the long awaited continuation

and then there was . . .

sunday:

sunday was the morning that we got up and went to one of our favorite little brunch places at its new location with some of our most beloved people. (from l -> r, that's aaron, matt, me, andrew, amelia, and rhiannon. i'm not sure why it looks like everyone paid for their meals but matt and i , by the way). and then it started to snow. . . it was already white and a little bit slick when we left the cafe. so we - of course - decided that sunday would be a great day to spend inside.

oh, wait! i forgot that cafe berlin actually provided me with one of my favorite pictures of the weekend. try to get past how ridiculously adorable rhiannon is in this picture and note the awesome sign in the window. so. . . our loved ones can rest assured that anytime that we go to cafe berlin, we are somewhere that is taser free.

i believe that sunday was also the day (or maybe it was saturday? i don't know - in this story it is going to be sunday, okay?) that matt got the details of what will be his "official" job offer. i'll write more about that when things are for sure for sure, but if you're wondering what someone looks like when the go to school for 20+ years and then finally realize that they have a job, they look like this mixture of shock, disbelief, and relief. this trifecta is quickly followed by exuberant excitement (not pictured here). it was a wonderful moment, indeed.

so we ended up having a nice, relaxing day inside involving job offers, a little bit of work, and a lot of staying in, making dinner, and starting to watch this tv series called mad men, which is one that bill simmons (a.k.a., the sports guy) has touted as one of the best. it's been interesting in a few different ways, i think; the details for that are a different post, though, i think.

in any case, it was a pretty great day.

monday:

since i didn't leave missouri until around 6:00 on monday, we got what felt like another full day together (though this was not the case in practice). matt had to get up early to go teach his class. i got up shortly after he left to go meet lindsay for tea at kaldi's, in downtown missouri. i actually rode the same bus in that i used to ride from my old apartment (it's awful, but i can't remember what the name of that place was. . . .).

after that, matt and i went for what turned out to be a wonderful, delicious lunch at the cracker barrel, courtesy of peggy's generosity and love. of course we knew that this meant that a picture was in order! it was wonderful, yummy, and we even got to sit relatively close to the fire. i tried to get a bit of the cracker barrel sign in the background, but that didn't really turn out. it's clearly a learning process. but it was wonderful and we looked forward to it all weekend and were not disappointed.

and now it's still a time of trying to recover from being away and then having a busy few days of visitors to the program. i just got up after sleeping for about 11 hours and i can honestly say that i still feel tired. that's going to be fun. ..

work has to happen today, though i promised myself not until after i got this post up! i owed it to the people :)

love you all.

five days in two posts, perhaps?

as the title suggests, i don't see any probable way that i'll actually have time to start and finish this post in the same sitting. we will see what happens (and let's be honest - i'm totally going to change the title and delete this paragraph if some miracle occurs and i pull off a marathon blog session).

as dr. becca schlegel is well aware, i like organizing things in list form during periods of stress or excitement, so i'll try some sort of list organization here. now is a case of the former, by the way.

hey there aren't any pictures yet! how about this? these geese were at a gas station in missouri. weird, right?

okay. . . list/recap

friday:
i choose this color intentionally, because friday had its - well - blue moments. there were a variety of travel woes that i won't delve into right now, because in truth they are each pretty minimal in their own right. the culmination of all of them in being left at the airport by the hilton's airport shuttle was the real low point of the day, however. that was followed by 15 additional minutes of waiting (i.e., sheer frustration) for shuttle #2, then getting lost in the st. louis hilton(/labyrinth) where for some reason none of the workers would help me find anything - unless in parts of the midwest that i'm not from staring at people and then turning around and walking away is considered helpful (on a related note, i have temporarily disowned st. louis as a part of the midwest). poor matt had waited almost a full week to celebrate his good news and instead found a wandering, teary-eyed me in the lobby wondering why midwesterners were no longer the caliber of nice that i remembered them to be.

the good news is, that's really all that the low point consisted of. so. . . that's good. we went down to the hotel bar for a glass of wine and then to the casino for a bit where i won and subsequently lost about $3. i'm not really sure the degree to which casinos are really my bag. i'd like something that involves a bit more skill than luck, but i don't have the money or the knowledge to play the table games; also, it seems that at that level, people get reeeeeeeally preoccupied with winning and are less amenable to my stranger-chattiness.

saturday (green because here's where the good really gets GOing - clever, no?):
so, by saturday, it was go time. we slept in and spent the morning in the cute historic district of st. charles. we popped in and out of a few shops (not pictured here due to "technical difficulties") and made our last stop a cute little family pizza place. so many highlights here. probably necessitates another list:

1. there is a story about chicken nuggets that really only works if you hear it out loud, but suffice to say that via this conversation, we made friends with a little boy (circa 18 months, i'm guessing) who was begrudgingly eating chicken nuggets at the table next to ours. i write begrudgingly because it was made clear several times that he wanted to be eating pizza.

2. i LOVED this bit in the menu. it's a pic from my phone, so a bit fuzzy, but do you see the terrific part? if not, near the top, the line reads, "at times thin crust appears dark but it is not burned. . . just darkened." i feel like i could write a whole blog on how terrific that is, but i won't. i just wanted everyone to have the opportunity to enjoy it.

3. at the end of lunch, when we got up to leave, our chicken-nugget friend definitely shouted at us across the restaurant, "i wuv you guys!!!!!! wuv you! see you yater." we couldn't even respond, because we pretty much melted on the spot. too adorable.

4. end sublist.

okay, after getting back into CoMo, matt and i went for drinks and appetizers in downtown columbia, which i'm certain looks different every time i'm back. then, for additional evening fun, we went to erika's house to listen to a 2-disc compilation that included three songs each from me, matt, becca, josh, christine, erika, yuna, chris, and my new friends sara and chris#2. the discs turned out very well - if i do say so myself - and erika burned all of us copies to take with us. lovely, lovely indeed.

okay, it is in fact true. as tomorrow is begins interview weekend in the hilliard-brooker household, i need to make sure that our applicant has a clean room to stay in, so sunday and monday will have to wait. perhaps as i've already made some notable progress on my posters, i'll try to sum up sunday and monday before diving into work tomorrow. oh man. . . they're good ones :)

one addendum, however, the whole brooker family is very, very grateful that our little miss kassi is doing well (albeit sore) today after a scary accident last night. this family learned some time ago that even seeming okay post-accident is not to be immediately trusted and i must say that it took me a bit to come to some sort of belief that things were, in fact, on the up-and-up. today could have been a very different day otherwise, and my heart bursts with gratitude to whoever or whatever allowed us to forego that experience and instead set out a gentle reminder of how important it is for us to live in ways that show that we love each other. in some ways, you'll find that's an inherent message in a lot of these posts, i think.

in any case, my love abounds for friends and family today, and that's always worth saying.

sometimes this happy valley is a little crazy

i'm taking a break from what now feels like 24 hours of running analyses to make sure that i get a post up before i head to missouri. i don't know what it is, since almost everything throughout the week was canceled due to the snow, but this week feels like it has gone by super quickly. i suspect that when i get back from missouri, that pace will only pick up until ICIS is over on March 14th.

as i'm certain you've picked up on, winter is a season of pennsylvania-isms; the majority of these have to do with snow and ice and the - um - interesting strategies for dealing with winter that come up in this area. here is one of my favorites, which i see all over the place:

i remember that when i saw this for the first time, i thought, "hmmmm, they know those are still going to get ice on them, right?" it's so strange to me because i never ever remember seeing this in the midwest (and ryan confirmed last night that he also never saw it in boston). i will give people that this will prevent your wipers from becoming frozen to your windshield, but if you're doing a little thing called running your defrost once you start your car, you should be okay. yet people stick by this charming little pennsylvania-ism, attesting to its tried and true performance in the "ice prevention" arena. so, maybe the next time the forecast calls for snow and ice, i'll go make sure that i open my car doors - that way they won't be frozen shut in the morning.

in any case, people putting up their windshield wipers don't really affect me and - aside from the occasional eye roll - i don't get too worked up about it. what does irritate me is this apparent inability to plow roads which is supplemented by people saying things like, "well, it's better not to plow the roads. if you plow 'em, they just turn to ice." what?! that doesn't really make any sense unless you live somewhere with the most rapid freeze/thaw cycle known to man. so, i feel a little vindicated this morning, when my parking space (that's mine in the top right of the picture) is my for-real-proof as to the value of pushing the snow away (i know you can't tell for sure, but no, it is not covered in ice. it's basically dry). haha, you silly pennsylvnaians. now please plow your roads.

what has happened in the last few days besides snow? not much, really. lacey and i had a superbowl party on sunday, which was fun. it made it even better that this year was such a good game. i found a bean dip recipe online that was not only cute and yummy, but full of protein and fiber ("lacey friendly") and low in cholesterol ("matt friendly"). tragically, i did destroy one of lacey's plastic spoons in my blender during the preparation process. my bad. there are more pics from the party on lacey's blog, if you're interested.

the only other news that i can share today is that it is "packing day" - a day of excitement that was formulated somewhere along the line to make it seem like an eagerly-awaited trip is basically here. i will be packing intermittently between struggling with these analyses. later this afternoon i have meetings, then my class at the gym, and then it will be the close of the day already. i only wish that it was summer in missouri right now. ah well - becca just posted some more pics from our trip to austin in the fall, so i'll post one of those where i'm sunburned and we can all just pretend. (l -> r: becca, me, matt, josh. i don't know why i'm making that face.)

winter is in the eye of the beholder

i had a text message from karen waiting for me when i woke up yesterday that made me laugh out loud. it read, "so you're getting some snow, eh? i find it hilarious that the national news is freaking out about it. wimps :)" the majority of the humor is in the truth of the statement. state college seemingly cancels school, group meetings, outings & events, etc. at the drop of a hat, often finding themselves with now snow and no school on the same day. it always makes me wonder if there's a principal or superintendent somewhere secretly thinking to themself, "whoops. . . my bad." between that, their inability to salt roads, and the people who think that not plowing is a good idea because "otherwise all the snow would turn into ice," i find myself often shaking my head at the shocking nature of the attitudes toward winter in a town that (here's the kicker) gets winter every single year.

that being said, 10" of snow is a freaking lot of snow to get in 12 hours. i say this for three primary reasons. the first is that despite the early appearing "freak-outs," mostly seen on the local news in the pre-snow hours, i did not really expect any sort of real winter storm. sorry, pa, but your inability to cope with winter over the last 5 years had made me think that you and i have very different ideas about winter weather (as in, if i would have brought pennsylvania home with me for christmas) a friend of course, i could never date pennsylvania given it's apparent love for the steelers, taxidermy, country music, ultimate fighting, and intolerance), it would've spent most of the holiday curled up in my closet - terrified and crying at the real winter happening outside)). but, i stand corrected, obviously. not sure what this means - this alleged 10" of snow? let me walk you through it. luckily for this blog, lacey and i documented the snowfall in between rounds of wii sports and the new super mario brothers game on friday evening. note that these hours are really, really, really estimated, because the new mario brothers game is really, really fun.

hour 3ish:
















hour 5ish:

hour 12 (aka: the next morning):

the second reason is that i was the self-appointed shoveler yesterday. this has something to do with a responsibility that i feel that comes along with being from iowa and a recognition that i've not been getting in the gym time that i would like to be lately and shoveling is a really great workout. this wasn't immediately evident as the beginning stages of shoveling actually had to occur from the inside of the townhouse. this was new for me. 
i don't actually know how much snow fell, but (once outside) it was almost up to my knees in most places , which meant shoveling had to take place in vertical layers. but don't worry, mom and dad, i did shovel the neighbors' half of the stoop, too. and my back and arms hurt today, which i take as proof that shoveling really is a great workout and that i've shoveled very, very little in my life. on most occasions i say that the one thing that my dad has that would be fun to have is an electric drill. it seems practical with all of the moving and rehanging of things that i do. however, this weekend i wondered if the thing that i needed wasn't a snowblower. . . .(on a related side note, copper beech didn't come plow out our complex until almost 6pm. how ridiculous is that?!)

the third reason actually isn't its own reason, i think, so much as it is the standard complaint that i have about winter. i hate cleaning my car off. hate it, hate it, hate it. most people that i know in the midwest have themselves a nice garage parking situation that alleviates this chore. however, this is the post-shoveling situation that lacey and i were faced with yesterday:

i'm not even kidding you, when i was done shoveling out my parking space, i "brushed" (as in, shoveled) the snow off of my car and then re-shoveled my parking space, as i had just dumped the equivalent of a brand new snow onto the ground. though, oddly i was a lot happier to be shoveling light fluffy snow than scraping that and a thin layer of ice off of my car. go figure.

so, the moral of the story is this: pennsylvania still likely doesn't know how to deal with winter (and sadly may not figure it out during my tenure here). so, if what people are saying are things like "snowmageddon," i will gladly roll my eyes along with you. however, if what people saying is, "scooping out of all of that is a heck of a lot of work," i will be nodding my head in agreement. and then understanding why it was so exciting for us to move (with our snowblower) to a house with a lgarage, a lot less sidewalk and a lot shorter driveway.

p.s.

i know this may lose me some credibility with my nearest and dearest who typically turn their noses up to pop musicians, but did people happen to catch the lady gaga/elton john duet when the grammys were on?

there were a lot of disappointments across the few hours (yes, you, jamie foxx and pink), but these two i will admit that i LOVED!!

the pre-super bowl days

the story of the week has been lacey's birthday, and i must say that it's been fun being the roommate of a birthday girl. it was all i could do not to give lace her presents early, though, so i took to decorating them whenever the temptation hit. i got her the ever-coveted buddha bowl, which turned out to be a bit difficult to track down in state college. i must admit that i didn't understand all of the many uses of the buddha bowl, but am acquiring at least a working knowledge from the birthday girl. i also got lacey a t-shirt in support of the emphatic love that she and matt developed for siena college (as they played against ohio state) in last year's ncaa tournaments. the big-ticket items were the wii that lacey got from ryan (yup, there is a wii in this house now :) and the obligatory cookie cake. yay and yum, respectively. if we ever get things hooked up and figured out, i will be anticipating playing via the internet with my and matt's families at some point!!

there were a few activities that occurred in the days leading up to lacey's birthday that i wanted to report on. first, lacey embraced her lb transport coozie and is adorable with it, as would be expected. the other is that i learned the joys of baked almonds (which was actually the activity occurring the night of that lacey/coozie picture. if you look closely you can see them in the background on the right side). it turns out that you can just boil almonds, let them dry overnight, pop them out of their (no longer papery) coverings, and then bake them in the oven. with no additional salts or seasonings, they are phenomenal. AND apparently filled with all sorts of health benefits. so, yay! (oh, and yum, again! this is working out nicely).

the only bad news to emerge over the last few days is that i am having the hardest time recruiting families to be in my dissertation study. i actually think that one of my families sneakily hung up on me this weekend thinking that they were under the cover of the answering machine having already picked up. nope. notsomuch. but sadly, despite your rudeness, i will still be eternally grateful if you brought in your child and let me record their brain waves. thanks.

on the plus side in work related news, the professor that i'm writing my postdoctoral grant with appears to have hired mary anne as his lab manager. i think this is an obvious good sign.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh - and did i mention that the birthday girl hit the red pin with a big old strike to win a free game? shocking, right? ryan and i thought so, too:

this weekend is our super bowl party (stop by if you're in the neighborhood), next weekend my $10 trip to como (thanks Northwest/Delta!), the following weekend is our developmental area interview weekend, and after that i think i'll be madly preparing for conference stuff :) so, hopefully i can remember to get some new batteries for my camera and have a lot of pictures to share!!

phones, cars, birthdays, and hearts

so, the big news this week that is unrelated to the state of the union address is that pennsylvania is coming closer and closer to banning cell phones while driving. i don't know if this is happening on other states, but texting while driving seems to be the real newsmaker here. there have been a string of phone-and-text related car accidents here that prompted the efforts. i remember when cell phone use while driving was a big story in des moines (i remember, of course, because i made the cover of the whatever section was reporting it that week). i don't know if it was because texting wasn't that big of a deal, but it seemed like the discussion was kind of limited to talking on your phone while driving - and kind of skewed in the direction of "things women do while driving other than drive," but that's a different post. however, it seems like that vision may be a bit incorrect as well. apparently moving from iowa to missouri to pennsylvania meant moving among three states that were all kind of behind in the cell-phone-use legislature. and maybe still are. in any case, i think this is what my mom is talking about when she says that you can only control yourself, but you should always be on the lookout for "the other guy."

i am determined that i will schedule more families to come in for my dissertation study this weekend. we had one family drop out of the longitudinal study altogether (not ultimately surprising, as they didn't participate in the last 2 phases) and another family move to colorado. so. . . that's not helpful. but this thing has got, got, GOT to get going. jeremy said the trick is to call on the weekends when families are actually home. so, i will be going into the lab to do that tomorrow. keep your fingers crossed.

otherwise the only plans for the coming days are lacey's birthday party on saturday (her birthday's on monday for those of you who are suddenly wondering) and getting a lot of work done. march and april are apparently going to be the months of ridiculousness this year, with the ISIS conference in baltimore, some talks for different groups on campus, and my grant due on april 8th. yuck. please don't be shocked if those months contain a steep decline in blogging.

oh, and i have to show off my mail from this week. i got this heartwarming gift from gabriel at my door on tuesday. it is so wonderful and i love it so much. i didn't even know that he knew how to make stuff like this!! very cool, anyway.