I have officially scheduled my PhD Dissertation Defense for Friday, October 15, at 3pm CST. I added a countdown to the site to scare myself remind everybody.
in 1 month, 11 days, 13 hours, 7 minutes
Several months ago I was trying to think of some quick new recipes that used ingredients that I typically have in the pantry. I happened to have some leftover Velveeta, so I wanted to include it too. I was reminded about an Enchilada pasta at a restaurant that I used to love, so this is what I came up with:
Ingredients:
Directions:
This recipe makes about 6 servings, give or take a couple depending on how hungry you are. It makes delicious leftovers too!
I’ve been trying to come up with more recipes lately, and today my sister wanted to make pesto with a whole plastic grocery bag full of basil that she picked from a friend’s garden. I had a recipe from the food processor cookbook, but I ended up making a few adjustments. Here’s what I ended up with:
Ingredients:
Directions:
We ended up making 4 of these batches and freezing most of it in old baby food or small minced garlic jars. Some of it we used tonight on a chicken, tomato, and pesto pizza that was delicious!
Jake is in Houston now, getting everything moved into the house. If you haven’t already seen them, here are some new pictures of what it looked like before all of our stuff arrived. I can’t wait to move in and make it our own!
Jake and I are officially moving to Houston this weekend – kind of. I still have to finish some work on my PhD in Nashville, but we are moving all of our stuff, and Jake will head back there full time. The most exciting part to me is that we are renting a really nice house! No more fighting over parking spots, elephants upstairs, or loud music next door!!
Here are some pictures of the house that I pulled off of the MLS listing. Once we’ve moved in, I’ll get new pictures, of course!
I put off writing this post for a long time to keep some of these projects a surprise, but I think it’s finally time to show them off. At one point I had three pregnant friends, all due about a month apart, and I decided it would be fun to knit baby blankets for each of them.
The first couple chose not to find out the sex of the baby, so I had to keep it fairly neutral. They were planning to use a lot of white in the decorations though, so I chose a white yarn. It took a lot of searching, but I finally found a pattern that I thought would be perfect – interesting enough for me to knit, gender-neutral, and beautiful. The pattern was created by another member of Ravelry, and she was kind enough to share it with me.
Ravelry Link: Cables and Lace/Ladders Baby Blanket
Pictures:
The next blanket was for a girl, and I wanted something simple but pretty and girly. The Ondas pattern fit this exactly. It is knit in the round, and it was a really fun, quick knit!
Ravelry Link: Ondas
Pictures, including a couple of progress:
The third pregnant friend was also having a girl, and had picked out beautiful pastel pink and green for the nursery. One of the patterns I had been eying for a while was a little bit more decorative, and it was just what I was looking for. This was another pretty quick knit, and I can’t wait to make one of my own some day.
Ravelry Link: Baby Chalice Blanket
Pictures:
For two of these, I also made “lovies”, with the cutest little pattern ever!
Ravelry Links: Bunny Blanket Buddy and Another Bunny Blanket Buddy
Pictures:
Finally, a friend asked me to make a blanket for Hope Clinic For Women’s charity auction. I didn’t have a lot of time, so I chose a simple but absolutely beautiful pattern – another one that I’d love to make for myself someday.
Ravelry Link: Serenity
Pictures:
I’m procrastinating finishing some homework (for my last class ever!), so I thought I’d update with pictures of some fun scarves that I made recently. I’ve been eying this pattern for a while, so when my mom asked for a ruffled scarf I knew this was it. I went with Malabrigo Silky, and made one for each of us.
I picked out a beautiful teal color for mine, and started it first since I had to wait on my mom’s yarn. It only took about a week to knit, and it was really a lot of fun. Shortly after I finished, I got a great haircut and temporary curls, which went great with the scarf. The kitties also helped me with some modeling. 
My mom’s was in a really nice red color (Ravelry Red!), and I made it a little bit longer than mine. It took me a little bit longer since I’ve been busy with class, but still only a couple of weeks. She hasn’t seen it in person yet, but Buster was happy to model it for her.
I loved this pattern and yarn, and I will definitely use them both again! And now – back to work…
I realize that I don’t keep up with this enough for it to actually count as a blog. I also don’t think that anybody reads this website, or that my life right now is interesting enough to have followers that aren’t family or friends.
My goal for this website is to serve as a central location for many of my online identities – facebook, flickr, google, Ravelry, and anything else I can plug in. Plus every once in a while I’ll get around to writing an actual blog entry that the general public might enjoy. I’ve got some things I’d like to write, including a review of a recent wine tasting trip to Napa, plus some posts about knitting projects from the last year. However, as a PhD student anticipating graduation in less than a year, I’m pretty busy. I guess it’s good that nobody reads this anyway.
I’m working on putting together a presentation (or at least a blog post) detailing all of my “expert” Zotero knowledge. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few weeks figuring out how to really use it to my advantage. Before I finish that, I thought I’d at least share my changes to the Vancouver style.
I’ve got two versions:
I’ve uploaded the file, and you can download it here:
vancouver.csl
Once you’ve downloaded the file, navigate to the directory and drag-and-drop the file into Firefox. This will overwrite the standard Vancouver style. If you want to keep both versions, open up the file in a text editor and change “” to “” (or anything else).
I’ve uploaded this file as well, and you can download it here:
vancouver_superscript.csl
Follow the instructions above to install the style, however I have already changed the title to avoid overwriting the original Vancouver style (because I keep both installed).
Editing styles isn’t extremely difficult, but it’s not completely intuitive, especially if you’re not familiar with XML. I came across the following link that might also be helpful if you want to create a new style:
http://www.somwhere.org/csl/
