Potassium and her wee holding Patti and Smokey the day the kittens joined the family.
A long time ago (read: before braces and growing up and all that jazz), Potassium and her family adopted two tiny kittens to befriend their older cat Blackberry. They named the kittens Patti and Smokey. Patti, the runt of the litter, was so tiny that the vet refused to draw her blood for the customary FeLV test at her new cat exam. “She needs all the blood she can get!” the vet commented, adding that Smokey’s test results would be fine for both of them.
In addition to being so tiny, Patti had epically long fluffy fur, she had the tiniest squeak of a meow, and she didn’t even know how to purr (Potassium and her friend G had to teach her). Potassium and her family fell in love with her instantly. Then Patti grew up into an even fluffier little puffball who loved being petted (so much so that she would bite your butt if you were “ignoring her” by petting one of the other cats), thought that cars were her friends (that was scary – she would flop down right in front of people pulling into the driveway so she could get her belly rubbed), and was our adorable little Snowbeast with her little pantaloon pants.
In case you didn’t believe me about her pantaloon pants…
Unfortunately after almost 17 years with our family, Patti succumbed to heart disease earlier this week. We love you and miss you, little puff!
Helloooo everyone! Happy new year! I hope you guys had a great Christmas and a happy New Year (and other happy holidays too)! Cobalt and I traveled to see both of our families and it was great having time to catch up with everyone. The pictures in this post come from my family’s holiday pictures!
Potassium and Cobalt being photobombed by Finn. Play close attention to Finn’s fin – he’s moving so you can see the books behind it! :)Fun with my sis! :D
Are you guys excited about 2014?! Any New Years resolutions? Cobalt and I are busy coming up with a name for ours. Last year ours was called “Operation Go for It!” and I think it worked out awesomely! Tune in later to find out all about this year’s soon! It’s going to be an epic year with me hopefully defending in the summer! I wonder where we will be by this time next year… I hope you are excited about all of this because I am… though also pretty scared. This is the first time in my life that I don’t know what I am planning on doing next! Cobalt feels similarly…
Okay, your turns. Tell me about your holidays and new years resolutions!
All the steampunk Disney princesses because you guys asked for them. Can you figure out who is who?! :)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Fashion Show Recap! Today’s post has a sneak preview of runway pictures! Are you excited?! I’m excited. Before we get to the pictures, I just want to talk about being a photographer at a fashion show. I was stationed at the end of the runway with a few other photographers and a giant spotlight. The models were supposed to stop for ~ 5 seconds and pose for us, then walk a few feet and pose again before returning back down the runway. The spotlight turned out to be awesome for lighting the models so that we didn’t need to use our flashes but it was hard getting the settings just right on the camera. Each position the models stopped in had slightly different lighting conditions so I was constantly switching exposure time and the aperature back and forth to make sure I got nice pictures of the models at each stop. It was kind of fun! Also, in order to get the models and their outfits to not be overexposed, I ended up sacrificing anything not directly in the spotlight – creating a sort of halo effect around the model. I think it still looks cool, though I am sad that it’s hard to see some of the models’ shoes…
On to the pictures!
I love the back of her dress! Gorgeous… and ruffles!I know we saw her on Tuesday but she rocked her runway pose! :D Also her outfit and the outfit above are by the same designer.We saw her on Tuesday too but look at the back of that dress! So neat!I like her pants! Also I like that her vest is super shiny! :)I love this picture. I love the motion of the dress and I love her facial expression!Aw yeah! This is my friend C rockin’ this shirt. Same designer as the dress above. Beautiful work and C is a great model! :DThis is one of the outfits C designed. I love that it’s a hoodie! :DSteampunk princess! :DSteampunk princess part 2! :D
I love her scarf! I also love its reflection on the floor!
Yay pictures! Tell me what you think! Do you have a favorite? What’s going on for you guys? At CU, finals week starts tomorrow (our first year has to proctor an exam at 7 am tomorrow!) but I am so far removed from classes as a 6th year PhD student, all the bustling and the stress is kind of confusing for me. I just go to lab every day workin’ on ma science. I had an epic check list of things that I wanted to get done before Christmas but then the lamp for the microscope I was planning on using broke… and then some of my other science decided it didn’t feel like working either. Maybe it’s time for a vacation… It’s not all frustrating though; I finally succeeded in making something I have been working on since JULY. Whew… ahhhhh the life of a scientist. It’s ridiculous.
Okay that’s enough about me. It’s your turn – Talk to me! Go!
This weekend I got to be a photographer at a fashion show at CU! My friend C is a designer in the club and he invited me to come take pictures! It was really awesome. All of the designers are students at the school and I was so impressed by the talent my fellow students have! The outfits were all so unique and each designer’s story and selected pieces were so fascinating. I also liked hanging out with the models before the fashion show started. We had fun chatting about school, their outfits, their poses, everything! I can’t believe I was nervous when I arrived at school because as soon as I started taking pictures, I couldn’t stop smiling. I took over 1000 pictures! I’ll post some sneak previews here. Today we’ll have a look at everyone getting ready and then we’ll get to the runway later this week! Are you excited?! I am! :D
This is one of C’s models. She used eyeshadow to make her lips blue like that! Later she added more blue to her eyes and then totally rocked the runway! :)This model’s designer had all her models dressed as Victorian birds. I loved this girl’s woodpecker dress. She had an amazing train (just wait till the runway pictures!).The girls practicing their walks. The peacock outfit was amazing. The detail of the feathers was fantastic.This girl designed and modeled her own dress. It was gorgeous.Practicing poses for the runway!I loved the way her makeup looked with her curls. :)This model is Steampunk Ariel! I love it! :) Also, the designer of this outfit (and the next one) is a double major: biology and biochemistry. Potassium is super impressed.Steampunk Rapunzel! :)
Wow! Are you excited for the runway pictures?! I am and I’ve been looking at them for the past few days!
Now it’s your turn: tell me what you think of these outfits! Also, tell me something you’d love to learn how to do or that you are currently learning to do! I’m loving being a photographer right now that’s for sure but I would also love to get better at clothing design myself! :)
Ugh! Looking at this picture makes me miss the fall colors already (pic on the left was taken at the end of October and pic on the left was taken this Wednesday)!
So we got a pretty good snow storm earlier this week. It would have been fine if it hadn’t been followed by ridiculously low temperatures… I woke up yesterday and it was -11 F outside. I’m originally from California… we do not do below 0 F there. Luckily for me, I have a ton of data analysis to do so I stayed home working on my computer while burrowing in blankets and snuggling with stuffed sharks all day. At one point, Cobalt even brought me the fanciest hot chocolate ever! Maybe I should stay home and work again today!
I did actually end up braving the cold last night to go to a girls night where we attempted to decorate Christmas ornaments. My attempts are below – there’s a shark on the clear one (as well as a shark in the 3 of 2013) and a skull for Cobalt on the red one!
I’m super happy that these guys didn’t get messed up upon exposure to the 3 degree F weather on the drive home…
What temperature is “cold” to you? Can you handle -11 F? HOW?!?!? Anyway, what do you have planned for the weekend? I have some pretty exciting things planned! I can’t wait to tell you about them next week! :D
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?
He has a great point… Where have I been? I left off with promises of pictures and stories from all my adventures (including pictures from Germany!) and then I disappeared into the ether.
I’d say it’s safe to say that grad school temporarily won the fight against my time. This year has been crazy as I work hard to finish my project and figure out what’s next, etc etc etc… It’s definitely enough to cause a breakdown mmmm probably at least once a week. But really, that shouldn’t mean that you guys get ignored! You should be included so you can hear all about the insanity in real time! It’s crazy out there! Woooo!
Anyway, this post is mostly an apology (but not an excuse!) for my time away. Any requests for something you’d like to hear about? It’s been almost a month! A lot has happened (including my birthday!). As usual, I have pictures documenting almost everything. :D Also, how are you? Tell me everything! :) The holidays are coming up. Any fun plans?
I’ll leave you guys with one of my favorite pictures from my hike/fun with my new lens along the trails surrounding Boulder last weekend.
I just love how expansive it is. So much of the trail and the sky are included in the picture… And me! It’s weird that I have to be careful about my own shadow getting in pictures with the fisheye lens…
Hey everyone! I’m back from Germany! It was super fun! First of all, Heidelberg is an adorable town nestled in some mountains in Germany. You should be able to see that from that top picture here. The conference I went to was at EMBL which is a giant laboratory tucked into the forest above Heidelberg. I hung out with my friends as soon as I landed in Heidelberg (adventures will soon be posted) and then spent the next few days being bussed back and forth between the town and the lab for the conference. The conference was awesome. All of the talks were full of innovation and cool science (pretty sure that excitement was the only thing that kept me awake in the face of the death jetlag) and I made a lot of fun international friends! After the conference, I spent one day frolicking in Heidelberg and the surrounding areas with some of the cool people I met at the conference (again with the adventures being posted soon!).
Some more pictures:
Another favorite German word of mine is schloss or castle. I visited the castle with my friends the first day I was there and it was stunning. I learned so much European history… Look forward to a post on the schloss definitely. :)My last day there, my new found friend T and I went for an epic hike (involving us getting lost a lot) in the mountain next to Heidelberg. The trees were so interesting!
Anyway, now I am back in Colorado. I’m super jetlagged still but life is insane in lab. I have to prepare (read: do multiple experiments) to give a presentation in a few weeks and if I really want to graduate at some point, I have to come up with what will ultimately be the “story” for my thesis. There’s actually a lot to talk about regarding my feelings about graduate school right now so I think maybe that will be in its own post soon.
Random questions below:
How are you guys? Is there anything specific you want me to definitely mention in my Germany (or Boston or San Antonio) posts? Do you want to know my favorite German word (it’s tchüss! – it means bye!)? I’m super frustrated with science/lab right now. Does anyone have any advice for relaxing/getting through hard work times? In other news, I am super excited that Allegiant finally came out today (where was it on my 10 hr flight back from Germany last week?!). Is anyone else a fan of the Divergent trilogy?
In other news, my blog is 3 years old today!!!! How did this happen?!
Success! The cannolis, pizelles, and other Italian desserts made it safely back from Boston (despite getting teased by TSA about the fact that there is more than 3 oz of cream in the cannolis… :/). Yummmmmmmmm…
Hey all! I’m back from the first two of my three conferences, enjoying this little break before I head out to Heidelberg, Germany tomorrow for the third conference! Epic…
How have you guys been? I am all right, despite having a pretty major breakdown about science/life/careers/etc right before I left for the first conference (more on that when I get back from Germany). Both conferences turned out to be really fun.
First I was in San Antonio for SACNAS where I was one of three graduate students from the University of Colorado recruiting future grad students and students for our summer research program (SMART). SACNAS is awesome because it’s both a science conference (with talks and poster presentations etc) but also a huge celebration of all of the cultures that make up this country. It is just such a fun and supportive place to be (just what I needed after feeling so down the day before)! Plus I had a great time bonding with my fellow graduate students. They helped me finish the poster I presented in Boston (and will present in Heidelberg). It turned out really nicely so I am super grateful for their help!
This was from the Pow wow at SACNAS. So many beautiful outfits and dances. We got to dance too and it was awesome!We got serenaded by a mariachi band while out at dinner in San Antonio!
After recruiting at SACNAS, I took off for Boston for the Salmonella conference! I ended up flying with a bunch of retired Texans who were heading to the east coast to watch the leaves turn. We bonded right away in line for the airplane and it made for a pretty funny experience. Upon arriving in Boston, I met up with my lab mate Titanium and my boss and we headed to the conference together. The conference was kind of intense… who knew there could be 5 days worth of talks (and posters) about Salmonella?! For the most part it was very interesting and exciting to learn about all the different ways people can go about studying such a vicious pathogen. I now feel inspired to build my own super team of scientists from all scientific backgrounds to try to answer some really hard question (let me know if you want to join… I’m going to make us matching T-shirts!). It was also fun because 1) there were people from all over the world attending the conference (new friends!!!!) and 2) Boston turned out to be a really fun city to explore! I can’t wait to share some of my adventures with you but for now I will leave you with these pictures.
My favorite of the random pianos around Boston. I played Heart and Soul on it. :)Titanium with two of our new friends the last day in Boston! :)
And now I am off to Heidelberg for my final conference. I have been learning some German words/phrases (turns out German is a SUPER fun language to learn) while traveling to my other two conferences. How exciting! Also, I just got an e-mail from some friends over there who are going to pick me up as soon as I get to my hotel and take me exploring! I feel so lucky and excited for this opportunity but also nervous about traveling so far away (even though I just went to Paris) and terrified that I am going to get sick… Maybe I should go buy some Emergen-C….
Now it’s your turn: tell me anything! If you are unsure where to start, you can tell me about a time where you did a lot of traveling in your life. How did you keep from getting sick? How did you go about exploring where ever you were (eating at various restaurants, going on tours, walking around, etc)? What is your favorite activity to keep from getting bored on the airplane? :)
Hey all, life is currently causing me rage and anguish so instead of a post, I leave you with this picture of my awesome orange hair. Cobalt and I had a hair dying party this weekend to commiserate life being meh right now and I think my orange turned out pretty well!
Now if only it would stop fading epically…
PS- who wants to guess what fun color Cobalt’s hair is?
Potassium Photography 