at work, on the walk back through the hospital campus from getting our H1N1 shots, I explained the following to my coworker, Crystal:

"It's not that I mind nature. I enjoy nature when I pick a specific time to be in it. I just don't like my urban experience interrupted by nature."

so suck on that nature.

Poor Olive just threw up all over the floor in the living room...

so definitely no more human food (I think she OD'd on Thanksgiving).



edit: Google seems to suggest it was the cat food she was stealing at my parents house...

1. upload photos from chicago trip, post online

2. address wedding invites

3. put away laundry

4. clean up living room

5. wash white load

6. grocery shopping

7. gym

also - i really would like this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Queen-Mother-Official-Biography/dp/1400043042

and my nose still hurts. . .  and seems to be turning purple a little.

so i may have broken my nose - ish? i was chasing olive under the dining room table and i came down and cracked the bridge of my nose on the edge of the table.applying ice now - will see if i look like i got a nose job tmrw...

where the wild things are was really neat - go see it!

Tonight - had lovely dinner with Janet and saw T. R. Knight star in Parade which was good (awesome set and lighting - all the tech was awesome) but the people playing southerners had odd fake southern accents. T. R. Knight wasn't the most amazing singer but more than made up for it with some awesome acting. Very interesting and sad story.

Tomorrow - flying to Chicago to see Alex!

Next summer - The Lieutenant of Inishmore is playing downtown and I'm going to make Jon come see it with me. I saw it during it's first run in London way back in the day and it's really funny, dark humor.

now I'm packed, super tired and ready to get a little sleep before catching the airport shuttle in a few hours.

So I get the Martha Stewart email newsletter (don't judge) because I signed up for the Martha Stewart Weddings website . . . and because a small part of me wants to be Martha, or at least have her glue gun and world domination skills.

Anyway, based on the subject line of today's email - I'm going to go with Martha Stewart has offically run out of ideas:

Turn Your Photo into a Glitter Painting!‏

Yeah, you read that right. For those interested, full instructions can be found here.



Now, I'd like to see a crazy Twilight fan make an Edward *sparkly* skin glitter painting. That would be tragically awesome.

I sort of figured - but sweet! free flu and swine flu vaccines because I work on the grounds of the hospital! Plan is to get gabbed when I get back from Chicago (will be gone next Friday through Tuesday) so as not to have any side effects while traveling.
Also note to self: fill out paperwork tonight.

So I got accepted as part-time faculty at Cal State Northridge to teach an evaluation course next summer (sweet!) for their MPA program (not dealing w/ undergrads = super sweet!) and they mailed me the hiring paperwork to fill out – so I need to do that tonight/tmrw to give to them tomorrow afternoon.

And just when I thought it was safe to not worry about applying for grants and focus on reports I have due (which are plentiful on their own) – we’re going to be applying for a $10 million (longshot but boy-howdy that’s a lot of money) NIH grant. The we in this case isn’t just my office – it’s in coordination with someone at the USC of social work. I’m actually really excited to work with this person, I met her briefly while working for LA Net and know some people in common and she just seems really cool and smart – someone who I would get a lot out of working with. Also she has written a couple successful NIH applications so it makes our application as a whole more powerful.

It’s weird – but my schedule is sorta set up until the wedding:

Oct: seeing a play downtown with Janet a week from today; visit Chicago and see Alex the 9th through 13th; send out wedding invites
Nov: thanksgiving; an LOI due for a grant ap; power through the end of patient recruitment for a study; put in official time off request
Dec: Hanukkah/Christmas; two reports due; BIG CRAZY $10 mil grant application due
Jan: finish up wedding stuff; asthma grant due
Feb: wedding; honeymoon

The wedding week and following weeks are starting to shape up: work Mon, Tues, family (and anyone who wants to go) Disneyland trip Wed, bachelorette party Thurs, rehearsal and dinner Friday, wedding Sat, family/out of towners brunch Sunday, hang out with family Monday, leave for honeymoon Tues, honeymoon Tues – following Monday. We have an idea for the honeymoon so won’t share it yet – but I hope it’s what we end up doing.

Now for some totally unrelated thoughts on tv: how awesome is Glee? Totally brings me back to high school theater. Yay. As for House, I wasn’t ever into it then my mom got me into it then I watched reruns and liked it then I watched the 2 hr opener and really liked it but this week’s – not so much.

P.s. sunny and 90 degrees with windstorms - fun!

so i was out with janet and we were goofing around - basically looking at cheap-y jewelry that made our inner 13 yr olds squee (it didn't that they were playing spice girls, "i tell ya what i want what i really really want" either). basically there was a lot of "hmmm could this maybe be work appropriate?" "no. not so much due to the quarter sized rhinestone" (janet is a lawyer, i pretend to be a researcher) and i saw these:




didn't buy them but hot damn did my inner ghetto san bernardino self stand up and pay attention. and the best part was about an hour later i was still in full on "girlllllll let me tell you" mode. ah - it's fun that to have that surface every couple of months.

also, i think i know what janet's getting for hanukkah this year.


in other news, it seems to be trying to cool down. for those outside the so cal area - it has been over 100 degrees for the last couple of weeks. that really really sucks. it sucks for so many reasons, including but not limited to i'm sick of wearing summer work clothes and want to bust out the fall clothing already. but now its dropping to the 60s at night and the 80-90s in the day - not a huge improvement but i'll take what i can get.

Tonight is the first night I've seen trailers for the "Where the Wild Things Are" movie. It looks so cool.

My inner child is squee-ing. My inner (and outer) 26-year old is squee-ing. It just looks really neat and I like the music in the trailer.

I'm working on a grant application for hypertension and dyslipidemia clinical decision making. It's an NIH grant for $1.2 million and so far I've written 25-ish pages. single spaced. and now I'm doing edits on everything. ahh, fun stuff. I had to put up a reminder note over my computer that says, "Active voice = good; Passive voice = bad." The writing process is tough... my writing (thought you wouldn't know from lj posts) is dramatically improving because I'm being held to high standards. And I'm learning how to spell words like "dyslipidemia." I hope I can wrap things up earlier enough on Thurs to get to my dad's art show thingy. For the last couple of work days I've been putting in 10 hours compared to the normal 8 and it would be good to get out early the day before the application is due - but also is leaning towards unlikely because it's the day before the grant is due.

I watched the tivo of House tonight and it was really good. I laughed, I teared up a little at the end. It was good stuff.

doing second round of save the date cards - finally!

still need a few address tho...

tomorrow is looking to be super long - full day of grant writing so early night tonight!

so wedding is in 150 days!

dude. whoa.

there's a lot left to do and at the same time - we have a lot of things taken care of.

hmmm.

http://www.members.shaw.ca/gf3/circle-the-cat.html

i've circled the cat once so far...

Awesome-sauce news: was asked to teach an evaluation class at Cal-State Northridge next summer (!) for an MPA program - so I'll be teaching at the graduate level (!!!) - so guess who's going to be part-time faculty bitches? moi.

Not so awesome news: while I was accepted to present at the conference in Montreal, I don't think work is going to pay for it - since hotel+conf registration+air+food will be around $2,500. Still going to ask about it - since I would be presenting work stuff but I won't blame them if they say no - that's a lot of money. On the plus, maybe not going to Canada in mid-November is a smart idea when the wedding is like three months away. My weak valley girl blood can only take so much and I *will not* get sick before the wedding.

Weekend was pretty low-key. Discovered that goat cheese, basil and spinach omelet with side of strawberries is amazing stuff. Did some cleaning, grocery shopping, and football watching with Jon. Slept an amazing 13 hours on Friday night (8pm - 9am) (well he did more football watching, I read a book). Also got some ideas finalized with Jon re: the wedding and got the gold star stamp from our moms re our ideas. Tonight Jon has writer’s group so I’m gonna go for a run with Olive and then hit the gym.

Goal: start posting more. Also- get back into awesome grant-writing headset since the current grant I’m working on is due 9/25.

Bonus item: Crystal (my RA – an alum of my grad school and all around awesome person) and I had a late late late night last night doing some stats *by hand since we don’t have SPSS* and it was actually such a fun time. Nice to know some of those concepts from the 4+ years of stats I’ve had have stuck around.

So Jon and I went to San Diego for two days (Sun and Mon) - we dropped Olive off at the boarders and then hit the road. We stayed at the Padre Trail Inn - it was right across the street from Old Town San Diego and super cheap with the triple A discount. Anyway - day one was Old Town San Diego stuff and Seaport Village for dinner (I had she-crab soup - it was really good!). Day two was the San Diego Zoo. The weather both days was amazing - 70's - really welcome from 100+ in the valley. Traffic was super light going and coming - about two and a half hours both ways. All in all a great weekend get away trip!

( pictures ahoy! )

so when it comes time for "Olive 2" - i think we have to get a pug/shar pei mix (or called an ori pei) -






anyway - we're off to san diego!

tomorrow Jon and I are going to San Diego - we got a got deal staying here: http://www.padretrailinn.com/ in old town (what's up triple A discount).

plan is to do old town in the day, seaport village for dinner sunday night, and the zoo on monday before coming home.

quite the romantic getaway i think.


we're having a really good day today - hung out at the apartment, did a little laundry, snuggled and played with olive. for dinner we grilled steak and had potatoes and steamed veggies. while we were walking olive we picked up slices of homemade red velvet cake from this small family run italian place across the street.

mom: what did the dali lama say to the hot dog vendor?
me: . . .
mom: make me one with everything! *rimshot*

and unrelated:

I don't really get cold veggie and fruit soups.

It seems just like you're eating a smoothie in a bowl. I did enjoy the cherry gazpacho I had at Gordon Ramsey's West Hollywood restaurant - that had too much Worchester sauce to be smoothie like for my taste. The shrimp floating in it also was very un-smoothie like. However, I hold firm in my original thought: cold fruit and/or veggie soup = smoothie in a different container.