A Day Away - Part II

The last post I wrote was about escaping from my life as a wedding planner. Today, I got to escape my desk job. I love my job. It's the greatest thing ever and I work with some amazing people. But the downside is that I spend most of my time sitting behind a desk. I suppose it's hard to make maps any other way, but to be honest, I never thought I'd end up sitting behind a computer screen all day long. Most anyone who really knows me knows that I can't sit still for any extended period of time. I just have too much energy itching to get out and something about the din of an air conditioner and the artificial brightness of florescent lighting just makes me scream for some outdoor relief come closing time.

Lucky for me, at times my job does afford me the opportunity to get outside. Some of our research projects in the past have required collecting field data - information about the conditions at a particular study area. As a map maker (I could get technical on you but I'll leave it at this) it's my job to bring along a GPS unit in order to precisely identify the location where field data is collected. Later, I'll bring that data into a mapping program (this is where the computer and the desk come in) and make pretty maps of where we went and what we found. Beyond just mapping the location of objects/places/things, it's possible to use the software to do very sophisticated analysis of the objects/places/things to better understand their geographic distribution, compare populations/trends and make predictions, etc, etc, etc. So today was one of those lucky days where I got to get out of the office to actually map something in the real world!

A colleague of mine and happy ecologist, Nels, was tasked to inventory the population of a rare plant, Limosella subulata in the lower Eightmile River. L. subulata had been spotted in this area in previous years so Nels needed to go back and look for the plant to be sure it was still around. He asked me to tag along to collect GPS data at any location where we found the plant. So we took the canoe and headed to Lyme (yes, the same Lyme that the tick originated from) to get started. The Eightmile River is a gem. It's federally recognized as a wild and scenic river - not an easy standard to achieve. And the houses along this stretch are just amazing. One of them could quite easily be our dream house, see the picture below. It turns out we didn't find any L. subulata, but we sure did see a lot of other beautiful flowers and even some wildlife as well. Check out the pictures below. Nels thinks that due to the wet and relatively cool (until now!) summer, the plants may be getting a late start. This just means we'll have to go out again - yay!

our ride and the view down the river

"hey, this is one of our wedding colors!" and my dream house on the river

At times Nels looks a little like a mad scientist - here he is pointing out the dead Phragmites australis and mating dragonflies

These are some pictures from a few summers ago when we spent four months sampling plants in a salt marsh - four desk free months!

SP and I collecting data at Ragged Rock Creek Marsh and me identifying Typha angustifolia (cattail)

Me and a praying mantis and the whole group - me, SP, Bill and Nels

A Day Away

Thank goodness for girlfriends! On Saturday I spent the day with a good friend of mine from grad school, Nicole. We drove up to Massachusetts and set out to do a day hike of Mount Greylock, the tallest peak in the state. Greylock is also located along the Appalachian Trail. Two summers ago, Nicole and I hiked the entire AT through the state of Connecticut. It took us five days to hike the 56 mile trail. Our long term goal is to tackle small pieces of the trail as it heads northward through MA, VT, NH and ME. We'll see how that pans out in the future, but for now we'll take what we can get. Here are some pictures from our hike. It was a beautiful day and exactly the get away I needed in order to refresh and refuel my wedding planning mojo. Thanks for an awesome day Nicole!

Pictures from our July 2007 Appalachian Trail Hike

Say Cheese!

About a month ago, James and I took a trip to Charlestown, RI to meet up with our wedding photographer, Olivia Gird. The purpose of the day was to spend some time getting to know Olivia and to have her take some pictures of us sans wedding attire and wedding stress - so-called engagement photos. At first I was unsure about all this, but Olivia made the day easy and fun and she did such a great job on the photos! She is so amazing and sweet and easy-going - exactly what we'll need on our wedding day! And she's green - bonus! We went to two different locations, the first was a working farm where we took pictures in their wild strawberry field. The second was a state park that had lots of my favorite thing - trees! Here's a sneak peek at some of our pictures. You'll have to wait for the wedding to see the rest!

Singapore Has Lights

Lots of them apparently. Here's a few pictures that James sent from a stroll he took the other night. Talk about light pollution! James describes it as something similar to Las Vegas, only bigger.

He seems to be doing just fine in Singapore. I get to talk to him about every other day on the phone and at least once a day via email or instant messenger. He says the food and hotel are great and the city is clean and accommodating. Work's been fine, almost everyone speaks English so that has made the process much easier. He looks forward to exploring the city more when he has some extra free time this weekend. I'll pass along any news. ~ Cary

Update: more pictures from James' weekend in Singapore - in daylight!

Two weeks in Singapore

James is on his way. To be exact, he's probably about halfway through his 15 hour journey across the world to the country of Singapore. Would you like a reminder about where Singapore is? I thought so, here you go:

I personally don't know anything about the country, except that the capitol is Singapore. Yes, that's right, Singapore, Singapore - they got creative didn't they? That's where James will be for the next two weeks. His company, Robert E. Morris, has sent him to Asia again (last time it was China) to one of their customers in the Aerospace industry in order to train 8-10 Singaporians on how to set up and use a Tsugami SS-20 Swiss Screw machine. Hopefully they speak a little English this time (the Chinese relied on hand signals and pictionary sketches) or else it's going to be a looooong two weeks!

The company he's visiting, Barnes Aerospace, makes precision aircraft parts. As part of his job, James writes the CNC program for a particular part they are interested in making and then sets up the machine to run the program. The last step is traveling to the machine's destination and training the machine operators on how to use the equipment and run the program. Very technical, I know. Honestly, I don't know how he does it, I can only understand a tiny fraction of it all! James' brain is mechanical and mine is definitely abstract, haha.

I haven't gotten an update from him yet as he's still in the air. Singapore is exactly on the other side of the world so they are 12 hours ahead of us. James should be arriving around 8 PM tomorrow night, which is really our tomorrow morning so I look forward to hearing about how the flight went and what his first impressions are. I'll be sure to post updates. For now, I'll leave you with about the only kind of photograph that comes up when you Google Singapore: buildings and lights.

Attacking the To-Do List

With just seven weeks until our wedding (and honeymoon - we CANNOT wait!), it's time to get serious about our ever-growing to-do list. With James leaving for a two week trip to Singapore this weekend, that means we needed to get started - like three weeks ago! Luckily, I hate waiting until the last minute to do things, so I've been doing my best to keep us on track. The last few weeks have been busy, but we've managed to cross several things off the list. First, we picked out our rings. I'm not going to give anything away here, so no pictures just yet. I'm so excited about them though, both James' ring and mine really show our personality. And I was even able to find a jewelry maker through my favorite site, Etsy, to make mine! I'm so in love with it, I just can't wait to wear it for the rest of my life!

Next on the list, our wedding wine. We headed up to my Godmother Diana's wine and beer making shop in Hartford. Diana and her husband Adrian are so wonderful. They made us this wine for our wedding gift. It's the most special gift and we can't thank them enough for all their love. James and I got to work on bottling and corking the wine. Thanks again Aunt Di, we can't wait to break it open with you on our wedding day!

me manning the bottling station while James handles the corking

On to the next task. Last Saturday we spent the whole (beautiful) day doing wedding stuff. We went up to the farm for a big planning meeting with the farm's coordinator Ian, the farm florist Laura, and our caterer, Twillia. We talked time lines, music, food, flowers, the set-up of the ceremony site and the reception in the barn. The last time we went to see the farm it was January and snowing. Boy, does the farm look different now! It is so breathingly beautiful I just can't imagine a more perfect location for our wedding - it's just so US! Seeing the farm again and nailing down some critical details really made the whole thing start to feel real - and got us really excited for all that is yet to come!

the ceremony location - what a difference seven months makes!

the whole farm runs off solar panels -way cool!

We also took some time after our meeting at the farm to drive to Putnam (just up the road) and scope out a place to have our rehearsal lunch. We found the most perfect little place called Bella's Gourmet Market and the owner was so nice and very accomodating - plus they have homemade GELATO, yum! We're going to have a causal "family style" lunch, a perfect warmup before the big day.

Lastly, and this was a big one, we FINALLY finished our invitations! I really love our invitations but man oh man were they ever a lot of work to make! Printing, cutting, gluing, threading, winding, tying, you name it, we had to do it to make these suckers. It took days to complete! But, it was totally worth it, I love them and best of all - they are 100% made from recycled materials. Love it!

the materials and the invitation task force in action

the finished product and the whole set

... and they're off... well, almost...they need a stamp...or two as I found out!