i wore flip flops today and it was awesome

i'm finally feeling better following a too-long sinus infection that i m convinced was brought on by stress. is that possible?

last week was our spring break, though mine was taken up by the obligatory trip to baltimore for the infancy conference (yes, you'll find me if you type my name into those boxes). as you can tell, it was gray and rainy for most of our visit, but we had a really sweet view of camden yards. yay! this year i presented a poster (as usual) but also chaired a symposium, which meant giving my first talk about research that i'm doing in our lab. things went pretty well, i think, despite my limited participation in the ensuing discussion (there were three talks other than mine) because it kind of felt like my head was going to explode under all of the pressure. kristin was happy though, and so was i, so there are no complaints from this end.

perhaps the best thing about this trip was getting to see and spend some quality time with liz, my very first lab mate in missouri and someone on whom i continue to depend to be a model of success in graduate school. she's pretty fantastic - and maybe the happiest person ever to have a ginormous lolly. i actually haven't seen liz since she and her husband, aaron, got jobs at the university of miami - ohio. believe it or not, miami-ohio has a longstanding rivalry with ohio university, meaning that liz and aaron will be rivals with matt once they all "take office" next year. liz and i have already discussed the opportunities that this is going to bring about for get-togethers of various sorts. and matt says if that also ends up meaning a reds game at some point, he's not opposed to it. seems about right, doesn't it?

so, as you may have guessed, while i found the conference to be really valuable this year (i.e., directly relevant to some things that i'm working on) we did a little bit of sightseeing while in baltimore. this mostly involved time at the inner harbor, modeled here by the "other liz" in our lab, our wonderful new (as of this year) post doc, liz davis. you have to give her points for being willing to pose in front of a gigantic blue boat with no apparent function except to signify the land around it as a harbor. whatever, baltimore. you're just lucky we take such little effort to be entertained. the other group trip was when liz, liz, jeremy, jess, steph (another student in human development & family studies) went to the national aquarium. (importantly, this produced the lolly pictured above). what did we see at the aquarium, you ask? well, luckily i've got pictures. . .

of a parrot

and a sloth (two not-very-aquariumish animals, i know)

but also divers feeding the sharks and stingrays

and evidence that one whale vertebra is roughly the size of my entire back. i'm not sure why i'm making that face. just stick with me on the point of the picture, okay?

others were notably less interested than me in our lucky proximity to places of notable athletic accomplishments. so, while my tour of camden yards didn't happen (thanks both to rain and a scheduling snafu), i did go on my own to tour the sports legends museum right by our hotel and to take a peak at babe ruth's boyhood home. that's babe's place on the right. no word on if that's his suv parked out front. something tells me not. i actually sometimes enjoy doing stuff like this on my own - especially when it involves getting to wander around a new city. i mean, it's not exactly magellan or ponce de leon, but i did find some cool stuff, so . . . it seems comparable.

and now i'm back at home running visits for my dissertation study, putting together a poster for the graduate student exhibition next weekend, finishing my grant (Stony Brook wants it on April 1st, so that's when some sort of sanity might return), and getting super excited to see Matt this coming weekend. i can't believe how quickly the last month has passed.

so, it's been largely work and work and work since i've returned. although today i did go get a dress for amelia's wedding. lacey and i had a shopping date, as she needed one for some events that she's got coming up, too. being my mother's daughter, i have to say how proud i was to return home with a $178 french connection dress for only $40. woo-hoo! sooooo lucky it was on sale, too, because it really was the one that both lacey and i liked the best. i'm sure you'll see pictures in another month or so.

hope everyone is enjoying their mix of spring and winter weather this weekend as well as the bracket-busting events that have come about the last few days. go panthers! and now everyone please vow to teach two of your friends to say Ali Farokhmanesh correctly :) then when ESPN stops calling him things like "Al" or "Alooo," we can all pat ourselves on the back.

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times

so, it will not be news to some people that i have had a yucky sinus infection for almost a week now. i finally went to the doctor on monday and got some antibiotics and now i feel only moderately better. but. . . for better or for worse, i will be hitting the road en route to the icis conference in baltimore in roughly t minus 7 hours. in just over 24 hours, my talk will be over, and in just over four days, this week that represents the culmination of a lot of stress will be done. this will make me happy.

i think it will be much to early, but still very likely that when i get back from MD, the countdown to summer will begin. essentially, this is a list of all of the important deadlines and travel dates that will occur before summer hits. each year, it's shocking at how it simultaneously makes things seem insurmountable and within sight at the same time. in essence, it will look something like this:

graduate research exhibition: 14 days
grant due: 25 days
amelia & andrew's wedding: 27 days
talk for imaging center alumni event: 41 days
last day of classes 47 days
matt's graduation: 52 days

for some reason, matt's graduation has become the event that signifies the start of summer for me this year. it's completely arbitrary given that finals week over almost two full weeks before, but that's how it's gonna happen this year, i guess. so. . . yeah. sometimes i really don't make any sense to anyone except for myself (and sometimes karen and kara, but that's only because they have inside tracks to my brain, i think).

also, i have to admit that seeing the familiar iowa sites is fun, but who is this crazy guy - and is he or is he not in a prison when he's in council bluffs?

also - mom and dad can correct me if i'm wrong in this, but for some reason i suspect that my grandma & grandpa got married in nashua. isn't that right?other points of interest:

we played regional golf my junior year of high school in pocahontas
we used to go dancing in clear lake on "teen night" at a place that i barely remember but think was "lou's lounge"
des moines is where i went to drake for a while
cedar falls is where the university of northern iowa is at - where my dad went to school for a time
i had no idea that mallard had a sign that said "we're friendly ducks." that's awesome.
dyersville is where the field of dreams is at, if you couldn't tell.
ames is the home of iowa state university.
i've definitely seen the goo-goo-dolls, sugar ray, and fastball at the iowa state fair. don't act like you're not impressed.
altoona is where kara's coffee shop is at.

not a lot of things - and not a one of them in order.

this is going to be a short post, because 1) not much is going on and 2) last week suckity-suck-suck-sucked so much i don't really want to relive it in a blog post. my favorite part is that when it ended on saturday with zero out of two research assistants showing up to do their part in running two lab visits for my dissertation, all that i could really say was, "of course. . . "

but whether it is in the spirit of lent or just optimism and hopefulness, i am going to try to list three good things that happened last week. (i'm shooting low, clearly. it really was a bad week).

3) ryan's birthday was pretty fun. i was pretty much exhuasted from the week and had to get up early to run said dissertation visits the next day, but it was nice to have some time just to chat with rachel, deepa, tassie, et al. i really don't see those ladies all that much anymore.

2) i got an inspiring e-mail from stony brook. nothing wonderful. no big news or promises - no words to call home about per say, but sometimes in the middle of a long, long, almost painful week, it makes all the difference for someone to give you an affirmation that something is going right.

1) let's not forget that matt has a job!! it's way too early to stop being thankful for this, and truthfully it is something to remain excited about! we're all going to have to be thinking green pretty soon (no...not that green...) and learning to - every once in a while - hold up an "o" rather than an "i." just don't go crazy with that.

the other thing that i can tell you - if only for the purposes of making my mom happy - is that lacey and i have inadvertently started drinking a lot more milk. well, inadvertently for me; i suspect that this might actually be intentional for lace. she's a lot better than i am at changing behavior in such ways. . . and it appears that there are all kinds of reasons (including those you may not have thought of before) for drinking milk. so, no worries mom. we're already on it.

insert tangent here: this reminds me of how much i've been eating cheerios and bananas lately. i can't say enough how much i love, love, love this breakfast. most of my childhood memories of eating fruit are of my mom bringing a small bowl of apples, oranges, grapes, etc. to me while i am playing. however, when it comes to cheerios and bananas, the memory is of countless mornings at the dinner table with dad - him slicing bananas with a butter knife onto the top of my bowl of dried cheerios before adding the milk. but apparently at least one other family had something like this tradition, too, because i found a picture of it on the internet.

one other newsworthy note before i sign off. congrats to miss karen for the addition of another (yet unnamed) broman to the family. i hope she doesn't mind if i share this picture with all of you. (if i hear that she does, look for this photo to be replaced with an anne geddes photo. (which by the way, when did those become wierd and scary instead of cute? because i'm totally there).

okay, this stream-of-consciousness type post is getting a little bit out of control. if you've made it all the way through, i'll reward you by being done now :)