Happy Birthday Adrian!

Saturday was Adrian's 30th birthday and we had a nice relaxing time by the lake.


The weather was exceptional and it wasn't too hazy, so I was able to get some nice shots of the mountains.

And there were a bunch of ducks sunning themselves on the rocks in the marina... here's one of the pretty ones!

I passed!!

My private thesis exam is finally over! My last major hurdle is my public thesis talk. The professors picked the 4th of July at 4pm as the date of my public talk... the president of my committee thought it would be so fitting that the American girl presents on an American holiday. Do I have to wear a flag?

Since I was so busy preparing before my talk last week, I didn't get a chance to post the pictures from our fun night at the caveau in Lutry and then afterwards downtown. Here's the link to the set from Lutry and a link to see all my pictures.

-Joe comparing the ferret-like animal on the bottle to the stuffed one in the caveau

-fun with distortions in the wine glass

A couple weekends ago Joe and I bought some edelweiss for our planters. For our wedding present, Jess and Tom are going to have Tom's sister paint us our very own edelweiss! Tom's sister's paintings are awesome and I'm so excited to get my own... but she can't paint it until I get her some good pictures of edelweiss. I need to get a couple pictures out in nature (too difficult to find) or at a botanical rock garden (unfortunately the closest one is still closed because our weather has been so cold the last few months that there's still snow covering the plants!), but I decided to buy my own plant just in case I don't get any good pictures at the garden.

-Here's one of the flowers on our balcony.

Carolyn is mad at Flickr!!

So, long story short... Flickr has changed how the guest passes work. That is, all the links to my photos in this blog now only link to the specific set of private photos and no longer give you access to all of my private photos....grrr!!! I can, however, give you the link to all of my photos, which means, that now you must do a bit more work on your end to find the photos that you're looking for. So after you click this link you'll have to search for the photos more specifically under "Sets." For example, if you want to see "Wedding pics from Phil"... follow the link, and then click on Sets, and then the Set named "Wedding pics from Phil". Voila! Or, you can register on Flickr and become my friend and then you'll have access to see all of my pictures without referring to any links at all....I'll let you decide :)

Holy crap, it's June!!

Yes, May was chock full of events and now it's over :( so sad.... but luckily I remembered to take lots of photos, as always. Links to the flickr photos are in blue... enjoy!!

Event 5/9: my bachelorette party in Lausanne. Thank you Jen, Jacqui, Kristen & Sachiko for such a fun night. (And thank you Mrs. Shields!)

-Kristen, me & Sachiko at Pur for dinner

Event 5/13: Joe's private thesis defense

-Stephan, Iraklis & Joe celebrating

Event 5/14: mail my thesis to my committee

Event 5/15: fly to USA

Event 5/17: bridal shower & bachelorette party in Pittsburgh

-opening presents....I like to put things on my head

-Rachel, Linda, Stéphanie, & me at Tusca for dinner

Event 5/24: our wedding!! I created a collection on flickr of pictures from friends and family. Just click on "Our wedding festivities" to see more pictures!

-our name in lights!

-popcorn toss!

Event 5/27: interview & fly back to Switzerland
Event 5/29: our wedding in the Daily Item Newspaper

Now I must get back to work preparing for my thesis defense presentation and finishing my second manuscript.... agh... so much to do in 2 weeks!!

Busy, busy, busy.......

Oh my goodness! Life/work has been absolutely jam-packed with way too much stuff to do this past month. Between birthday parties, thesis deadlines, wedding planning, trip planning, moving home, applying for jobs, etc. we've been swamped and therefore I haven't had much time to blog. Needless to say, I won't have much time to blog between now and my thesis deadline (May 9th) to discuss the mundane goings on my stressful last 3 weeks as a PhD student. But, I did have time a few weeks ago to post the pictures from Joe's Birthday party on Flickr, though they are lacking titles which will probably remain nameless, that is unless I decide to procrastinate writing my thesis (like I'm doing right now by writing this).

I don't have any pictures to show you since Joe's Birthday party, but here's a picture from my thesis... yes, it is a real human brain.

Happy 29th Birthday Joe!!

I don't have time to write anything now... but here are a couple fun things from last night....

-Guinness through a straw

-single patty Greatest burger

-arm wrestling with Sandeep

-dancing with me!

-Happy Birthday cheers to Joe!

beautiful weekend

This weekend was absolutely beautiful and sunny. Joe and I had a lazy day Saturday after having a late dinner at Melody's house Friday night. We went to the market to buy stuff to grill. Nothing like cooking out in March! And then after we finished all of our neighborhood grocery shopping we headed down to the park to get some sun. Joe read while I walked around and took pictures of the spring flowers with the big bad Sony now that I know how to use the manual setting!

- honeybee in a daffodil
-grape hyacinth (these will be in my bouquet)

On Sunday, I stayed home and cleaned the apartment and did laundry like usual. And then I made a new found recipe in one of my Jamie Oliver cookbooks for poussins (small hen chickens) with roasted potatoes and then I also made spinach.

-Mmmm....it was messy to eat but really yummy!

Happy Birthday to me!!

Yeah for 2 days of birthday celebrations! Thank you all for the birthday wishes!!

On my birthday Joe took me out to a nice dinner at Ma Mère M'a Dit (My mother told me) after ballet class. We had a very interesting meal, well Joe did... I had my new favorite, duck. He ordered some veal dish that he'd never heard of before because he's adventurous and thought, 'why not?!' Of course the waiter knew we weren't francophones and proceeded to explain that it's not meat, but organ meat. Now, my french isn't perfect, but I know quite a few vocabulary words for organs that people do regularly eat, like heart, liver, kidneys. But Joe decided that he'd eat it anyway without knowing what 'riz de veau' was. Of course I wasn't about to try it, but Joe said it was okay...tasting like dark turkey meat....hmm..... we found out when we got home that it was 'sweatbread', which is actually pancreas or thymus...... mmmmmmmmm...............gross!

Then last night was my birthday party at Great Escape with my friends. It was a pretty low key evening considering other birthday parties (i.e. Stephan's or Joe's) so in the end I only had, I think, 5 shots....of course they all came in the last hour or so that we were there. I made brownies to fatten everybody up that were yummy.

-my birthday cake. I turned 24...I found out because I counted the candles!!

-reading my card

On our way home, we walked by an upside down car in the middle of the road. Apparently everybody was okay and we got there after everybody was taken to the hospital. I decided to take some pictures because if the swiss police are doing it with the camera phone then so can I!

-how crazy!

More fun photos from my bday party!

Easter Weekend

Nothing like an official 4 day weekend holiday!

Friday I went to work for a few hours to finish something up and then headed to Bern with some friends to go indoor rock climbing. It was massive!!

Saturday Joe and I went shopping at the market and Joe bought me beautiful Easter/Birthday flowers...the 2nd week in a row for flowers. I'm so spoiled!


Sunday we had Easter dinner with Sai and Jen. For dessert, I made some banana bread with gluten free flour for Sai and it turned out alright... not quite the same consistency, but close enough! It was a lot of fun.

Monday we slept in and then I finished doing laundry and wedding stuff. For dinner, Joe and I were too tired to make anything, so we braved the cold wind and constant flurries and went to GE for a burger and salad....yummy! Can't wait til my Bday party there on Thursday!

Camera play time!

So last Friday was absolutely beautiful, especially after a rainy, cloudy week. So as soon as I finished my experiment I took off to get the big bad Sony and wander around Lausanne's cathedral to take some pictures. I decided to head down to Lutry for sunset to see if I could get some nice pictures, but there weren't enough clouds to give me a nice colorful sunset. But I finally figured out how to use the manual setting! Actually, Jay figured it out while we were having a glass of wine at the caveau before heading to dinner in town with a bunch of friends. here are some of my favorites:

-monkey on the cathedral entrance

-shadows on the chateau
-doorway in Old Town
-The Alps & Pont Bessière

Who won a wooly sheep on St Patty's Day? I did! I did!

So we got off to quite a lame start to St. Patty's Day. I was at a thesis defense and apero until 6:30pm and then I met up with Joe, Jen and Stephan at Great Escape. We then headed up to Harper's, the only Irish pub in Lausanne and it was closed!!! We stood there stunned....how can an Irish bar that's closed every Monday not make an exception on St. Partrick's Day?!?! So, we headed back down to GE, but by now it was really crowded and there was nowhere to sit. So we decided to try Captain Cooks, an old haunt from when we first moved here and it was dead, but decorated for St. Patty's Day and there was even an open table! So we snagged the table and had some beers and actually had a lot of fun!!

-Joe and his leprechaunette...hmm...is that a word?

-Jay and my sheep

Check out the rest of the pictures on flickr.

The birthday that Jacqui missed...

So Joe and Jacqui returned from their conference in Ventura, California at noon on Saturday after flying for their entire Friday, which incidentally was Jacqui's birthday. Sai, Adrian and I bought her flowers and put them in her apartment Saturday morning (always convenient to have her spare key). But like always, we went to Great Escape Saturday night to celebrate Jacqui's birthday and try and keep her and Joe awake as long as possible to help them get over the jet lag. It was funny to listen to them talk about Thursday as 'yesterday'. All the pictures are up on flickr, but here are a few funny ones.

-Me and Jacqui

-Jen, Joe and Jacqui enjoying the massive pink drink

-Hi Joe!

What's wrong with a Christmas tree in March?

okay, yes, my Christmas tree is still up, which surprised the girls that came over last night for some wine and cheese. Nathalie and Jyoti from work came, along with Jen, Rikki and Laurence from the CHUV. At first glance they didn't notice and then they all did a double take and asked, 'Why are your Christmas decorations still up?' well, here's the official answer: I need to pack all the ornaments very carefully to transport them back to the States and I haven't had time to spend carefully wrapping all the glass ornaments in bubble wrap. in other words, Joe and I have been too lazy/preoccupied with other things to take time to wrap the ornaments carefully. Really though, I was preoccupied this week and wasn't being lazy. Monday I went climbing; Tuesday I went for Thai with Adrian, Sai, Stephan and Iraklis; Wednesday I had ballet class; Thursday lunch at GE with Adrian and Jen and then Girl's Night. Tonight I'll be cooking Sai and Adrian my world famous lemon rosemary chicken with Hasselback potatoes. It's one of the few dinners I like to make! So there goes one more week and the Christmas tree is still sitting in the living room....maybe we'll take it down on Easter Sunday!

So Joe and Jacqui are on their way back to Switzerland from California right now. Poor Jacqui... it's actually her birthday today, and she's spending the entire day on a plane, then gets back to Lausanne tomorrow morning, missing her entire birthday traveling from California to Switzerland! But we'll go out and celebrate as much as we can...Jacqui may sleep through happy hour, but the rest of us sure won't miss it!

Happy Birthday Jacqui!!

lots of stuff!

Since my last entry, I've kept myself quite busy. I went to the hospital in Geneva and observed an epileptic patient while they determined what part of her brain they need to remove to help curb her seizures. I'll be going back within the next few weeks to observe a surgery... how exciting! Then on Friday, Fabien (a colleague) had his public thesis defense. Joe then left on Saturday morning for a conference in California....so not fair!! But since he left, I had paella at Adrian's Saturday night and then I went hiking with a bunch of people (Adrian, Stephan, Kristen, Rikki, Michael, & Sandeep) near Gruyere. The plan was to take the cablecar halfway up Moléson and hike at 1500 meters around the mountain. The only problem was that when we got there, the entire area was under snow and the path that we were going to take was blocked off with the following sign: Danger of Avalanches. You can actually see the avalanche snow across the path in one of my pictures on flickr.

-me with the sign

So we headed back down the cable car and then Stephan asked the stupid guy that sold us the tickets up the mountain where we could go hiking instead. So we went to a gorge nearby in a town called Broc, where the Cailler chocolate factory is located. Incidentally, Adrian had already hiked the gorge, but it was really pretty yesterday so he didn't mind doing it again. We hiked the gorge and then hiked around a lake. All in all, we hiked for about 4 hours and by the time we were finished, the sun came out and it was beautiful out.

-Moléson behind the lake

Of course I also had to play with the macro on the waterproof camera. It's not as good as the big bad Sony, but I got a few decent photos out of a lot of bad macro photos....next time I'll bring the big bad Sony.

-Cluster of pretty purple flowers

-Water droplet on moss

busy, boring....

Now that I'm as finished with my paper figures as I can possibly be, I'm back to doing experiments to keep me busy at work. I haven't consistently done experiments myself since last April, so it's nice to actually be doing experiments instead of sitting on the computer playing in photoshop or excel or some other computer program analyzing data.

We had amazing weather over the weekend. While Joe was at work Sunday I took the big bad camera out to learn how to use it's manual settings. I went down to the park a few minutes from us and wandered around taking pictures of the flowers that have already bloomed in this spring-like weather. Here are some of my more favorite photos... let me know what you think!

-teeny tiny pinecones

-magenta flower

-buds and translucent leaves

-yellow crocuses

-opening seeds

-pinecone leaf sitting in a branch

-kitty in the grass

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yes, it's that time of year again when the buses and metros alternate their bus route number with "Les Amoureux" and everyone attempts grand gestures of love all thanks to the marketing team of Hallmark. Valentine's Day is a nice day to spoil your loved ones; it can also be stressful to find something perfect to give your loved one... especially when you've contracted your 3rd illness in 5 weeks and can't get off the couch/bed to do anything. Seriously, I've had 2 colds and the stomach flu since we got back from vacation! I'm very mad at my immune system...maybe it's getting back at me for getting a flu shot, who knows. All I know is that I spent all afternoon yesterday sleeping and moping....and admiring the flowers Joe bought me for Valentine's Day! Finally, I had a subject to photograph! The flowers and the sunshine gave me an opportunity to play with my new fancy camera that Joe's mom gave us for Christmas. I'm still not quite sure how to use all the manual settings, but here are a couple pictures I took this morning playing around with the morning light in the kitchen.

-the entire bouquet from Joe (yes, the camera manual is in plain view)

-farting around with the camera's aperture settings


Over the years I've become pretty good at taking pictures of flowers...now I just need to figure out how to expand this to better artistic photos of people and scenery as well!