back up your data!

yesterday i lost all of my dissertation data. don't ask. just remember to back up your computer. fortunately, i had only collected data on 4 subjects thus far and hadn't done much processing of the data because i have been too busy collecting. by the end of this evening, i'll have collected data on 4 more subjects, so at least i'm ending the week where i was half way through it?

i got a piece of fun news this evening too. during my senior year of college, i was one of the two coordinators for my graduating class for our "senior gift." each year the graduating class at mit gives something back to the institute. my year we noticed that there was no picture of the mit seal anywhere in that we could find on campus, so we decided to fix that problem. we decided to have a large copy of the seal made in bronze and hung in lobby 7, a large lobby on campus that is just off of mass. ave. many a visitor and most students pass through that lobby a couple times during the day. well, the seal was funded by monetary gifts from my graduating class. its taken 7 years (i graduated in 2003), but the money was finally obtained. today, i received an email informing me that the seal had finally been installed. the picture above is a picture of the seal after it was installed in lobby 7. the next time you're in boston, head to mit and check it out!

success!

have you ever had one of those days at work where things just come together? i had one of those today. i had one of my labmates be a subject for me today so i could pilot my data collection protocol. last week when i had my undergrad do this for me, the computer wouldn't let me collect data as it normally would. after trying everything i gave up for the day. well today, it happened again. so i got on the phone and called my friend alberto who works for the company that makes the software i use. fortunately for me, alberto happened to be stuck in an airport and he was more than happy for the distraction and helped me solve the problem in less than 5 minutes. i then got to collect a trial for each of the conditions i will be looking at in this particular study. more specifically, i will be examining how one's stability changes when one walks with "cautious" gait characteristics, such as with shorter or wider steps. i won't actually be tripping anyone in this study, so if you'd like to participate, let me know. you will be paid!

i also had to present in lab meeting today and had decided to share some of the data i recently finished analyzing with the group. the results appear to be the first indicating that you can actually change a certain measure of stability by physically perturbing someone, which is important because up to this point, we thought these measures of stability only indicated something inherent to the body system. my advisor told me to run the stats and then start writing the paper. yeah! its nice to be moving to the next step in the process.

i spent a good chunk of time this past weekend driving all over and checking out venues for our wedding. eric was out of town for a conference so i was on my own to ask questions. we're going to go back and visit one of the places i saw this past weekend later this week so he can see it, and then we'll also check out one other place that's a little farther south. its amazing how after you start looking at bunch of places you can tell pretty quickly what you like and what you don't like...and how you can tell someone might not be telling the truth when they say they are "kid friendly"!

only 2 more to go

homeworks that is. there's less than 1 month left this semester, and i and everyone else i know can't wait for it to be over. this morning i figured out that yet again the book and professor i am teaching for this semester were wrong and because of it the students were ending up with all sorts of weird graphs on their homeworks. its kind of exasperating when a professor continually doesn't pay closer attention to what their teaching and then you, the ta, have to reteach the material while trying to not undermine the professor (despite the fact that you really want to). only 2 homeworks left in the semester though and one of them goes out today.

in other news, i've very quickly realized that wedding planning is stressful. you have a ton of friends and family, a certain amount of time, a lot of peoples' schedules and the need to not make your parents take out a second mortgage (i've really heard of people who spent $100k on their wedding, seriously!). eric and i are going to check out a place on wednesday, and i'm in the midst of making arrangements to check out another one on friday afternoon while eric's out of town at a conference. and this weekend i might even try dress shopping. my free time is quickly becoming filled with party planning!

we're engaged!

the ring!

eric and i got engaged on friday!

i need to preface this story with a review of our first date. on our first date, we went to see where the wild things are the imax next to campus. then we walked down to the amy's ice cream (a local ice cream place) on 6th street. after ice cream we walked to zilker park. most of the park was fenced off due to a recent music festival, so we sat on the swings by barton springs and talked for a long while. then we walked back to my house (this totaling at least 6 miles of walking for the evening) and sat in my room looking at pictures and talking until the wee hours of the morning. it was awesome.

so, fast forward to the present. friday night after work we went out to dinner. this was nothing out of the ordinary. we went to try zocalo which is a mexican restaurant on west lynn in the clarksville neighborhood of austin, continuing in our quest to try lots of restaurants in austin. after dinner we drove around the neighborhood for a few minutes to see if there were any cute looking houses for rent (we found one but it was about twice as much as either of really wanted to pay for it).

then we headed over to amy's and got ice cream (mango ice, which is non-dairy, is awesome by the way). next we drove over to zilker park and parked by barton springs. we walked into the middle of the fields and sat watching the stars (or clouds covering the stars) for a bit. it was kind of late so we decided to head back towards the car that and eric had mentioned needing to read me his poem. eric writing poetry is also not out of the ordinary. we will even text to each other in verse. on our way back to the car, we stopped by the swings on the playground and talked for awhile longer. there was a father racing up the slides with his daughter which was pretty amusing to watch. eric said again that he wanted to read me his poem and suggested we walk up to the hill. so we walked up the hill and sat on the curb in one of the parking lots underneath a street light.

i'm not sure whether it was his words or my allergies that brought tears in my eyes (i'm allergic to the grass in texas, just here, no where else, seriously), but his poem was beautiful. eric had been working on it for the last 5 months, adding to it as funny or memorable things happened. it is several pages long. at the start of the last the last stanza of the poem he pulls out a ring and the final line of the poem was, trish mcandrew, will you marry me?

side view

and of course i said yes! i have known i wanted to marry him from the first time we went out.

now here's the rather amusing part. thursday night at about 11:30p i am woken up by my phone beeping. i check my phone and eric has sent me two text messages and left me a voicemail saying that what i do i should delete the email he just sent me. of course this means i need to open my email immediately and see what he's talking about. i check my email and there are three emails from his that say in the header, delete all previous emails from me tonight! don't even both opening them! so i call eric and ask what is up because he's normally not bent out of shape like this. he explains that i just need to delete everything, that he was talking to a friend about somethings, that its time sensitive and he can tell me at the beginning of the week, but that for now, i just had to delete everything without opening. so i do. but now i'm very suspicious.

well, after eric proposes he tells me that he had been talking to his friend anamae on the phone on thursday night and had told her he'd send her a picture of the ring. he went to send the email and just typed my name in and hit send without thinking about it. realizing what he'd done, he started calling, texting and emailing me to get me to not open the email...the email had contained a picture of him holding the ring up to his webcam so anamae could see the ring. fortunately, the picture was blurry and wouldn't have shown me what it looked like specifically anyway, but i didn't even know he had a ring (though i did know he'd asked my dad for permission when we were in san francisco over spring break), so it would have kind of put a damper on the surprise. at least we could laugh about it afterward!

the ring itself is a circular diamond set in a white gold ring. if you look at it from the top, it looks like a plain shiny silver bands with a circular diamond, but if you look at it from the side, the part holding the diamond is sort of woven. its beautiful. eric has great taste. i will try to post a picture or two of it this evening.

we are planning on getting married sometime in late july or august in austin (before school starts). we have to find a location and such and then we'll start with all the other details. its going to be a crazy next few months! i'm so excited!

live from PE class?

one of my labmates had to go out of town and needed to people to cover his classes for him. one of the classes he tas is basketball. so today i discovered where the gyms are at gregory gym. i'm currently sitting inside the very nice tennis courts, below the jogging track, dressed (according to my housemates) like i'm going to dance class because i didn't feel like getting dressed up today (and by that i mean i didn't want to wear jeans). the joys of being a grad student where i can get away with that!

my grant proposal was supposed to be turned in yesterday, but my advisor didn't get around to looking at anything i sent him last week until yesterday...he sent me comments back yesterday afternoon while i was ta-ing. needless to say i was a tad frustrated. its really annoying when people expect you to suddenly have free time to make up for their lateness (this is me having very little sympathy). instead i had to email the person i was supposed to give everything to yesterday to tell her that due to jon not getting stuff to me i wouldn't be able to get everything to her until today. sigh.

at least its almost the weekend! general conference during the day and then a bunch of the girls from church are getting together to decorate Easter eggs saturday night! i love opportunities to be creative, particularly when work/school has been stressful.