happy mother's day

Here is a little "word cloud" from wordle.net that I created in honor of mother's day (click on it to see it bigger). sorry to post a day late---Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers that I know!

tree pics pt 2

Here are a few pictures of the progression of the new crabapple tree over the past week or so.





Yea for pink flowers!

ankle update

Most of you know I sprained my ankle about 2 months ago. It has still been bothering me, especially after long walks, so I finally went to the sports medicine doctor. The sports med docs here at UW are great--they are the folks who take care of all our varsity athletes, so they really know their stuff.

They took an x-ray and good news- my doc said there were no bone chips or any other abnormal looking things going on in the x-ray.

She gave me some new exercises to do along with the old ones I was doing, and she told me that I need to increase my activity in 3 levels. Level one is non-weight bearing - like swimming and biking- and I should do that for about 2 weeks to see how things feel. If it is feeling okay, I can progress to weight-bearing but non-impact- like ellipticals and stairmaster for another 2 weeks. Assuming that goes well, I can move on finally, to walking for exercise and running. So, I think I should still have plenty of time to get in shape for the running part of the triathlon this summer.

The doctor did say that about 40% of ankle sprains still hurt after 4 months, so I guess I shouldn't have been too worried about it. But I'm glad I know now that there isn't something bad that happened that I ignored.

palouse mountains

I was in Pullman, Washington the past two days. I've never been to Pullman. I was amazed at how beautiful it was. In a very different way than Seattle is beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless. I didn't see many trees in the Pullman area (at least not like Seattle has trees). Pullman is in the Palouse mountains.

You have to fly into Pullman on a pretty small plane, and it was pretty empty so I had plenty of space to look out the window and wonder at the curves and colors in this area. Below are a couple pictures I found online that look very similar or just like what I saw. I was amazed at the contrasts between the green and the brown and the varying shades of browns and greens. Some of the greens were SO vibrant it was amazing.



Isn't it amazing?

tree pics pt 1

Here are 2 photos of our new tree.

It is a "Prairiefire" flowering crabapple. It is a medium growing rounded deciduous broadleaf tree, with dark rosy flowers. Flowers are red in bud stage, and it has persistent (ie. non-dropping) berries.

Here is the view of the tree from a seat at the table and chairs on the patio. Notice how it screens the upper windows of the neighbor's house. Or at least it will when the leaves come in and it gets a bit bushier. But it will do a lot toward making us feel more private on our patio as it is.

I'll post a few up-close shots soon.

cheesy but true

I saw this in one of my magazines yesterday and thought that even though it is a bit cheesy- it is true and we should all try to remember it.

To give proper credit, this comes from the June 2009 issue of Shape magazine and its author is Jared Matthew Weiss.

I CAN CHOOSE TO BE HAPPY

Enjoying your life isn't something that happens while you just sit there; it's the result of small decisions you make all day long. You can choose to add a favorite necklace to your outfit in the morning or to spend the evening with people who make you feel good. This month, remember that while a lot of what happens is beyond your control, your happiness is not. It's your choice; what's it going to be?

cheddar, ham and dill biscuits

Oh my goodness. David and I made these biscuits last night and they were SOOO good. This is another recipe (like the frittata one) from the chef, food writer, and soon to be cookbook author I mentioned in a previous post. We met her through a friend of ours (she is his new wife), and we offered to test out some of her recipes. This is the third recipe of hers we have made. Her name is Lorna Yee and she writes a food blog called The Cookbook Chronicles, among other things.


These were the most amazing, tasty, flaky biscuits. I will definitely be making these again! Of course, they used a whole stick of butter...so they will have to be an occasional treat.

time to take photos

Well, we've done a little more work in our yard. I need to take some photos of the new yard addition so you all can see what you think.

We got a new tree. It really helps screen the new neighbors house, or at least it will really help screen it once all its leaves come in.

yea!

Salsa

I have a feeling I'll be eating salsa everyday for the next 3 days. I hear that New Mexico is the chili (spicy) capital of the US.
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forgetful

Don't you hate it when you are going on a trip and you feel like you have forgotten something? Last night as I lay in bed ready to fall asleep I remember counting 4 things that I needed to remember this morning before I left for the airport. This morning I was able to remember 3 of them, but can't think of what the 4th one was, for the life of me. I hope it wasn't super important ;-) I'm going to assume it wasn't that important since I didn't remember it, but that may not be the best assumption.

Went to the public library book sale yesterday. They do this sale in a huge old airplane hangar in Magnuson Park in Seattle. There are books from all genres there. When we went into the building I told david that I wasn't going to over-do it and I was just going to get books I really wanted. Then we split up to search our favorite areas. Well, about 1 hour later, I sent him a text telling him that I lied. My bag was full of books and I was still trying to find more. He came and found me and let me use his bag for some of my books, luckily. All in all, I found 28 paperbacks of fiction that I wanted. Some of them are part of series of books by the same author, and a few are classic fiction and some are by authors I've never heard of but the book jacket and/or title caught my eye, and the book summary seemed interesting.

The only frustration is that I would find 2 books of a 3 part series, and not be able to find the third book. There is a series by Fern Michaels like that. I read something by her awhile ago that was about Kentucky and basically the ups and downs of a family there- which I enjoyed. Well, I found one about Las Vegas, but couldn't find one of the 3 books. Trick is, it seems that the book I am missing is the first one in the trilogy. So, I've going to have to find that one at a used bookstore before I can read the other two.

But I couldn't help but smile to be walking away with 28 books for 28 bucks!

a day early

I'm heading home a day early from my trip. The second school I was supposed to go to got cancelled, so I'll head home on thursday morning rather than friday night. But I head out again on sunday for a trip down to New Mexico (warmth here I come!), and I'll be back from that one on wednesday late afternoon. Then I've got a week in the office and 2 trips after that.

I am happy to be going home early. I think I brought the rain with me to Central Pennsylvania. It has rained every day here. I hope we some nice weather when I get home.

blah

I'm at Penn State for research interviews. Last night I got sick--I think it must have been food poisoning or something like that. I'm feeling a bit better today, am headed out now to try and get some food in me. Soup sounds good.

no vacation?

I'm going to use some of David's words to tell this story...I'm in DC and got an email from him today (and talked to him shortly after) and found out the following:

"So, I discovered this morning that the basement storage room flooded. The carpet is completely soaked, and I'm moving stuff out of the room now. We'll have to tear out all the carpet and padding, and probably strip the walls down to the studs... they'll need to be painted with that mold-retardant paint after they've air dried sufficiently."

When I spoke to him late this evening, he had already moved everything out of the storage room and had torn up the carpet and carpet pad. He basically had to work all day on this and just sounded exhausted when we talked. I feel bad that I wasn't there to help out. We did have some casualties of the water, including 2 Obama posters we had bought and were sitting down there waiting for us to do something with them.

We are pretty sure we know the cause...we had a downspout that didn't have a tight connection and was spilling water out of it over the top and therefore all around one corner of our house. David had tried to fix it before we left, but it didn't work and we had to leave for our trip before we could try something different. pooh! It sounds like money we might have used for a vacation this summer may have to be diverted to fixing the basement and the leak. =-(

par-tay!

This weekend we had a wonderful party to celebrate my mom's wedding and marriage. We had the party in Florida at her house and it went really well. People had lots of fun, we drank most of the beer, and it was just so nice to meet mom and peter's friends and sort of see what their life is like. We also decorated their driveway with chalk drawings. It was fun to create things on such a big scale. I was up earlier than most on saturday (the day of the party) so I was the first to start the drawing/writing. Later in the day everyone pitched in and drew or wrote something. When mom and peter send along pics I'll have to post a few. I especially loved the huge heart that was in the middle of the driveway with their names. Anyway, it was a great wedding reception, and I'm glad that my sisters and I were all able to be a part of it.

Congratulations Mom and Peter!

photos of food

Here are a few photos of the 2 recipes we made last night. We don't always eat this well...tonight we had oatmeal for dinner ;-)

recipe testing

We have a friend who married a woman who is a food critic and chef. She sent out an email and asked friends to test some of the recipes she is writing for a cookbook. David and I get the recipes and have now tried 2 of them. The first was a salmon and goat cheese frittata with red onion and leeks. This was really good.

We also cooked some blueberry cinnamon struesel topped muffins. These were good, although they didn't rise as much as I would have liked. Maybe my baking soda is old? I just bought new baking powder so I know that is not the problem.

We have some other recipes I think we will try out for her and see how they are. Of course, we've got to write our reviews and give them to her. We better do that before we go out of town or we'll never remember to do it later.

lunges

After doing some hard skiing on the ski trip, and feeling the burn in my thighs, I thought for sure that some lunges would be easy work. On Friday David and I went to the track at the gym and did some walking lunges. I did maybe 15 on each leg. How sad is it that I could barely go down steps on saturday and sunday? I'm still a little sore today, but much better than before. I think my ankle might be good enough to walk around the track. I think I'll try it tonight and see how it goes.

leave it alone!

Seriously, why can't I just rest? I sprained my ankle (not a bad sprain) a little over a week ago. When my ankle starts feeling better, I think it is okay to do something and then the next day I pay the price with new pain!

For example, on Sunday my ankle was feeling better, so I took Sam for SHORT walk. I mean, this was only 2 blocks down the street and 2 blocks back. It didn't feel especially bad that night, but I woke up on monday, and it had swollen a bit more and hurt again. So, I laid off of it for a few days and only walked distances I absolutely had to walk.

Yesterday, I went to pilates. I told my instructor about my ankle, and we did lots of modifications so as to not put too much pressure on it. It didn't really hurt at pilates. What do you know- I woke up this morning with it in more pain than the previous few days.

How long do I have to wait to do anything with it? I'm not going to know if it is getting better if I don't occasionally try something, right? I'm frustrated with this...sorry for my complaining.

Late

Last night I stayed up way later than I normally do because I had to get some work done. Today david told me that he had the hardest time falling asleep without me and that he didn't really go to sleep until a little after I got in bed. I found that to be pretty cute and endearing. Just wanted to share.

best intentions

Every night so far this week, and every night last week, I have lugged home a bag with journal articles and papers in a stack about 4 inches high. Only 2 nights have I actually dug into the bag to use what I keep lugging back and forth between home and office.

When I pack it up to take home, I have the best intentions of working on things. By the time I get home I'm so pooped or just sick of work that I'll decide to not work late into the evening. Why can't I decide to not work in the evening before I leave work? When I'm up against a deadline (as I am now), I really don't have a choice in the matter. The work has to get done and no one else is going to do it. But some nights when I'm not so tight up against a deadline, I should just not bother to even bring stuff home. It would make me feel less guilty, and it isn't necessary.

Today, so far, I have put in a 11 hour day. Unfortunately, I absolutely have to work tonight...going to be a long night.

The only thing keeping me going is that I'll have5 days off soon where I won't be responsible for anything big or important. They will still expect me to answer some emails, but that isn't so bad.

Spoke too soon?

Not sure the fridge is fixed. Didn't feel much colder this morning. We'll see how cold it is when we get home.
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fixed

Well, they came today and fixed the refrigerator. Apparently the problem was the freezer (even though it seemed to be working). It wasn't defrosting itself and so there was a big chunk of ice that wasn't allowing the air to circulate and cool the fridge. Thank goodness that is over.

I'm so glad tomorrow is friday!

warm milk

no-not warm milk in the warm, fuzzy, nighttime drink way, but in the gosh, the milk I just poured on my cereal seems warm kind of way. This weekend we realized that our refrigerator stopped working. The freezer still seems to be working fine, but the refrigerator just stopped cooling anything down. Luckily, we have a second fridge in the basement that we usually just put our soda/beer in, but now it contains the contents of the refrigerator that didn't go bad between the end of the cooling and us noticing the warmth.

Hopefully it won't be an expensive fix. The refrigerator is almost 2 years old, so it isn't under warranty anymore, but I'm surprised it broke down so quickly. The repair people are supposed to come out thursday to fix it. I'll know more then. I really hope they can fix it then and there and not have to order a part. I know this is really lazy of me, but I'm getting tired of walking up and down the stairs everytime I want something out of the refrigerator. Making dinner this evening felt like exercise!

Inefficient?

Sometimes I wonder whether I just have too much work or whether I am inefficient with my time. You won't find me surfing the internet or anything, and I never really feel like I've been unproductive unless I've been in meetings all day. So what gives? Anybody have tips to increase efficiency?
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fear and delight

So, yesterday when I got the mail I saw that there was an envelope from the UW Registrar office to me. It was about 5x7 and said "do not bend" on it. I was a little worried that this was some official notice that they were kicking me out b/c I'd been around for too long. [ thus the fear in the title]

To my delight, it was nothing of the sort. In fact, it was my doctoral candidate certificate. I had no idea I actually got a certificate for being PhC. I had to take some photos to show you all.

it came in this pretty purple envelope

It almost felt like an invitation when I opened it..

The words are raised off the page..I forget what that is called, but it looks very official.

Am I supposed to frame this? I don't have any of my other diploma's framed...maybe I should wait and frame them all at the same time?

deadlines

I've got a big deadline coming up this friday. 2 papers are due for a conference that we had abstracts accepted to. I'm a bit worried b/c I'm still waiting on the results section for one of the papers, and some of my "co-authors" have yet to do very much on the papers. While I certainly expect to do more than others since I am first author, I do expect some work on the part of others who want to have their name on the paper.

Once that deadline is over, I've got another deadline on Feb. 16th for a different project and need to compile and create a bunch of documents and slides showing this organizations successes and failures. Gonna be a long 2 weeks!

Happy Birthday Honey!

Happy Birthday Honey! I hope you really enjoyed our Whistler trip to celebrate your birthday! We got some great skiing in!
Love you lots.

Customs

We are waiting at customs at the US/canada border. We have been idling for about 30 minutes so far. Hopefully we only have another 30 min. Skiing was good-it was really cold though, so we had to take some hot cocoa breaks. It was a little rocky/pebble-y...I need to assess how much damage it did to my skis.
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whistler

We are headed to Whistler to celebrate David's birthday. It is about a 6 hour drive, so we won't get there until about 3-4 tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it. We will take lots of pictures to post later.

felt like christmas eve

Do you remember back to when you were 5 or 6 and still believed in Santa Claus, and Christmas Morning was magical? Back then I would have such a hard time sleeping through the night. I would wake up often and remind myself that I had to go back to sleep or Christmas would never get there.

Well, last night felt just like christmas eve to me. There was so much anticipation that I couldn't sleep. I fell asleep just fine, but it sure was hard to stay asleep. I kept waking up...I can't even count how many times I woke up. And I didn't just roll over, look at the clock and then go back to sleep. Often I would roll over, look at the clock, and then think about how exciting the next day was. By then, I had woken up enough that my body temperature was increasing and I would get hot and have to throw off the covers. Then I would try to fall back asleep, eventually doing so once I had regulated my body temperature.

Today was exciting. And last night it was clear how exciting I thought it would be...I could hardly sleep!

early to work

Tomorrow I'm going to get up early to go into work early. I don't want to miss any of the inauguration, and people at work have pretty much indicated that we'll all be streaming it live, and maybe huddled around one person's computer.

I'm very excited and looking forward to it.

Liz

inauguration

For all of you who want to celebrate Obama's inauguration, consider making part of your celebration a white knot.

http://www.whiteknot.org/

This is a great website and I whole-heartedly support its message.

mission semi accomplished

Well, I did work on both saturday and sunday and I felt like I was really getting somewhere. I was able to correctly calculate the Index of Dissimilarity for gender segregation, now I just have to work on the Index of Association.

I'm still not ready to give someone this chapter, but hopefully soon I will be. Maybe after this upcoming weekend? The only way I'm going to finish this damn dissertation is to allot time to work on it- so sorry honey- looks like I won't be much fun in the near term future :_(

working weekend

So, I've now passed two deadlines I had for giving my advisor something to look at about my dissertation. So, I have promised myself that I will do some serious work this weekend on it. I have been working on it, but it just isn't at a place where I feel like I can share it. And no, I don't think this is my perfectionist side coming out..I really don't think it is shareable at this point.

So, here's to getting some serious work done!

Congratulations Mom and Peter

Congratulations! I hope you have many long happy years together.

photos from christmas visits

I can never remember which order to upload the pictures in so that they will come out in chronological order! So, Instead of moving all of them like I usually do, I'm just going to tell you about our trips in reverse order.

Here is the Price Tower in Bartlesville. The only skyscraper designed by Frank Lloyd Wright ever to be built.

My honey at Will and Sandy's house. Their yard has a creek that runs through it. Very picturesque.

Will and Sandy and the Tulsa Aquarium. We saw some really interesting fish. Their shark tank is pretty cool.

Sandy took this photo of the 4 of us getting ready to watch a video on Matt's big screen TV.

We got to stay one night of our trip at Matt's new house. It is really nice and he has done a great job. This is Matt and his cat Dyna, getting some X-box stuff ready for David and Matt to play on the big screen.

Now we are in Kansas City. This is the recent addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art designed by Steven Holl. It is pretty cool how it glows at night.

We went to see where Suzanne works, at the Kansas City Free Health Clinic. We pulled into the garage and closed it behind us. Only problem was that halfway through the tour the power went out on the whole block and we thought our cars were going to be stuck in the garage. Luckily, Matt helped find the manual opener and we manually opened the door. This is us trying to put the cover back on the emergency opener. It was quite a bit of excitement.

David and I thought this was especially cool. It is the original mission statement of the Kansas City Free Health Clinic.

The next few photos are of either during the gift opening or just after we were done opening gifts.

This is Casper. He's a cutie.

Out and about

David dug the car out yesterday and put the chains on, so we were able to return our videos. He had to go into work today so this morning he dropped me off at my doc appt. Now I am at a coffeeshop waiting for my eye doc appt.
Gotta get this years vision benefits! I've got to get home after this and work on my dissertation. Only about half the buses are running with all this snow on the ground. Hope our plane can get out tomorrow!
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snow photos

Here are a few photos taken during our recent snows.

David, Sam and I went for a walk after the first snow. The sidewalks and roads were pretty clear so we didn't have any problems. This is not the case after the second snow, though.


This is after the second snow. I know this looks pretty wimpy to some of you who are used to much more, but the fact that the snow didn't melt on the concrete and blacktop surfaces really made Seattle grind to a halt.

Another one... Sam loves to roll in the snow!


Pretty white rooftops after the snow.

snow day

Yesterday the weather people promised that we would get a big snowfall. All the seattle public schools closed in anticipation of this snow. And, as of 10:30 last night there was no snow in the city of Seattle. So, all those kids got the day off and no snow.

I guess we are making up for it today. Everything is coated in snow outside and it just keeps coming down. It has been snowing all morning. I'm working from home, as is David. I don't think many people have ventured out. The newscasters are telling people to just stay home. It is so funny how this city shuts down with a couple of inches of snow. I guess we do have some big hills and we also don't normally get snow so we aren't really prepared in terms of snowplows etc. I'm enjoying the snow. It is so pretty.

It isn't a wet snow either---it is very light and fluffy. While that means snowballs aren't exactly easy to make, it would definitely make for some great skiing in the mountains. I think that one of the local ski places is supposed to open tomorrow.

I'm loving the snow!

confession

I have a confession to make.

I recently got a new phone. It is a smart phone. Not just that, it is a Blackberry.

I know, I know! In some ways I can't believe I decided on a blackberry, but I really liked the capabilities, and the way it works, so I went for it. Plus it is pink :-)

David and I decided that we really wanted to be able to look things up on the go, and that since we are almost always together, it would make sense for just one of us to get the phone with internet service. And it will be very helpful for me when I am traveling for work, so we decided to pay for the extra data plan so that my phone has internet.

So, if anyone else is on a Blackberry, apparently we can text message for free through Blackberry Messenger--we just have to set each other up with a profile or something. Let me know if you have a Crackberry too!

moving time!

Mom and Grandma are moving to Peter's this weekend. I know they have already moved some stuff and will continue to move other things too. Moving is hard. I think it gets harder as you get older. Not just because you accumulate more stuff, although almost no one is immune to that problem, but also because you can't do as much of it yourself. ....hey, wait. maybe it gets easier as you get older BECAUSE you can't do as much of it yourself. Hmmmm...hiring movers sure makes things easier. But you still have to pack...and then you are back to the problem of having too much stuff.

thanksgiving pics

Here is David and Matt. We were trying to take pictures with the night setting on the camera, but you have to hold the camera really still/not move it at all to get a good picture. This is the best one we got of David and Matt with the city in the background. For those of you who might remember, this place is where David and I took our wedding photos.

In front of the market. It was pretty busy down there the day after thanksgiving.

This is what Thanksgiving dinner looked like at the Litzler house this year.

And finally, this is the little patch in our backyard that we were working on in late fall. I don't think I ever posted any pictures of it. I think we are going to move some plants around..it isn't quite how we want it yet.

thanksgiving

We had a great thanksgiving here. David's brother came up to visit and we played downtown, went over to Bainbridge Island, and had a lot of great meals. Truthfully, it was REALLY nice not to have to travel for this holiday. Sometimes it just gets to be too much traveling every single holiday.

I'm not really looking forward to work this week...It is just going to be hard after having so many days off in a row to get back into the swing of things. But I've got lots to do so I better starting swinging fast!

ohio

Being back in Ohio is weird. Not as weird as it would be if I were in Cincinnati, but still. I sort of feel like I could run into someone I know out of the blue. Even though I'm totally old, and wouldn't know any of the students here (most likely), it is possible that some of the women I'm interviewing came from cincy and maybe even went to McAuley. Not that it would be a super tight connection, but I do feel some sort of possible connection.

I haven't had skyline chili yet. I did get a hamburger at Frisch's---it was very disappointing. I remembered the burgers and being quite yummy but this was just a regular fast food burger but with tarter sauce stuff. No need to go back there again.

garden

Here are a few photos of the pumpkins from the garden and our maple tree which is brilliantly red right now.
We had 13 pumpkins grow. Two are still on the vine--these 11 were on vines that were getting kind of mushy so we took them off and will hopefully use the pumpkins for baking and cooking.

Here are a few I could carry in our glass recycling bin.

Here are the two still on the vine. The one up top is actually suspended in the fencing. It is probably 3-4 inches off the ground.

Here is a view of the pumpkin that is suspended in the fencing. One side grew a lot more than the other side.

A view of our beautiful maple (and Sam).
The maple from a different angle.

life safety?

I'm at UC Irvine for a meeting. Yesterday we were on campus for the meeting. One of the times I went into the bathroom I noticed something which I thought was funny.

You know those paper toilet seat covers some restrooms have? Sometimes they are called sani-seat or something along those lines.

Well, this brand name was "Life Safety". Don't you think that is a little over-dramatic for a toilet seat cover? I mean really- is the toilet seat cover going to save my life?

It made me laugh and I had to share.

stomach 'flu'

I am not sure what I caught, but I was sick all last night with what the doctor called gastroenteritis, which is commonly known as the stomach flu. I haven't been sick like that for a long long time. I'm feeling better today, which is good b/c I am in the airport waiting for a plane to take me to Southern California. My stomach still hurts, but I've eaten some rice and toast and so far I haven't had another episode. Even though I want to watch election coverage tonight I may have to sacrifice and go to bed early so that I can get better quicker.

and

I Voted! (absentee, so technically I voted 2 weeks ago)

wisconsin

Last week end I was in Wisconsin for work and fun. I worked in Milwaukee and I had fun in Madison. Below are a few photos I took from my trip.

Here is the Milwaukee art museum with the 'wings' up. I was lucky to see them up. I went the night before to see the outside and saw it as below.

MAM the evening before my focus groups.

Here I am in Madison. We were waiting for the bus on State street by the UW. We were munching on some spicy cheesy bread we got from the farmer's market. It was yummy!

The capitol building in Madison. The farmer's market goes all the way around the capitol. It is big!

Melissa and Emily in this photo....this was great fun. I'm so glad I got to see Madison and hang out with the newlyweds.