Jeff Completed His Dissertation Proposal Defense!

On Wednesday, Jeff gathered his dissertation committee and presented his dissertation proposal, which includes his plan for writing his dissertation and also his initial findings. They asked him lots of questions and really made him work hard to explain everything, but in the end he passed his defense! Yay, Jeff!

Honeymoon Credit Card

Since Jeff and I will be overseas for quite a while on our honeymoon, we decided to get a Capital One card, since they don't charge foreign transaction fees (that probably saves us about 3% on everything we buy during the honeymoon, which is pretty significant!)

Another fun bonus - Capital One lets you personalize your card with a photo. So Jeff and I picked this one:

It will definitely be fun to have this as our main credit card to use during our honeymoon! :)

National Survey on Drug Use and Health

Tonight a survey person came by - I had been randomly selected to complete the Department of Health and Human Services' National Survey on Drug Use and Health - again! (I was randomly selected to complete the survey last year too.)

https://nsduhweb.rti.org/

So I spent about 45 minutes answering questions about my history of alcohol and drug use, about mental health and healthcare. It's a fairly interesting survey. Did you know there is a prescription drug called Soma, and its a relaxant? (Someone must have been a big "Brave New World" fan.) 

Wedding Invitations Have Been Mailed Out!

Our wedding invitations all arrived yesterday, so Jeff and I had an invitation-stuffing party that night, and this morning, we mailed out our wedding invitations! Soooo exciting! Can't wait for the RSVP cards to start coming in!!!

Boston Bachelorette Party Weekend!

Back in November, I got together with two of my really good friends from college – Neera and Janet. We had all gotten engaged and were all planning weddings for the summer – and we were all in each other’s wedding parties. So, we decided it’d be really fun to have a joint bachelorette party!

We handed off the planning to Katie, Silpa, and Dorothy, and they ran with it. We invited the bridesmaids for each of our weddings, so that they could all get to know each other. Since people are spread around the country, we decided to all meet up in Boston – that was where Janet, Neera, and I met, and it minimized the amount of travel necessary for the greatest number of people.

I got in at about 1:30pm. As soon as I saw Boston out the window, I couldn’t stop smiling – I absolutely love that city. It was raining, so I decided to take a cab to Pooja’s apartment near Harvard Square. I knew that taxis are expensive in Boston, but it really is crazy – because of the extra fees, you owe $10.50 before you even leave the airport ($7.50 in airport fees, $3 starting on the meter). So the 15 minute ride cost more than $40. Ah, well. At least I stayed dry. :)

Pooja was running a conference the weekend of the party, so she wasn’t at home. I went up to Silpa’s room (she lives in the same building) to pick up the key. Then I put my stuff in Pooja’s room and took a quick nap. Around 5pm, I went to Janet’s house, which was just around the corner. Stephanie’s flight got in around then – I warned her about the exorbitant cab fees, so she decided to take the T. Then she had a bit of a fiasco when she tried to take a cab the last bit of the way and ended up back in Boston instead of Cambridge. But eventually she made it to the right place.

Once we had Stephanie, we all went to Silpa’s apartment. We ordered pizza from Bertucci’s, and Silpa and Neera had picked up other snacks and drinks. It was a really awesome group of girls – Neera had Silpa and Omeleya there, I had Katie and Stephanie (Annette couldn’t make it and Paul came in on Saturday), and Janet had Jenna, Christina, Jess, Julia, and Liz. I knew everybody – mostly from MIT. It was amazing how many intelligent, successful women there were in that one room – multiple Harvard MBA and grad students, a doctor, a medical student, engineering PhDs, and all just generally super interesting people. Plus, they’re all really fun and friendly!

We chatted together, played Dirty Minds (which is a board game that was pretty good for a bachelorette party), and then played Apples to Apples. It was really fun to have a night in to relax with everybody. Even though Friday was supposed to be our early night, everyone stayed until 1:30 or 2am. Luckily, Katie, Stephanie, and I only needed to make it to Pooja’s apartment in the same building.

Pooja had actually planned to sleep at her neighbor’s while we stayed at her place, so she would be able to sleep and we wouldn’t have to be too quiet. But she ended up getting home later than us – at about 2:30am, so she stayed in her own place, which was nice, because I got a chance to at least say hi! She was up and out – on her way to her conference – by about 5am the next morning. Yikes.

Katie, Stephanie, and I got up around 8:30am, got ready, and went to Newbury Street. We met up with the other girls and all got manicures at Minilux. It was a really nice place, and they had really reasonable prices! It was a nice, relaxing way to start the day.

From there, we all walked up Newbury Street to Snappy Sushi. The sushi there was good, and I liked the place, though I was a little sad that Tea Luxe – the tea shop that had been in that location – had closed down. Paul met up with us towards the end of lunch. From there, we walked back along Newbury (shopping a bit on the way) and made our way to Kenmore Square. Along the way, I gave Paul and Stephanie my ‘memory lane’ stories – the restaurants where I used to eat, the convenience store we always went to in the middle of the night, the bus station that was under construction for as long as I can remember, etc.

Paul wasn’t allowed at the next activity (their rules – we would have brought him), so we dropped him off at Game On outside Fenway. His girlfriend was in town, though, so he hung out with her while we were dancing. The rest of us went to Boston Pole Fitness for a two-hour dancing lesson. It was actually really fun – I think all of the girls had a really good time. And it was surprisingly difficult – we got a pretty good workout.

When the lesson was over, we picked Paul up again, and headed back to Pooja’s to change and get ready. Katie had arranged for all of the brides to wear red and the rest of the group to wear black. After some very quick getting ready (and a nap for Paul), we took cabs to Lala Rokh on Beacon Hill.

Lala Rokh has Persian food, and was really good. Katie and I shared stuffed zucchini and lamb shank. Dinner took quite a while, so we decided to skip the plan of stopping at a bar and go right to the club. It was just on the other side of Boston Common, so we all walked there. The place was called Estate – I’d never been there before, but it was a fun place. We had arranged for a private area and bottle service, since with a group our size it was a pretty economical deal.

Katie had made three matching veils for each of the brides, and people helped us get those on. Silpa had printed out a list of activities for each of the brides to try to accomplish before the end of the night – like ‘get serenaded by a guy’ or ‘dance with a red head.’ They were cute. (I didn’t quite finish mine, but I think Neera did really well.) We all danced for a while, and then hung around near our booth. (Paul didn’t actually dance, but he was content to be the photographer, and I’m pretty sure he also bought me about 100 drinks.)

We stayed until just before last call, hoping that we’d have better luck finding a cab if we didn’t wait to the very end, but we were out of luck. It took us forever to get a taxi, and when we finally did get one, the guy was super crabby and stressed out. And I was feeling pretty chatty, so I asked him about it. My sister was pretty sure he was going to just drop us off in the middle of nowhere.

When I got back, I jumped on Pooja to wake her up, which I’m sure she loved. :) In my defense, she had told me earlier in the day that I should wake her up when we got home, and she never did specify how. We all chatted for a bit and then eventually fell asleep. (Katie, Stephanie, and I stayed at Pooja’s, but Paul actually walked back to his hotel – it took him an hour!)

On Sunday morning we were all really, really tired, and actually pretty sore from our dancing lesson, but we got ready and headed to Masa in South Boston for brunch at 10am. The food at Masa was great – it’s all Mexican-inspired – and they have an amazing brunch deal – an appetizer, entrée, and coffee for only $8! I had a plantain empanada and huevos rancheros – and shared some Santa Fe style eggs benedict with Katie.

After all of that food, we decided to walk a bit, so after saying good bye to everybody, Stephanie and I went with Katie to South Station, where she caught the bus back to New York. We met up with Paul and Kris there – they were also planning to take a bus to New York. We chatted for a bit before they took off. Then Stephanie and I fueled up on McDonald’s and Auntie Ann’s respectively and cabbed it back to Pooja’s apartment. We spent the last couple hours before our flight laying on the futon watching Doctor Who – a great Sunday afternoon activity. Eventually, we made our way back to the airport (cab again – just too tired to deal with the T), and caught a 7:15pm flight home.

The weekend was so, so fun, and really special! I was just so happy the entire time – being in a city I love, getting to see friends who are really important to me, and doing lots of fun activities with everyone. I was actually really sad when the weekend was finally over – which is the first time I’ve felt like that with wedding-related stuff. Maybe it’s a sign that it’s getting closer to the actual wedding. Or maybe it’s because this is one of the activities that I’ve been planning for and thinking about for a long time. And now it’s no longer one of the exciting things that are going to happen, but one of the exciting things that already did happen. It may be over now, but it’s a pretty amazing memory to have.

Wedding Idea Board

Lots of wedding magazines say that you should cut pictures out of magazines, ads, or other documents and create an idea board that shows all the different things you want to include in your wedding.

That plan didn't work very well for me, because I've been doing all of my wedding planning electronically. Instead, I created an electronic idea board - it's got pictures of almost all of the things we've already picked out (the venue, guys' tuxes, bridesmaid dresses, decorations, etc.) and some pictures of things we're still considering. I'm really happy with the way it looks!

The blank space in the middle is because I had to hide my wedding dress, since Jeff reads this blog. :)

Apartment Update: We got our stuff back... and then got rid of (most of) it!

Last week Jeff and I got access to the things in our old apartment. We brought down all sorts of plastic bags and boxes full of our old things. Our apartment was really messy.

It's crazy to think that we haven't had these things for five months. We've basically adjusted to living without them. Some things - like our pens, scissors, and post-its got organized and put away in the desk. Other things - like almost all of our old dishes and pots and pans - we decided to give away to Goodwill.

It took quite a few days, but by this morning our apartment was looking nice again! And since we had our drill back, we could even hang the photos we'd gotten framed! (All of the photos are ones we took - except for the one of the two of us, which my mom took.)

Top row (left to right): A gateway on an island on Lake Titicaca, Peru; the Charles bridge in Prague; Boston Public Garden; Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis; and Lake Titicaca, Peru.
Bottom row (left to right): Jeff and I in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; a city street in Seoul, Korea; Some castle ruins in Ireland; Beach in Honduras; and old buildings reflected in glass in Prague

Today Jeff went in and got our old furniture and brought it down - and pretty much all of that is up on craigslist now, since we replaced basically all of our major furniture over the past five years. Once we get all of that taken away, it will just be odds and ends left! (And hopefully someday soon we'll get our clothes back and we'll have closets with more than five items of clothing...)