Got Beer?

I don't know about you but I have plans this weekend. Got to love that it's on the bus route on our way home.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Portland is not like Tucson. It's cold here, which seems to get people in the Christmas spirit a lot earlier than in Tucson. The day after Thanksgiving, the town officially lit its Christmas Tree in Pioneer Square. (Lent actually saw the pre-lighting one afternoon while he was here). Anyway, there is a ton of greenery around, evergreens, wreaths with holly berries. Pretty cool. Haven't seen that in a while, not even the day before Christmas in Tucson. However, Tucson is pretty great because even though pine trees don't seem to grow there so well (mountains excluded), you can still buy a Christmas tree for $40. Portland is different. There are trees everywhere here. So what do you do? Buy one of the corner stores? Go cut your own? Alas, imagine my great happiness and surprise when Ken tells me the other day that you can rent a live Christmas tree that will be delivered to your door, picked up and then planted somewhere for you. Wow.

Congratulations Tucson!

Your very own Craigslist is now up and running. No more having to post via Phoenix for you!

Come to Papa

My new toy: The Dell Axim X50v



This thing has it all.

SD card slot
CF card slot
624 MHz processor
VGA display
Bluetooth
WiFi
Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Ed.

It's charging up now. Have to wait 8 hours. Argh. For those of you thinking about buying a PDA, PDA Buyer's Guide has some very thorough reviews.

The long weekend

In two words, relaxing and exhausting.

Wednesday night
The realization of having four days ahead of not having to work was amazing. Sara Burke was home for thanksgiving weekend and we met her for drinks downtown. Awesome happy hour specials separated into 1, 2, 3 and $4 snacks (i.e. edamame was $1, sweet potato potstickers was $2, pad thai was $4, etc). I love how this town works for happy hour... Some have drink specials, some not, but they all seem to have food items from their regular dinner menu in smaller portions for a fraction of the price. It's a great way to taste a restaurant's food without shelling out the big bucks. Case in point from another restaurant: dungeness crab topped deviled eggs. I can't justify spending 7 bucks on these. However, I can spend the $1.50 for the happy hour special. Incidentally, they were incredible.

Thursday
After being in the hotel for the past few nights, Thursday was the day we got to move into our house. The new floors were now dry and ready to go. I worked in the morning and got back around noon. It was so quiet and peaceful downtown. We packed up Hughes and headed home. Felt so nice. Didn't do much in terms of moving in -- pretty much just set up our bed before we went to the Burke's for Thanksgiving. Note: getting the boxsprings up the stairs was a nightmare. Had an awesome dinner. Those Burkes can cook. Talked gardening with one of Sara's uncles who is a landscaper (read: how can Lisa trim the begeezus out of those front bushes). Came home and crashed.

Friday
You need to take a written test to get an Oregon driver's license. Ken picked up the books for us earlier this week and we went to the coffee shop down the street while we studied them prior to going to the DMV. After all these years, still hearing the word 'test' puts me in a panic. I started studying like crazy. I was nervous. Studied at stoplights on the way there. What's wrong with me? The test-panic mode has gotten me this far, but come on. This panic is unnecessary, but I can't stop. Needless to say, we each got 97% and are officially Oregon drivers. New license plates too... three numbers followed by BMW. I wonder we'll get more tickets or get singled out more. Subconciously, I wonder if people will associate our randomly generated license plate with affluence and not let us merge, be more apt to giving us a ticket, etc. Ken doesn't agree, but we'll see.

Went home and set up the rugs. Moved in some of the furniture downstairs. Worked on unpacking the kitchen. All day. Went to Sara's brother's party late that night. We came home and realized we weren't that tired yet and needed to decompress before sleeping, so we went to Holman's (the place with the 'spin the wheel' breakfast) for a drink and grilled cheese. FYI, they're open 24 hours on Friday and Saturday nights -- serving food the whole time. Wow. This is going to be wonderful and a disaster all in one. Also, Lent's birthday.

Saturday
Ah, the furniture still left to move in downstairs was the armoire. We didn't want to do it ourselves since last time it almost fell off the dolly and Ken had to throw his body under it. ouch. Sara's brother was too hungover, so Mr. Burke kindly helped Sara, Ken and I move it in. Together, we moved in the armoire, the mexican bookcase that jana helped me get and our free desk from a downtown office. Success. I spent the rest of the day unpacking the kitchen. I think it's 95% finished now. Ken went to get cables to set up the TV, stereo, etc. and then started setting up that beast.

Sunday
I went to the lab in the morning to take care of my cells (which need attention every three days or so) while Ken went to a bar to watch the Vikings. Came home and started moving clothes upstairs. As Lent can attest, we've been going to the basement to change clothes since that's where they all were while the floors were being refinished. We have a ton of laundry. However, it's dirty down there. When we moved in, none of the fixtures had lightbulbs in them and it was dusty and filled with cobwebs. Now we have lots of light and we cleaned everything out (including the 'icon wall' of taped-on magazine cutouts that a 12 year old girl created 3 years ago -- no more Aaron Carter, sniff sniff). We moved the washer and dryer and Ken installed a laundry cabinet, countertop and clothesrod for sorting and hanging clothes. Did five loads of laundry. Felt so good. Ken continued with setting up the armoire while I continued to move boxes, pull out the over-toilet-storage-shelf, ripped out the weird wood that was nailed to the wall and respackled the whole bathroom. It is now ready for priming and painting so we can install even the basics... like a toilet paper holder. Seriously. Actually, this is true for most rooms... can't finish any room until they're painted. Hopefully this weekend while Ken levels the floor in the front room by sistering 1x6's to the old joists and then installs the subfloor. The wood floors for that room arrive the first to second week in December.

I love this process, but get antsy to finish it all. I can hear my mom say 'Rome wasn't built in a day', but those of you who know me won't be surprised that I'm still going to go full steam until it's finished. My OCD tendencies from my dad are in full force. Poor Ken.

Earth or space???

I've been trying to make a big decision. One that will inevitably affect my (our) entertainment choices. For which type of service do we sign up.....cable or satellite?? Do I want my viewing entertainment coming into my house from an earthbound cable or some satellite in space?

Earth

Comcast is the local cable company here in Portland. I've been a cable subscriber for the far better part of my 31 years. Never really had an problems. Programming and channel selections were fine. And when they started providing internet service, well....all the better. Seems like the logical choice. Except for the fact that, if I don't like the NFL games being broadcast, I'd have to go to the local bar. Now this normally wouldn't be a bad thing, but the early games on the west coast start at 10am. A little too early for me to be at a bar on a regular basis if you ask me.

Comcast's answer.....NFL Network On-Demand. This is a service that Comcast provides that allows you to view the hightlights of all NFL games......but starting on the Monday after the games. What???? I thought "On-Demand" meant ON-DEMAND!!! How is this not a glorified version of ESPN's NFL Prime Time. What a bunch of crap. And I'd still have to go the bar to see any games that aren't being broadcast.

Space

Direct TV is the only satellite system I would entertain for one simple reason...NFL Sunday Ticket. I'd have all the games I could want in the luxury of my living room.

Problem??? I don't want a home phone line, nor do I want DSL with slower speeds, nor do I want a DirectTV box in every room that has a TV. And to top it all off, I'd need a dish mounted somewhere on the roof facing the front of the house and completely visible from the street. I don't think that would go over too well with Lisa.

In the end, I've opted to go with cable and watch my games at a bar for the time being. I just wish these cable companies would get the rights to broadcast these games. Oh well, I'll just order me up another porter this Sunday morning and enjoy my weekend.

If anyone has any suggestions or something further to add, please educate me.

Happy Thanksgiving

Ah, the joys of neuroscience and thanksgiving come together in my dream world. Only here can you turn the temporal lobe into a drumstick. I guess this also means my love for photoshop hasn't diminished much since Tucson. Hope you all have a great one. We move into our house tomorrow!

In the two blocks...

between our hotel and the busstop, I passed five coffee shops. All different companies. Welcome to Portland.
-L

Science

Throughout grad school I have tossed around the idea of leaving science. Many of you have had these talks with me. I have been bored and unfufilled. I have always been a curious person, but something in science wasn't doing it for me. Instead, I have wanted to do everything from cooking, making furniture, writing manifestos, to opening a museum -- much to the chagrin of my father. Gary (my grad school advisor) has always been sad that I wasn't going to stay in science and be a professor like he wanted. I think me getting married was hard on him, because he thought I'd leave forever and do something else after a brief postdoc... which I still may do, who knows.

I get bored of the long hours for no reward. I get bored of being forced to be in the lab because the boss is watching. I love the big discoveries (who wouldn't), but they are few and far between to count on them to keep you interested. It stinks to go through the daily grind for 4 months and realize at the end that something should have been different. Nothing stinks more than 'what if'.

Is it just the topic? I worked on estrogen and the brain for 3 years as an undergrad.. 5 in grad school and here I am starting a new postdoc. What am I doing... estrogen and the brain. crap. you'd think I would have learned by now.

But something's different. I don't know how to do any of these techniques and I have the enthusiasm of an undergrad again. Only now I can ask 'why' without people thinking I'm a complete dumbass. I'm actually enjoying this. Maybe it's because it's new. Or, maybe it's because I'm doing molecular techniques where you can get your little answers of "did it work" in two-three days rather than 2-3 months. I'm 2 weeks into work and am on page 72 in my lab notebook, not to mention my pages of lab manifestos on my computer. I got up at 7:30 today to go to work. I left after 6 last night. Not because anybody's watching what I'm doing, but because I want to be here. I like the autonomy of being a postdoc. I like picking my own project without getting hassled every day about why I want to do something. Just let me work on it and I'll get back to you. Went to the bar this past friday night and actually talked science with a coworker for hours. This is not normal. But I loved it.

I think the biggest case-in-point may be that my cells (which I didn't contaminate after all) weren't ready for treatment today. However, they will be ready for treatment tomorrow followed by harvesting them 20 hours later... meaning I will be working the morning of thanksgiving. What is going on? I have a day off, a new husband who is off and a new house that we can move into that morning, yet I've decided to work. Is this a new beginning?

What has happened to me.

PS that said, I don't by any means want to make it a habit of working on nights and weekends. work time is work time. play time is play time. You need both to stay refreshed.

Weekend in Review

Despite all of the goings-on, I found it to be a really relaxing weekend. On Friday, Lent toured around Portland while Ken and I went to work. Ken met him for lunch and then we all met up after work for some drinks along with a guy I work with. We forgot to eat dinner though. Oops. Oh well, we made up for it on Sunday (see below). Saturday, we woke up and walked to breakfast. Turns out we have a great, cheap little old school place about a half a block away. Afterwards, you can 'spin the wheel' a la 'the price is right' to get your breakfast for free. Pretty cool. We all had to pay, but we left all full and happy. That afternoon, we went down to Oregon wine country and drank a bunch of wine, ate some pizza and then came back to the house to meet up with Rob Church, who was visiting this past weekend. We walked down to the Pinback show, which was pretty good although the opening acts left a lot to be desired. Crashed that night. On Sunday, Rob woke up and left for his interview in Montana while Ken, Lent and I packed up the car and went to Seattle for the Seahawks vs. Miami game. Got there before the traffic hit and tailgated with some awesome beef and pork ribs we picked up in Portland, some polish sausage, peppers and onions. It was amazing. 2nd best barbecue sauce I've ever had -- after the one Beverly's family made for graduation weekend from UVa. We got so full that we haven't eaten since. Our seats were awesome. 45 yard line, 3rd row. Actually got to see Feeley take all these painkillers on the sideline after he got injured. Pretty cool. Made it back by 8:30 last night. Ken and Lent moved our new fridge in and the old one into the basement (we didn't know they were leaving us with one and we had already purchased one). So now I can buy massive amounts of turkey after thanksgiving (a la dave and kristen) and store them in the freezer. I'm very excited about it.

This morning we packed up the car and headed back for the hotel while they seal our floors over the next three days. They're also ripping out the rest of our upstairs front bedroom floor so we can install a new (level) subfloor and fir floor. Ken, Lent, me and Hughes... chilling in a hotel room. I imagine we'll go watch monday night football tonight. Lent leaves tomorrow. Then two more days until we can move back in... permenantly. I'm so excited. I can hardly wait for the holidays.

-L

The new place

We've slept two nights in our new place. Sounds cozy. Truth is, we're sleeping on a mattress (no boxspring or anything) on the empty living room floor without heat (as it's been turned off so we can open the windows and air out the dog-smell, which was from the carpet upstairs that we ripped out the other night -- evidenced by the still wet urine spots and stains throughout the upstairs. I gagged taking it out. Seriously. It was nasty.)

Even with all of the above -- it's totally fine. We love being there. It is awesome. It is our house. Our life. That's a cool feeling.

To fix the house, we're resanding the old growth fir floors upstairs and down. They did the first pass yesterday with 28 grit sandpaper. 3 professionals working for six days. Krikees. I'm so happy we decided not to do it ourselves. We would be exhausted. I'm exhausted anyway. Now the dog smell is replaced by a soft pine smell that the lysol marketers only dream about. Our sweet cat is a freaked out pile of fur hiding in the basement and my new husband and I are warm and cozy under a pile of flannel sheets and down comforters. It's pretty nice.

When we ripped out the carpet in the rooms, the floors looked great with the exception of the front bedroom, half of which is over the porch. Now that the porch has settled, there's a noticeable grade that's been covered with plywood and makeshift shims. Ken spent two hours last night with a crowbar and hammer trying to remove it. And he got halfway through it before he realized that a 2 ft wide hole had been cut underneath by the previous owners. Crap. That means the floor actually needs to be replaced. Meaning rip out the floors down to the supports, put in a new subfloor and then the new wood floor. Two parts with two options:

Part 1: Where to replace
Replace only the sloped part in the room and have a visible line down the middle. Or cut it at the entrance to the door and make the room look consistent.

Part 2: Wood choice
Second part is that old growth fir is hard to find now even though it was common back in 1910. Henry (the floor refinisher) found a place to get it, but it won't be here for a few weeks. You can put in new growth fir, which is noticably lighter and color and it would be done sooner.

What would you do? I think we're leaning towards replacing the whole room and using the old growth fir. Do it right. Just stinks because the old boards can't be salvaged because the wood's too soft. I hate that.

We can't move in furniture until Thanksgiving (after the floors have been finished and coated), but we've started moving boxes from the storage unit to the basement and larger furniture to the garage. It's taking forever and by the time we get home from work, eat dinner and start working, it's already late. We're getting there though. It will feel awesome to get rid of the storage unit, probably next week.

So for tonight, it's back to the floor. Lent comes at 7 for a long weekend. We've set him up with his own sweet mattress on the dining room floor. Only the best for our guests.

Seahawks game on Sunday!

-L

We're In......sort of?

Loaded up the truck while Lisa was at work yesterday afternoon. Around 5:00, went to the house to pick up the keys from our realtor only to find that the tenants still had crap laying around. Dressers, trash in the backyard, etc. They ended up coming by and took the dressers. They're making a dump run this afternoon. So then the house is all ours. That is, after the flooring guys get done.

We ripped up the carpet last night and this morning. Removing the carpet is the easy part.....removing the tack strips and padding staples is a bitch and a half. That's the real time consumer. Helpful hint.....use a hammer and a putty knife for the tack strips. It works wonders especially if you're looking to permanently expose the flooring below. But then we exposed a little "hidden condition", a lovely term contractors use to justify extra charges. The flooring under the carpet in the front bedroom settled with the front porch over the last 100 years. There's a bow in the floor over the front wall of the house. So what did the previous owners do to fix it? They nailed plywood down to help level off the floor and then put the carpet down. UGH!!

We stopped at 2:00am last night, slept and then finished around 9:30 this morning. Flooring guys showed up 5 minutes after that and started going to town. But not before talking to us about the options for the front bedroom. Basically, we need to replace the flooring in there in order to get a level floor. Maybe 1/2 the room, maybe the entire room. We'll see when we rip it up. No big surprise to me. We're doing it one way or another to get it done right.

So that's our project for this evening. OH! and we haven't unpacked the truck. That's still sitting in our driveway. Fun, fun, fun.

-Ken

What a day

I left the hotel at 7 this morning to go to work. What? That's not like me. Was thinking about the house and the gels I had to run and just wanted to get going. Found out I contaminated my sterile cells (most likely; will know better tomorrow). Ken and I had a bet going. If I could make it a month, he couldn't call me a dirty person. Oh well. I lasted six days. Crap. Am about to start running gels, which takes a little over 3 hours. Meanwhile, Ken took the afternoon off to take care of Hughes (since his boss is allergic to cats and won't allow sweet chubface in the office). So Ken went to pack up the truck while I'm in the lab and ok about it. Weird. This is the twilight zone. I can't wait to go home though. Plugged the new address into trimet.org's website and they tell me what bus to take and that it will take me 37 minutes from lab door to front door, waiting and walking included. I'm excited, but nervous, still in denial that we have a place, antsy and full of anticipation. Will the house be filthy? Will everything be ok? We just found out that the owner is refusing to pay for hydrojetting the drains (one of the things that we agreed on in our contract). The seller's agent won't cover it either. Our realtor said he'd pay for it for us, but that doesn't seem right. The seller said she's lost enough money on this house and doesn't want to lose any more. I'm just tired of dealing. I don't care. Luckily I have Ken who does. I just want to get in, rip up some carpet and eat pizza on the living room floor.... hopefully while it's raining outside (i can't believe I'm wishing away the blue sky). It is the twilight zone.

IT'S A GO!

Just got off the phone with the title company. The seller came up with the dough and they're recording with the county today. We get keys at 5:00pm today!! WOOHOO!!!

Now, for a crazy night of shuffling back and forth between the house and storage unit. UGH!! One more move. The light at the end of the tunnel is near....let's just hope there isn't a train on the other side of that light.

Hardwood floor guys come tomorrow to start sanding down. Should be an interesting week. Can't wait for it to be done.

Ken

Still no word, part deux

We haven't heard a peep. No "she went" or "didn't go". No "you have the house today/tomorrow". We know nothing. Tried calling & left a message to no avail. The Hilton is booked solid for tonight; we packed the car last night with all of our plants and stuff because we're moving tonight.... either into our house or another hotel. We just don't know which yet. So frustrating. Hughes is going to work today. He needs to bring home the bacon. Actually, we have to check out of the hotel at 1, so Ken's actually taking him to work today in the afternoon. This is ridiculous. I'm ready to be settled.

-L

Still no word

I'm antsy.

-L

My hand hurts.....

....from signing and initialing all of those title and loan documents. UGH! It took about 45 minutes to get through it all. But our part is now done. Just waiting on the seller to sign the documents and come up with the rest of the cash that she owes.

Interesting side note, we found out yesterday that the seller is actually going to be losing money on this deal. Apparently there was a clause in her loan refinancing deal that states if she pays the loan off early, a $7,500 penalty will be imposed. A great way for the banks to ensure they get their money. Good thing we don't have any clause like that. Just something to look out for when you're researching lenders.

Hopefully all will be in order for us to move in tomorrow evening. We can finally move out of the storage unit which is quite full as you can see. And this was before we had the refrigerator and other misc. things from Newberg in it.

Where's the purge button?

-Ken

House Pictures are Here!

Thanks to Ken's ingenuity, we were able to download the interior pictures of the new house sooner than we thought. We move in Tuesday. Can hardly wait.

The price of coffee

Taking a coffee break is pretty common. Used to do it in Tucson by trekking down to the hospital to grab a latte for around 3 bucks -- cheap compared to most coffee establishments around town. Just went to get coffee here at OHSU. Walked up two flights of stairs to the neuroscience building's very own little 'cafe' called "The Synapse." Clean and lots of tables and chairs. Away from sick people. Read a complimentary daily paper while I drank my double caramel latte for 2.25. It's sunny here today too. Wow.

Finally!!!!!!!

It's about time I downloaded the photos from the camera. Here are some pics from the Church's house in Newberg. The first is a sunset from the other day. Made me think of Tucson's sunsets. The second is a picture of fog in the valley. Very cool sight.





More to come, probably on Ofoto.

You HAVE to be kidding me?????

"Football is NOT a contact sport. Dancing is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport."
-Vince Lombardi

Watching the Viking/Colts game last night made me fully realize that a work of art has been lost in the NFL. The Art of Tackling. It's pathetic to watch so called professional defensive football players go out there and make complete fools of themselves. I've seen kickers do a better job of tackling. (By the way, I loved the unnecessary roughness call on the Indy place kicker Hunter Smith last night trying to tackle a kick returner. You don't see that very often).

Anyway, my Vikings lost and I'm beginning to think that Coach Tice is not the person who should be running this team. He seems like a nice guy who wants to do the right thing. But come on, what is going on with that defense. I know they were playing the Colts and didn't have Moss, but they should have won that game.

Anyway, enough ranting. Time to get to work and start earning that raise I got yesterday. Oh yeah, I got a raise yesterday after only one week on the job. our agreement was to review my salary at each pay period until we reach the level at which I wanted to be originally. Next one in two weeks. WOOHOO!!!!!!!!!

I'm with him

We've been working a week. Ken's boss called him into his office yesterday... and gave him a raise. Crazy. I like Portland.

-L

When you have nothing better to do

There have been some protests here in Portland this past week regarding the recent Presidential elections. Seems that some people around here aren't too happy with President Bush being re-elected and decided to march through downtown Portland declaring that the election had been rigged and demanding a re-vote.

Now, I understand that losing an election, a very close election, can be heartbreaking. I understand that people can be subject to post-election depression. I can even comprehend some people's inquiries, and INQUIRIES only, into the immigration policies of foreign countries. But for Christ sake people, there's no need to violently parade down your city's streets demanding a re-vote, trying to take over the tracks of a Tri-Met's red line (the local light rail) just to make that statement. That's just downright absurd.

Some of the local news coverage of these protests is quite lacking as well and, I think, bears some mention with regard to the attitudes/views of these protesters. A reporter for the KATU/2 news was at the rally and asked people why they were protesting. Here are some of the hightlights (and I'm paraphrasing here):

1) "Because 45 million votes were recorded electronically and without a paper trail. This election was stolen by the Republicans and there should be another election to decide the Presidency." OK???? Now there is some validity to the lack of security when it comes to electronic-paperless voting, that's for sure. Heck, some 3,500 votes were 'lost' in North Carolina because the machines couldn't handle that many ballots. But to deduce that the Republicans "stole" the election because of this is ridiculous.

2) "I'm here because I woke up and had nothing better to do. Really, I had NOTHING better to do". If this statement doesn't discredit the intent of the protest, I don't what does.

Bottom line, the protestors wanted it to be heard that they were unhappy with the election results. Well, so were 56,000,000 other Americans. You casted your vote, you were heard, either protest peacefully or don't protest at all. I understand you're upset, but you looked like a bunch of sore losers out there.

You can buy everything online

I love the internets. You can do anything. This morning I bought all my stamps for the holidays and beyond from the USPS online -- no lines, huge selection and they deliver them to you in two days for a dollar. Wow.

Also, Rachel has told me for a while now about the produce delivery her house gets. Organic produce grown locally that is delivered to your door once a week (or biweekly, if you prefer). Items change weekly and the box contents are posted online so you can change out items you don't like. Wow. Although I love going to the grocery store and farmer's markets, this option is amazing because it forces me to try new things and cook with ingredients with which I may not be familiar. Kale? Chard? Fuyu persimmons? Unfortunately (and not surprisingly), Tucson didn't offer this kind of luxury. The heat... the desert... not very conducive to leaving a wide array of fresh local produce on your doorstep (for the record though, Tucson does have some good farmer's markets). Behold -- Portland has produce delivery (actually three different companies here do it) and is yet another reason why I'm enjoying this town so much.

We'd probably get the small box -- $28 -- more expensive than what I typically buy in produce, but the convenience (imagine my happiness of coming home to a big box of produce that I can use for dinner that night and beyond), quality and novelty make up for it. Hip hop hooray for Burke talking me into the greatness of covered porches in Portland. Enjoying a beer and persimmon on the front porch. Oooooh.

Yet another reason I can't wait to get into the house.

-L

The storage unit is our home

We're moving out of the Church's place in Newberg this Saturday. It has been wonderful and so nice of them to let us stay there for so long as we transitioned to Oregon. But moving out is a good thing and we're looking forward to it -- because it means moving into our new house is right around the corner. Eight days to be exact. In preparation, Ken and I took the rest of our stuff to the storage unit this past weekend. CDs, my dutch oven, extra clothes, shoes, books, the dining room table that was in the garage, bike, sideboard, Ken's drafting table, etc. Purge baby purge. Wow. Now all of our eggs are in one Uhaul storage room basket. We took a picture of it, but of course the camera-to-computer cable is in a box in the back of the storage unit. Curses. All we have left is a backpack for each of us, lots of friends (i.e. plants) and Hughes. I did all our cooking last night for the rest of the week... dinners, prepped stuff for lunches, etc. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's not coming fast enough, but I can see the light.

-L

Plasmids and protein and preps, oh my

It's friday, meaning I have completed my first week of work at the new job. Even though the general focus of this lab is brain and hormones, which is the same thing I was doing in Tucson, the techniques and approaches are so different. I haven't done a western blot before let alone anything remotely similar to transfection, real-time PCR and generating clones. Ah, but alas. Here I am in a lab that does all of this meaning I have to learn it to ask the questions that I want to.

But what's the point of learning any of this new stuff if you hate your project?

Typically, labs are funded by the government through a peer-reviewed grant process. Do good work, write it up, publish it and then write a big summary to explain why what you're doing is important and that you have the science to back it up. If you can convince a group of people giving out money (and they have enough to go around), ta-da, you get money to do your work. Seems easy enough, but that also means that professors try to get people to do the experiments that they've proposed to do in the grant (else they won't get their money next time when it's time to resubmit). So imagine my happy surprise and delight when the project that I proposed (my dream project) actually got approved by the head boss (rather than "lisa, screw what you want to do, here's what I want you to do"). Happy day. Happy day.

So now I'm learning all these weird new techniques about cell culture and molecular biology. Putting them into my gestalt and reconciling the big picture I learned from Gary with the more narrow focus I'm learning here. I feel like I'm two again. Constantly asking why and not knowing any different than what is being taught to me. It will be a long process to understand all of this, but at least I'm making headway. I get my own cells next week -- kind of like the 'egg baby' we all had to do in HS to see if we can actually take care of things. Should be interesting.

In other news, the furniture refinishing is going well. The dining room table is stained and has it's first coat of tung oil. The sideboard cabinet is my love-hate project because spray-and-wash was spilled on it by the previous owner which penetrated the wood. I tried sanding out the top, but apparently it bleached the wood and made it impermeable to stain. So now my beautifully sanded table has three lighter spots that talk to me and remind me that I botched it. Curses. Oh well. Ken's been sanding his drafting table and will tung oil it this weekend. So happy the weather has been nice and we'll get to do this all before we get into the house. There's a home depot down the road and I've already bought three cans of stain, 1 jar of wood putty and a big bottle of tung oil. Hmm. and we're not even into the house yet. I love it though. We can't wait.

TGIF
-L

At long last...

Here are the pictures of the house you've been asking about. Many thanks to Hawkins for taking and sending us the pictures.

These bottom three pictures are the east and west sides of the house, respectively. The bottom one is looking west towards downtown. Just out of view (to the left) is the coffee shop. Our bustop will be right around the corner. The hill you see in the background is right near where Lisa works.

Can't wait.
-L

Fashion-ably inept!!!!!!!!!!

My friend Eddie used to say (and still says) that the first thing people notice when they meet you is your shoes. I always used to think, "What the heck is he talking about?". Well, something occured to me today while making a short shopping trip on my 'lunch' break. How is it possible that a 31 year old (ouch, did I write that??) professional male hadn't purchased a pair of brown shoes in his life until today. I think everyone I know has had a pair of brown shoes at some point in their life, including childhood. I truly can't remember EVER wearing a pair (with the exception of my hiking boots). It may not seem too weird to anyone else, perhaps just to me. Nonetheless, there's a new pair of brown Skechers in the car waiting to go home. WOOHOO!!!!!!!

I'm starting to settle in at work. Had a sit down with the two head honchos here and I'm getting a project that's very similar to the stuff I used to do in NYC, roofing. One of the guys made it explicitly clear to me that this is a project for which no one in the office can provide me support. No one here has the expertise. He also made it clear that this is an important project for our biggest client. Should any project with this client go south, the firm is done.....literally. Should it prove successful, we'll be great. Yikes, pressure is on already.

Oddly enough, I have no worries about the project. This kind of stuff is easy. Am I overly confident? I don't think so, just very confident in my abilities on these types of projects.

What throws up the red flag to me is putting all of your eggs in one basket. Relying that much on one client is incredibly risky. And then claiming that if one project goes south with this client, they won't hesitate to drop us is a bit alarming, but it also keeps you on your toes. We'll see how it goes. I guess that's part of my responsibilities, expanding our expertise and client base. For now, they've placed a lot of trust in me and that's something to which I'm completely accustomed.

The First Day

Overall, it went well. Got a new email account (that I won't be using except for work stuff), new ID card, signed up for new keys, W4, HIPAA training, direct deposit stuff, etc. Had my first DNA plasmid vs chromosome talk too. Wow. I don't know much about molecular biology at all. This is going to be a big change. Looking forward to learning all the new stuff, but nervous because I don't have a background in any of this stuff (not even from classes). The only similarity is that we both work on estrogen and the brain. venn diagram overlap = very small in terms of techniques and scope. Alas. Tomorrow is another day.

Ken's coming to pick me up now. Don't know how his day went yet. Looking forward to a glass of wine. Or three. Ooh, and playing with my newest craigslist purchase... an old sideboard table that I bought yesterday which I sanded and restained last night. Tonight is the tung oil and maybe staining the table from last week that we stripped. Hooray. I love fixing old furniture.

Anxious for the election tomorrow. I just want to know.

-L