15 Years

Today is CrabMama and my (unofficial) 15 year anniversary.  It is unofficial because we got married twice - the first time for financial reasons, the second time for love.  Well, the first time was for love too, but her financial aid forms were due, so it was motivated by money.  In celebration of our big day, we went to McDonald's and ate some french fries, got Chinese food, and watched a movie at home.  "Why McDonald's?" you ask.  Well, about 18 years ago, CrabMama worked at MD's.  I drover up to where she was working and asked her if she wanted to move in with me.  Oh, so romantic!  Last night, we went to the same MD's, sat in the same booth (actually, it has been renovated, so the booth doesn't exist anymore, but, we sat close), and ate french fries, just like we did 18 years ago.  The girl who served us wasn't born yet when we had this conversation that we were celebrating.  That was depressing.  Another sad thing is that both places that we worked when we first met don't exist anymore.

After snarfing our large fry, I happened to look down as the nutritional information.  That is some scary sh*t.  500 calories for a large fry! 25 grams of fat! Wow, it is good that we split it.

We next went to the Chinese restaurant close to our house and got some food.  CrabMama got steamed vegetables (what's the point?) and I got Kung Pao Chicken.  Hopefully this is a tiny bit more healthy that MD's, since there was nothing fried.  I only ate about 1/3 of it, too, since the portions were huge.  The restaurant was clearly designed for take out only.  Subway has more tables in it.  They decorated it with while wall paper.  No pictures.  No words.  No nothing.  Just white wallpaper.  Extremely uninviting.  (Just think about all of the valuable information that you are learning from this blog post!)

We watched "Amelia", which I thought was a pretty good movie, even though you knew the ending.  I didn't know much about her at all, except for the obvious things, so it was an educational experience.

Our official anniversary is in August, so we will probably do something more adventurous then.  We are actually planning on traveling out west for the month of August.  Since we are "discouraged" from paying ourselves for all three months of the summer, I have pretty much (notice the subtle qualifier) decided to take a month-long vacation.  One of the problems with this idea is that there are probably going to be all sorts of meetings and crap during August.  But, I will just miss them.  I can do that, right?

This week is spring break for the students (not for me!)  I am hoping that I can hole up and write some reports.  I have a bunch of them that all due right about now (just got an official overdue notice this morning!)  I think that there are three grant reports that all due right now.  Then I have a third revision of a review that I have to do (I told them that I didn't want to see it again, but they sent it anyways).  And I got two proposals to review from NSF this week (you get an e-mail from the program manager, not asking if you want to review it, but with instructions on how to download it and the review criteria.  Nice.)  So, more crap to do.

One of the problems that I am struggling with right now is how to keep track of all of the projects/stuff that I am working on right now.  I have been taking notes on some paper, but it doesn't feel very modern to do that.  I was going to get a lab folder, which I think would be good too, but I have so many things going on, that I should get one for each project.  A guy that I work with does it with a three-ring binder, paper, and tabs for the different projects.  This is probably the best idea that I have heard.  I was trying to think of something a bit more high tech, though.  I have EverNote, which seems to be pretty cool, but I have to play with it a bit more.  The main issue I have with computer note taking is that it seems sort of offensive to do this, since people automatically assume that you are checking e-mail or working on other things instead of taking notes.  It also feels more natural to take notes on paper.  So, I am considering taking notes on paper, then scanning them in with my fancy scanner and putting them into EverNote.  One cool thing about this idea is that I can scan images that my students/PostDocs bring me to look at.  Well, this is definitely a continuing adventure.

Short updates:

1. Children taking ice skating lessons at Veterans Park.  Highly recommend.  Very professional.  Very.

2. Still learning guitar.  Don't have much time for practice.  But learning.

3. Didn't work out at all last week.  Fail.  Fat.  Blob.  Sad.

4. Cold.  Snow.

5. Sleeping badly.

6. Twitchy eye due to stress.  I have been wearing glasses for the last few days because I can't see right.  I guess that is bad.

7. CrabGirl made us a cake for breakfast.  Marble cake with pudding frosting with brownies sprinkled on top.  Wow!

8. Pictures are mostly of trees and snow and things lacking in color.  We have about another month of this weather.  And then another month after that until it is actually "nice" outside.

9. I am going to give up Mt. Dew.  This is it.  Once the supply that I have right now runs out, I am done.  Bring on the Excedrin!

10. I think that I am going to make a doctor's appointment too.  It has been about seven years.

Enough for today.