Happy Christmas!

When we were writing our Christmas cards, Justin pointed out that "merry" implies drunkenness, and that it is therefore more appropriate to say "Happy Christmas," as our British brethren do.

We did indeed have a happy Christmas, though quite busy. Justin's graduation went well, although his diploma says "Justin Oshay" rather than "Justin O'Shay". Boo. We spent 4 days with his sister Lillian who's 14 and a freshman in high school. We think she had a good time; on her last evening with us we overheard her chatting with a friend on the phone, telling her about all the fun things we'd done. Yay!

After four fun-filled days with Lillian, culminating in a 3-hour each-way drive to take her home, we began our final Christmas preparations. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my family, then Christmas dinner with Justin's. Amidst the hubbub of all the Christmas festivities, we have also been putting final touches on the planning of our trip to Japan, for which we still have not started packing (yikes!) We even had a brief moment of "I know I'm excited about the trip, but it feels like I haven't had nearly enough time to prepare for it and how did my month long Christmas break become so full with so little relaxation/veg time?"

However, this feeling was soon overcome. I had lots of fun visiting with my family, which this year included: Mama, Daddy, Grandmarm (Mama's mom), Grandfather (Daddy's dad), Luke, Amber, Titus, Joy, Apollos, Simon, Katrina, Carsen and Canon. I particularly enjoyed Joy and Carsen's rendition of Jingle Bells. It was so good, Titus and Canon could not resist the urge to dance.

It was lots of fun, especially getting to see Simon & Katrina and fam, since they live in Dallas and we don't get to see them that often. The only thing that was missing was Mari and Chris! This realization refreshed my excitement of our trip to Japan. Not only will we be getting to do lots of fun sight-seeing, but we'll get 10 days full of Mari-Hannah-Justin-Chris time! Hooray!

A+

After 16 weeks of sparse (non-existent?) blogging, minimal apartment-cleaning, and lots of time with my 7 classmates, I have completed my first semester of graduate school. So far, it's a lot tougher than I had expected, but I think my mathematics background prepared me well. Although I have definitely been having to work hard, I enjoy what I've been working on, which is very encouraging. I took four classes this semester. My favorite class was Microeconomic Theory; this is the field that I would like to focus on. My other classes were Macroeconomic Theory, Math, and Statistics (bleh!). I found out I got an A+ in Micro, and since that is my favorite, and the most important for me to do well in, I consider this semester an academic success.

Now I'm enjoying a month of no school before starting next semester on January 11. During my month off, I plan to celebrate my husband's graduation from TAMU (he graduates tomorrow, and will be beginning his M.S. in Geophysics at TAMU in January); do fun stuff with my sis-in-law Lillian (justin's younger sister) for a few days; visit with my mom, dad, grandfather (dad's dad), grandmother (mom's mom), brother, sis-in-law, nephews, niece, who all live in Katy now, and even see my other brother, sis-in-law, niece and nephew, who will be in town for Christmas; and ...drumroll... fly to Japan with Justin and spend 10 days with my sister and bro-in-law!!! Needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to this Christmas break, especially the Asian Adventure! Oh, and of course spending some quality time curled up by the fire with my 1000 pages of Microeconomic Theory.

Our Apartment on Shakespeare St.

I started Grad school this week. I'll write about that later (maybe).

2 weeks ago today Justin and I moved into our new apartment!!! It's part of Rice Graduate Housing, which consists of 3 apartment complexes. One was built in the '90s, and is recommended for first year grad students, but married students are not allowed. That left Justin and me to choose between the brand new building in Rice Village, or the much older building across the street. Justin and I chose the old one- it's bigger, cheaper, and has more character than the new ones. We love it! After several trips to Ikea, we finally feel mostly settled in. I would like to he done "before" (boxes and junk all over th

e floor) and "after" (current decorated, organized state of the apartment) pictures, but my camera didn't surface until the end of the unpacking period. So here's a photo tour of our apartment as-is. In fact, it's a little bit messy, since these pictures were taken this morning and I didn't feel like cleaning up, so blog readers can get a feel for what our apartment is really like!

Living room, viewed from just inside the front door and looking left:

And then looking around the room from left to right:

Justin's working at the computer.

And now facing the wall with the front door:

(notice our 32" TV, about which Titus said "Aunt Hannah, since you have such a cute little TV, how can we play Wii Mariokart with 4 players?")

And our small bathroom (no space wasted here!):

Dining Area, with our nice little Ikea kitchen cart, and wine glass rack:

Kitchen table, with this morning's leftover pancakes: (note the plants by the window- these normally go in the living room on shelves, but they're here for there occasional sun-feeding)

And now, the wood-panelled kitchen! (ignore the drying dished that wouldn't fit on our dish-drying rack).

I'm going for a Japanese theme in my kitchen; note the authentic Japanese panda oven mits and wall hanging (unfortunately not very visible, as it is behind me).

This picture looks pretty bad. It was difficult for me to get the right lighting, since it was right by a bright window, but I wantd to show the cute stuff on my sink-side shelves. On the middle shelves you'll see a Japanese tea set (mine, from Mari 'n' Chris) and a Japanese sake set (Justin's, from Mari 'n' Chris). On the bottom shelves I have some cool Japanese sushi / side dishes, and my cream and sugar dishes. And on the window sill are the rosemary and basil plants I'm trying to grow, as well as an unsightly dirty rag.

Justin and I hope you've enjoyed this photo tour of our apartment! If you want to see more, come and visit us!

Zebras are Reactionary

The weekend before last Justin and I went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Justin liked this big piece of really clear quartz. We spent a couple of hours there, but when we left we decided that we like the Houston Museum of Natural Science better. I think their exhibits are more extensive, and they have more variety.

This past weekend we went to the Denver Zoo, which we decided was quite a bit better than the Houston Zoo. The weather was quite a bit nicer than it ever is in Houston in June, and they had lots of animals that Houston doesn't have (kangaroos, gorillas, polar bears, zebras). The Denver Zoo covers 80+ acres, and it was a challenge to visit every interesting animal in the whole park, but with persistence and good route planning we were able to see pretty much everything. Everyone knows that the most disappointing thing about the zoo is that all too often the animals aren't doing anything even remotely interesting. I was particularly disappointed with the lethargic kangaroos (last picture) because there aren't any kangaroos in Houston; I don't think I've ever seen a live kangaroo, and who knows when I'll have another chance? These kangaroos had a huge enclosure that they shared with a couple of emu, who were just standing around at the other end, also being boring. Luke has proposed a good solution to the "lethargic zoo animal" problem- give each animal a shock collar, and sell remotes to the collars at the front gate. Then zoo-goers who want to see the animals jump up and run around can make this happen for a small fee. Unfortunately, I don't see animal rights people allowing this to happen any time soon.

Thankfully for me, on Saturday the emus did the job for us. After staring at the boring kangaroos for several minutes, hoping to see one jump or at least stand up, I was ready to move on to the next exhibit, when I guess the emu decided he was bored too. So he ran over to the group of kangaroos and started chasing them. I'm not sure when the kangaroos were afraid of, i.e. what the emu would have done if he had "caught" one, but they jumped up and hopped around, allowing me to get these good action shots:

Colorado, Here We Come!

This is how Justin and I spent the 8 days following our wedding: 5 days honeymooning in Cancun, 1 day in Katy packing up and saying goodbye to family, 1 day making the 1,049-mile drive from Katy, Texas to Denver, Colorado, and 1 day moving into our new apartment. Monday morning (day 9) Justin began his new job.














A quick photo tour of our apartment: Living room
Bedroom
Dining Room







Last weekend Justin and I went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park. As it was our first time camping on our own, we decided to just go for one night and thereby get practice with planning camping trips. On our way there we stopped at REI and got North Face sleeping bags, nalgene water bottles, and hats! So we totally looked like legit campers as we headed out to the park... that is, after we removed all the price tags.

The park was beautiful!!!
We saw lots of wildlife, including elk, marmots, ducks, bunnies, and chipmunks!
On Friday afternoon after setting up our tent, we went for a short hike (2.3 miles each way) to a small lake. That was really fun, and would have been more fun if it hadn't started to rain as we got close to the turn-around point. Saturday we went for a slightly longer hike (3 miles each way, with a 1,000-ft elevation gain) to the top of a mountain. That was also fun, and the view was BEAUTIFUL. As we sat at the top, eating lunch and shooing away chipmunks, we saw (and heard) threatening thunder clouds approaching, and it got pretty cold. So we packed up, making sure we didn't have any chipmunk stow-aways, and headed expeditiously back down the mountain so as not to get rained on. A short way into our descent we started to feel wet drops on our skin... cold wet drops. Soon the frequency of these drops increased, and we heard them falling on the ground also. I looked at the ground around me and was astounded to find that rather than simple wet spots, there were little white spots on the ground! I turned to Justin, who had just had the same realization, as we both said "it's snowing!!!" This was very exciting for us, and we would have enjoyed it more if we hadn't both been wearing shorts and t-shirts. We hurried down the mountain as quickly as we could, so we didn't have time for photos. But we weren't quite quick enough to escape getting snow, which soon melted into cold dirty water, inside our sneakers. Bleh!

Here are a few photos from our hiking. We have so many, it's hard to choose which ones to post, but this blog takes so long to upload each photo that I will only post a few. There are more on my Facebook page.

Eat, Drink and Be Married!

I have taken a large step towards becoming a real grown up: I have gotten married. I think this means I might not even have to sit at the kids' table anymore at family gatherings, but I'm not sure. I might have to have my own kids before that happens.

The wedding was a lot of fun but also very stressful. I had thought I would LOVE having a huge party with all my friends and family all paying attention to ME, but it turned out to be really tiring. There were so many people I wanted to talk to, and I had to be paying attention to what was going on because people were looking at me. I had a really good time, but as Justin and I were leaving we agreed that that is something that is best to only do once.

Thankfully, we only had a few mishaps. First, Luke and Amber and family were late. This would normally be a big deal simply because he's my brother and I want him at my wedding, but it was an extra big deal because he had the ring bearer and one of the flower girls with him. We did have our other flower girl, Carsen, who had dutifully been at the church since 3:30, but the flower girl task was a little too big for one little girl to do on her own. When it was 5:00 pm and we were still unable to get ahold of Luke and Amber, we were quite concerned. Thankfully they were fine and safe, and there had been some mis-communication about what time the wedding started- they thought it started at 5:30. They arrived shortly after 5:00 and sent the kiddos down the aisle. Once it started, the wedding ceremony went smoothly.

After the ceremony, during pictures, my step-grandpa had what appeared to be a stroke. Thankfully a couple of the guests were nurses and were able to attend to him until the paramedics arrived. Sadly, he had to be taken to the hospital, so he and my uncle who drove him weren't able to attend the reception. After several days in the hospital, Pappy was released and doing fine.

The morning after the wedding Justin and I flew to Cancun for 5 nights at an all-inclusive resort. We had a great time. The resort was beautiful and not very crowded (thank you, swine flu!). I think we got a room upgrade because of the low occupancy, and because we were honeymooners, and because we were so charming. The resort even put flower petals on our bed!
We found that it was hardly necessary to leave the resort, since there was a beautiful pool (with a swim-up snack bar / drink bar), lots of nice restaraunts, and beach access. We spent most of our days at either the pool or the beach, while waiters brought us an unlimited supply of margeritas, daquiris, beach combers, quasadillas, chips & salsa, chicken wings, etc. It was great, and very relaxing.

One day we took a tour to Chichen Itzah to see the Mayan ruins. It was really cool to see, but it was very hot that day.

For more pictures, check out my facebook photo album.

Towards the end of our 5 days at the Cancun resort, we decided that that was just the right amount of time for us: it was long enough for us to really be able to relax and enjoy all the food & drink we wanted, but by the end of it we felt refreshed and ready to get on with married life, especially with our upcoming move to Colorado!

Next time: read all about Justin and Hannah's move to CO and their first few weeks there!

Honeymoon SNAFU

Justin called me and said "a long time ago, people used to say that we would have a black president when pigs can fly.  Well, now we have a black president, and 100 days into his presidency, ... SWINE FLU!"  Ha ha ha.

He used this as a lead-in to telling me that we would have to re-book our honeymoon.

Several months ago, we put a good bit of time and energy into researching resort rates, airfare prices, etc., and decided to go to Cozumel for our honeymoon.  So we booked the trip, including plane tickets and resort.  When we heard about the swine flu, we discussed our options, and decided that we would continue with our honeymoon as planned. We're young and healthy, we can make sure to wash our hands and not touch our eyes/nose/mouth, and Cozumel isn't even part of mainland Mexico.  Besides, who wants to completely re-book their honeymoon 10 days before the wedding?

Then today Justin got a call from the resort at which we were planning to stay and they told him that the resort is closing down for the entire month of May. So now, 8 days before the wedding, we're being forced to consider other options.  The main contenders at this time are 

• Go to a resort at Costa Rica that is owned by the same company; this would require us to rebook our plane tickets. Even though we would not have to pay a rebooking fee, we would have to pay an extra $200 because apparently tickets to Costa Rica are more expensive than tickets to Cozumel.
  

OR

• Go to a resort is Cancun that is owned by the same company. We could keep the same plane tickets to fly into/out of Cozumel, and the resort would pay to taxi / ferry us from the island to mainland Mexico.  But how would this be safer? Why is the Cancun resort, on the mainland, still open, when the Cozumel one, safely secluded on an island, closed?

Meanwhile, we are trying to make sure all our final wedding preparation fall into place.

I'm unemployed and moving

Last Friday I quit my job. As today is Monday, it is my first real "unemployed" day.  I was planning on putting in my two weeks notice, but my boss said "well, I know you're planning a wedding, which takes a lot of time, so you don't have to stick around for two more weeks you don't have to. Today can be your last day if you want." After some careful consideration, prayer, and consulting with Justin, I decided to take his suggestion. So last Friday was my last day to be an IT consultant!

For those of you who don't know, my plans are to finish planning my wedding/move out of my apartment and relax a little bit before my wedding, then spend the summer in Denver where Justin has an internship, then begin a Ph.D. program at Rice University in the Fall.  I am really looking forward to all of that! Wait... not ALL of it... 

I HATE moving! It's always such a hassle.  Besides the sadness of leaving a place I have spent a considerable amount of time in, there's the hassle of going through all my stuff and deciding which is worth moving, and which I don't really need, and how to pack it most efficiently into boxes.  And this move is even worst than most.  The unusual difficulties in this move are:

• Combining households with another person.  So for everything I move, I have to ask "does Justin already have one of these? Or is this really girly and/or something that Justin really doesn't like?"
• I have to decide which stuff I want to take with me to Denver for a few months over the Summer, which stuff is not worth taking on that 16+ hour one-way trip for that short a period of time but are worth keeping at my parents' house for when we return to Houston, and which stuff is not worth keeping at all.
• I want to get rid of stuff for which I will receive replacements for my wedding. For example: we registered for a nice coffee maker.  So if we get it, I don't want to bring my dumb old one... but what if we don't get one?
• I'm going to be staying at my parents' house for the next 5 weeks, and then going on a honeymoon, before I actually move into my next place, so I don't want to pack up anything that I will need during that time.

I have spent most of the day today working on this more-difficult-than-usual move. Witnss the wreckage of my apartment:

 

    

On a different note, I made myself a yummy dinner tonight!  I was going to just make chicken because that's one of the few things I have here, so I put some breading and seasoning on it and stuck it in the oven to bake.  After it had been in there a few minutes, I thought "Hm... I have a tomato in the fridge that I ought to use before it goes bad.  I think that would make nice addition to my chicken".  So I chopped up the tomato, sprinkled with salt and basil, cut up a string cheese to go with it, and dumped that onto the baking sheet with the chicken for the final 5 minutes. I was quite pleased with it, but didn't think to take a picture of it until after I was a good part of the way through it.

I was quite pleased with my attempt to make a yummy dinner out of what I have in the fridge.  Hopefully soon I will be a master of this art, like Mama!

I know- I'm way behind

I haven't blogged in a long time. Here are the main things that have happened since my last blogging:

1. Christmas, which was very nice as always. It was great to get to spend a whole week NOT working and hanging out with my family and Justin.
2. Justin asked me to marry him!!! I said Yes, of course. We're getting married on May 9 at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church. The ceremony will be in the chapel and the reception will be in the fellowship hall. I am very excited, a little bit about the wedding but more so about being married to Justin.

3. I'm supposed to transfer to a new project at work. Since I started at this company in July, I have been on two projects, both using SSIS to convert data. It is very boring and not what I was told I would be doing when I was interviewing with this company. So I am looking forward to starting a new project next week. This new project is supposed to be custom development, which should be more fun, but we'll see. We will be working from the office, which is much closer to my apartment, so that's good.