Rainy Days

So, first truly rainy day in a few weeks and guess who decided the umbrella wouldn't be necessary. Hopefully, I'll be able to get home without getting completely soaked.

I had a pretty good weekend. Most of Saturday was spent in cleaning up the apartment. All that Crystal and I have left to clean is the bookshelf, so I think we did a pretty good job. On the other hand, we have another slug friend. I really don't know why they want to wander into our apartment. We aren't leaving food out or anything like that. And we never actually see them. Just the little trail of slime that they leave behind. I need to remember to put some salt down tonight. That'll teach him.

Sunday was spent doing some Christmas shopping. We've got gifts for most of the people on our lists and we'll send them off soon. I think we'll ship everything to my parents house. From there, it can be redistributed. It won't be likely to be there by Christmas, but it shouldn't be too late.

Speaking of which, we'll be at the Phynn house on Christmas eve for some merry making. I thought that a sangria might make a welcome addition to the party, so we'll be fixing that later this week. We made some chocolate chip cookies on Sunday and we are planning to make sugar cookies next weekend. Turns out that it takes about the same amount of time to make a batch of cookies as it does to make spaghetti sauce. That kept both Crystal and me busy on Sunday evening. I've discovered that red bell peppers, mushrooms, and fresh garlic are welcome additions to my mom's recipe.

I wasn't able to make it into the lab today unfortunately. No one was there most of the day. I was able to get in a few minutes this afternoon to weigh some samples, but didn't really have time to do much else. I've spent most of the day catching up on reading. When we did the cleaning, I found a stack of articles that I printed out but never read. I've got through about half of them now, and that includes entering some info about them into EndNote. That's a citation program that I use to store bibliographic and other information about the various articles that I'm referencing.

As soon as Christmas and New Years are past, I will be able to get some more field work done. I need to do a good amount, but I know where to go and what to do. I just have to spend the time down in Tauranga to get things done.

P.S. All our international cards have been sent out, except for one, whom we are still trying to find an address for. So, look for something in the mail in the next week or so. I hope they are in by Christmas, but I can't be sure. I've also taken a few pictures of things, and I'll try to post them soon. Crystal is really hard to get photos of.