hibiscus

our first plant! this is the hibiscus plant brooke and jason gave us. the angle of this photo makes it look deceptively small. it is actually a couple plants. one has yellow flowers and the other has orange and pink ones. all of them sit in a beautiful turquoise container. i'm excited to see how it takes off!

since arriving back in austin, i've bumped my training back up. i've decided to shoot for the cactus rose 50 miler on october 30. its held out in bandera, tx and has some tough crumbly, limestone trails. its a two-loop course and we have to bring all our own aid...which definitely makes the cost of the race drop a bit! this jump in training has made me able to sleep on command. i hit the pillow at night and am out...and then i can take naps in the afternoon and still sleep the following night. so far i've run and biked to and from work. one evening we also took the bus home together just to see how long it took and where it dropped us off. if i can get away with it, i plan to bike as much as possible.

we had our first sunday in our new ward (church congregation) this morning. there seem to be lots of young couples who are also grad students. there is a family who speaks french so eric will get to put more of his french skills to use and i'll continue to learn at least one word a day. the best thing about this ward so far is that it is packed. if you arrive late, you basically don't get a seat, which is refreshing. i'm excited to meet some new people and get to now a few people who i have seen around the institute but never had the opportunity to talk to much!

till one day it cracks them open

the sad thing about the above picture is that it captures the cleanest our apartment has been since getting back from our travels. it has taken us quite a bit of time (and we're rather efficient) to get all of the boxes, wrappings and suitcases cleared. in the meantime we took a break on this room and had our way with the office, which now looks like a different room...but there's even still stuff in there that is being donated or trashed. wedding aside, we're realizing how much stuff we have and what can go.

on a completely different note, i downloaded my pictures from the last week or so of travels. the photo below is of a poem that was on the wall at the rhode island school of design (risd) museum which i got a chance to see when i was in providence last week. may joy fill your weekend!

stuff

our apartment is currently so full of stuff i have to step aside to let eric pass me if we're trying to move about. we have two extra beds from when we moved not to mention tons of boxes from shipping of wedding presents. we haven't had time to go through everything yet given how we have basically been out of town since the wedding. a friend of ours told us today that it never gets better and we looked at him and at each other and said with certainty that it will get better. we both value space and there is currently anything but.

i have been following minimalist blogs on and off for awhile now. every couple months i seem to go through a phase where i need to declutter. i take books i have read and don't plan to read again to half-price books. i get rid of clothes that don't fit or that i just don't wear. other than my bikes, i just don't like having tons of stuff around, and i am starting to question the need to have three bikes in texas. i think i could probably do with one less? one of the blogs i follow is called miss minimalist. her most recent post was about ways to simplify your life. i think part of the reason some of this appeals to me so much is that i frequently find myself feeling like i don't have enough time lately...and so by paring down my schedule and the number of "things" i have to look after, i have generally found i have a little more free time and piece of mind. i feel like i have more time to try new recipes and read books and write in my journal...its just, well, nice.

i also deactivated my facebook account yesterday. i felt like i was spending to much time on it, so i just quit. i am preparing to not know what's going on every moment of people's lives. i am hoping that in doing this i will have more time to work and to actually interact with people in person. the latter in particular maybe a bit of a whimsical idea, but i figure its worth a shot. with my new found free time i may also post a few photos of the apartment and all the amazing food i got to enjoy when i was back east last week!

wedding, cruising and now a conference

a lot has happened in the last few weeks. first and foremost, eric and i are married now! our photographer has posted a sneak peek of our wedding photos here.

we are both very grateful to our friend bridgid, who pointed out midway through our reception that we were not legally married...it took my friend a little longer than expected to do my hair and instead of arriving at the ceremony site two hours early, i arrived approximately 10 minutes early. this meant that we didn't sign all the necessary paperwork before the ceremony. bishop stebbing had to come back to the reception later to sign the paperwork...

which brings us to the reason bishop had left us in the first place. an elderly friend of ours suffered a massive heart attack at the reception. it was good that he was there though and not at home because my mom's a nurse, my second mom is a cardiac nurse, a friend is trained as an emt and many others were certified in cpr. our elderly friend's cardiologist said if cpr hadn't been started immediately, he probably wouldn't be with us now. he's still recovering in the hospital, but is making progress. and his spirits still seem to be okay as he was definitely able to laugh at my expense when i went to visit him yesterday.

we went on a cruise to the mexican riviera for our honeymoon. it was nice to get away from cellphones, facebook and email for a week and get to spend time together not talking about things that needed to be done for the wedding. i really enjoyed puerto vallarta, but in i think in part that's because the mountains reminded me so much of hawaii.

i have been enjoying the celebrating, but i'm excited to have life be a bit more "normal" for a bit and to have the opportunity to actually get some things done in lab. i'm on track to graduate in may, but there's still a lot that needs to happen (and be written!) between now and then.