Lots going on, but I'm barely taking notice of any of it-- I've reached this kind of zoned-out groove where I move from thing to thing kind of in a daze. I enjoy the thing in particular, and just kind of make my way in a very spacey fashion to the next. Perhaps this is my adaptive strategy for having So Much To Do. Case in point, my schedule for the past few weeks:

August 2-3: Drive to Princeton, North Carolina for nalroth's family reunion.
August 4-8: Commute 2.5 hours a day, add in such necessities as cooking and food shopping, Belly dancing, an early-morning doctor's appointment, tasting with the Caterer out in Casanova, and then fly to San Diego.
August 9-10: Help out with friend's wedding (yaaaay!), get back to the hotel room at approximately 1:30 am after cleaning up, promptly leave hotel at 3:45 am to get to the airport and through security for my 6:00 am flight. Spend all day traveling due to various delays, get home at 5:30 pm.

This Saturday will be jam-packed... Meeting up with girlie47 at 8:30, meeting with the florist at 9:30, final dress-fitting at 11:00, lunch, picking up my freshly-engraved wedding ring soon after, and then collecting (and maybe shipping) the bridesmaids dresses, followed by a lovely evening of cake-tasting and games with satanya. Had to move the hair and make-up trial to Sunday morning to make up for that... and then next weekend is the bachelorette party! No sleepies for me.

And on top of all this has been just enough mental awareness for me to start pondering my next step in life. As per my last poll-post, I'm thinking of teaching. This probably means I'll be pursuing my Masters, just for flexibility's sake. I was looking into just straight-bio classes, but after a quick chat with the lovely paleotheist, I'm very, very tempted to try to get back into Paleo (incidentally, it turns out Tom Holtz's research interests are exactly the same as mine, just for dinosaurs). Chances are I'll spend part of my honeymoon poring over research papers in preparation for contacting him.

And to commemorate-- a meme! Since I spent the entire flight there and the entire flight back reading His Dark Materials...

( Another daemon meme? Laaaaaaaaame... )

Just a quick note saying I'm back on my respective coast-- I have a lot to report, but I'm runnin' behind, so I'll catch up with everyone later!!

In other news: nalroth is the best boyfriend EVAR!

Although it really doesn't feel like it to me. Perhaps it's because I haven't done anything that really signifies Christmas to me-- Mom and Dad decorated the tree this year (which is fake and doesn't smell, to add insult to injury); Mom and I haven't made any Christmas fudge (that'll come Wednesday); and because I'm a poor starving graduate student I haven't had any opportunity to go Christmas shopping. About the only hint I had to the approach of Christmas was the fact that it was friggin' freezin' in Davis-- and now that I'm down in MV (where the high today was a balmy 76 degrees), I don't even have that.

Mrr.. but, yes. Last week was a blur-- got lots of random things taken care of since I won't be back 'till the second week of January. Finished up that bothersome phylogeny paper, and muddled my way through the entertainment at the holiday party. Mom came up and delivered my new (to me, at least) futon, which is awesome. She was also nice enough to cook and clean as I was running around frantically like a chicken with my head cut off. We made the drive down from Davis to MV on Saturday, and I've spent the past few days recuperating.

I was supposed to drive up to Westwood today to hang out with the ever-awesome d1ucb4u and Pete, but I just was not feeling good today. :P I'll definitely try to make my way up there before I head back to Davis, since I miss you guys.

Chatted with one of my GOC friends, Jess, tonight-- I totally don't realize how much I miss my friends until I hear from them again. When we lived together Jess would always ask these random science questions and I'd spend hours explaining things to her. We went through a few of the questions she came up with while in China (and while visitng her personal trainer today), and it was very bittersweet... *sigh* Just one of those times in my life where I wish things could have continued indefinitely. But even if I'd stayed in Westwood things wouldn't have been the same. Still makes me a bit melancholy, though.

In other news, nalroth is again the best boyfriend ever. I got a package from amazon.com today-- he'd sent me something to stick under the Christmas tree to open on Christmas morning. This of course lead to loud exclaimations of dismay and much declarations of affection and warnings of retribution. ;) And then later this evening there was an artist on deviantArt who was offering a kiriban. I'd wanted to make an attempt at catching it, but then my parents dragged me downstairs to watch March of the Penguins (a movie which really didn't excite me)... I happened to mention my mission to nalroth, and lo and behold, when I called him after the movie was over he'd managed to snag a screenshot of the lucky number and sent off an e-mail to the artist. I just felt incredibly special that he'd humored me with this silly little wish of mine... He really is the most amazing boyfriend evaaaaaaaaar. I'm so lucky!! (Mine! Mine mine mine mine mine!) ;D

Anywho, illucian posted something on her LJ that I thought might be worth doing myself. And without further ( adieu )

Really, too quiet. It was a bit of a lonely weekend.

My lab-mates (along with any other Geo grad students back from AGU) continued our celebration of Lars' achievement at the local Woodstocks. The pizza was better than I remembered, though that may be because it was a different restaurant in a completely different city. They all went off to continue drinking, and I decided to head off home. Said goodbye to Stevan, Sanja's husband-- he was heading back home to Serbia, where Sanja will join him in ten days. Ten very long days for her-- I can completely sympathize. But she's got her own Orals to deal with on Thursday, so hopefully she won't have enough time to be sad.

I got a call from one of my good friends from GOC, Emily-- she's at a paid internship in DC working for some sort of start-up political company of sorts. I hadn't talked to her since graduation-- sounds like we may miss each other in LA, but there may be tentative plans to see each other while I'm out visiting nalroth in December/January. (Squee!!! 17 days from now I'll be cuddled in his arms! <3! )

Saturday was less than fun... made a mistake and went and watched The Chronicles of Narnia with a labmate, when I promised I'd see it with nalroth. *sigh* I felt guilty the whole way through, and it kind of put a damper on it. Suffice it to say I've learned my lesson, and I am once again absolutely astounded by what a wonderful and understanding boyfriend I have. After the movie I managed to get a little work done on my phylogeny project, but overall I was too worn out to get much done.

Today I woke up early, chatted with my love before he started on his return trip from Connecticut, and got into lab. It was distinctly odd being in the Geology building on a weekend-- but also very peaceful. I think I may make a habit of it, whatever weekend I don't have plans with friends or nalroth's unavailable. Spent a good six hours working on the phylogeny project-- and that's just data entry and running the analyses! I have the information here in front of me to go over for trends and results stuff. Hopefully the paper won't turn out too bad. *cringe*

*sigh* I wonder very, very often if this is really what I should be doing. I spend all my free time thinking on creative things, like stories bouncing around in my head, video game ideas, drawing, crafting, etc... I mean, what will I do with my PhD, anywho? I'd like to teach-- but I'm really only prepared to teach Bio classes, and what Bio department's going to hire someone with a PhD in Geology? Heh... makes me shake my head every time I realize that I'm getting a PhD in Geology without having taken a single geology class so far. That'll change next quarter, but it's fun to boast about now.

Anywho, I think I'm going to try to keep up on these every day or two updates-- it'll help keep those I don't happen to catch very often updated on my life.

In other news, I'm out of Nutella. D:

Also: All I want for Christmas is a little love!

Sneaking on for a bit before the Banquet tonight.. This week has been full of weird events, and I hesitate on whether or not to update about them. SVP, on a whole, has been odd, but the poster was very well recieved. Everything other than that will have to wait-- I'll decide on the plane how much I want to share. :P

Oh, and zhai is the coolest person EVAR for this.

<3!

And time drags on.

So, it's been a while since I've updated anything meaningful (well, meaningful in the non-magic-8-ball way, which is what memes are). Mostly because things have been crazy. I've been meaning to post another update of DOOM-- but the problem with those is I usually get distracted partway through and they sit on my computer, saved and untouched, until it's no longer important that they be updated. Since all my friends are scattering to the winds I really do need to stop that-- since this is, sadly, one of the more reliable ways of keeping updated on my life.

I guess I might as well start with ( updates from the last update: )