My blog posts have been lapsing in part because I find it incredibly hard to talk about anything else other than the fact that I will be getting married to an absolutely wonderful man in just 11 days! Things for the wedding are coming together so well! We got our marriage license on Monday, so things are starting to feel very official.
It turns out that getting married is a tremendous distraction these days, especially while I am in lab. I find it much more fun to play with the layout of our programs or arrange our seating chart than to do any experiments. Luckily, I went to a conference in Andover, NH last week, so I was forced to think about science for extended periods of time for at least a week of June...
The conference overall was a really great experience. Instead of just following professors around all week, I met other students in my field and had a great time hanging out with them. Two of them were from the UK, and were incredibly excited to see chipmunks for the first time! (Apparently they don't have this American novelty animal across the pond.) Some other things that happened in NH:
1. Across from the school that we were staying at, there was a skateboarding park with a set of rules posted about safe skateboarding. Can you guess what rule #1 was? If you guessed wearing a helmet, you would be wrong. Rule #1: Only one child per skateboard at all times. This is rule #1?? How many times has this been broken? And in what ways? (Picturing two kids trying to ride one skateboard makes for a pretty funny mental image, though.)
2. The Andover fire house had a sign posted outside of it stating the chances of fire for the day. While we were there, the chance was MODERATE. That seemed pretty high to me...if someone told me something had a moderate chance of happening, I'd assume at least 50/50. Luckily, moderate chance or not, there were no forest fires while we were visiting there.
3. I gave a really successful talk on Wednesday afternoon. I was SO nervous. Pretty much every famous professor in my field was watching as I talked about my research for 10 minutes. I am gauging my success on the positive feedback I received throughout the day, and I am so appreciative that people were so nice. It's amazing how even a "nice job" or "great talk" can really boost a student's confidence. I am feeling good about my August committee meeting presentation already!
Did I mention...11 days??? :)
