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December 31, 2006
hold on to whatever you find baby
rachel and pepper
The last day of the year seems to request some retrospection.
This year involved a lot of ends and beginnings and continuations. I defended my Ph.D. (It was offically awarded Dec. 28). I started my master's keeping on my career plan. An end, a start, and a continuation. I started some friendships. I continued others. We got a dog. We got married. A start and a continuation.
The dog is definitely the best decision of our life. Though it has helped that i am home a lot.
After my first quarter of the master's, i realized that i need to chill a little. I think I have. The first quarter is always settling in, getting use to everything. I have more than enjoyed my life of leisure, though i am looking forward to returning on wednesday to my friends and my classes.
This year is bound to bring surprises and angst, but not thing that can't be dealt with with a puppy on one's lap, a cat at one's feet, and a boy on the elliptical.
Posted by christina at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)
December 30, 2006
shower him with love love love
pepper and baby love, jenny's b/f's dog.
i got the coolest thing for christmas. hands down the thing i never knew i wanted - a garmin forerunnmer 201 - it is a gps based pedometer. not only does it keep my milage, pace, and time for many many runs and i can upload it to the computer, it does not need calibration because the distance is measured from the GPS satellites. it is so awesome. so awesome.
i also got a shuffle, much appreciated due to the fact my mini is dying.
we made it back from a great week in hot springs. pepper love love loved it. she loved rachel's cat and jenny's b/f's dog. it is really cute. she was not really cute during the drive back yesterday in which she whined basically the entire time.
i got to see my high school friend's baby. also super cute. and he didn't cry at all while i held him, unlike the baby that came to visit last christmas. now i am a little less afaird of babies.
pepper is ridiculous about wanting to sleep on people. she is still recovering from all the whining and really wants up in my lap to sleep. sleep on your bed, dog!
Posted by christina at 3:52 PM | Comments (1)
December 25, 2006
have yourself a merry a little christmas
Posted by christina at 8:49 AM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2006
would you lie with me and just forget the world
Posted by christina at 9:51 PM | Comments (0)
December 17, 2006
Oh, here it goes again
well, ben and i are officially dorks. I make fun of emily when she chats with her husband online. Well, we now have them beat. Yesterday, Ben and I sat on opposite ends of the couch and played each other on yahoo games. yes. we are dorks. we wanted to play cards and it is so much easier to just use the website.
if you are wondering, i kicked his gin-playing butt.
it is abnormally warm here, which i am sure it is most places. It is strange to go out for dinner on saturday in a light coat in December. We took advantage of the warmth to trek downtown for some cajun food. There use to be a great cajun food place a block from our place, but it closed about a year ago. So we have to trek to their downtown location for some gumbo. It is so good that it is totally worth it, but i hate dealing with the tourist and it is definitely in tourist land (north mich ave and the surrounding streets). It is the worst time of year to go to tourist land on the worst night of the week as a lot of people come in to do their christmas shopping. more power to them if they enjoy it. it is quite pretty downtown with the lights and the windows. we did the holiday thing a couple of years ago when we went ice skating in millennium park and then walked up mich ave. it was our first christmas together. ben got a really short tree. i came across the pictures today in operation life of leisure clean out the closets. it is funny to see him with a full beard.
i saw blood diamond on friday with thomas. it was quite good. a little violent for my tastes. i've always been suspicious of diamonds. For a long time i maintained i would never want a diamond. i still don't want a new one. my engagement ring does have a diamond, but it is a family stone, which makes it more than just a diamond. i do like the sparkle of diamond and my other "diamond" jewelry (my wedding jewelry) is made of a much more interesting material, cubic zirconia.
the most fascinating part of the movie is the suggestion that the diamond companies keep diamonds in vaults to maintain an artificial scarcity, which of course, drives up prices. i wonder if it is true.
it has been a long time since a book invaded my subconscious in which i always want to be reading it, where it is on my mind all day. i love the feeling of falling into a book like that. I was totally surprised when a nonfiction book captured me like that this week. And the band played on (see sidebar link) is 600 pages of little type. The story of the AIDS epidemic makes me so mad and makes me want to cry. It is unforgivable how many people died in the early years b/c people didn't care. it should be a must read for anyone who want to work in research policy. the politics of research funding and the effect on the pace of research is abysmal. science should be better then that.
i think the saddest part is looking back from today, when we've developed drugs to helps those with HIV live longer. These drugs took time to develop. So many lives could have been saved if the R&D had started in the beginning instead of 3-5 years after the first cases.
Posted by christina at 2:13 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2006
never never
i forgot to mention that my rock awesome sister rachel got into northwestern law, early decision. i am so excited for her. and for her moving up here and puppy-kitty-sitting. congrats to her.
pete and j's new rock awesome website went up today.
i randomly ran into ben's mom at the dentist this morning. it was quite random. i briefly thought about calculating the probability of the event (one would actually calculate the probability of not running into her and subtract it from one), but i am living the life of leisure so no calculators for me...
Posted by christina at 9:38 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2006
jingle jingle
my first run in three weeks went well. it is nice to be back running.
gap is having an amazing sale on sweaters.
i am addicted to online card games. canasta anyone?
just living the life of leisure...
Posted by christina at 9:55 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2006
light love
i got a flu shot today. i had been planning on getting on, though i've never been tempted before. At tech, a couple of friends got the flu shot one year and got sick, so i've always been afraid of them. This year I got one because of the large classes I'm stuffed into at school. There are at least 100 people stuffed into the lecture hall for two of my classes. I am worried about the sharing of the air. i was at the health center today for my foot and since I was there just got on. It did not feel good. at all. and now my arm is all achey. and my head is convinced i'm in for a "cold". we'll see...at least i've living the life of leisure.
ben is also home today. the kitty was suppose to have surgery yesterday, but finagled her way out of her lumpectomy for a couple weeks.
ben was going to stay home to help with the wound care. since he had already arranged for the time off, he took the day of. he says that he needed to recover from this weekend (we were out late saturday), but mostly, he wanted to stay up late to watch the bears game.
so he is home and watching crime shows on a&e.
Posted by christina at 4:05 PM | Comments (1)
December 11, 2006
wonders of his love
well, the life of leisure has been quite busy, mostly because i've been doing science stuff getting these publications ready in their specific point in the process (one in proofs, the other in drafts).
pete and j came to town this weekend and played a coffee house/bar near us. We all went out with their parents to a yummy tapas place. Usually I am not a fan of tapas, but am i huge fan of sangria, so i was surprised to really enjoy both the food and the sangria. the show was great. i always enjoy seeing them play.
I finished most of my christmas cards. yay.
i have finally as least thought about picking out wedding picture by looking at the pic book of 850 pictures off and on. i can't find the flags. so i just looked. the cocktail party pictures are the most random groups of people. They are just amusing. dancing pictures are even more. the pictures are good, especially of the ceremony, b/c when you are the bride, you are the last to show up and first to leave, so you don't get to see much. The sunset harbor gazebo really made awesome pictures. so i am quite happy we did that. i still love my dress. i am totally unsure of what to do with it now. it is still hanging all dirty from the day. i really need to get it off to get "preserved". there is such a wide range of options (and prices). I refuse to spend more then what we paid for the dress, which limits the choices somewhat. emily was somewhat horrified when i said i was getting it preserved through the internet. first, i do everything through the internet from finding snow removal people to the rehearsal dinner place. plus i think if you take it local, they are just going to send it off somewhere. anyways, i love the dress so much i'm thinking about dying it so i can wear it again...if it only didn't have the train.
Posted by christina at 1:53 PM | Comments (0)
December 7, 2006
ding dong ding dong
I'm done. I've actually been done since lunch yesterday. it is a very weird feeling to have so much time off. i haven't had this kind of time off since i graduated from undergrad. It is weird feeling to have nothing hanging over one's head. too bad i still do as the big thing for tomorrow is to get my last research paper submitted to a journal.
i've spent a perfect day off. I went to an interesting lunch downtown held by my department on energy policy. i got very lost trying to get to the building because no one bothered to mention (maps.google.com, BEN) that illinois st goes UNDER michigan ave, so if you are walking east on illinois to get to michigan ave you NEVER WILL. and you'll be left clueless in the 17 degree weather wondering how the hell you missed michigan.
and then you get in a cab and 2 minutes and $4 later you are there.
I spent the afternoon hanging out with emily as she baked surprise cookies. her and her husband have a beautiful condo with amazing views. (amazing) it was like college where you stay up late into the night talking about life, love, politics. except it was a random thursday afternoon. she is at the same place in her life dealing with a lot of the same issues (career v. babies and timing), combined with harris and our same general attitude about life makes us a perfect match.
yesterday i finally accepted that i live in this state and got an illinois driver's license and plates for my car. thought i'm still in parking in the garage as i don't have a mount on the front of my car for the front plate, so until i get to the dealer to have them put that on, i'm parking in the front to avoid the ticket happy ticket person.
Posted by christina at 7:41 PM | Comments (0)
December 5, 2006
brain hurts to much to hear music
big dog. small dog.
two down. one to go.
my brain and hand hurts. I've had two 3 hour essay (basically) test. I have stuff a lot of information into my brain. Yesterday's test went well. Today's went pretty well. I was chugging along at a good pace and was totally thinking i was going to get down in half the time (1.30 hr) but i hit a wall at the last question and spent the remaining 1.5 hrs on it. i think i figured it out, but who knows. and i certainly don't care now.
tomorrow i have my stats final. It is good because it is open book (no more stuffing things in the brain) and it is only 2 hrs. but i have a lot of problems to work to get into the stat thinking mode - where i can look at a problem and know how to pick out the information.
i want the snow to melt. though i'm not as affected as usually since i've restricted to the elliptical and with the 9 am final i've been doing a short core work out instead. except this morning, when i studied profit maximization. turns out, should have worked out.
not we are just hanging out until our stats final. it is hard to believe that this time tomorrow i'll be done and started the first break, real break i've had since, well, my semester off at GT. i'm looking forward to mopping.
Posted by christina at 1:10 PM | Comments (0)
December 4, 2006
i don't want to jump in / unless this music's thumping
Posted by christina at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)
December 3, 2006
snow snow snow
we ended up not getting as much snow as they threatened. but i still have stayed wrapped up inside with cost curves, population estimators, and voting theories. tom ventured up here for friday night chinese and pepper play. last night ben and i ventured out for breakfast for dinner. it was awesome.
what is not awesome was the ticket i got from the city of chicago for expired tags. my tags expired Thursday. I waited to renew them because i am finally registering my car in illinois and the first chance i really have (since i got my title) is after finals this week. I didn't worry about it as every year since i've moved to chicago i have expired tags. i usually finally get it taken care of in arkansas about a week in to dec. I've never had a problem. but this year i think that the parking people get commissions so they are crazy about the tickets because i got a ticket at 12:36 am Dec 2. (the night of dec. 1). not only that, it snowed 4 inches b/t Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. Oh well. we put it in the garage, so i'll be fine until after finals b/c i doubt i'll get a ticket driving down the street.
Posted by christina at 12:34 PM | Comments (2)