sleepy

so tired tonight, i'm going to bed soon. here's a pretty blue and white mosaic to look at for now:

entertainment

it was a BAD night with erik tonight ... no nap today, and at bedtime we had a complete nuclear meltdown. luckily peter very generously relieved me when i was about to totally lose it. erik has FINALLY settled down in bed, i have FINALLY settled down with a couple of glasses of wine, and i created this to amuse myself:

meh

i need to get out and take some photos!

wordles

there is the really cool website with a program that allows you to create word clouds from any text you type or paste into it. i've been having a lot of fun playing with it and making wordles mostly from lyrics to various songs, but if you're more creative than i am, you could probably make something really interesting. the website is: http://www.wordle.net/

here's an example of a couple that i have made.

this one is just text pasted from dean wareham's wikipedia entry:



and one from the lyrics of the luna song sideshow by the seashore:



finally, this one is from the lyrics to another day by galaxie 500:



i highly recommend that you go check this out, and share your results with me. i'd love to see them!

the other red squirrel

today i did not take my camera to school with me. today, on my walk from my car to the lab, i saw my little red squirrel friend but had no food to share with him so i didn't stop. and then, a little further down the road, i saw *another* red squirrel, this one a bit fatter and a bit bolder than the one i usually see. he came right up to me, obviously begging for some food. he sat only six inches from my feet so i of course whipped out my phone and took a couple of pictures of him - what a cutie!

another erik birthday mosaic

i wanted to update the one that i made yesterday so that i would have a photo of erik on january 20th each year, and also so that each photo would clearly show his face (yes, i am very picky!) ... this is what i came up with:



my little boy blew out his candles all by himself tonight!

happy 3rd birthday erik!

here's a mosaic i made with photos from each of erik's four birthdays. they were all taken on january 20th except for the last one, which i took at his party this past sunday (the 17th). i'll try to get a decent shot tomorrow and update it. hard to believe my little guy is 3 already! it's gone by amazingly fast, and i hardly remember what it was like having a little baby. he's such a big boy now!

party!

yesterday we had erik's third birthday party. it seemed to go pretty well, everyone had a good time. i'm not feeling particularly verbose tonight, so for now here are some pictures.

before the party:





funny faces:





opening presents:







cake time!



no one seemed to mind that he spit all over the cake while he was blowing out his candles.





i think the highlight of erik's day was listening to yo gabba gabba songs on unkie newt's phone:



then watching yo gabba gabba with maggie upstairs:



while others played wii downstairs:





more later ...

afternoon in the strip

*yawn*

i'm feeling too tired/lazy to blog tonight, so here, look at this picture of my cute squirrel friend!

reflection

it was another beautifully sunny and blue skied day today, and it's even warming up a bit. the sunset was again gorgeous, and i again couldn't resist stepping out onto the balcony of our new building to take some pictures of it. the cloud patterns were very interesting, and the river was smooth as glass reflecting the clouds and the colors, not to mention the trees, bridges, and buildings. i'm going to have a huge collection of pretty sunset pictures from this place!

thirteenth sunset

my day in pictures

today was the first day of sunshine and blue skies in 2010 ... i'm so glad i took my camera to school with me!

the geese make interesting patterns with their tracks in the snow.





i see this little red squirrel most days on my walk from the parking lot to my new building. today i shared some bread with him and he rewarded me by sitting close by for some pictures then doing some incredibly cute things.















all of the sunshine caused the ice to thin out a bit on the river and it made some really cool shapes.





i saw the geese again on my walk back, but not the little red squirrel.



and i was treated to a very pretty sunset, the first i've seen so far this year.

erik, unhappy in the snow

on saturday peter had some errands to run and i stayed home with erik because he wanted to play in the snow. it turns out that erik is really not fond of the cold, so we spent more time getting all dressed up in his snowsuit, then undressed again than we actually spent outside in the snow. for what it's worth, i didn't think it was all that cold and just had a jacket and jeans on, but i suppose i have a lot more insulation than he does! here's a picture of him i snapped with my macro lens as i was begrudging the fact that i wasn't going to be able to photograph snowflakes while he happily played in the snow like i'd planned. doesn't look too happy, does he?

icy

today was another very busy day at the lab. i was doing about five different things at once. some of them worked, some of them didn't. some i won't know for a couple of weeks if they worked or not. my day started out with erik being pleasantly and unusually cooperative before daycare. i've been making him hold my hand going down the stairs there lately because they've been wet from all of the snow and i've been worried he might slip and fall. sadly today i was the one who slipped and fell, and pulled poor erik down with me! luckily neither of us got hurt ... we both landed on our bums! i felt terrible though for making him fall. aside with the trouble with some of my experiments today, the other bad thing that happened was that i got bitched at by a certain stomme kutwijf who will remain nameless because i happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. apparently someone had slipped and fell (i see a theme today) on some water that was in front of one of our lab's -80 freezers. granted I had been in that freezer twice this morning, each a quick visit, but i suppose some ice could have dropped from the door onto the floor, but i really didn't deserve to be spoken to like that. i feel terrible that someone got hurt, but in a room like that (the freezer farm) with so many freezers in a small enclosed space, it's inevitable that water will get on the floor from time to time. i'll be more mindful of that in the future and clean up any messes immediately, but i also think that people just need to assume that the floor in there could be slippery and take the proper precautions. as i found out just this morning, slippery wet floors can cause you to fall! only i didn't feel the need to curse at someone for my bad luck and clumsiness. hopefully we'll be getting some non-slip mats to put in there, and maybe that will alleviate the problem.

as per my entry yesterday, i took my little camera to the lab today, but only had time to take a couple of shots. the ice on the monongahela river was really pretty and interesting to look at today, all crackly.



it was hard to get a really good picture from inside the lab because of the reflection in the windows, but i waited until it got a little darker to take another one and kind of like how the lab reflection looks on the photo of downtown pittsburgh.




this evening after work/lab, we went down to costco to order erik's birthday cake. we let him choose what he wanted, and i think peter was pretty relieved that it wasn't pink and purple with princesses, butterflies, and unicorns on it. instead he picked a colorful caterpillar on white icing, on top of a chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling. sounds yummy! i'm still trying to motivate to clean the house. we got some things done to that end, but still have a long way to do. as for now, it's almost 1:30am and i need to be getting to bed!

back on the horse

today was an unremarkable monday. i got erik up and out at a reasonable hour without much fuss, got to lab in time to do my transfections before class, and took my first shuttle rides of the year up to the bst and back for research in progress. it wasn't too bad. i was a little sleepy and had trouble paying attention, but i got some good hot chocolate beforehand so that was nice. here's me on the shuttle, looking a little haggard:



i'm not sure why, but i seem to feel compelled to take self portraits on the shuttle with my phone and then post them. i guess it's all about documenting little parts of your day. i really should start carrying around my little camera with me to capture all of the interesting things i see each day rather than using my phone. but i guess it has a certain charm all its own.

i really am trying to motivate myself to get my house cleaned and organized for our guests this weekend, but i'm just feeling so absolutely uninspired to clean. i know that by the end of the week i'll be in full blown panic mode and it will all get done, so i'm not too concerned just yet. i have to give a lot of credit to peter who actually has been doing a nice job of getting some things done in the living room. thank you peter!!!

sold out

i guess that's what i get for waiting until the second day tickets are on sale - the wilco show is sold out! %#@&! hopefully i'll still be able to acquire a ticket somehow ...

boo!

being there

i just found out friday that wilco is going to be playing at carnegie music hall in april! i'm so excited that a band i like is finally going to be stopping in pittsburgh - they usually just go right by! i still need to get my tickets which went on sale yesterday. it'll be great!

i had been looking for at least a month for my wilco cd 'being there' which lived at the cellomics lab with me and came home shortly before the move. for some reason it had never made its way onto my ipod and i've really been jonesing for it recently. today, as peter was working on cleaning/organizing for erik's birthday party and our visitors next weekend, he found it buried in a pile of CDs that i had looked at several times but always missed it. yay! i now have it both on my ipod and my laptop, so it will be with me at pretty much all times. thanks peter!!!

one of a kind

check out this beautiful snowflake that i photographed this morning. i love this one in particular because its center looks just like a daisy!

foray into fisheye

i've been dying to play with my new fisheye lens so i decided to take it to the lab today where there is copious light and lots of interesting things to photograph. i still need lots of practice, and to develop a better eye for what will look interesting with this technique, but i had fun shooting people and things around the lab. i got home a little earlier than peter and erik, so after i was finished shoveling the driveway, i snapped a few photos of our house/neighborhood/trees. this is my favorite, a hibiscus:



some snowy pines at the cemetery this morning:



the view from my window at the lab, down the monongahela river towards downtown pittsburgh:



marco in our bay:



my desk:



my snowy neighborhood:



hopefully i'll have a lot more time to experiment this weekend! i want to try to take erik sledding (for the first time ever) tomorrow, and we're going to a party at my friend jamie's house tomorrow evening. plus lots of cleaning to get ready for erik's party next weekend. it's going to be a busy weekend!