Overdue Update with lots of Good News!

These past few weeks have been very good to us.

First and foremost, this week marks our 4th anniversary as a couple! We both managed to get next weekend off -- so hopefully once the stress of finals week has passed, we can finally get out and enjoy ourselves and celebrate for a few days.

In other good news, whenever someone calls the Hospital to leave positive comments about an employee, they send out a letter to the employee with all the compliments they were bestowed. And yesterday, Dan just got an absolutely glowing letter in the mail talking about how his compassion went above and beyond the call of duty (!). It's true, Dan is such an amazing, compassionate, patient and thoughtful man. I'm so glad he can bring these strengths with him to his job.

And my good news? I am less than a week from finishing my first year as a Ph.D. Candidate. AND. My research from my Master's thesis will be published in a scientific journal in just a few months! If you'd like a copy, I'd be happy to send you one once it hits the press.

April was very good to us.

Other random updates:

Our little garden is really starting to take off. George, the tomato plant, already has two quarter-sized green tomatoes coming in -- and we have been thoroughly enjoying taking full-advantage of our little herb garden.

Texas is really starting to heat up now that April has passed. We are still trying to hold out turning on the AC, despite daily temps in the mid-80s. The biggest beneficiary of this is definitely the cat.

There he is, in his typical window pose, stalking the birds. If you look closely you can see his arch-nemesis: a big, fat robin. He sits in the same spot all day -- right on the very edge of our apartment sign. It drives Loki bonkers. He spends the day twitchy and talking to his robin; and the robin spends the day staring at the cat and singing his happy little tune.

Loki's other recent obsession has been the REI box (and packing paper) that my new backpack came in. He has so much fun with them that we don't have the heart to take them away. Typically, play involves stealing 3-6 highlighters off of my desk, or from my backpack, or from the pencil jar. Then, he hides them under the paper, or his box. And spends all day batting them between locations.

That's whats new in our next of the woods - I'll make sure to take pictures of *us* for next time.

Take care!