work and fun stuff!

All last week I was attending/working at the FENS forum, the big european neuroscience meeting that happens every 2 years. This time, we were (un)lucky enough to have it in Geneva. It was nice to be helping out at the student social night, Jump the FENS (get it... fence), and it's information booth during the meeting. It was nice to hide out since I really don't like big meeting. Unfortunately for me, I had to commute everyday from Lausanne, so I didn't get to stay late at the Jump the FENS, which was held at the UN's private beach 3 nights of the conference. Here's a picture of the last night, when it finally stopped raining and the sun came out!

-view of the Mont Blanc (yes that white blob is the tallest mountain in europe) over Lake Geneva with a nearly full moon in the sky.

Friday night, Melody hosted a barbeque at her new, not quite so finished, lake (Geneva) front house....which is big and awesome! I can't wait to see it all finished. Once the sun was nearly down, Jacqui, Jen and I climbed down her dirt hill to the lake and went swimming... okay, i just waded around in the lake, which was really warm, and took pictures. It was awesome because the full moon was rising over the mountains through the clouds. I took a bunch of pictures of it while in the lake, but they all came out blurry because the lake movement moved me around too much. So here's one of the moon from the shore, after the boring swiss neighbors yelled at us for making too much noise.

-moon rising over the Alps & Lake Geneva

wow, that looks like crap.... here are some other fun pics from the day and all of the pictures can be found by clicking here!

-View from Melody's kitchen

-View of picnic fun from the upstairs balcony-Jen & I swimming

A week of weirdness

So this week was a bit weird, in that it felt like I had virtually nothing to do, even though I accomplished a few important things. But after the fast-paced few weeks I've had (wedding, private defense, Joe's parents, both of our public defenses), getting back to a 'normal' not so busy schedule has been nice.
I put together my poster for the FENS meeting that starts this weekend in Geneva. Every 2 years, the european neuroscience community has a meeting... of course this year it's in Geneva, so I don't get to go on a fun trip and must commute everyday to the convention center. I also submitted my first manuscript with my GABAB data. We'll see if it gets accepted to the journal for review. If it does, great! If not, we'll have to rewrite and resubmit to another journal.

I also got to play around with my wedding pictures and am starting to pick out my favorite pictures to put in an album. I want to make a massive album of pictures from the official photographer as well as pictures taken by friends and family. So if there are any of you out there with wedding pictures, please send me some so that I may include them in the album.... I'm so sad because I don't have pictures with a lot of my friends, especially those that didn't come down to the bar after the reception finished up.

I was also able to chill out Tuesday afternoon to go see The Incredible Hulk with Joe and Adrian and Thursday after work I went climbing with Stephan and Kristen for the first time since March. It was great to be outside climbing again. I almost forgot how much fun it is! I didn't get to use my new rope yet, but I finally got to use my new daisy chain and carabiners that I bought when we were home for Christmas.

So, this weekend and next week I'll be attending the FENS meeting and Joe decided to go up to Norway again to work on his collaboration with the lab up in Bergen since I'll be busy all hours of the day with the conference. That's all for now!

Wedding pictures have arrived!

Finally, after weeks of waiting (3 weeks longer than he originally promised...grrr) the pictures arrived! There are some really great pictures and I'm currently picking out my favorites to put in my album. Here are a couple!

-my favorite

-picking a bug out of my veil

-For the garter toss

For those of you who aren't photo-maniacs like I am (thank you Roberto for that classification ;), I have put some of my favorite/obligatory wedding photos into a smaller set.

For anybody willing to waste time looking through all the official wedding photos (there are 400), here are the links to those two set:
Set #1
Set #2

And for the ambitious procrastinator looking to waste an entire afternoon, here's the link to my flickr photostream where all all the other wedding pictures from my friends, and all other non-wedding related photos can be found if you organize by "sets". My friend Phil took some great pictures, so you'll want to check out 'wedding pics from Phil'.

I graduated!!

I'm now a Dr!! woo hoo!! Does that mean I have to change the title of my blog? hmmm....

My presentation went well. Everybody said I did a good job even though I felt as if it was going horribly while I was giving the talk.... it was so weird actually having to present in front of all my friends since it was basically the first time they'd ever heard me give a presentation... it was a bit surreal. At one point I looked at Joe, who was staring at me in this creepy way (like Witek for those who know him), which of course made me laugh and not want to turn to the audience at all. Of course, Joe was staring at me like that to get me to talk more to the audience, but of course, it had the opposite effect. I suppose we need to work on our nonverbal communication skills ;)

I also received awesome gifts from my colleagues and friends. I got a travel book from a friend of mine, and then my friends at EPFL and my colleagues at work chipped-in and got me my very own climbing rope!! I can't wait to try it out, though carrying it myself may prove difficult. I also got two beautiful bunches of flowers! Aren't they pretty! (Yes they're in the same vase because I don't own 2!)

-mixed flower bouquet from Jen & Adrian and I don't know who else

-lillies from Ulrike, Marzia and I think Jeff....

Anyway, the last week and half have been insane. Joe's parents came to visit us and to attend Joe's public defense. We did the sites of Switzerland for a couple days, then were off to Paris and Krakow and then back to Lausanne for Joe thesis defense, all in 4 days! I'm still in the process of posting pictures of everything on flickr.... just follow the link to all pictures in a previous post, and once i'm done posting the pictures, i'll post more specific links.