time goes by fast

this morning i got an email from my sorority saying something about celebrating 10 years of membership. my immediately reaction was, oh how cute, they're celebrating people who have been in the sorority for 10 years. then i realized that 2010 marks 10 years since *I* joined the sorority during my sophomore year of college. it is crazy how fast 10 years can go. it doesn't seem like college was THAT long ago.

i'm getting antsy for summer. one of my housemates was having a bit of a rough morning and was joking that it felt like a monday. i few minutes later i walked into the kitchen to observe him cleaning up his oatmeal which had exploded out of the bowl in the microwave. i told him to remember that it was monday. at that point, the three other people in the kitchen turned to me and said, wait, its monday? we all started laughing as we realized that it wasn't okay to make jokes about what day it is at this point in the semester. no one really knows what day it is. all they know is that the work load is picking up and summer can't come quick enough!

piano

i had a humbling (or in eric's words, terrifying) piano experience yesterday. the girl who normally plays the piano for our last church meeting on sunday had to leave before the closing hymn. so she happily points out before said meeting again that i play the piano. she asked me to find a song that i could play so i picked one of the one's i have been practicing...and then we decided i would just play the right hand of it because that would be easier. i sat nervously through the meeting and then sat down at the piano at the end of the meeting to play.

well, i played in recitals when i was a kid, but i have never played when people are singing while i am playing. so i played the song once through and then everyone started singing on the second time. needless to say, i messed up a lot. the first time i did it there was a pause but then everyone kept going and i started again where they were. this continued through all three verses with the third verse being the best as far as my playing was concerned. i am grateful for all the women who were singing and didn't let my errors disrupt the song.

it is amazing how you can practice by yourself and play BOTH hands with no errors...and then when i played in front of people who were singing i was only playing one hand (which is easier) and i messed up a lot. my friend lindsay informed me after church that that is pretty standard. she said her brother would play at home and it sounded amazing but when he played in church he'd mess up.

i practice for 30-60 minutes a few times a week, but this gives me all the more motivation to practice (which i happily did for a good hour and a half yesterday afternoon too). it also gives me more appreciation for the people who play every week in church and never seem to mess up!

sf

its been so long! eric and i went to sf for spring break. these are a few of the highlights.

boudin's for soup in a san francisco sourdough bread bowl.

playing with bubbles in the exploratium...if you're there check out the tactile dome!

flowers with leaves like clovers on 3/18 in muir woods.

hiking in the redwood forest in muir woods

driving across the golden gate bridge

eric and i at the oakland temple

the tulips were up at the oakland temple...SO beautiful!

eric and i on alcatraz island with san francisco in the background.

we had warm sunny weather the entire time we were there. as a result we made up for being sick the last time were in town.

we got back to austin last sunday night and hit the ground running. this semester is so busy its leaving little time for much else. i should be hearing back about the teaching fellowship i applied for soon. in the mean time, i'm currently working on another fellowship application...this one is a big one. it has to have all the components of a standard grant submitted to the national institutes of health for funding. other than that, i'm trying to get everything in the lab going to start my next data collection.

kehau and jason's wedding

last thursday i traveled to salt lake city, ut for the wedding of my good friends kehau and jason.
i had a blast helping out and meeting their families and just generally enjoying the festivities. here are some of the highlights:

kehau is from maui and had never seen snow falling from the sky before...
lucky for her the temperature on thursday went from really warm to winter wonderland, which continued through friday morning. we had to clear snow off the car (in case that wasn't obvious).

fortunately the sun came out friday afternoon and it warmed up a tad.
this is the slc temple where kehau and jason were married.

kehau and jason coming out of the temple...looking good as per usual.

i got to see lori and meet her husband james. so good to catch up with old friends!

jason and kehau chose to share their wedding day with jason's grandparents. it was their 62nd wedding anniversary. they are both in their late 80s but i never would have guessed had i not been told. i am so glad i got to meet them--they are so cool!

kehau forgot to throw her bouquet at the wedding luncheon...
she and jason both wanted to just hand it to me. instead we stuck with tradition
and kehau tossed it to me from the front seat of the car.
her flowers were beautiful.

i made it back to austin late sunday afternoon after a side trip to montrose, co because of the denver airport being temporarily shut down due to bad visibility. the line at the customer service desk was probably 0.25 miles long because of all the people who had missed their connecting flights. when i finally did get to denver, a quick phone call and talk to a random agent, informed me that my connecting flight had been delayed 3 hours and that i could still board if i sprinted back down the terminal. awesome.

spring break starts at the end of this week. this week is super busy and it already seems to be flying. eric and i leave for san francisco one week from today to spend spring break hopefully doing all the things we didn't get to do the last time we were there because we were sick.

passport

you can eat bbq on a stick (or bone) at the salt lick

my irish passport arrived last week. i can now officially travel in europe with it...not that i'm planning a trip anywhere in the near future. work has been bogging me down. this whole ta-ing thing is turning out to be a lot of work. the professor, who is new, almost broke down in tears in front of the other ta and me on friday after reading the mid-semester feedback her students had given her. i'm not sure that flat out saying the instructor is inhibiting your learning is the most tactful way to tell a professor to step it up a bit. suffice it to say, the reviews were brutal.

the other ta is from india and after listening to some of the reviews he made a really interesting comment. he said that where he went to school, they definitely wanted and requested student feedback, but that to say some of the things the students here said would have just been considered over the top disrespectful. the reason i found this so interesting was that a professor in the oceanography department at uh had posted an article a few years ago about how students today feel a sense of entitlement, even when they (the students) clearly don't know what they're doing (i.e. they expect more credit on exams for "trying" despite not being able to solve the problems and/or writing down incorrect equations). the students in the class i am currently ta-ing will give harsh reviews and say they don't know what's going on, and yet, they're not coming into office hours, frequently it seems like they're not even trying to read the book (which is terrible, but you can still glean some useful information out of it) or emailing the tas or the professor with questions. they just expect to be able to sit passively in lecture and "get it." last time i checked, learning didn't work that way. then again, i'm "old" now, so what do i know.

on a completely different note, saturday eric and i got a group together to go to the salt lick for bbq (pictures to come). i went as a designated driver so that when people were uncomfortably full afterward they didn't have to think (or drive). afterward we stopped at whole foods so i could grab something and then went over to carrie and julie's house for the end of a party and so that i could crash. my house party was this weekend and i had a feeling that i just shouldn't go, hence staying at friends' house. well, sunday afternoon my housemates told me they were glad i didn't go (for my own sake). apparently they had to kick a bunch of people out among other things, the dj was terrible and there were various other mishaps. funny how things work out.

my students had an exam on friday, which means office hours this morning have been spent bonding with my laptop and updating my blog. i could get used to this. thursday morning bright and early i'm leaving for utah for kehau and jason's wedding. fortunately, they didn't have to evacuate this weekend during the tsunami warning, but i'm sure it was a bit stressful trying to wrap up last minute details for this week while making sure everything is in order at home in case of water!

happy first week of march everyone!