(108). He has emerged!

Nick has been- how should we say- a bit stressed in prepping for SuperComputing conference next week. Pinot (and Cashew and I) were more than a little excited when he emerged from the office this evening:)

Congratulations to Nick

On his latest publication, to be presented in Delft, Netherlands at the EuroPar Conference this August!

(I’m just a little jealous that I don’t have the vacation time to go along on this trip, but appeased by the fact that we’ll be on our big vacation to Eastern Europe only a month later   )

Weekly Updates

With the cool new phone, I’m trying out the twitter thing for short updates during the week, but I’ll still try to update the actual blog fairly often too!

Last week was really busy for me – I had a subcontractor meeting late on Monday, followed by a big customer meeting on Thursday afternoon.  Between prepping for both meetings, I was at work late lots last week – but the thought that got me through was that I had enough extra hours to take Friday off!

We kicked off our spring bocce season last Wednesday night with a 16-3 victory, and ‘brick red’ tshirts (as opposed to the lovely pale pink we got last summer).  Pinot loved having CJ to hang out with during the game and during post-bocce dinner at Bullfeathers on the Hill.  I think we’re all looking forward to this season!

Thursday was wonderful, well, post customer presentation (that went well too, which added to the bliss) – just knowing that I had Friday off, and that the weather was going to be great all weekend.

Friday, we got up and had a leisurely breakfast at home with Nick, then Nick went in to school and Pinot and I set off to run the Capitol Cresent Trail.  We got done a bit early and hit up lululemon for some new running gear – I’m all about their manifesto.  As a side note, I LOVE the Bethesda shops that allow you to bring your dog in shopping with you and I heart my new running outfit.  Then we set off to meet Melanie for lunch at Brown Bag (well, technically in the park, but the food was from Brown Bag).

Headed home, and then Nick and I set off to celebrate our 1000 days of marriage (woohoo!) at the Italian Pines in Gaithersburg, which had really great Italian food with a home-cooked sort of feel.

Saturday mornining, we were up and at em early, heading out to do the 8 mile MS walk.  The bus ride to the walk was rather humorous because the driver had no idea where he was going, and Pinot was in the bus seat with us, but the walk was a really good time.  It ended at Glen Echo with free subs from Subway.

Saturday night we headed out to celebrate Melanie’s 27th birthday at CoCoSala - all the food was all wonderful, and I loved the ambiance!  (Nick and I almost thought that the food was better than the dessert….)  After dinner, the 4 of us headed over to the Kennedy Center to see Shear Madness, a whodunnit comedy that was rather entertaining.  Ended the night needing a jump, all in all, a great evening!

Today, Nick and I gave Pinot the day off (poor dog, 18 miles the past three days), but we headed out for an early-ish morning run in Bethesda followed by brunch and a leisurely day at home.  Nick is kicking off Dynist week this week at school this evening with his group and all the Wisconsin folks that came into town.

On a seperate random note, we’re thinking about getting bikes!  Yay! 

I didn’t really take many pictures this weekend (shocking, I know) – but Melanie took quite a few with her new birthday camera on Saturday night – I’ll link/upload a few of those when I get them!

2008 – A Photo Review

Some favorites from 2008 – a bit late, but fun nonetheless.  Here’s to a wonderful 2009!

(Updated – I don’t recommend rock you slideshows – this one wasn’t working properly, so it has been deleted and replaced with a picasa slideshow in another post!)

A Great BIG Catch-Up Post

It’s been awhile.  So the quick rundown on what we’ve been up to since the last time we updated this is going to be a bit long…

Nick headed down to Austin for the Supercomputing conference towards the end of last month.  I’m told that Austin is as weird as it’s been kept, and that it would be a cool place to live.

While Nick was down in TX, I was finishing up the last parts of the home improvment fall project – mainly repainting our bedroom and getting the backsplash up in the kitchen.

We headed back to Rochester for Thanksgiving (that was an earlier post), and then came back to MD with a full week including my company holiday party and our annual holiday party back to back.  All of the holiday baking was put to work in the form of take out boxes for everyone to take home.

We splurged a bit on a pre-Christmas present to ourselves – a nice Nikon digital camera and an extra zoom lens.  We headed down into the DC on a lovely brisk Winter day to play tourist with the new camera.

December was flying by, and (amazingly) I was able to hold out until we had ‘our’ Maryland Christmas to give out presents to Nick, Cashew or Pinot.  Good times were had by all, Christmas at home. 

Right after that, December 19th rolled around and – just in time for the biggest snow storm of the year to hit the east coast – it was time for us to drive to Rochester.  (Nick was amazing through non-stellar driving conditions the entire route.)  We picked up a real tree and decorated it with my mom, and had a lot of fun watching Pinot romp around in (her first?) big snow experience.  Cashew wasn’t so happy to be away from home, but we had a wonderful few relaxing days with my mom in the ROC. The turntable that we got for my mom was the awesome (loved listening to some old 45s), a few classic holiday flicks, and my mom did a great job of shopping this year (too much!)

After a few relaxing days in ROC, we drove to Buffalo to fly out to Nebraska.  A bit of snow on the way there, we thought we were going to have to shovel ourselves out on the way back.  The Christmas trip to NE was great as always, with the fun amplified by 2 youngun’s under 2 years old, and everyone’s willingness to let me play with all of the new camera settings. 

And alas – after heading back to Buffalo (60 degree weather no less), driving back to Rochester, sleeping a bit, having lunch with my mom and then driving back to MD, we’re back home, momentarily at least.  Excited to see my neice Vanessa tonight (who is down visiting Melanie for the new year).  And soon….  very very soon…  our new year trip awaits

Congratulations to Christian & Amelia!

We spent the earlier portion of today celebrating Christian & Amelia’s wedding.  Nick & Christian are in grad school together (wrote & published a paper a few years back).  The wedding reception was held at the mansion house at the Baltimore Zoo, complete with a penguin and a toucan at the reception! 

It’s Official…

We now have an actual PhD candidate living in our midst.  Nick rocked his proposal this morning – just incase you’ve been refreshing all day waiting for the outcome (you have, haven’t you?)  – found at at about 11:56AM that he passed   And so, the road to the full dissertation begins….

Aaaah! Nick’s proposal is this morning!

In just 2 hours and 15 minutes – 10AM on Friday 9/5, Nick is starting to give his proposal on his thesis topic to advance to candidacy.  Unfortunately, I am at work this morning I have absolutely no doubt that he’s going to kick butt – and I’m really excited to be leaving here at 11:30 so I can meet up with Nick and the UMD crowd for a post-talk Indian buffet lunch to get the full scoop on how it went!

I did bake a whole heck of a lot yesterday so that he’d have some yummy snacks to bring in and feed the masses this morning!  With the talk starting at 10, and that being the time most grad student alarms go off as being early in the morning (ha ha, i kid, i kid), I went with a mostly morning approach to food.  When most people think morning, they think coffee.  Coffee, according to Nick, is loved by most grad students.  So – what goes good with coffee?  Perhaps a coffee ‘n’ cream cheesecake?  Maybe some fresh biscotti?  How about some peach and blueberry coffee cake?  Or maybe – just maybe, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?  Yep, all 4 of them are ready to be eaten during a certain someone’s talk on parallel frameworks – with orange juice and coffee proper to boot.  (Awesome of  AT to pick up some coffee for m’boy on his way in to school since NJ went in super early this morning.)

Pinot was dropped off at daycare at 7AM today!  Wow!  She actually seems to be loving it this morning on the web viewer from the moment she entered, though she was still sad to see Nick leave.  I’m so glad she seems to be starting to get the hang of it there!

Between watching Pinot on screen this morning, thinking about the talk, and being excited to meet up for lunch, I’m sitting on pins & needles this morning.    (If you’d like to tune in to Pinot too, she’ll be in the Romper Room until about 6 this evening:  http://dogdaycare.com/whiteflint/webcams.php)

Send good luck thoughts (or the CS equivalent – foo bar deadbeef (?)) to Nick for a kick-butt presentation & Q/A session this morning!

What did you do today?

While I was sitting at work, Nick waited in line for almost an hour and rushed up to the nosebleed sections to see Obama speak at UMD this afternoon. Don’t forget to get out and vote tomorrow if you are in DC/MD/VA!

And I’m done :)

A bit rocky towards the end of the semester, but everything is done – finals, paper, paperwork. Just sitting back and reveling in it Woohoo!