random thing i looked at today

if you know what this is i am impressed!

highs and lows

aside from the craptacular fact that my school laptop crashed on friday, i had a really good weekend. erik and i had a lot of fun on saturday, and we went out to get his very first potty. since everyone i asked seems passionate about either the little potty or the little seat that fits over a regular potty, i decided to get both since neither was too expensive. on saturday night i set up the little potty (it even plays music when you tinkle in it!), and erik peed on it the very first time! i was so proud of him! it's amazing how excited you can get over a little person peeing on a potty. our sunday was very nice too. i got erik up and fed him breakfast while peter slept in a little, then i went down to the lab for awhile to take care of some things. we met my parents, brother, and his family for lunch at red, hot, and blue to celebrate my birthday. the food was so-so (used to be MUCH better!) but we all had a really nice time. i really love spending time with my family, and have really been missing my brother, sister-in-law, and nieces since i last saw them when we went to OC.

i'm still utterly dismayed over the fact that my laptop (along with almost a year's worth of data and presentations) is now completely useless. the only answer dell's 'award winning' tech support could give me is to take the thing to the geek squad to try and recover my files before reinstalling windows, which i am absolutely not going to do. besides having an inherent mistrust for people who travel around in black and white vw beetles, i think that the geek squad is nothing but a way for best buy to extract as much money as possible from people at their weakest (ie when their computers aren't functioning) while installing unnecessary (and expensive) updates on their computer and causing irreparable damage to it in the process. just ask my mom! being a student has its advantages, and one of them is free access to the computer experts at the university. so i have an appointment to have one of them attempt to extract my data tomorrow afternoon. i hope they're successful, because if not, i am calling the whole thing a complete loss and reformatting the hard drive. craptacular!!!

a picture to cheer me up

when i was looking for a crying picture for the previous post, i came across this one and it made me smile.

argh!

i don't feel like blogging right now because my school laptop had a cataclysmic failure and i may have lost all of the data, papers, and presentations from the past year that i was too ignorant to back up. argh!!!

all you need is love

here's a picture of us at west point from last weekend, probably the only one of us all dressed up and all looking at the camera ... yay! it's great to have a nice family photo. i love my two guys!

thanks to my mother-in-law for taking this picture!

my birthday dinner at the melting pot

was wonderful! we had a perfect table for two tucked into a very private corner and they had put candles and rose petals along the back, along with a beautiful vase filled with roses and daisies.

great food, great wine, and a great 3 hours alone with my hubby! we had such a nice time.

i took some photos of our yummy food.



on the way home we walked through bessemer court and the fountains were beautiful.



pittsburgh was looking particularly lovely last night.

here's one more for you

Originally uploaded by stupid blue

on our way to station square i almost missed this one as we drove past. luckily we stopped at a red light and i took a picture of this robot beneath the liberty bridge. it makes me wonder, are there more?

busy busy weekend

this weekend we drove up to west point, new york for the wedding of peter's cousin brian. the ceremony was at the beautiful thayer hotel overlooking the hudson river. it was a very long and action-packed weekend, but we got to spend lots of time visiting with peter's family which was really nice. it's good to be home! i'll try to upload my photos from the weekend over the next couple of days. i would do it tonight, but i am being taken out to a very special birthday dinner at the melting pot by my sweet husband peter. and i have to give a shout out to my mom for babysitting for us this evening - thanks mom!

another pittsburgh robot

Robot w/ Cup O Joe
Originally uploaded by Chris Bail

this one is on the 10th street bridge and was captured by chris bail. it doesn't look like the same artist as "my" robot, but i was excited to see that there's at least two of them in pittsburgh ...and they both have hearts! so fascinating!

robot remix

robots on my mind again

why salmon sperm?

i find myself asking this question all the time. ok, maybe not, but today i was looking for some information on southern blot probes on a science nerd website and came across this text box:


of course it's a very logical explanation as to why one would choose salmon sperm, but that question along with the strange lady with the purple hair, pink gloves and tutu has me totally baffled.

erik's new 'do

i mentioned the other day that erik got his second haircut on saturday. i don't really have a good "before" and "after" shot, so here is a picture of him a couple weeks ago enjoying himself in the water play area at the pittsburgh children's museum:



and here's one of him from yesterday:



i think it looks pretty cute, but definitely a lot more grown up which of course makes me sort of sad. i miss his long blond curls! how peter and i produced such a beautiful little boy still mystifies me.

after the storm

last night the remnants of hurricane ike hit our region. fortunately our house was spared any damage (just an odd flower pot or two in the front yard), but it looks like my brother's house has some large branches if not a whole tree on it this morning judging by the text message he sent to peter. hopefully there's no damage to his house.

the three of us (peter, erik, and i) were out on a mission to get my robot graffiti photo (see post below) yesterday afternoon, and by the time we stopped for dinner in oakland, the wind was really picking up. it was one of those really weird, hot gusty breezes. we actually saw someone flying a kite in schenley park. i wonder how much success he had! when we were finished eating, the sun was beginning to set and the sky had a surreal pink/orange glow to it. luckily i had my camera with me and snapped this picture from the parking lot:



the sky was far too interesting to pass up a chance to get some photos of the sunset with downtown pittsburgh in the background, so we went down to the hot metal bridge and i took some more pictures. you can see these little fluffy clouds in some of them. they were flying across the sky at an amazing pace. it was really cool to see.





this one i took with a longer exposure (1.6s). i like the way the colors came out. it captured the oddness of the evening a little bit:



(click on any of the pictures to see a larger size)

my robot friend

today i finally got a picture of my latest obsession, and now it is immortalized here on my blog. ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, i now present my robot friend:

what would my blog be without a picture of erik?

uhhh!
Originally uploaded by stupid blue

hella lame, that's what! we had a great day today and he got his second haircut ever. he bawled for about the first 5 minutes, so all the hair stuck to the tears and snot on his face. but he calmed down after that and sat very still, just saying "all done!" until we were. it turned out really cute. i will have to get a good picture of it tomorrow.

this picture is from last week at the playground in the run. he'd just stepped in dog poop (our first of two recent dog poop incidents, but i digress) while i was taking a picture of this flower.



i don't know if the photo was worth the hassle or not, but i like the picture of erik a lot, which i took immediately before i saw the dog poop on his croc. uhhh!

i wish i was still on vacation!

wild horses at assateague
Originally uploaded by stupid blue

it's hard to believe that the summer is already over. luckily i love the fall! i can't wait for halloween!

more robot graffiti

Robot graffiti
Originally uploaded by earthdog

this is more similar to "my" robot graffiti but not as cool. they both have a heart, which i find interesting and ironic. maybe i should stop thinking about robot graffiti for awhile.

robot graffiti

red robot
Originally uploaded by badjonni

the shuttle i take between the building my lab is in and campus passes under the birmingham bridge where there is a very cool piece of robot graffiti. this is not it, but also a cool piece of robot graffiti that will have to suffice until i can snap a photo myself.

sunset

sunset
Originally uploaded by stupid blue


my first entry on my shiny new blog! please to enjoy this photo of a beautiful pittsburgh sunset. that is all.