Highlight Reel

November 11, 2015November 11, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

So if you haven’t noticed yet,

a new menu has popped up riiiight about there..

See it? It’s the one entitled, Highlight Reel or for those that can’t read, it’s the one on the far right.

We’ve decided that writing a long post with pictures about every day is actually a lot and we don’t take that many pictures. This results in the blog not getting updated on a schedule and stuff like that.

Enter Highlight Reel. It’s a place where we jot down a sentence, or two, about each day. Maybe even include a picture if we actually did something exciting (not likely, we are poor grad students and exciting things cost money). This is mostly for us since we have the attention span and short term memory ability of a goldfish and we’d like to actually remember what we did or did not do.

Anywho, it’s definitely still super new so expect the page to look different every time you go there for a little while

TTYL

What Day Is It?

November 10, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Happy today!

I’ve been struggling to remember what day it is all day (it’s either Thursday or Friday, but it might also be Monday since it’s so gross outside)

Raleigh is slowly transitioning to our winter weather which is gray skies, wind, and rain. It’s awful! Most activities here involve the outdoors in some way so bad weather gets everyone on edge.

Luckily the North Carolina Museum of Art has an awesome temporary exhibit on M.C. Escher going on!

For those who aren’t familiar, Escher was an artist who liked to f*ck with your mind in multiple dimensions…

Like the never-ending stairs..

Note this and all his other works are copyrighted and I don’t own any rights to these btw.

2D to 3D hands drawing themselves…

and some other dimensional explorations (which I thought were incredible) on how a sphere distorts an image…

There is NO way on this earth that I could draw a circle remotely that perfect even with a stencil/protractor/computer! *seriously impressed and looking stupid with mouth hanging open*

The tickets to this also included admission to see the Codex Leichester, the only original notebook of DaVinci’s located in North America…

Don’t worry if you can’t read the notebook from the Renaissance. It’s mirrored/backwards and in Italian so I can’t read it either.

TBH, I was hoping it’d be a little more exciting than it actually was. Most of the topics covered were on fluid mechanics and the concept of erosion (aka Fluids 101 for engineers)

All in all though, it was a great way to spend a rainy afternoon! Although the dogs weren’t too happy about being cooped up. Oh well 🙂

Sometimes I Do Stupid Sh*t

November 8, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Hiya!

We’re having a lazy Sunday morning over here (the best) after a pretty full week of everything.

~~Inda and Loony and~~ Indy and Luna and I went out to the greenway back by the old Wench house on a rather gray day so the dogs could get out some energy.

Pretty sure this is what Pooh and Piglet would look like if they were dogs!

It was pretty eventful since Luna, who HATES water, tried to follow Indy across a creek and got herself stuck. Rather than helping her, which is what kind and normal people would do, I sat there, laughed and took a short video of her trials.

Don’t worry, she figured it out and is safe and sound and was only a little traumatized from the water.

I also hit up the library for some quality ~~people watching~~ paper writing time. Also I needed to try out some of the other kooky chairs. Priorities y’all .

Then, Steve and I decided to go work out. Smart idea right?? Wrong.

Since it’s been a while since we’ve visited the gym, we both tried to make up for lost time by working out extra hard. Bad idea.

I ran so hard I gave myself heartburn and other gastric issues. Apparently 9mph is pretty fast?? Steve overdid it on the leg press and strained his knee a bit. I was going to do a bit of strength training after the run but couldn’t function/breathe so I went and sat in the sauna until I could walk around without dying.

This is my “Oops WTF did I just do” face.

We grabbed some beers with Matt and Lisa decided to not move again for the rest of the night.

How was your weekend festivities?

So Umm Hi

November 4, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

How’s it going?

Hope things are going well 🙂

Things have been a giant 💩 around here so the blog got pushed to the way way back burner. The daily routine has settled into what could be called ‘normal’ and a lot has happened since September!

So imma spam you with pictures from the last month and a half, brace yourselves, you have been warned.

~~We’ve~~ I’ve been watching a lot of college football

Luna has been gazing out the window and dreaming of freedom. Her wild side cannot be contained in a mere apartment.

Lisa and I had a fun girls night! We made full use of the rooftop patio at Raleigh Beer Garden 🙂

Steve and I flew to Little Rock to surprise the fam! It totally worked and was an awesome trip. We decided to investigate the local alcohol scene there and tried Lost Forty Brewing…

…and Rock Town Distillery! Look at all dat moonshine that’s gonna grow up to be wiskey (We tried all 15 of their liquors to make sure they passed expectations, which they did and now we’ve saved you a trip to Little Rock. You’re welcome)

Luna’s sleeping habits got weirder.

We went to a local farm and picked apples, pumpkins, roasted hotdogs and smores, and went on a hay ride *cue nostalgia and pretending to be 7 again*

Said apples were used to make my first pie (yes it was from scratch and it turned out fabulous) Vodka. Vodka is the secret to pie. Like anyone is surprised.

(those are supposed to be bats on top, alas my artistic skills are severely lacking)

Grad school has been grad schooled

Michael and I went on a ~~super fun~~ trip to DC for ASSIST promotion. We were so excited it just couldn’t be contained!

Aaaaaand Steve and I went as zombies for halloween in what was the best. costume. ever. Seriously.

even zombies need to take the dog out

Whew. That was a lot and pretty sure there’s a decent amount missing but that’s what we’ve been up to!

TTYL

Adulting

September 12, 2015 / Amanda / 1 Comment

How do you get motivated when you have no motivation?

Adulting is hard….cleaning, showering, exercising, working, paying bills, eating, and it just never stops.

Adulting is hard..I hate adulting

I’ve been pretty lazy about this whole half marathon training thing. I’d like to completely blame it on the fact that I may or may not be able to afford the trip out to San Diego to the run the thing in the first place. It’s hard to stay motivated to genuinely ‘train’ for something when you’re not sure you’re even going to run it!

But, because we’re being honest here. I’m going through a bit of a lazy spell. The motivation to work out every day just isn’t there. Hell. The motivation to shower and cook and survive every day just isn’t there either.

Trigger warning about depression and possible spelling errors ahead.

Can’t medication be a magical cure all?? Seriously, that just needs to happen. The alternative is just too much work. It’s really frustrating when everything is going great and your life is chugging along like The Little Engine That Could and then all of a sudden your sweet childhood book looks something like this..

Not gonna lie, August was a little rough in the PhDeviant household. Puppy + ACL surgery + Last min trips + start of school = a household just trying to make it through each day in one piece. A whole month of that usually results in forgetting how to return to functioning normally.

Aaaaaaaand that’s exactly what happened.

So much energy was spent on making sure each day was accomplished that now that the pressure is off, my brain is kinda off in no-mans-land

My instinctual response to winding up on a deserted road is to resort to ‘depression-state’ or the lesser known ‘lack of motivation state that leads to depression state’. Either way, it’s not awesome.

The best thing to do at this point is to just continue on with life as though nothing is different and the motivation will come back at some point I think.

To end this post on a happier note, here’s a Calvin and Hobbes quote because those are awesome

PhDeviants

Misadventures in grad school, running, and life