The One with the Disney Couple

Have you taken a silly Facebook quiz? I like to see other people's results, but I (almost) never take them myself. One of the more popular quizzes this summer was the "Which Disney couple are you?" Back in July, one of our mutual friends took it (she got Aladdin and Jasmine) and Justin saw the link on her page. He took the quiz and then told me to take it to see if we got the same result. What do you know, we did!! We're super cute :)

We are Mickey and Minnie :)

cartoonesia.com

The first day of the college football season further cemented our "classic/stable" relationship status. Justin woke up early and went on a bike ride. I slept in and then started cleaning when I got out of bed. Here's our text conversation from that day:

Me- "I think we're soulmates. I'm flipping channels between the UCLA-Virginia game and LOTR. Love you!!"

Justin- "We are definitely soulmates!"

You would think that Justin has just rubbed off on me in the past 6 years, but honestly I would have been flipping between those two channels if I was single. That's why we'll look like this when we're 90:

disney.wikia.com

Oh yeah, and yesterday was 26 weeks for Baby Cora!! We're in the third trimester people. Parenthood is about to get real!!

The One with the Announcement

I can't believe I haven't posted this to the blog yet!! It's actually the reason I haven't posted much recently.

I guess I let the cat out of the bag with the last post anyway. We find out the gender today. Super excited!!!

The One with the Pair o' Docs

Justin passed his dissertation defense today! Woo hoo!!! He was amazing!!

It's a tradition in his research group to open a bottle of champagne and toast the new PhD. The new grad then writes their name on the cork and hangs it from the ceiling of their group office. It's a big moment! So proud of him!

This is the white board outside his office. Earlier it read " It's almost over Justin!"

Oh yeah, this was sparkling grape juice. 

Nonalcoholic for the pregnant and Mormon :)

Dr. Cooper!!

Update: I took Justin to Ruth's Chris steakhouse to celebrate. We even dressed up; it was so fun! FYI- they are the place to go to celebrate. We told them Justin just defended his PhD and we are expecting our first child. Our waiter was awesome, the food was perfect, and they gave each of us a free dessert.

Congrats to Justin for graduating!

And congrats to me for getting pregnant! Let's be honest, that's the hard one ;)

The New One (Finally!)

This won't even be a very good new one, sorry. I've been thinking about blogging a lot lately and just haven't done anything about it. My last real post was before Thanksgiving so I haven't even covered the holidays, yikes! For the time being, here are a few recent thoughts/updates for y'all :)

For six(!) years now I've heard about "Spring in Utah." This is in reference to the seriously crazy weather patterns we get March-June. Temps in the 70's followed by a snowstorm. Seriously. We got married Memorial Day weekend 2010 and I was terrified because it snowed 5 days before. It was a beautiful 65 degrees for us, thank heaven! Anyway, I think this is actually the first time that the weird Spring weather has been visualized by our car:

Here's Justin loading up for a bike ride. Notice anything unusual?

Yep, that's a ski rack on top. We were up on the mountain just 9 days ago. Crazy!!

Here's a new "Funny Justin" story. We were walking to lunch today when a rollerblader, yes rollerblader, zoomed by. Justin said "Wow, I almost got taken out by 1992!!" Bwahaha!!

The One Where Justin Messed with Texas

Ok, he didn't really mess with Texas but it does look like he got in a good fight. Just a minor mishap in a pickup bball game.

It's hilarious when he tries to not laugh!! Well, for me :)  I promise I'm not domestically violent!

The One with the Tour of Utah

In 2006, Larry H. Miller (former owner of the Jazz and most of SLC) started a road bike race across Utah.  I know, what's with all the road bike posts?!  Justin is kind of getting into it.  He wants to buy a bike!  (update: he has bought a bike.)  We are definitely still mountain bikers but you can ride on the roads earlier and later in the season than on the mountains.  So we'll probably get road bikes to get in and maintain "biking shape."

Last year we watched the end of one of the Tour's stages.  It finished right off of campus.  People are loud and crazy, ringing cow bells and yelling.  It's fun.  This year (on Aug. 9th) there was another stage right by campus so we walked over with Mike (a member of Justin's research group who mountain bikes with us often).  The bikers get going so fast!!
 

Justin and Mike

The Pelaton (main group of riders)

After all the bikers pass, their support vehicles follow.  It was kinda funny to see these in the circuit race, driving loops through downtown.  There are some nice bikes up on those racks.

This section was coming off the only downhill in the circuit.  The riders get in "super-tuck" position and just fly down the road.

We were also "Tour groupies" on Saturday (8/10) and drove around chasing the route from Snowbasin to Snowbird (both ski resorts meaning LOTS of climbing, ouch!) with our friends Bonnie and Kristian.

Bonnie, Kristian and Justin

We waited beneath an underpass.  The riders went up and across that hill in the background and down the highway.

Here they come!!  The front riders are called the Break.

This was a long enough race that there were a few groups in front of the Pelaton.  After the first group (Break) came the Chase.

And back to the Pelaton.  That's a lot of bikers!

We wanted to see the bikers speeding downhill so we went to the bottom of Big Cottonwood canyon.  This volunteer cracked us up.  He was very enthusiastic about his role.

Check out how fast they whipped around this corner.

Other shots from segments of the race across the state.  These are all from the website.  They cycled past some pretty awesome scenery.

Manti Temple

Escalante National Park

Red Canyon (near Bryce Canyon National Park)

Other side of the Red Canyon arch

Escalante again (this is where we did our Coyote Gulch backpack trip a few years ago)

The One with Saints and Sinners

"Saints to Sinners" is a road bike race from Salt Lake to Las Vegas.  I love the name, super funny!  Justin was invited by Bonnie and her husband Kristian to join their team.  He's not a roadie but he's in dang good biking shape so he accepted.  The race has 30 legs and they had a 10 person team so Justin rode 3 legs.  Their team started at 6am Friday morning (7/26) and finished about noon the next day.  They came in 8th place out of 17 teams in their division.  The sad thing is they were only 10 minutes behind the 6th place team but Justin got a flat on the road which took about 15 minutes to fix.  So had that not happened they would have come in 6th!!

Here are Justin's legs :)

And here's what he biked during the race:
His first leg was from about 2:30-3:30pm.  For easy comparison I'm using his Strava maps because they show distance, elevation gain and time at the top and have an elevation map at the bottom so you can see just how much he climbed.

His second ride was 1-1:45am!!  I thought this leg would be his hardest.  It was the shortest but had one of the biggest elevation gains for the entire race.  Justin said it was really dark and actually started to rain on him.   He said riding that late at night was a little scary. At one point he had just passed 2 other bikers and was all by himself when he came upon the Mountain Meadows Massacre memorial sign.  Creepy!!  He definitely picked up a little speed right then.

 

This leg shows how impressive a biker Justin is.  The fastest time for that leg was 35 minutes (set by the 2nd fastest team overall who did the entire 800+ miles in just over 24 hours, only 5 minutes behind 1st place).  In Justin's division the fastest rider took 38 minutes.  Justin's time was under 46 minutes!!  He came in 5th in division, 12th out of 52!!  Not bad for a non-road biker!!  That's my hubby :)

His third leg was the second to last of the race.  Justin came in 4th in division and 11th overall on this leg.

I cannot imagine how crazy these people are who sign up for this every year.  I mean, it would be fun but EXHAUSTING!!

A few pictures at the finish line:
(*I wasn't at the race (obviously) so I got all these pictures off the Facebook page.  Thankfully there were some good ones of Justin.)

 Here he comes!! (The guy in front, fist pumping, is Kristian's brother,

the last rider for the team.  Justin just wanted to ride through the gate.)

A little closer.

A little closer. 

 Bam!!  Hottie with a body.  I mean, bike :)

I bought that Utah jersey Justin is wearing for Christmas at least 3 years ago.  We may not have even been married quite yet, just engaged.  Anyway, it hung in his closet for a few biking seasons before he decided his other jerseys could finally be retired and this one could be worn.  Why buy new things if you're not going to wear it?!  I'm the exact opposite.  I buy a new shirt and wear it that night :)

Team photo: Bonnie and Kristian are on the left and hopefully you can pick out Justin :)  The rest of the team was Kristian's dad (who sponsored the team), 2 of his brothers and friends they each recruited to fill out the roster.  You may notice that there are only 9 in the picture.  Our bishop is actually an avid roadie and participated but had to head back to SLC early for church the next day.

We don't know these other teams; I just like their photos.  They're funny :)

Can you hear the Chariots of Fire theme song right now?

The One where Justin is Hilarious!

Got home after work just a few days ago and Justin was literally "pink with barely concealed glee" (Friends reference!) because he had done something that afternoon he thought was hilarious.  He was right!!  His cousin who is also from FL but currently living in the DC area had posted on Facebook how much she was missing family.  Here's his response:

Bwahahaha!!  I almost peed my pants when he showed me!!!  I seriously laughed so hard and continued to giggle for a good 10 minutes.  What a nerd!!  That's his "goofy" face, I love it!!

The One with the Publication(s)

Justin is a published scientist!!  Yeah buddy!!  I'm so proud of him!!  Even though this actually happened a few months ago (the publication date was 9/3/13).  That's how far behind I am on blogging.  Oh well, now you know :)

If you look up articles written by Justin Cooper you'll find this one:

Interactive Gaming Via Mobile Playmaker 

Sadly, wrong Cooper.  I'm sure Kaden is bitterly disappointed.  I can't put a link to the article here and I'm sure nobody wants to subscribe to Analytical Chemistry (which, by the way, is a pretty nice journal to be publishing in) so here's a snapshot of the first page and even a graphic for ya!

 

And here's how he'll look when thousands of people reference this article in the future:

Cooper, J.T.; Peterson, E.M.; Harris, J.M. Anal. Chem. 2013, 85, 9363-9370.

I am also submitting my first article for review today.  Fingers crossed!!

Meet the Robinsons- Disney