The first ever Trivia Tuesday

I have recently been inspired by other blogs and by my love for useless knowledge to start a Trivia Tuesday. Yeah! Each Tuesday I’ll post a random factoid that will amuse you and will hopefully help me get better at that Trivia game they have at Slider’s and Black Bear Saloon…here goes…

Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning

Not sure about you, but that makes me a little bit depressed. I looooove my coffee/tea in the morning and I think it’s way more soothing than eating an apple. On the other hand, an apple in the morning would probably be much healthier. I think that I’m going to try an experiment over the next week (I’ll report back to you on Tuesday next week). I’m going to try to go a whole week without a morning cup of coffee and I’ll eat an apple instead. This could be interesting….

In other news, we close on our first house tomorrow! I’m super excited (though a little bit nervous too…guess I won’t be totally comfortable until I have that key in my hand). I’ll be posting the before pictures up here tomorrow night or Thursday morning. Stay tuned!

The wedding

Here's the slideshow from the wedding (it's pretty long). If you'd like to see the slideshow that our photographer did just click on the link below!

http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewshow.html?fl=3118794&alb=130083

The Pre-Wedding Events

I'm going to do these wedding posts in three seperate sections (so I don't overwhelm anyone).  We have literally over 1,000 pictures of the whole wedding process so its taking me a while to sift through them.  This slide show is the lead-up stuff.  It starts with my shower which I've already posted about (scroll down!).  That was such a blast!  Then you have a few from our pre-wedding party.  Keith and I wanted to just have a little barbecue cookout for our wedding party to thank them for all the time they put into planning our special day.  Last is the rehersal and our nail appt.  No one thought to take pics at the rehearsal dinner so I don't have any of those, but that was at Smokin' with Chris' in Southington.  It's a great barbecue joint that smokes all their food (delicious!)  Totally recommend it if you're in the area.  Anyways, here's the slideshow.

Science Friday #1!!!

I do plan on doing an update on this blog (about the wedding and the honeymoon) at some point this weekend when I can go through my pictures and pick out some of my favorites to show you have everything went. In the meantime, in my effort to become better at regularly posting things I have decided to have a few theme days! Playing off of NPR’s Science Fridays, I’ll be posting my own Science Fridays.

Those of you who know me know that I am a complete science nerd. I love all kinds of science (particularly life sciences) and try to get everybody around me to like science, too. I’m also missing being a teacher and sharing all of my neat current events with my students, sooo…you guys get to be my students (you lucky ducks!) Here’s the first article…

Brain Scans Reveal What You've Seen
I saw this on CNN and on ScienceDaily so it must be good. Basically (if you don’t feel like reading) scientists are able to use a technology called fMRIs which measure the blood flow through different parts of your brain and can use that data to determine what types of pictures you were looking at. Obviously they can’t get too detailed and it’s still in its multiple choice phase, but I find this kind of creepy. Fascinating, but creepy. Given that science knowledge increases on an exponential scale (meaning that the more we know the faster we learn more) I wonder what this technology would be able to do in 5, 10, or 20 years? Is this the kind of thing that one day would make our lie detector tests obsolete because we could just plug someone in to an fMRI machine and know their thoughts? What would happen to our privacy? Our copyright laws? Creative licensure? What do you think?

A big 'ol sigh of relief...

I was laid off from work about 3 weeks ago. It sucked. Royally. I have tried to keep this fact quiet because I was petrified that I'd be out of work for a while and the last thing that I wanted was everyone talking about how I was unemployed at the wedding and hearing how sorry people are over and over again. No offense or anything, but sorry's aren't going to get me a job or earn me money.
The reason that I can finally say that I got laid off is because i got a new job! I'm super excited about it too. First, in case you don't know, I was a teacher and I have been saying that I wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. Sure, I went through various dream careers including archeology, pharmacology (those were my dream jobs anwyays...what...they weren't yours too?), but for a large chunk of that time I have wanted to be a teacher. And for the past 5 years I have loved being a teacher. My career aspirations, though, have always been to be a "teacher's teacher". In fact, according to my mom, I decided at the age of 6 that "someone had to teach teachers so that's what I wanted to do). Up until a few weeks ago I figured that someday I'd end up teaching at a college in the education department.
When I started looking for jobs I decided to peek on monster. com just to see what was out there and ran across an "education specialist" position at the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technologies. I applied on a whim....come to discover it's a pretty cool job. I went on 3 interviews an (wooh) got a job! I'll basically be designing teacher workshops/student programs that encourage students to enter into science/engineering/technology jobs. I get to get kids excited about science! How cool! So I'm jumping right into this...I start next Thursday. Can't wait!

Amazing blog!

So 2 posts in one day...clearly I am procrastinating on writing all those thank you notes from the shower. I just came across the most amazing blog ever if you grew up the 90s. http://childrenofthenineties.blogspot.com/ enjoy a good laugh!

I was showered!

My shower was this past Sunday. How amazing! I have to admit, I was completely nervous and a bit guilty about the fact that people had bought me so many gifts (the table was covered...and so was the floor beneath it!). Luckily, once I got over that initial nervousness it was wonderful. Good job mom and Mrs. R.! It was help at a golf course in town and we had a lunch-time banquet complete with salads, finger sandwiches, sweet tea, and spiked punch. With the sweet tea I felt like we were down south. After that we did gifts and I was completely blown away with how generous everyone is. I got everything that I could have asked for and more and some people were so clever. Keith's aunt and I are both avid readers and talk books a lot. She found this website www.booksbyyou.com where you choose a book, enter in information about people and then you get back a book that is personalized. She got Keith and I a book about race car owner (me) and her new driver (Keith) and their romance....ooooh! I doubt Keith will ever read it but it's so cute. I am also completely stocked to have the biggest party ever....so details on that will be forthcoming I guess. :) The shower was also good practice for the wedding day. I got kind of used to being the center of attention and learned that I need to not make so many faces. My poor cousin was trying to take pictures and managed to get a stupid picture of me practically every time! Might be tough to get good wedding pictures if I keep that up. Next wedding related thing is my final dress fitting next weekend. I can't wait!