Cobalt wanted three spoons to eat his birthday tiramisu cake when we celebrated his birthday early last weekend!

It’s Cobalt’s birthday today! Cobalt, I’m sorry I’m in France on your birthday but I still hope you have an amazing day. I am so excited for you to get here and join me too!
Love you,
~Potassium :)

The Mona Lisa is concerned about seeing Cobalt and me in person in the coming weeks… I would be too… We’re kind of a crazy pair..

You guys… I can count the number of days until I go to Paris on one hand! I am simultaneously jumping for joy and freaking out (it’s kind of awkward to explain). I have been constantly obsessing over one detail or another all while trying to get through my normal life here in Boulder. It’s been an intense week – both with the planning for the trip and just with everything going on with life. I thought today I’d basically give a little photo summary of some of the things that have happened this week.

First of all, the trip. Cobalt and I picked up some euros for me to take with me next week and set up a travel bank account through our bank here for easy access to more cash at any ATM anywhere. I learned something about euros too. Did you know that they get bigger in size in proportion to their amount? Seriously, the guy at the bank showed us the 5 euro note and it is so tiny compared to the bigger bills (and our dollar bills). They’re all so shiny too.

In addition to doing some money things this week, Cobalt and I bought Paris Museum Passes. I’ll give a full review when I get back but I think these guys are going to be awesome. They grant us admission to over 60 museums and landmarks in Paris (including the Louvre and Notre Dame, etc) so we won’t have to wait in line for tickets (apparently this is a thing…). Also, they’re good for four days so that means we can go in and out of places like the Louvre as many times as we want during those four days. I am really excited! The passes arrived yesterday so they’re featured on the top of my blog post today! Next up – we need to plan out what museums/attractions we want to go to and then figure out which attractions should go on the same day…

And now a lab thing. You may recall me mentioning about a month ago that my labmate K did his PhD defense and now has his PhD. Normally after you defend, you get to walk during commencement and be hooded (you get this crazy hood attached to your robes – seriously, google PhD graduation) by your advisor. Well our advisor came all the way back from France for K’s defense but she couldn’t get back for commencement this week. My friend/labmate G and I took matters into our own hands and we held a “commenecement” for K yesterday. We asked Cobalt to announce him (Cobalt has this amazing radio announcer voice), we got him a king’s crown and a feather boa to act as his graduation cap and hood, we asked our boss to record a little video so that she could be there in spirit, we got him a stuffed neuron with a graduation cap as a present/”diploma,” we invited all our labmates, and then we all threw confetti and had a little party at the end. I think K appreciated our crazy efforts to make him feel special for commencement. Yay! Congrats again, K! :)

The confetti turned out to be quite a hit. Every time we cleaned it off the floor, someone else would throw it at K…

In the midst of all of this, Colorado has decided that the phrase is actually “May showers bring June flowers…” At least it’s not snowing anymore, right? :-/

Sometimes I just get caught by how beautiful the Flatirons are… They’ve been especially amazing with all the rain/fog we’ve been having lately.

How are you guys doing? Anything fun planned for the weekend? I’m going to France next week and I’m probably going to be super busy/jetlagged so the post schedule is going to get a little crazy. Is there anything you’re dying to hear about (Paris trip planning or otherwise… I know I haven’t talked a lot about our plans for the trip so please feel free to ask away!) before I go?

Look at those Flatirons all ready for spring!

Well for now it appears the snow has stopped and maybe spring can finally arrive in Boulder. This Saturday, Cobalt and I repotted some of our plants (still too cold for the peppers to go outside though…), went out for delicious taco truck tacos, and then we took a walk around a lake. The lake walk had all these neat little exercise activities located every 0.2 miles. Cobalt and I had a lot of fun trying all of them out. Here’s Cobalt on the parallel bars!

Can you find the shark in this picture?

Is it spring for you guys yet? We’re supposed to get a lot of rain this week – just in time for all the undergraduates to graduate this Friday. Did you guys do anything awesome this weekend? Did anyone else see Iron Man 3? Cobalt and I liked it but not as much as the first one…

Cobalt and I are getting excited about our France trip! Hopefully updates on that later this week….

On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of seeing the University of Colorado orchestra perform. I have to say that even though I have lived here for almost 6 years, this was my first time seeing any of the school’s music groups perform. Not really sure why since I pretty much saw or performed in almost every concert on my undergrad campus. Anyway, on Wednesday night, the CU orchestra performed a Brahms piece I hadn’t heard before (Academic Festival Overture) and then performed Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (you know, Ode to Joy?) with many of the CU choral groups. Both pieces were fantastic and I found myself pretty much equal parts happy to be in the presence of such lovely music and sad to not be in any performing groups anymore. Maybe this weekend I’ll practice my trombone…

Any plans for this weekend? What do you think about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or about symphonies in general? I find it so hard to believe that Beethoven was deaf when he wrote the Ninth Symphony because it was just so wonderful to my ears. How sad that he never got to hear it…

In other news, yesterday was my sis’ birthday! Yay sister! I hope she had a good day.

So how did this happen? Well my boss is in France on sabbatical and pretty much as soon as she got there, she sent me an email saying we should figure out how to get me out there for a bit because she really wants me to interact with the huge bacteria community (my project involves bacteria) at the institute where she works. Then it turned out that they have this computer program that is designed to help with analysis of microscopy images. If any of you have heard me talk about my project, you will know that the biggest issue with my whole project is that I don’t know how to analyze my data… at all (What does it meaaaaaaan?!?!?!?). Every month, there is a class that teaches people how to use the program so my boss and I are both signed up to take the class next month… together… in PARIS. Yay! Exciting! It’s been kind of a whirlwind of an experience for me because we had to figure out how to fund my trip because funding has been a bit awkward here and because I still don’t know if I got that giant grant I applied for last July… Ugh…

Anyway, so the first few days of my 12 day stay will be spent learning that computer program and interacting with the other scientists there and then Cobalt is going to fly out so that we can explore Paris together! How awesome is that?! I call this mini honeymoon part 2. These past few weeks have been spent in a whirlwind getting Cobalt a passport and figuring out the necessary supplies for our trip… how exciting!!! Looks like my French for travelers class and my obsession with listening to French rap music at work will pay off after all! :):) I have to admit though that I am kind of nervous too. I’ve been to Canada before and allllll over the US but I’ve never been anywhere else. Crazy nerves and excitement simultaneously!

I think Finn wants to go to France with us…

Now it’s your turn. Have you been to Paris? What is something that Cobalt and I have to check out? Have you traveled abroad? Any words of wisdom for two people who have never left this continent? And finally, tell me something you are SUPER excited about right now. :)

A and Potassium showing off our awesome t-shirts and glowy items pre Rave Run.

You guys… I am really tired. I have been working pretty much nonstop this week (seriously… two 12 hr days in a row) so this post might not be as awesome as I was originally intending it to be. We might have to revisit it later when I have more time!

Anyway, the Rave Run. Cobalt, A, J, K, another A, and I all ran/walked the Rave Run 5K in Denver last Saturday. We dressed up in everything glowing and then headed out to the race, which had a lot of lights and color and music but less than what we were expecting. It turned out to be more of a fast walk simply because there were so many people out that it was more or less impossible to run (especially at the finish line :-/) but it was still fun. And we got sweet t-shirts! I have to say though that doing a 5K less than a week after the Boston Marathon tragedy really fell heavy on my heart. My thoughts were pretty much constantly with everyone involved in Boston even as I was bobbing up and down to the beat. A lot of people had signs honoring those fallen during the Boston Marathon, which I thought was really nice!

In other news, doing a 5K at night surrounded by music, lights, and tons of people all glowing the dark turns out to be a great way to make me want to run (we kept weaving between people so we could actually run). I am so excited that I might go ahead and sign up for the Firefly Run 5K coming up in July!

Potassium and Cobalt just after the finish line! We did it (and I acquired glowy ears between the first picture and this one)! :D

In other other news, Cobalt and I have been reading The Great Gatsby together in preparation for the movie coming out soon. We started reading books together when he still lived in New Mexico and I lived here in Colorado because it was something cute we could do together since we couldn’t be together. Once, when we were reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I got so annoyed with the book that I couldn’t read it anymore. Cobalt recorded himself reading a few chapters and sent them to me to keep me reading. It was adorable and I grudgingly finished the book, just for him.

In other Cobalt and Potassium news, here’s today’s hint for what we’ve been planning: it has to do with a part of our proposed ideal honeymoon. Can’t remember? I think it’s somewhere in one of my many Wedding Wednesday posts if you want to go hunting for it… or you can just wait till next week and I’ll tell you. :D

Now it’s your turn. What do you think of doing a 5K? What do you think of Cobalt’s and my reading books to each other? Any fun plans for the weekend? Seriously, you guys have been pretty quiet. What’s going on with you all? Something exciting I hope…

Potassium, A, and C on their respective horses (Misty, Max, and Andy) after a lovely morning of horseback riding…

Even though it’s been crazy snowy during the weeks here (apparently we’ve gotten over 35 inches of snow over the month of April), it’s been absolutely beautiful and warm on the weekends (Colorado is weird…). A few weekends ago, A and I went to our friend C’s family’s ranch, called the Fifth Element Ranch, to ride horses! They have four horses on the ranch that C’s mom (T) uses for horse therapy workshops during the week but this weekend was all about fun. C, T, A, and I all got to ride together. Seeing as I was the least experienced in horseback riding (I have ridden horses a few times but they were all a long time ago…), I got to ride their mare Misty. I was really nervous at first but T was awesome at teaching me how to work with and interact with Misty. After Misty realized she was going to have to listen to what I wanted us to do we got along pretty well. It turned out to be a really fun day and the weather was awesome! I can’t wait to go back and ride more!

Some more pictures (Thanks to T for the photos!)…

Potassium and A explore the ranch…

Potassium and Misty

In the evening, A and I headed to our friend J’s house to have art night with J and our other friend L. It tured out to be a fine ending to a neat day. First we had pizza for dinner and then we spent the rest of the evening drinking wine and doing art. J, A, and I painted while L went through fashion magazines for a project she’s been intent on starting. At one point, L found all of our horoscopes in Italian and cut them out for us! I decided to incorporate mine into my painting and I think it looks pretty neat. Check it out below!

Materials used in this painting: Japanese paintbrush and ink, acrylics, and magazine cuttings. I wasn’t really sure where it was going at the beginning but I actually really like the way it turned out…

So I have to admit that I am kind of stalling about telling you guys about something super exciting that Cobalt and I have been planning recently. Partially it’s because I want to talk about the fun that happened on these past few weekends first and part of it is that it’s hard for me to believe that it’s actually happening. So I’m going to end today’s and Thursday’s posts this week with little hints and then we’ll get to the excitingness NEXT WEEK.

Today’s hint: It partially has to do with my work (and no I’m not graduating… but this could possibly help me graduate sooner than later…).

Now it’s your turn. Is there anything about your work that you’re excited about right now? What do you think of horseback riding? Awesome? Scary? Finally, is it spring there yet? I’m so sick of snow. I have been telling myself that it will lead to a beautiful summer but I am getting really impatient for that summer!

Hello and welcome to my last post about our Dallas trip. I’m warning you, this is going to be a long post (and very pic heavy) but hang in there! I think it’s a pretty awesome story! :)

All right so where to start. On Tuesday we left off at the aquarium. From there, we headed to this amazing deli called eatZi’s for lunch. It was amazing! It is like a bakery, deli, and wine market all in one place. It was pretty much the place to go for lunch – they had prewrapped foods like sushi, sandwiches, and salads; they had a sandwich and salad counter where you could request the ingredients and they’d make it in front of you; they had a bread counter and a deli counter; and on and on and on… I was so happy in there. I think I would probably go there every week if I lived in Dallas. We each got epic sandwiches (mmm prosciutto…) and other things to share before heading to Klyde Warren Park, which is a park over a freeway, to eat our lunch. It was a fantastic day outside and everyone was out enjoying the sun. After lunch, Jem and I took our cameras for a walk through the park to work on some street photography. Here’s a pic of us in action…

After Kylde Warren Park, Jem and I wandered around the nearby neighborhood and I decided to play with my zoom lens a little. That’s where that crazy picture of Cobalt comes from. How this works – I set the shutter speed to pretty slow (tenths of a second instead of hundredths of a second) and then as I was taking the picture, I would zoom the zoom lens out or back in, creating this awesome blur effect. I think it looked particularly cool with people and cars so that’s what I’m showing you today…

My first attempt at playing with the zoom lens:

Jem taking a picture of me.

I like this picture a lot.

They turned out pretty cool, don’t you think? I think my favorite is the one of Cobalt up there. He decided that it will be the album art for any music he ever puts out… Wahahaha…

After street photography, Jem and I dropped our cameras off at her house and then Cobalt, A, Jem, and I headed out of Dallas to see the town that Cobalt grew up in (before his family moved to New Mexico)! It was so cool seeing Cobalt’s old house in his old neighborhood. We also got to drive past his old elementary school and church. It was neat. After taking Cobalt down memory lane, we stopped at Krispy Kreme donuts before heading back to Dallas.

Jem, A, and Potassium being odd

Back in Dallas, Jem took us to see her work. It was exciting. I met Jem because we used to work in the same lab together back when she was a graduate student. But now she’s all fancy with her PhD and works in a new lab in Dallas. I always like seeing other people’s labs just because it’s so interesting to me how the same basic procedures get done in different labs (sometimes they are surprisingly different…).

We continued our tour of Dallas by heading to Deep Ellum to see The Traveling Man, a series of three robot sculptures that pop up kind of out of nowhere by this train track. They are super neat so here come a bunch of pictures… Ready?!

Each robot sculpture is surrounded by these little adorable bird sculptures…

Of course Cobalt wanted a picture of him riding one.

This one, called Waiting on a Train, was my favorite.

Jem and I were both sad that we’d left our big cameras at her house and had to resort to our iPhones for pictures. I immediately downloaded a fisheye app for mine because I thought the robots would look neat with a fisheye lens (don’t happen to own that for the DSLR anyway…).

Cobalt and I got photobombed by this Waiting on a Train guy… It was awkward… :-/

This is the second sculpture, called Walking Tall (We kind of saw these out of order, I think Walking Tall is technically the last sculpture in the series) through the fisheye iPhone lens… I love how it turned out. Also, notice that in addition to the bird sculpture the robot is holding, there’s a real bird perched on his shoulder…

Here’s me and the Walking Tall robot as viewed on this bird’s head. I tried to make it look like he was holding my hand. Weren’t the clouds amazing that afternoon?

Another angle of the Walking Tall robot… I like this pic a lot too.

Finally, the last sculpture (but I think technically the first sculpture) is called Awakening. Also, notice that cool art on the wall behind the robot.

The Traveling Man is a really cool and inspiring series of sculptures. They are really close to each other too so I highly recommend that you check them out if you live in the area or ever choose to visit. Next time we visit Jem, I am definitely going to go back to visit my robot friends.

At this point, everyone was getting a little grumpy because the donut high was wearing off and we all realized how hungry we were. So we headed to The Alligator Cafe for some cajun/creole food. Holy crap, this food was amazing. Everything that we got we loved. I had been craving fried catfish the whole time we were there so I got the Catfish Ponchartrain which was seriously soooo good that I am drooling right now just thinking about it. Yum. Highly recommend this place too!

AFTER DINNER (I know what you’re thinking… there’s more?! Seriously, I told you Day 4 was a long day… remember that on top of all this stuff we went to the aquarium too… don’t worry… we’re almost done.), we met up with some of Jem’s friends at a bar called The Ginger Man. It was nice to meet Jem’s friends and see a little bit of Dallas at night. Hurrah. Also, A and I decided to play around with the fisheye app on my phone and we got this gem of her…

In the morning we got up early and A, Cobalt, and I loaded up the car before driving allllllll the way back to CO. It was kind of a sad drive because we all really enjoyed our trip to Dallas and then we had to go home! Things got epically boring in Kansas and we brought out the license plate game to keep entertained. Turns out that a lot of people from all over the country drive through Kansas!

Okay folks, it’s time to end this epic post about our epic trip to Dallas. I hope you all enjoyed reading it. And now it’s your turn… What was your favorite part of our trip? Is there anything you wished you could have heard more about? What are you doing this weekend? Something fun I hope? Tell me! Jem is actually coming to Boulder this weekend to visit (yay!!!) and Cobalt, A, our friends J, K, another A, and I are all running in a 5K called the Rave Run. I am normally super grumpy about running (I just hate hearing my inability to breathe while running so I only like it when it is connected to soccer or some other sport…) but the Rave Run seems right up my alley. It’s at night so there are going to be flashing lights and colors and music and glowy things… I will probably just dance the whole way through… :)

Helllloooooo and welcome to today’s post on the last day of our trip in Dallas. We’re going to wrap up this series this week I think because there is a lot of exciting stuff going on right now that I want to talk about! So today will be about the Dallas aquarium and then later this week (Thursday or Friday) we’ll wrap up Day 4. Be warned, the entries this week will be picture heavy…

So let’s start at the top of Day 4. Cobalt, Jem, A, and I got up early because there was so much stuff that we wanted to get done! To start the day off, we headed to the Dallas World Aquarium because they feed the sharks at 11:30 am! Jem and I brought our cameras along and we had fun photographing all the aquatic animals!

So let’s take a look, shall we?

We got to the aquarium right after it opened so we got to witness the sloth being brought out to its tree. It immediately started climbing to its favorite spot which made for a pretty cool picture… :) PS – When you see a sloth do you think about Kristen Bell freaking out or is that just something I do?

I don’t think we had any pictures of monkeys from the zoo so let’s remedy that right now! Aquarium monkeys!

I like this one – the manatee swimming out of the shadows and crazy catfish hovering.

My MIL loves frogs so I always try to get a picture when I see one…

or two… I think this one is my favorite.

My sis in law loves penguins so I tried to get a pic for her. :) This one looks like he just got done with a swim!

These guys were fun to photograph. I was playing with manual focus on my camera and I love how this guy is just popping out of the side of the picture.

This picture is just beautiful. I love this guy.

These fish were creepy. Their angry eye-like spots were all you could see… I liked them because they look mad and grumpy creatures make me happy. I am not sure why. I just know that the rule is: if it’s fat, furry, grumpy, has sharp teeth, or wings (or any combination of those things), I will generally like it.

I think we’re at the shark part of the post. The sharks were swimming in this big tank with a glass tunnel underneath. You could stand in the tunnel and look up at the sharks or walk to the end of the aquarium and look down into the open shark tank. I had a lot of fun standing in the tunnel trying to capture the sharks through the glass…

One of my favorite things about taking pictures in the tunnel was that I could capture sharks and passerbys so that it looked like there wasn’t glass between them. In this picture, I especially like that the shark looks annoyed at that guy. He’s like WHO SAID YOU COULD TALK IN MY TUNNEL?!

The rays were also in the shark tank and they looked really cool too. I like this picture because I like the kid watching the ray. I wish I had made the depth of field better so that the ray was more in focus… oh well.

We did get to see the sharks get fed! The tunnel was packed with people but I managed to snap a few photos of this sawfish eating a squid. This little kid was pointing at the chomping the whole time so his hand is in all of my pictures… Oh well… at least you know what to look at!

The Dallas World Aquarium was really fun! They did a really good job making unique habitats for all the animals. It was like being whisked away into an exciting and magical world of all sorts of animals. Usually, I feel like it’s obvious that I am at an aquarium but for some reason this aquarium seemed more magical and exciting… I wished it could have been a bit bigger though… Though considering all the craziness planned in the rest of our day maybe it’s a good thing it wasn’t. Stay tuned!

In other news… wtf Boston?! I was horrified to hear the news yesterday (seriously… I was like a broken toy repeating “SO SCARY!” over and over again, ask my lab mates…). Plus I had friends running in the marathon. They’re okay but my heart goes out to everyone who was there/was affected by this tragedy. :(

Your turn – Do you have a favorite picture? Which pictures did you like better: zoo or aquarium? What is the best aquarium you have been to? I really like the Monterey Bay Aquarium but I have heard that the Shedd Aquarium is quite amazing. I am so excited to go one day. Also, what is the weather like there? I am so ready for spring. It has been snowing nonstop here. They even closed campus early yesterday (not like it matters for us grad students who practically live in the lab anyway though)!

Hurrah! The rest of the zoo pictures are finally here! I hope you all enjoyed the rest of your week! I definitely did, though mine was crazy busy as usual… Probably my favorite part of this week was on Wednesday night a few people in my lab and I had a cookie party. Basically, every Thursday at 3, all the labs on our floor of our building have cookie hour. Each week, a different lab (or a professor) volunteers to bring cookies for everyone else. This week it was our turn so we ordered a few pizzas, opened a few bottles of wine, and set to work. We made: snickerdoodles, Mexican hot chocolate cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and these crazy brownie bites that I basically designed on the fly with chocolate chip cookies on the bottom, a Reeses peanut butter cup in the middle, and delicious brownie mix on top/to hold it all together. Everything turned out delicious and our cookie hour was definitely a success yesterday! Yay lab bonding!

Moving on… Back to Fort Worth for the conclusion of the zoo. I have some non bird animal pictures today (including that adorable elephant at the top) and then I’ll conclude with the rest of Day 3. Let’s go!

Animals at the Fort Worth Zoo

First another pic of that cute elephant up there. Dust bath continued…

Zebras! And a bird…

A giraffe happily sitting in the sun. I learned the other day that apparently the nerve that connects the giraffe’s voice box to its brain goes allllll the way down its neck, wraps around its heart, and then alllll the way back up its neck to its voice box. Craziness… what an odd creature!

So this was so cool… When we got to the lion’s cage, he started roaring! I’ve never seen a lion roar in real life before. It was kind of awesome… but also scary.

Another lion…

A shark at the zoo?! No way! Must be photographed…

I like this picture! I was taking pictures of this guy and then he started to turn and swim away from me so I got a picture of his snout under the water in focus and his head out of the water slightly out of focus. It makes for a bit of a creepy pic I think.

So this snake marks the point in the reptile/amphibian house where we got turned around because they were closing the zoo! Booo… but at least this picture turned out pretty neat!

That’s all folks. For more animals, you’ll just have to go visit the Fort Worth Zoo yourself! I highly recommend it if you’re going to be in the area.

So after the zoo closed on us, we made a trek to get some delicious Texan BBQ. C1 and C took A, Jem, Cobalt, and me to this smokehouse called The Woodshed Smokehouse. It was amazing. We got some delish Texan beer, wild boar sausages, and artichoke chips for starters. Then I got some goat tacos with some amazing tomatillo sauce and Mexican corn (yummmmmmm) and everyone else got such delicacies as ribs and wild game tamales. Mmmmm…. It was so happy. Plus the restaurant is right on the Trinity River so we sat outside on the patio and watched the river slowly go on by. Highly recommend this place if you like meat. After we finished our amazing dinner, we headed to this bar C1 and C had heard about and hung out there having desserts and (root) beer floats and chatting. It was a great end to a great day. Then we all had to say goodbye and Jem drove us back to Dallas… Once back at her place, we stayed up late planning our last epic day in Dallas. Watch out… it’s intense. We even got up early so that we could do even more stuff! I am not really sure how to break up this last day into blog posts so you’re going to have to wait until next week. One thing is for certain though – aquarium pictures. Tell me if you have a favorite fish!

Any fun plans for this weekend? I think I am going to get to go horseback riding on Sat and then I am going to a girls’ craft night on Sat night. Yay! I am super excited. Tell me what you are up to. How’s the weather there for you guys? Is it spring there yet? Boulder can’t decide… It snowed ALL day on Tuesday (like it was snowing when I went to sleep on Monday night and still snowing when I got up on Wednesday morning) and it was so ridiculously cold on Wednesday that my car windshield cracked :( but it’s supposed to be in the 60′s this weekend and then back to snowing next week… :-/

Okay, this post has gotten long. Bottom lines: tell me what fish (if any) you are excited about seeing next week, tell me what your plans are this weekend, tell me what the weather is like for you guys, AND a new question: tell me about the best restaurant you have ever been to while on vacation. What made it amazing? The food? the experience? the company? I want to know! :D