Business & Networking Cards

Many of you know the importance of networking. You do it all the time. At work, at meetings, at lunches, but you may not realize that you also network at the gym or the hair salon... dare I say it, even at a bar! You never know who you will meet or when. I recently started working out with a group of about 6 people. The guy who "ran" the group is married to the VP at BD Biosciences for the Health Economics and Outcomes Research Group. Whoddathunkit? Gave the guy my "grad student" card that I made myself and am now connected to her, a valuable resource. Awesome. Always be prepared. You never know who you will meet!

These are the cards that I made myself in grad-school. I think you can get some through UMass when you are a student, but I wanted something a little more feminine.


But now, I'm facing the idea that I may be looking for a job while NOT at UMass and living in our new town Rockville, MD. So, I found these awesome "mini" cards. They are half the size of a business card. I was able to use confocal images that I took during my graduate research for the back-side and put my current info (email and phone number) on the opposite side in a cool lime green color, which happens to coordinate well with the images on the opposite side. Cool huh?!? Even better is that you can upload up to 100 different images. And they are cheap! $19.99/100. I think that's pretty good considering you are getting a unique product that can really promote your "brand". In full disclosure, I also ordered some non-nerdy ones with a cool pink-geometric pattern when I don't want someone to know my full geekiness. :)

Use the link above for a 10% discount!!

These are some of the images I used for my custom cards!

Little Miss Picky

This cute little thing, Ginny, well, don't let her fool you. She is as picky as they get. She only eats her dog food when she is absolutely starving and there is no sight of human food anywhere. Now, the good news is, we aren't totally worried about her eating habits because she doesn't wolf down everything in sight. However, her pickiness has made me realize that it's actually easy to "trick" her into eating her dog food. For example, all Dave has to do to get her to eat is to put one little piece of human food in her bowl and she gobbles it up! Amazing!! Problem solved! But, we do give her little things every now and then and this is what we've discovered our sweet Ginny likes to eat.

1. She loves her food cooked in egg yolk (we do this occasionally because it's good for her coat). When we do this, she inhales her food... and we usually only give her one yolk (cooked) with a few tablespoons of kibble mixed in.

2. She goes CRAZY for barbecue... especially pork ribs. It's like she's died and gone to heaven. When we barbecue, you see her almost twitching as she sits watching us devour the deliciousness.

3. Chips/pretzels... anything like that.

4. Carrots, broccoli, oranges, apples

5. Cheese! oh boy... she waits at our feet when we grate cheese

6. Peanut butter (really though, who doesn't?)

7. Meat (any kind actually)

8. She really WANTS to like chocolate chip cookies (especially straight out of the oven) and mint chocolate chip ice cream, but no chocolate for Ginny. :)

OK, so most dogs will eat just about anything, our sweet puppy does not like the following:

1. Pickles

2. Strawberries

3. Cucumbers

4. Lobster

5. Asparagus

6. Zucchini

As you probably guessed, she will eat most things, even if it's not her favorite, these are just the things that she absolutely won't eat :)

Toilet Paper

This story is 100% true. All of it.

Dave & I were out shopping at Costco. We needed toilet paper. Even though we live in a small apartment, Costco size TP is totally worth it because I hate always having disposable items on my shopping list. That's why I stopped buying paper napkins, but that's another story. So Dave is off looking at something else and I'm sent to fetch the TP. On my way towards that paper aisle, Dave reminds me to get the cheap stuff. (He's an economist, it's not his fault). So, I go and I start looking at all the different TP and the prices. Scott 1000 was by far the cheapest (even compared to Kirkland brand) and so that's what I got (mostly in fear that Dave would go back to look at the prices and discover that I didn't choose the absolute cheapest one).

We get home and he looks at the toilet paper.
Dave: "You got this one!?!? Why?? This is horrible!"
Me: "It's the cheapest. You said get the cheapest"
Dave: "But not that cheap!"
Me: "Too late now... besides, it can't be that bad"

We begin using said toilet paper and it is truly awful. It was 100% recycled fiber (whatever that means) and just plain awful. By the time we are finished using the first 3 rolls or so, we had a couple of the old stuff left. We saved that... boy did we save it! In fact, if we had guests over, we put away our cheap awful toilet paper and put out a roll of the "good stuff". Seriously. This is true. Though, once (and only once) we forgot to put out the good toilet paper and Dave was concerned... he said "do you think Jen noticed our crappy toilet paper?" ummm... not sure. We did not let it slip after that.

Move forward to May. Dave is graduating with his Master's Degree and his mom, dad & sister come out for the event. At this point, we are bout 80% through the bad TP and have about 3/4 of a roll of the "guest TP".
Dave says "should we put out the good toilet paper?"
Me: "No way! It's just family. Not anyone we need to impress. Besides, they can help us use up all this bad toilet paper!"
Dave: gives me a look.
Me: "Besides, we don't have much good stuff left, we'll have to go buy more if you want to use it while they are here."
Dave: "I guess so. Hopefully they won't notice"

If they noticed how crappy our TP was, they didn't mention it. It might have been said behind our backs, but I can deal with that.

At our most recent trip to Costco. I declare, "We are getting good toilet paper, and I don't care how much it costs". We both laughed. It took us forever to get through that stuff! One mistake I'll never make again.

But this all brings me back to when I was a kid... probably in middle school or something like that. We were all in front of the TV watching StarTrek and a Charmin commercial comes on, you know, the one withe the Bear in the forest with the newspaper and his roll of huggably soft toilet paper. Anyways, dad, being the funny one, says, "Ya, like I look for comfort when I'm in the toilet". (Insert 4 kids laughing). But seriously dad, I do. I didn't before, but I've been to the other side and back. It's way more important than you might think!

Gluten Free Cereals

So, many of you know that I'm a Celiac (meaning I can't eat wheat/barley/rye products) and I'm here to update you on the cereal situation. I am a cereal fanatic. It's what I like to eat in the mornings. That is going to have to change, mostly because it's not the healthiest choice since there's not a significant amount of protein in cereal, but every now and then (AKA: every other day) it's alright. I'm here to tell you what gluten free cereals taste good and which ones are crap.

Believe it or not, until recently, NOTHING from Kellogs brand was gluten free because ALL of there cereals have malt in them (malt is derived from barley and therefore not ok for me to consume). Even things that you think should be ok were not... like Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies. Oh well. It's all just refined crap anyways!

Here we go:

GOOD:

1. Nature's Path: Organic Vanilla Sunrise (my new favorite- similar to Honey Bunches of Oats but vanilla flavored and better for you)

2. Rice/ Cinnamon Chex

3. Kix/Berry Kix/Honey Kix (if you're not that sensitive to gluten, technically these are GF, but there could be issues of cross-contamination from other products produced in the same facility)

4. Cocoa/Fruity Pebbles (Not very good for you... but still... yum)

OK:

1. Corn/Honey Chex

2. Enjoy Life Very Berry Crunch Granola (GF granola just isn't quite the same... this one is OK compared to the other one I tried)

3. Basic gluten free corn flakes are ok... just boring

5. Puffins Crunchy Cocoa

Haven't Tried but want to:

1. Kellogs GF Brown Rice Krispies

2/3. Nature's Path- Whole O's & Mesa Sunrise

4. Quinoa flakes (or some variety)

BAD:

1. Glutino's-- ALL VARIETIES ARE AWFUL!

(don't even get me started... they tease you like they are Cheerio's, but they are just plain awful)

2. Enjoy Life Foods Perky's Crunchy Rice (these are sooo dense, they are comparable to 3. GrapeNuts. OK for yogurt but not with milk and a spoon.)

4. Bakery on Maine Granola

5. Puffins Honey Rice (there are other varieties I haven't tried, but these were like pure sugar)

Welcome June!

Well, it is officially June... we can wear white shoes and white pants and skirts... summer is here! But I am loaded down with work, this will not be a summer of fun for me. Nope. Gotta write that thesis! I'm "graduating" this Sunday, a little premature, but there you go, since I'm not submitting my thesis until July and defending later that month. WOW, only about 1.5 months to go... crazy!! I started the PhD program July 6th 2005 and I will have been in the PhD program for 6 years this July. I'd like to say the time flew, but it didn't. This has probably been the longest 6 years of my life. It has been a tumultuous journey filled with ups and downs of research, love and friends. Filled with anxiety and stress, not only about my own work, but with some serious health issues I've been dealing with the last two years.

Writing my dissertation has been slow. I don't have a job lined up, so I'm not super motivated to move on. PLUS, we're getting married in October, so that's another distraction hanging around me ALL the time! I am excited to dig in and get the meat of my thesis written! Wish me luck!

Save the Date's

Save the Date's are out. I sent them out in April. I looked online and found it difficult to find a design that I liked, so I set out to design my own. Well, a perfectionist like myself is never satisfied... you have no idea what I went through! Dave finally started telling me he liked them all because there were too many to choose from. The winning design was very different. The photo was taken in Balboa Park at the Organ Pavillion during a family photo shoot that my sister-in-law got my parents as a Christmas gift. Each of the four kids had their pictures taken with their respective others and we took some family shots, all eleven of us! I did all of the designs in Photoshop, I'm getting pretty good at that, but though I thought that I constrained the picture size so all the ratios would be the same, it seems that our heads got stretched a tad bit anyways. Oh well. We finally had the printing done at VistaPrint for about 0.22 cents a piece. The printing turned out great, especially for the price! They were small, the size of a business card, but I didn't want anything huge anyways.

Enjoy looking at the designs! I had fun with the process!

These were the 2nd and 3rd place designs:

May Happenings

Yes, it's true, I'm a bit late... but I hope that you will forgive me since it has been, by far, the busiest of months!

Dave graduated from Northeastern with his M.A. in Economics!
I am so proud of Dave! He did something that many don't have the courage to do. Immediately after high school... well almost immediately... he joined the Navy and through his diligence, strong will and pure amazingness became a SEAL. He served for about 5.5 years and decided it was time to move on and he went to college. For most, college is a given: graduate high school, go to college. Period. I bet you've never thought about what it might be like to start college when you're 25 and graduate when you're 30. It's tough when you have the awareness that most people your age have a "real job" and make money. It's tougher when you think about how you're going to make up for "lost time" (which, by the way, is absolutely NOT LOST!). And it's the toughest when you're surrounded by "kids" 18-22 years old who haven't really grown up yet or experienced much and who you wouldn't necessarily choose to be your new best buddies. But Dave did it all... sure, there were times he considered changing course, but in the end, decided that the degree was necessary. Last May, he graduated Summa Cum Laude with his B.S. in Economics and this year, graduated with an overall 3.6 GPA in some pretty tough economics coursework. That my friends, is victory! He is amazing. I love him. There are many reasons for that.

We also had a lovely time with his family who came out for the occasion. We went to see the Wayside Inn where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote "Paul Revere's Ride".

I went with Dave's dad to Sturbridge Village, New England's largest outdoor museum set to the time of Colonial Massachusetts. That was pretty cool!

Dave took his dad for a skydive... talk about pressure!

And we had a fun lobster feast!

Busy but great month!