Allergies suck....

The past two springs in Lausanne brought typical mild allergy discomfort, but this spring is horrible. Apparently, the Hornbeam tree is causing problems for a lot of people in the Lake Geneva region, including me. It also hasn't rained recently, which keeps the pollen floating around. Even though the weather's been beautiful the past week I'm really praying for some allergy relief soon because the zyrtec can only help so much.

In other news, Joe and I had a boring week and weekend after his insane birthday. Saturday included shopping at the market and then Adrian invited us over for chinese that he cooked himself! It was delicious. Sunday Joe and I walked from EPFL to our apartment. It took a solid hour and I got quite a workout... we'll have to do this on a regular basis so I can get into shape faster :) Then we christened our grill with the thick cut pork chops we got at the market. It's so much better than the POS we had the past two year. And last night, Adrian and Stephan came over and we cooked out again. I love having summer weather so that we can grill! Next time... smores! All the while, there's a horrific winter storm on the east coast of the states...hopefully the spring weather will come for Jenny's wedding in a few weeks!

Happy Birthday Joe!

Holy crap! about sums up Joe's birthday extravaganza. The mini-burgers were a hit! I negotiated with Alex and George, the Great Escape owners, for mini-burgers, but the bakery made the buns super small so we ended up with lots of micro-mini burgers... how cute!
Joe drank lots of Guinness and people bought him a lot of shots... including the infamous blow-job shot that Jacqui and I were also required to do on our birthdays. Alex and the bar staff also gave Joe a great big mixed drink with lots of straws to share... but why use straws when you can just pick up the massive cup and drink right out of it. I made brownies again, swirl brownies this time, for everyone at the party to enjoy. I also offered them to Alex, George and the rest of the bar staff. A few minutes later Alex came up to the table with 2 more blow-job shots in exchange for 2 more brownies.... so Kristen and I enjoyed those!
As usual, by the end of the night there were only a few of us left standing and Joe managed to even take a picture of us at his level of intoxication. After we left the bar, Joe and Dan decided to jump into the fountain at Riponne and then some random girls joined them! Dan and Mac then walked Joe and I home... it was nice to have a massive german shepherd escort back to Malley, and Dan, too :)
Thank you all for a great party!

Happy Easter!

Hello everybody! I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend. Here in Switzerland it's a nice long 4-day weekend, which was much needed after all the traveling Joe and I have done over the past 6 weeks. Saturday night we went down to Lutry and drank a bottle of wine by Lake Geneva with Adrian and then we went to the caveau for some more of my favorite wine. We are going to be such wine snobs when we move home! For easter, Joe made an excellent ham in the crockpot... delicious! While it was cooking, we finally put together our new grill! Last night, we headed over to Mark's (one of Joe's colleagues) for a wine and cheese party. Before we went over to Mark's, we finally watched 'Nothing but Trouble,' a movie Joe's mom had bought for us a while back that Joe was hesitant to watch again. Let me just say that it ranks in the top 2 worst movies I've ever seen and I don't think that I can look at Dan Aykroyd the same way ever again... don't ever watch this movie!

In other news, I was accepted to go to a conference in July in Maine about GABA, which is the major part of my thesis project. I just only hope that this conference is as good as the auditory conference I went to last fall where I learned so much. I also hope that I'll be able to network and maybe find myself some job opportunities for when Joe and I finish our PhDs next spring. I'm going to go enjoy the beautiful spring weather that we're currently having... have a great week!

Cully Jazz festival

Saturday night we went down to the Cully Jazz Festival for the 3rd year in a row. This year, we ate again by the lake and then picked a venue. We decided to go to the 'Hundred Blue Bottle Cafe' and watch Carte Blanche à Master Margherita. They were.....different. Lots of percussion and rhythm with a bass guitar and a bag of musical toys including cow bell! I've got a fever, and the only perscription is more cow bell.... and I digress.... anyway, here we are sitting on the stairs to nowhere in the little caveau.