Happy New Years! 2011: Year-end Review

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

Thinking about the up-coming year made me curious to see how far we've come in the past year. So I put this post together to remind us of all the awesome things that happened in 2011.

We started off the year strong spending time with our dear friends Hamsa and Danika (first in Delhi, then in Bihar on our Buddhist adventure). Next was the intense Vipassana meditation course I did in Sarnath; I'll always cherish the lessons I learned in that course, even if I'm not good enough to keep my meditation every day. After that was the South India trip Allen's brother took with us, where we saw elephants and house boats in Kerala and beautiful temples in Tamil Nadu.

By March we'd found out that I had gotten a full ride to the University of Michigan's School of Information and that changed all our plans. Next stop, Ann Arbor, Michigan! Our last months in India were a bit of a blur after that, but we did get some time relaxing in the mountains of Mussoorie (and thankfully, Allen got some good writing done on his dissertation).

Once we had gotten back to the States it was a whirlwind of family reunions at the beach, preparations for the move to Ann Arbor, and friends' weddings.

The shift to Ann Arbor and grad school was a little rough for me because Allen had to stay behind in Brooklyn trying to sell our apartment. In the meantime though, Allen was keeping himself busy going to conferences, getting interviewed on TV about his work, and writing up his dissertation.

But by Thanksgiving we had finally lined up a likely buyer for the apartment (whoohoo!) so we lifted Allen's temporary exile at Brooklyn and moved (almost) all of our stuff to Ann Arbor.

And then, as far as our blog is concerned, we dropped off the face of the planet basically. But not without good reason. We've been up to a lot.

While I had a very eventful (read: extremely busy) semester, it was at least extremely productive and I'd say for the most part successful. My grades for the semester were stellar and one of my professors wants me to work my term paper into a conference paper. I got elected to be an officer for our Student Organization for Computer Human Interaction (basically the society that thinks about how to make interaction/interfaces with digital information more user-friendly). I'm also coordinating a Data Without Borders inspired datadive at our school this February. So, yes .... I'm keeping busy in grad school.

Allen is plugging and chugging at his dissertation and we marveled the other day about how far he's come in the last couple of months. Meanwhile he's already gotten a scholarship to work on his dissertation for 6-weeks in London this spring and is a finalist for another post-doc (won't jinx it by saying much more). He's well on his way to finishing this year - if that's what he decides to do. Playing the game of academia means that he may want to take an extra year of fellowship funding next year while testing the job-market waters instead.

So that, my dear family and friends, leads us to now... the holiday season. We were especially excited to come down to Asheville for Christmas this year so we could play with our 3-month old niece, Caroline and let me tell you she is a CUTIE!

All dolled up for Christmas

And of course we had a blast with our nephews, Joseph and William ... Allen got a special treat by playing Santa for them on Christmas day because at 6 and 3 they still believe in the magic of Santa. Grandma and Grandpa explained that Santa was leaving by going up the stairs because he had to go to the bathroom before he continued on his way. HA!

Check out the Brady Boy Band! You heard 'em here first, folks!

After the orgy of presents and family crazy fun time Allen and I had a nice relaxed New Year's Eve in Asheville ....... of course playing bridge with his folks! Ha!

We will take ALL OF THE TRICKS!

We hope that you all had a wonderful time with all of your friends this holiday season and have a very very HAPPY NEW YEAR!

To our blog readers from Santa!

Hi all! You haven't heard much from us in awhile because we've been busy with finals and dissertations; but we wanted to wish you all a happy holiday season.  Click on this link to watch a video we had santa make especially for you.


http://youtu.be/qiQv_P5So90

Happy Holidays!

Allen and Nikki

(Long Overdue Post*) Things I'm thankful for....

... that my 501-class Affinity Wall Diagramming project is over

  Nightmare on Group-project Street

... that I have the most amazing family and friends, who during their own holiday break, helped us pack up all our crap in Brooklyn

No joke, we had an army of people (Mom, Dad, Darek, Nina, to name just a few) all put in back-breaking effort to get us all loaded up this Thanksgiving break. I honestly don't know how we could have managed without them.


... that my husband is the most amazing packer in the history of all time. Period.
I've mentioned Allen's packing prowess before on our blog, so its not worth going into the specifics. Plus I don't have any pictures of how completely Allen had that U-Haul truck packed. We're pretty confident nothing broke specifically because the was no space left for any of the boxes to move in the back of the truck.


... that our India connections still mean something in the states.

Our friend Megan from Varanasi put us up during our cross country trek and lett us crash her birthday party! W00T!


... that the couch and the bed fit into the Ann Arbor apt! Double W00T!

I very truly and honestly did not believe that there was any way that the movers were going to get our heavy big-ass furniture up into this poorly designed apartment building (the stairs and elevator are so narrow!). I'm so happy to have been proven wrong.


... (and lastly, but certainly not least) THAT MY HUSBAND IS FINALLY WITH MY IN ANN ARBOR!!!! TRIPLE W00T!!!

Gosh it is good to be together again! Yes, it has been a long haul. Yes, the end of the semester is crunch time for both of us. And yes, (giggle) we have a lot of unpacking to do. But it always goes better when we're together...
I hope that you all had a very Thanks-filled holiday! What are you all thankful for?
_________________________________
* Apologies for seemingly dropping off the face to the planet, as you can see in this post, we've been quite busy lately

Happy (Albeit Lonely) Birthday

This year might mark the first (and hopefully the last) year in which I didn't talk to any other humans except via phone or internet.  That said, I made the most of a beautiful day outside with a bike ride, some productive dissertation writing, and the most ridiculous dinner I have ever prepared for one:

Yes. I ate the entire pie myself. It was epic. Here's to completing another (solar) revolution!

Pictures of Iowa

I only took two - both from my hotel room window.  Which I guess is about par for the course - I'm not really the photographer/blogger in the family.  BUT, they are pretty, and I must say Iowa seemed like a perfectly fine place to live (which is perhaps contrary to everything I would have ever thought about it before going to visit).

Pretty sweet, eh?  The other side of that bridge was the fine arts building where we saw a play about Gandhi and Tagore. It was nifty.

Late-Posts: New Nieces, Data Dives, and Being Single Again

First - I'm sorry it has taken me so long to update you on what has been going on. Seriously, I have NO time in grad school. Zero. I should be doing homework right now and will probably pay for slacking off, but the mind can only take so much information overload.

So much has happened in the last couple of weeks. Allen's brother Richard and his wife Mary welcomed their new baby girl, Caroline into the world earlier this month.

Mommy and Baby Caroline

She surprised everyone by coming earlier than expected - but she's doing really well; both momma and baby are happy and healthy. There are no words to properly express how pumped I am to be an aunt again - I cannot wait to meet little Caroline and tell her parents in person how excited and happy I am for them.

So I keep telling you how busy I am ... you think I'm kidding right? Well, this is what an average week has looked like for me since school started at the beginning of Sept

Allen and I share a calendar - and finally he stopped keeping my activities loaded on his calendar because he couldn't see his activity because mine were taking up all the space.

As if school alone weren't enough I went this weekend to Data Without Borders first datadive in New York City. Yes, to answer your unspoken question: I did get to spend a lot of quality time with Allen while I was back in Brooklyn - but Friday night and most of Saturday I was working with other data scientists to help three different non-profits work through their data issues. Here's a link to the flickr photo stream of pictures that were taken at the event to give you a sense of what it was like.

(The photographer, Emanuel Rosario, got a couple good ones of me in there.)

I worked on a project with UN Global Pulse, who is trying to conduct a proof of concept that they could collect current data through SMS surveys (amongst their other projects). Their mission is to try to harness available technologies to get more up-to-the-minute information about the world's most vulnerable populations. I can't talk about what we did because their data won't be released to the public until Ban Ki-Moon presents it to the UN General Assembly in early Nov. Hopefully I'll still be working with them and will be able to give you an update about how the work we crunched out at the datadive was received.

Besides giving me an excuse to see my husband, Data Without Border's datadive this weekend was an amazing experience. I learned so much (new software to use, which programming languages are better for certain tasks, and more general issues related to project management on a tight time-frame). I know they will be having another datadive in Chicago sometime soon and I hope I can make that one (and convince some of my other SI friends to join me).

Lastly, you may have seen Allen's most recent post, which I think is a not so subtle nod to the fact that I don't seem to be doing so well as a single lady; I'm not getting enough sleep, I'm not eating very well, and I'm definitely not getting away from my computer often enough.

I was not in good shape when I Allen found me, so what did he do? What any amazing fabulous bestest husband in the whole wide world would do - he planned to send me home with a ton of left-overs so that his over-worked-stressed-out-wife wouldn't have to worry about cooking for a week.

No joke, here they are in all their glory.

He also finally got me outside - and I was finally able to properly say good-bye to Prospect Park.

As if all these wonderful inducements weren't enough to make me feel a sick at heart to be returning to Ann Arbor by myself, upon arriving back I pulled out my lower back, found my car battery had died at the Detroit Airport, and have been too sick (read: sorry for myself) to get back to work, of which I have too much to recount in this one blog post.

So this, if I haven't bored you to tears yet, is what I've been up to in the last couple of weeks. Maybe my update will induce our guest blogger Allen to write about what has been keeping him busy in Brooklyn **cough, cough, dissertation writing, cough cough**

Cooking for 1 by Allen

1. Start a Huge pot of rice.
2. Start adding stuff into the largest sauce pan you have until the rice is ready (or you run out of stuff to add, or the saucepan overflows - if this happens it means you need a larger saucepan)
3. Freeze half and eat repeatedly for the next four days. Eat 2nd half two weeks later.

Today's menu: sausage, onions, carrots, spinach, garbanzo beans.  Was going for the tomatoes, but the rice was ready and I was hungry.