nsd.

today is national scrapbooking day, so i decided to take a break from school stuff to participate in a couple challenges over at studio calico.

these two layouts came together very fast, each one took me less than two hours to complete. i decided to just sort of go with whatever came to me, and not fight it or try to make things look a certain way. i'm happy with the results.

this layout was a combination of the "embrace white space" and "music" challenges given by the two tinas. i took that mini polaroid shot this morning. i think the film in my camera is bad, but i just went with it. :]
i'm also excited that i finally figured out a way to use that dotted swiss cardstock from bazzill. when i first saw it, i thought it would be my new favorite cardstock, but it turned out to be a struggle for me to use. i always found myself wishing that the core was white so that you could sand it and get that cool distressed look. well. today i decided to sew that teal paper over it, and messed up a little bit bit with my sewing. so i decided to use sand paper to give the sewing the intentionally messed up look, and when i sanded on the teal paper, i quickly realized that the dots were showing up. i'm definitely going to try this technique again.


this one is for the "use three different patterned papers", "hand stitch", and "use ledger paper" challenges. i just realized that it sort of fits the "use cute animals" challenge too. :] the photo is one that amanda mailed to me back in december. i put in with the rest of printed photos that i might one day scrap. today was its lucky day. ha. every time i hand stitch, i'm reminded of why i hate hand stitching. my thumb is still sore. not sure why i thought it would be a good idea to sew through ribbon that was adhered with glue dots, but i ruined my needle. ah well.

tonight, i'm going over to a friend's house for some more crafty time. i need to work on some atcs for a swap, so i think that will be a good project for tonight.

james is playing softball all day. his company is participating in some type of tournament where different local businesses compete in various sports. he called me a while ago to let me know that they are winning their games. he was pretty excited. ha. so i don't imagine he will be home for a while.
eta: they won the championship. :]

otherwise, this weekend will just entail me getting ready for two exams next week. not very fun, so i'm happy to be enjoying today with some scrapbooking.

hope you are all having a fabulous weekend. :]

do i talk about food too much?

i often say that i am a fat girl at heart. usually when i'm going on and on about food and someone makes a comment about how i couldn't possibly eat very much being my size.
this post might be evidence of my inner fat girl because i feel like i have a lot to say about food. :]

last night, our friend mike asked me what i want to do in hawaii, and i replied "eat pineapple and have lots of shaved ice."
ha.
then i told him i want to go on at least one good adventure, so we discussed a little trip to manoa falls for some hiking.
anyway. today when james and i were at costco, i almost bought a pineapple, but then i remembered how good the last pineapple that mike brought back from hawaii for me tasted, so i passed. i knew it probably wouldn't live up to the last one i had. plus, i wasn't kidding about the eating pineapple while in hawaii thing. i'm planning to have several meals of pineapple, so i think i can hold off for the good stuff.
i bought strawberries instead, and promptly ate a bunch of them when we walked in the door. ha.

this week has been a busy one, but that's to be expected since the semester is coming to an end.
i had my presentation in micro on tuesday. it went pretty well. i always get so worried about presenting, but i need to just remind myself that i have a tendency to hold myself to a higher standard than most other people. everything always turns out well no matter how much i stress over it, so i need to learn not to stress so much.
i also had my last lab. it's just a weird feeling. i got a little sad that i won't see some of the people anymore. i don't remember feeling like that perviously. i guess i'm getting weak in my old age. ha. but there were a couple girls who were just really nice, and i sort of regret that i didn't get to know them better during year. sigh.

even though i had a lot going on, i made time to make cookies on monday night. it had been a while, and i wanted to try out a recipe. i know that i've mentioned one of my favorite local restaurants is the sup. well. they always put a little cookie on your plate, and they are so yummy. so deepa and i were telling the lady how much we love the cookies and she gave us the recipe! so cool. so i tried it out, and the cookies are sooo good. :] they are even a hit with james, which says a lot since he doesn't tend to like sweets at all. i think my mixer was happy to be taken out of the cupboard and put to use again too. ha.

i was supposed to update about the weekend with erin.
we had a lot of fun venturing all over the place downtown after deepa's party. we had tea at seven, made a few stops into imperial, went on an epic search for food, visited with old friends, and had a little dance party at tonic.
and we had the best breakfast.
[gotta love taking pictures with the phone. you can catch people off guard. i stillllll can't find my camera.]

it had been too long since i'd eaten at peg's for sure. definitely worth rolling out of bed after three hours of sleep to go eat there. :]
it was really nice to spend time with erin again. and she might be getting a job in reno soon, which would be awesome.

anyway. i have a long day at work tomorrow. i guess that means it's time for bed.

much better.

after styling my hair on my own yesterday and today, i like the cut much better.

still not sure about the bangs. for now, i enjoy pinning them to the side. we'll see if i grow to love them or not.

i'll be back later with another post about the weekend, but for now i need to make a powerpoint for a talk i have to give in micro tomorrow. have i mentioned how much i hate group projects? especially when i'm the only one who cares? ah well. the semester is allllllllmost over. :]

chopped.

my hair today.

before:

after:


i don't know what happened. i've been debating about bangs lately, but last night i decided that i wasn't going to go for it. i haven't had bangs since i was a wee little one, all i remember was what a pain it was to grow them out. so i thought i would hold off.
then when i was in the chair, i just sort of agreed that it might be cute. ha.

i'm not in love with it yet, but when i style it on my own i'm sure i will like how quickly it is to flat iron. for now, the jury is out. but i can tell you that looking at the "before" picture is kind of making me miss my longer hair.
ah well.

tonight, erin is coming to reno and we're going to have an adventure. she's staying the night here so she doesn't have to drive home, and we're planning breakfast at peg's in the morning. i'm so excited!

i hope everyone is enjoying the weekend. :]

stressedddd.

i'm feeling stressed to the max today.
i've been putting off grading lab reports in favor of knitting, and now suddenly i need to have them all done tomorrow. so far, i've only graded the intros! ack.
i was thinking that i could leave work early today to work on them, but that didn't pan out. in fact, work was super stressful today too. after a few weeks of getting barely any samples, today we got at least 40. and they all need multiple tests. totally insane.
and i have micro lab tonight, so i arrived early thinking i could get done early, but the ta's aren't here. grr. so i'm just blogging about my frustrations from the good old iphone. :/

p.s. happy earth day. :]

this week was crazy.

my mom spent the night in the hospital on tuesday.
she was experiencing many of the classic warning signs of a heart attack, so my dad took her in to the hospital on tuesday morning. her blood tests showed that she was right at the borderline for having had a minor heart attack.
she is doing fine now though, so that makes me happy. but it's always scary to have a situation like that happen. even though my dad didn't call me until he knew she was ok [that's just what my parents tend to do], it still shook me up quite a bit.

it was a busy week for school too. i had my fourth microbiology exam on thursday, which was hard to study for because my mind was obviously on other things. somehow i managed a 95%. i was expecting a low B based on the amount of time i spent studying... so i'm pretty happy about that outcome. i didn't manage to get 100% on a test, which was my little goal for this class. oh well. 96, 95, 93, and 95 are pretty good. now i just have a few more labs, a presentation, and the final.
we did unknowns in lab this past week, which was stressful for me. i always second guess myself when it comes to unknowns. i did the same thing in organic chem lab. plus, i haven't perfected the decolorization step of the gram stain, which is the first and key step to the micro unknowns. so on two of my three organisms, i was really questioning my gram stain result. i finished up the final tests this morning, so i have theoretically identified each of the unknowns, but i just have that gut feeling that one of them will inevitably be wrong. i guess i'll just have to wait and see.

ok. well. that's my brief update. i'm really looking forward to catching up on sleep tomorrow. i just feel like i've been running on empty this whole week. i'm so glad that i have the trip to hawaii to think about... you know... sort of like a light at the end of the tunnel. but i guess you would say a beach at the end of the semester.
or something like that. :]

bad blogger.

i've been so busy lately that it seems i've become a bad blogger.
so i figured why not put off writing my research article summary that's due tomorrow by doing a little update post, so here we go...

-i booked a flight to hawaii tonight. i smile every time i think about it. so now i'm hunting for a new swimsuit and cute dresses. i've made one dress purchase so far from j. crew. i actually bought it this weekend in anticipation of booking my flight. but now that it's official, i am really going to be on the hunt for cute hawaii wardrobe options. :]

-i seriously need to workout. if booking a flight to hawaii doesn't get me motivated, then i don't know what will.

-i got a new car this weekend. i can't really drive it right now because it has a manual transmission. i've been out to drive it a few times in the neighborhood, and i'm just having a hard time getting the whole clutch thing under control. i tend to let it out too fast or something. so hopefully with a little practice i will learn to love it. i'm excited about it because i never thought i would have a black car, and it's seriously so pretty. james is excited because it's 418 horsepower. :]

-i'm almost done with my first eleventh hour scarf. thanks to some expert help from jeanne, i figured out what i was doing wrong. i'm in love with it already... even if it is a ridiculously warm and bulky scarf, and it's almost summer. :]

-i'm still in love with london fog. i'm basically addicted to it. i had two of them today. this has to stop so that i can get in shape for the beach!

-i really really really want to go to this. anyone else want to go? from the looks of past events, they seem pretty intense, but i think it would be really fun. i mean... all of that handmade goodness in one place... how cool. :]

i guess that's all for now. i need to get to work on this paper so that i can get some sleep before i have to go to work in the morning. ugh. work. lame.

busy. busy. busy.

seriously. life has gotten so busy with the new job. by friday night, i was completely exhausted and so ready for the weekend.

the position is in the inorganic lab. my job deals with testing turbidity, conductivity, pH, ammonia, ferrous iron, tds, tss, etc. for water and occasionally soil samples. it's all somewhat tedious and just a tiny bit boring. luckily, the people i work with are nice and easygoing.

today i went to see monsters vs. aliens with radhika. this was the first digital 3D movie that i have seen, and it was pretty fun. radhika and i were both a little concerned that we might get a headache or something from the glasses, but didn't have any problems. i got a kick out of seeing who forgot to take their glasses off when the movie was over and we were exiting the theater. :]

i also went on a little adventure to the yarn store today. a little expensive, but i'm excited about my purchases. i'm testing out a potential gift idea. the problem is that i'll probably want to keep it for myself when i finish. heee. :]

i stopped at target and came home with all kinds of stuff except the two things that were on my list. oops. that seems to happen to me more often than not. ah well. the freezer is stocked, and i'm excited about having the best lemonade in the world in the fridge once again. i had no idea they sold it at target. i usually get mine at whole foods, but as you may know, i don't go grocery shopping all that often, so we've been out of lemonade for about a week now. i've never paid much attention to the freezer section in target, and today i realized that i've been missing out. they have some good stuff.

speaking of favorite drinks. i'm in love with london fog right now. i was hesitant about trying it... but it's my new favorite drink from starbucks. i crave one everyday. and about an hour after i finish one, i'm already wanting another. it's amazing. if you like earl grey, i highly recommend it.

james played tennis with his brother and some friends today, so i haven't seen much of him. he asked me if i wanted to go play with them, but i thought that it was way too cold. it was around 50, but still. too cold for me.

i'm happy to report that i've been making some progress on studio cleaning/organizing. i broke down and ordered the mm desktop carousel from twopeas. it arrived on thursday, but i was dead tired from staying up late writing a micro paper then going to work early followed by school and teaching. usually when a package arrives for me, i open is as soon as possible, but on thursday night i just walked by the box and went to bed. finally last night, i got it out and set it up. so far, i really love it. it holds more than i expected, which is nice.
i ended up spending a good part of the evening in there finally tackling some of the piles and clearing off my desk. i've decided that i have a bit of an aversion to the plastic iris containers that i switched over to for my paper storage. i just don't like the look of plastic. plus, they all sit on top of my expedit shelves, which isn't working for me. i don't flip through my paper with them up there, so i'm not reminded of what i have. instead, i have to think of a paper i want to use, and then go to the container and retrieve it. so yeah. i really want to switch my paper storage so that hopefully i will see it more often and use it. still looking for the perfect solution, but last night was a good reminder that i am just so over the look of those plastic containers.

alright, i'm seriously falling asleep here. time to get up and clean or call it a night. tomorrow i am going to make a trip to the bookstore and try to get ahead on some school stuff.
i hope you are enjoying the weekend!