Busy Quarter

Things are moving along in our lives. This quarter is definitely more intense than last quarter, which means posts will be even fewer and further between than they were in the fall. Ryan goes to work and then comes home and does most of the work around the house. Gareth has assigned chores for each day, so that helps a bit. I have fewer classes this quarter, but more credit hours. And a lot more papers/projects with much longer page requirements. I definitely made a good choice in not applying for a TA position. I don't know how I would have handled that on top of classes and everything else. They just posted the TA opportunities for next quarter and, quite frankly, I don't even have time to think about if I could manage it next quarter, which means I probably won't apply because applications are due next week, just as we're hitting midterms.

I'm also attempting to decide between a thesis and a capstone. I went to the faculty research forum and came home all excited about the research that's being done and swayed to the thesis side. Then I went to the capstone meeting and came home excited about the project options and swayed to the capstone side. I've met with a couple of researchers who have been very nice and have actually seemed to push the capstone option a lot, which was surprising to me. Due to the time limits of the degree, a thesis would likely be a secondary data analysis, so everyone tells you to think about how much you're enjoying biostats (which we're taking right now) and how comfortable you are working with data sets. That I'm not hating it but just very, very "meh" about it has me leaning toward a capstone, which seems like it will be more directly applicable to where I want to go with my career. But I don't have to decide until the end of the quarter, so it's nice to have time to mull things over.

I'm also taking metabolism (covering lipids this quarter), food safety, and public health nutrition. The professor for public health nutrition is great, but the subject matter is confirming to me that doing the MS instead of the MPH was the right choice. Policy creation is good to understand, but definitely not where I want to be working (especially right now, ugh)!

Mal is officially registered for kindergarten - we got the confirmation email a few days ago. It's a relief to have that item off the to-do list. Hopefully his transition to K will go more smoothly than his transition to the new preschool did. Gareth will likely be done with his first round of braces this summer. I'm just assuming he'll need a round two in a few years. He enjoys telling me that he's not a little kid anymore, but is "almost a teenager" or "almost in middle school", which is just terrifying to think about. He just started kindergarten, how can we possibly be so close to entering middle school?!

I managed to squeeze in a bike ride this past week. Didn't really have time, but decided making time for mental health breaks is good once in a while. School work would take up every second if I let it. We rode much farther than we planned to, which was a bit much for me since I haven't been riding often lately. Went to bed early that night! But it was a beautiful day.

Looking across I-90 to Bellevue

View of Rainier from I-90

Looking across the 520 bridge

You can ride out on the 520 bridge, but they haven't completed the bike/pedestrian lane all the way across yet, so you can't get all the way to Seattle and end up having to turn around and come back. I'm hoping that that actually does get completed at some point. We were planning to ride down and come back, but it was chilly and windy (and would be even windier on the bridge) so decided to save that for another day. Which was good because as it was we rode 45 miles and I was dead by the time we got done. And so, so sore. A year ago this ride wouldn't have been a big deal, but it turns out you actually have to keep practicing skills in order to maintain them. We stopped to warm up at a tea shop, which was an unexpectedly excellent choice. I'm rather sad the shop is in Kirkland instead of near me. They had so many tea options and made me a delicious tea latte with one of them.

And that's where we're at right now. Next post will probably be over spring break, at the end of March.