Logos

I've been working on some logos because at our reception venue they have a light and you can provide a logo and they shine it on the dance floor... and I can also make a rubber stamp with our logo on it and use it for miscellaneous wedding things. :) I've designed a few. Tell me which one you like the best!


Logo 1: I like this simple design... I saw one similar that was called "enclosed together". I thought that was cute and wanted to try to make something similar to avoid paying the $60 to have someone else do it for me.

Logo 2: I originally wanted the text here with some whimsical brackets above and below the text but was unable to find said brackets. I settled for this "tag" look instead.

Logo 3: This is a very classic style logo with our names and last initial. I tried just initials but couldn't come up with anything that I really loved, so I did this instead. I like it. I think the double outline with dot accent inner really gives it some zest without being overly done or plain.

Logo 4: I think this one is my favorite... but I really can't decide. I love the flare on the ends with a very classic text. It's not as "square" as the others. This one is definitely high on my list!

Logo 5: This is a classic monogram logo. I'm not sure I love the style, but I had to make one... everyone else is.

Logo 6a: Another version of a classic monogram logo without the surname initial. I really like the simplicity of it. It's very nice. Easy to use this anywhere.

Logo 6b: I tried polka dots around the initials. I think I would have preferred smaller dots, but this is what I had for clip art.

Logo 6c: I am using these dahlia's on my wedding invitations (more on that later) so I thought it would be cool to see what they look like together. I like it, but I would want to do the flower in another color and the initials in black. This one probably won't make the stamp, but I like the concept!

Logo 6d: I wanted to try a border that was a little more whimsical and came up with this. I like it, but not so much with the formality of the font that I chose. Oh well.

It's official...

Well ladies and gentlemen, it's official. I'll be defending my dissertation in late July/early August this summer! That means that my committee said "go" and all is well with the world. I have a few things to wrap up with my paper I still need to submit, but otherwise, I'm good to go. My TRAC meeting went well, but I'll say this, I was surprisingly more sensitive than I expected to be when we were taking a good hard look at my work. I guess when you pour your heart and soul into a project for 4 years you take some of these comments more personally than you might if you had nonchalantly floated through graduate research only to eventually arrive at the end of the tunnel expecting them to hand you a PhD. Not me. I agonized over every experiment I did. Many of them I thought up when I was preparing for my qualifying exam in my 2nd year. I am proud to say that I actually did those experiments and they are significantly contributing to my dissertation research. I'll have to toughen up for my defense.

I haven't had a perfect track record with grad school. Like most, it came with ups and downs... but I will finish. Thank God.

Can I graduate? Pretty please...

My life is never quite in sync with what the world thinks it should be and it seems as though this year, March is coming in like a lamb and going out like a lion. Not the reverse. Let me explain. The first week of March, I'm cool, collected, a slave to my job but overall simply focused instead of out-of-control busy. This week has been more along the lines of knowing how much I need to get done and oscillating between bursts of intense production and procrastination. I am going to go ahead and tell you that at 8:15 this morning, it's all changing. Today is the dreaded turning point of March when instead of being a nice spring lamb, it turns into a raging lion. Which will continue until I've finished my dissertation.

Tomorrow is my year 6 PhD TRAC meeting where I meet with my thesis committee and tell them all the things I've accomplished over the last year and please please please can I graduate? 6 years working on a PhD is still less than the 6.5 year average at UMass. I guess I can be glad about that... but it's been a LONG road. I am ready to move on. In order to graduate you need to publish a first-author peer-reviewed publication, minimum one, preferably two. But when you work with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, you take what you can get. I'll have one first-author publication and a couple second-author papers. I am absolutely satisfied with that. The problem is, my paper isn't published yet. Actually, it's not even submitted. The reason it's not submitted is because I was trying out one last thing (famous last words of a scientist) and actually got something to work... on Monday. I rushed to repeat the experiment and am waiting 2 weeks for the colonies to grow on plates, count them and submit the paper. This last experiment really boosts my paper and thesis quite a bit. I identified novel aspects of innate immune mechanisms contributing to the control of M.tb in host cells (theoretically, although all experiments were done in vitro) and I am certain that my thesis committee will be thrilled. My hope is that they will give me the 'go ahead' to write and defend my dissertation, but I think that will commence once this paper is finally submitted. My advisor is confident that my time has come. I hope he's right.

I have a lot to do for tomorrow...