menu for the dinner:

• turkey rubbed with compound butter of savory, parsley, and thyme, both inside and outside of the skin so even if one eats no skin, they still get the herb flavors
  
• em's sweet potatoes
  
• my mashed potatoes
  
• dressing
  
• green beans
  
• corn
  
• dill glazed carrots
  
• cresent rolls
  
• homemade gravy from turkey drippings
  
• em's pumpkin pie
  
• my chocolate pie

turkey is in the oven. pies are done. em's sweet potatoes are boiled and mashed and in a pan awaiting marshmallows and a quick trip into the oven. i'm about to start peeling and boiling my potatoes and chopping vegetables for the stuffing and the carrots. the turkey should be done at 5:30. reynold's turkey bags are amazing. they cut the cooking time down like crazy (2-2.5 hours for a 12-lb turkey!) and the meat is crazy juicy, too. best. invention. ever. it's going to be an awesome meal. i'm excited! two more hours to go!

happy thanksgiving, all!

i know it's uncharacteristic of me to be spewing so much happiness, but you'll have to bear with me for awhile at least. i'm feeling really good. my house is clean, we have a bunch of candles lit that smell nice and look pretty, i got to take a long leisurely shower today, all the food has been purchased for thanksgiving, we have fresh flowers in the house that have opened beautifully, and really my only problem is a headache that's almost gone. i feel a lot lighter. em got home early and is playing a football video game and i am freely surfing the internet. with no guilt because i should be doing something for school! i finished editing the portraits of terri's dogs that i took when we were in austin back in october. now i'm waiting for sara to get here, at which point we'll go to dinner and see 2012. nothing says thanksgiving like a good disaster flick.

we were looking at the calendar earlier, and i've got stuff to do for the class i teach all of next week, but the week after that i have nothing. nothing! my thesis is due december 4th to the grad office, which is the last day of classes, and then my students have an open-note take-home final, so they won't have a review. i don't know what i'll do with myself! it's going to be awesome. i'm excited.

i was thinking that having a job five minutes from my house will make it easier to do things like cooking and going to the gym. i'll be done at 5 or 6 and i can go to the gym and be home by 7. or if i want to skip the gym and make some awesome five-course meal, i totally can. it's going to be fun trying new recipes.

i passed!!!!! so now i get to have a nice relaxing thanksgiving with sara and emily! going to see 2012, make and eat a ton of awesome food, watch some football, and then friday we're decorating for christmas! so exciting!!! and it'll be so much more relaxing now. ahhhh. much better :)

and, barnaby's for dinner with em and brian. yum. happiness.

I PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!!

and now i'm nauseous. talk is just over 20 minutes, which is what it should be. hopefully i won't go super fast because of nerves tomorrow. i'm so ready to be done. i just wish it could happen without having to actually do the defense. things will be so much better tomorrow afternoon. hopefully. uuggghhh.

brian said that if you rearrange uuuggghhh, it spells hhhuuuggg. cute.

maybe it's the lack of sleep and the stress of my upcoming defense, but that comic cracked me up this morning.

so, i got the job at lpi!!! i'm so excited! i've wanted to work there since i was an intern in 2004. it's an amazing environment and the people are fantastic. stephanie, the woman who's going to be my boss is really great. she's been emailing me asking how my defense prep is going and telling me how excited she is that i'm taking the job. i start january 4th, so i've got time to do my defense, make any corrections to my paper, get it submitted, and have some time to relax over christmas. very exciting. really, if i can just get through the next four days, things will be loads better. plan for this weekend is to go through my thesis with a fine-toothed comb and look up any details i've forgotten and read over the abstracts of all the papers i've cited. and practice my powerpoint a few thousand times.

i was driving an hour and a half through the rain this morning through horrible traffic to make it to school too late to park anywhere but paid parking and i was thinking how nice it's going to be to have a five-minute commute through neighborhood streets to get to work. seriously. it's 45 minutes of driving plus 15 minutes of walking from the parking lot on a good day with no traffic. now i'll have 5 minutes of driving and 30 seconds of walking from the parking lot. it's going to be awesome. i can't wait. i actually only have four more days of sitting in horrible rush hour traffic to get to school. monday next week and mwf the week after thanksgiving. then classes are over and i'll have to run a couple review sessions and have office hours, but those will be in the afternoon. woot.

we're getting a cable box installed in the guest room this afternoon, so in a bit brian's taking me to lunch and then i'm heading home to work while waiting for the cable guy. just in time for sara to enjoy it when she comes to visit next wednesday. she's excited. i'm excited, too. thanksgiving is going to be so nice. i have an awesome job lined up and my defense will be done. yay thanksgiving.

I HAVE BEEN HIRED BY THE LUNAR AND PLANETARY INSTITUTE!!! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

there are six days until my defense and em sent me this awesome card:


i did a practice talk today and have some minor changes but the talk seems to be in good shape. i'm taking the rest of the day off. i'm tired and my brain hurts.

em and i got up at 2am on tuesday and headed down to galveston to watch the leonids meteor shower. there weren't a lot of meteors, but i got pictures of a couple. and it was freezing! the cold front had just come through, so it was nice and clear, but very cold. for iso 6400, i'd say beefy did an awesome job. there was so much noise at 800 (don't even think about using 1600) on my old camera i never went above 400. it's nice having more options now.

leonid meteor (long streak in the upper right) over boats in the gulf of mexico

sirius (bright star on the left) and orion

orion (bright fuzzy object near the center is the great nebula in orion)

leonid (streak in the upper left) and orion

lastly, someone on my flist sent me this song and it made me chuckle. thanks, ilysse!

i turned in my thesis to my committee yesterday. my advisor looked at it earlier this week and said it looked good, so hopefully my committee will think the same thing. my defense will be on november 24 at 12:30. it was a big problem to get a room reserved for a 2.5 hour chunk on a tuesday, so i'm in a giant lecture hall where we hold department seminars. i've given talks there before so i'm used to the room, but it's going to be weird to be in this huge room with just my committee after the general public leaves.

in other news, i think my second interview at lpi went well. i was there for 5 and a half hours. i got along great with the other group members and they seem to be my flavor of crazy, so i think i'd fit well with them. they said they'd let me know midweek next week. the woman who would be my boss and whom i'd be working with most closely has already called my advisor, so they're checking my references. i take that as a good sign. she wouldn't waste her time or my advisor's if they weren't interested. so now i get to wait. i really want this job. it would be absolutely perfect.

i'm now making my powerpoint for my defense so i can practice it over the next few days and have a pratice talk at school maybe on tuesday. it's almost done and looking good. i have pretty pictures and nice plots.

tonight em and i are going to see ludo. i need to call the venue and see if they allow cameras. it's a smaller venue (with super cheap tickets!) so they might, and i can see how beefy handles concert conditions.

lastly, hook 'em horns! we're killing baylor right now, and i'd love to see texas jump back up to #2 in the bcs. #3 is a horrible place to be.

i can't believe i forgot to mention this! i got a sweet new camera before we went to arizona! it's a canon 7d and it's awesome!! it's freaking huge and heavy, and thus has been named beefy. what's nice is that the kit lens that came with it was a lens i was actually planning on purchasing for $600 before i knew the camera was coming out, and with the camera it was $200. score! it's a nice lens, too. i had fun with it on our trip. i also like that the camera does hd video. i took the video below on az87 going north out of scottsdale. it's a nice, winding road that goes through the mountains. makes for nice views, though it was a bit bumpy. the song is "that's what's wrong" by good old war. a larger version is on youtube.

AZ scenic drive from Heather Dalton on Vimeo.

we had some spare time in arizona so we spent a few hours at the phoenix desert botanical gardens. they had a monarch butterfly exhibit, and i got some pictures of all the cactus and desert plants.

the next day we left the harvard hotel, drove by the fort davis city hall building, and took the scenic route back to i-10 through the davis mountains.

on our way out to arizona from houston, em and i stopped for the night in fort davis, tx. we saw a gorgeous sunset with some amazing mammatus clouds and stayed in the fabulous harvard hotel.

150 words for an abstract is oppressive. here, summarize your work for the last two and a half years in a maximum of 150 words. ONE HUNDRED FIFTY. i'm at 172. started from 340, which is the size of the abstract of the paper being submitted for publication. 150 words is ridiculous. uuuggghhhh

the interview at lpi went really well! i have a second interview this coming wednesday, where i'll meet with the group i'd be working with and perform some sort of task. there also will be lunch involved, and the whole thing is supposed to take about four hours. i'm slightly terrified. this job would be perfect for me. it's coordinating planetary science education for everyone from girl scout leaders to college professors. and, lpi is all of five minutes from my house, so i'll be spending no money on gas instead of having to buy at least two tanks a week, and my health and dental insurance benefits start the day i start. they're all smart, funny, passionate people and i would love to work with them. i'd be sharing an office with one other person and have one whole wall of windows, where i can see all the deer that run around the building. all freaking amazing things. so hopefully i'll rock at whatever task i have to do and they'll hire me.

in other news, my thesis is just about finished. i'll be sending it to my advisor this weekend, and then my thesis committee gets it on friday. defense is the 24th. uggghhhhh. but after that, sara's coming in for thanksgiving on the 25th. we're going to go see 2012 (i am absurdly excited about this movie!), and i'm cooking thanksgiving dinner. i make a mean turkey. and badass mashed potatoes and chocolate pie. em makes sweet potatoes and a rocking pumpkin pie. and sara's bringing some fancy cookies from a place called tiff's treats. should be an awesome meal. and texas plays texas a&m so we'll have some good football to watch, too. the next day sara's going back to austin, and em and i are decorating for christmas. since we're going to new jersey for christmas, we're decorating as soon as thanksgiving is over so we'll have time to enjoy it before we leave. then i'll have to get to work on my thesis corrections. finished thesis is due to the graduate office on dec 4, which is also the last day of classes, so the following week all i'll have to do is office hours a couple of times, and maybe a review session or two for the final. so exciting. then to austin the week after that for a couple days for various and assorted doctor, dentist, and hair appointments, back to houston for more doctors and packing, and then leaving for new jersey on dec 18. good stuff. just have to get through the next two and a half weeks.

now back to formatting my thesis, as the formatting elves did not come and finish it for me while i was at target. sigh.

em and i went to target to get cat litter and new flatware, among other things. we picked out this set of flatware and went to check out. the cashier rung up the flatware and cat litter (em was getting the other stuff.), and told me my total was $15.13. the flatware was $79.99, but rang up as something called "2 cup easy" at a grand total of $2.29. the cashier didn't even question it. so, i got something like a 97% discount. awesome!

i love glee. it's one of the best shows on television, in my opinion. i also love that they got to sing the national anthem at the world series. it was really well done. now they need to come out with a christmas album.

i have an interview with the lunar and planetary science institute on wednesday! it's for a position in the education group that would fit me perfectly!! i'm so excited!! weeeeee!!!

conversation with brian:

me: is it freezing in my building
brian: I think that was a brief dyslexic episode.
me: it is
me: yes
me: yes it is
brian: *pat pat* It'll be ok.