Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, mates!

Three of my cousins here in New Zealand have started up an internet business that some of you programmer-type/computer-y people might be interested in. Check out www.micropledge.com when you have a chance. Thanks!

8 obscure things about me...

*this is a cross post from my blog*

Yeah. Thanks, meesh for tagging me. i've been putting this off for a while because i'm quite unoriginal and am having a hard time coming up with anything.

in no particular order:

1) I support desktop computer environments (i'm pretty good at it, too) and have never taken a computer class. (unless you count touch-typing... but i don't think that should count because most techs don't know how to type correctly.) i guess that's a benefit of having a computer programmer for a father.

2) i've been to europe 4 times. 3 of those times i was still in high school.

3) i had a job as a telemarketer. it was for a painful 2 weeks. i hated it, but needed a job since i had just moved out of my dad's up to where i'm at now... (tip: have a job before relocating)

4) I name almost every inanimate object i own. My jeep was named Harold, my trumpet is Leonardo, my laptop is Meph (short for Mephibosheth), my phone is RoryG (after rory from the gilmore girls). i'm thinking about calling my new truck Harvey, he hasn't informed how he feels about that, yet.

5) While we're on the subject of names, i had 4, maybe 5 hamsters when i was younger (one at a time). All were named Michaelangelo (no, not after that Michaelangelo, but after the TMNT Mike).

6) I love pickles but hate them in burgers.

7) I'm an avid Apple and Mac fan, even worked in an Apple reseller store for a while, but have yet to call myself a mac owner. :'(

8) my guilty pleasure: chick flicks... but the funny ones, not the serious one.

Hey all,

You know, the trouble with this blog thing is that nobody reminds you to check it. I guess no one reminds me to check my email either, but somehow it really feels like email is delivered to you and to blog you have to go out and post something. I was really thinking that I had put an update on not too long ago so everyone should know what is happening in my life. Then I looked at the blog and realized I was at least 6 months behind. So it seems I have missed a lot of great stuff in 6 months. Glad to hear so many new houses, babies, and other major life changes are going well. Many congrats on all of them! Nate, way to go on the dissertation defense!

I guess I don't post much because my life hasn't changed a whole lot. Still in school, I have pushed my graduation target date back to next June rather than December. Maybe my big news here is that Lisa (younger sister) just left for China last weekend. She is going to spend the year there learning chinese and helping in a coffeeshop/bookstore.

Hannah, you must already be on your way to New Zealand. I am jealous! Looking forward to your updates.

That's it for now. Back to learning about what sort of aerosols are in the atmosphere and what they do to sunlight.

ps Alysia, I can't remember if the getting rid of odors post was in the last few months, but the question intrigued me. I am pretty sure that our sense of smell comes from molecules interacting with some kind of "sensor" in our nasal passages. I would guess that many of them are organic and not very polar molecules, so not ions. But it may be that those molecules are given off by the life habits of bacteria. In which case, if you get rid of the bacteria you get rid of the smell...

Just wanted to inform all of you that I leave Thursday for [potentially] a year of work and travel in New Zealand! I fly from Knoxville (1:40 pm) to Christchurch (Sat. 2:50 pm) via Chicago, San Francisco, and Sydney. I'll be with cousins the first week or so (another cousin is getting married a week after I arrive); then I'll be boarding with friends for the next few months. After that, who knows. The whole plan still seems pretty crazy to me...I don't think it's hit home at all. Maybe 'cause I just started packing today since the house has been jumbled with things Eva was taking/sorting through before moving out last Saturday.

I'll look forward to seeing the updates you all post here. NEB, "chicken" seemed pretty suitable. :)

Well, awhile back Jordana tagged me... and I never responded, so now, I will try to pull this off while the baby is nursing propped on the boppy...

*8 Obscure Facts About Me*

1) I had 5 wisdom teeth. They all got removed when I was 16. My mouth is actually really, really small, so I now only have 24 teeth (the normal adult mouth has 32, including wisdom teeth.)

2) I have lived in 6 states, and visited about 38 (there are a few I'm not sure about.) But the only time I've been out of the US was a trip to Mexico in high school to do volunteer work.

3) Barbara Bush is my aunt. (She's a retired school teacher in Kentucky.)

4) My grandfather was the director of the state department of mental health in Georgia. He died in 1976, before I was born. My grandparents would have turned 100 this year if they were still alive. They met in France in WW II, in the army.

5) I didn't read much just for fun in high school, so when the Wheaton application asked for a list of "leisure reading" from the past couple of years, I systematically picked about 14 books that would prove I was "well-rounded"and read them just so I could list them. (The thick biography of Marie Curie, to prove I was interested in issues related to women in science, was rather... hefty.)

6) I know 180 digits of pi. I can recite the first 100 in ten seconds.

7) I have been in at least 7 car accidents that I can remember. Once, the other driver was 14. Once I was on a school bus. Three times my dad was driving. Once a Wheaton professor was driving. Twice I was driving- once the accident was sort of my fault, but not legally so, and the other time it was legally my fault, but I wasn't really to blame (ice). The first time involved 5 cars on I-10 in Houston in rush hour, and fire trucks, and ambulances, and helicopters. I have never been injured.

8) (You didn't really think I would make it through this list without mentioning The Wee One, did you?) I call my newborn daughter many typical things, like "little love" and "sweet pea" and "precious angel" and "sugar pie," etc etc, but one morning this week I realized I had this urge to call her Chicken. Why "chicken," I thought? I fought the urge off a few times and then gave in, and started calling her Chicken. Then I realized what her favorite pose reminds me of:


So maybe I'm not as weird as I think. ;-)

Love, NEB

PS I tag... all of you!

Yeah! Thanks Valerie. So about 5 hours after I wrote that last post, my water broke (although I wasn't sure that's what it was at the time...). And about 7 hours after THAT, I totally pushed a baby out.

Yeah, so, there's that.

Also? Her cord stump just fell off. First tub bath tomorrow.

I must learn to type one-handed.

Will start Nebiverse update tomorrow morning at 5, God willing. Possibly typing one-handed.

Must go pump now, and to bed!

Love, Neb (&Madelaine)

PS Please see

http://www.babiesonline.com/babies/g/galois

for pictures and a guestbook!! :-)

Congratulations Nate and Neb on a new baby girl for Liam to choose from when he gets married. Can't wait to see more pictures. For those of you who missed it, Madelaine arrived, 3 1/2 weeks early and a day after Nate became Dr. Nate. Talk about a subtle post to announce it, Nate! Congrats!

Editing other people's posts:

If you are signed in, click on the little pencil icon to the bottom right of a blog entry. You should then be in edit mode.

It works for me, anyway. I'm going to go check that everyone is listed as an administrator for this blog.

Toodles.

P.S. Turns out that the more recent contributors to the blog (Neb and Nate, among others) were listed as guests, so now y'all are admin as well, which should now clear up the problem.

Wes, for goodness' sake, post already!

Question to the science-types (and please answer this one -- the air in our house depends on it!):

Are odors ions? Little bitty bacteria?

We're trying to figure out what kind of air filter to get, now that we have 3 felines. Odor is the major issue, as it's a longer-running problem. (We're already getting desensitized to our particular kitties' dander, so I'm not as worried about allergies. Plus, I could always vacuum. And dust. Keyword here being could.)

We've been borrowing an ionic filter from the MiL for a week, and that seems to have gotten rid of the majority of the odor, but I'm open to the possibility of placebo effects. Various consumer groups online say that ionic filters are crap and do very, very little of anything.

All I know is that the filter we're using has two pretty blue lights when it's running.

Hey guys, do we have any rules on this blog about Appropriate Picture Sharing? Is 6 okay? I shrank them down! Really! ;-)

My husband did his thing yesterday! He defended his dissertation against the cruel, harsh attacks of the outside world! He went into The Big Lecture Room with the Powerpoint and Made the Science Words for like an hour, all the words about the Proteins, um... doing their Protein Things! And there were graphs! and charts! and many, many equations! And I recognized a couple of the equations because I had helped with them! And then his family and I went into the room next door and set up all the tables of Snacks while the faculty people questioned him about his work and his affiliation with the Communist Party and why his shirt is never completely tucked in and why he's always drenched in sweat, and then they signed his papers, saying he's a Doctor! Woo hoo!

This is before the big talk. Doesn't he look incredibly Hott??? (...and hot...?)

Here's the snack room afterwards. The nice man in the blue shirt is his adviser, offering a toast. His siblings Adrienne and Elliot are here, too. (I'm pretty sure Elliot understood more of the talk than I did.) Do you see the cheese plate? With little flags in the cheeses? We had 10 kinds of cheese and I made little flags identifying each one because I hate eating cheese and not knowing what I'm eating. Not that I'm obsessive compulsive or anything.

Look at all those cookies I baked! Because I am totally a Proverbs 31 woman! (Just kidding, of course. Wegman's helped out a little bit. But if we read the part of Proverbs 31 that says something about "bringing food from afar," then I still qualify...?)

Here's Nate looking happy with his friend John.

Most of the good friends he's made while in grad school.

And as a special surprise, his family and my family and some friends chipped in and we got him the Big Person camera he's always wanted. So after he opened that, the rest of the evening was spent Talking Camera with his dad (they know all the things about lenses and filters and, you know... Camera Things.) So he was a happy boy. And then I fell into bed, exhausted and Great With Child.

So thanks to those of you who prayed for him. Yay! (Now we just need a job.)

Love, Neb

PS I'm posting this on my own blog, too, for the benefit of that audience...

(A day late, as usual...) ;-)

Happy Anniversary, Chris and Jordana.

(And we must say, two in four years isn't bad... you certainly have us beat!)

Love, Neb & Nate

PS (To everyone)- Nate is defending his dissertation on Tuesday. Prayers appreciated!

Hey guys,

As far as I can tell, there's no "Edit" option if you are not the original author of a post. (Can anyone else confirm this...?) Perhaps the settings for this blog can be changed so that we CAN edit Alysia's post, but for now I'll just put my ideas here...

3) Snuggle as much as possible. Especially the kind of snuggling that leads to sex. ;-)
4) Remember to put your spouse first- even in little, subtle ways. One thing Nate and I do instinctively, that I really appreciate, is that when we're in a group of friends, if one of us gets interrupted or doesn't get a chance to say what we were going to say, the other one of us will bring the conversation back to pick up the missed comment... (do you guys know what I'm talking about?) I find this very encouraging and affirming; it dissipates any leftover feelings of junior high awkwardness in social settings.
5) Don't throw away things without permission. This includes old underwear. ("If there is at least one molecule of Boxers left, it still counts as underwear!!") This applies even when your spouse has a Packrat Problem (as does mine.) Learn to negotiate gently. Praise when progress is made. (Last year Nate cleaned out his closet and organized the remaining items... I was on Cloud 9... I probably took him out to dinner afterwards or something.)
6) Try, TRY to listen when your spouse is making The Confusing, Boring Words. After 6+ years of marriage, my husband STILL tries to bravely tell me about his Science Things, like proteins, and graphs, and... yeah, I lack the vocabulary to even talk about it. And when I am reading or watching TV or something it is REALLY hard for me to stop what I'm doing and listen to a couple of minutes of Science-Talk that is 100% uninteresting/un-understandable to me (in its own right), but because it is Important to the one I love, I Try. (Last night I launched into a long thing about how Nate needs to be Emotionally Supportive during labor and help me stay relaxed and calm and everything, and at some point he kind of glazed over and I said "Are you listening to me?!?" And he said "There were keywords that made me zone out... something about Emotions and Feelings..." And I said "Now you know how I feel when you talk about science!" And he said "Now you know how I feel when you don't listen to me!" So there you have it.)
7) Smooch a lot.
8) I just asked Nate, what is your advice about marriage? And he said, "Big sheets." ;-) He also said, "People are always surprising. The surprises just get more subtle."

Here's a Group Post -- just Edit in your additions. I thought of this while changing the sheets and thought it would be fun for us old married folk and enlightening for those who Still Have A Social Life (i.e. "singles").

Tips for a Happy Marriage

1. Get a flat sheet one size larger than your mattress size, thus allowing plenty of leeway for sheet-stealing.
2. Don't share toothpaste.

Couple window ideas for Mary:

There's colored window tape

Or just decorating the window

Or the (more expensive -- but very, very pretty) window screen

But there's a cheaper version
but only sorta

I think there's something similar at Ace Hardware and the like as well.

That's what I've found so far ... I know I'm missing something, so more post later. I suppose.

The other day at work I caught a whiff of my old Strawberry Shortcake doll.

Does that every happen to anybody else -- completely apropos of nothing, you smell something from your past? Just through a strange combination of ambient smells that conspire to totally throw you off balance.

F'rexample, a couple years ago I regularly worked 4am-9am Sunday mornings, and when I got to work the parking lot always smelled of Smurf Berry Crunch. When I walked back to the car at 9, the smell was always gone.

the news from peter

Yes, I now own a house with my brother Ben. We have just finished painting the living room Delft Blue (so it will match the sky pieces in all the Dutch landscape puzzles we intend to work), and it looks much better. I, on the other hand, do not, as I have blobs of primer stuck in my hair, and it is 1am. The rest of the house still smells like old people, but feel free to drop in and see us when you're in K-Town. I'm probably getting a fairly new sleeper-sofa from a cousin of a buddy at work unless they've given it to someone else, and it will reside in the living room, which now smells like solvents.

In other news, Zingrin is back in the country, and (which will be of particular interest to Dan, Chris x2, and your spousal relations) he has the picture. Way to go Z!

correction.
The book is named The Higher Power of Lucky.
If I work with books all day, I should be able to at least get their titles right.
You'd think.

Hey everybody! Here's a long overdue post. Unfortunately, I'm blogging blindly, as my google account seems to think that I'm fluent in Chinese. So here's hoping that something goes right. As I have no children at this point, there will be no pictures of adorable creatures (I'll spare you the nieces and nephews--I have six now!).

I am currently recovering from a two week visit by my brother Nate, his wife, Faith, and their three little ones, Brennan (4), Ryan (2 1/2), and Kathryn (3 mo.). Wonderful and exhausting. I have a renewed respect for those of you out there with the courage to multiply. Parenting is a tough job! And boy do toddlers like to whine! They are packing up and/or selling all of their earthly belongings and moving to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, with hopes of starting a youth hostel.

It's a summer of saying good-bye as several friends and/or family are packing up and moving to various locations far, far away from me to do the work that God has called them to. I am very excited for the opportunities before them, but it's hard not to feel left behind sometimes. Especially when one is left in a place like St. Louis, where snorkels are needed to breathe in the summer air. Between all these partings and the death of a Honeyrock friend, I have begun to develop a new gratefulness for the hope that we have in heaven. How great is it that through Christ, we never really have to say good-bye! That alone is worth all the crap we have to go through down here sometimes.

Those of you who have had the joy of living with me will be astonished to know that as of two or three weeks ago, I have begun to wake up of my own volition (no alarm, no shaking, no shouting, no War of the Worlds:)) at 6:30 AM!!! And I am conversant! And I smile!! It is an absolute miracle and I don't exactly know how to take it all, quite frankly. But I'm thankful that I've stuck with my crazy doctor long enough to get to this point. Because it really does make life easier.

Last but not least, for those who care, I am reading Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, amidst various and sundry kids books. If you're looking for a controversial kids book that is being banned in schools across the country for using the word scrotum (completely gratuitous, but mostly harmless and quite hilarious, really), read this year's Newberry award winner, The Power of Lucky. You might get a kick out of it.

Ok, here's the update from me...

Have a short haircut.

Am trying to sell cards and purses through Alysia's spot at the French Market (she can tell you whether that's working or not).

Did two murals and a calligraphy project in four days this week--maybe a new record.

Have a work holiday visa to New Zealand and will be leaving either early September or late December for a year of work and play in Christchurch (and thereabouts).

Hope to be visiting Mary, Christopher, and Suzan in the next month.

Gotta run.