I love the Flatirons above Boulder when they are lightly dusted in snow… I think it’s my favorite version of them…
Hard to believe these guys were on fire only a few months ago…
In other news, I voted last night. Have you?
In other other news, what are you up to this weekend?! It’s Halloween weekend for us and then my mom comes to visit! :D
I promise, professional wedding pictures are coming soon… The proofs are supposed to be uploaded any time between now and tomorrow. It’s making me ridiculously impatient now that I know that we will almost have them. I check the website pretty much every hour…. Hopefully, next week’s Wedding Wednesday will be filled with glorious wedding photos. If not, never fear, the post will still be interesting. :)
Anyway, today we are going to talk about rings! I have been wanting to do this post for a while but I decided I would wait until the ring debacle was over and now it finally is. So here we go!
Cobalt and I ordered lovely titanium rings from Minter and Richter and they arrived in California shortly before we did (thus, my mom was too impatient to wait for me to get home and opened the package without us… :-/). They were packaged in wonderful red and black tissue paper (the effect was only slightly ruined by my mom’s sneaking around with the package ;)) and nestled inside a little tiny black envelope in the center. They were so awesome! One problem… my ring didn’t fit.
Apparently I had totally underestimated the sizing when we had had the sizers a few months back and I had still guessed the wrong size! The wedding was in just a few days at this point and I was a stressed out bride who couldn’t deal with the idea that her ring didn’t fit. So we got married and poor Cobalt had to shove my tiny ring over my fat knuckle at the ceremony. After the wedding, I wore it on a necklace until we got back to CO.
It might sound crazy but I was actually really upset about my ring not fitting. Maybe it was the lack of sleep that goes into planning and executing a wedding but regardless, there was some major unhappiness on my part. Meanwhile, Cobalt contacted Minter and Richter about the issue and they said they’d send out a new batch of sizers and make a brand new ring FOR FREE (these people are awesome, seriously). They sent me four new sizers that varied in 0.25 sizings for me to try out and wear. I found that my ring size is actually about 0.5 sizes bigger than my original ring! We ordered my new ring and it finally showed up last Friday. It was packaged again in an envelope in the middle of that red/black tissue paper, which meant that I got to open it (so it’s okay that you opened that other one, Mom)! I am so excited. Now I’m legit! ;)
Did you have any wedding drama? Did you have to get your ring(s) resized? Do you want Minter and Richter to make your wedding rings? We have a coupon for you… ;)
This weekend, I got to fly to Seattle for SACNAS, a conference for minority students in science/math/engineering/etc. I know I have many friends in Seattle so before you get mad at me for not telling you I would be up there, know that I spent the majority of my time in Seattle recruiting students to come to grad school at CU and talking to potential future employers. I did get to spend a lot of time with my sister who was also at the conference with her grad school. It was a ton of fun to wander around the conference with her. We got stuffed stem cells from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center booth, caught up on our lives (the last time we saw each other was for my wedding), and kind of freaked people out. “Uh… Are you guys… related?” Ahahahaha… My first day in Seattle, we headed to the aquarium before going to the conference. I loved the Seattle Aquarium when I was in Washington for undergrad so it was nice going back. We learned a lot of neat facts about fish and marine mammals.
Here are some pictures from our day at the aquarium (taken with my iPhone because I didn’t feel like flying with my DSLR):
The octopus was lurking in the corner of its tank…
We really liked this fish!
There’s a cuddlefish hiding in this picture…
Sisters in Seattle! Look at the sweet skull hat she found for me! :)
Picture at the top – Mt. Rainier, which is the 14’er that looms over Seattle, and the mountains to the south of it. I took that picture from the plane.
It was so nice being back in Washington after so long. I love that state. Seattle is probably one of my favorite cities in the US. Plus I got to see my sister, which was awesome. Booo… I hate that we live so far apart… :(
What did you guys do this weekend? What is your favorite city in the US? Have you been to Seattle (next time I go, I promise I will go for a longer time and I will actually let people know so we can hang out!)? Do you live far away from your family? How do you handle that? It makes me sad. :(
Craziness here in Colorado. We got our first taste of winter this weekend with lows in the 20s and highs in the 30s. Thrilling. It’s all back to “normal” now – I think it almost reached 70 yesterday! Unfortunately, I am going to be really busy this week (giving presentations at two different lab meetings and then going to a conference) so I probably won’t post much. Never fear though, I leave you with this awesome picture from this weekend. That’s Finn the shark watching A drive…
This past Saturday, Cobalt and I went up to Aspen with our friends A, J, K, T, and L to continue our search for fall (which officially started this weekend). The seven of us checked into our condo and immediately headed for the fancy hot tubs and pool.
Then we spent the rest of the evening feasting on Chinese delicacies mostly made by T, J, and K, though we all helped. There was sooooo much food that we all totally overstuffed ourselves.
In the morning, L and K made us an epic breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon, pancake balls stuffed with red beans, and Korean pancakes. Oh and Cobalt found this crazy Dragonfruit when we were shopping on Friday night so we ate that too. Then we headed up to the Maroon Bells (two mountains near Aspen) to check out the beautiful changing aspens (all that gold in that top picture comes from the aspens). It turned out to be a wonderful day for running around and being silly in the midst of these gorgeous trees and mountains. I ended up being a crazy photographer who would lie down in the middle of the trail just to get the perfect shot.
The first set of pictures I took were pictures of everyone jumping up and down. T was especially good at it as you can see in this picture.
Jumping
Then we decided to take some “Hunger Games” shots, so named because I would focus on the aspens and hold my camera steady while everyone else ran through the trees, getting slightly blurred, not unlike the way the Hunger Games movie was filmed.
Hunger Games
Finally, here is a picture of part of our group towards the end of the trip, J and K had already left at this point.
This trip was so much fun. The drive to and from Aspen was beautiful (the changing trees made the scenery look painted gold), I had a ton of fun with my friends, I got to see the Maroon Bells (which I had never seen before), and I got to have a lot of fun being really creative with my DSLR. I was talking to A today about “life changing experiences” and how I feel like I’ve had a lot of them this year (getting married was obviously one). I think this trip was definitely a life changing experience too. It was so neat to see everything come together – from shopping for food with T, A, and Cobalt on Friday night, to riding the bus up to the Maroon Bells, to running around like crazy people through the aspens… I think it all lead to me feeling at peace with myself and the world for a bit and that was awesome.
Because I posted this today and not on Monday, all bets are off on what the rest of the week will look like. Also, if you want to hear more about the trip/see more pictures/learn about how I took some of them, I have about 173 more pictures left so I can always post more in another post if anyone is interested.
Now it’s your turn. Is fall happening where you are right now? Do the trees change color? What is one of the best life changing experiences that has happened for you recently? Let’s discuss.
Wednesday morning was a lovely morning for chai tea with breakfast…
Oh my, what is that in my chai?!
Whatever it is, it’s got teeth!
AHHHHH THERE’S A SHARK IN MY CUP!!! (runs away screaming)
Who would have guessed sharks liked chai? Btw, this is one of our favorite wedding gifts. :D
Yay! It’s Friday! Any fun plans for you guys this weekend? How was this week for you guys? Crazy? Acceptable? A little bit of crazy and a little bit of acceptable? I’ve been working like crazy in lab while my boss is at a conference in France (jealous…). So determined to have something exciting to tell her when she comes back…
Also, do you have an iPhone (or are you getting the iPhone5 today)? Tell me what you think of the new iOS! I’m kind of upset about the new Maps app.
This weekend, Cobalt and I traveled to NM for an amazing wedding! I took some great pictures of the bride and groom but we got back home so late last night that I didn’t even have time to upload them from my camera. Plus we had a pretty stressful weekend involving getting leaky tire on Cobalt’s car fixed (we got to drive halfway there on a donut tire!). So instead you get a picture Fred, my sister in law’s cat. S and Cobalt were outside pulling Virginia Creeper from the side of the house and Fred was so curious about what was going on…
Question of the day: Cobalt and I drove our friend The Chocolate Pudding down to NM and we got super hyper and crazy on the drive back up. What are your road trips like? Do you have ridiculous conversations or is it quiet and mild?
Well… it’s been a month since our wedding (officially on Tuesday). To celebrate our one monthversary, Cobalt and I went out to a tasty dinner last night and then came home to try our frozen wedding shark cake. Our cake lady suggested that we eat our cake on our one month anniversary instead of on our one year anniversary. This turned out to be a fine suggestion because I am not sure this cake would have been very tasty next year. As it was, this poor shark cake got dragged 21 hours across the US and then shoved into our freezer so it had seen better days. It still tasted pretty delicious; it just had a hint of freezer to each bite. Awww sharky…
I actually got really sad when we were trying the cake because I feel like all the celebrating for our wedding is officially over now. I mean, it’s been over for about a month really but this just seemed so final. Just reminds me that Cobalt and I should never stop celebrating and enjoying each other’s company as husband and wife. Just because the wedding is over doesn’t mean that we should stop partying yet. We’ve got a whole lifetime of celebrating ahead of us…
I think I’ve only got one to two more wedding posts until we get our wedding pictures back from our photographer so I think this blog is going to go back to more of a photojournal of a day in the lives of Potassium and Cobalt. I hope you’ll stick around to see what happens next!
And now it’s your turn. If you’re married, did you eat frozen wedding cake on your one year anniversary or are you like my parents who have 27 year old wedding cake somewhere in the bottom of their freezers? How was your cake? If you’re not married, would you want to eat year old wedding cake? Yummmm…
Woooo this is shaping up to be an epic weekend here in Boulder. Tomorrow marks the beginning of our football season at the University of Colorado when we play the annual game against our rivals, Colorado State University. During half time for our home football games, our mascot Ralphie the buffalo, gets to run around on the football field! This picture is from Tuesday when my friend A and I took a break from science to watch them practice on the soccer field by our new science building.
Then on Sunday, President Obama will be back to visit the school as part of his campaigning tour (wooooo CO is a swing state!). Craziness. Too bad Cobalt and I will be working when they hand out the tickets… Though I did get to see him when he was at our school in April of this year…
Also, today A has her oral qualifying exam (scary 2 hour test where three professors ask you tons of questions to make sure you know the biochemistry and chemistry required to adequately do your PhD project. If you pass, you get to become an official PhD candidate) so wish her luck! I think she will do great! Go A!!! :)
Well on Wednesday night this week, Cobalt and I got to continue our tradition of seeing a musical every year. Last year we saw Next to Normal and two years ago, Cobalt didn’t live here yet so I saw Legally Blonde with my friend C. Legally Blonde is very silly and Next to Normal is very serious so if we continued with this pattern, the musical this year needed to be a funny one. So we went to see Book of Mormon. We were apparently quite lucky to get tickets because it is only here for two weeks and it sold out in a few hours. Luckily for us, back in March I got the e-mail from the Denver Center for Performing Arts saying that the tickets for the Book of Mormon were on sale and Cobalt and I were able to maneuver through the epically slow and overpopulated website and get tickets! Yay!
We started out our evening in Denver by meeting up with our friends J and K for tacos at Pinche Tacos. This restaurant sells ritzy street tacos, which I’ll admit is a bit odd for someone like me who grew up eating actual Mexican street tacos. They were very good though and it was kind of like sushi happy hour where you get a list of all the possible tacos and their various prices (ranging from $2.95 to $4.50 each) and you just check off the ones you want. Cobalt and I each tried four different tacos. Yum. Here’s a picture of our awesome friends pre tacos…
Then we headed to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts for the show. We got there pretty much in time to find our seats before the show but I snapped a few pictures first….
When we bought our tickets, we were in such a rush to actually get tickets that we settled for the ones in the balcony. We had never sat there before but it was kind of neat. You are waaaaaay up in the rafters and your seats are so high off the floor of the balcony that there is a little bar for you to put your feet on – it got a bit uncomfortable in my fancy wedge sandals though… I wish I had worn flats. Anyway, the show! It was funny but also terrible in that South Park kind of way that I am sure many of you are familiar with. Sitting in the balcony, we had a great view of the stage which made it awesome to watch all the dance numbers. The songs were very typical Broadway type songs… except there was more than once where the F bomb was dropped in the middle of some happy musical number… which was kind of startling at first even though we expected it. All in all, I think it made for a very amusing evening and I am glad we got to go. :)
Anyone have a favorite musical? I think my favorite is Wicked… or the Phantom of the Opera (my first musical ever…). Or a recommendation for next year’s “serious” musical? OR Anyone doing something amazing this weekend? :D
Potassium Photography 