whoops!

2 months with no blogging... 2 very busy busy months....

I got home in one piece. Packing was yucky. Colin had to help a lot. My bike did not get lost by the airline this time. I had a 5 or 7 hour stop in Sydney, so now I can kind of say I've been to Australia, but not really. I got Australian dollars and ate Krispy Kreme.

I had almost 2 weeks at home. Figuring out car financing and insurance was a small nightmare. Sissy and Tom bailed me out and took out the loan and put me on their insurance. Everything is still complicated though, being out of state and almost married.

The car is AMAZING. OMG. GROWN UP CAR. I love it, and it's beautiful to drive.

Sissy and I had an awesome 2 week roadtrip. Highlights:
- Millions of Mormons in SLC
- Jackson hole - thought my car was in mega trouble, but it was just a rock in the wheel. Then I left my computer charger in the motel.
- Yellowstone! Conophyton in Octopus Spring, bison traffic jams, beautiful sunsets, eating gummy octopus at octopus spring, grand prismatic spring, lots of columnar basalts, got trapped on a trail by a bear, but NO MOOSE! :(
- Beartooth road to Montana. BEST DRIVE EVER. Archean pink gneiss the whole way. Tundra. Great views. Snow. Didn't see the migrating red snow bacteria though. 11,000 ft pass. Thin air.
- Visited with Tom's Aunt on her South Dakota farm
- Devil's Tower! Huge Columnar basalts with crevice climbers all over it! Really Amazing!
- Mt Rushmore? It was 10 pm. I spent an obligatory 5 min there. Sissy spent another 5 while I went back to the car. It was smaller than I expected. Only went there because everyone said we had to.
- Crazy Horse - only the head is finished. 6o years for the head and for blasting a MASSIVE AMAZING OMG HUGE amount of rock away. I think it will take them another 150 years at the rate they're going.
- Banded iron formations (BIFs!) and Stromatolites near Marquette, Michigan
- Canada!
- Niagara Falls! Awesome! Dinosaur Mini Golf for next time. I'm taking Colin here when he gets his Green Card and can leave the country again.
- the Inn at Lock 7. Sit on a 3rd floor balcony at 2 am while giant ocean transport ships, 700+ feet long, transfer giant wind turbines 100 feet in front of you. You get the watch the boats go up and down as they navigate the locks between two of the Great Lakes. Wow.
- NY state - crazy drivers, and toll road, and lots of driving the wrong way.
- CT - arrived at my apartment and found out the sprinkler installation contractors had been using it as a warehouse. UUUUgh. Took about 24 hours to get the situation fixed.

Photos will be on facebook, eventually. I'm being slow with that. I might put a few up here too.

Sissy went home, Mom flew in, and we shopped for a week, and also did some literary tourism. The Mark Twain House in Hartford is really neat, and there is an excellent Irish Pub around the corner. It's foodie and beer nerd paradise in there. Probably the best meal I've had in years. Mom and I shopped, and got lost. Lots of getting lost. Connecticut is very confusing.

Mom left, and Colin flew in the next night! Colin's here! We have everything we need but furniture, which doesn't sound like much, but its' really a lot. We have lots of kitchenware and blow up coleman beds. They are our bed and our couch for now.

We found a JOP the other day! This is her second wedding, and it's the exact same situation as her last... UConn Geology grad student marrying foreign fiance immigration speedy style - i.e. just them and the officiator. The coincidences convinced me that I had picked the right JOP. She's so excited! I really like her.

We got the rings! We stayed within budget (whew! although my budget went out the window weeks ago... :/) and we were able to take them home last friday. The sales lady put on these ring saver things (little pieces of metal) to keep our too big bands on for now until we have the time to resize them (we got the not-so-expensive service plans so we could resize and re-rhodium plate was much as we wanted).

Sasha and I found the dress back in Sac. Sasha was my offical wedding dress shopping buddy. We went to Macy's, and the first dress I tried on was THE ONE. I swore I wouldn't wear white, but it's white. It's really perfect though. Still very non-traditional. Sasha was a great shopping buddy. If you ever need one... I highly recommend her.

So... it's gonna be the 13th! That's when the JOP is free. I like that it's the 13th.. non-traditional! Yes! But the only fancy restaurant in the area isn't open on Sundays. Colin proposed a fancy picnic lunch. This might be a really good idea... except for the ticks... hmmmm. Oh well. I think sparking wine, fancy cheese, and chocolate at the park would be worth a tick.

Grad school is fun. I like my classes. There's another new student! I think my advisors forgot to tell me about her. She's really nice, and down to earth. We have all our classes together and even TA at the same time. I TA'd my first lab yesterday! It went alright. The lab was basically on how to do conversions between units. Some of my students were pretty lost, but they really wanted to understand how to do it, so teaching them was fun!