What I did this weekend

Was amazing.  Perfect weather, lots of family, and a great reason to celebrate.  And so fun I’m just now recovering! (no, not like that.)

Grad school is officially over.  And I have the pictures to prove it!

My favorite part was how so much of our family came in to help us celebrate.

These years have been hard for us.  Yes, they started out fun (we got married!) and we had a lot of great benefits by going through it together, but these past two years especially have been rough.  Anyone who knows me knows that I was thisclose to just calling it quits and moving off to Mexico last summer.  Sometimes I felt like I was doing a disservice to our marriage by coming back here part time to stick it out.  Not to mention all of the other fertility related pain in our lives and sometimes I think its a miracle that I did finish.  It felt nice to have a reason to celebrate!  Sometimes I really feel like I’ll never have another reason in this world to have a celebration  because there will never be a baby shower or baptism or Christmas at our house.  It was nice to have it affirmed that no, we still matter, even if all the people who came didn’t know all the gory details, at least a few did.

It meant the world to me that we have all these amazing people in our lives that cared to come out, sit through a hot Texas ceremony with us and celebrate with us in this very glamorous city (and believe me, I told them this too and I’m pretty sure its all on video!).

We are enough.  And we have reason to celebrate and things to be happy about.  Good reminders.

It is done!

Well almost, I still have to turn in minor revisions on my thesis.  But still!  I defended on Friday and passed and now? It. is. done.

So, thanks for all your support!  I was much more calm and peaceful than I thought possible.  Two days later, I’m still trying to calm down and have a feeling vacationing in Mexico is JUST what I need.  And only 4 more days of long distance marriage.

Here’s to all the hard work for the past 5 years and new beginnings!

We aren't photogenic, but this is one of the better photos of us from that day!

Celebrating outside with the flowers he “surprised” me with :)  The Dr. Matching Moonheads! 

Thanks be to God!

*Updated to say, I just realized my tongue is red in this picture from the chili mango candies from Mexico!  Ha!

I apologize for not writing here

But let’s face it, all my writing power is currently being used over here.

The cool thing is that this comic almost applies to me. Except we can leave “days” uncrossed.

What what.

Piled Higher and Deeper

That’s me right now.  Trying to get the final results so I can graduate.

Its also the name of Jorge Cham’s PhD comic series.  He was a graduate student that basically found a lot of success writing comics about grad school life and eventually giving basically stand up routines using the comics.  He came to our university last year and gave a talk on the Power of Procrastination and seriously, it was awesome. The man has brilliantly motivated many a graduate student by helping us realize that this whole experience is just part of it all.  My favorite was during the Q&A after he gave the talk and one girl asked him “So, like seriously, what do you do with your PhD. now?” (He graduated from Stanford in Mechanical Engineering).

“Umm, this.”

His point?  Pay attention to what your procrastinate on.  He wrote comics in grad school and look what he’s doing now.  It helped me sort a lot of life questions out for myself (though I don’t claim to be done).  We also gave him a couple ideas for comics we’re still waiting to see on his site…ha!  If you know a graduate student, I highly recommend gifting them a book!  (If they haven’t procrastinated away on the website already…)

Anyway, here are a few comics that I’m finding particularly entertaining now:

And if you didn’t laugh at those…well…this is probably why!