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 :)

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.