Must see movies

I love movies. Love love love. And I enjoy watching the ones I really like again and again.

Whenever I meet someone who has never seen my favorites, I want to have an immediate movie night. So, I'm just going to say these are my favorites and absolute must-sees.

1. Breakfast at Tiffany's (Audrey Hepburn is so classic, and I love Moon River)
2. Funny Face (Audrey Hepburn is so fabulous)
3. When Harry Met Sally (Meg Ryan's fantastic way to order food is hilarious every time. Low maintenance vs. High maintenance??)
4. Buffy The Vampire Slayer (so so corny, and yet..)
5. Sleepless in Seattle (love love..)
6. The Princess Bride (my name is inigo montoya...)
7. Notting Hill (love love...)
8. Cats and Dogs (maybe I think this is great because it stars a beagle... but he's so cute!)
9. Tommy Boy (it makes me miss Chris Farley every time, but so so funny)
10. School of Rock (it's kind of dorky, but it's great, and so many people need rock schooled and can sort of get it from this movie)
11. Forrest Gump (it's a great movie, and a history lesson for those crazies who aren't into the 60s and 70s and should at least know a little bit about the time and protests of the war.. plus the music is FANTASTIC)
12. Working Girl (the outfits are so incredible everyone should watch it, and a bonus: the story is good too)
13. The Big Lebowski (you will laugh your head off. just be forewarned, the f-bomb is way overused in this movie. and this movie will make you want to drink white russians)
14. The Lord of the Rings.
15. Runaway Bride (just to see someone in the movies obsessed with Jerry and the Dead, so fabulous)

Alright, I think I should stop at 15. Go see them!! They are fabulous!!

done!

After a very very very very long day, I am done with graduate school. Lots of running around, printing my thesis, getting signatures, plus having my boss take the lab out for lunch (yummy indian food!), I am exhausted.

I spent the night at a friend's house last night so I did not have to drive back and forth and waste all that time. I had a ridiculous dream last night:
My friend's fiance came in to ask if I wanted to sleep another 30 min. I didn't respond, I didn't feel like it I suppose, so he took that as a yes and left. What felt like a half an hour later, I woke up to look at the time. Literally. It was 1:30 in the morning.

I think I'm losing it. Or I was. I'm done, I've found it, and I'm not going to lose it anymore.

through the eyes of my cousin..

With the fancy facebook messaging that is now available, I talk to my much younger cousin much more often than I ever used to. He is a freshman in undergrad and I think enjoys making me feel old. During my stressful period of finishing experiments and writing he posed the question of me: "How many credit hours do you have?" Well, my initial guess was 400. I don't really know, because I don't remember how many credit hours I had when I graduated from undergrad, and I only have 20 credit hours of classes in grad school but a ton of research hours. Well, his most recent question of me: "How long was your thesis?" At the time, it was at 150 pages, I have a few things to add, it will be longer when I deposit on Friday, but I think when I told him 150 pages he might have fallen out of his chair. I realize I have been a bit crazy to have gone to school for so long, and we'll have to see if it actually pays off and I end up doing a job I love, but cousin's questions really make me laugh.

Ok, yesterday my enter key wasn't working very well. Today, my space bar isn't working very well. What theheck isgoingon?? See! I didn't fixit! So strange...

PhD, three days in.

Friday was wonderful, Saturday was great. Sunday, I had the stomach flu. I couldn't eat anything all day. By the end of the day I was so weak and dehydrated I could barely stand up. I was able to eat a few pieces of toast and drank some 7up. When I woke up I was no longer the very weak person that fell asleep the night before, but my stomach is still killing me. And Spunky had another seizure this morning. I need to work on my thesis corrections and add a couple appendices and I am feeling like total CRAP. It's funny how you stress yourself out enough that as soon as the stress is over your body turns into a giant ball of germs and illness. I need to go back to school this week in order to meet with my boss and deposit my thesis, plus clean out my desk and bench, pass on all my stuff, etc etc. Hopefully I'll feel better soon.

it's official!

My defense is over and I am officially a PhD! My presentation was a bit short, only 25 min, even though i had 45 slides (apparently 1 minute per slide went way out the window), and the defense part was done in 30 min. And we have a lab tradition that we shoot a champagne cork down the hallway, and mine went farther than anybody!!! So awesome! Then lots of partying and I'm not too hungover today. It was a great great day.

PhD Day!

PhD Day is finally here. And while I should be practicing my talk at this moment, instead I am writing this little note.

My stomach is all tied up in knots and I've been awake for three hours already today. More coffee anyone??

I cannot believe today is finally here, it was not too long ago it felt like this day would never come, and now it is here!

so, to help with the calming of my nerves, i visited a shoe i am in absolute love with (if only it wasn't so tall and i wouldn't break my ankle attempting to walk while rocking these beauties)

Naughty Monkey Side Swiped in purple $35.10 at 6pm.com. oh they are so so pretty...

my PhD practice

I practiced my defense today. I flew through that bad boy like it was going out of style. The speed demon speak was OUT OF CONTROL. I have to spend the next two days practicing SLOOOOWWWWWWW speak. While cleaning my entire house. I almost wrote apartment. That's funny, I don't live in an apartment anymore. I live in a house! That we bought! That I love! And provides much more to clean! And I really need to unpack the linen closet in order to find all my blankets, cause I'm not sure where they all are at the moment...

Slow speak, slow speak, slow speak..........

and, a shoe:

Chinese Laundry Trenton in Dark Teal, $35.10 at 6pm.com

a new puppy??

Adam and I have been puppy sitting for the past few days for a hilarious beagle whose tounge is so long it does not fit in his mouth. Spunky and Riley have been playing like little monsters and snuggling like monsters. Our mortgage person is super involved at the humane society and I happened to mention to her at our closing that we were interested in possibly getting another beagle (or beagle mix). Well, she has been emailing me about a darling little beagle mix who is so freaking cute and now I am having a hard time deciding if I want to see her. I know if I go to see her I will want her. Adam wants me to really think about it before I just say let's get another dog, but gosh she is too cute. She's about 4-5 months old, so we would have to house break her (ick) and deal with puppy teething/chewing issues, which isn't something I wanted to have to deal with, but she is so so cute!

4 days to PhD day

I am attempting to finish up my seminar presentation for my defense... it's not too bad, and I need to start practicing. I'm trying to stick to the new rule I've learned recently 6x6x1: 6 lines per slide, 6 words per line, 1 minute per slide. Which means I need 45 slides. And I have lots of pictures, so not worrying too much about overwhelming people with words. And first and foremost, I have to convince everyone why they should care. I'm feeling somewhat nervous about the defense part, but I know what I've done and what I haven't, and why I haven't been able to do things that I really wanted to. Sometimes, things just don't work out as well as I hoped.

I will say that as I've written my thesis, I really feel like I am leaving the lab (and the person taking over my project) with an awesome start to answering lots of questions. I almost wish I could stick around to work on these things (haha). There's just a lot of questions that I've realized I'm closer to finding the answer to than I originally thought. I have always loved my project, and now that I'm coming to the end of it and handing it over to someone else, I might just love it even more.

And, I'm half-watching the inaguration eve stuff (I cannot believe tomorrow is finally here and we will finally have a new president, long overdue). This inauguration eve stuff looks like new year's eve stuff! people outside bundled up in the freezing cold, screaming with excitement, it looks like new years eve, which i suppose inaguration day is like a new 4-years eve. anyway, it's awesome.
and now that we can finally say bye bye to GWB, I will just say what I've been thinking for months: I have been wanting to sing "He's Gone" by the Grateful Dead on GWB's last day in office. I'll post it one day early:



Rat in a drain ditch
Caught on a limb
I know better but you know him
Like I told ya
What I said
Steal your face right off your head
Now he's gone
Now he's gone
gone he's gone
he's gone
like a steam locomotive
rolling down the track
he's gone
nothing's gonna bring him back
he's gone

Thank goodness. Bye GWB, Nothing's gonna bring you back.

Seven Days to PhD Day

I was going though data tonight trying to find the best pictures to include in my thesis (that is due tomorrow) and I realized I never did a very important experiment. So, at 9:oo tonight, I began said experiment. Then realized I didn't do another very important and somewhat related experiment. And started that one at 11:00. The 9:00 one will be done soon. The 11:00 one I will be working on all night long. Luckily there are wait periods (like right now) so that I can continue writing. What I should be writing, not this silliness. But I needed to just say out loud: ONE MORE WEEK!

And, as I have learned from Dr. Isis, I am going to end this post with an Open Letter:

An Open Letter to the Janitor:

Dear Janitor,

If I am wearing gloves, frantically adding lots of liquids to tubes, doing many things that require much focus, do not try to talk to me. I am busy. I cannot give you any attention, much less the undivided attention that you require because you have a very thick accent. I do not need to hear about how big your ass is or how much you hate the weather because it makes a mess on your floors. My thesis is due tomorrow and I'm not going to sleep tonight. Maybe on your planet that means you should bother me, but on my planet that means go away. I have to get back to work. And if you don't get out of my way I will trample you.

Thank you,

Seeree PhD in one week.

Eight days to PhD Day

I'm losing my mind. I am in the middle of doing ten things at once and keep forgetting to finish them. I keep losing things. I look for things, cannot find them, and they are right in front of my face. A boy who works down the hall told me that most PhD's he knows are completely scatterbrained, so therefore my transformation is almost complete. That made me feel a little better. But if I lose one more thing, I just might have to scream.

oops

Somehow, mid-experiment, I forgot about it. I'm a little bit peeved with myself, so I am taking a break and drinking coffee. Apparently my brain stopped functioning earlier and needs a pick me up. yum. so, I found a shoe, another much needed pick me up.



Shakeup by Steve Madden $59.99 at stevemadden.com

recommendations from seeree

anyone who knows me, knows i have lots of skin problems. dry skin, ecsema, basal cell carcinoma, sun burn, etc etc etc. And it's only going to get worse. And so, with winter weather torturing so many of us, here is a list of my favorite lotions:
1. Cerave. Available in a lotion or cream, and is supposed to have healing ability as well as moisturizing. It has no scent and helps when it seems as though nothing else will. This was recommended to me by my dermatologist for my ecsema issues (to use something besides a steroid that thins my already sensitive skin).
2. Burt's Bees Thorougly Therapeutic Honey and Grapeseed Oil Hand Creme. Your skin will suck this up like a marathon runner sucks up water. And then everyone will ask "What smells like apple pie??" There's nothing wrong with lotion that smells like baked goods.
3. Olay Quench. It's fabulous, and I've seen it recommended on TV shows too.
4. Aveeno. Everything by Aveeno is great. I really just recommend all their lotions (not their face wash, it didn't do what I needed, but lotions they know).

Like my mother before me, I must try all lotions to deal with all these skin issues, and therefore, I can be your guinea pig.

moving and shopping

We have moved! We no longer live in college town of rednecks! We now live in big happening city with more stuff to do than I ever could imagine. Which includes LOTs of shopping. Which Adam and I did yesterday. For HOURS. $400 later, we had a new entertainment center, a huge shelving unit for cds dvds etc, fabulous curtains for the living room, an area rugs, and random necessities for the bathrooms, kitchen, etc. I have to say we did some fabulous shopping and got a LOT of stuff for that $400.

I wish Mary Poppins could teach me how to snap my fingers and put my stuff away! And make my thesis format itself!

Back to work!

dead tour 2009

Something else to make 2009 fantastic... the surviving members of the Grateful Dead are going on tour again!! They haven't toured since 2004, they played two shows for Obama in 2008 and must have the tour bug! Hopefully the tickets won't be too expensive...

Yippee!!!

new year, new shoe!

Once again, I am taking a break from thesis writing to post a shoe! Now, I cannot afford this, and if it wasn't on sale, it would not even be in my shoe search list, but here it is...
Stuart Weitzman Icing in Black Peau de Soie $99.95 at shoebuy.com (which is 64% off - $280 for shoes is a bit ridiculous).

happy new year!

Happy new year!
2009 is going to be a big year for me, with graduation kicking it off with a bang. The next three weeks may be the most stressful ever, with the least amount of sleep ever, but that's okay. When it's over, people will call me doctor!
I will then start my new post doc. So fabulous.
Adam and I will get married this year. He has waited for way too long for me to finish school, and we will be getting married sometime in the next 9 months (give or take).
It has been ten years since I graduated from high school. I am thrilled that I will be done with school by the time I go back for this silly reunion, though I am not even sure I want to go.
Plus we will have much to do with decorating our new house!
2009, bring it on!