Meet Norbert!

Happy Holidays to all! This past week has been filled with Christmas Spirit here in Oregon, now that I am officially done with classes this term, David and I have begun to fill our condo with christmas cheer! Cookies have been baked, presents are being delivered and wrapped, the stockings have been hung by the chimney with care, and we had our first official "christmas tree day" of our relationship.

What is Christmas tree day you ask? Well basically its when you get your Christmas tree, specifically a live one that you cut down yourself. This wasn't an option when we lived in Texas, which is why it was our first christmas tree day. So we grabbed the car and drove to the christmas tree farm that I run by in the mornings. There we tromped through the farm until we found our tree.

Some trees were too big!

Some trees were too small!

But then we found our perfect tree! A 4 1/2 foot Nordman Fir, which of course we (and by we I mean myself) chose to name Norbert.

We brought Norbert home, went out and bought a tree stand, and set him up in our living space. Lilly and Norbert quickly became friends, she especially loves to cuddle up in the tree skirt.

Fast Friends!

We finished putting all the decorations on Norbert on Thursday when David was off from work. Lilly still enjoys sending time with Norbert, although I do worry when she is going to try to chew the lights on the tree. We hope everyone is having a great Holiday season and want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Oregon!

Mini wave in celebrate of me!

Woohooo! I'm done, one term down and 5 to go! (insert happy dance here)! I'm done, I'm done, I'm done!!! And there is no one to celebrate with (since its 11am and no one is here on campus today!). Oh well, I will no go celebrate by returning my 17 some borrowed books to the library and follow it up with a nice long nap with my cat!

Don't worry I really will celebrate. Its planned for tomorrow evening, drinks with my fellow grad students!

The arrival of Finals!

Well, they are finally here, my last week of my first graduate school quarter. I have a spatial/temporal statistics final in about 30 minutes, so wish me luck! Many may wonder why I'm writing this blog post rather than studying, but I have reached my tipping point. I have crammed as much information about point pattern analyzes, fractal dimensions, differences between semivariograms and correlograms as I possibly can. I do apologize to those of you who didn't understand the last part of that sentence, the key part is that I do.

After this final is over, I have to do a mental memory dump and begin cramming for my cartography final. But at noon tomorrow, my first quarter will be over, and I will have survived!


Anyone wanna get a drink?

Dead week

Well folks, it's that time of year again!

Sorry, I'm not referring to the holidays, thanksgiving, black friday, cyber monday, or whatever. I mean dead week, the week before finals. OK, let's remember back to a time during our undergraduate degree during a dead week, any dead week is fine. People were making plans for the holidays, the campus was dead, no classes, just pure study time. The library was filled to the brim, and you could always find students at the local IHOP studying. Dead week was always a nice break. A nice quite week filled with books, papers, and computers, but you didn't have classes, no exams, no homework, no major papers due, etc. You had a break!

Well apparently dead week does not exist for graduate students. Why didn't anybody warn me? I have two major papers due Friday, a lab due today (which I did finish... this morning), and then have to prepare for two final exams over the weekend. I know, chalk it up to procrastination, but I swear I have been working. Graduate school is just a different beast entirely. It has even forced me to resort to coffee. To give you some background, I am not a coffee drinker, despite many peoples attempts. However, I guess I just needed the proper motivation, and yes I found mine, grad school.

OK, back to the books, papers, and yes, caffeine! Wish me luck!
At least it will be over next week, and than it will definitely be time to celebrate!