update

Back from ASBMR - all went well with my presentation, yay!  Sitting at the lab, not doing work - he he!

Now that I'm back I'm starting to feel pressure on wedding stuff again...  

We have our engagement session coming up in a few weeks and I want to get my make-up done, but I don't really know anyone in town and the person the photographer recommended charges $75/hr - that kind of seems unreasonable, right?  Oh, and once we have the pictures back I need to make Save the Dates... and mail them out - oh but before that I have to collect peoples addresses...

I'm also getting nervous about our invites... Josh really likes the ones I designed, but I'm afraid they won't look professional enough, especially since I'm printing them at home.  I emailed the Budget Savvy Bride and her rates are very reasonable - for $50 she will design 5 invites for us to choose from based on our wedding colors, styles etc, and she will design them so they can be easily printed on a home printer.  For an additional $25 each she will also design RSVP cards and any other elements I want.  I'm seriously considering it.

Its also almost time to start looking for a florist... I'm not looking forward to it.  I want really nice flowers, but I refuse to pay a lot because I know its something I could do myself - my family won't let me (they have no interest in having me transform into a Bridezilla the afternoon before the wedding).

My mom is also going to Israel in a couple weeks, so we have to settle on a guest list, and date for our Israeli reception so that she can find an appropriate location.

I think thats all for now.  Just needed to unload.

ASBMR

my hotel

View from inside the convention center

The room I'm presenting in tomorrow... eek!

i'm leaving on a jet plane...

... i'll be back on Wednesday.

Going to Denver for the annual meeting of The American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.

On Monday afternoon I will be giving my 15 min oral presentation... wish me luck.

I'm going to try to post pictures while I'm away (assuming I can find the cord to connect my camera to my computer between now and 625am).

would rather be...

the lab has been pretty crazy recently.  i'm desperately trying to get data together for the meeting i'm presenting at in just a few short weeks... in the past 5 days i've spend approximately 45 hours in the lab.  

i would definitely rather be here...

... Finland.

Home of the cell phone, 190,000 lakes, and, of course, 

the Wife-Carrying World Championships.

i'm so not joking.

check out the BBC article - gotta love a country that can be so serious and so ridiculous - reminds me of myself.

work sucks.

The last couple of weeks have been a little bit of a roller-coaster with my PhD research.  Just last week I found out that the first abstract I submitted for my very first conference was not only accepted, but accepted for a 15 min oral presentation - pretty much the best a student can do.  In addition, my advisor's other student also had his abstract accepted for a presentation - so pretty much happy times in the lab (despite all the data we still need to generate).  Unfortunately, yesterday we found out that some random people from Cincinnati "scooped" us (ie published our data before we could).  This was especially upsetting because we have way more data than they did and our data is more compelling because we approach the question from multiple angles and have answered the question more fully.  I don't think we are completely screwed because we have all this other data, but we lost the novelty, and probably will not be able to publish in as good a journal as would have been able to otherwise.  Its been really disheartening, also, no idea what I'm going to present at the conference because a lot of it was just published...

Sorry, I know this was kind of a downer post, with nothing to do with our wedding, but I just needed to vent a little.

Damn peer pressure

I've decided that one of the reasons why I'm freaking out about my ring (other than I'm picky and a perfectionist and a wannabe princess) is that spending your life in a hospital is a great way to get ring envy.  Everywhere I look there are women with giant, gorgeous, sparkly rings.  Even the medical students (who are in massive debt) and graduate students (who make barely enough to live) generally also have large, gorgeous rings.  Obviously some of the students have significant others who aren't in school and have a nice salary, but a lot of them don't, a lot of their significant others are also students.  I would love to know how they are affording these rings!

Over the weekend I went with the lovely Doctor Whimsy to a local chain jewelry store, so that I could pick out a cut and a setting to tell Jewelry Gal.  (BTW, I picked a rectangular radiant on a trellis setting - more on this another time)  While we were there we ran into one of our medical school classmates (lets call him Over Achiever) and his girlfriend (Sweetheart) - they were also looking at rings.  I know both relatively well and Sweetheart invited us over to see the setting that she had picked out.  I was a little shocked when I saw the price tag -$1500- but for platinum setting with sidestones, not bad.  As we were there the sales person was showing them 1.3ct round of decent quality to go with it - easily another $6000+ (based on BlueNile prices).  Now I was in shock.  How in the world could Over Achiever afford such a ring?!?

I'm not sure how my classmates are paying for these rings, maybe they are just going into even more debt.  I guess when your already going to be around $150,000 in debt and your future earning potential is over 6-figures, what's another $10,000?  

I personally was raised to avoid debt like the plague.  Obviously some is unavoidable (especially while in school), but I definitely try to minimize it as much as possible.  Beau is planning on paying for my ring with money in savings (he won't let me help pay), and I'm trying to balance keeping costs down with the pressure I feel to have a ring that will look good compared to all the other rings in the hospital...  I think I'm succeeding, but there are times I feel pressure to go back to my original budget, instead of my decreased budget after choosing to work Jewelry Gal so that I can get an even bigger, better ring.