vacay

The vacation has begun. First, some blog about the defense and fabulous Clevo trip.
As mentioned earlier, the defense was fine. Julie/Brian organized a party for me at which the following AWESOME cake made an appearance:

Love the mice. love love love. Also, Katie sent me these pretty gerbera daisies.

On Friday night we went to Marotta's with Amy and Lisa P. and then to the Barking Spider, where others joined us, including college friends Amish and Larry:

The requisite drunken phonecalls to other college friends were made. Today I had a message from Amee that began, "Sorry I missed all your very late night phone calls..."
I know Katie reads this, so I also have to put this picture up:

We left this graffiti in the bathroom when we were out for the lab move. Hee.
On Saturday Brian drove home very early. I woke up late, and walked around campus. I saw the new CWRU dorms:

which I am very jealous of.
I went to the Botanical Gardens:

Which were beautiful. They had a Costa Rica exhibit where there were HUNDREDS of butterflies flying around. I like this picture:


Then Lisa P took me to the airport where I had an adventure including missing my connecting flight. I didn't get into Manch-vegas until 12 am.
Early the next morning I found out we were going up to the lake. I went kayaking, jet-skiing, boating, drinking. The neighbor's dog MacGyver went on an inflatable raft in the water:


Lots of relaxation packed into two days already.