Last week had a few highlights, the primary one being that I gave a practice talk on my research in front of my lab group. I got a lot of good feedback, Felisa seemed impressed, and now it is over and I can prepare for the real thing and concentrate on the rest of the semester. Some of the advice I got went way over my head, and may have been more than was really needed. However, I will make some changes to some figures that are confusing, and I need to seek out a statistical test, which I am getting help on tomorrow. Sweet.
Friday was not so much fun. The only way I can describe it is "stupid". Matt and I went to get NM driver's licenses, which turned into an all afternoon ordeal. Stop one: we went to a regular MVD government office, waited an hour, only to be told when we got to the desk that they couldn't do first time out of state driver's licenses because the "system was down". Great. How about telling people before they waste an hour or so of their lives sitting there like schmucks?
Stop two was an MVD Express office, which costs an additional $25 "convenience fee". My experience was convenient, but Matt's was not. The guy helping Matt got an "out of state" error message, and told Matt that he would try again in 15 minutes. Then "Dave" disappeared. About a half hour later, we stand up looking annoyed, and the woman behind the desk asks us if we're waiting for something. It turns out Dave was told to go to lunch, but failed to mention he was helping us. In the end, the error was because Matt has an ' in his last name. Seriously. Apparently if you have anything other than letters in your name, their system just can't handle it. So now Matt has a license with a last name that isn't technically his. That should make going to the airport loads of fun in the future.
This weekend was chock full of fun for me. Matt was on a birding survey all day Saturday, but I got up at 6am to go to the Taos Wool Festival with my friend Fred. I got lots of yarn, saw some really cool stuff, and petted some nice animals. Then when I got back for the evening, Fred and I went to her friends' house for an Octoberfest dinner. Then I met up with Matt and other friends at the Marble Brewery. Not a lot of sitting room, but they have good beer.
Llama with a serious under bite.
A lovely little alpaca who just got a haircut.
Fred, posing with a knitted woolly mammoth. We bought the pattern for it, as well as a dragon.
A knitted cactus garden, guaranteed to never die. I love the little lizards.
A felted piece with actual bird bones. This is some kind of wall hanging. It gets points for creativity, in my book anyway.
Sunday I went to the Balloon Fiesta with Matt, Mouse, and Dave. That involved waking up at 4:30am, sitting in traffic for a long time, and being in the cold dark for about an hour. I will say though, it was SO worth it. This is something I will definitely do again, and I hope when people visit us, they come when the fiesta is going on.
We're here! It's fiesta time!
Dawn set up of balloons.
Laying out balloons before take-off.
A small sampling of all the pretty balloons!
Completely awesome. Breakfast burritos, hot chocolate, and Darth the balloon.
That's all folks.
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