Hi everyone! It’s been forever and a day since I last posted on here, and I really miss it. I think I was stressing myself out about having the most amazing prose accompanying the prettiest pictures from the coolest places on each post. And I’d put all this work in and wonder if it was even worth it. Who was I doing all that work for? So I stopped posting.
But I really missed having a place to record what I’m up to every week, even if it’s nothing glamorous. Chances are I’ve taken at least one photo that I’m particularly proud of or that I think sums up my week. And after all, this blog is supposed to be “a day in the life of an active metal,” so shouldn’t it be showing snapshots of my life? Really, this should be a place for me — a sort of online photo album, if you will. If y’all think my photos are cool, well that’s neat too.
So today you’re getting this bird on top of my bus stop. I posted it because I think it sums up the running story I’ve been writing in my head while I walk around Seattle lately: The birds are out to get me. I know, very “The Birds” of me. But seriously, let’s discuss:
A few weeks ago, I was walking to the bus stop and a bunch of crows were cawing at each other on the power lines above my head. Then one of them swooped down so close to my head, I could feel the air moving. It was seriously like a scene out of The Birds. Crows continued cawing at me for the rest of the walk….
Then, last week, I was walking to a meeting and I was suddenly swarmed by a huge flock of pigeons taking off.
Later that same day, a crow tried to drop a shell on my head. It fell and broke near my feet. I looked up, and the crow was eyeing me from the top of a building.
And then this photo: a crow on top of my bus stop. Its feet made really neat/ominous noises above my head… Yikes
See what I mean?
Anyway, that’s all for today. More posts to come soon (though no promises on any normal posting time. Life’s too crazy for that), as long as I don’t get attacked by birds….
Potassium and Tarantula pondering life one evening.
Hellloooooo everyone! I hope you are doing well! Sorry these posts started to get infrequent again – I wasn’t kidding when I said that adding teaching my class into the mix was going to make my life insane! But it’s almost spring break now and I am finally coming up for air.
Here are some things that are interesting me right now:
Mimivirus. This virus infects amoebas and can also cause pneumonia in humans. This virus is HUGE. You can see it under a light microscope (note: you can see most bacteria but NOT viruses this way). The mimivirus also has a huge genome. Most viruses have a few genes but the mimivirus has more genes than a lot of bacteria! Just a note, the HIV virus (causes AIDS) has ~10 genes while the mimivirus has ~1000 genes. What is it doing with all of them?! Who knows… but it has them!
In addition, the mimivirus has its own “immune system” in that it has a system set up where it can recognize DNA from other viruses that might try to infect it (yeah… viruses can infect other viruses AHHHH! What is this ridiculous world that we live in?!). Bacteria also have systems like this to protect them against viral infections. This is all super interesting because the mimivirus and its family members (including an even BIGGER virus called the mamavirus) are challenging the idea that we scientists had of viruses not being “alive.” I can go more into that if you want – it’s kind of an interesting philosophical question except also with science.
Science rhetoric – that’s right. Let’s talk about how to talk about science. That’s like a million levels of nerdy in one sentence but still. It’s so interesting to me. I have been loving the class that I am co-teaching because it is opening my eyes to so many cool ways of talking about science! Plus I get to hang out with college students and have them debate things like: who is responsible for sharing science with the general public (all scientists? some scientists? journalists?, etc)?
Science Communication – Speaking of talking about science, I’ve been accepted to the Science Communication program at UC Santa Cruz! It just keeps getting better and better! It’s big decision time! Life is getting exciting and terrifying.
So Metal – This Tuesday my friend L and I drove down to Colorado Springs to see Nightwish and Delain in concert. There was much head-banging and jumping. Wednesday was a hard day…
Soccer – I finally got to play soccer last week. I’ve been having some major IT band and bursitis issues that were initially flared up by doing Insanity workouts last summer but I think they also initiated drama from an old soccer injury. But I got the OK from my PT to start soccer again and spring season started on Sunday. Our team lost 5-2 but I was so overjoyed about being able to play again that I barely noticed. Also I assisted on the second goal so WOOT.
Inclusive Excellence- It’s a big deal right now on CU’s campus as we try to shift the campus climate to be more inclusive and welcoming. I’ve been playing my part by drafting a document for the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee I serve on and by moderating a meeting between the Chancellor of the University (!!!) and the group I co-founded called CU Café.
Craziness… I swear I am still working in the lab on top of all of that!
Okay, let’s talk about some future posts. Do you have any preference? I could write about my life in general, life as a postdoc, previous trips (like how we went to Germany last October and I haven’t talked about it at all?!), race, cool science topics, science communication, etc. How’s your spring shaping up? We’re getting our traditional “pre spring break” snow storm right now… perfect because my PT has also cleared me to go snowboarding!
I’ve been doing a lot of networking coffees/informational interviews with people around the University/across the US. It’s been pretty epic fitting all these events in with actually working in the lab; it means I am running around like a crazy person even more than normal. Plus I start teaching my section of the class I am co-teaching next week (how is it March already?!?!). I might explode!
Anyway, I want to talk about these coffees/interviews because I’ve noticed a striking pattern. I think that within the first minute, I can tell whether a particular interview will be useful. Then I either leave feeling inspired and excited about my potential future and career or I leave feeling miserable and like I totally missed the boat somewhere along the way. I’ve been going over my various interviews recently trying to figure out what’s happening in each scenario so that I can share them with you! Let’s break it down:
Good interviews:
make me laugh.
make me feel comfortable “in my skin.”
involve my coffee-mate listening to me and acknowledging that what I want to do is important.
include a list of potential contacts for follow up interviews, potential fellowships to apply for, potential new directions to go in, etc.
include a list of ideas for making me more a “competitive” applicant.
Bad interviews:
make me feel like I should have already figured out my life.
make me feel like I fail at communication and basic human interactions.
involve my coffee-mate not really listening to what I am trying to say and pushing their own agenda on me.
involve my coffee-mate telling me that everything that I want to do is competitive and assuming that I am not a hard worker and do not have the skills to succeed in the field of interest.
include a list of potential contacts for follow up interviews, potential fellowships to apply for, potential new directions to go in.
include a list of ideas for making me more a “competitive” applicant.
I think that the bad interviews are bad because I have a different personality from the person I am chatting with, not because I am not interested in learning more about his or her job. I guess I never thought about how completely jarring it would be to try to get career advice from someone who thinks differently than me. I am tempted to chalk them up as good practice but not too important but I feel a bit uneasy completely writing them off. I’m sure there’s good information in there (see the bottom two bullets of both categories) but I leave them feeling so down about myself that it’s hard to find it. Ideas for how to make the most of these situations? Is there a way I can take charge of these situations and refocus them in a way that’s actually useful for me? Should I even try? Anyone want to share their own job-hunting stories?
I’ll leave you with this picture of tasty tacos from last weekend when Cobalt and I went to Torchy’s tacos for the first time with our friends J and K. Delish.
Now I want tacos…. I should start setting up networking taco interviews………
So as some of you may know, I am a member of GoodReads, which is a website that allows you to review books that you’ve read or see reviews of books that you might be interested in reading. COOL! Anyway, every year, GoodReads allows you to make a reading challenge for that year, where you propose to read x number of books. I used to up my challenges every year by 10 but that started getting ridiculous because I generally go through at least one month where I don’t feel like reading and any challenge greater than 52 requires you to be reading (on average) at least a book a week! So anyway, I’ve been chillin’ at trying to read at least 50 books per year for the past few years. This year, a surprising number of them happened to be published in 2015 so I thought I would write a post about my favorites! Note: these reviews are similar to my reviews on GoodReads so if you follow me on GoodReads, don’t be surprised.
This list is not going to be into any apparent order and because it’s my list, I get to make up the categories. Yay!
SciFi/Epic Book – Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
The first line of this book is “The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.” I think that is description enough. But if you really need more here it is – the first 2/3 of this book is about the immediate struggle to save humanity after the moon blows up (without warning) and the earth is deemed doomed. The last 1/3 of the book is 5000 years later when the human race returns to earth.
This book is really long but really good. I was totally absorbed in the first 2/3 of the book. I loved most of the characters (so many smart and awesome women!) and was really captivated by the struggle to save the human race under ridiculous circumstances (i.e. how do we survive in space?). I felt that Stephenson accurately captured the craziness of humans and the lengths we would go to survive. Also he very nicely summed up how helpful/hurtful social media and the internet can be. Plus now I understand so much more about orbits and other space things.
The last 1/3 of the book took some warming up for me. I almost wish it was a separate book but that wouldn’t have been true to Stephenson’s style. The first hundred or so pages of this section moved really slow as I, completely whiplashed from jumping 5000 years in the future, tried to get caught up with all the newness of this universe all while following an incredibly slow plot (the new main character does one thing, 10 pages of backstory, etc). I realize that it was kind of necessary to do that if he wanted to keep the book with both parts but I realllllllly missed my old main characters. Once I got caught up though, this last section got much more interesting and I was really sad when it ended. I want to see more from this universe!
One warning – if you have never read a Neal Stephenson book before, you should know that Neal Stephenson likes technical details. So there are a lot of pages describing how everything works. Sometimes I find it interesting and sometimes I want Neal to get back to the story. For the record, the descriptions seem to only exist to add to your experience in the world; you can easily skim them and not miss out on much plot.
One more thing – this book made me really notice the moon, especially because whenever I was reading the book, I was surprised to see the moon in the sky, since, at least in the book, there was no more moon. So I took a lot of moon pictures this year and I thought I would share some of them with you.
Some context for these moons! Leftmost orange moon: an orange moon from this summer. Middle tiny moon + Venus: Seen on the flight back from Hawaii while I was reading Seveneves. Rightmost moon: the nice big full moon on Christmas Day (first time since 1977!).
Young Adult book – I Crawl Through it by A.S. King
This book didn’t seem to make waves through the young adult community (judging by its absence as a GoodReads Choice Awards nominee) but I thought it was phenomenal. Also, it seems to be one of those books that grabs hold of you and never lets go – I still am thinking about it to this day. Anyway, this book is weird. I am going to warn you about that right now – it’s incredibly surreal and disconnected from reality. And yet at the same time, it’s very real.
In this book, we follow four teenagers through a few weeks of their high school careers. There are regular bomb threats and a lot of tests. Overall, I thought it was an excellent portrayal of smart teenagers and what our current educational system is doing to them. Being disconnected from reality really made all the thoughts and feelings the characters have so much more real – sometimes overwhelmingly so.
This book broke my heart in the same way that all the violence at various schools this year (and previous years) breaks my heart. I also really appreciate the discussion of how schools are ruining creativity in our kids and I applaud A.S. King for finding a way to stand up and say something about it.
American memoir – Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
This book is a letter to Coates’ son about what it’s like growing up black in America. As I am an African American woman who grew up here in the US, I was interested in what he had to say about our potentially “shared” experience.
This book made me feel both heartbroken and relieved sort of for the same reason- that what I feel is a real and common. It is interesting to be younger than Ta-Nehisi and older than his son because I have my own social/political events that affected me in the same way that the deaths of Prince Jones and Michael Brown affected Ta-Nehisi and his son, respectively. Reading this book helped solidify my current thoughts about how I live my life too, which is neat but also still super heartbreaking…
This book is written in a way that will make many people uncomfortable or even angry but that doesn’t mean that what is said in here is not also true or at least worth pondering. Toni Morrison is right. This book is required reading. Please go and read it (and then tell me what you think)!
Foreign memoir – The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story by Hyeonseo Lee
This is a powerful look at what it is like to grow up in North Korea and then lose your identity several times in order to be free. I found this book both eye-opening about a world I know nothing about and also interesting in that it really makes you ponder the concept of being ‘spoiled.’ Now I really want to help out! Warning – I read most of this book all in one sitting so be careful – it sucks you in!
Humor – Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
This is an amazing book about depression (yeah you read that right – I put it under the humor section). Jenny Lawson does a great job being brutally honest about what it’s like to live with depression and anxiety disorders while also being hilarious. They might not seem like they would go well together but I assure you, this book is incredible. If you have ever suffered from depression and/or anxiety OR if you know someone who has, please pick up this book and read it. You will not be disappointed.
Serious Comic – Bitch Planet Vol. 1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine DeLandro, Taki Soma, and Robert Wilson
Bitch Planet is about a society where women must conform to societal norms (i.e. whatever men want). If not, they are labeled “non-compliant” and shipped off to Bitch Planet. This is an amazingly smart comic with a unique perspective on modern feminism. If you consider yourself a feminist, read this. If you don’t, too bad- you still have to read this. It’s totally necessary for everyone. I can’t wait for more issues!
Fun note about being non-compliant: The women who are sent to Bitch Planet have NC (for non-compliant) tattooed onto them. This has inspired many “non-compliant” fans of the comic to also get NC tattooed on them! I think that’s really neat! I don’t have any tattoos so I had to get NC nail wraps so I could add my name to the list of non-compliant individuals out there (see below).
PS – The individual issues of this comic are really neat because each issue contains a feminist essay at the end. The essays didn’t end up in the trade paperback so it’s worth trying to get a hold of the issues (or finding the essays).
Sweet glow-in-the-dark NC Bitch Planet nail wraps from Espionage Cosmetics! Note: cats like to play with glow-in-the-dark nails at night… you were warned…
Fun Comic – Lumberjanes Volumes 1 and 2 by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke A. Allen, and Maarta Laiho
This story is about 5 girls who attend “Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s camp for Hardcore Lady-types” and have all sorts of adventures. It’s really fun, has great art, and how can you not like a book where someone shouts “Holy bell hooks!”?! Also if you were ever in Girl Scouts, this book is for you (though I think being a Lumberjane would have been waaaaaaay cooler than being a Girl Scout).
PS – My friend T did a really good job getting me obsessed with comic books this year so this category was really hard to do because I read some really fantastic ones. So here are some more great options:
If you like going on supernatural adventures with some really cool girls, you should read Rat Queens
If you like epic sci-fi stories with amazing art, you should read Saga
If you like awesome women superheroes, you should read Miss Marvel and Squirrel Girl
If you like really pretty art and creepy western-ish stories, you should read Pretty Deadly
Cobalt’s top choice – The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
He didn’t read a lot from 2015 this year (too busy reading for classes!), so he’s gonna go with this one. The novel is a great satire of young adult books for people who notice too many similarities in that market. Definitely worth your time.
I am super happy Cobalt picked this book because Patrick Ness is one of my favorite young adult authors!
Now it’s your turn to weigh in. What did you read this year? Did you read any of these books? Did you love them or hate them? Tell me everything! Also have a Happy New Year!!! Any traditions?! Any New Years resolutions? I am struggling with mine because I want to use the same one I used this year but I think that might be cheating…
We have a lot to talk about today so let’s get started!
France
What to say?! My heart broke when I first heard the news and I’ve continued to feel uneasy about this situation since then. I’m so sad that this keeps happening – with the few crazy members of a culture wreaking havoc on so many people they don’t know. It breaks my heart to see a city that I love filled with terror. Plus I am sad about all the other places are being attacked and no one is talking about them. It also breaks my heart seeing people younger than me committing suicide to hurt other people. And finally, I worry about the anti-Islam backlash this attack is going to cause… Be careful with your blame everyone… :-/
Science!
For all of you who got excited about my post last week, yay! I am so excited too! I got a lot of comments concerning “who to trust?” considering anyone (including yours truly) can talk about science on the internet these days. Also I got a great question about what types of jobs we scientists can get these days (excellent question and super relevant to me as I am on the market for a specific type of job that may or may not exist right now). Finally, I had some general comments about what it feels like to talk about science with people who “get it.” I can’t wait to address all of these questions and comments. Soon… >_<
Tolerance vs. Acceptance
Last week, I spoke on a panel of Tolerance vs. Acceptance on the CU campus. I think it turned out really well! The room was packed! The first part of the panel was to ask our audience to discuss the definitions of tolerance vs. acceptance and we found that it was much easier to define tolerance over acceptance. I talked about how “tolerance” to me means being acknowledged but not being invited to “the party” that everyone else is talking about/attending. We decided that acceptance would then be being invited to the party and asked to dance! I talked about how I was at a loss about what to do with feeling accepted – I can’t figure out how how I got there. I don’t understand that I can just be accepted as I am. Clearly I had to have done something “right” to make people like me? Then everyone else started sharing their own personal stories about what acceptance looks like to them. It came down to opening up and being authentic with each other as well as being curious about people’s lives. So we practiced these in small groups! I feel much more closer to my fellow panel members after that and I hope everyone else in the audience feels closer to their group members now too! I think it was a pretty successful panel. I’ve heard a lot of really interesting stories about what it feels like to be an undergrad/grad student, postdoc, faculty, or staff on CU’s campus and excellent personal examples of what tolerance vs. acceptance looks like in general. The stories have continued over the course of this week and I hope people keep talking about this issue!
Speaking of this panel – I will be on the radio this morning at 8:35 am (it looks like you can stream it live or listen to an mp3 recording on that website) talking about this panel and the new seminar series I helped start at CU. Check it out!
Snow!
I turned 30 last week!!! How does this happen?! Anyway, to celebrate my birthday and the fact that we had an unusually warm weekend, Cobalt and I went to Golden Gate State Park and ended up doing a 3 mile hike around in the snow. I injured my knees this past summer and have been not allowed to do any exercise besides walking for the past few months. It felt pretty good to be able to play a little in the snow with minor knee pain. I’m slowly getting better…
Now it’s your turn: What’s the weather like for you? I think everything is shifted back a month for us – nice October weather goin’ on for us in Colorado… not so great for people who like to ski though. Also – tell me your definitions of tolerance vs. acceptance or give me an example of what it feels like to be tolerated vs. accepted!
Challenge:
In the tree, I spy a shark “star,” a skeleton, a sheep from Germany, Ice Batman, Ice BatDracula, and a buffalo. Can you find them?
Let’s talk about the tree:
This is my first year ever having my own Christmas tree and look how cute and tiny it is! I love it already. I hope Cobalt likes it too (he put the skeleton in it afterall). I like to think that the Ice bats are guarding the tree against evil… :D
An artsy picture of the top: Poncho the “star” and Jörg the German sheep say hi from the top of the tree!
Let’s talk about Potassium:
Whew you guys… trying to finish a PhD is hard work! I apologize so much for being gone but life is just ridiculous. Recently I’ve:
watched Catching Fire (it was good! I liked it!)
done 4 16 hour imaging experiments (I start up the microscope and then go home, sleep, and then come in early and turn it off)
flown to Oklahoma to spend Thanksgiving with Cobalt’s family
discovered that minus the French Country station (which is hilarious because it played a song called “My horse is dead” in French), Sirius XM radio is not all that exciting
Made delicious gravy for two different Thanksgiving celebrations
Probably done more!
Let’s talk about you guys:
How were your Thanksgivings? Are you excited about the holidays? Tell me something about your holiday traditions. What have you been up to?
Today is a random assortment type of a post. Here we go:
Lately I’ve been:
Doing an Instagram photo challenge with my friends – some of my favorite entries are belowThis was day 3: 5pm
This was day 6: self portrait
Teaching high school students about DNA/heredity/genetics research. I got them excited about the concept by first having them extract DNA from strawberries using household supplies (dish soap, water, salt, and rubbing alcohol). The boys thought it was COOL and the girls thought it was GROSS but it got them asking questions.
This was also an Instagram Challenge pic. Luckily for me, the day of the DNA workshop was also day 4: food
Making delicious egg and bacon sandwiches in home made biscuits and pondering how to make Cobalt’s and my meals more healthy but also delicious while on a budget… Ideas?
Yummmmmmmmm
Running another glow in the dark 5K and actually running it this time (last time I was out of shape and it was so disorganized there was no way we could actually run anyway…)Potassium and A before the race with all their glowy stuff on
Potassium, A, and Cobalt being silly before the race…
Finally getting around to hanging the beautiful wall hanging Cobalt and I got as a (late) wedding present from a family friend
I am so mesmerized by the patterns on this quilt…. I could stare at it all day.
Getting excited about art and painting and the idea of art journals?
Finishing my challenge of reading 50 books this year (up to 53 now… guess I should go back to trying to tackle Crime and Punishment…)
Feeling super excited for all my friends who just got engaged or married recently!!!!!!!! So much love! Also, if any of my said engaged friends want some sweet engagement pictures, I happen to know someone who’s pretty good at that kind of stuff… her name’s Potassium… Seriously. Let me know! I would love to take some pictures for you!
Gustav wonders why we aren’t still skiing because he wants to make it all the way to the Flatirons you can see behind the hill we are on…
It’s spring break here in Colorado. Unfortunately for grad students like me who are done with our classwork, spring break doesn’t really mean much except that there are less undergrads everywhere. We still have to go to lab and we still can’t park on campus because spring break doesn’t count as a holiday for the crazy parking police. Booo…
Even with that said, my spring break has been pretty exciting so far. First my mom came to visit this weekend! We had so much fun even though it snowed almost a foot (yeah Colorado doesn’t really get the whole “spring” concept). Below is a list of fun activities that my mom and I did together:
We went out to lunch at this fancy French restaurant in Boulder. We pretended we were in Paris and babbled a little bit in French while eating our super fantastic meals… mmmmm
We made homemade rosemary crackers from scratch… Oh man they were so easy to make and so delicious. I wish I could post some for you guys to try on here…
We watched the crazy snowy USA vs Costa Rica game (which happened in Commerce City, CO… not too far from here) on Spanish television and screamed GOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL along with the newscasters. I also babbled along with them in Spanish whenever I was happy that I knew a word or phrase.
We made delicious shrimp tacos for dinner for Cobalt since he had to work late.
We braved the crazy snowy streets to go run some errands and get tasty breakfast at Mom’s favorite breakfast restaurant here: The Buff (it’s on Man vs. Food – the Boulder edition if you want to learn about it).
We had a party for the 50th anniversary of The Birds because it was mostly filmed about a 30 min drive from my hometown/where Cobalt and I stayed on our minimoon and because my mom had never seen it. I always get super homesick when I watch it so it was nice to watch it with my mom…
I worked on trying to make alligator earrings in a similar style to my shark earrings…
We planted the seeds for Cobalt’s and my summer garden. Obviously they won’t be heading outside for a while…
Yay! Mini plant greenhouse!
Did I forget anything Mom?
After my mom left, I took advantage of the crazy snow everywhere and went cross country skiing around the hill by my house. No one else was out so it was a peaceful adventure through the fluffy snow for me and my sharks (Gustav is featured in the picture on top).
And now for the reason why I didn’t write on Thursday last week – I’ve been working extra hard in lab (except for when my mom was here) so that I can take some time off to actually have a spring break. Cobalt, our friend A, and I are road trippin’ to Dallas to see our friend Jem later this week! So exciting (so excited about WARMTH too…)! So I might not write this Thursday either… Or maybe I’ll make Jem cowrite a post with me (you were warned Jem… ;)). Jem and I have already planned to work on our street photography techniques as she shows us Dallas. Also, maybe Jem and I can finalllllly get our Etsy store up and running! So much excitement!
Now it’s your turn. What kinds of things do you do with your family when you visit them or they visit you? Is it spring there yet? What is your ideal spring break activity? Do you want that tasty cracker recipe? Have you been to Dallas? If so what do you think of it?
I apologize for having a weird posting schedule this week. I’ve been trying to fight off this stupid sneaky cold all week. Do you know what I mean when I say sneaky? Let me give you some examples from my week.
I felt fine until midnight when I ended up keeping both me and Cobalt awake coughing up a storm. It was pouring rain outside so neither Cobalt nor I wanted to get up and go to the store to get cough medicine. Maybe if I had been coughing earlier (when it wasn’t raining), I could have gone to the store then but noooooo…
I went to my soccer game feeling normal but in the middle of the game, the cold attacked and made it hard to breathe.
I was walking to the bus stop by way of the library to return a book and I was so out of it from the death cold that I slipped on the grass and ended up face down in my apartment complex’s parking lot… booo…
Anyway, thanks to the little hints this cold keeps dropping, I’ve been trying to take it easy in the evenings this week (minus the day I played soccer) and yesterday I managed to rearrange things in the lab so I could take the afternoon off. I went home and made myself tea and soup before settling into my bed. I got a lot of reading done, which was good because I have a growing pile of books that I am currently in the middle of right now. I’m not quite sure how that happened. Maybe I will write a post about that next week!
So tell me about your week! Or about your favorite things to do when you feel a little under the weather. Doing anything fun this weekend? I am planning some awesome things so come on, cold! It’s time to leave.
Crazy that in 4 months it will be August and 4 months from today, Cobalt and I will be married for one day! That means we have a little over 3 months left to prepare. So I thought I would discuss some of the things we have been working on lately. Most of the big things are out of the way so it’s just on to the little details. THERE ARE SO MANY DETAILS. Just letting you know in case you didn’t already know.
Details (in no apparent order):
Where/when to have the bachelor/bachelorette parties
Our wedding is pretty much a destination wedding for most of the guests, excluding anyone who actually lives in my home town, so we thought it would be mean to have a separate weekend/location for parties. We’ve currently planned to frolic in San Francisco with our guests at our respective parties (we have yet to determine whether they will meet up) a few days before the wedding. That way everyone (including Cobalt and me) only has to travel once. As for the details of the parties… eh… not so much yet. We just wanted to nail down a day at least so our guests could start to book their plane tickets/hotel reservations.
Where Cobalt and I are staying the night of our wedding
Yeah… we really should figure that one out…
Registry
This one is almost done. In fact, I even posted our registries on the wedding website… though we are still updating one of them as we remember more things. Whew. Thanks Lauren for suggesting Myregistry.com to us! :)
Rings
Are still driving us crazy. We have decided to get matching titanium rings from Minter and Richter but we have had a hard time deciding exactly which rings we want and an even harder time getting sized for them. Since they are titanium, they can’t really be resized (but they will make you a new ring for 50% off if you need to change your size) so we really want to have the rings fit (well duh…). Back in February when we were visiting Cobalt’s family, we went and got our fingers sized at the local jewelers. Then a few weeks ago, we went to a jewelers here because someone (me) forgot their size (sorrrrrrry). They measured both of our fingers again and the sizes were completely different than the ones we got earlier. So yeah… Mysterious. Minter and Richter actually sell a ring sizer. I think it’s time we buy that guy!
Ceremony
Actually is outlined! We have a good idea of how we want it to run and we have two offiants (cuz we’re special like that. ;)). Now we just need to figure out the details (sooooo many…) like vow-writing, songs we want, what to do about music (live vs. recorded), etc. Woot.
Flowers
Cobalt and I are getting married in a garden (see above picture – that’s what it looks like in August… and why we pretty much fell in love with the place instantly) so we are not investing too much time and energy into flowers. I have contacted a florist about the availability and pricing of the flowers I want in my bouquet (anemones) and the flowers I want my bridesmaids to hold (Stargazer lilies) but they are not responding… So I think I should probably get on that…
Gifts
Cobalt has ordered his groomsmen their gifts but I am still having issues finding the perfect gift(s) for my girls. I just want to get something both special and meaningful but also useful/something that they will actually wear/use, you know? Blahhhhh… Back to the searching. Sorry I can’t talk much about it but I know that some of our groomsmen and bridesmaids actually read this blog (hi! and Thanks for reading!). We also need to put our heads together about gifts for our families. Ooooo…
Centerpieces, favors, etc
Still thinking fortune cookies for the favors but they will probably be felt instead of crochet because then Cobalt can actually help me make them. Centerpieces… BLAHHHHHHHH… yeah… that goes into the category of things that we should think about… also table numbers and seating charts. Everything table related, really…
Wedding Showers
I have two lined up. One in my home town and one in Cobalt’s home town. Getting to Cobalt’s home town is drivable so we actually have a date set for that one. Need to set a date for the other one but I’ve been kind of waiting for an airline sale so I can actually get to it… >_<
Honeymoon
Cobalt and I are too poor to afford a honeymoon after this crazy wedding. We hope that one day we can go to France and also New York City (in the same trip preferably) but for now, we are thinking about chilling for a few days around my home town and maybe going ziplining through the redwoods. Oooooo…
What was your favorite detail to plan for your wedding? Or if you’re not married, what are you the most excited about planning? Anyone want to finish planning our wedding?! :D Do you have anything you’d like us to talk about in future wedding Wednesday posts? Any questions about how we did something or how far along we are with planning something?
PS – Garden update: now we have THREE lemon cucumber sprouts and one spinach sprout!!!!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D (be happy I didn’t postpone the Wedding Wednesday post another day with more pictures of baby plants…)
Potassium Photography 