some new bling

For those of you who haven’t heard yet (though I suspect most of you have heard by now…), Jason and I are engaged! As of 11:30 this morning! Yes! I am so excited!

Here are some pics of my new bling:

side view: cathedral setting

 

it’s much sparklier in person

 

see – sparkly!

 

Jason and Barley

buy me! buy me! buy me!

(at least that’s what I hope my house is screaming)

I listed it today. Let me know if you’ve got any critiques on the listing. Or if you want to buy a house in Lexington. I’m ready to make a deal.

In Barley news, he not only licked the realtor’s foot while we were trying to fill out paperwork, he subsequently fell asleep on her foot and also jumped into her very nice and very clean Acura SUV with wet, somewhat muddy paws. I was a little mortified.

Jason’s coming tomorrow, so you can look forward to posts describing our packing progress (I’ve threatened that whatever he doesn’t pack will stay in Lexington, so I suspect he will be packing like crazy all weekend).

jason needs more to do at work

Clearly he is being under-utilized in the workplace. Here is another story he sent me and I struggle to determine exactly which part of the story is the most ridiculous.

Here are possible contenders:

1. That there was an officer in plain clothes in the Minneapolis Airport bathroom because of “citizen complaints and arrests for sexual activity there” - are you kidding me?
2. That there are particular signals that those who wish to engage in lewd behavior typically make. Who are these people?
3. That he plead guilty and is now trying to take it back. Seriously, Senator. I suspect that if he wasn’t guilty, he wouldn’t have plead guilty and tried to hide the whole thing.

Speaking of ridiculousness, if you haven’t seen this clip of Miss South Carolina in Friday’s pagent scholarship contest, it’s appalling. But I’m not sure which is worse – Miss SC’s answer or the fact that some Americans can’t find the US on a world map (although I suspect that the number of Americans that can’t find the US is less than 1/5. I mean, I can find the US, and I’m pretty sure you guys could find the US, and that’s got to be worth something). Anyways, it’s clear that Miss SC could use that scholarship to learn more about Africa or The Iraq.

Finally, for those of you who are fans of The Hills (which I am completely addicted to), Heidi and Spencer’s new “hit” is both horrible and ridiculous. Barley gives it 2 wrinkled foreheads with head tilt and a run to the other side of the room with his tail between his legs.

research math

Jason sent this to me today, and it was great timing, because I was having this sort of a research day. Let’s just say my recent data is not as intuitive as I’d like it to be.

Anyways, if you get it, you’re probably as much of a nerd as I am.

the brain-eating dream

I often have strange dreams (nightmares) relating to the things that are going on in the lab. For example, one night I had a dream that the rats were housed in my room without cages – they were just running around on the floor. And another night, I had a dream that the monkeys escaped from their cages and were sitting in the lab office with me.

But this one takes the cake.

I’ll qualify this by saying that I sat at the cryostat (aka tiny meat slicer in a -18 C compartment), freezing my hands off while slicing frozen rat brains (we will not discuss how said brains were obtained) all day Thursday and Friday. So maybe it was really natural that I had a dream about eating rat brains Friday night – I was just popping them in my mouth like they were cherry tomatoes. On second thought, that is not natural at all.

In completely unrelated (and a bit more pleasant) news, I found this on my front porch planter the other day:

I don’t remember ever seeing a praying mantis up close before, much less finding one in my garden. Excellent.

This weekend was low-key – a much needed break since I’ve been out of town the past 2 weekends. Plus, I needed to organize and update my data spreadsheets (oh boy!) and I had some things to do at work this morning.

My neighbor had a party Friday night, and Barley was a good protector dog – he barked as some of her guests were walking down my driveway to leave. And it was a ferocious bark. So I feel pretty good about that – like there might be a slim chance that my afraid-of-everything pit bull might actually do something in the event we had an intruder. I will continue to hope, though, that we do not have any intruders.

Today, we had Tracy and Bella over for dinner, and the doggies had a ball! Even though Bella is about 1/3 Barley’s size, she managed to keep up with him, and I think she may have even have asserted her dominance over him. Tracy is super-cool – probably my favorite new Lexington friend – and I will be trying to convince her to move to Minneapolis when she gets her degree. (note: it appears that she is not the only one that I will need to convince to move to Minneapolis).