2011: A Retrospective

This was quite the red-letter year for us.  

Paul presented at SICB and I got laid off, then un-laid-off, then laid off, then un-laid-off again (yay!  take that budget cuts!) at SSNERR.

I got bangs and Paul more or less moved into a permanent, sexy-lumberjack, man-scruff look (Except for those three months when he grew "The PhD Beard").

We reached our goal for having a six-month emergency savings fund and our little coastal town got slightly hit by the tsunami from Japan.

In May, we both flew out to Germany so Paul could interview for the Max Planck Institute and I could play the employment field for a possible job.

Paul was offered the job.  I was offered part-time work.  And we agreed to take that six-month emergency savings fund and use it to move to Europe and travel.

Paul became Dr. Paul and we celebrated our 3rd Anniversary! (In style: On a Northwest Tour Extravaganza)


My sister got married in October and had the best reception (and bouquet) I've ever seen in my life.


Paul turned 30 (!!) and we celebrated in the Czech Republic and spent Thanksgiving in Turkey.  I found out that I was accepted into Penn State's MGIS program (woo! but...expensive!).

We moved into Aquahaus, in the old-city neighborhood of Rostock, which served as our base for an awesome first German Christmas.

I'm so incredibly grateful for everything we've been able to do and see this year, and especially that we have each other.  Paul is everything wonderful in the world and he tells me that I'm pretty cool too--I think I'm just cool by association then.  All in all, I have a feeling that 2012 is going to be The Year of the Hunn.   

Happy Silvester (as it's called here) to you and we hope you have a good slide (as they say here) into the New Year!