A week ago yesterday I graduated! It was a moment I think many of us thought might never come, especially during the past 6 months, but I’m happy to say I did it.
I decided to go through ceremonies for several reasons — the first was that I promised my dad that I would. When I quit grad school in 2001 with “just” my master’s degree, I decided not to go through ceremonies, and my dad was fairly disappointed. I didn’t want to celebrate my master’s, though, because I felt like it was a defeat, rather than a triumph. I was quitting short of my goal.
More importantly, though, I feel like I needed the ceremony as a kind of closure. The defense was a bit of a let-down because I didn’t have the sense of accomplishment when I finished. The graduation ceremony gave me at least some of the sense of closure, the sense of accomplishment. I even walked away with a real diploma!
Here are a couple of pictures of my hooding ceremony, from Peter Teuben, a member of the astronomy department
Felicia graduated, too, and here she is in her regalia (I still need to make her hood, though):
I’ll post a report from the grad party that followed last Saturday later; hopefully tomorrow.
Tags: felicia, grad life
Posted by barb on May 13, 2008 in
Crafty Me,
Pictures Felicia’s cap for graduation is ready:
Now, if I could just get the gown the right color, I’d feel pretty good.
Tags: felicia
Posted by barb on May 13, 2008 in
Pictures,
Travels I know things have been quiet around here lately. I was hoping that after I defended that I would magically find a new fount of energy which would result in a flurry of activity both in my life and in my blog. Truth is, I’m tired. I’ve been tired for months, and I have a feeling that it’s going to take an equal amount of time to recover.
We did take a long weekend in Myrtle beach a couple weeks ago, and I have to say that it did wonders for my morale. For the first time in a long time, I can say that I was truly happy. I went into sensory overload in the Build a Dino Store there, but a good kind of sensory overload. We played loads of mini-golf, and also played in the ocean.
(All of my Myrtle Beach trips are here.)
We haven’t gotten on our bikes this year yet, and that’s probably going to wait until mid-June, after I get back from a meeting in St. Louis. I haven’t gotten into my scrapbooking yet, though hopefully that will pick up this weekend. I have had loads of ideas for blog posts (pink? in a John Deere store??), but lose interest by the time I get to a computer. I promise that I’m coming back, and I’m getting less tired and more happy every day, but I have a feeling that its going to be a while before “My Silly Life” is terribly active again.
I’m trying, though.
Tags: felicia, trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 3, 2008 in
Crafty Me I haven’t been scrapping with Laurie in a long time, so we decided to get together in February around her birthday. Sadly, Laurie’s household was all sick with the flu when our scrapping date came around, so we postponed until this past weekend. I spent *all day* Saturday up at Laurie’s house. Really, all day. I think Laurie was sick of me by the time she kicked my arse out, but, hey, it’s her fault for not kicking me out sooner.
For part of the time Laurie’s friend Kirsten joined us – she’s new to scrapping, so we had to show her some things that she *needs* to waste…er, invest, her money and time on to improve her scrapping.
Felicia also came along, since I was starting on her scrapbook. She and Ruby helped out with our scrapbooks.
Here are a couple of my completed pages:
I was very naughty on Sunday, and continued scrapping instead of working on my thesis. Oh well, at least I feel nice and refreshed and ready for writing this week. (That actually was not sarcastic, though it might have been hard to tell.)
Tags: felicia, scrapping
Greetings from the Huntsville airport, here in sunny Alabama.
I thought I’d blog earlier this week, with being at a conference and bored in the evenings, and all, but obviously it didn’t happen.
I’ve been at the Eight Years of Science with Chandra meeting this week. I travelled with the Constellation-X booth, but I also had a poster at the meeting. Attendance at this meeting was actually fairly low, but surprisingly, it was the first time I’ve had any interest in my poster from researchers doing work in my field. Yup, I’ve brought posters to 3 or 4 AAS meetings and the last Chandra meeting – all relating to my thesis work, but this is the first time I’ve had a discussion with anyone *in my field*. And they seemed interested in it! I have to say that it’s nice to finally have some outside validation of my work.
Other than that, it was a typical conference. A few interesting talks, a few boring talks, and several talks that I just didn’t understand (either due to language/microphone difficulties and/or due to material).
Yesterday (my birthday…hurmph) the conference ended at noon, so I packed up the booth, and then Felicia and I went over to the US Space & Rocket Center, which was right next door to the hotel. I actually had gone many years ago, when I was in junior high or high school (can’t remember exactly when), with my aunt, uncle and grandma. Sadly, I was a little disappointed this time around. One of the coolest things to see was the Saturn V rocket last time. Now the Saturn V is getting a new home, in an under-construction building next to the main building. Translation: I didn’t get to see it. They also have a mock-up of the Saturn V standing in the “rocket park”, but the area was also under construction, so I couldn’t get up close to it.
Oh well. I did get to see the other rockets, and took some pictures with Felicia (more posted to Flickr later). Plus I got some astronaut ice cream – since I couldn’t have cake on my birthday, at least I got some ice cream.
Tags: felicia, grad life, trip report, work
Posted by barb on Dec 22, 2005 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts 
Things are going to be quiet around here for a week – hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday!
Tags: christmas, felicia
Posted by barb on Oct 30, 2005 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts Have I mentioned that I love Halloween? Yes? Well, I’m going to say it again. I LOVE Halloween!!
Everyone in the house gets into it — that’s Felicia and Patrick. Felicia has a witch costume, and after Patrick saw it, he wanted to get into the act, so I gave him my cat ears so he could be her familiar.
And I carved my pumpkins today – I’ll post pictures tomorrow with the candles burning.
Tags: felicia, halloween
Posted by barb on Jun 2, 2005 in
Books,
Travels And she had a great time browsing the shelves.
We bought a lot of books, but the pile that Felicia and I bought will be shipped later, when a could other books arrive. So much for instant gratification.
Tags: felicia
Posted by barb on May 31, 2005 in
Science Musings,
Travels Felicia presented her poster at the AAS meeting yesterday, so I took a few pictures for her to remember her trip.
Here she is asking a question about the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
She also stopped at the American Astronomical Society booth to ask about membership.
When Felicia passed by the Glast booth, she saw that JD was having some trouble with a Python script, so she stopped to help him out.
At the end of the day, she had picked up just about every give-away she could find in the Exhibit Hall – she could barely lug her bag back to the car.
We’ll post all of her pictures from her big day after we return home next week.
Tags: felicia, trip report
I gave the talk last night at the UMD Observatory, titled X-ray Astronomy: Frequently Asked Questions.
The forecast called for snow and icy conditions, which probably kept a lot of people from the observatory. The group was small — about ten people were there for the talk. I had planned for several children to be in the audience, and feared that with only the one there, my talk might be at too low a level. However, at the end, three people asked questions, which suggests that it was at an accessible level. Overall a good experience for me, and hopefully for the attendees as well.
Felicia came with, and gave her talk, too, as shown in the picture below.
She also went down to the telescopes, and adjusted the pointing on one:
And checked out some of the astronomy posters there:
Tags: felicia, grad life, science
