conditioner, towel, hair drier, and brushes included! Usually Baxter's preferred method of drying off is to go strait from the bath tub to my bed. There, he rolls around pressing out all the water into my bed which is just gross. I say it was worth every penny to have zero water on my bathroom floor and zero water on my bed! For those in the area, Buckle's is officially the cheapest place in town!

For whatever reason, I only got 6 hits yesterday and I had exciting news! Go back and read it if you want to know why I was so excited Thursday morning!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Grad students stick together for a budget win!

2011-07-28T08:42:00.000-04:00

This is our 2010-2011 Purdue Graduate Student Government

I was actually lacking inspiration for any kind of post today until I opened my email and got my billing statement from the Bursar. My student fees went down by $28 per month. This is a big deal for a lot of reasons. It all started about 3 years ago or so when the Purdue Graduate Student Government decided enough was enough on the fee situation. For whatever reason, when we get funding, that funding can cover our tuition and stipend, but not our student fees. Student fees help pay for things like computer labs (which most of us never use), the gym (which you can tell by looking most of us never use), and I don't know what else. The one thing a lot of us use is the City Bus. Our City Bus system is free to all Purdue Students. Pretty awesome right?!?! Well, back to complaining about fees. As it turns out, Purdue was one of the only universities that had this grad student fee business. What made it worse was that these fees were something like $800 and due at the beginning of September. Most grad students who start at the end of August get their first pay check at the end of September. And, that pay check is often only about $1400. Knowing that the fees were over half of most students paychecks and that they didn't even get a pay check until after the payment was due, Purdue worked out a payment plan. To participate in this payment plan, you had to go to the Bursar Office, wait in line forever, talked to a grumpy lady, and fill out a paper form. All of that AND you had to pay interest! It was such a scam.

Move forward to the PGSG. The student government stuck together and got the fees on a reduction plan PLUS an automated payment plan! Starting in 2009, all grad students were automatically enrolled in a monthly payment plan and the fees were reduced by a decent chunk. Everyone was happy about this. I have a feeling that even the grumpy lady in the Bursar Office is not so grumpy anymore! What I didn't expect was for our fees to be reduced again! Maybe I was told that they would be reduced again and I forgot. Seriously good chance. But I'm still very excited to update my budget with $90 a month going to Purdue instead of $118! So not only did I get a raise this year, but I also have reduced fees! Do you think Congress is reading this? Income and less spending equals money in the bank! Wink Wink!

How will I use that $28 a month. I'm not sure where it will go. I was talking with friends yesterday and the hardest area of our budgets is the eating out category. The other category that's tough to stick with for me is gas. I already pumped up the gas budget since I got the raise. I think I'll bump up the dining out budget by $8 which is about one lunch out a month. The other $20 will go towards the emergency/moving fund. More on that another day.

My travel mishaps

2011-07-27T10:29:00.000-04:00

Me on one of the 2 days I was in Taiwan.

I travel quite a bit. There are folks that travel a ton more than me, but compared to the average Joe, I'm in airplanes more often than most. Considering my carbon footprint, I should probably consider an electric car! Generally I fly about twice a month. You might think that I have the system down pat, but the reality is I don't. Occasionally, I still forget to take my shoes off at security. All this traveling just puts me at a higher risk of something going wrong!

The worst thing that happened was when I missed a flight to DC. I was sitting in the gate! Granted I was probably in my own little world, I was still there. I never heard my name called and the plane ended up leaving a little early! The desk attendants were super nice and re-booked me for the following morning and it all worked out just fine.

My first ever day skiing, and I was skiing in the alps.

I hate packing. I forget something almost every time I travel. My domestic travels are the worst, but my international travels aren't immune to bad packing. I mostly blame my ballet friends. When I was a kid and we had spontaneous sleep overs, they had everything I needed. I didn't have to pack pajamas or anything. At least I don't remember packing anything. So now I forget stuff all the time! Usually it's a hair brush, something cosmetically related, or most recently I forgot my running shoes. I've compensated to some degree by leaving extras of all my toiletries at a certain someone's place so that I don't have to worry about forgetting that stuff. On my most recent trip I bought a $25 pair of decent running shoes at T.J. Maxx. Now that problem is solved too!

Knock on wood, but I've never actually lost my luggage. That's a blessing I try to remember to be thankful for often! Just so you know, if you buy your plane ticket with a credit card, or buy the $13 extra travel insurance you usually get something like $100 to buy new clothes to get you through till your luggage arrives. That extra insurance is always worth it for international travel! I seriously doubt that your current insurance covered much of anything internationally. I know someone who had a medical emergency that caused a plane to land in London. Not only did that $13 cover all her medical expenses for the brain tumor that was discovered, it covered expenses for her husband who was with her. Then, they flew them home first class. That insurance might actually be $40, but trust me you want it.

JFK Memorial in Dallas.

My other travel woes seem to happen in the parking lot. Ive never lost my car, because I always take a picture of the sign marker closest to my car with my phone camera. One time I left my window down the whole time I was gone. Another time I completely lost my parking ticket thing. Luckily if you show your boarding passes, they'll only charge you for those days. Whew! So my most recent travel mis-hap stems from trying to get to the airport by 5 am. That's why my alarm was still set for 3am yesterday. Arg. Anyway, a few weeks ago, I got to my car in the airport parking lot only to find I had a dead battery. Turns out I left the dome lights on. Oops! Lucky for me, the airport provides a free jump-start service. Obviously I'm not the first one to need a jump. The guy told me they jump about 10 cars per day. Sadly, I didn't have any cash for a tip. I did have a Starbucks gift card that was empty, but registered. I gave him the card and told him I'd add money to it from my phone. Which I did. Weird thing is that because the card is registered, I can see the account balance on the card. The guy hasn't used it yet. He seemed excited at the time, but maybe he's just not the Starbucks type. Maybe he lost it. Maybe he's saving it for a present. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes before using it!

What are your crazy travel mishaps? Did everything work out ok?

Letting other people do the talking

2011-07-26T11:10:00.000-04:00

I've had a rough morning. Evidently, alarm A was still set for 3:30am and it was on. Not cool. It was so hot I had trouble falling asleep. Alarm A rudely interrupted what precious little sleep I was getting! Arg! That made it really hard to wake up to Alarm B at 7am. Not a good way to start the day. It's coming up on the end of the month, so I figure I'll just let other people do the talking. In the next couple of days, you should do the following...

1. Check your monthly statements! Kevin just posted about this yesterday.

2. Review your budget. If you don't have one, make one! Molly over at Molly on Money actually has some good step by step reading for you. J. Money over at Budgets are Sexy has a nice list of free budget templates you can use.

3. Think of all the things you're thankful for. I saw a good quote yesterday, but forgot to save it. I think it said something to the effect of, "What you already have was probably once on a list of things you didn't have, but wanted." For the month of August, I'm going to try to be appreciate the stuff I already have! It's my birthday month though, so I'll probably have a little "happy birthday to me" spending in there too!

Today I'm thankful for

My air conditioned office
Splashtop on my iPad so I can work from home when I need to even though I'm not today (see above)
A really good journal paper that an intern found
that my friends Rebecca and John finally got their brand spankin' new Prius!!!!!
That I had clean clothes to wear
That it's still summer, because let's face it...summer is awesome!

What it's like to have a unique name

2011-07-25T09:16:00.000-04:00

Credit

I've been a little off-track with the weekly money check-ups hosted by MyPrettyPennies. I'm so excited that she revealed herself to her readers last week! Not in a flasher kind of way. She told us her name. She is Ginna!

Bloggers often have quite the dilemma when considering whether to blog publicly or anonymously. Some reveal very intimate details about their lives in anonymous writing. I think there must be something very therapeutic about that! Others, chose to put it all out there. They blog under their real name AND reveal intimate details. I fall in another category; I write under my real name, but censor my writing to some degree. I chose to do this for several reasons. The main reason is because my name is so unusual. If some future employer decided to do some serious spy work, I feel like there would be some risk of them figuring out that an anonymous blog belonged to me anyway. It's not like an anonymous blog would link back to a Sarah, or Katie, or Emily. It would link back to TusaRebecca. so, here's my take on my name.

My name is who I am. My name represents family history. My name means I never had a personalized lunch box or back pack, because those embroidery companies only allowed 10 letters. My name means I have to explain myself every time I'm introduced. Of course, that's a good thing, because then people almost always remember my name.

Here's the story. My great great grandmother was a Native American named Tusa. At that time in US history, Native Americans we not treated with any respect, so she was sent away to England. When she came back, she didn't claim her Native American heritage. The first part of my name helps keep her story alive. Rebecca was my grandmother's very close cousin. They grew up more like sisters than cousins. I always imagine them playing together during the summers and having loads of tea parties and picking wild flowers. This may not be what they did, but I'll keep that idea in my head!

To answer all the usual questions:
No, you may not call me just "Tusa" or just "Rebecca."

You may not call me "TR." Only a select few people can call me TR without getting a scowl. In fact, I think there are only 3 people who I let get away with it. I can only think of one of those people who may be reading this. She can still call me TR.

I have a nick name, but you have to be grandfathered in. If you already know my nick name because we were friends in college, feel free to keep calling me that. Otherwise, you may only call me by my name.

TusaRebecca is my first name. Rebecca is not my middle name. My middle name is Eleanor.

So far as I know, I am still the only TusaRebecca. Google my name and you will only find stuff about me. It's kind of scary to have a name so unique that a last name is not even needed, but it's pretty super cool at e same time! It's almost standard that employers at least do a Google search of your name. At least most of you have the benefit that multiple people will come up in that search and might throw the employer for a loop. On the other hand, could be bad if your name is Sarah P. Jones and another Sarah P. Jones from your same town has a serious police record! Do a Google search of my name and you will find a few manuscripts for which I am an author, a few news articles, my blog, etc. It's all me and it's all relevant!

Well, back to the weekly, money check-up.

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on a new Patagonia Margot dress.

2. Today I am thankful the rain we had this weekend!

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was "real science" with my nephews.

4. I will consider this week a success if I pack my lunch every day, put away all my clean clothes, get at least 2 workouts in.

5.A good friend is someone who likes you just the way you are, but will encourage you to be better every day.

A few things I'm loving right now.

2011-07-22T11:56:00.000-04:00

Here are a few things I'm hooked on right now.Things other than school, that is. I'm on a roll at school for sure. I've written about 20 pages in the last week or so. Might not sound like much, but trust me...it is! Every word has to be chosen carefully. I have to spend time reading articles that will help me develop my expertise in the area I'm working in, etc. It all takes more time than the term papers I used to whip up in undergrad, that's for sure!

StumbleUpon

Thanks to Paula over at afford-anything.com, I discovered StumbleUpon. She was (maybe still is) hosting a book giveaway. To earn an entry, one option was to post one of her blog posts to StumbleUpon. Now I'm a wee bit hooked on the site! Ack! Basically, you key in a few interests on your account, click "Stumble" and random web sites come up! I've found tons of great recipes I want to try, so decorating ideas for some day when I actually have my own apartment, and some cool blogs I might end up following for a long time!

Pinterest

Thanks to StumbleUpon, I discovered Pinterest. Pinterest is this cool site that allows you to catalog ideas you find online. You could make a page of craft ideas, or recipes, or gift ideas. You name it! I requested an invite and I'm seriously hoping I get my invite soon! I already have ideas of the pages I want to make. 1) DIY projects 2) hand made gifts 3) Party ideas 4) recipes which will probably be divided by category 5) Store bought gift ideas 6) ok that's all I can think of!

Sundresses

It's been over 100 F all week and I can't imagine wearing anything other than sundresses. I have a Patagonia Margot dress that I love, and I've been wanting to order another. Lucky for me, they are on sale right now!

Gardening

It's hotter than hot, so our garden isn't producing too much this week. Everything is just trying to survive the heat. I love ol' X6 though! It's so peaceful out there! Yesterday I took my nephews to see the garden. You may be tired of reading about them, but I don't really care! They are my favorite little boys in the whole world and I could pretty much write an entire blog about all the funny things they do and say! Here they are helping me out in the garden!

Confession of a girl who LIVES to be an Auntie!

2011-07-21T11:33:00.000-04:00

Well...I confess that I didn't get to the office at a reasonable hour today. I just thought making strawberry pancakes with my nephew was way more important than an hour of work. In my not so humble opinion being an Auntie pretty much rocks! My nephew wakes up with more energy than 10 spider monkeys or 100 ninjas. Today he woke up as soon as he heard my alarm and was very patient with me when I hit snooze and wanted to go back to sleep for a few minutes. Pancakes just seemed like the right thing to do this morning. He did a great job stirring the batter! Couldn't have been a better breakfast! I mean really...how do you resist a little guy with underoos hanging out his pants? Look at that face! It begs for strawberry pancakes!

County Fair 2011

2011-07-20T10:54:00.000-04:00

I love the county fair. Brings back so many happy memories. Don't get me wrong. During my 11 years of 4-H, there were plenty of unhappy memories too! One year the judge told my mom that I didn't get one of the top prizes for modeling a skirt I sewed because I insisted on carrying my doll with me. She was wearing a matching outfit. It was completely adorable! Everyone EXCEPT the judge thought so! The happiest memories are of the heat, the lemon shake-ups, climbing on the tractors, visiting the animals and wish I had my own horse, and generally the rest of the fair food! Yesterday I'm glad I got to share those happy memories with my sister and nephews and some friends! Last year the animals were a big hit. This year John Deere won the kids' hearts!

New Friends

Giant yellow digger thing wins every time!

When you get big, you can come mow my lawn any time you want!

Way too cute!

Please don't figure out how to put this thing in gear!

Ready to farm!

On a money saving note, we all had our own drinks for lunch. Buying sodas would have seriously doubled the price of lunch. Do they really need to charge $2.50 for a soda? That's just nonsense! It was actually too hot for sodas anyway. The air temp was 97 F and heat index of 110F. Way way way too hot! Lemon shake-ups and water was all anyone really wanted!

Disjointed News!

2011-07-18T22:18:00.001-04:00

Baxter loves the garden!

I can't believe I didn't post Monday morning. Actually, I can. I don't know many people who had a fantastic Monday today. So that's my excuse. Monday was just kind of a bummer of a day. Anyway...here are a few disjointed thoughts that will suffice for Monday and Tuesday. All pictures are just for fun.

As it turns out, I have a lot of lotion. Special lotion I got for gifts, lotion from hotels, big bottles of lotion I bought because I thought I needed "good" lotion. In fact I'm pretty sure I won't have to buy any for a very long time. I also have several bars of pretty soap that are still their original packaging. My guess is I'm not the only one. Pretty sure other people do the same thing with pretty candles too. Why don't we just use this stuff? Why is ingrained that pretty things have to be saved and not used? It's one of my new goals to use up all that lotion. I'm not a daily lotion user, so it could take a while. I suppose if I become a daily lotion user my skin will look much nicer! Maybe I'll think to post about it again when all the lotion is all used up!

Never thought I'd get 3 dogs to sit long enough to get a picture!

In other news, I got a raise! The best part about Monday. Very exciting as pretty much no one in the our academic world is getting a raise right now. My raise ends up being about 2% which isn't too shabby for anyone. If I were making "real" money, that could be a decent chunk of change. Two percent of a little bit isn't actually very much. We all know every penny counts, and for me this raise basically means I don't have to worry about things like fluctuating prices of gas, the headlight that's out on my car right now, and I can still meet my savings goals. Yay!

Just so you know it wasn't a fluke! Same dos sitting at the same time on a different day! Amazing!

Show Me App Review and update

2011-07-14T20:00:00.001-04:00

So I downloaded a free app called Show Me. It's basically a white board. You can draw with your finger or with one of those fancy iPad pens if your have one and talk while you draw. The app records what you're saying as you draw. It's pretty, fun to play with so long as you don't freak out at the sound of your own voice! I think it would be great for communicating concepts long distance. So far it looks like most people are using it for academic stuff. I can see how this would be useful for some academic concepts, but I decided to use it to tell you about my recent hair transformation! I've dropped a serious chunk of change in this transformation, but the end result is the most ridiculously low maintenance situation ever! Watch it here

In other news, I have done some serious writing for school. In my field, writing journal articles and having them published is super important. Publication is your bread and butter! No publications, no job. Seriously...some day when I'm a professor, my career will somewhat depend on getting my research published. I won't get paid for each publication, but I will pretty much lose my job if I don't publish my work. Eek! Good thing I'm getting in a lot of practice now! Besides, everything I'm writing is a part of my dissertation. Yay for being one step closer to graduation!

Tonight I took a few minutes to clean out my coupon file. The bigger pile is getting thrown away. The smaller pile is all I have left. With all the recent traveling, I've pretty much fallen off the coupon bandwagon. It's good to purge them every once in a while anyway. Tonight I got sulfate free shampoo (part of the hair cash dump!) on sale and I had $6.50 in CVS extra care bucks. Made it pretty close to free! Maybe this Sunday I'll see what I can get for close to free at CVS. Fun times. That's all for now. Should have a good garden post soon!

Too many USB sticks

2011-07-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

So the other day I was looking for a USB stick with a specific file on it. I found all of these in my desk only to realize that the one I needed wasn't in my desk! I think if you have more than 7 USB sticks you probably have too many. Just sayin...

Weekly Money Check-up

2011-07-05T08:43:00.002-04:00

Image Credit

This weekend was a fantastic tour of Americana. Cubs beat the White Sox, and I was right behind home plate! I had amazing food all weekend! Generally a wonderful couple of days.
Might as well get back on track with the weekly money check-ups provided by Pretty Pennies!

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on my hair. I'm in the middle of a transformation!
2. Today I am thankful that I got a good night's rest.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was hang out up at the river.
4. I will consider this week a success if I make my own coffee every day.
5. My favorite 4th of July tradition is fireworks!

My blog isn't dead.

2011-07-01T10:30:00.000-04:00

My blog isn't dead. I'm just super tired and can't get everything done right now. I'll get back to it next week for sure. In the mean time, you can enjoy this awesome collage of a pup that my nieces Anja (age 3 and a half) and Greta (age 2) made for me. That's some serious gluing going on! I love it! I need to find a special place to display it. Probably my desk is a good idea. Kudos to Annie for being able to cut out the dog. I mean pup. That's not a stencil folks! She's just that good!

Exploding Garden!

2011-06-27T20:26:00.001-04:00

So the garden totally exploded while I was gone! I think we're all a little mesmerized that everything is growing. I know I am!

Tonight was our first big harvest. Check out all the beans! We're estimating 2 pounds!

We even got a good job sign from the Garden Fairies! Right in front of the lettuce we picked tonight.

Baxter was excited to visit for the first time. Don't worry...he didn't water any gardens. Did some preventative toileting to make sure it wouldn't be a problem.

And the best is that our corn is taller than knee high and it's not even July!

Mucking Good Time

2011-06-27T01:28:00.002-04:00

I'd like to say that I'm stronger than jet lag, but I'm not! I traveled over 40 hours to get home on Friday. It was a miserable trip. Our first flight was at 7am, so we were up at 4am. Our second flight was delayed an hour. After the 15 hour flight to LA, our flight to Chicago was cancelled. We were transferred to a flight that connected in Dallas. The flight out of Dallas didn't have a crew, so it was delayed a little over an hour. Oddly, I was wide awake at midnight when we got to Chicago and drove the 3 hours home. Got home at 5:30am, took a nap and then got up for the Mudathelon! We had a mucking good time! Now it's 1:39am on Sunday and I'm wide awake. Thanks jet lag!

I've lost track of the days.

2011-06-21T19:40:00.001-04:00

All our plans have changed. Stupid volcano in Chile sent it's ash cloud over here and flights are being cancelled right and left. We aren't too upset to be stuck in Sydney today and tomorrow, but it could get tricky after that. Kinda need to get back for our Friday flight.

We've done soooooo much. I can think of 2 museums we have NOT been to. It's super handy that I'm a student and mom is over 65. We get in most places for a fraction of the admission price. Anyway, it's a good thing I've been taking pictures or I might forget all the stuff we've been!

This morning we got a backstage tour of the Sydney Opera House. Super cool. I momentarily dreamt of being in the Australian Ballet Company and dancing on the Opera Theatre stage.

Mom and I both pretended to conduct a symphony in the concert hall.

Then we wandered through the Royal Botanical Gardens where squawking cockatoos surrounded us!

We ended up by the Museum of Sydney which was pretty cool. Did you know that the Australians put all the Germans living in Australia into concentration camps during WWI? They were NOTHING like the concentration camps that the Germans put Jews in, but they weren't exactly lovely either. Interesting exhibit. After lunch we walked all the way back to the Australia Museum which is just plane awesome. There was an exhibit about the history of indigenous people in Australia. Sad to learn about how their culture was nearly ripped away by the white people. The history is similar to the treatment of Native Americans. Sad.

Now we're just wondering how tomorrow will pan out. Pretty much all flights in Sydney and Melbourne have been cancelled for tomorrow. We seriously don't know if we'll be able to get home as planned. Trying to see it as an adventure, but the reality is I'm kind of frazzeled!

Sydney Tour Day 1

2011-06-19T06:59:00.001-04:00

Oh my goodness. We had the best day! We're staying on Darling Harbor and can easily take a ferry to Circular Queue. It's basically a water bus. Holds a few hundred people and only costs $2.50 per trip. Great way to view the city!

Here's mom knitting on the Ferry this morning, and me wearing the infamous red sweater that I knit.

We took the ferry to Toronga Zoo. I loved it! It's about the size of Brookfield Zoo. There are 3 baby elephants. Two were born this spring. One was born last fall. All were seriously cute!

I know it's not a great picture, but I was nearly attacked by this peacock at lunch! Ok...not really attacked, but it snuck up on me and I may have made some noise when I turned around.

I think I like the little wallabies even better than the big kangaroos. They were in a walk-about enclosure. One hopped right in front of me! You could get pretty close to them and they didn't seem to mind much.

I'm most proud of my koala pictures. They were in a really well designed space with a ramp around their trees. We were pretty close, but I admit my camera was zoomed in a bit!

One of the best parts about the zoo was the view of the city. Sweet, right?

I think the kamodo dragon likes me.

I love giraffes! Their enclosure had the best view of the city, but I didn't get a great picture.

After the zoo, we hopped on a free shuttle having no idea where it s going! Just did it for the adventure. Turns out it dropped us off at Hyde Park which happens to be across from St. Mary's Cathedral. We sat through evening prayers and then mass. The Bishop said mass which was pretty special. Mom and I went up for a blessing during communion and ended up in the Bishop's line! Totally made our day! After mass we found a great Irish pub with live music and good food. All in all a fantastic day!

How much is too much for Dr. Pepper?

2011-06-17T19:58:00.001-04:00

Maybe if soda cost $29.95 for a 24-pack, we'd drink less of it. And that's half price! A 20 oz soda is $4 here in Melbourne. Sometimes I saw certain brands on sale 2/$5. Well...that's one way to fight the obesity epidemic!

Exploring Melbourn

2011-06-16T19:15:00.001-04:00

Yesterday (Thursday) was a day of exploring and celebrating. We visited the old Queen Victoria Markets which were quite the site. Several bunkers full of tourist crap followed several bunkers of the good stuff! There was a fruit and vegetable market and a HUGE meat market that included cheeses. Soooo cool! I loved seeing all the fresh fish. Obviously we didn't have much need for raw meats, but Mark and I finally found kangaroo salami! Now I can say I've eaten kangaroo. It tasted just like any other salami.

Just one corner of the fruit and veg market.

How adorable are these little aprons?!? They were in one of the 2 cute shops in the markets.

Decoration boomerangs were in no short supply. Only $5, but the don't work.

We surprised my adviser at dinner. Very clever of us. She had no idea that we knew it was her birthday!

Kids these days...

2011-06-16T03:25:00.001-04:00

Nothing too exciting to report from Australia. I explored a little this morning, got really tired, and went back to the conference for the afternoon. After all, that's why I'm here! Anyway, I decided to post funny pictures from the day we left.

Ever wonder what happens when you give a kid an iPad? A lot more than you might ever imagine. There's a reason most gadgets come with a quick start up guide and no actual instruction manual. Gadgets are intuitive, and kids will proove it every time. I let me nephews play with my iPad the other day. They figure out everything. And I mean EVERYTHING!!! My one year old nephew figured out real fast how to play the xylophone. And by that I mean he figured out that if he pressed the home button, the app went away and he figured out which app to open so he could play more. Yowzers!

My 4 yr old nephew figured out the Cut the Rope game and got to level 22. Jerk! Pretty sure I've only ever gotten to level 10. Boy did I feel dumb! He really took to the camera. I started with about 12 pictures and ended up with over 350! Here are a few of the moments he captured. We were all laughing like crazy.

Muscle man!

Pearly whites!

Brothers.

Too cool for school.

I think it's hilarious that he took a picture with the iPad of his little brother messing with the iPhone.

Whoa...blue.

Don't you wish there were 2 of him?!?!?

Dear Volcano, please quit erupting.

2011-06-15T18:15:00.001-04:00

Oh my gosh! Have you all heard about the volcano in Chile that's causing loads of travel woes? It seems most of the ash cloud is over Australia and New Zealand. Just my luck.

Yesterday's conference time was good. The research group that I'm a part of was invited to come to this conference to describe and demonstrate our project. I have to admit, our project pretty much rocks. The principal investigators (professors) are amazing to work with and they take such good care of us, plus the other grad students are super fun to work with. No wonder I actually like grad school! Here are a few pictures of my fellow grad students preparing for the demo.

Dinner last night was probably the highlight of the day. Partly, because the only food I had between breakfast and dinner was a cup of coffee and a cookie. Mostly because we had amazing Italian food and laughed and laughed and laughed. Marc and Maggie had baby snapper. Marc's fish was staring at me the entire time. With about 28 teeth! I've never seen so many teeth on a fish other than a piranha!

Today is already Thursday here. I think you all are getting ready for bed on Wednesday as i write this. I'll go exploring this morning and then head back to the conference this afternoon. I'll leave you with a few sights along the Yarra River.

Survived the 16 hour flight!

2011-06-14T01:16:00.001-04:00

How was your Monday? I didn't really have one. I left LA at 11:30pm. Immediately we were forced to switch to Melbourne time which was 5:30pm on Monday. They served us a late dinner, and told us to go to sleep. Which of course I did. I woke a few times, but I didn't really wake up till 5am when they served breakfast. So according to Qantas, I flipped from bedtime on Sunday in LA to dinner time on Monday in Melbourne in a matter of minutes. I'm surprised how easy the switch was! I was so tired, I didn't really care.

Chicago to LA was an adventure. We were late getting to the airport, but that didn't much matter when I realize our flight was delayed. I tried to leave my poster at security. A certain someone asked that I refer to research posters as a "poster of research awesomeness" to distinguish it from a jr. high science fair poster board. So I ran back to security to claim my posternof research awesomeness, but it already been deemed suspicions and they made me stand there while they leisurely checked it for explosives. For real. Then I nearly left the dang thing on the airplane in LA. Oops!

I think I'm most excited that I got to fly in an A380. The A380 is currently the largest passenger plane out there. I have an inside scoop on the A380, because a certain someone was a part of the engine test flights. Way back in 2006, I visited Toulouse, France for the first time. He left me on the side of the road outside the Airbus headquarters so that I could watch for the A380 take off. Might sound lame, but seeing it take off is quite the sight. It does this hover thing that you don't see in normal passenger planes. As you can imagine loading about 800 people on a plane is a pain, and the terminals for them are often really far away from civilization. I think we walked at least 1.5 miles to get to our terminal.

Qantas did a few things right on this flight.
1. Everyone got a meal card. If you're asleep when they come by for a meal, they keep your meal in the oven and you can have it later.

2. There are snacks available at your leisure and the snacks are good! Apples, cookies, seasoned almonds, etc. Plus you can get your own drink whenever you want it. Every airline should do this.

3. There are foot rests. Thank you!

Ok, well...time for me to check into my room, freshen up a bit and go exploring! It's 1pm on Tuesday in Melbourne and 11pm on Monday in Indiana. Craziness!

It's about to get crazy!

2011-06-11T15:38:00.000-04:00

I'm heading to Australia tomorrow, so things are getting crazy. Despite all my traveling, I hate packing. This time I have a packing list and I'm sticking to it! Hopefully that will prevent over-packing. No promise that I will remember everything I need though. I'm always liable to forget something. Here are the top 5 things I'm most excited about:

1. I get to present my research in Melbourne, Australia! I mean really...it's pretty awesome.
2. I finally get to drive on the wrong side of the road without being yelled at! We rented a car to drive from Adelaide to Melbourne along the coast. I've heard it's one of the mos beautiful drives ever. I'm thinking that me driving on the wrong side of the road for 13 hours with my mom in the passenger seat could be a little stressful, but I'm still excited!
3. I have 3 days to roam the streets of Sydney. Oprah house, the Rocks, cool pubs....fun times!
4. I got some really good deals on hotels and the car. In Melbourne we got the room for $75 less per night because my mom is a "senior." In Sydney, we got 1 night free! They had a deal if you drove a car one way from Adelaide to Sydney or Melbourne. $5.50 a day! Even with insurance, it was only $40 for 3 days!
5. My dad doesn't know it yet, but he's getting a Nook color today so that he can keep in touch with us better while we're gone. He doesn't read my blog, so we're safe announcing this!

Alright, well laundry and packing are calling my name. I can hardly wait for the 16 hour flight! Not true. Obviously that didn't make the top 5 list of exciting things. In fact, I'm kind of dreading the flight. Anything over 2 hours is too long if you ask me, but alas...it's quicker than a steam boat! I will be blogging from Australia, so stay tuned!

iPad apps I'm loving right now

2011-06-09T01:06:00.000-04:00

This iPad was obviously a big purchase. I did tons of reading before making the decision to be sure that I would have a tech tool that could enhance my life and not just a fun gadget. Trust me...this is one heck of a fun gadget!!! When I travel, it's a rare event to forget about work. These days, most of my big travel is for work. I'm actually heading to Australia for a conference here soon. Pity, right? When I'm away I need to be able open and edit documents, I need remote access to my office computer, I of course I need email with the ability to attach documents as needed. What I hate is lugging around my giant laptop and acquiring random notepads of notes during the conference. I'm decently strong, but lugging around a laptop during a week-long conference can do a number on my back! Here is the arsenal of apps that I've gotten in the last few days to make traveling with only my iPad possible. I have very few apps on my iPhone that I paid for. However, I knew that most productivity apps would be paid apps. Here they are...

iWorks $9.99 each

iWorks is actually a suite of 3 apps including Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. They are the iPad counterparts to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. I'm honestly not sure how well it works to create a new document and then edit it on a PC. Importing Microsoft documents and making edits isn't bad though. To be fair, I haven't done anything major with these yet, but the reviews I've read are good. I'm really impressed with the general sophistication of these apps. The documents you can create using these apps are far from basic! It takes a little to get used to, but there are tutorials at are super helpful.

Splashtop $1.99

Splashtop is a remote desktop application. This was a gutsy decision on my part. I mean rurally...how do you know if a remote desktop app is going to work for you just be looking at a brief description and some screenshots? I read reviews, but even those direct me to a single best app. Finally I found a review that basically said Splashtop was the best because of the ease of set-up and the price. Some of the other remote desktop apps are $30! One downside is that you have to download some software onto the home base computer. That meant I had to submit a request to our IT department. Luckily, they were totally cool with it! Once the home base computer software is activated and a password is set, it's super easy to connect and my brief test tells me that I can do anything with this app! Plus, you can access multiple computers! I'm going to install the software on my home computer too. $1.99 well spent!

Daily Notes +todo $4.99

I wanted an app that would allow me to type notes during meetings and create corresponding action items. There are lost of apps for creating task lists. There are also lots of apps for taking and organizing notes. Evernote is pretty popular. It's not bad. I like the way Daily Notes is organized better. You create your own notebook categories. Right now I have one for project meetings, dissertation related stuff, blog ideas, and conferences. The app basically creates a new page for each note book on each day of the month. It's easy to visualize your notes by date. You can also add tags within the note categories. There is a task list within each category as well. So let's say I'm in a project meeting like I was today. I can take general notes throughout the meeting. When an action item comes up, I can immediately create a task with a priority level, a tag for easy searching, and a due date. You can also email the meeting notes to anyone. I believe you can also delegate tasks. Boom! Done. When I'm back at my desk I can review all the tasks for all categories in one view. There is one feature that I have yet to have an opinion on: I don't think you can sync with your online calendar. So my final opinion is that this is one very organized, stand alone digital notebook and I like it!

BlogPress $2.99

Alright...blogging isn't really work, but it's also not so simple to do from your phone. Blogging through the Blogger site on an iPad isn't as simple as you might think either. Everything is all fine and dandy until you want to upload a picture from your iPad. So, to really be able to integrate images, you need an app. I honestly don't know why I ended up picking BlogPress. I'm sure I read reviews, but they aren't etched in my mind. It's easy to use. I need to work out a few quirks related to formatting, but it's just a learning curve thing.

Right, so the grand total spent on apps is $40. But actually, I had a $20 gift card to BestBuy that I used to buy iTunes gift cards and a $10 iTunes gift card that I bought using Chase rewards. So I only actually spent $10 out of pocket on the apps. Not too bad if you ask me!

Once apon a time, there was a Garden...

2011-06-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time (and that time is actually now) there was a beautiful garden. The garden was planted by Emily, Rebecca, John, and me.

Rebecca and Emily are very happy about how the garden is growing!

The beans are growing!

The tomatoes are blooming!

Everything is growing! Oh wait. That's not our garden! That's Jim and Jim's. We've learned a lot from them!

John is really happy to water while the girls watch. Look closer! He's smiling!

Radishes are almost ready!

Lettuce is...well...it's growing.

Cabbage is doing awesome! Doing awesome over in Jim and Jim's garden!

TusaRebecca and RegularRebecca look too school for school!

She's here!

2011-06-07T08:30:00.001-04:00

The long awaited moment finally arrived! I am officially blogging from my new iPad2! Tracking the delivery on FedEx tracker was awesome. Waiting all morning for the FedEx guy was not. I used gift cards and Chase Rewards points to buy iTuned gift cards. I really wanted iWorks...basically Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They're $9.99 each, but worth it to be able to edit documents and create documents on the go. I downloaded a free kids' book which my nieces enjoyed quite a bit! Speaking of...shout out to Annie who is the awesome mommy of my nieces! She made the best brownies AND strawberry short cake tonight! Yum! I may have also gotten some pool time today! All in all a very very awesome day!

If anyone has a favorite iPad app, let me know!

Urban Commuter Biker Chick

2011-06-06T09:08:00.000-04:00

Bike commuting in my town is not the easiest. It takes come courage and determination. Don't expect too many bike lanes. They are few and far between! Don't expect drivers to be looking for you. Bikers are few and far between! Here are a few things I've learned about bike commuting.

1. Your bike will set the mood. Getting a girl's bike is pretty important if you are a girl. You can decide what you want to pay for a bike. If you've got a short commute like me (about 2 miles), I wouldn't put too much money into the bike. I happen to have the greatest retro cruiser. It's a Puch. Love it! Love it! Love it! My bike has a basket, fenders, leather seat with springs underneath, and a wee bit of rust. It also happens to have a cup holder thanks to my sister. Be sure you let everyone know you're a cute commuter, not Lance Armstrong.

2. Dress to impress and maintain good posture! Slouching on a bike is bout as attractive as slouching any other time. I'm working really hard to have better posture and only slouch on the couch! There is no reason to buy an entire wardrobe of stuff from REI or Dick's Sporting Goods for your commute. Euro girls, particularly the uber cute girls in Amsterdam (city of bike!), don't sacrifice fashion just because they are biking around. Trust me, you can't wear a cute skirt if you're on a guy's bike. Today I wore a flowy silk skirt that caught in the wind a few times. Oops! Several people around here may have gotten to see more than is necessary! That might not have been the best. But anyway, I've biked in just about every summer dress and skirt I own and it's all just fine.

3. You do not have to race to work. It's a commute, not the Tour de France! Bike at a comfortable clip, but don't get nasty sweaty on your way to work.You might want to pick a nice evening to bike to work as a practice run. That way you know just how much time to allow to get there at a comfortable pace.

4. Follow the law. Did you know it is illegal to ride a bike without a bell or a horn in the state of Indiana? Bikes must follow all traffic laws. You must stop at stop signs and red lights. It is illegal to ride the wrong way on a one way street. You can get pulled over by the police and you must provide an ID such as a driver's license or a state issue ID. Bikers must stay in the far right lane and must pull over if the biker is holding up more than 3 cars behind it. I'm not sure how you could possible know that, but whatever...it's law. Bikes are not to be ridden on sidewalks or other pedestrian areas. I was once on Grafton Street in Dublin going about 1 mile per hour on my bike. I was kindly asked by the Garda to get off my bike. The Garda even said "please." Now...it's my opinion that my town simply does not provide safe conditions for cyclists, and in situations where I feel completely uncomfortable on the street I will occasionally ride on the side walk. In this case I make sure pedestrians ALWAYS have the right of way and I go slow. In a crowded situation I get off the bike and walk. You know...I would love to go for a ride with the mayors of Lafayette and West Lafayette and show them just how intimidating it can be to try to cycle to work. I wonder if they would have more bike lanes put in if they realized just how bad it can be.

5. Keep yourself safe! I'm all for looking cute while biking, but helmets are a must. Maybe in Amsterdam where there are plenty of bike baths and strictly enforced traffic laws to keep bikers safe, you can choose to go without a helmet. In Lafayette, Indiana helmets are MANDATORY, not optional! There are very few bike paths let alone bike lanes. Drivers are distracted and rarely expect a bike next to them. You can try to stay towards the curb, but you'll have an urban obstacle course of water drains, pot holes, gravel, etc. When I bought my helmet I chose one that would maximize my visibility! Hard to miss a giant pink helmet with flashing lights on the front and back! Which brings up another point. LIGHTS! Also mandatory. Actually, I'll have to double check, but I believe it's Indiana State Law that bikes have to have a front and back light of some sort if biking after dusk. In Ireland they sure take lights seriously. The back light should be a red flashing light. Doesn't hurt if the front light flashes too. My helmet has a flashing red light on back and a flashing white light on front. When I turn my head, the light will shine into whatever I'm looking at. Safety first. Better to look dumb than dead!

Notice the last 2 sections are the longest. Share bike laws with your non-biking friends. It will help them become more aware of you and your commuter friends. Mostly, just keep safe! I don't know many people who can afford a head injury. Besides the hospital bill, you may end up brain damaged for life. Not good. Helmet!

Gas prices drive me crazy

2011-06-02T08:24:00.000-04:00

If there's one thing that's really been making me angry, it's jumping gas prices! The only thing that makes me more angry than the actual price jump is listening to the news throughout the day and hearing all the conflicting excuses for the jumps. It's ridiculous. This morning I passed my usual gas station and gas was $3.64. As I've said before, I'm pretty loyal to Speedway. I don't shop around for gas, because it's not worth driving across town to save 2 cents per gallon. Today was a different story! On my way home for lunch, gas had jumped to $4.15! That's right...51 cents in about 4 hours. I can see prices jumping 10 cents, but 50? So immediately I grabbed my phone, opened my GasBuddy app and this is what I saw.

Gas at Payless (it's actually Kroger, but they left the local name) for $3.62. I'm willing to round to 50 cents saved per gallon since I drove a few extra miles, but still...I saved about $6.50 by going to the Kroger station today.There were about 20 or so other cars there waiting to get gas. I should have thought to take a picture of that!

I scrolled down and got a screen shot of the Speedway price. Just so you know that it really was $4.15 there. Glad I checked GasBuddy!

Student loans: good, bad, ugly

2011-06-01T11:36:00.000-04:00

No really sure why I've been thinking about student loans lately, but I have. Certainly not all, but most folks end up with student loans during some point of their education. Particularly undergraduate education. I just read that about 66% of 4 year program students graduated with student loans in 2008. The average student loan debt among these graduating seniors was just over $23K (finaid.org). Supposedly, students who applied for financial aid borrowed even more. Not sure how that works. Did they have greater need, got less in grants (money that does not need to be repaid), and thus borrowed more? I'm not sure, but anyway...student loan debt is still a bear.

So much so, that our Federal Government started the Income-based Repayment Plan in 2010. On the up-side, the minimum monthly payment is based on your income and family size. As your income changes, your payment amount may change or you may become ineligible. But...if you are eligible and make the payments for 25 years, any remaining loan will be forgiven. This is an over-simplified description of the program, so please go read for yourself if you think you are eligible and think you may want to participate. There are certainly some down-sides to the program. If you are only making little bitty payments and then all of a sudden you start raking in the cash....eek...you'll have a big chunk of balance to pay off.

I'm in a good spot. My loans are deferred while I'm in grad school. That means no interest earning and no payments needed till 6 months after I graduate at which time I will have a relatively low interest rate because back in the stone age when I graduated from college the first time, interest rates weren't so bad. I could start paying them off now, but I'd rather meet other financial savings goals for now and have fun with what little money is left. I will not be participating in the Income-based Repayment Plan. Based on my projected income and family size of zero, I won't be eligible anyway. No big deal though. If I'm not income eligible that should be something to be thankful for!

Does anyone out there participate in this program? Anyone wish they had known about it sooner? Anyone have opinions?

Weekly Money Check-Up

2011-05-31T17:23:00.000-04:00

MyPrettyPennies

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on a membership to the Shedd Aquarium. Who wants to go with me? My pass is good for 2 adults!
2. Today I am thankful that my learning plan portfolio is done. Hard to believe I've been a dietitian for almost 6 years.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was hang out with my nephews!
4. I will consider this week a success if I get my poster done for Australia.
5. My pet peeves are gum smacking, nail biting, slow driving in the fast lane, whining over a few points on a grade, refusing to take responsibility for self, etc, etc, etc...

Coin Star: turns metal into plastic!

2011-05-26T08:00:00.002-04:00

Image Credit

I've seen the CoinStar machines in various locations, but I never pay attention. I was under the impression that those machines take a percent of your money. Purdue Federal Credit Union has a coin machine that is free for members, so I just use that. If you want cash, then yes...the machine takes a cut. But...Turns out that you can cash in your change at a Coin Star machine and get gift cards and there's no fee! How fun is that?!? It gets better. Sometimes they have bonus deals. Right now, if you cash in at least $5 in coins, you get a $5 Borders book store bonus certificate. Recently, the bonus was iTunes. Other gift card options include Lowes, Amazon.com, Gap and their family of stores, Starbucks, CVS, etc. Looks like I have a new motivation to stash my pocket change. Maybe I can hold out for an Amazon.com, Starbucks or iTunes bonus.

The iPad2 race is on!

2011-05-25T11:08:00.000-04:00

The race is on. Actually, it's been on for almost a week. Who can get me an iPad2 faster? Best Buy or Apple.

Best Buy: I put a $100 deposit down on the iPad over a month ago. Still.No.iPad. Super frustrating. I did this because it was going to help me save about $20 and I thought it wouldn't take forever. Blogged about it a while back with all the rational.Well, that rational has gone to pot. Luckily, I can get my deposit back. Unheard of, right? My guess is that so many people are ticked off and Best Buy can't make us wait forever.

Apple: The only real reason I wasn't buying through Apple was the $20 in coupons I had for Best Buy. I ordered on through Apple on Saturday. Supposedly it will ship in 1-2 week. I'll for sure get it by June 10th. The great thing is that I can cancel my order if one comes into Best Buy before Apple ships one to me! It's a win-win. The main thing is that I want my iPad before I leave for Australia. Now it's a sure fire thing! I still think I've waited way too long!

Weekly Money Check-Up

2011-05-24T09:46:00.000-04:00

Time for the weekly money check-up from My Pretty Pennies!

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on gas. This month has been a gas guzzling month. Not because I have a gas guzzler, but because I've been driving to Indianapolis a lot to spend time with friends! Totally worth it!
2. Today I am thankful for sunshine!
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was sit on the porch and knit and watch the storm blow in.
4. I will consider this week a success if I take a bag of clothes to a charity shop.
5. I am currently craving nothing. My tummy feels funny right now.

Weekly Money Check-Up is a fill-in-the blank post once a week. The first four questions are always the same each week and the fifth is always different. Care to participate? Fill in the blanks in the comments section or post it on your blog and link back to here! I usually post it on Mondays, but it can be posted any time of the week. Thanks for participating! :)

BlogBooster Lite initial review

2011-05-23T08:37:00.000-04:00

credit

For those of us who often blog from an iPhone (eh hem...Annie), this app could be for us! The only way I knew how to blog from my phone was to email a post to my blog. The problem with that is that only some of the text comes through if you add a lot of images. Additionally, there's no way to hyperlink, change the font size or color, and stuff like that. BlogBooster Lite free app allows all that! If you see my test post, you'll notice that the image is way big. I picked the biggest image to see what would happen. Obviously, it's too big! Other than that, I think the app has serious potential! BlogBooster has another app like this with more features for $2.99. I'm not willing to pay that right now. I think I'll get to know this one first. Oh and just FYI, this post was not written in BlogBooster.

Testing a new app: BlogBooster

2011-05-22T23:21:00.002-04:00

I think this app called BlogBooster has potential. A free iPhone app that allows for more sophisticated blogging on the go. Mystery. you can change the font and text color. Underline. ~~Strike.~~ Bold. Italics.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Stayin' alive! Stayin' alive!

2011-05-22T10:57:00.001-04:00

After all that apocalypse hooey-balooey, thought it would be nice to focus on life! Here's the garden update!

Two nice rows of bush beans! By far the most aggressive growers in the garden.

We planted all our vining veggies (all technically fruits, I know) the night it got super cold. All but 1 were pronounced dead. We have 4 confirmed survivors!

Another surviver. See those ity bity leaves growning?!?

The decorative corn is in the aggressive grower competition. Knee high by July? Maybe.

Our herbs didn't look like they survived the cold snap, but they did!

Fiesta!

2011-05-21T15:35:00.000-04:00

Just got this Fiestaware for free!

Watch out P-Dub!

2011-05-18T23:14:00.000-04:00

I had one crazy Texas weekend! Started to feel a little bit like Pioneer Woman. We hit up the local rodeo on Saturday and I cooked all day on Sunday. The rest of the weekend was super relaxing. Mostly spent time by the pool and read magazines.

Check out the fresh ingredients! My favorite place to shop is Central Market. They have the best produce section ever. In fact, I think their produce section is probably about the size of the Kroger I usually go to! Ok, maybe the Aldi.

Here's the picture of the recipe in Bon Appetit! Does that look delish or what? Chili-braised pork shoulder tacos, Pickeled onions, and house recipe guacamole.

Here are the beautiful ingredients.

Here are the spices that cost us next to nothing because we bought teeny tiny amounts in bulk. Total about $0.12 on spices! Yay for Central Market!

Ancho chilis and some other kind. BEFORE "stemming and seeding."

AFTER: "stemming and seeding." I was so careful not to touch my face. I know they were dried, but still...seemed risky to me!

Final glorious tacos. Only about 6 hours later. While the meat was soaking up the amazing flavors of the chili rub we actually went for a run. And we went cigar shopping. And we made guacamole. Actually...I didn't have anything to do with the guacamole, but it sure tasted good!

Seriously worth every minute in the kitchen. The chili rub has a full flavor, but it's not spicy at all. I loved the pickled onions and the radishes. Added a nice, fresh zing. I need a dutch oven though. Meats just don't get tender enough in a skillet covered in foil. That said, tacos were still the bomb. I ate 3! I would have eaten more but I didn't want to look like a complete pig. Thinking back I wish I had eaten one more.

Wait till you hear about the rodeo! Then you'll really think I'm a P-Dub wannabe!

So much to tell, so little time...

2011-05-18T09:44:00.000-04:00

I promise I haven't fallen off the blog-wagon. I have a lot to tell and lots of pictures to post! This weekend was fabulous. Can't wait to sit down and tell you about it. In the mean time, here is my delayed weekly money check up from last week.

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on Cubs tickets!
2. Today I am thankful that I can ride the City Bus for free with my student ID. My car battery is dead.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was go for a run on Katy Trail. First run back after the half marathon and I felt pretty good!
4. I will consider this week a success if I get all my stuff ready for data entry.
5. My favorite magazines are SELF and Bon Appetit, but pretty much any magazine will make me happy!

Here's the blurb about the weekly money check-up from MyPrettyPennies.
Weekly Money Check-Up is a fill-in-the blank post once a week. The first four questions are always the same each week and the fifth is always different. Care to participate? Fill in the blanks in the comments section or post it on your blog and link back to here! I usually post it on Mondays, but it can be posted any time of the week. Thanks for participating! :)

I'm horrible at packing

2011-05-11T01:31:00.000-04:00

Despite the fact that I travel more than the average bear, I pretty much suck at packing. I just packed an entire suitcase that includes stuff for 3 days of conference plus a social weekend. Here's a list of thing I figure are not in the suitcase yet...makeup, flat iron, jewelry. Here's what I have too much of...EVERYTHING ELSE! I think I packed 4 pairs of shoes plus the pair I'll wear tomorrow. Alarm is set for 5:50am, because I know I'll just want to un-pack and re-pack in the morning. I wish I could go back to my Euro packing days. So long as I had a black fleece and a decent looking top and a rain coat I was good to go! I used to do weekend trips with a backpack. We're not talking a hike through the woods type of backpack. It was just big-ish school backpack. Now I have to worry about multiple scenarios. I need outfits for bumming around town, for going out on the town, for casual nights on the town, for pool parties, and for conferencing it up all in one suitcase. Easier said than done! I hate packing.

This is for all the girls out there!

2011-05-10T11:57:00.000-04:00

There are a few things that I need to tell ALL the girls out there. If there's one thing I hate, it's being called small, skinny, tiny, etc. Everyone seems to think that the grass is greener when you on the low end of normal when you calculate your BMI. Let me just tell you that it's not, and here's why...

1. Jeans aren't made to fit anyone. You may perceive that shopping for jeans would be easier if you wore a size 2, but trust me when I say that it's not easier. I've had shopping trips in which I tried on 16 pairs of jeans and none of them fit right. Evidently my thighs need jeans that are about a size bigger than the jeans made for my waist. Does that make me voluptuous? Never mind.

2. No matter what size you are, you need a pair of Spanx. If you're going to wear form fitting clothes, trust me...you need Spanx underneath. 'Nugh said.

3. Training for a half marathon isn't easier just because you weigh less. This is stemming from some crazy lady next to me in coral T. She kept going on and on with things like, "Must have been so much easier for you to train for the mini because you're mini." Um...no! I was out of shape when I started training and those training runs were crazy hard. Out of shape is out of shape no matter what your size. Might be easier on joints, but not exactly easier to get into shape again.

4. If you're going to run 13.1 miles, you're probably going to chafe. Even BodyGlide didn't do all it claims to do for the insides of my thighs! Was that too personal?

I think I'll just leave on that note!

I ran 13.1 miles!

2011-05-08T22:40:00.002-04:00

Saturday was quite the day! I ran the half marathon in ~~1 hour oops!~~, 2 hours 16 minutes and 34 seconds. I got 13,977th place. I'm still de-compressing everything that happened. We woke up at 5am to get ready and head down town. Here's the short version:

Mile by mile emotions:

This shows my pace during the race.
Red zones are water stations.

Coral T: I was way back in coral T. That means I was towards the back of the pack! My main though was, "Wow. In a nation that is suffering an obesity epidemic, I'm in a crowd of 35,000 people who are walking or running 13.1 miles today! How cool is that?!?"

Miles 1-3: Crowded. Crowded. Crowded. I was totally jazzed though.

Miles 4-6: Really? Does every 12 year old in Indy have a rock band?

Mile 7: Running onto the Indy 500 track was pretty cool. Running around the track was just ok. It's just a really long lap.

Mile 8: At least I was heading back to the finish line!

Mile 9: Oh, this kind of hurts.

This is the t-shirt I wore
during the race.

Mile 10: Officially the longest I've ever run. Didn't know if I could make it that far, but I did. I felt good and almost wondered if I was experiencing "runner's high."

Mile 11: Not so bad. Maybe I could do this again.

Mile 12. Are we there yet? This hurts pretty bad. I want to be done.

Mile 13. Really? It has to start pouring rain now? This sucks.

Mile 13.1 I just want to be done. Where is that dang finish line?

Finish line: Whoa. I did it. I ran 13.1 miles!!!!!!!!!

Signs I loved:

"Go Amy Go! Running this half marathon has to be easier than being married to me!"

"Way to go random person!"

"Do it for the girls who got picked last in recess!"

T-shirts I loved:

This was pretty much how I was feeling before the race.

There were lots of t-shirts with the following 2 Bible verses

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

I totally memorized Hebrews 12:1 "Run with endurance the course set out for us." Both those t-shirts were encouraging!

Other t-shirts were inspiring because they advertised personal accomplishments. My favorite two were

"I'm down 80 pounds and still have more to go. Read about it on my blog."

"8 months ago I had open heart surgery. Today I'm running a half marathon!" The guy wearing that t-shirt was running with his 2 daughters. They ran on either side of him. Their t-shirts said, "I'm running with my dad," and had arrows pointing to him.

I read the book Marathoning for Mortals when I first started training. One of the quotes from the book is, "The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start." I think that pretty much sums up my experience. Now I can relax and train just to stay in shape. It's pretty awesome to know I'm capable of running 13.1 miles though.

Special thanks go to

John for being incredibly supportive from start to finish. Might not get the boots, but the incentive got me going! The flowers were a great surprise!

Rebecca for being our sherpa! It was so good to have a friend there for moral support the day before and immediately after.You're the best!

Marsha, Kristen and Mel for being my training buddies. Especially Marsha! Your discipline and cheerful spirit inspires me every day! Everyone should read Marsha's blog!

Marsha's Aunt and Uncle and adorable little cousins for letting us crash at their place! Thanks for the encouragement, hugs, food and my morning coffee!

Last, Dr. Campbell. After all...this whole thing was his idea. Thanks for rallying people department to do something monumental together.

Half Marathon Tomorrow

2011-05-06T08:00:00.012-04:00

Credit

My life is about to change. Tomorrow I will be running a half marathon and I'm completely freaking out. Running a half marathon is kinda monumental. At least it is for me! To say I've trained adequately is a bit of a stretch. I started out so good and then I went to those conferences and all my training went to pot. Then I got sick. Then I just got crazy busy. So I'm really going out on a limb tomorrow. I know I can run 8 miles. I'm pretty sure I can run 10 miles. I'm hoping that maybe possible by the grace of God I can run 13.2 miles!

My bag has about about 5 different running outfits because who knows what the weather is going to decide to do. Today there have been 3 different forecasts! Could be 50 and cloudy. Could be 50 and drizzle. Could be pouring rain. Here's hoping for 50 and cloudy. Thankfully I have a friend who will meet me at the finish line with a sweatshirt and a smile! Yay Rebecca! You're the best! I also have great friends who I hope to start the run with. Maybe I can keep up with them too! Anyway...wish me luck! I'm going to need it!

These are the things I will be telling myself throughout the race...
1. you can do this
2. one foot in front of the other
3. just because you can't run 13 miles doesn't mean you aren't in shape
4. you can run 13 miles
5. the quicker you run, the quicker it's over
6. at least you won't be the last person across the finish line
7. focus on your arms, not your legs

Did you know that I burn approximately 100 kcal for every mile I run? So tomorrow I will burn about 1300 kcal. That's like an entire Qdoba burrito with guacamole! Or a lot of ice cream! Or several beers! Or 10 cans of Coke.

Here's hoping that enthusiasm plus a lot prayer gets me across that finish line!

Garden is planted!

2011-05-05T13:34:00.001-04:00

It was a cold evening with threatening clouds, but we got our garden planted!

We now have tomatoes, variety of peppers, beans, rhubarb, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, lettuce, spinach, Brussels sprouts, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, musk melon, decorative corn and in 5 years someone is going to get asparagus!

We also have a garden gnome!

And a fence to keep the rabbits out!

Sustainability

2011-05-03T09:07:00.000-04:00

I'm not talking about wind-farms, organic farms, or natural gas. I'm talking about sustainabile finances.

Credit

Finally! I got to watch the show, Till Debt Do Us Part! I’ve heard of the show and I’ve even read Gail VazOxalade’s blog now and again. She’s a sassy lady who basically intervenes in bad debt situations. She makes couples who are in ridiculous situations get their crap together. It’s a bit like The Nanny. Anyone who has seen the Nanny knows that all she really does is go in, tell the parents to act like adults and take control, and then the kids start shaping up. Till Debt Do Us Part is a bit the same. Gail goes in and tells people they can only spend as much as they make, they have to ace their debt, and they often have to come up with extra sources of income. What do you know…life starts to seem better when these people start taking control and making their personal finances sustainable. Currently on the show, there’s a couple who are $60K in debt. Now they have to live on a cash budget, address relationship issues, and then at the end they’ll get $5000 to help with their debt. Some people use envelopes, Gail uses jars. These people are cutting their variable spending by 77%. You might be thinking, “Holy cow! That’s insane!” The thing is these folks aren’t really abnormal. At least I suspect that they aren’t. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a bazillion people buried in debt. There are a lot of people out there who need to get their financial crap together.

So here’s my take on it. People get pretty hyped up about sustainability in businesses and especially agriculture, but I’m not sure people apply these opinions to their personal financial lives. In my mind, sustainable means living now in a way that will make living later possible. At the very least, people should figure out how to live on what they have and not on what they don’t have. People need to be content. It took me longer than it should have to get my own crap together. So I’m not saying it’s easy and I’m not trying to make people feel bad. And obviously it's hard to be content. There's always something out there you want to have that you don't have.

Not going to lie…I had to make some changes in my spending in the last few years to make life sustainable. I had a chunk of credit card debt that needed to be paid off. To make it happen as fast as possible, I had to become so much more aware of how much I was spending on all the little day to day stuff. The biggest thing was making a reasonable budget and sticking to it. We’re not talking a general “oh it would be nice if my money flow looked something like this” kind of budget. We’re talking “I can spend $10 on coffee and soda this month and that’s it. Not a penny more!” kind of budget. Granted, that budget had some fun stuff worked in. Like I said, it was reasonable and I had to stick to it. In making that budget, I had to keep my priorities in mind. Those priorities were:

1. No more credit card debt
2. Emergency fund
3. Travel

It’s been a whole 2 months with zero credit card debt, and it feels so good! It feels so good and the budget discipline is so ingrained that I have ended up with extra money the last 2 months. That extra money has turned into a curve-ball fund. Unlike an emergency fund, the curve-ball fund is just for when life throws a curve-ball. For example, last month I was at a conference and I was texting like crazy. I texted $30 worth beyond my limit. Oops! This hasn’t ever happened, so it’s not worth it to me to spend an extra $10 per month to get unlimited texting. The other day, I really had the urge to hit up TJ Maxx. I didn’t need anything, but I ended up with some sweet sunglasses and a padded iPad sleeve. Boom. $30 impulse spending. Neither is a big deal though since I have a curve-ball account. Even on my measly salary I’m happy to say I’ve gotten to a place where I can cover surprises and I can splurge without freaking out. See? That is what I call sustainability!

Inch by inch and row by row

2011-05-02T15:48:00.002-04:00

My official garden clogs.

Sunday afternoon we made some serious progress on our garden. We “hoed it up” about half way and then a guy tilled it with his power tiller! Whew! That would have been a lot of work to do it all by hand. I mean…we could have, but I was glad we didn’t have to. Since we had extra time, we made a mad dash to the garden center and bought 12 tomato plants! We have La Roma, Rutgers, Lemon Boy, and Sweet Baby Girl varieties. Three of each! Split between us, I think it won’t be so overwhelming. Still…that’s a lot of tomatoes! We also planted a row of radishes. Later in the week maybe we’ll have time to get the rest planted.

Looks like dirt, but actually it's a row of radishes in the making!

Not our garden

Also not our garden

Good work, John! Try not to get tetanus!

April's budget got super messed up, but I win in the end!

2011-05-01T13:45:00.000-04:00

It’s May 1^st. That means it’s time to look over what I spent last month. Something went screwy and I blame all that business travel I had to do. When I put in all the numbers from mint.com into my excel spreadsheet, my spreadsheet says I’m $21 in the hole. I completely blame the 8 day biz trip. It shouldn’t have made a difference, but I have to blame something! Thing is, my bank accounts don’t agree. Bank accounts say I’ve got money to spare! Oh well. I guess it’s better to have error in this direction! I’ve got mint.com set up for a May budget that has quite a bit more detail. Hopefully that will prevent errors next month.

I’ve deemed everything left over a “curve-ball” account for when little freaks of spending happen or when I decide to splurge a little!

The end of April weekly money update looks something like this.

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was $20 on a pair of awesome Cole Haan aviators.
2. Today I am thankful sunny weather!
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was get ready for the garden with my friends. Ok, so that cost a little bit of money, but it's negligible at this point!
4. I will consider this week a success if I run 3 times, get all my grading done, revise a manuscript, and run an entire half-marathon.
5. My favorite TV show growing up was Inspector Gadget. That was the first show that came to mind, so I have to go with it!

Description of the Weekly Money Check-up by MyPrettyPennies

We're starting a garden!

2011-04-30T11:19:00.000-04:00

A few friends and I decided it's time to have a garden. I wrote about the plot the other day. Yesterday we took it a step further! Now we have seeds for lettuce, asparagus, bush beans, and easter egg radishes. We also checked out the garden plot yesterday. It needs a wee bit of weeding. Good thing we all have new garden gloves! It's always good to look the part.

We spent a decent chunk of time at Bennett's Greenhouse looking at all our options. It's not going to be as expensive as I thought. Most little plants cost about $1.50 each. Obviously getting started from seeds would be cheaper, but it's not so feasible for us. None of us really have space to get all the seeds started and none of us has the time to deal with it. Little plants are the way to go!

Here's the gang.

Rebecca, fondly referred to as "Regular Rebecca" with a row of tempting tomatoes. I think we'll have about 8 tomato plants when it's all said and done!

John, the wonderful man Rebecca married. He's our garden expert. We're plot X6. It's close to the garden shed which is pretty nice actually. It's also pretty close to the plot belonging to my date from the freshman winter dance. Funny story.

Me with my friend, Emily and all our seeds and our new garden gloves. We're ready to go. Surely our enthusiasm will take us pretty far!

Getting Started with Coupons

2011-04-29T09:16:00.001-04:00

Last week, the only thing I got for free was a small bottle of Listerine at CVS. Small bottles were on sale 5 for $5. I had a coupon for $1 off from my dentist. Boom...free Listerine. Well, almost free. I paid 7 cents tax. No biggie. I love getting deals like this!

For anyone interested in getting started with coupons, this weekend is a big weekend! The Sunday paper at the beginning of the month always has the most coupons. I'd recommend 2 - 4 papers this week if you can pull it off. You can just get the coupon inserts from your non-couponing neighbors and people who go to Starbucks to read the paper often ditch the ads right away. I'll probably end up with 2 papers. Should be good enough for my current lackadaisical approach.

For the record, I am not an "extreme" couponer like you see on TLC. There are some real benefits to be had by couponing all you can. Every penny counts in my book and I'm all for getting good deals! However, what you see on TLC isn't necessarily something to aspire to. Jennifer Derrick over at Person Finance advice sums it up. This is a great article pointing out what you don't see on this show.

My new NETGEAR wireless router won't connect to my iPhone (actually, it finally connected)

2011-04-27T22:48:00.002-04:00

For the first time ever, my house has wi-fi! Kinda crazy, right? I mean really...who doesn't have wi-fi?!? I got a NETGEAR - RangeMax Dual-Band Wireless-N Router. The good news is it was super easy to set up. The bad news is my iPhone won't connect. I've been reading a few things online and I think I'll get it eventually, but it's starting to be a little more frustrating than it should be.

I feel like I've written about Best Buy a lot lately, so let me just say that Best Buy has no idea who I am. Truth be told, I generally don't like Best Buy all that much because of experiences like the one I'm about to tell you about. Last week I was at Best Buy putting a deposit on an iPad (still waiting by the way) and I decided to ask a sales person to tell me about wireless routers. The guy came over and I say something like, "I was hoping you could talk to me a little bit about wireless routers. I'd like to know what the difference is between them." Before I even finished with all of that, the guy picks up an $80 router. After I'm finished he tells me it's the one for me.

Umm....let's back track a minute...

I said I want to talk about the differences between the routers. I didn't say, please pick an expensive one and try to sell it to me. This story basically sums up my Best Buy experiences. I go in and some jerk tries to tell me why one certain product is what I need instead of just describing the products and letting me make an informed decision. For that reason, I have not shopped at Best Buy for a really really long time. The only reason I'm shopping there now is because I can get the best deal on what I am shopping for right now. For instance, the router I got was on some super sale online for $40 instead of $60 and free shipping. The set up was super easy, but I can't get my iPhone to connect. If anyone has a brilliant idea, let me know! I've tried all the usual fixes and they haven't worked yet. Sad. If it doesn't work with an iPad, the router is going back and I'm going to write a mean review!

This morning when I checked my phone, it asked for the wi-fi password. Not sure why the router needed to sleep on that decision, but it's working with my iPhone now, so all is well! No mean reviews.

Crying over the price of gas

2011-04-26T15:13:00.000-04:00

I don't understand the price of gas! How can it go from $3.92 in the morning to $4.17 in the afternoon?!? I just bumped my gas budget up by about 15% to accommodate the prices we've seen the last month or so. Is it really ok for gas prices to jump 6% in a day?!? I heard on the news that there's higher demand. What?!? Did 1 million 16 year olds just get cars or something? I find it hard to believe the rest of us are really driving more. I'm going with the 1 million 16 year olds added to the road theory.

TusaRebecca

Weekly Money Check Up

2011-04-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

I've really started to look forward to these weekly money check ups from MyPrettyPennies. Here's the Easter edition.

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on an iPad deposit at Best Buy. Adds a new dimension to the waiting game.
2. Today I am thankful that I had something clean to wear to church this morning.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was sleep. I slept for nearly 12 hours Friday night and then took a 3 hour nap on Saturday afternoon. It was just what the doctor ordered.
4. I will consider this week a success if I get all my grading done. Thank goodness for group assignments!
5. This Easter I spent the day with family.

Easter Memories

2011-04-24T14:08:00.000-04:00

For me, Easter memories involve church and pretty dresses. I don't remember so much about the Easter bunny. All I really remember is that our baskets were always hidden. There was always plastic easter grass stuck to the Peeps and you never knew if you were about to bite into a chocolate malted milk ball or a bubble gum egg. We had easter egg hunts in the front yard with real, hard boiled eggs. In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have eaten some of those eggs. Usually we didn't even know how many we were looking for, because mom never counted. One year, mom got plastic eggs and hid them all over the neighborhood for the neighbor-hoodies. What we like to call good, old fashioned insurance. Mom was nice to the kids and in turn they didn't vandalize our property. Not a bad gig. Another year when Martin and I were a bit older, we had a piñata. For some reason there was an argument and mom was pretty mad at us about something, but there are old pictures that don't show any remnants of arguing. Just scrawny kids whacking at a piñata. Now, I still get a chocolate bunny that I couldn't possible finish even if I tried and a bunch of candy. If one thing is for certain...Starburst has really changed the standard for jelly beans. Thank goodness!

I had the prettiest dresses. Usually my mom would sew me a new dress, but one year I got a gorgeous dress from Zayres. Zayres was kind of like K-Mart, but it didn't even have the business model to last as long as K-Mart has. Now there's a Rural King where Zayres used to be. Anyway, I had my heart set on this dress. It was right in the front of the store calling my little 3 or 4 year old name. The dress was probably horrible in all ways the 1980's made dresses horrible. I think there were pink on pink polka dots, tulle, and probably some satin thrown in for good measure. I couldn't have felt more beautiful in that dress even though is was probably the chinciest thing I ever wore. Ever! I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure I had white gloves and big hats other years. Other dresses had more class. I remember a navy blue calico dress with a white collar that mom made. There was a little white pinafore type thing with a bunny embroidered on it. Mom didn't have time to get the buttons on, so she sewed it to me. Not the first or the last time I had a dress sewn on me! Those were the glory years!

I don't remember much about church when I was little other than it was a festive, happy place to be on Easter. I do remember church at St. James. I thought the Easter breakfast was the coolest thing since sliced bread! What could be better than sitting around eating scrambled eggs, sausage, and pancakes with all your Sunday School friends? And any one who has ever been to St. James on Easter Sunday surely has Pastor French's booming voice etched in their heads as he yelled, "He is risen!" And of course we all replied as enthusiastically as possible, "He is risen indeed!" It was never enthusiastic enough. Pastor French always boomed a little louder, "I said, HE IS RISEN!" And mustering a little more enthusiasm, "HE IS RISEN INDEED!" That followed by the singing of "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" with trumpets blaring and little girls in pretty dresses...that sums up Easter in my book.

Cleaning tirade!

2011-04-23T11:32:00.000-04:00

image credit

Not sure what got into me. Must be the spring cleaning bug! Maybe my room will be all neat and tidy by the end of the day. And maybe there will be several bags of clothes to donate by the end of the day. I can only hope! It all started with a 15 minute task list. I was bored on a flight and made a table with a bunch of things I thought I could get done in 15 minutes. Today that 15 minutes turned into a whole morning! Gotta take advantage of the situation for sure!

I still want an iPad2

2011-04-21T18:24:00.000-04:00

I want an iPad 2. I want one real bad. I've been waiting for a really long time. A term that came up a lot during my conferences was, "early adopter." Early adopters tend to be the technology freaks who wait in line for the latest and greatest. I can relate to these people, but I'm not one of them. I want to be waiting in line. I want to be one of the first. I'm never one of the first though. It's all for the better in my opinion. For the iPod, iPhone and the iPad, I've waited one very long painful year for the next version to come out. Actually, the iPod was a fluke. Sure, I wanted one. I didn't spend my own money on it though. Landed myself in the hospital for a while and my godmother suggested someone get me one. Boom. iPod nano 2nd generation. It's my general opinion that the iPhone 3Gs is quite a bit better than the iPhone 3G. Worth the wait. The iPhone 4 doesn't tempt me. I think the iPad 2 has been worth the wait, but the problem is I'm still waiting!!!! I finally broke down and put a deposit down at Best Buy. Here's the logic...

I wanted to get something engraved on the back of it, but I couldn't decide what. No longer need to buy from the Apple Store. Everyone suggested I engrave something generic, so that I can sell my iPad someday. What? I've never sold any technology. I tend to use it till it dies. Or in the case of my iPod, till it dies and comes back to life. That baby has been through the wash! Once it dried out, it worked like a gem.

I have a Best Buy rewards card, so basically I'll get 1% cash back from my credit card and $10 in gift certificates back from Best Buy.

I'm tired of called the AT&T store and Best Buy every day to see if they have any in yet. Best Buy will call me when the iPad comes in. Could be tomorrow, could be in a week or so. Until then, I'll be waiting at the edge of my seat! Can you guess what color I ended up with? Black or white? And what color case do you suppose I'll get? The color has been chosen!

April showers

2011-04-20T08:04:00.000-04:00

I was a bit bummed by all the rain yesterday. I'm ready for spring! I'm ready to garden. Yes, that's right...I'm going to have a garden. Purdue Extension for Tippecanoe County has a great community garden program. Basically, for $20 you get a 15x20 foot garden plot that's already tilled! A few of my friends and I are in cahoots and plan to work together on this endeavor. I'm super excited and trying to remember that April showers bring May flowers. And maybe vegetables too! You'll want to watch the video. It might not be as cool as Kevin's music videos, but it'll make you smile. I promise!

Staying calm when your flight is delayed isn't always easy

2011-04-19T09:45:00.000-04:00

I’m writing this while stuck in the airport. I was trying to stay calm, so reading a magazine seemed to be a good idea. It was until I found out that in Hong Kong you can have your wedding reception at McDonalds. They have a reception room. No joke. Instead of a wedding cake, they serve a pyramid of single serve apple pies. I can’t imagine a worse wedding reception! I mean really…what is this world coming to?

Second not so calming factor…a whole plane load of kids who are on their way home from space camp. Holy canolli! Talk about a good dose of birth control! There’s one kid who I’ve observed to be a bit of a social outcaste. You might say he’s in his own little world. Nothing wrong with that. I’m often in my own little world. This guy must be about 12 years old. He’s wearing a bright blue space suit and he’s hiding between the chairs. Or under the chairs. Despite his awkward behavior, I have a feeling he just had the time of his life at space camp! It’s my general opinion that there’s nothing better in the world for a kid than camp!

Time for more Sudafed. Experiencing spring in 4 states and one commonwealth in a 10 day span has been a bit much for me. Serious sinus thing going on and I’m not happy about it. Thank goodness for Sudafed. I hope the meth heads don’t ruin a good thing. If I wasn’t able to buy Sudafed, I don’t know how I’d survive. My sinuses might actually explode!

Need to get back to couponing!

2011-04-15T13:08:00.000-04:00

I almost watched Extreme Couponing on TLC last night, but then decided against it. Seemed like a bad idea to get all motivated to be a crazy couponer when the reality is I don’t have time right now. For a while there I was totally organized and into it. I was getting free stuff at CVS every week. Sometimes more than once a week! I was surprised how much I could get for just pennies.

If you are interested in getting free stuff at the grocery store or the drug store, there are a bazillion web sites to help with that. Before you get started, let me share a few things that I learned the hard way. I just wasn’t convinced at first.

1. You need motivation. You need to separate SAVING from NOT SPENDING. I can’t stand it when people say, “I just saved so much money!” when in fact, they just didn’t spend so much money. It’s only saved if you don’t spend it! For example: some people set a reasonable grocery budget, use coupons to get discounts, and then put the money saved in a special accounts towards a savings goal. Maybe you want to put that money towards paying off debt or maybe you want to save for an iPad. Coupons are used by some people who either don’t have the money to spend, or people who have other things to spend the money on. I fall into that category. I try to keep my toiletry budget to a bare minimum so that I can spend that money on fun stuff. Who wants to spend $4 on a toothbrush when you could spend $4 on a latte?

1. You need multiple copies of the Sunday paper. In order to get the best deals, you need multiple coupons for the same item. If an item is buy one, get one free…you want 2 coupons. If it’s 3 for $5…you want 3 coupons. Get the picture? You can try to get it delivered for cheap, get it from neighbors (with their permission of course), look at Starbucks or other hangouts for discarded papers, etc.

2. You do NOT need to “clip” the coupons. At first I was overwhelmed trying to clip the coupons, organize them, and then find them when I needed them. Reality is, some people clip, some people don’t. My favorite system is to keep an accordion file and simply put each week’s fliers in one section. That way I can go to the date of the coupon release. Every couple of weeks I discard all the expired ones.

3. You need to be bold. Now and again, you’re going to run into a grumpy cashier. Other times, there will be a line behind you. Do not fret! Grumpy cashiers aren’t so bad. Just keep smiling and thank them for their help. Long lines…well…if you’re doing multiple transactions, you could let other people go ahead of you in between transactions. As you get better with the coupon routine, you will also get more efficient. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. The people behind you will be jealous when you pay a few dollars for a cart full of stuff!

Here are some websites I use to find deals, learn the tricks of the trade, and be encouraged to keep moving forward.

Couponing to Disney

This was one of the first sites I came across when I was learning about coupons. She’s got great advice for finding motivation, finding deals, and lists lots of free stuff to sign up for. I like her coupon check-lists for specific stores.

Money Saving Mom

She lists coupon match-ups by store, free stuff, and great information for menu planning.

Simply CVS

Need I say more? Every week you can find coupon matches for the best deals at CVS.

I hope you can find your own motivation for saving little bits of money with coupons. Every penny counts. Questions for the comments sections…Do you use coupons? What’s your motivation?

A summary of my trip in pictures...

2011-04-13T22:15:00.000-04:00

Welcome chocolates from the Courtyard Marriott. Pretty much the highlight of the hotel.

Blooming tea! Pretty cool if you ask me!

The gang with a chocolatier from DC. I look like a mess, but it's because I was overwhelmed with an amazing evening of chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate.

This is chocolate from my goody bag. For real. I'm actually in nutrition, but maybe I should get a degree in foody-ism!

Didn't buy these, but they were more tempting than I expected!

Did I mention that I like food? Steak, beans, rice, and fried plantains. Yum!

Heather went with lobster.

Kinda blurry, but that is a serious case of man purse!

Just ate this. It was in my chocolate goody pile. Now I have to find them and buy a big stash! So good!

I did more than eat on this trip! I won an award of excellence for my research poster, had great conversations with important researchers in my field, talked statistics with a statistician from NIH way more than I've ever talked statistics before in my life, got advice for applying to post-docs and got enough free pens to last me at least another year!

Things are good, but crazy!

2011-04-13T08:17:00.000-04:00

My apologies for a boring blog the last couple of days. This conference stuff isn't for sissies! Today is the 5th and final day of my second conference. We'll head to conference 3 this evening. I'm having a great time, but I'm exhausted. Hopefully I can sleep on the plane tonight!

Pictures coming soon!

Under 1 Million

2011-04-10T09:44:00.000-04:00

I made it! There are less than 1 million blogs that are better than mine now. Must keep plugging along.

Two things that have already happened this morning before 10am
1. I might have an opportunity to help with social media for a professional organization I'm involved with.
2. I got coupons for free orange juice and free snacks!