What do you do when your hubby's not in town? I turn to my girlfriends.... and this was certainly a week filled with great times with some female friends of mine :)

My 4th of July was a bit of fiasco as I stupidly missed the 4-mile race I had signed up for months ago because I got the start time wrong (I was an hour late). So, that was a bit of a bummer and I felt like a real idiot. But the day was not a complete waste as I got to catch up with Amy (whom I often run with and who had come to cheer me on for the race). She filled me in on some of her wedding details/ideas for next June, and should now be in Panama starting off on a 2+ week long adventure! Have fun Amy!

I got to chat with Marc over Skype and spent the rest of that Friday afternoon working on our seriously overgrown vegetable garden before heading out for a cookout, where I played 3-on-3 basketball with a bunch of guys before an amazing thunderstorm descended upon us. It rained pretty much all night long!

Saturday, I went for a hilly 6-mile run around Carrboro & Chapel Hill, and then had Whitney over for breakfast. Whitney's planning to head to Ann Arbor soon to start her post-doc at U-Michigan. It sounds exciting and I'm definitely planning on applying for that same post-doc for next year. I've been thinking about post-grad school plans lately, and Marc & I will have to sit down when he gets back to figure out how to add some boundaries to our search.

I had another friend, Katie over for breakfast on Sunday, and we read the newspaper/ Runner's World, listened to the radio, then headed off to church together. It's funny how it's just so much better to do simple things like that with someone else. Katie has taken on a bunch of home-improvement projects, which is rather impressive -- I love the DYI culture here in the US, which is very different from back home in Singapore (side note: last night, I helped Katie install a new chandelier and dimmer switch, and learned a lot from that process! Here is a picture of me testing out the new dimmer -- the oven mitts was from when I was holdin gup the metal chandelier and we weren't sure if we wired things correctly!) Katie & I reconnected again later on Sunday evening for a run (with threatening clouds overhead) before I met up with Maribeth Gainard who was in town with her parents.

Dinner with Maribeth, her parents, and two couple friends of hers was great. We met up at Brixx and the time just flew by. It's astounding how Maribeth remember so many details about various people and is able to connect lots of people with each other -- she is incredibly dynamic. I also thought her parents were wonderful and so easy to get along with. There were some great stories exchanged, and it was really too bad Marc wasn't there. Maribeth will be starting her JD at Northwestern in August -- Good luck!

These past few days have been more work focused as I've had to give a presentation, work on my dissertation, write up a few research ideas/abstracts and round up the UNICEF project. But this Sunday-Monday, Tammy, Tim & I will head to the beach for a day to get some sand and surf in us before hurricane season is in full swing.

Happy Belated Independence Day to the US and Happy Bastille Day in advance for the Frenchies out there! The 10 day countdown to Marc's return begins!

~ Shuwen (who has now turned into an insomniac during Marc's absence)