My parents came to visit!

To prepare for the wedding, my parents made the trip out to Wisconsin to spend some time with us, and to help us take care of some of the details of the wedding. We had a great time! We took my parents to Essen Haus, where I introduced my parents to the German drinking of Wisconsin, the rules of the boots, and good beer! Tim and I took them to Nifty Fifty, a restaurant decorated with 50s advertisements, TV shows, signs, and a juke box with the best oldies! Not to mention candy for 10 cents and classic burgers and shakes. Yum! I also showed them where I work, and my parents were excited to see the lab that I always talk about.

That Saturday we spent most of the day at Lake Windsor Golf Club. We did the food tasting, worked on the layout of the room, figured out the exact order of events, the timing of each thing, contact info for each vendor, etc. It took all day, required quite a number of arguments, but eventually we got everything all figured out. A whole lot of things done off of the To-Do List!

Birthdays!

Happy birthday to Tim and my mom! Tim is 25 years old now, and my mom is ever young ;o) For Tim's birthday I got him a grill that is painted like a baseball. He loves going to Brewers games, and his grill was stolen last year, so I decided this one would be perfect! Hopefully he'll get to use it quite a bit! I was unable to celebrate with my mom (that long distance thing and all), but I wished her a happy birthday from afar!

Unfortunately we got a rough start to Tim's birthday. A friend of ours had a scheduling conflict, and asked if we could watch his dog from early in the morning until he got off work in the evening. We figured it would be no problem. He dropped off Morgan very early, and the trouble started right away. Cooper knew that Morgan was in our living room (stupid dog hypersensitive smell), and was going nuts whining and crying. In turn Morgan heard him, and being a beagle, started barking (at 5am... we live in an apartment complex). Since it was Tim's birthday, I decided I would try to handle it and let him sleep. I tried to let the dogs play together for a bit to tire them out. That just made them more awake. So I tried separating them again. Then they cried and howled. I tried putting them in the kitchen together, but they freaked out when I was out of sight. I tried putting them in the same crate together, but it was too small and they freaked out when I left. HOLY CRAP! So I tried taking them outside, but all they wanted to do was play. So I took them back inside, at which time Morgan peed on the carpet and Cooper pooped on the carpet.

Then I had to wake Tim up, becuase I couldn't handle the dogs and cleaning the carpet simultaneously. So began Tim's birthday! We couldn't let either dog out of our site because Morgan kept having accidents, so we had to take turns watching them and showering and getting ready for work. Eventually we had to crate them both, Cooper in our room and Morgan in the living room. We even had to tell our complex that we had 2 dogs for the day so they wouldn't be concerned about the noise coming out of our apartment while we were away. We both had to come home at lunch to take care of the dogs too! It was quite a mess! Definitely a failed experiment. Our friend felt really bad, since neither of us had anticipated this being such a mess, but we realized that the dogs just get too excited around each other, and 5am was a bad time to start! Ah, so it goes!

Later that night Tim and I got food at Granite City, a restaurant not far from our apartment. It was really good! Unfortunately we both had to work the next day, so we couldn't go out for a drink or stay out late anywhere (because we're old now). Maybe next year!

Tim is the Employee of the Month!

Congratulations Tim! He was named the Employee of the Month at Dick's Sporting Goods (or as the Big Dick of the Month as our friend affectionately called him). He's been discussing getting promoted to a Front End Coordinator (FEC) from a cashier, but that will require dedicating more hours and working nights and weekends (which he had previously kept open for working at the Wisconsin State Journal and covering sports). He may accept the promotion once the sports end for high schools in the spring. But for now, congrats to Tim!

Graduate school interviews

Many people had been asking about graduate school through the winter, and I was deliberately avoiding the issue and here's why: it wasn't going the way I had anticipated. I applied to 6 schools, and you always expect some rejections, but not all of them to be rejections.

Tim and I were excited to use this as a chance to leave Wisconsin and explore some other part of the country. I applied to 2 schools on the west coast, 2 in the midwest, and 2 on the east coast. We were excited to go anywhere but Madison. Nothing is wrong with Madison, but I've been living here for 6 years, Tim has been in Wisconsin his ENTIRE life, and we were ready to try something different.

But luck would not have it that way. I did not get into any of the other 5 schools I applied to, but I did get an interview at Wisconsin. The interview went really well, and all of my recommendations were coming from the pathology department, and shortly after my interview I was offered a spot in the University of Wisconsin Cellular and Molecular Pathology department.

I was excited, but not as excited as I would have been to go somewhere else. I wanted to explore a new city, meet all new professors and staff and faculty, get lost finding classes, find a new apartment, go on an adventure and try something different. Tim and I were ready to go, but I think I reached high and fell short. It me me some time to get really excited, because nothing in my life changed leading up to graduate school. I would keep working, I didn't have to move, I could make plans for month into the future, etc.

But I am excited. I'm starting graduate school, making new friends, taking new classes, and starting my rotations! But more on that later, I'm trying to stick to a chronological update!