Spring Break!

My second quarter of grad school is over... I'm halfway through year one! More than halfway, even, if I can find my thesis lab without adding a fourth rotation this summer. I met with my Spring quarter advisor this morning, and so far it looks very promising. That's all I'll say for now, because of course I'll need to get into the work and the lab dynamic first.

St. Patrick's Day weekend is very green in Chicago, and it was made even more so by my sister Kara's visit... our main goal was to get $25 front-row seats to see "Wicked," the musical, in the ticket lottery. We had four chances to try for it over her three days in the city, but we were super lucky and her name was the second called on our very first attempt, Thursday night. I've owned the soundtrack for a couple of years, so finally seeing the show was fantastic! We even had time between the lottery and the show to check out nearby Millennium Park:

























We spent Friday downtown, exploring Michigan avenue's finest chocolate stores, the Lincoln Park Zoo, and dusk at the Sears Tower Skydeck:



The fact that Kara looks so much taller than me next to the Sears Tower is probably some kind of optical illusion:



You can't see the stepstool in her picture. Yeah, that's it. The stepstool. I swear.

Saturday was the annual dyeing of the Chicago river and then the St. Patrick's Day parade:





Kara even got kissed on the cheek by a passing leprechaun, though sadly I didn't turn my camera on in time to catch it. That's what she gets for being a redhead on St. Pat's, I guess!

Speaking of hair, it was one of my goals this break to get a haircut, so I tried out a place in Evanston this morning. It's probably not short enough for Grandma Jean's taste, but I'm very happy with it!



Now to write my second rotation report and enjoy the rest of spring break!

The most wonderful time of the year

I've been getting into the holiday spirit this week. Carolling with the Catatonics, visiting the Christkindlmarket downtown, baking cookies (mmm... Elizabeth's great Snickerdoodle recipe) and last but not least, decorating my apartment this weekend with Mike!

Check it out:


You can barely see in the photo, but the ridiculousness of our little tree is impressive. Mike bought it on sale at the end of the holiday season last year. We were a little surprised to find that the base section had colored lights since the box showed white ones... and then we unwrapped the top section. Which did have white lights. Even better, several branches remained dark when we finally got it plugged in. There were no hooks included in the ornament box, so we had to adapt some paperclips to the task. Still, it's our little pathetic tree. Awww...