fancy dinner

The long August 1st weekend was a well spent weekend of relaxation. I was planning to head up to the botanical garden Friday to take advantage of the holiday, except that it rained all day and was chilly. Instead Jen and I went to lunch and then I headed into work for a few hours since we ate nearby. And since it rained all day long, we decided not to venture out to watch the fireworks that night, but got to see some of Renens fireworks from our balcony. Saturday we had planned a group trip to Bern for a nice dinner, but by the time we figure out exactly who was going and called to make a reservation they were completely booked!! So Joe, Adrian and I scoured the internet and guide books looking for a suitable replacement somewhere around Lausanne and settled on a fancy restaurant in St. Saphorin, one of the small villages nestled in the vineyards of the Lavaux. Luckily they had room for 7 people and so we all dressed up and headed to St. Saphorin's for our very first dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant! Of course, we stopped by the town's very own caveau before dinner.

-Jacqui & I all dressed up on one of the quaint little streets of St. Saphorin

-Adrian in front of the Auberge de l'Onde... we ate on the 3rd floor.

Dinner was delicious and the desserts were amazing. I looked up the dessert chef and found that he has a blog and blogged about making the dessert that I had. Check it out!
It's all in french, so here's a picture for the not-so-adventurous types. Also, other photos are on Flickr... scroll down to find a link to all pictures... you should all know the drill by now!!

-mmm.....A rose flavored macaron and wild strawberries and sorbet

-Joe and I waiting for the train back to Lausanne

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.

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