Vacay is over!

Well, we've returned from our Christmas vacay. Back to the house and the cats who are now attached to us like velcro, because they totally didn't think we were ever coming back. I had flown out alone last Tuesday, and Brian joined me after a midnight-noon drive up from NC. I couldn't believe that, I didn't know he was planning to do it in the middle of the night. I called him at 10 am the day I expected him to leave and asked where he was, to which he replied "Connecticut". To which I replied "bullshit". However, it was true. Doing it that way really saved time, because generally we sit in solid traffic from Virginia through Baltimore.

We went to the Outback for Brian's birthday with my parents and brother Jim, Matt and Mel, and college friend Marc who I only get to see at Christmasses when he's back visiting his family in Mass. Yum, delicious cinnamon pecans in the chopped salad. Then back to the house for some additional fun. We played 'Name that tune' or something like that, one of those board/DVD games. I'm sorry, it sucked. It did. And I'm not just saying that because I lost, Marc. Those DVD games have so much promise but then so few questions actually use the cool DVD part. The rest of the time you're just sitting there trying to get to the DVD questions. Booooooring. Sort of like 'Scene It', another boooooooring game.

The rest of the trip was filled with shopping, eating, and playing of video games. We played this bizarre game 'We love Katamari' which has a really silly premise (you go around with this sticky ball and roll things up) but was totally addicting. With Matt/Mel we played 'Karaoke Revolution Party', brought to you by the same wonderful people who bring us my favorite game, 'Dance Dance Revolution!'. For the record, when I launch my rock star career, I'm going to be starting by singing only Blondie songs. Because I'm AWESOME.

My parents took us to dinner at Smith and Wollensky, a fancy steakhouse, which is newish in Boston. How lucky a vegetarian I am to have gotten to go to TWO steak places for dinner! The food was good - I picked from the sides we ordered - but the service was TERRIBLE. Absolutely terrible. They guy screwed up our orders several times, and was real snooty about it when we tried to get them fixed. But. I did get some truffled mac and cheese which was great. I'm eating it for lunch today, in fact! You know how I love me some truffle. Oh, you don't? Well, I do. Love.

Drove back on Tuesday, all in one day. We woke up at 3:30 am and left the house by 4 am. Hurrah.

The whole thing went as well as could be expected, I guess. Upsetting, but we all survived. The one thing I can say about this whole horrible experience is that it has brought the family even closer together than we were before. So, thats a silver lining, I guess.

Also, we got a Dyson from my parents! So, come on over and clean!

A Christmas Miracle!

Two Christmas miracles have occurred:
1. My next paper FINALLY got submitted!
2. I got a $59 ticket (last minute!) to NH, so I'll be there tomorrow!

With 4 days of driving, it would have only left me three days really to be in NH with my family. This being the first Christmas since Ed died (and well, come on. Only what - 6 weeks since?) I really wanted to be there a bit longer. So Brian is going to drive up later with the dog and meet me, and we'll drive back together. Then he can listen to 'The Lord of the Rings' on CD for the 10 millionth time, and I won't even complain.

Oh also - ew.

Ok, I just got the Cell table of contents in my inbox and was totally grossed out by the cover photo:



Yuck. I couldn't imagine what this was suppossed to illlustrate that was published in Cell. Well. Here's the caption:

"The cover image exemplifies the saying “one bad apple ruins the bunch.” In this issue, Hill et al. (pp. 1001–1011) report that an epithelial cancer (the bad apple), through non-cell-autonomous mechanisms, induces a p53 tumor suppression response in associated fibroblasts (surrounding good apples). Due to ensuing selective pressures, highly proliferative mesenchyme harboring p53 deletions emerges, contributing to cancer progression, an observation that impacts both mechanistic understanding and clinical management of this disease. Cover photograph is courtesy of Cheryl Meissel."

So this was just gratitutious use of bugs on their part, as far as I'm concerned. Ick.

See? I do love you!

I changed it! No more pink!! Wahoo!
Also, I am at least skilled enough to change the fonts used in the basic template. I hate serifs. I am picky like that. So, go me!

Whats going on? Not much. Its raining here and cold, thus: Freezing Rain!! Dun dun dunnnnnnn...
As a result, we decided to sleep in this morning (until 8! wahoo!), I made the crust for my world-famous white chocolate mousse cake (for our holiday party this weekend), and I rolled in here at 10:30. The joys of being a postdoc!

I then proceeded to do my Westerns, which I have to say totally sucked. Four blots! All sucky!! I used a new gel system and I don't think the ideal conditions are the same as those for the one I normally use. Oh well. File that under 'Lisa does the experiment'.

Not too much else is going down. Trying to plan our trip back to NH for Christmas - which, if you're lucky, may be stopping in a CITY NEAR YOU!! Oh yes. Especially if you live in Philly - thats a definate stop. We'll be stopping in the city to visit college/grad school friend Anna. We're also auditioning Baltimore as a stop, but haven't bothered to find out whether our friend will be in town or not then. It is difficult to shack up at someone's home when they are not there.

We will also be making another trip with Milo (the dog), which will be exciting. Actually, Milo is fine in the car. Totally. He just hangs out. The only problem is that sometimes he slides around on the leather seats. Hee.

I've ordered myself a new Game Boy game too, so I'm all set with the sitting on my ass while Brian drives (he doesn't like to not be the driver, and I don't like driving - another good reason we married each other!).

So thats about it.

CBS does the experiment: Amazing Race Family Edition!

Todays screwup is not mine, but a screwup on the part of CBS.
Yesterday was the Amazing Race finale. Usually, this is my almost favorite show (I'm sorry, but nothing can top Lost) and the finale is met with much excitement at my house. However, for this season I couldn't have cared less. If you've not watched TAR before, teams of two people (who have a pre-existing relationship of some variety) travel all over the world based on clues that they receive at the beginning of each leg. They go really everywhere, they do a lot of neat things, and its generally pretty clever (i.e. tasks are not something like how much of this nasty crap can you eat, like on Survivor). So we love it. I also love the drama that occurs between teammates and between teams. Its great.
However, this season they elected to do a family version where teams of FOUR (all related in some way) do the race, except this time it was N. America only. It was just stupid. First of all, there were so many people to get familiar with (I don't remember how many teams of 4 started, 12 or 13 though) that you couldn't really have any real connection to any of them. So basically I just didn't really care that much who won. Secondly, the tasks were completely lame. I mean, lame like "Go watch Old Faithful erupt". So you just stand there. Um, ok.
In the regular version, there's a lot of room for strategy and constantly trying to improve your position, primarily in the way that you make your travel arrangements. For example, in the finale of the first season, a bad call travel-wise (I think it was take a bus instead of a taxi) caused one team to be so far behind the two leading teams that they actually never made it to the end (They were an easy team to hate though, so it was an exciting moment when they were unceremoniously told that the game had already ended and they were like a day behind). In the family edition, tickets were practically handed to you. In fact they were handed to you. Lame.

The only thing to keep it interesting last night was the fact that one team was so horrible and hated by Brian and I (and probably everyone else watching) that we just desperately wanted them to lose. As it turned out, they did. So that was good.

Fortunately, it seems as if they're switching back to the original format for the next season (which I think starts in February?) so prepare for some exciting world travel!!

Just when you thought it was safe to drive...

Well! Apparently, yesterday was not a good car day for many people. At first I thought the curse was limited to 'people who know Karl' as one of the other bloggers he links to also had an accident yesterday (albeit, not his fault).

(Oh. Actually, his appears to have been on Sunday. We're going to selectively ignore that fact because it's more exciting if this all happened on the same day!)

This morning I found that the problem was far more widespread than I had thought. Luckily Eve's potential accident was narrowly avoided. But still!

Coincidence?? You be the judge.

whoopsie!

A friend of mine who lost her mother a while ago told me that after her mom died she got in... four car accidents in three months? or three car accidents in four months? I can't remember which actually. One of those.

I thought - yeah, ok.

Well, I'll be damned if I didn't get into a little fender-bender myself this morning. On my way to work. I was on the interstate (the one that keeps changing the traffic pattern) getting ready to exit. There was traffic, and there was lots of lane changing. And for one of these reasons, the guy in front of me stopped quickly and I rear-ended him.

I have noticed that I have trouble concentrating at work. I used to be pretty good at multi-tasking, but not right now. I end up taking it one experiment at a time. Not getting as much done as I'd like, but oh well. At least I can manage to get through one experiment without totally screwing it up. I didn't notice the lack of concentration in the car (as I'm usually noticing the crying - you know, thats when I'm un-busy enough to actually get the time to think about things).

So, everyone was ok. He said his back bumper was messed up or something. I didn't see it, but whatever. Sadly, I have injured my wonderful wonderful Civic hybrid. The hood is bent up a bit and doesn't close correctly, and there's a big gouge in the paint near the headlights. The nice policeman came and didn't give me a ticket. Now I'll wait and see what happens.

I haven't had a car accident since I was 16 or 17, which I mentioned in the 8-trackmobile posting. And other than the freaking airport speeding ticket from this summer, my record has been pretty clean. So hopefully this won't have too much of an impact on our insurance.

Bleh.

Secret Agent

Technology has afforded me so many ways of spying on things, its so fun. For example, I have a sitemeter on this site. Not like I'm thinking 'ooh!! so many hits!'. Actually, Melissa turned me onto it first because she always knew what bizarre things people had searched for in Google to come up with her blog. So I can see that someone found my blog by searching for 'fried cheese' or 'girls wearing flip-flops'. Or that they came to my blog by way of one of my friends blogs. Or whatever. I can also see geographically where people are (roughly). Its fun trying to figure out who reads the blog.

The music sharing feature of iTunes provides me with similar levels of enjoyment. I like to look through peoples music libraries and see what they like - not that I know who they are, as you get to name your library whatever you want. Mine is of course named 'meandertail'. Usually I scoff at their music, because I am a music snob and very judgemental of people's taste in music (and yet, you all like me. I'm not really that bad, am I!). My favorite computer guy has told me before that he thinks I have good taste in music (after browsing my library, which btw is a sure way to make me want to be your friend) but I've never been able to see what his is, because he didn't share his library. This week he set his up to share, so I've been looking through it. I emailed him to say that I could forgive the show tunes (after all, I have both Jesus Christ Superstar and Guys and Dolls in my library), but did he really want everyone to know that he had bought a Rick Astley CD? Hee. I'm funny. Frankly, even more alarming is the fact that he also has something like 'Bea Arthur Sings Broadway Hits' or something like that. I'm totally not kidding. Alphabetically the next artist is the Beastie Boys. These are not two things you expect to see in the same place.
In addition to spying on what other people like, I can also spy on what people are listening to of mine with a fun widget. Someone listens to my stuff regularly but only to the Dave Matthews and the Sublime. Thats it. I have SO much better music than that. Come on. Live a little, people!

We do a little less hi-tech spying at work. There's this guy - lets call him Sweaterboy (because thats what we call him) - that we watch eagerly every day at lunch. He got that name because he wears the same blue sweater about 4/5 days of the week. This is only a small fraction of his appeal, however. Even more exciting is the fact that every day he comes down to the cafeteria, gets two containers of soup and two bottles of water, and either sits alone and eats them or packs them all into a plastic grocery bag that he brings with him. Some days he gets as many as FOUR containers of soup. Now, thats a lot of soup. The guy certainly does not have a hydration problem. We're starting to notice new things about him too. Like, sometimes he primps a little bit before he walks into the cafeteria. Also, yesterday he totally got three soups and a SMALL SALAD. I think he must have decided that he needed a little roughage in his diet. It was so unlike him, with the odd number of soups and the added excitement of salad!
The fact that we're so interested in Sweaterboy led someone at the table to ask whether we ever wondered whether we were someone elses Sweaterboy. Was there someone who was totally intrigued with us? I don't know. But its an interesting thing to think about.

Bugger.

So, when I was back in Mass. for Melissa's birthday, a lot of cooking was happening for her party. I made spinach and pesto lasagne. Matt and Mel had some of the ingredients already, we had to buy others. One of the ingredients that we did not buy were lasagne noodles; Mel had a box of Barilla oven-ready noodles that she had meant to use once but had never gotten around to. She did caution me that they were old. I was like, its pasta. What could happen?

After our marathon grocery shopping trip I set out to make the lasagne. I sloshed some sauce into the bottom of the pan and started laying noodles down. The fourth noodle dropped a rather alarming sort of powdery mess into the pan. Wha? Closer examination revealed that this mess was in fact A PILE OF DEAD, DESSICATED BUG. Oh my god. Of course I started shrieking (as I do), and Mel and I extricated the remaining noodles (which actually had some holes in them, I should have noticed) with a pair of tongs. And then washed the lasagne pan better than it has probably ever been washed in its life.

You can imagine the sense of deja vu and abject horror I felt when I read this article and the blog entry that it links to.

Lisa does the experiment: Ethanol on an unhealed wound.

When I was a grad student, I used to think it was strange that one of the postdocs in our lab didn't wear gloves when she did tissue culture. I guess it is strange, but now I do it too. I guess I'm too lazy to wear gloves. My new PI doesn't wear gloves for anything, even things I wouldn't dream of doing without gloves. And he is the one who taught me. Also, gloves are MURDER on my nails, which have enough problems as it is. So I just ethanol my hands real good while I'm doing TC.
Remember how I said that I had ripped a big strip of skin off of my pinky the other day? Well, I didn't. Until I ethanoled my hands. HOLY CRAP.

On the plus side, the wound is clean now. I don't know that my pain receptors will ever be the same, but we're clean.

Think pink!

Ok, so I've just about had it with the pink. I know! You're shocked. Me too. Its just so freaking PINK. Not easy on the eyes. I bet you're also thinking "...and difficult to pass off as a website that I should be viewing at work."
So thinking of you, dear readers, I did just try to switch to a new template. And apparently I'm completely incapable of doing so without completely screwing everything up. Ugh. So you're just going to have to deal for now.

Unrelated to the pinkness, but I talked to High School Boyfriend Bill yesterday. I do not talk to HSBB all that often, a couple of times a year if we're doing really well, which we never are. So scratch that. Maybe once a year. He called to offer his condolences and see how I was doing (yesterday = ok) which was nice.
Now recall that I was in band/orchestra/jazz band for most of my life. The vast majority of boyfriends I've ever had were also musicians, especially in high school.

(aside: Hm. Now I'm really thinking about this. Jerky college boyfriend Greg was not. Jerky boyfriend Sean was not. There's a pattern here!)

(second aside: Before I completely alienate former boyfriends who do read this, I seem to recall that you took guitar lessons. So I'm counting that, whether or not you still do. You're good.)

(disclaimer: I do know many non-musician men who are not jerks, I just didn't date them so I have nothing with which to compare)

(finally: I married Brian, and he doesn't play anything. There are exceptions to every rule)

HSBB is no exception. Unlike myself, HSBB has continued to play, lives in NYC now and has a fabulous life of wearing metallic-effect shirts and playing in Broadway shows. Such as now, he's playing in Sweet Charity. He offerred a tidbit of gossip that I CANNOT BELIEVE I did not pick up on before (especially because it doesn't seem to be too secret)- after Christina Applegate's run ends, it is possible that BRITNEY SPEARS will take over - although suppossedly she is no longer in talks about this (bummer!). OMG.

Of course, I love the celebrity gossip, so it stunned me that I hadn't heard this. But alas, I searched Gawker and I found an item about it. How can I be the last to know? Its like when my mom had to tell me about Nick and Jessica (which she heard from my Dad, which is even worse). I even missed the fact that the Britster had kicked her white trash husband out of the house, or whatever. I figured that out by reading a recent 'Go Fug Yourself' entry. Clearly I'm losing my touch.

Also, I'm going to have to get HSBB to read the blog, because he'll be pleased that I made a reference to his metallic shirt, which I saw once like 4 years ago. I'm telling you, it really made an impact!

Nothing like a pair of shoes to make you feel better.

When I was back in NH this summer after I finished my PhD, I went shopping with my mom and Melissa. As we do (New Hampshire is tax-free, you know!). At Marshalls, or TJ Maxx, one of those two, I saw I pair of shoes that I loved. They were pink. They were high. I thought they'd look great with jeans. Unfortunately, they were about half-a-size too big, and gapped a little bit at the back of my heel. I looked everywhere for a pair in the half-size down, but they were nowhere to be had.
At the end of October, I was back up in that area for Mel's 30th. At the party, her sister-in-law was describing how she buys everything on eBay, including this cute pair of mules she was wearing (I just cannot do mules. I always feel like they're going to fall off my feet). So I tried to search eBay for my wonderful dream shoes, but I couldn't find them. Probably because I didn't know what brand they even were. Bummer.

Cut to this past weekend, when I made the most depressing mall trip ever. Of course, I was already having a bad weekend so the last thing I wanted to do was go to the mall in the midst of holiday shopping. Come to think of it, that feeling is not all that unique to this year. I hate crowds. Well, anyhow, everyone is all chipper and doing their shopping, and I was going directly to the Hallmark to buy those thank you notes I was talking about. I don't usually go into the department stores, but I had parked outside of Hudson Belk because I knew that the Hallmark store was right outside. For some reason, I was pulled in the direction of the shoes. The clearance shoes. And there I found these:



I don't think they're the same shoes I saw before, but they're similar enough. These are more of a light mauve-y color than what I remember (not as almost silver-y as they look in this picture). But the other features were the same - the square toe, the sort of drawstring-y gathered effect, the heel. And of course, the only pair were my size, exactly!! Hurrah! I know you're jealous.

It hasn't rained all summer or fall, but its been raining buckets this last week, so I wasn't able to wear them until today (even though they were on clearance, they still cost more than I would normally spend on shoes, and I haven't had a chance to spray them with that anti-water spray). So exciting. And (and I know no one will believe this) they're relatively comfortable.

On a totally unrelated side note, as I was sitting here typing this I caught my finger between my chair and my desk and ripped off a little strip of skin. A relatively big strip of skin actually. I put a band-aid on it about 5 minutes ago and it has already soaked through rather extensively. Ack. Ack ack ack.

Also, by special request: Lessons learned.

There has been a request also for me to post this, an email I sent out to friends after we returned from the funeral. I just learned a whole lot of things about responding to the grief of others: things that I was glad that people had done and things that I really wished that people had done that they didn't. We don't deal with this often, as we're so young. I know what it is like to not know what to do for someone too. People are still calling too. People I don't talk to on a regular basis under normal circumstances have continued to invite us over or out somewhere, call, or send nice emails, just to see how I'm doing. It means an awful lot to me.

Anyhow, here's the email:

Hi all,
I wanted to say thanks so very much to those of you who were so thoughtful during this hard time. Several people sent beautiful flower arrangements to the funeral home which I really appreciated. Since I hadn't really lived in NH for any extended period of time, I didn't have many friends in the area, so only a few local friends were able to make it. It made me feel far less alone when I walked around and looked at all the cards from the flowers. I know others were trying to get out to NH to be with us, and I appreciate that as well. I know its hard to make travel arrangements at the absolute last minute!

Thanks also for the many supportive emails and phone calls and cards I recieved. Even if I did not get back to you (I'm going to try to over the next few days!), I got all of your messages and it really meant a lot to me that you were thinking of me and my family.

I just wanted to give an update and some thanks to everyone after everything that happened last week. We returned from NH on Saturday night. It was nice to be back with my family for the week. The wake was on Monday night and it was as nice as a wake can be. Many of my brothers' friends and my parents friends attended, as well as a few of mine. After the wake was over, my brother Jim and I attempted to leave a beer in the casket with Ed (we had actually left several things, but this one we tried to sneak in at the end). He was trying to hide it a little bit and so tried to put it next to Ed's leg. The loud 'clunk' that followed scared everyone to death - apparently the legs part of the casket isn't padded like the part you see. The beer had just clunked down to the bottom. It was a classic Ed and Jim moment. Luckily the funeral home people were there to save the day.
The funeral was also nice. Jim and I both did a reading, as did my Uncle Bart (who is Jim and Ed's godfather). Jim and my dad both said a little bit about Ed as well. He was buried in the nice old cemetery of Windham. There are two cemeteries (that I know of anyway), one of which is newer. This one is really small, on a hill surrounded by old stone walls. There are a lot of very old graves in here, from the 1700 and 1800s.

We're all so young that we've probably not had to go through anything like this before with our friends. I know that it is difficult to know what to do or what to say. I thought I would pass on a few things I've learned from this whole experience.

The most important thing is: don't ignore it. I know that its difficult to know what to say to someone who has just lost someone close to them. As my father said in the funeral, 'What you say is immaterial, its the fact that you were there that is important'. Or something like that. Its worse when you don't say anything. Don't be afraid to call or send an email. Send a card. If you're able to, come over. Don't wait to be asked. Before I left for NH, two friends here stopped by, even though I totally tried to talk them out of it because I didn't want to be a bother. I'm glad they ignored me. Bring over some food - just don't everybody bring lasagna! I swear, I may not be able to eat vegetable lasagna for a while. Send flowers to the funeral home, even if you think you're not supposed to - 'in lieu of flowers' seems like we don't want any flowers at all. I don't know why they put it that way, but thats not what it means.

Anyhow. Thanks again for thinking of me and my family.
Someone has made a website in memory of my brother:
http://edhelbling.com
if you're interested in that.

Thanks,
Lisa

Avoiding all work

Today is Saturday, and I'm at work. Before you think to yourself how dedicated I am, let me tell you what I've been doing: surfing the web and listening to music. Well, its something to do. At first I was "waiting while my tissue culture media warmed up", but I'm pretty sure that its warm now so I'm going to have to come up with something else. I could just go home and play Pokemon, but you know what? After three solid days of it, I think I kinda OD'd. I know, thats hard to believe. Also, hello! Carpal tunnel! Maybe I should go to the grocery store. Haven't gone grocery shopping since we got back from NH, so the level of food in the house is LOW. I would say almost nonexistent. I've been eating dry Weetabix for breakfast and I'm officially out of frozen meals for lunch. Dinner is also sorely lacking at the Chadwick home, much to Brian's unabashed joy, because I'm far less resistant to the idea of getting takeout or pizza.

I could also go home and decorate the house or something. I know its Christmas and maybe I should feel a little Christmassy, but I really don't. I did put up a wreath on the door, so please give me some points for that. We did also take all of the Christmas crap boxes out of the attic, but they're still all sitting on the bed in the guest room. And we put our fake Christmas tree out of its misery last year, so we're tree-less (and before you get all up in arms that I have a fake tree, let me remind you that we're NEVER actually at our home at Xmas, and I don't like the thought of leaving a real one there to drop all its needles while I'm gone, or catch on fire in a freak accident). I'm thinking that the annual Chadwick cookie exchange is taking a break this year. Also, do not be shocked when none of you get Christmas cards from me this year, as I'm pretty sure that ain't happening. However, many of you will get something from me: an acknowledgement card. I didn't even know that these existed. They're like thank you notes for funerals. I've always been a terrible thank you note writer, terrible terrible. Generally at Christmas I would speak to the gift givers and say thanks on the phone. I know, Emily Post would not approve. With a Herculean effort, I did manage to do all of the wedding thank you notes. And I have made more of an effort the last few years, now that I'm a grown up.

Work is going okay. I had a bad day on Friday which was rife with bouts of bursting into tears at work, which is great. Way to keep up the image of tough female scientist, Lisa! Of course everyone is very nice, so I think I can keep my credibility a bit longer. I also had a good day on friday in that a) I had some possibly interesting data and b) it seems that I FINALLY FINALLY got RNAi to work in my stupid made of steel and stone cell line. So OMG. I've been working on that since August. Maybe I can keep my PhD after all, not that I've received my diploma yet. Apparently my department elected to not pay my last semester of tuition. I did contact them about this and they assured me that they would take care of it, however I know now that this is really not true because my account was turned over to collections. Hurrah. Yay for my credit.

Last night, we went over to the home of Denise/Jim/Mia/Mac/Mascot/Milo/Chessie/and an array of small dead animals that Chessie brings into the house with Chris/Leo/Adam/Grace. I think I need to have kids just to keep up. Anyhow! Back to the subject. Son Adam was wearing the absolute funniest t-shirt EVER that said 'Sarcasm is one of the services I offer'. Hee! Apparently preteen daughter Mia also owns a t-shirt that says 'Its cute how you think I'm listening to you' which of course her mother gave her. Hahaha. Funnily enough, Mia won't wear this shirt. She does however wear a shirt that says 'Science Rocks!' on it. Additionally, I am her idol. I go by the name of 'Lisa the Scientist'. I hoped I could parlay my fame into some wearing of the other t-shirt by Mia, but alas, no go. I remember in high school I wore t-shirts almost exclusively. Herryn called me 'T-shirt girl', I believe. And I wondered why I was not more popular with the boys.

I wish I could go back now and redo those parts of when I was younger and thinner. I would wear only flattering clothes. I would never have tried those blonde blonde highlights that ruined my hair for YEARS afterwards. I would have started shaping my eyebrows better much sooner. Seriously, I look back at pictures from college and the only thing I can think is 'Oh god! Those eyebrows!'. Not that I didn't pluck them or anything (I mean, I didn't have a monobrow, are you kidding?), but they were too much. My real hair color (not that any of you know what that is!) is much too dark and my Irish skin much too pale for those eyebrows. Oh well. Live and learn.

hurrah!

So, Herryn and Matt got engaged! Hurrah!



Best of all is that I get to be a bridesmaid (and so does Kendra! Hi Kendra!). Hurrah again! Being a bridesmaid is like my favorite job EVER. I know. I'm weird like that. Even better is that Herryn doesn't live that far away, so I can actually participate in some of the planning events, which I wasn't able to do in the other weddings I've been in. Like my FAVORITE activity, which is looking for dresses.

The most exciting part of this perhaps is that the wedding is going to be in North Dakota! Hee. Awesome! Well, the wedding is going to be in Minnesota, the reception will be in ND. A double whammy!!
However the wedding will not take place in winter, so we will not need to bring our block heaters in order to start our cars. Darn. I guess you can't have it all.