Back in Michigan

*edit* Woo-hoo~ my week-long, all-expense-paid business trip to Palm Beach, FL just got approved by the department!! =D *end edit*

What I didn't realize until right before landing in Palm Springs is that it is quite literally an oasis in the middle of a desert. Palm Springs is beautiful; I woke up to a view of tall, thin palm trees against the backdrop of purple mountains. The architecture in Palm Springs is refreshing. Being a desert resort, the buildings were built akin to those in small Mexican villages with colors such as bright blue, yellow, and terracotta constrasting against the green palm trees and cacti. The conference was both intense and stimulating. We were completely immersed in social psych research from 8 AM to 7 PM everyday. Besides short 15 minute coffee breaks and a lunch hour, we were going from lectures to lectures with poster sessions in between. Good connections were made during the trip, while new ideas were dreamed up. I feel a combination of excitement and fear about my future career.

Highlights of the trip:

• Tanning by the pool during lunch breaks
• Walking around at night...without a jacket or coat
• Meeting people that I've cited in my papers or want to work with in grad school
• West coast seafood
• Going out drinking with former colleagues (now professors) and former GSIs
• Yummy fruit smoothies
• Shopping for souvenirs and doing other touristy things
• Finding strawberry gummies at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport!!!
• Star-gazing from the plane at 32,000 feet altitude

and just to update on my 101 in 1001....

#6 & 7: Go to the doctor's/go to the dentist: I caught up on these last weekend. I finally asked my doctor to look at my back (I have chronic back pain) and am starting physical therapy this week.

#4: Drink no caffeine for 1 month: I started over Christmas break because I knew my family in New York don't buy pop or really anything with caffeine (except tea, which I'm not partial to). For those who thought I couldn't go without caffeine for a month, boo-yah! ;)

California...

here I come!

In less than 2 days I will be in Palm Springs, CA for the SPSP Annual Conference!





It is currently 76 degrees there right now. =D

Weekend recall

What a weekend. =)

Friday:

• Finding out that Jeff and Lisa had their baby Emma
• IVCF/CCF joint large group meeting (amazing worship!)
• Wiping out on the "shortcut of death" between my apartment and Ian's house
• Knitting while watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Saturday:

• Breakfast with Shelley
• Amazing worship practice (using a piano with missing keys)
• Task #57: Go to the Zoo. I haven't been to the zoo forever so I emailed the ladies of InterVarsity and 12 of us drove to the Toledo Zoo this past Saturday. (pics to come later). It was a cold, but greeeeat time! We saw a black light puppet show, danced to the catchy tune "I love the Zoo" in a connection tunnel thingy, watched the polar bear feeding, saw really pretty (and ugly) birds and fish, lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), penguins, and of course, the smelly monkeys.
• Tattoo parlor (that's right, I finally got one!)
• Knitting while watching Strictly Ballroom

Sunday:

• Trying to leave for church in a frenzy. I woke up late, my phone was dead, I was trying to herd the worship materials + cell phone charger + 2 guitars out the door all at once. I ended up forgetting a guitar somehow and Kristen had to walk it to church for me. =/
• The funnest time I had leading worship in a looooong time!
• Hearing about a TON of engagements - at least it seems like a ton (Amy + Josh, Kathy + Dan)
• Retreat of silence
• Dinner with the roomies

101 update

Work has actually been getting much busier, leaving me with less and less time to blog and kill time on the Internet. I'm pretty happy right now. It doesn't hurt that Heather burned me the last two year's worth of Hope College CD's.

Not that many updates, but here goes:
Task #35: Make my bed everyday for a week. For those of you who don't know, our apartment did some roommate switches and I now have a new roommate. The nice thing is that Kristen is student teaching, has to be at school at 7 AM, and thus gets up at the same time around me each morning (6 AM). This is very convenient as we now have 2 alarms going off at the same time making it almost impossible to sleep through/snooze through the alarm clock and that I actually get to get ready in my room with the lights on! Having the light on makes it easier for me to pick up after myself and make the bed. I am proud of say, I made a point of making my bed everyday this week. =)

Task #62: Go for a night out and dance. I went out with my work friends to Live at PJ's (awesome awesome club!!) to grab a drink and dance on Thursday night. It was fun, but I wasn't really in the mood to dance. Saturday night, Bert was in town and so after Charlie's, him, Brian, and Tim dragged me to go dancing at the Necto. It was definitely an experience, but fun. =)

Task #83: Call Maintenance to fix all the broken things in my apartment; Task # 84: Reorganize my music binder; Task #85: Reorganize the church's music binder.
Finally got down to business to get these things done. Of course, calling maintenance doesn't mean that maintenance is prompt in responding. After reorganizing some binders, I think I'm going to spend a few evenings in the church house this week organizing worship stuff. I'm sure I'll be glad to get it out of the way when things pick up more with IV for the semester.

I'm starting to get pretty disorganized. I proposed a trip to the Toledo Zoo for the women in IV not realizing that the date I proposed was this Saturday! Oh well, I cleared my schedule and we are now going. Call it unintentional spontenaity.

On another note, I finished the whole first series of Meteor Garden (a Chinese Drama series) in a week. Sad, I know, but sooooo good. =)

So it begins...

The New Year. My favorite time of the year. My mom tells me that making plans is my form of therapy. New Years Resolution is the perfect outlet for that. My break was pretty good. Rob and I broke it off so my plans had to change last minute which kinda sucked. After Christmas in New York with the Kwang family, I ended up going to Toronto for New Year's. Highlights in between included having a reunion with housemates from the 516 Fourth days. I also listened to a lot of Kelly Clarkson, which I have to say, is such a great break-up album. =)

This year's resolutions? Too many to list. I'm embarking on a project I've seen on other blogs called 101 in 1001. In 1001 days, I will accomplish the 101 tasks listed on the sidebar of my blog.

101 Update:
Task #91: Buy an Mp3 Player of some sort (iPod/iPod shuffle preferably). So one of my aunts bought me a nice Coach bag for Christmas (!!!). Unfortunately, the look was a bit outdated so I took it back into the store and exchanged it for a smaller and thus slightly less expensive black hobo bag. Using the leftover money, I invested in an iPod nano. It's great!

It was hard to wake up this morning and go to work. I was up late dyeing my hair. It was supposed to be dark ash brown but turned out black on me. I don't mind - I quite like the dark look for winter. I was also watching my new obsession: Chinese soaps. Although I can understand most of it, I realize there are drawbacks to being illiterate in Chinese. At one point, the camera focused on something written on the chalkboard then cut to the character's look of horror at what was written. That was the cliffhanger on which the episode ended. I couldn't read what was written and thus have no idea what was wrong. I lost sleep over that last night.