Dawn and John

Now Where Was I?

2009-03-29T20:15:00.006-05:00

Oh Yes. My Birthday, part III.

Not only do most people's birthday only last one day, and two celebrations are rare, but somehow we managed to make a third trip part of my birthday celebrations. A second trip to Vegas. We had been planning a trip to Vegas kind of half-heatedly, then I signed up for emails from the Bally's Casino group. They sent a me an offer of $37 for a Friday and a Saturday night. $74 for a weekend, tax included. How could we not go?

This trip was much less stressful then our first, which we took on as part of our trip west to move out here. This time we took our time strolling through the casinos seeing what each had to offer, and getting tips from my sister on what to do.

One of the things we did do was go to the discount tickets window, there are a number of them on the strip and one on Freemont street. We scored tickets for The Blue Man Group and Madam Tussaud's (sp?) wax museum. The dummies are a little shocking to see in real life, to see the work they've put into them. In real life, you wouldn't be fooled by them, but in the right light, the right picture does make it look as if you are standing there. There was only one instance where there was a "pro" photographer insisting he take our picture (with Barack Obama.) They wanted to charge so much for the picture though, mostly to spite them, we snuck back in through the exit, and took our own picture.

If you've not seen he Blue Man Group, you really should. It's parts rock and roll, experimental theater, stage magic and audience participation. It's tough to describe it otherwise, but while Dawn, Sara and I walked out of the theater excited and elated, other were feeling like they'd been hoodwinked.

We also went out to the Red Rocks Canyon just outside of Vegas. The rocks a wonderful shade of earthy red, and are great for rock climbing. But, it was cool and windy on the day we went, a day that turned into overcast, windy, and with hail falling from the sky. That did not stop us from getting out to see the seasonal waterfall.

The rest of the trip? Stays in Vegas.

My Birthday Part 2

2009-02-20T00:01:00.005-06:00

So most people's birthdays only last one day, but somehow my birthday became the excuse for three weekend worth of fun. Weekend one was Disneyland, weekend two: Sea World, San Diego.

Sea World is not one of the theme parks I'd been to before this. I had some idea what I was in for, I figured I'd see some a killer whale named Shamu, for example, but other then that, I didn't know what I'd get.

Sea World is a mix of amusement park, animal shows, zoo, aquarium, and celebration of things Budwiser.

The first animal show we went to didn't even involve any sea life. The have a show where they rescue animals from the pound, and have trained them to do tricks. Dogs and cats, running around in all sorts of zany ways, hopping, jumping ropes, running obstacle courses. The most amusing animal for me running the course was the pig though. Rather then jump over the brick wall, he went through it, with a crash sound effect.

Of course we saw Shamu. I did learn that Shamu is the stage name of the whales used in the show. There once was a Shamu, and the name is too recognizable to not keep it going, so each park has a Shamu. The show we saw, called Believe, had a story line, and encouraged us to protect the ocean. Also, the whale jumps way up out of the water, flips around, and occasionally splashes the audience.

We also saw the Budwiser Clydesdales. I'm guessing they are a big park sponsor, because a team of them is kept there, and I think they occasionally pull the cart around, but we didn't wait for that, just tried to get a little face time with the horses.

There's many opportunities for interaction with animals. You can have a swimming experience with dolphins, feed various animals, take time to pet them too. We got to pet rays, and feed seals, or sea lions or both, but didn't wait around the time it would've taken to pet or feed dolphins.

We did also see a dolphin show. I'll admit it, I was a sucker for the gimmicks used in the show. It was no Shamu Slam, but it was fun in a different way.

If you do go, protect your food and small children from the birds around the park. The aves are not shy about stealing stuff.

I thought we lived in San Diego...

2009-02-16T00:33:00.005-06:00

Well that's the theory anyway. We might be living in Seattle based on the weather lately. Apparently John and I brought the cold, wet nastiness to San Diego this year. Everyone keeps telling us that the weather we currently experiencing is the strangest its been in years. I'm not so sure. Now highs in the 50s aren't bad for February and are downright fantastic in some parts of the country but here where the beach is just moments away and where they kept telling me it was warm, sunny and beautiful all year long, it's just downright odd. Weather complain now over.

Work is going ok. We now have a technician to fill the gap until the other technician from Texas arrives. Since handing over my ordering duties I've been able to focus on getting some science done which has been fabulous. As always, there is more that needs to be done and I should be working more, but I think things are going well for now. The meetings every week with the big bosses are a little frightening. I am use to trying to please just one boss. Having never been very successful at that in the past 7 or so years, I now have the added anxiety of trying to please 4-5 people.

On the home front, the place is quite cleaned up and starting to look like we actually live here. I don't think I'll ever think of it as my home but it now has John and Dawn touches on it. I've been a little crafty lately so I think in my next post I'll show some of my craftiness. Nothing really that great but not putting in 10 hour days at work 7 days a week, makes me need something to do :)

My extra time has also giving me an opportunity to start reading again. I am currently obsessed with mystery novels. I'm not sure where this is coming from but I seem drawn to them especially the ones that are in a series so that I can follow the character through their unlikely lives as amateur sleuths. Right now I'm really enjoying the Goldy Culinary Mysteries by Diane Mott Davidson, The Coffeehouse Mysteries by Cleo Coyle, and Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper by Elaine Viets. I've read most of the Hannah Swenson Mysteries by Joanne Fluke but their is a love triangle with the main character, Hannah, and the two men, Norman and Mike, that she seemingly has hanging on her every word. Now I realize that the idea that one woman could live in a town where there has been multiple murders in less than two years and apparently law enforcement is so bad that the local cookie shop owner is the only one able to figure out whodunit is pretty unrealistic, however, the idea that two men would propose and be "ok" with the fact that this woman is dating both of them and refuses to marry either one because she just can't choose is beyond impossible. I will probably finish the series because I'm a completist but I'll shake my head through the whole thing.

Also in our free time we've been all over the place it seems. I'll leave John to do the details of our recent voyages because he does a much better job with it than I do but I can give the reader's digest version. We went to Vegas to visit Sara again. This time we stayed on the Strip at Harrah's and had a great time. John was lucky and won back all the money I lost :) We also got a little outdoors scenery in as well with a visit to Red Rock's Canyon where it proceeded to hail as we went on a hike. It was definitely a memorable visit :)

Last weekend we went sea kayaking in La Jolla Shores. Now for those of you who might not know, I am a Southern Atlantic Ocean girl. The Pacific is not the Atlantic. It is cold. So sea kayaking involved wet suits. Which the deal I made with John and Rachelle was that noone was allowed to laugh or make fun of me in the wetsuit, but overall we all looked rather silly so we all ended up laughing at ourselves. Wetsuits don't do much for the overall physique but add on helmets and life jackets and let's just say the outfit is something to behold :) We had a great time with our quite cute guide checking out the famous 7 caves of La Jolla Shores.

For this weekend as you may know, I am not the hugest fan of Valentine's Day so John and I had our traditionally boycott of Valentine's Day by having Beer and Pizza with TV. This year with my joy of Weight Watchers we made our own pizza instead of Domino's but it was pretty darn good anyway. I've also gotten it into my head that I need to run a 5K and 10K before I turn 31 this September so I tortured John this weekend by going out running with me. The Wii Fit says that I can run 6 miles in 30 minutes. However, in the real world it takes me 20 minutes to run/walk 1.5 miles. So I've got some work to do. Also this weekend we went to the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. It is a nice aquarium but it is hard to not compare it to the GA Aquarium. We had a nice time though getting out and about. We're determined to explore San Diego as much as we can and I think we are making some major headway :)

Maybe if I blogged more often my posts wouldn't go on forever. Hmmm...have to think about that for awhile :)

Let's Jump To My Birthday Part 1

2009-02-14T23:20:00.006-06:00

My birthday this year got spread over three weekends. This post is about the actual day of my birthday, January 10th.

On my birthday, We Went To Disneyland! It wasn't the real original plan, I was thinking we were going to go to the zoo. Turns of Disneyland offers free admission on your birthday. But only on the day of your birthday. No rain checks. So, instead we got out of bed and drove to Anaheim to go to Disneyland. I had been to Walt Disney World before, as had Dawn, but this was our first trip to Disneyland. I think I spent most of the day in wide-eyed amazement, just surprised by that mere fact that I was in Disneyland. I know, it seems stupid to some, but growing up in WI before air travel was $200 a ticket. you know not like it is now, going to Disney was a once in a life time experience. Just getting to go to the park twice in my life time was what I thought was pretty cool. Now knowing that Disneyland is only 90 minutes from where I live. Well, it feels like nothing can stop me now.

So, yea, on this trip, rather then focus on the rides, I did spend most of the time just looking at things and thinking about how much time and effort has been put into these things. Like walking around an elaborate movie set, because you know it's not "real" but there it is in front of you.

Not that we completely ignored the rides, we did go on the safari boat ride, and splash mountain, (among others,) but really, I think our favorite was the teacups. We took many pictures, I think these are our favorites.

We spent nearly all day there, visiting each of the major park sections, I don't think we left until near closing time.

We also learned that we like churros and even tried to re-create favorite movie scenes with them. Here we are doing our impersonation of "Lady and the Tramp."
Yes. We are wearing mouse ears. They'll even stitch your name on your hat.

I also think if you were making a noir disney movie, this would be a great closing shot.

Christmas, here there and everywhere.

2009-01-31T20:12:00.004-06:00

Christmas present opening is done with my family on Christmas eve. Also in our house we take turns opening presents. There's an orderly process. First, the ages of everyone in the room are determined. Then the youngest person in the room picks a gift, (not their own,) and presents it to the recipient. The recipient opens it, and we all ooh and ah. Then the next youngest picks a gift, and so on and so on. The advantages of this system is no-one's gift, either as a recipient or as a giver is overlooked. The disadvantage of this system is it can take an long time to get through all the gifts (depending on the number of people, and number of gifts per people. You do the math.) But it also leads to a number of running in-jokes, referring to monkey paws, pictures of Dave or the "or you can have box number 2" tradition.

We all received a number of very cool gifts this year, but the best part was the gift seen multiple times in the evening. Let me show you:

That's right it was a Merry Wii Chirstmas.

The biggest disadvantage of for us on this night is the dreaded get up before you even get to sleep to catch a plane to see the other half of the family. But, this is our tradition and we love and build on our tradition every year.

In previous years, we got to go Atlanta, and drive to Chapin, SC. This year, we got to fly all the way to Columbia, SC, and had chauffeur service (Thanks Claude!) pick us up and get us back to their house. Where, in also a growing tradition, they let us sleep before going for the gifts.

The tradition there is Christmas Day opening of presents, with a distribution of presents by Claude, and everyone getting a little pile of presents in front of them and the chaos of opening everything all at once, with some oohing and aahing over particularily good gifts. There are traditions here as well, including Dawn, Tanya and Rosie getting pajamas. All in all, a good time.

So, Let's Jump to Christmas

2009-01-28T00:32:00.003-06:00

So, having been in San Diego just a few weeks, we head back east for Christmas. The trip itinerary this time includes Milwaukee, Chapin, and Dayton. We also had stopovers in Phoenix and Charlotte. We left on a very nice San Diego day. Notice the lack of jackets in this photograph. I was warm in the sweater I was wearing. But, it is family we must see, so onto Milwaukee we go. Through Phoenix. In Phoenix, we saw Rapper and Actor Ice-T passing though, with his wife. It didn't really hit me who it was until he was about even with me. So, no photographs, no autographs. Besides I wouldn't know what to say to him if I saw him. I'm no big fan of his rapping, or acting, so we'll just add him to the list of famous people I've seen in airports. The list now includes two: Ice-T and Emmanuelle Lewis.

The holidays at my family's house includes the cookie day tradition. The day when we gather to make cookies and don the cooking articles of clothing my mom prepares. We've had aprons, hats, and this year, oven mitts. Some cookies get made every year, others are experiments that sometimes become traditions. This year was the first year in Peg and Dave's new house, and one of the biggest cookie days we've had. We greatly missed the presence of my sister, but my sister in law's sister and her husband came this year. We were also joined by Dave's niece and fiancé.

Other things that go along with cookie day includes sugar highs, silliness,

cookies poorly decorated by John. (One year I was mixing colors and managed to make grey frosting.)

We also had lots of snow, and that gave me and Dawn opportunity to play in the snow. We did try sledding, but the snow, the day we decided to go out was too wet. We did manage to snap a few cute pictures though.

Three posts in two days? Must be a Record....

2009-01-18T16:31:00.005-06:00

Having enjoyed a night in Las Vegas, we woke as on time as we ever did the next day to meet Sara, who provided breakfast for us and introduced us to all of her co-workers. Apparently she set up a game where the had to guess when I came in. I think one person said they guessed right, everyone else, not so good. (Though I'd think the game wouldn't be that hard. I imagine there place, for breakfast has mostly regulars, so spotting the guy who's never been there before should've been clue number one.) Admittedly, Sara and I do not look much a like, so that would've been the biggest challenge.

Honestly, there's not much to the pictures to see on this day. The only one really worth looking at is the arrival in California picture, which also serves as the last self portrait in the serise.

So, we made it to California, even made it into our apartment. The first thing we did is go to the beach right? Nay! There was unpacking to do, things to get arranged. we hardly got any free time until well after we got here, a story I might save for another time, because it's boring. And if there's one thing you don't want to detract from one boring story, it's another. (I know, I've got a boring story about a broken down Mazda in Mississippi that bores the pants off 'em.) So really there was a lot of running around before we finally came to the real completion of our Westward journey, putting our feet in the Pacific.

So, let's all pretend that these pictures were taken on November 1st, though really it was December 14th. This though, really did mark what we considered the symbolic end of our westward journey.

By the way, the water was freezing. Our feet went numb after taking these pictures. But we had done it. We had gone all the way across the country, from Fernandina Beach, Fl, to San Diego CA. Dawn also managed to snap these amazing photos from the cliffs near UCSD and the Torrey Pines beach.

Where have I been?

2009-01-18T15:24:00.003-06:00

Alright John is right (that's right I said it). I haven't blogged in forever. I guess the mess of moving, settling in, getting work going, Thanksgiving, Christmas and John's birthday have sorta of overwhelmed me. And I'm not one to want to talk about messes until they are hopefully far behind me. So here goes the update since the last time we chatted:

We went to Grandma and Grandpa's for Thanksgiving which was great and sad all at the same time. It was nice to go somewhere that felt familiar but it was harder to leave it behind then ever before. I mean before it was 2.5 hours away and now we're a really long plane ride away. After Thanksgiving sales were only so-so this year, but with the economy stinking it up, there was not the huge crowds as usual which was much appreciable albeit sad for the survival of the stores.

Back at work things were coming along with the setup. It seems like we keep hitting plateaus in the unpacking. There is still so much to get done and every time I turn around there is something that we need or are missing. It is enough to drive anyone insane. One crappy part of the event was my project that I was working with was a sponsored research project sponsored by a company. Due to the worsening economy, the company decided our project would be part of their downsizing. Well that just sucked to say it as politely as possible. Luckily my bosses are founders of another start-up company that is being incubated inside UCSD. Me and my other now jobless cohorts (all of which just moved to San Diego) lost our jobs on 12/17 and had an interview on the 18th with the other company. What a great start to the Christmas holiday, huh?

Christmas was a crazy time as always. We continue to do the travel everywhere trip which is great and crappy at the same time. We love seeing both sides of the family but the traveling does wear us out and we always wish we could spend more time with everyone. It was a great holiday though. It was a hard holiday with my side of the family with my Aunt Alma's passing. Christmas was always the time that we visited with her and it was hard not getting to see her this holiday. We were able to visit with some of my extended family that I don't get to see much of and that was just great.

We returned to the Cali with a little nervousness of what was going to happen with my future employment. Our New Year's we celebrated at home watching the ball drop on CNN because they delay the NY celebration out here. So we celebrated New Year's at 9pm instead of midnight. I guess I'm still stuck a little bit in the east coast :)

On Jan 2nd I had a second interview for the other company and luckily I am now gainfully employed again (YEA!). I never thought I would be taking the risks that I am with working for a start-up company. I mean, I'm always the one who takes the safe route and tries not to rock the boat but here I am always thinking of what is going to happen if the company doesn't make it because in the current state we're in you never know. Hopefully I'll have this job longer than 4 months :)

John's birthday arrived on Jan 10th and we took off for Disneyland. The deal is you get in free on your birthday and so being that neither of us had ventured there before we thought it would be fun. To our great luck, someone was selling their 3rd day of a 3-day pass for $20 so we went to Disneyland for $20 total. It was great fun even though we didn't get a chance to see everything. I guess that just means we have to go again (my birthday maybe?). John got a button that said it was his birthday so everyone at the park and even some other people just walking around would say "Happy Birthday John! Are you having a good time?" It was just so cool. I do have to say that Disneyland was quite different than Disney World. Not bad, just different. Also we got to try out churros for the first time which is apparently the big thing to eat there. It is basically a fried doughnut stick dipped in a cinnamon-sugar mix. I have to say that now I would like to be a connoisseur of these delicious delicacies although I don't know if my current Weight Watchers points will be able to include them on a regular basis.

So then this week we've been trying to get in the swing of labwork. Things are starting to get going and we tried out the new fancy schmancy new microscope in lab that is AWESOME (totally cool nerd toy). I will hopefully post a picture of the cool pictures you can get from it. It is just way cool.

On Saturday (1/17) we headed to Sea World with Rachelle and Anne. Getting the yearly pass (which is the same price as getting a one day pass for So Cal residents) was so worth it because we leisurely took in the park. There was aquariums that we missed but hey we'll just come back some other day and check those out. The churros at San Diego are not as good as the churros at Disneyland (my taste testing continues). Also the funnel cakes are not nearly as good as those you can get at the NE FL county fair from the CMS band. I have high standards for my Weight Watchers points and I was disappointed. I'm guessing my weigh-in this week is not going to go so well :(

Well that brings us up to today which has been a lot of still trying to get the house in order. The apartment is livable but could be better organized and we still need to get things off our patio (we have gotten 2 notices to get the amp and chinchilla supplies off of it-I'm thinking the next notice will have a fine inside). We're off to Target to try and find some organization inspiration where I am sure that I will spend more than $100 since apparently I am unable to leave that store without spending a small fortune. Off to spend the little bit of money we have :)

Slowest developing still active blog?

2009-01-18T00:37:00.003-06:00

Anyway, Now, what seems like a long time ago, Dawn and I went to Vegas on our Cross country adventure. It was Halloween night, and I was excited. Halloween is one of my favorite hollidays, and I like to dress up for it. I expected Vegas to go all out for Halloween, and honestly, I was a little disappointed. Not that many of the tourists there didn't dress up, it's more about how there was not much imagination to their costume choices. I one point I thought if I see another slutty Nurse/Dorothy/Alice, I may just lose it.

Anyway, on to the picture part of the blog:

Please note, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so that will severely limit the photos I'm going to show you.

Me and my sister.

Me and Dawn.

The Chihuly ceiling at the Belagio. I think everyone takes this picture.

The Old New Frontier. It's not lit and this is the dead of night. It took the steady hand of Dawn to capture the picture, and a little editing in iPhoto to bring out the image. I like this photo because it really shows the Frontier's vintage. Look at the "cowboy" style in the Frontier name, the diamonds leading up the sign. The peculiar "r" at the top. At one point this was the height of cool. Or maybe not. Vegas isn't really on the forefront of design, but does an excellent job of copying others. (The New York, New York, Paris, Venetian, MGM Grand. Not new ideas just scaled down cut and pastes of others.) Anyway, it stands in front of an empty lot now. We'll see what fills it in.
I'll let you guess what lead to this photo,

Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon more 66 and Las Vegas.

2008-12-18T01:31:00.003-06:00

Flagstaff, seems to be a cool little hip town up there in Arizona, a little historic downtown with an Amtrak station, and some roadside attractions, such as the giant Muffler Man Lumberjack.It seems like a cool place to spend a weekend, a week, or a few years. But for us, on our westward journey, it’s only a one night stop over. It also is our access point to the Grandcanyon. Because we were again pressed for time after another late start, a decision was made to only do the south rim, and approach it from the east and head west along the park road.
The canyon itself can only be described in hyperbole, and has been done a million times better by someone else. It is an unbelievable natural feature, as Dawn kept saying, you can take as many pictures as you want, try and describe it to everyone you meet, compare it to your local ditches. (You listening Tallulah?) The only way to really experience it is to actually go there. See it yourself.
The rest of the trip was punctuated with stretches of 66 nostalgia and includes one of the longest continuous stretches of the road from just outside Flagstaff to Kingman.
We saw old steel bridges, Burma Shave signs, (although these replicas were fun to see, apparently the real Burma Shave signs were never placed along 66.)

We also saw a lot of burnt out towns that have seem better days. Dawn also took one of my favorite pictures of the trip. At least of the road trip style pictures.

We did intended to see some other roadside sights in Arizona, but we were in the Dark by Kingman, and had yet to get to Vegas.

Holy Cow how did I forget this?

2008-12-13T21:10:00.003-06:00

Welcome to HolBrook! I don't know what it is either.

We went to Holbrook and Winslow, AZ. Two more stops, along Route 66 famous for different things.

First, was Holbrook. Now, what Holbrook, is famous for is the famous Wigwam Motel with it's Tee-pee motor court rooms.

We got there at 5:30pm, and all the rooms were booked up for the night. Well, if you do want to stay there, I'd make recommend you book your room in advance. There are many classic cars parked in the parking lot, not that they take up too much room, but your stuff in the room might take up all the free space in the room. One nice couple was nice enough to let us peak inside their room. Tiny! I mean really small. There is a bathroom attached, but again, tiny! So, it may be fun for the novelty of it, but it does not seem like it has all the comforts of a modern hotel. The owner seemed like a nice guy too. We overheard him talking to a couple checking in, and he had some stories to tell.

Also: Dinosaurs:

Finally, there's this song by The Eagles, "Take it Easy." One of the lines is "Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...." Well, Winslow has taken advantage of this and created a "Standing on the corner" park. There's even a statue of skinny guy and an acoustic guitar, (the song was written by Jackson Browne) and a flat bed Ford. Though, for picture taking purposes, there's a girl (My Lord!) in a flat bed ford painted in reflection in the mural. Otherwise, Winslow as well looks as if it's seen better days. A few souvenir shops, a few gas stations, and Historic 66. Not much to it.

Then we went to Flagstaff.

Albuquerque to Flagstaff

2008-12-03T00:14:00.005-06:00

This was a day where the pictures tell a lot of the story. I mean, how much can words add to a day when you see a Chevy on Stilts:

Paul Bunyan outside of a Vietnamese restaurant:

Cool roadside signage:

The continental divide:

(Honestly, not that impressive. If not for the sign, we might not have known. But it is a milepost in the journey. I leave the river the basin I've spent most of my life for the west coast.)

Some new to me geology:

A giant Indian, and arrows:

Since Route 66 was decommissioned, there have been various efforts to preserve it in sections. And since the route itself was altered a number of times in it's history, efforts to drive much of 66 can be met with much frustration. Sometimes I-40 is where 66 used to be. Sometimes 66 is a frontage road for I-40, even being marked with Historical 66 signs. Follow that frontage road to long though, and you might get into a road closed/dead end, but see a decaying pavent reeling out in front of you. Other times, a look at a map shows a road branching off from the interstate, and winding away from it, only to intersect it again later, leaving one to wonder, was that 66? The myth of 66, what it means to some in this country, is longer and wider then the road ever was itself. Part of the mystery of the road is compounded in the Historic 66 designation. Historic by who? The last years of 66? 66 itself was re-routed in small and big ways throughout it's history. Trying to drive it today would be impossible, even with the aid of a library of maps and reference points. There is some "americana" sights to see on it, including the "Tee-pee" on the border of NM and AZ.

Keep going westard, and you come to another national landmark. A pair of them really. The Painted Desert:

And the Petrified Forest:

There used to be a lot more petrified wood in the petrified forest. People use to take it away by the cart load full. Train car load full. Can you imagine how much was lost?

These are two places, that like other grand national monuments, do not translate well into photos. I would say though, like Carlsbad this is something worth seeing in a life time. I know it may be hard, the era of family car vacations may be over. Honestly, if we had not moved to California, I would not have taken the time so see these things either. But honestly, they are worth seeing.

One more comment about 66 here:

This photo depicts where 66 used to run through the Petrified Forest national monument. Notice what's missing? All the road. It might seem weird to some that I'll decry the lack of a man made structure in a natural monument, but I think it's weird that the decommissioning of 66 in this area meant completely obliterating any trace of the trail rather than saving what some consider a historical landmark.

Carlsbad to Albuquerque

2008-11-23T18:10:00.004-06:00

In the morning after pushing through the west Texas dessert in the middle of the night, we awoke in Calrsbad, NM. (It smells like a fart. Who farted? Carlsbad, NM.) And made our way to Carlsbad Caverns. and it was another trip where we spent way longer in the caverns then we expected to but it's very nice. And easy to do with pets, they have a kennel service, and we kenneled Vicki while we were there.

Carlsbad is definitely a place to see how nature tourism has changed in the last 50 years in America. You can walk down into the caves through the "natural" entrance, or you can do it the "modern" way and take one of the longest singe shaft elevators in the world to get to the bottom. When you exit, you're in the main "lobby" of the caves, with a small souvenir stand, the bathrooms, (they have rock formations inside of them,) and the now defunct cafeteria in the cave.

The cave itself is amazing. Bigger then you can describe. I took a number of pictures, all useing low-light settings to capture some of the scale, but even when you're in side the cave, the size of various rock formations, or spaces between them is difficult to describe, because of the lack of normal things to compare to in your vision.

We were told by a ranger in the 60's and 70's the lighting the cave was much brighter and included many more colored lights. We imagine it must've looked like a SPECTRE headquarters (probably on purpose.) The ranger was also nice enough to use her flash light to point out some unlit formations. The path around the cave was paved, though there were some parts that were not wheelchair accessible, due to steepness of the path angles. Also, if you want to go, I'd say mid-week, off-season in the morning is the time to go. We didn't see more than 20 people in the three hours we were there, so we had plenty of time to photograph the formations on our 2 mile walk.

Leaving Carlsbad, we got stuck in construction traffic, so we decided it was time for the self portrait.

We then drove north toward Albuquerque, and though we stopped in Roswell, the UFO stuff there is was overblown. First, the UFO tourist attractions only take up one side of the street on one block, second, and I thought this was odd, the UFO museum posted, and described various photos and stated that they were fakes and how they were done. Only the most unknown stuff was presented with an air of mystery. Even evidence of the "Roswell Incident" was shown with things to demonstrate the case that it was a weather ballon. Overall, not really worth the stop.

There's not a lot between Roswell and Albuquerque. I knew we'd have to stop for gas, but the map showed three small towns between here and there. Two of them apparently don't exist except on the map and the third's only gas station closed. So, we were white-knuckling it trying to get to I-40 for gas. It was the closest we came to running out of gas on the trip, and though it was evening, and not particularly hot outside, there was no-one else on the road. We turned off all the electronics we could, slowed down some, and watched the odometer turn, and the Garmin tell us how far we were from gas. Thankfully, we made it into Clines Corners. Apparently pushing it it was people do around there, we met three travelers at the stop who did the same thing. After filling up, we made it into Albuquerque without incident. Having had enough adventure for the day, we ordered a pizza, and went to be.

Starting to look like a home

2008-11-22T18:05:00.002-06:00

John and I kicked ourselves in gear and finished almost with setting up the apartment. Mainly the kick in the pants came from wanting some people (Elle and Anna) to come over and have some Wii time and that meant boxes in front of the TV was out of the question. But now it's worth it. Waking up this morning to only 2 boxes in the house (books to sale to local used book store and frames to hang up) was amazing. There is still lots to organize but things are really starting to look up. I've become a huge fan of Ikea. We bought their Billy bookcases to organize all our books and cds. Neither one of us had any idea how many cds we had but after having to go back to buy more shelves to put them on we are now thinking it is a little excessive. We still need to get another shelf to finish out the look but all of the cds, records, and books are displayed. I think this is the first time we've ever been able to do that!

Downgrading to a one bedroom has made us much more aware of what we actually use and what we need. There are some things we won't get rid of but other stuff especially my huge closet of clothes is now significantly less considering John and I now share a space. I won't say I've been the most pleasant about having to get rid of so much but I'm now definitely down to a more livable amount of crap. They always say on all those organization shows on HGTV how if you really love stuff (like collectibles) that you need to pick the ones you really love and display them and not just store them in the attic. So the Piglet collection is now hopefully being enjoyed by someone else out there. I kept a few but I have no room for it and I felt bad about them just sitting in a garbage bag. Maybe this will teach me to be less of a pack rat. I definitely have gone through the toss it, donate it, keep with a fine tooth comb.

The lab is coming along pretty well. Everything is pretty much unpacked and we get balances this coming week. Still need to get the hood hooked up to gas so we can actually get some work done but it's coming along.

So far we haven't gotten to the beach yet but this weekend will be our time. Also the car, driver's licenses and the such to become California residents will be next week. It still feels pretty surreal to be living out here but it should hopefully feel more like home soon.

San Antonio Part II, and Points West

2008-11-14T17:31:00.005-06:00

As we left the Alamo (remember that?) I placed a call to Barney Smith, the proprietor of the toilet lid art museum. Toilet Lids? Yea, it's his folk art medium of choice. Barney was a plumber by trade who one day mounted two pair of deer antlers on a toilet seat, thought that looked pretty good, and his passion (obsession?) was born. Originally, he told his wife he was going to stop at 500, when we were there he was in the 850's. We became part of the collection when we signed the Georgia seat, and put the approximate location of Athens on the map. Each seat has a theme, often dealing with Barney's work, travels, or family, others have sporting event or military themes. Most mark something personally important to Barney,and he can give the story behind any seat you ask about. If you are in San Antonio, and have some time to spend on some funky attractions, the toilet seat museum can't be beat. If you want to see it though, it's open by appointment only, and you need to call Barney Smith at 210-824-7791, because the museum is in his garage.

On the way out of San Antonio we did stop at purportedly the Worlds Largest Boots. We have nothing to compare it too, but we stopped to take some pictures anyway.

We also blew past another muffler man along the freeway.

To get to the next stop, Enchanted Rock, we passed through the town of Fredricksburg, TX, a quaint little town with some interesting architecture.

Enchanted Rock is the largest batholith in Texas. That is, it's a big granite stone, out of place with the rest of the terrain. It's like Stone Mountain in Georgia, only smaller, and without anything carved into it (yet.) Dawn and I were enchanted.

Past enchanted Rock, Dawn had to dodge cows on the road. We stopped to take a picture, but Dawn would not let me pet it.

We passed the afternoon in the plains of west Texas. Arriving at Midland/Odessa for dinner. We pushed on through the night with the guide of the Garmin GPS and the gas fires from the oil pumps crossing into New Mexico and onto Carlsbad.

One more for Barney:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8wMhrC8WU

San Antonio Part I

2008-11-07T00:16:00.003-06:00

So, with heavy hearts, we head out from Bryan, Texas. Our route plan is to avoid extra long days, with stops to see things across the country that we might not get to see otherwise. So, with some help from some online guides, including roadsideamerica.com, we start our trip heading southwest to San Antonio. We knew about the river walk, but didn't know how cute it would be. Guys, take a tip, a walk along the San Antonio river walk can be very romantic.We very quickly dubbed it the Venice of Texas, though others have called it that as well. We ate diner at one of the oldest river walk establishments, a mexican place, with a mariachi band, and ducks that begged for food. Little motorized tour boats would come by, tour guides calling out various sights. Some of the boats were dinner cruises, some were full, others contained a singular tourist. A slow walk up and down the river walk seeing all the nooks and crannies, and a quick shopping trip for souvenirs, and observance of the variety of birds bedding down along the river bank. Well, good except for the bird that pooped on my head.

A good night of rest and on to the Alamo. The Alamo is a little bit of a let down. The building you see in all the pictures is the Alamo mission. Frankly, the the mission building is quite small, like a good sized house. Not much had been done to preserve it though the years, it was used as a storehouse for a long time. Though there is some effort to restore some of the original paintings on the wall, many of the artifacts are if not replicas, articles that were not items from the battle of the Alamo. There's also a lot of rah rah Texas stuff, which is funny because the independent Republic of Texas only for 10 years. But there is a very cool deco style monument to the "Heros of the Alamo" outside the Mission. And let's not forget across the street, the wax museum and Ripley's believe it or not attracts blasting eurodisco music at nine am.

But there was more the San Antonio then the Alamo...

Leaving Bryan

2008-11-05T22:37:00.003-06:00

Yea, I know we have a new President Elect, and we've livid in San Diego for four days now, but still I feel the need to talk about Bryan and College Station some.

It truly is a special place. Different and unique from many places. First off, we found most people there to be friendly. I think that's a by-product of the TAMU. The students and faculty are encouraged to be friendly. Encouraged to say Howdy to each other. Be polite, and helpful. Dawn and I were impressed by the amount of respect the students seemed to have for each other and the school traditions. The 70 days we were there, on campus we saw less then 20 articles of clothing representing other schedules and schools. Not that everyone wore something with TAMU on it, but there was a lot of school spirit.

Now, not everything about the place is wonderful. There isn't a lot to do in terms of nightlife there. But so many things are a drive away, see our posts about the ACL fest for example. The gulf shore was accessible, Houston, and Dallas were close too. Cost of living in town is very good, and we are going to miss the HEB food selection and torillaria. On campus the buildings are not that pretty, but there are some great details on some of the buildings, this being one of my favorites.

In the larger photo, seen on my facebook page, you can see all sorts of animals in the details.

Is it conservative? Oh, yea. But if you work at TAMU, you get a good dose of liberalism too. It's also good to get a reality check every now and then, and remember that not everyone thinks like you. They also had some cool signage around town, including this giant cow.

So, it's not as bad some people might say it is. If you get a chance, you should give the town a shot. It might just be what you're looking for.

In the end Dawn and I are looking forward to our time in California, but will miss the town of B/CS, and the people we leave behind.

WienerFest!

2008-11-03T23:59:00.002-06:00

So, yea, I know I'm already in California, and Dawn's talked about this some, but I want to take a few minutes and talk about the great time we had at Wienerfest in B/CS just before we left. We did not get there in time for the parade, but we did get there in time to see some of the costume contest. I'm going to point out my favorite costumes, though I've long since forgot who the actual winner were.

In no particular order, I got a big kick out of little Bo-Peep and her "Sheep" Dog. I'm amazed the dog puts up with this.

My favorite wiener dog costume is a tie between the Hot Dog that Dawn talks about, and another dog dressed as a horse, with a tiny cowboy attached to his back. I don't have a great shot of it, but when the dog would trot forward, the "cowboy" would rock back and forth like he was riding a bronco. It made me chuckle every time I saw it.
The next best thing at the festival were the wiener dog races. It was so cute to see the little dogs come darting out of the chute, and perhaps even cuter to see the dogs who didn't quite know what was going on kind of tentatively emerge from the chute, and maybe trot to their owners. Of course there were qualifications of dachshund, something about a ratio of leg length to body length, and a maximum hight requirement, I guess to stop people from entering greyhounds or something. There were also different divisions, including seniors, puppies less than one year (perhaps the cutest race ever) and handicapped. Three dogs, one blind, one deaf, and one with a little dog wheelchair, because it could not use it's back legs. People came from all around southeastern Texas to participate, so I hope the shelter had a great fundraiser. (I did put in a bid on an iPod in a silent auction, but lost.)

What's that you want me to make some double entendres of wienerfest? Like it's a sausage party? Well, you were out of luck, as the organizers took most of the best away from me, including tee-shirts saying , "I stroke my wiener every day," and "Ask me to show you my wiener." What more could I do?

Holy cow we're in Cali

2008-11-02T22:27:00.003-06:00

We made it to California! This whole thing is still pretty surreal. I can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that we are now living here. It's just nuts. We've already found Starbucks (there really is one of every corner it seems and one with walking distance from our place) and have spent an exorbent amount of money at Target twice. Whenever I move form some reason I have to go for the Target/Walmart run to get things. The POD doesn't arrive for another few days so we needed some stuff to keep us going until then. We found two grocery stores, one being Ralph's which is essentially west coast Kroger so that is comforting. Today we went to the building where we are going to be working and wondered around trying to find the loading dock. We have to meet the building manager there tomorrow and then the movers to get stuff into the lab. We think we sorta kinda know where it is but aren't super sure. Crossing my fingers that things will work out tomorrow.

The rest of the trip went well. I'll include pics some other time but we went from Albuquerque

to Flagstaff passing through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest Park. The Painted Desert was just great. The Petrified Forest was somewhat sad since there isn't a lot of "forest" left but it was still really cool to see rocks that look like trees :) We then took some time driving on Route 66. It is kind of sad the amount of towns that are just disappearing because Route 66 is not being used. It is especially sad that parts of Route 66 aren't even there anymore because it is now fused with I-40. There are even parts of the route that have been torn up which makes no sense to me whatsoever. I mean if the road isn't good enough for cars/trucks/rvs/etc then have sections of it remain for bicyclists or hikers. I can see interest in people being able to just go down the Mother Road in some way even if it isn't in car. We stopped in Gallup for lunch which if you stop and you think "hey I want to eat on Route 66. Well look there, its a Mexican restaurant named El Sombrero maybe that will be good" run away. The place was recommended by the AAA book but it was highly overpriced and I started my how many national parks can Dawn throw up in list. Not good by any level. Anyway, we made it to Flagstaff being extremely weary and cranky (and somewhat queasy). We went out and I had a fantastic black bean burger at the Flagstaff Brewery and then we crashed into uneasy rest.

Day 4 led us to the Grand Canyon. There is no way to explain how big it is or awe-inspiring. It is a really, really, really big ditch. Go see it yourself to completely understand how massive it is. BTW, if you are from the Georgia area and have only been to the Grand Canyon of the east coast ie Tallulah Gorge, it doesn't even come close to the one on the west coast :)

After seeing all of the beauty and wonder of the natural greatness on our trip, we slipped off to Sin City to see Sara. This was John's first venture to Vegas and it was just as jaw dropping as it was for me. We walked up and down the strip without gambling because there is just so much to look at. Oh we were there on Halloween so there were quite a few more semi-naked people then on your normal Vegas night (or at least I would think). It was great to hang out with Sara and see Vegas. We thought we would be tired and end early but we ended up staying out until past 2 am. We were on the Vegas high :)

Day 6 and final day of the road trip-we headed out of Vegas after stopping off at Einstein's Bagels to see Sara. Then it was a straight, don't stop for the potty drive through the Mojave Desert, LA and finally ended up in San Diego. It is still amazing to me that we made it here without one of us killing the other. I think the whole adventure was fun and tiring and exciting all at the same time. Our place in San Diego is smaller than I thought it would be (I know I had the measurements but when seeing for real makes it so much smaller). I think we're going to have to downsize our stuff a little more but we'll make it work.

So now I'm tired and tomorrow is going to be an early, busy and crazy day. Pictures and more later.

PS Vicky the chinchilla made it through the trip great. We've even had her running around the apartment a few times. She typed this on my keyboard as I was trying to blog "gt 3te623". She might be smart but I won't get any shakespeare out of her yet :)

Oh the places you will go...

2008-10-29T22:23:00.012-05:00

It seems pretty surreal that we are making this trip to San Diego from Bryan, TX. When we left Bryan on the 27th, I was pretty
surprised how sad I was to leave. In my 70 days there I grew to like the place pretty well. Now it isn't the greatest place in the world and I'm sure that I would find things wrong with it the longer that I lived there but the twin cities of Bryan/College Station are pretty cool. I mean it is a typical college town but the student's at least seem more respectful and it does have some interesting stuff to see. For instance we went to the WeinerFest on the Saturday before we left which was AWESOME in a weird sort of way. Imagine taking a bunch of dogs and dressing them up for a costume contest and then pitting them against each other in a race to end all races. Craziness ensues.

The campus itself has quite a few interesting things. For instance how many places can you find a monument dedicated to roughnecking, a oil drilling rig and a monument to the past mascots where there is their own scoreboard so they can keep track of whether the Aggies are going to run out of time or not. My favorite was the sign for the local Hillel group though. This place IS amazingly friendly and I am sad that we have left.

So we are now on the second leg of our cross country tour. This route is a little more wandering then the one to TX. We actually started going south to San Antonio because I wanted to see the Alamo. The Alamo is pretty small for the surrounding area. It is kind of like seeing the Arch in Athens. You are expecting something just a little smaller than St. Louis and what you get is something MUCH smaller than St. Louis. Same here with the Alamo. There is also not much of it left after all it was a fort and it was kind of beat up and abused. We also visited the Riverwalk while there eating at the oldest restaurant there. I started calling it the Venice of Texas and John said the canals reminded him of the Small World ride at Disney World.

After we paid our respects to the Alamo, we stopped by Barney Smith's garage to look at his toilet seat cover artwork. Now I know you are thinking we must be crazy but this guy is awesome. We found his museum by going to www.roadsideamerica.com which has to be one of the coolest places to find random and interesting places to stop by on your next road trip. Back to Mr. Smith. He is 87 years old and has been making his folk art toilet seat covers for over 40 years. He is up to 858 and is aiming to complete 1000. Some are funny, odd, and amazingly creative. John and I signed the Georgia toilet seat to mark our visit (we decided that one made the most sense right now) and then toured his collection. He does not sell or loan his collection out but we did get a souvenir for our Christmas tree of one of his fired ceramic toilet seat ornaments. He is an incredible man and so humble taking all his "fame" in stride. If you are in the area, give him a call. The museum is only open if you call him and he will meet you with so much enthusiasm so that you can see and share in his "little" hobby.

After spending an extended time with Mr. Smith, we headed to Carlsbad, NM. We stopped by Enchanted Rock which is a giant hunk of pinkish rock sticking out of the ground. It is kind of like Stone Mountain in GA except nothing is covered on the side of it. I took over driving and the Garmin decided we should take a more back roads route after visiting the Rock so we headed to middle of nowhere TX where there were a few loose livestock roaming the roads :)

The scenery in West TX was as we were told - nothing too remarkable. The scenery changed subtly but it was not too dull; however, there is a problem with roadkill especially the amount of skunks that are apparently killed. It seemed the whole drive was sprinkled with eau de skunk or the smell of gas/propane/yuck. We made it to Midlands, TX for dinner (hometown of First Lady Laura Bush and childhood home of "W" Bush). We decided to go ahead and make the push to get to Carlsbad. It was a crappy drive in the middle of the dark. The road was rough and it was super dark. No moon or anything. We kept our eyes open for alien encounters but we saw nothing (at least nothing we remember). Finally we made it to Carlsbad at 11pm and were completely exhausted.

This morning we woke up after a fitful night sleeping to head out to Carlsbad Caverns. We realized we didn't miss much last night on the drive. There is nothing on the roads except brush and the occasional tree. Also we found that Carlsbad smells a lot like gas of the human variety but once we got out to the Caverns all was better. Incredible vistas getting to the caves. The national park has a boarding area so that Vicky didn't have to stay in the hot car and we were able to take our time in the Caverns. We spent 2 whole hours to walk just the Big Room trail. Crazy big and spooky all at the same time. One of the rangers explained that there used to be more lighting (including red, green and blue-groovy man) in the 70s but is now reduced in lighting (and color). It's pretty amazing and we wished we had more time to hike from the natural entrance, but next time :) By the way I finally figured out what my superhero skill is - humidity girl. You can't tell so much in this photo but as the cave got colder and wetter, my hair got bigger and bigger. Ahhh...I love my hair :)

We headed up to Roswell after chowing down at the park and picking up Vicky (the now very cranky chinchilla). Roswell was less than spectacular. I was expecting Alien central and there is like a block of alien stuff. The shop we went to had this deal that you could get your picture taken in front of a green screen which puts you in a number of alien themed scenes. Unfortunately they closed just as we were getting through the museum of alien contradictions (are there UFOs, are aren't there, you decide). I was seriously disappointed since that was all I really wanted was the stupid photo but we got an alien ornament and headed out for Starbucks (yea coffee). Then came the long, boring, monotonous drive to Albuquerque. Yep we were somewhere between nowhere and BFE. We hit a little scare when the car decided to bring up the empty light somewhere around "holy cow nothing but grass" and we were easily 45 miles from the next gas station. I've never done math so well to realize that we might be pushing to the gas station. Luckily we made it and switched drivers (my heart had enough of the stress). Then off to a sunset worthy of the picture on the NM license plate and our descent into homebase for the night. It is overall been crazy and tomorrow should be even more interesting. Stay tuned!

Austin City Limits Music Festival Epilogue

2008-10-29T22:20:00.004-05:00

So what if I'm in Albuquerque on my way to Califonia, I've got more to say about Austin City Limits.

So, Dawn and I called it a day early but I wanted to go to Stubb's BBQ in Austin, if for no other reason, Todd turned me onto the sauce years ago. As an added bonus, the Black Keys were tearing it up on the stage at Stubb's there was no need for any wrist band, they could clearly be heard over anything else in the bar. Anyway, Dawn and I were kicking back, enjoying some appetizers waiting for our main meals to come out. When I see someone coming up the stairs, and I think, that dude looks familiar. Where do I know him, then I realize DJ Dangermouse was coming up some sort of VIP enterance from the basement. I was trying to play it cool, and yet get Dawns attention. You know that kind of closed mouth, through gritted teeth, "hey dawn, look over there...isn't that DJ Dangermouse?" she finally gets the hint and looks up. I decide I want to shake his hands, were both Athenians after all, but he dissapeared into a VIP section before I could. So, feeling I may have missed a chance, I went back to my meal, and then discussed our near brush with fame again, when, who should walk in bigger then life, but Cee-lo, much more outgoing, it was easy to catch his eye, shake his hand and tell him what a good show he put on, and they we we're from athens, but really enjoyed our visit to Austin. Somehow, the Athens talk sparked the interest of one of the entourage, and we talked with him about Athens some, as he was also a native Athenian. He was helpful in getting DJ Dangermouse over, and we got to shake his hand too. He was much more resereved, and although appreciated meeting a few fans and talking about being from Athens, he clearly did not want to be a center of attention, so he was also quick to leave. No matter, we had now met Gnarls Barkley. How cool? Well, the guy from the entourage was busy picking up a actress/model or something. Well, because they were VIP's they got food on the house, and they had a big plate of leftovers from food that they weren't going to eat. Packed in a take out box, the entourage guy I guess on the basis of our conversation, decided to give the food to us, with a little speech about how he didn't want to insult us, but if we wanted it, we could take it. So we did.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Gnarls Barkley('s entourage guy's) leftovers.

The End.

Austin City Limits Music Festival Day 3

2008-10-26T23:07:00.003-05:00

So, yea, I'm writing this on the eve of us starting our trip to California, but so what? I've got more stories to tell about ACL fest.

Day 3: The Short Day.

Short because we got our latest start yet, and we knew we weren't going to stay for the final act, the Foo Fighters, because we'd already seen them. If we saw them, we'd break our streak of seeing bands we'd never seen before.

Did I mention this festivals commitment to mass transit and eco-friendly solutions? Hence the bike racks.

We had a half a mind to see something when we got there, but stumbled over to the Massacoustics, on the basis of a very Paul Mcartney-esque song we heard. We got a real kick out of this duo, note the drummer sings, drums, and plays bass all at the same time. If they come around, I'd suggest you see them.

Close encounter of the famous kind, Part One: Dawn and I headed over the the merchandise tent to get some T-shirts and music. Who do I see wandering around the back of the tent, John Popper of Blues Traveler. It's just before their autograph session, and a few more until their music set. So he even, got closer, but I didn't get a good picture. He gave the guy in line next to me a promotional copy of the upcoming release. So, I was close, but not that close.

Neco Case was a folksy act we decided to see. She has songs about sea animals taking eating each other. Like Patty Griffin on day one, her quieter set had to deal with music bleed from other stages, once again, the Austin Ventures stage in particular. The audience had another factor detracting us from the show, and that was The Racounters. Well, not the band members, as it was their fans. They had the stage after Case, and a break. But they started filtering in, trying to get up to the front of the stage during the Case set. This by itself, was annoying, but it's a festival, so you deal with some boorish behavior. Even worse though, is they'd wedge themselves in in packs of six or what not, then get on their cell phones, and call their freinds to try and triangulate and meet up, in the center of a crowd of people trying to watch the music on stage. Racounters fans? You are assholes. It got to the point where other people were telling them to shut up.If you think there was any less enthusiasm because it was Sunday, you would be wrong. Blues Traveler is playing in the right of this photograph. The crowd stretches out to the left. There was maybe 20000 in front of that stage. Our next show goal was the main stage seen at the center of the photograph.Gnarls Barkley pushed though a energetic music, pushing them selves at the end of their current tour. Straining voices, sun in their eyes, and heat causing them to strip off articles of clothing, the put on a great, profanity laden show. At one point, Cee-low gets the crowd to swear with him, and then sing-songs into the mike how he likes to swear.

So ends our festival experience. Dust covered at dusk, we make our way to the exit before most of the crowd, to head into Austin for some dinner, satisfied with our ACL festival. So many acts, so much fun what else could we want for?

Austin City Limits Music Festival Day 2

2008-10-12T22:14:00.011-05:00

Day 2 offered some of the harder choices for the bands we don't know very well, or had seen one way or another already. So, we got there in time to see a band we had very little information about, but the crowd was thin, so we hung out, waiting for We Go to 11. We noticed that the crowd was kind of younger then most of the other shows we saw, but we thought little of it, and grew more concerned about why they missed their start time. Fifteen minutes later, we figured out why.

We got to Eleven is like 12 years old. Well, definitely not old enough to drive. Can't you see the argument at the security gate. (No really, they're a band!)

We then moved on to see the Fratellis, a hard rockin' band from Scotland. The lead singer apologized for putting on a bad show, and complaining about playing at 1:30 in the morning. We don't know if he was jet lagged, or is so Rock and Roll 1 in the afternoon to us is one in the morning to him, because he's still drunk from the party last night.

The heat got to me and Dawn by the time we go to see Back Door Slam, a group that can be favorably compared to Cream or any of the number of british 60's blues rock combos. They played a good set, but Dawn and I spent most of the set sprawled out on the blanket. It was cool feeling the bass rumble through my chest. We also managed to get the self portrait (seen at the top) was done here too.

From there we went to see Erykah Badu. Great set of soul/funk. She was as out there as ever, comparing presidential elections to the changing of managers at bowling alleys, and talking about the 4th world war. Perhaps he most fun we had at a show to that point.

We then meandered back to see Mason Jennings, no relation to Shooter or Waylon, but music more like Jack Johnson, G. Love, good stuff we liked his clever song writing, and laid back sound. Another nice surprise for us.

Evening fell, and we wanted to see the Black Keys, but never really got close enough to the stage to enjoy the show, and were constantly buffeted by people moving through the crowd, either closer to the stage, or away from the stage to see one of the nights headliners, Beck. We chose to do like wise.

Beck put on a great show, played "Loser," "Where it's at," "Que Onda Guero" and even covered Bob Dylan "Leopard skin pill box hat." Great light show. What was odd, according to the schedule cut his set 15 minutes short. Never having gone to a Beck show before, we were surpirsed by the lack of intersong banter, but whatever, it's Beck. We were way in the back, but still it was cool.

Another dusty day ends, what surprises will day 3 bring? Stay tuned.

Austin City Limits Music Festival Day 1

2008-10-10T00:46:00.008-05:00

One cool thing about College Station and Bryan are the proximity to some of the other cities in Texas. One of those other cities is Austin. A town known for many things, one of which, close to me is music. So when Dawn suggested we go the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and was able to find reasonably priced three day passes, we decided to go.

Day 1:

We get to downtown Austin and find a spot to park at a meter at 3:30, and this is cool because we can fill the parking meter to take us to 5:30 which is when they stop checking the meters.

The festival worked with the city's transportation services to run shuttles from a downtown park to the festival grounds, I'll just say the operation of these shuttles was incredibly efficient, and we often spent more time walking to the point to catch shuttles rather then actually waiting for the shuttles. That was very cool, and much better organized then other shuttle services I've seen.

But really, this is not a blog entry about busses, it's about the festival.

Upon getting to the grounds, the first act we have time to see is Del the Funky Homosapien, who I knew from Gorillaz. Dawn and I sat in the back of the crowd to get the lay of the land, and make it easy for us to get to the Patty Griffin Stage.

We also decide to try and document ourselves each day.

We did start far away from Patty Griffin, but we eventually moved ourselves closer to try and block out sound spill over from other stages, most notably the Austin Ventures stage by the food tent. The shows there were routinely too loud all weekend long. I felt Patty put on a good show, and I was excited about the next acts we wanted to see, G. Love and the special sauce, and David Byrne.

After the Patty Griffin show, we started making our way across the park to the other stages. That's when we got our first view of how ow many people would be at the festival over the weekend. It also means that we were too far back from the G. Love stage to enjoy the music. Onto David Byrne.

Now, I had heard that Byrne dosen't do the Talking Heads music any more, so needless to say, I was more than pleasantly surprised to hear Life During War Time, I Zimbra, and Once in a Life Time, among other Byrne and Talking Heads songs. Byrne, being the art school guy he his, had dancers in a number of his songs. Their routines though sparked a debate between Dawn and I. Dawn was not pleased with some of the choreography, I thought the geeky dance moves were of Byrne's creation, and meant to invoke the Stop Making Sense concert movie. Turns out David Byrne address the dancing in his own blog. So, maybe I am a sucker.

I really felt like that was going to be the highlight of the night, but we went to two more shows, the Swell Season, (famous for the song Falling Slowly,) but they experienced multiple sound issues, both from their own equipment and spill over from....Austin Ventures Stage! We decided we would need to see them again sometime.

So, we decided to end the night with Donavon Frankenreiter. That to me was the biggest surprise of the night. I really enjoyed the show, and there was a lot of crowd energy and interactions. Plus, G. Love joined him at the end of his set to play a few songs. So, we got to see G. Love anyway.

A good start for the Weekend.

Packers v. Cowboys

2008-09-21T23:03:00.002-05:00

So, I just finished watching the Packer Cowboy game in a span of about two hours thanks to TiVo, and I've got a few things to say about it.

The Packers do not look to be a Super bowl bound team. I don't think anyone expected them to be though. On offense, most things look pretty good. Rogers looks like he know the offense backwards and forwards, and has a good command of the passing game. What stinks is the pass blocking. Oi. The Packers would keep 7 to block for Rogers, and the Cowboys would only send four. And they'd still get to Rogers. Good lord. That was terrible. I also question the playing of Ryan Grant. I know he's supposed to be the feature back, but two weeks in a row, he looks slow and easily taken down. I know it's because he's got a bad hamstring, but doesn't anyone else think that might be enough to rest him, maybe just one week? It seems Lumpkin and Jackson can pick up the slack. Why not let him rest a little more. Finally on offense, I'd like to salute Donald Driver. I know some might be mad about that late game lateral, but at least he was out there trying to make something happen. The game was going down fast, and if nothing else, it created a little excitement. It's not as if the Packers were going to win before that play anyway.

The defense on the other hand, that was something terrible. I'll give the Packers brain trust credit, they took away Owens, taking away the early big play, and that kept the game theoretically close into the third quarter, but the Cowboys came out running. And the Packers did nothing to stop it. I hoped to see some adjustments made at the half, maybe sending 5 guys into the line or something, but I didn't see it. It seems to me stopping the run in the second half may have been more important then stopping it in the first. Dallas already had the lead and established that they were going to run. Yet, it seems no adjustments were made. Oh well. I guess I'm no expert on coaching right?

Finally, to pick at scabs, lets talk about could Brett Favre have won that game for the Packers? This time I'm going to say no. Rogers played relatively safe with the ball, did the best he could with the plays as called. I didn't see a play where I thought if Brett Favre was throwing that ball, it would've been a completion. The second level of that question is would Brett have needed the 7 man protection package? I think he would've. Hands down, the Cowboys have the better personnel then Green Bay. Favre would've been sacked, pressured to make bad throws, and fumble it more or less like Rogers. Any other opinion? Feel free to comment.

TAMU v. Miami

2008-09-20T23:03:00.002-05:00

You may think the fans of your favorite college football team are the best, but they are not. Don't get me wrong. You might be the biggest fan of your team, supported them through think and thin, championships and years where the wins were few or absent, but your co-fans have nothing on Aggie fans.

Dawn and I went to see the Fightin' Texas Aggies take on the Miami Hurricanes. One one piece of pre-game showmanship that I missed was the F-14 fly over, but we were in a tunnel and were deafened as they did pass overhead. Unlike certain schools we've been at to see games, the student section was filled before the game. Hell, the whole stadium was filled for the game. When the band struck up the fight song, the whole stadium sang along, and even joined shoulder to shoulder at the appropriate time. The fans did their best to rock the stadium supporting the defense, and follow the signals of the yell leaders and cheer in unison. Unlike certain schools we've been to, the amount of drunken annoyance seemed to be at a minimum, and for the most part people seemed to watch their language.

The same cannot be said about the fans of the visiting team. Really, is there any fan worse then the Miami fan though? I challenge anyone to tell me who. The all seem to be jerks. Brash and brassy, know it all and smug, often drunk, often odious, either of sweat, alcohol, cheap cologne or tobacco.

As big of jerks as the Miami fans were during the game, the TAMU fans couldn't have been more polite to them as they exited the stadium early wishing them good luck, and asking if they enjoyed their trip to Aggieland.

Even well into the fourth quarter, when the game was out of hand, the student stood by their team, maybe not cheering as loud as at the start, but there none the less. When the game was over, and the Aggies racked up another loss, the student section stayed for post game Yell Practice, after which the fans are allowed onto the field. Anyone who wants to. We even saw some Miami fans out on the field. It was so cool. Families running around with footballs, taking group pictures, showing their children a little something about where they went to school.

So you may be the best fan of your team, and you might think your group of fans is the best in the world., but your group of fans has nothing on the Aggies. And really, if you know there's a group of fans out there more supportive then yours, how strong is your dedication to your team?

HEB complaint and Dawn's Birthday

2008-09-19T22:44:00.004-05:00

So, I know not too long ago, I was singing the praises of HEB, and of course there are still many things I really dig about the store, but here are my first three complaints:

In a store that seems to stock everything, why can't I find non-pareils? Fruits and vegitables I've never heard of, but no non-pareils? Hardly any sprinkles at all from what I've seen.

Cart collection. It seems that they don't do any cart collection until there are no carts in the store, and a swear I've seen those boys wrangling a cart train that was 1/3 the length of the parking isle. Certainly nothing bad could come of that.

My next complaint, HEB can't really do anything about, but consider this an open letter to you customers:

A.) Why can't you put your carts in the cart corral? I can't tell you the number of times I've pulled away from a parking space because though I think it's open, it really isn't, and it's because some customer just left the cart in a space. There are plenty of cart corrals people, use them!

B.) Can you, the customer count to 10? How about 20? Then why are you constantly going to the ten and twenty item of less lanes with more then ten or twenty items? You completely throw off the nice even flow of me getting out of the store in a reasonable amount of time every time you do that. Oh wait, I forget. You can count to ten and twenty so therefore you just don't care about the people standing in line behind you. What's that? There's two of you so really your 40 items count as 20 per person? Doesn't fly with me, flapjack. It's not like the mother of three gets to bring 100 items through the twenty item or less lane. Oh wait, this is HEB, so yes. Yes they do.

I'll be getting help at work starting next week, an undergrad from a time before I arrived is returning to help out. While I am glad he's coming back, I have to say I'm surprised. If I was him, I'd I've looked to a new lab to do research, just so as to get some continuity in my studies. (Of course, I claim to be the worst undergraduate researcher ever, so what do I know?) But, in short I'm glad to have the help, it frees me up to get started on other projects, as frankly, I was feeling bogged down a little by the one project I'm actively moving forward on.

For Dawn's Birthday, we went to Sodolak's Original Country Inn and had the Chicken fried bacon. Dawn ordered a small steak, it ended up covering a 12" plate. Even I only managed to eat about half my meal. Saturday, to finish off Dawn's Birthday celebration, we are going to see the fightin' Texas Aggies take on the Miami Hurricanes. Fight Farmer Fight!

One final thing, I've added Skype to my applications, so if you use that for instant messaging, let me know, and I'll add you to my contact list.

The end of a decade...

2008-09-17T21:53:00.004-05:00

So today is my last day of my 20s and I'm not really sure why this birthday is bothering me so much. I guess it is the number or maybe its the idea of 30 being a grown-up birthday. It seems weird to me that I'm going to be 30 anyway. It seems like only a year or so ago I was at JU and now here I am with a PhD and have a sorta kinda maybe getting closer to a real job. I mean 30 doesn't mean I can't get a little tipsy on occasion right? Or that I can't play MarioKart to all hours of the night, correct? I don't know. I just didn't expect 10 years, 5 years or heck even last year to be where I am today and all the change is just a tad overwhelming. Add in a decade birthday and you have one frazzled, questioning her future chick. Maybe I need some goals or something for this year. I had some last year that I wanted to do before I was 30 and some of them were accomplished (graduating, the brazilian) but going abroad and running a 5k didn't happen. Maybe that will be my 30th year's exciting time.

BTW one of my bestest friends Angela and her hubby have purposefully gotten pregnant! It is such an exciting time for the both of them and I can not wait to see the incredible mom that Angela is going to be. Plus I'm ready to be Auntie Dawn :) I see spoilage in this child's future.

Sunday

2008-09-14T16:35:00.002-05:00

Today, we managed to get out of the house to watch the Packer game. I pointed out to Dawn that we'd been indoors since Friday afternoon, and the house is only so big. So we got up, and went to the Fox and Hound, the same place where I saw the Packers take on the Dallas Cowboys. We were a bit late, and I expected that we'd have to sit at the bar, but when we got there, there were whole open sections. So much so, we got to dictate what games we wanted to see. So, we sat, facing each other, looking over the other ones shoulders at our respective football games. Because I know that I cannot describe the events of the football games without the express written consent of the NFL, I'll just say I'm in a good mood after watching the Packers, Dawn is not in such a good mood after watching the Jaguars.

The F&H was okay. I don't know what they expected, but there wasn't enough waitstaff by the end of the first round of games. I overheard the waitress tell another table it was going to be an hour wait for food and we easily went more than twenty minutes without seeing our waitress. After we got our $50 bill, four beers, two appetizers, two burgers, Dawn reminded me again about the price of Satellite TV.

You know, I was always disturbed by the bathrooms in Athens. Even in the nicest places, the bathrooms could always be a little sketchy. I would joke that I was going to start a journal that reviews bathrooms.

The F&H bathrooms are well appointed, clean, looks as if they can handle four at a time, which is good for a restaurant of it's size. the floors, sinks, urinals were clean. They did have newspapers up in front of the urinals. This may be a personal thing, but I don't get that. I'm usually standing closer than I would hold a paper to read, and I'm not standing there long enough to read the whole thing. Overall though, I would give the bathrooms 4 out of five stars.

I've been experimenting some with dinners lately. This week I made Risotto for the first time. It's not a great challenge to do this, but it definitely is not something I would've been able to make two years ago. I even did it with HEB bag-o-risotto. worked my arm out, but a good meal came of it. I also made Jessica Alba's enchiladas. (That is not an innuendo.) They were good, worth keeping the recipe, and making again. But I wold like to know what's in canned chili sauces. Is that something I could make myself? Is it worth the effort? I know, for example, boxed mac-n-cheese is cheap and easy, but i think the mac-n-cheese I make is much better. So, if anyone knows, let me know.

John

Ike is Leaving

2008-09-13T14:38:00.003-05:00

So, the worst of the hurricane is over for us. We lost power somewhere around 8 am, but it was back on before noon. We also got lucky, because though the path of the storm was predicted, at times to pass right over B/CS, the eye of the storm passed about 30 miles to our east, and was a category 1 storm at the time. Dawn says being on the west side of the hurricane is better then the east because the east side has much more of the rain. We had some pretty good wind gusts starting early in the morning. We both woke up well before the morning before drifting off to sleep again, and really waking up to no power. This is my closest experience with a hurricane, and for me it's enough.

At work, we prepared ourselves on Friday by moving equipment out of the basement. It was not as hard as I imagined the equipment was on carts. And now, though it looks like it might not have been as necessary, I'm glad we did it, because the storm could've been a lot worse. And then we would've been sad if we hadn't. If the basement had flooded, and the equipment ruined, it would've been many thousands of dollars to replace them, and the moving didn't really in-connivence anyone.

One nice thing about having cultures that take five days to grow, is that you can start stuff and walk away from it for awhile and not feel guilty about it. So, even though I've plates and tubes and flasks growing (presuming the power is still on at the building) If we don't get out of the house until this evening (the weather, though improving, is intermittently rain and wind, not enough to force us inside but enough that if we don't want to get out we won't. And right now I think we're both content to stay on the couch.)

My work stuff, such as it is, is going well. It seems like every few days, a new project pops up, so there's been a lot or reading.

We also need to complete a plan for moving so, that's the next thing to do now, Dawn's on Craigslist, so I think it's time to get work.

John

Oh, as Dawn says, we've mario cart, my license number, if you want to be mario cart buddies is: 1461-8645-9975

Ike is coming

2008-09-12T17:44:00.002-05:00

But, really, I don't feel like talking about that yet, really, because nothing has happened that's unusual yet, around here.

So, let's see some of the photos of things that We've been up to lately. These all should be links to my facebook photo albums:

Dawn is a Doctor

Chandra is a Doctor

James and Emily are Doctors

At the ARCH

John is a Doctor

Pre-graduation party

Just Before the Ceremony

The Ceremony

After Party

Sebastian Summer

Road Trip! Athens to Bryan!

Our Rental House

Neha and Steve's Wedding in Chicago Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Around Chicago

And the thing I really want to talk about right now, First Yell and Midnight Yell practice.

There's a lot of tradition at TAMU. One of them is midnight yell paractice, where today, the student body gathers at Kyle Field at midnight before home games to practice the school cheers, and school songs. It's a pep rally, really, but hear that's a big deal 25000 people big deal. There are no traditional cheerleaders at TAMU either, but Yell Leaders. Cadets voted to lead the students in cheering. There's also other traditions, like a torch lit parade from the quad to the stadium, the ceremonial guarding of the field, and the junior class doing push-ups.. In the first video, you can see a Yell Leader giving hand signals to the crowd to lead the cheers. The students learn the cheers, songs, and hand signals are all taught to the students during orientation. I apologize for the camera shakiness at the end of the video, I'm rocking back and forth arm in arm with the rest of the students

Cheer 1

In this next video, you will hear one of the speeches the students give to fire up the crowd. Now, a few notes, Rock and Rockette are mythical A&M students. Every time the leader says a number, it corresponds to a class number: (20)09, (20)10, and so on. The tone of the speech was set by the previous speaker, where he made certain insinuation of the dating habits of people who go to Ark State.

Cheer 2

so, yea, we drank the Kool Aid, really got into it, sang the songs, cheered the cheers, whooped. The Fightin' Texas Aggies ran out of time against the Red Wolves, but we did have fun.

Wii Fit makes my sides hurt YEA!

2008-09-09T11:51:00.002-05:00

So I haven't kept up with the blogging as much basically because I was lazy with writing about First Yell. I will need to include pictures with that one so right now I'm just going to update on our newest toys - WiiFit and Mario Kart for the Wii.

So as a child I didn't have a video game system (unless you count Big Bird's Egg Catch on the Atari). I took the back seat to watching other people play because my gamer thumb was sorely unused. I do enjoy watching other people play although watching John play occasionally makes me nauseous :) In college, Angela's boyfriend had a playstation which she and I would play Crash Bandicoot on but I still was pretty lame in my skills. However, I was really pumped to get the Wii and although we haven't used it everyday since we bought it, I definitely think that I'm getting better. Recently we purchased Mario Kart and I finally have beat John at a game. I don't win all the time BUT I am winning so either the game is easier or I gots skills :) I actually want to play and have yet to throw a controller when I lose. I need to do better at the online play because I rarely come in the top 3 (unless there are only 3 people playing). Overall it is fun and it is a game that John and I can play together as long as we don't play against one another (me and my crazy competitiveness).

We picked up WiiFit this weekend. Now I've been eyeing it up since it came out but it has been sold out pretty much everywhere and I've even tried ebay a few times (with little success). However this weekend when we checked out the Post Oak mall (imagine Georgia Square mall slightly bigger) we walked into the GameStop and low and behold they had the game. Well we bought it and immediately went home to try it out. After 3 days I can say that it is super fun and makes my abs sore. It is not the same as taking a weight lifting or step aerobics class at a gym but it is fun. Since leaving Athens, I have not been doing anything to work out at all and my pants are definitely feeling a slight bit tighter then they should (and it can't be that the washer/dryer are shrinking all of our clothes, John). So far I've been doing 30 minutes a day and am hoping to keep it up. I'm not expecting to lose a lot of weight but as long as I'm active I might be able to eat what I want and not feel bad about it. Plus hopefully it will help with my recent bout of insomnia.

On the work front, all is going well. I am not used to cultures taking 5 days to grow up and need to work on planning a lot further ahead. We are in a countdown for the move to San Diego. Unfortunately we don't yet know what day that is except that JG and SG have to be at work on Nov. 1st. So 55 days and counting them! It still is pretty surreal that we are going to be moving again in such a short period of time. Everyone knows that I am super planner and love to have everything planned out to a tee but now I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants it seems. I guess first priority is finding a place to live which we haven't done yet. Another round of the Buchner/Adin house hunt 2008 is almost upon us. Are you ready? Because I don't know if we are :)

Texas AM what an interesting place

2008-08-27T15:19:00.005-05:00

So as I have stated before Texas AM is an interesting place. It is quiet. I mean we walk from our parking lot in the morning and there is quiet murmuring amongst the students that are walking from class to class but other than that no one yelling or anything like there was at JU or UGA. It is also strange to see the amount of uniformed students walking around. I can't imagine how hot they are in full fatigues or in the snazzy TAMU cadet corp uniforms but I do like a man in uniform :) (even though they are way out of my age range). Oh and by the way I saw Reville, the mascot for TAMU walk by my window today with her cadet escort. That is pretty cool that the mascot is on campus. I can't imagine Uga handling the heat walking around campus but it's cool that Reville goes to classes and is around the campus for the students.

So beyond the uniformed presence on campus, I have seen some things that I have not seen before. For instance the photo of the manhole cover below is just one that I have a picture of. Check out the side around the bottom. It states "Do not molest." Now I'm not one for checking out manhole covers on a regular basis but really do you have to tell someone not to molest it. Are there really people out there that "take to" manhole covers and feel the need to enjoy themselves with it? First the trees and now the manhole covers I have to feel bad for. Inanimate objects around here are put to the test. I hope they aren't too stressed out :)

Networking

2008-08-25T00:54:00.002-05:00

We've got internet access on both computers, the TiVo, and the Wii, so we are networked all around. Got nearly all the minimum electronics plugged in including the stereo, so we are ready to entertain our selves too. Look out neighbors, you better be ready to rock when we plug in the guitar hero. The next question we have to ask ourselves is what sort of entertainment we want to deal ourselves next, satellite or cable. We have a series 2 tivo, so it is no longer compatible with dish tv stuff. while it still works with basic cable, and in theory digital cable, it is only a matter of time before TiVo drops support for our machine, I don't know how long TiVo supported series 1 machines, but at some point, sony has got the be getting ready for the series 4 tivos. Though, i don't know what they would add in, except satellite compatibility which is about the only function they really seem to be missing.

With all this network stuff going on, I hope to be keeping up with all you all more often, especially through facebook. If you are reading this and not a facebook user or friend then get on it all ready. I've dumped maybe 200 pictures on my facebook site in the past two weeks, some of them are even of me. Though not many, I tend to spend a lot of time behind the camera. Don't know why that is, I mean, I think I'm good looking enough, and even though I had one friend obsessed with taking pictures of me, I'm a few hundred miles away from her so, most pictures of me will be views from arms length, with best efforts to keep Dawn's head in frame. All that reminds me I've got files on the phone, road trip stuff, that I need to get on here, and over to facebook. Including a shot of the Atlantic Ocean, on the beach, the real start of our road trip.

the unpacking stuff continues

2008-08-24T11:49:00.004-05:00

So the unpacking continues. My back is shot unfortunately. I always say that I try to be careful so that I'm not stuck screaming every time I sneeze (which for some reason is all the time here, ahh new stuff to be allergic to), but I feel bad seeing John haul stuff around and me just moving stuff around and unpacking. So I pushed it a little too hard and now doing pretty much anything makes my back wish it was separated from my body.

Today was our first visit to Shipley Do-nuts. We heard of the place from watching Kathy Griffin My Life on the D-list. She went on and on about how cool they were so we had to try them out. Well they are pretty darn good pastries. I think my chocolate covered and chocolate filled almost gave me a sugar attack but hey that's what I expected. John had his first kolache which is apparently a pastry filled with a variety of things (in this case a sausage). Well it was more like a pig in a blanket because it was a hot dog in the center. We need to go to a place that sells only kolache and see if it is any different.

So we are finishing up the bedroom today and hopefully going to get to cleaning up the kitchen today. It is a slow process but the temporary quarters are starting to look more like a personalized hotel and not a storage unit. The duplex still does not have a well functioning air conditioner so crankiness is the norm. Rumor has it that the air conditioner will be looked at this week. We'll keep you up to date on the status.

Off to work on the mess that is our kitchen/dining room. I never thought I would say it but I'm sick of organizing stuff soon it will be over though and I can concentrate on more important things like Wii and Playstation oh yeah and work, lots of work :)

And we met the landlord

2008-08-22T22:57:00.002-05:00

We met the landlord today. He shares the other half of the duplex, and he's very concerned about our air conditioning, but knows there's not much anyone can do about it on a Friday night. So we let him get settled after his week long vacation with his wife and kids, so we let him do that as we had taco night! We made tacos and beans, with peppers and hot sauce. The highlight of the evening was the chips and and the tortillas. The chips were really good, like restaurant chips, not like tostidos, and the tortillas, the tortillas! They are made in the store. And let me say here, not in some speciality store, they are made in the HEB. Neither one of us thought tortillas could taste that good.

Oh! How the mundane observations roll on!

Work is kicking up a notch next week, I need to get off my butt from reading, and get back into doing. I do have some idea of what I'm working on now, so it's time to get onto the work stick and do stuff. Good time to learn how to do all the techniques I'l need to use when we get to California. It looks like fewer and fewer people going to CA with us. I'll need to be ready to supervise what's going down in lab. Best to pick the brains of the people I'm working with now. Of course, they are in the position I was in not too long ago myself, that the need to find a job, new places to live, figure out how they are going to get around. So I try and temper my questions of them with my knowing that they have their own stuff to deal with. Plus I'm too stubborn and independent, used to finding how to do it myself, or getting the information from books, that's what I've done before, and I reckon I'll do it again.

Is it a home or a storage unit?

2008-08-22T10:02:00.002-05:00

So as John said the POD is unpacked and now the duplex (or temporary quarters, TQ as I like to call it) is filled to the brim with boxes. You apparently can distinguish our duplex from a storage unit because it has bathrooms and a kitchen. It is beyond crazy right now with boxes lined up to create pathways to the kitchen, to Vicky and then finally to the bedroom. We don't want to unpack too much because it just means we have to pack it again in less than 3 months but I really want to have french fries soon so I guess the deep fryer will be found sooner than later :) This weekend we are hoping to make some serious headway. John (the I hate making lists man) actually wants to number all the boxes and make a list of what is in the box so that it makes it easier to figure out where things are. It might take a little more time but it would make it easier in the long run when I'm looking for that much needed blender for margaritas :) (don't worry I already found the blender though margaritas have not been made yet)

We are finishing up our first week of work. I've been doing a lot of reading and trying to figure out what is going on. I met with both Haitao and Lan, the two other members of the group I am working with to see where there projects are heading. Lan just found out this week that she has a position in San Jose and will be leaving on Monday (yes this coming Monday) so she is now trying to pack up all her things for her big move. I will be working on her projects from now on and so I will be back at the bench on Monday/Tuesday. I haven't been really doing science for awhile now so I am excited to get moving on something. It is somewhat strange being that cultures take a week to grow up but I am sure that I will get used to it eventually.

TAMU is a very interesting place by the way. TAMU has a very active cadet corp that are prominent members of the TAMU student body (want to learn more check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_A%26M_University_Corps_of_Cadets and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditions_of_Texas_A%26M_University). We were walking in the other day from our parking spot (which is in BFE but hey we both could use some exercise) and found these cadets who were wearing shirts with "11 hound" on them yelling. Now I understand the military is full of unusual procedures that I may not fully understand because I am not in the military and I realize you might be thinking "Uh Dawn it is the military of course they are going to be yelling" BUT it was not so much the unusual deal that they were yelling, it was what they were yelling at. Trees to be exact. Poor defenseless trees were being yelled at by these cadets. Now I'm sure there is meaning to this but I don't get it. I felt bad for the trees. I mean I'm sure this isn't the first group that has yelled at them and probably won't be the last.

By the way we are still minus a good air conditioner at the duplex which is definitely not making us the happiest people ever. Unfortunately it is apparently leaking in the attic which is causing a spot on the ceiling. The landlord returns today to hopefully help us out with this problem and the running toilet and the lack of mail. Apparently we need a mail box not a mail slot and we have a mail slot right now so the post office is holding our mail for us to pick up until we get a mail box. I'm sure it will all get settled soon or at least I hope. Well back to work...

Moving is over, Unpacking is not

2008-08-20T22:58:00.002-05:00

Today, with the help of friends we finally got the PODS container unloaded, I'll call tomorrow to get them to come pick it up. So, in a few days, we went from a container full of boxes, to a house full of boxes. This challenge is almost as tough as packing the container. Because, now we have to decide what to unpack and where to put it. We don't want to unpack too much because soon enough we'll need to pack it again. We don't want to unpack to little because we don't want to be frustrated when we ask "Where's the ...?"

"In a box."

"Which box?"

"Um...."

Moreover, not to sound unappreciative of the help we got, when opening boxes you had no help in packing, you wonder what's in it? Or you'll find 2/3 of a piece of kitchen equipment, but wonder where the missing piece is. So, there's so many jobs, one wonders what to tackle first. Tonight, I got the entertainment center 2/3 together, and found the Tivo, and set that up. I know I've got one of those input boxes so I could hook up the Wii and PS2 around, as well as a power strip designed for electronics. I think I'll leave the VCR out of the loop for now, and maybe leave the stereo also in boxes until we go to CA. Although we want to throw a party too, so some electronics well be necessary.

Texas, and TAMU itself has been quite the adjustment. We are starting to learn our way around, or at least to our parking space and back without looking at too many maps. One place we can find, because it's on our way to work is H.E.B. That place is amazing. Supermarket is really the term that applies. It's got a much more expansive food section then we're used to, plus all kinds of housewares. Larger then a standard food store, smaller than a wal-mart, it's quite the experience.

And Moving is coming to an End

2008-08-15T23:38:00.002-05:00

Though not before the current leg of the trip, which has taken us to Chicago. Chicago? I thought they were moving to Texas you might be asking yourself. Well, a great friend of mine is getting married in Chicago over this weekend. They are having a Hindu and Christian ceremony tomorrow. It looks to be a fun day. Tonight Dawn had her first Chicago deep dish pizza. While she didn't say she'll trade it for NY style pizza, she did like it. The trip to the airport was actually uneventful, though similar in milage College Station to Houston is a much easier drive than Athens to Atlanta, if for no other reason, the state road between the two cities has no traffic lights.

The Pod also arrived today. And once again, I couldn't have gotten better customer service from them. The driver was in high spirits and we joked has he dropped it off. (Pictures to follow sometime.) Even helped to get the door open, as our stuff shifted to press against the rolling door, making it tough to open. So once again, PODS rocks.

The road trip ended long. We did manage to get to see the Muffler Man in the New Orleans suburbs. I wanted to see the Oak Alley plantation in Lavacherie, but it was $15 to get inside. Forget that. We took some pictures outside of the grounds, climbed the levee to look at the river, then ate lunch at B&C seafood. There's the place to go. Skip the plantations, go to the B&C.

Back on I-10, and over the Mississippi, we did manages to see sugar cain, oil rigs, and cows. Dawn thrashed me in Cows and Cemeteries. (I won today, tough.) Lots of miles, I drove further west then I ever have in one continuous trip. Huzzah for personal milestones.

First half of the road trip...

2008-08-13T11:21:00.002-05:00

Well the first half of the trip is over. We made it across FL yesterday and ended up in New Orleans last night. We think that the travel gods are against us because it rained, and rained and rained yesterday. We couldn't really stop anywhere except for lunch and gas because it was pouring. For lunch we stopped in Tallahassee at a place called Jenny's Lunchbox which has a lunchbox theme. Lunch boxes hang from the ceiling and the such. Huge burgers that were made well and satisfied. From there it was to finish off FL which took FOREVER. Holy cow FL is wide at the top. Then brief ventures in MS and AL (with a wild venture through Mobile looking for a Starbucks...unsuccessfully) and then to LA. We were tired of rain and the car and found our hotel to be on the outskirts of the French Quarter where razor wire somewhat dominates. The hotel itself is great but the neighborhood not so much. John ran for food and we ate in. Today it was up and off to Cafe du Monde and a little sight seeing before we head out for the rest of the trip to TX. Pictures and more info later. Time for more car time!

Hola Amigos!

2008-08-12T08:19:00.002-05:00

Sorry it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but I've been busy.

Today is the first day it becomes real. Today, we start the westward journey to Texas. Even though we resisted the urge, while packing, to put many things in the, "just put it in the car," pile, we still have a car full of stuff. Filled up the trunk, and the entire backseat area. This morning though, was the easiest car pack to date. I've been getting smarter about how to put things in, and compressing things into smaller spaces, and using every available cubic inch. So, loaded down, we're ready for the road.

Yesterday was spent in Nassau county, FL. We had lunch with Dawn's mom, Dawn got to see Amber, one of her bridesmaids, and got to have a nice few minutes with her to talk about what's going on and old friends. We also did some shopping, and managed to find time to get out to the beach. Dawn was talking about things she's never seen along the Fernandina Beach, like sharks teeth, and lo and behold! A sharks tooth. Walking along a little further, Dawn thought she saw a shark, but instead it was a school of Dolphins swimming by. Dawn says that's good luck for travelers. We also saw a sea bird with a gimpy leg, and another gull missing it's leg below the knee(?) all together. I say that's good luck too, and I invite anyone who wants to to make a rhyme to go along with that. (I tried, but got nothing.)

If anyone reading this is ever in Callahanm Fernandina beach, I'd reccomend Callahan Bar-B-Que, though many people call it the chicken shack. They moved to a new loaction, but the food is just as good. I'd recommend the fried chicken sandwich.

Getting the high sign from Dawn, so I'll see you on the other side (of the Mississippi.)

Yellow rose of Texas is calling...

2008-08-12T06:56:00.002-05:00

Well the mini-vacation is OVER! We are heading out this morning for the beginning of our trip to TX. It's been a pretty good vacation. Visiting my grandparents in SC and getting some time on the lake skiing (as well as a little bit of a sunburn. Apparently our tender indoor lab skin can't handle a little sun). Then down for a brief visit to FL with a stop at Callahan BBQ (my favorite chicken sandwich ever), quick walk on the beach looking for shells, and dinner with Dad.

We are now up and thinking about trying to leave by 9 so we can try and hit New Orleans tonight. It will be a long drive but then we will only have 5 hours left tomorrow which would be nice. Hopefully Vicky the chinchilla will be ok on this drive. It will be her longest yet.

It is starting to feel more real I guess. Before it just felt like we were on vacation and I would start thinking about what project I needed to focus on when we got back to Athens but we aren't going back to Athens now. It's just weird but I guess this is how everyone must feel when then have a big change in their life. So we're off to see I-10 for the next 900 or so miles. So the next time, I'll see you from the road :)

moving on up (or at least out)

2008-08-06T07:15:00.002-05:00

Everything about this graduation has seemed surreal and yesterday was no exception. The signing the paperwork to hand over the house (yes, we are officially homeless). The emptying of the house. I mean it didn't feel like it was ours anymore when all you have left is a blow up mattress, a couple towels and the chinchilla. The capillary electrophoresis machine being broken meaning we don't have to stick around any longer. Last night we stayed with Noreen, Chris and Kaly's. We ate at 5 Star for the last time in a while. Came home and pretty much crashed. Today we are headed to run errands (DMV, condo management company), me to drop stuff off with EVS and meet with him and then it is off to the Grit for lunch. Re-pack the car, pick up the Vicky and head to SC! A vacation, imagine that!

Speaking of Vicky, the little chinchilla is a little unsure of what is going on right now. She let out the distress call last night. She's not one for change and here we are moving her from room to room and now from house to house. I'm sure she will be fine but this is just a rough time for all of us.

Well we need to get a-moving again so its up and at-um for me and John. And so begins the wild and crazy adventure!

Graduation is OVER

2008-08-03T20:23:00.003-05:00

Yep we finished up this weekend. It is still pretty surreal. I keep thinking it is going to eventually hit me that graduate school is coming to end but then I have to come to work and do a growth curve so I can do capillary electrophoresis tomorrow and then I realize why it hasn't hit me that I've graduated :) Here is a picture of us in our robes. John might add some more pics with the family later. Regalia does nothing for the figure let me tell you :)

Almost the whole house is packed up. My family (Mom, Grands, Dad and Bob) plus most of John's family (Peg, Dave, Ed, Jenna and Billy) came down for graduation. After feeding them on Friday and Saturday, we put them to work packing our house. I feel so guilty for everyone taking their vacations and then us put them to work but we are so thankful that they did help. John and I wouldn't even be half as close as we are now if it had just been the two of us. I think I spent most of the time in some sort of half trance state because it just seemed unreal that it was happening. There were a few testy times as there always is when packing, hunger and fatigue set in but I think overall we all weathered it pretty well. There is no way we could possibly thank everyone as much as they deserve. I'm not sure how we are going to pay everyone back because a simple thank you just won't cut it. John and I are certainly blessed to have such loving families that care about us enough to brave high 90s-low 100s weather to help us pack our stuff and then carry it to the POD.

Graduation was ok. I was in the early pack to get hooded so I was getting just a tad bored by the time we finished with all the hooding and then the master's students walked across. The speaker, the CEO of Build-A-Bear was actually pretty good. I was wondering if the talk would be a huge analogy of college being like putting together a bear (the heart of a dawg, the stuffing of the knowledge you've taken in and the outer skin of the person you were when you came here; no matter what clothing you cover yourself with or where you move you always have your degree blah blah blah) but instead it was actually pretty good as commencement talks go. I was impressed overall.

We went to dinner tonight with Wendy, Andy, Chandra, Emily and James H. Emily and James leave out tomorrow morning and it is just hard to believe that they are heading out to Idaho. Chandra leaves on Tuesday for Arkansas to then head to Montana. The whole thing just seems weird. I mean I want us all to get jobs and move on but I don't really want everyone to move away if that makes any sense at all. I still want to be able to go downstairs and run into James and Emily and go shopping with Chandra so we can gossip or complain. I guess now it will be on the phone or through the internets. Hopefully we can meet up occasionally so we can keep up. I'm happy yet sad for everyone.

So my strains are definitely growing tonight. I might have everything spun down and ready to go to work tomorrow by 11pm which is pretty awesome for minimal media. I don't know if I should want the experiment to work tomorrow or not. If it works it means I have to do it for all the other strains. If it doesn't I might not have to do this again and I might be officially done but the data might be a nice addition to the paper. I really need a vacation though :) What happens will happen no matter what I want :)

Countdowns are on

2008-07-29T21:10:00.003-05:00

Fifteen minutes to write this post.

Probably the last day I have this update to Facebook as notes.

Two days to my brother getting here.

32 minutes until my transformations done

Three days to graduation Pre-party.

Four days to graduations.

Six days to fill the PODS container.

Seven days until closing.

Twenty days before we start work in Texas.

Sixteen before I want to be in Chicago.

Six months before I start paying on my student loans.

About 95 days before we start moving to CA.

Just a few things on my mind. Most pressing is the experiments I need to do before I leave, getting the house ready for the party, and getting the house ready to move. And getting out of here (work) tonight, with an eye to helping my wife who's packing our kitchen right now. (Good bye Tupperware! I'll see you in Texas!) I might miss my tongs most of all. Other things not directly on that countdown include getting new tires for the car. Oi. We also don't know exactly how many people are coming down for our graduation. There is some flux in the system. So, we just ordered food for 25 from Sonny's BBQ, and the grand plan is to shut down the kitchen before this week is over, and eat Sonny's leftovers for three days. Pulled pork. Yum! By the way, if anyone reading this wants to buy some of our stuff, talk to us about it. We've got a book case, end tables, entertainment center, a great gas grill all still out there for purchase.

If anyone in Athens is reading this, your welcome for the rain. I watered my herbs this morning. Of course the meant it was going to rain. It helps that the Weather Channel also predicted rain for us, but I'm still taking credit.

Does anyone else watch the weather channel religiously like us? I wonder what they do during the commercial breaks. Do the ever talk about California? It seems like the forecasters are fixated on the east coast. Granted, that's where the cool weather happens, hurricanes and such.

But still. I have a theory. When they cut to comercial, they go to west coast coverage. Then when my commercial is over, they switch back to east coast. It may have something to do with it being 3 am in CA as to why they don't talk about LA in the forecast though.

stay at home Tuesday

2008-07-29T18:02:00.003-05:00

So the massive amount of catching up I had to do is finally showing a light at the end of the tunnel. I finally finished updating my notebook (YEA!) and now the -80 sheets are coming along. I don't know if anyone will ever work on my stuff again in my lab but I want to make sure that at least someone might be able to make sense of my stuff. My lab notebook writing has improved but still needs a lot of work. I hope the whole industry job thing will not only force me to keep up-to-date but also help me with writing a more comprehensive notebook. I mean sometimes I look at what I wrote and go 'what was I thinking here' and then have to read a week before to go 'oh yeah that was what I was trying to do.' But the huge weight of the notebook is now off my shoulders so I am ecstatic.

We are still packing away. The pod is filling up little by little but there is still thank goodness space left. We have ALOT of stuff. I'd like to think that I am not a packrat but I like books and I have a hard time letting them go. I know that I probably will not read them again but I like having them on hand to....I don't know collect dust. I just like having them around. In case you didn't know, books are heavy meaning Dawn does not get carry such boxes because of her back meaning John has to suffer for my addiction to books. That poor man didn't know what trouble he had gotten himself into marrying me. Grandma was right when she told him good luck after we got engaged :)

Today I saw the SURP student from our lab present her research. She did a great job though the talks were quite distinct from each other. The program encompasses all disciplines, not just science. So we heard about Melissa's talk on V. fischeri, moved to Respiratory Syncytial Virus and then ended on Female Genital Mutilation in Africa. Yea it's a big leap. I think its great that there is this kind of program for students but it would be nice to kind of group the talks by section so that way we could see all the science kids together and then the history kids together. Maybe there point is to keep us all awake and the FGM talk was definitely disturbing to say the least.

On the way back from the talks, EVS, Noreen and I ran through a thunderstorm. Yes we need the rain but no I did not want to be soaked through and through. It was full of laughs though. I mean how many times do you get to kind of play in the rain as a big kid :)

Like Dawn Says...

2008-07-27T22:05:00.005-05:00

So yea, another boring Sunday round here. (Sarcasm. That's original.) As Dawn said, I started to load the container today, at noon. Could I have been any dumber? I don't work out much, and today was a hight of Georgia summer day. I think it was at least 95C. So, I

just took a shower, but an hour later was taking one again for the purposes of photographs. I think they came out pretty good. Again, as Dawn says, it's difficult to look good in a shapeless sack and funny hat. But, there it is. Also, li

ke D

awn says, roadsideamerica.com is a pretty cool website. It's user updated though, so it's tough to tell if some of the roadside attractions will still be there, particularly along the Gulf Coast and post-Katrina. We don't even seem to be going to Louisiana at festival time. I thought it was always festival time there. But no. Our estimated travel times seem to miss all the festivals. Either we're too early, or to late. We'll even miss the opossum festival in Florida. Darn it all. On other big problem with roadsideamerica.com is the interface is kinda clunky on safari or opera. Also looks as if the page coding has not been updated in a very long time. I guess if it works, it's good though right? Though I do remember seeing the site in earlier web searches for guides, but didmissing it because the web design in strange. For many websites, particularly blogs, it can be difficult to tell what's still active, and what's died a long time ago. It's no

t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes there's a lot of fun to be had mining the archives of websites. notmydesk.com comes to mind pretty quickly in that department. zug.com as well. How about some more pictures of the container?

The moving has begun...

2008-07-27T21:06:00.003-05:00

The POD landed yesterday as John described. It was pretty weird having no idea what to expect on how this thing would end up in the parking spaces. I'm sure the guy delivering it had to think I was pretty weird taking pictures of him dumping off our pod but hey we had to keep you all informed :) John has begun the stashing boxes from the second bedroom in the pod so the house is beginning to empty out a little bit more. There is just still too much to do but little by little we are moving.

The tradition at UGA is to have your picture taken at the arch for graduation. Well I don't want to stand in line next Saturday after graduation so with a little help from Dave in John's lab we took our pictures of us in our regalia. It sorta seemed more real that we were graduating but still its pretty surreal. The pictures are pretty good. Let me warn you that huge robes are not flattering on anyone. I look like a short round black blob and John looks like a tall round black blog, but hey we have our PhDs so why not dress us up in funny costumes and take pictures :) And also they are not the most lightweight, cool temperature things to wear on a 95 degree day in Georgia at 1pm. I think I lost 2 pounds of water weight just to take the pictures. I'll post the pictures after graduation. I'm still worried about jinxing us that maybe if I post them graduation won't happen or something. Damn me and my superstitions.

Friday was my lab's end of summer, Noreen's got a new house, yea REU and SURP are soon to be over, Dawn graduated, etc. It was fun and nice. Big thanks to Noreen and Chris for hosting. It always is a pain in the butt to have a party-madly cleaning and prepping the house to then have everyone come over and dirty it up. I hope everyone had a nice time. I gave all the girls in the lab these really cute squid change purses. I found them through a vendor at AthFest and just had to have one for everyone. The artist, Jude Stuecker, has some wonderful stuff but the change purses (under small works on her webpage www.judestuecker.com) just couldn't be passed up. She was also more than willing to make more and alter colors and everything. I hope the girls liked them. EVS and family came so it was nice to see them. EVS and I exchanged gifts. He gave me a $30 gift card to Borders and I gave him 4 of these recreations of SunJar's that I am calling Light Organ Jars because they glow blue due to a nifty trick that James H helped me with by taking an overhead sheet and printing blue ink on it. They looked pretty cool. I found out how to make them by using the Instructables website. Check it out at: www.instructables.com/id/Home-made-Sun-Jar/. The website is also full of other diy projects. We used this before to make a fabric covered headboard for our bed. Ah the internet. What did I do without you in my early days.

Tonight we had dinner with John's lab. It was also nice to hang out with everyone from his lab. Brian is in town so seeing him was good. He's been finishing up some stuff for a paper so he spent his vacation from his post-doc at Princeton here in Georgia doing science. Oh the dedication.

By the way thanks kt and James for the suggestion of roadsideamerica.com. It definitely rocks. John and I are already exploring for cool things to look at while we are on our way to Texas in the next few weeks. We are already looking forward to getting on the road. I think the move will be good for us (or at least I think so now). This whole moving thing has been something new for our relationship so I am hoping we will continue to grow as this big event happens. I said in my defense that if we could both defend our dissertations at the same time that we could get through anything together. I hope that includes a very long car trip with a sometimes easily bored person :)

PODS has landed II

2008-07-26T21:52:00.006-05:00

PODS has landed.

2008-07-26T15:17:00.003-05:00

Today, the Pod came. Dropped off buy the nicest guy. I have to say, that PODS customer service again has been unfaltering. Well, one fault. I asked if the PODS fits in a parking place, and they said yes. What they don't make clear is the need space on either side to bring the container off the truck, so really, it's a two space minimum, to drop off and pick up the pod. I imagined a car wrecker style of drop off, where the bed of the truck tilts and to pod rolls off. Nope. There's a self-propelled lift carried on the truck, that takes and lifts the pod off the bed, the truck is then rolled out from under the pod. The pod is lowered onto the ground, and then the lift is pushed back towards the truck, it's put back on, and he drives away. I'll eventually post pictures of the operation somewhere, but for now, trust me, it's cool. And the interior, except of the roof of the container is wood, with eyelets screwed into the support posts to make it easy to attach ropes. Also there are horizontal bars to hang clothes, but only a few. But there is enough space to hang pressure rods if you wanted to. So far, thumbs up on the PODS experience.

Since this has mostly so far about moving, but we've been trying to introduce more people to our blog, we'll throw these questions out again,

What are your favorite car games? We've already gotten one good suggestion from Katie, but more are always appreciated.

Also, anyone know a good guide to roadside attractions? We'll be spending many hours driving down I-10 so the break for the worlds largest house of mud, or second largest ball of twine, might be nice to stop at.

I've always talked about stopping and photographing all the historical markers between here and Dawn's grandparents house, so be on the lookout for that. Maybe. We'll see how annoying that gets.

There are many things I'll miss about Athens, but the bureaucracy is not one of them. Now, the tag office is alright, and the driver's license off has much improved since I've been here, but the water business office. My experiences with them have always been a hassle. They seem to run such an outdated system, every time I've had to do something about the bill, that doesn't involve just paying it, it's a trip to their offices. I called yesterday to get the water turned off, and after about 10 minutes of hold, I was shuffled between to operators. After another 10 minutes, I hear the phone pick up and someone further away say "...Don't want to deal with this..." and put me on hold again. Well! After five more minutes I finally gave up.

(I'll transfer the pictures later.)

trying to get caught up...

2008-07-23T21:05:00.002-05:00

You know I usually am on top of things. I pay my bills on time. I meet deadlines for things. I obsess over trying to get to places on time. And yet, I always put off the stuff that I don't want to work on, ie my notebook and my primer/-80/strains lists. With my freakish love of having things organized you would think this would be a passion of mine. So now I'm trying to get caught up especially since the deadline for my finishing is so close. I just keep telling myself that it will get done, it will get done, it will get done.

I found someone with a capillary electrophoresis machine which means I might be back to the grind next week with work. I quickly ordered the supplies I need and if they come in next week I should be good to go. It seems a tad crazy for me to expect to start a new technique and have it work before our projected move date of Aug. 5th but hey you never know. It might work (*shaking head in despair*).

Other than that the beat goes on. We need to be packing more, we need to be cleaning more, we need to be doing more. Graduating isn't really as relaxing as I thought it might be. We did find out that we will be heading to California from College Station between October 25th and November 1st. Well that is when the movers for the lab will come to move it away. Our actual move date is still undetermined. I think John and I are more than a little anxious about the whole thing (ie me having panic attacks, John sighing a lot). It seemed like a great idea at the time to take these jobs and hopefully it will pan out. Right now just a lot of stress, but we have a whole road trip to play with.

By the way, anyone who actually reads this, we've been on the hunt for roadside attractions on I-10 (the road we will be on for the majority of our trip). You know, like the Gaffney Peach or Paul Bunyan and the such. Anybody know of any attractions on I-10 that we should stop at (the cornier the better) or know of a good website/book where we could find some? If we're going cross-country we could at least see all there is to see. Hopefully when this blog goes mobile we can post all our exciting (and fun!) sightings on our adventure for you to see.

and Living arrangements were found..

2008-07-21T20:19:00.002-05:00

but, like Dawn said, maybe too far away, maybe too expensive, we'll see how it goes. Well, we'll have to. I don't know how it can go any other way at this point. But, it's a residence. M&T said it was some of the best rental housing they've seen in CS, TX, so it should be good. It does have a washer drier. Do I sound like I'm trying to convince myself?

I got all my stuff in under the deadline for graduating. I even (thought) I had done my corrections before midnight. Little did I know EndNote was quietly screwing with my references, and stuck them all at the end. Dawn, bless her soul, came down to fix it all for me, just for the cost of lunch. She's been very supportive through all of this, and I don't thank her enough for minding the details that keep us running as a pair. Or even keep me running solo.

But, just the same, all the other paperwork and submissions were done before 1 pm. Pretty good for me. (I've a terrible habit of doing things at the last minute. I'll work on that. Will I ever change? Stay tuned....)

Today it was more protein purification, this time the last, I hope. A few experiments short of a paper, but I think I've eluded to we're always a few experiments short of a paper. That means binding assays tomorrow! Big fun that is. But like I said, get it done, and then it's done. And as Claude told me, don't try and catch a pig in an alley. So, don't look for me doing that in the near future.

We got our robes today, and as I was screwing around, trying it one, it really felt real for me today, that this graduate school thing might really be ending. Also though, I might've felt a little faint because of the heat. I did carry three boxes of robes in 100 degree heat. So, I was a little sweaty. Part of my purification protocol involves me standing in 4 degree room, rarely have I been so happy to stand in that room. I had just about enough of it though, after 40 minutes, I was starting to shiver.

I wonder how I'll do in the Texas sun.

Waking up somewhere else...

2008-07-20T21:23:00.002-05:00

Ok so its not as bad as it sounds. But I've been thinking that I wish I could just wake up and all the paperwork/packing/apartment hunting/moving deal would magically be done and I would be somewhere else. Today was especially hard for some reason. It should be exciting. We've got a lead on a great place (thanks to Tasha and Matt) and that should put me in the jumping up and down spirit, but for some reason it is just hard to deal with the whole thing. The place isn't on the TAMU shuttle system meaning we have to buy a parking pass to get to work on. Which brings to my mind the whole one car issue. John and I are two people (if you haven't realized already) and we don't always work on the same schedule. I mean we work hard and long hours usually but sometimes one of us is done and goes home while the other is at work. Meaning late nights the person at work gets the car meaning the other person is now stuck at home instead of having the extra car to get around. Like today for instance, John is at work. I'm at home without vehicle. Now there isn't really any place I need to go today but what if I did. I know it seems stupid but I hate feeling like I am stuck some place. The benefit of being on the shuttle service meant that we didn't need a parking pass and because the shuttles run late (like after 11 pm), it wouldn't be a big deal if I went home and took the car around somewhere else because John could still get home by shuttle. I'm not exactly sure why this is such a big deal to me but it is and I can't deny it that's for sure. I just hope it all works out. We need a place to stay and if this is the best then we should probably take it. Period.

By the way, Andy (of Wendy and Andy) told us about Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog by Joss Whedon (http://drhorrible.com/). It is pretty awesome. It doesn't hurt that Neil Patrick Harris is in it (who I had a super crush on in the Doogie Howser, MD days) but Joss Whedon is just too cool. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Serenity. I just want the man to succeed because his stuff is just too cool for me and I keep wanting to see more from him. So check it out. If you can't get it free anymore, pay the 3.99 and buy it off iTunes. It's worth it.

Also I am religiously visiting postsecret.com lately. Every Sunday, more postcards are posted and I seem to just have to look. I don't know what it is about seeing someone else's secrets to make you put your own in perspective. I mean some are funny, others just sad and then some just give me a smack in the face about my own fears and problems. I haven't sent one in (yet) but the big thing is I probably should rid myself of some of my own secrets and stop hiding them whether I send them to postsecret or just realize they aren't that important anyway.

Since I've already given two sites I'm into right now might as well list some others. I've been using www.pandora.com alot lately. My Dave Matthews Band playlist is growing little by little. And finally, I'm visiting http://icanhascheezburger.com/ regularly as well. For some reason the more I see of them, the funnier they get. I mean I know they are dumb but I just can't help laughing. I guess the PhD classiness hasn't started up yet. I think I'll probably still watch my terrible television (Project Runway started up again and there is still American Gladiators to watch and then there is always the rerun of Girls Next Door) and be proud to enjoy it. Who says a PhD can't have a little fun? :)

Another Milestone

2008-07-20T11:31:00.002-05:00

I've turned on facebook notes to link to this blog, because a number of people have asked about our blog after we've brought it up. And we generally want people to know about our blog so it can be easy to keep track of us as we move across the country. I only plan to keep the link going a week or so, so that you aren't constantly bombarded with John and Dawn have updated their notes notifications on facebook. So, if you like this, keep checking out dawnandjohnblog.blogspot.com. If it's really annoying, you can always defriend me, and then refriend me later.

I've been trying to write 15 minutes a day, stream of consciousness so forgive my terrible spelling and grammar.

Today I've already finished most of the typing corrections I needed to fix in my dissertation, but I've got a figure to add, a figure to make, and four figures to correct. I'm thinking that will take me a few hours to work at work, but I think it will all be done before Monday morning. I also have to go to work this afternoon to take care of culturing stuff needed so I can purify protein this week. There's a big difference between finishing high school or college and graduate school. That difference is the actual end point of "Now you're done." Almost everyone I know defends their dissertation, and then has to stick around, not just for corrections, but usually has experiment or two to finish up. Then there's graduation, the actually ceremony, but even there, there's sometimes agreements between graduates and mentors of what sort of work needs to be finished, even as they start their next legs in life. Often it's just writing a paper to be published on their work, but in some cases, people "take work with them" to be done in the hours they are not working at their new job, and even the occasional return from the new job for a few days or weeks to complete one more experiment. Again, usually these "one more thing deals" are predicated on one more paper. But, if we knew exactly what experiment to do, and what the results would be, then that's not the most exciting experiment, and probably not paper worthy. And even with all this post-Ph.D. work, the papers don't always come, or come particularly fast.

Graduation and good data

2008-07-18T21:30:00.001-05:00

YEA!!!! John defended his thesis today! The changes don't look so bad at least from what he tells me so we are looking good. I am so proud of him. He has worked so hard and done so much. He deserves this PhD so much. I think Emily was right when she said that I felt like it was me up there with him. I just wanted him to show everyone how smart, intelligent, and incredibly wonderful that I see him as. I've never seem him give a talk on his research so well. It was clear, concise and just overall great. I guess if you are going to give the best talk about your research it should be the last one you give, right? I just can't explain how proud I am of him. The corrections will hopefully go smoothly this weekend and soon this whole bundle of stress will be behind us. Then it is just finishing up the research (you know only research that should be easy right?!). I'm really happy that Peg and Dave were able to make it down. I know John knew they supported him but having them there I think made him feel even better. Having my family here was also great. I know that the whole science thing isn't their forte but having them there here means so much.

It is weird that all 5 of us (Chandra, Emily, James, John and I) are all done. When we first joined forces with the dissertation support group, I could only imagine the day when we would all be done. Now 10 days and 5 defenses later, its over and pretty surreal. I don't think I'm ready for us to all go our different ways. It is kinda funny that we are all heading west (Emily and James to Idaho, Chandra and James to Montana and us to Texas/California). We're already talking about Vegas trips (which will be super fun since John's sister Sara is living there now) and meeting in different places. You know I'm glad to finish with graduate school but I'm going to miss Athens and all the people and places here. Speaking of missing Athens, man am I going to miss the food in this town. We went to Harry Bissetts tonight and it rocked. Last Resort, Aqua Linda, Mellow Mushroom, DePalma's, Caliente Cab (and its variety of other names), etc. It definitely shows on both of us that we are good eaters and in this town we definitely haven't starved :)

AND...my recent squid data that I've been so worried about finally is plated and the data held true. The complementation works and returns the phenotype to wild type and the parental plasmid doesn't effect the mutant phenotype. I sent the data to EVS and am now hoping that that will be my last squid experiment maybe forever. You never know where things will lead so I can't say for sure that I never will end up in the squid field but I would rather not have to work with squid for awhile. They are cute but only when your graduation doesn't depend on them.

And Scene

2008-07-18T16:50:00.000-05:00

Today I defeneded! Huzzah! And all my paperwork was completed! Double Huzzah! Now all that's left is corrections and more science. In the final strech now. The paper work jab has to do with this school not confirming that files they should have had already got to them. Paperwork is always a drag, but an unresponsive bureucracy is worse. The panic button was hit yesterday around 4:30. After some quick typing and printing, there was a mad dash to the gradschool offices and papers flying in, and blank stares from the staff. As if they'd never seen the forms we were handing to them. So, that was fun. As worried as I was that I was going to have weird dreams last night of paperwork and such, around midnight, I fell asleep, and didn't wake up until the next day, 6 am, with the alarms going off. And for the most part, I couldn't have asked for a smoother day. Only one moment of panic when my laptop mysteriously died just before my talk. Wouldn't wake up from sleep. Oddly enough, Dawns did the exact same thing. But, a quick yank of the battery, and a hard re-boot, and things were back together and running at full power.

Many thanked me for giving such a great presentation, even giving such high praise as, "I usally don't get into that recombination stuff, but I understood your talk." That was cool.

I was glad my famillies came to town to shar this day with me, and I am excited to see them again in two weeks, at the actual graduation, with the hoods and all.

The selling of stuff has cooled off for now. Then again, there's not much more to sell. We've also hit that point where we look at what we have left, and it doesn't seem like all that much, and maybe it will fit in the PODS container. We may be short one more table and the gas grill soon. Maybe as soon as Saturday. The grill will be a sad sale. I didn't think I'd like gas grilling as much as I do, but what do you know. I do like it. It is more convient then gas grilling, and I can get some rocket hot temperatures on my cook top. Broiler and pan fry burgers from here on out, I guess. I hope we sneak small charcoal grills into where ever we go next.

On to corrections, and then the next thing

Goldfish memory...

2008-07-16T14:01:00.000-05:00

So yes I just finished my dissertation and did my defense. Yes that chunk is over with yet I'm still doing experiments. However, I can't remember someone telling me that they are coming over to the lab more than a minute from when they called. I keep forgetting where things are supposed to go or what I am supposed to be doing. I am distracted more than I have ever been. What is wrong with me???!!! Wasn't there some magically cloud to be bestowed upon me after my defense? I mean they didn't even teach me the secret handshake :) I guess I am just super distracted with everything that is going on. I mean the living situation is getting more than a little overwhelming. We sold our bedroom furniture last night leaving us our bed frame and mattresses. The cardboard boxes with our clothes from the drawers is a little off putting. The housing crisis and then the trying to figure out what is going on with the whole capillary electrophoresis stuff...ARGH! So maybe my goldfish memory is just a part of that or my brain is going through a massive dump. Maybe if I walk around with my fingers in my ears I can hold what is in there but I have a feeling people will look at me pretty funny walking around work with my fingers in my ears especially if I talk to myself in the process. Maybe my decent memory will return after we move to Texas or maybe California or at least I can hope so.

Ahhh the joy of science

2008-07-15T16:35:00.001-05:00

So met with the bossman today and went through the changes that LJS wanted. Some it was good, some was well that's just a preference and other stuff it was just nope we're leaving it our way. Only a few overall changes to make really. I'm very lucky with that. EVS wants to run through it another time and then I can finally get it submitted to the grad school. Chandra already beat me to it so I'm super jealous :) Still some squid experiments that I need to plate. Only plated one today but hopefully plates will be dry enough to get the other plated tomorrow. Keeping fingers and toes crossed in hopes that this will be the last squid experiment that I need to do. EVS found another protocol to analyze peptidoglycan, capillary electrophoresis, so he is wanting me to try that out. I'm worried that I will be pressed for time to get it done (we're hoping to leave after we close on the house on Aug 5th) but maybe I can really push it. No one I've talked to so far has done it before so I'm going a little blind into this endeavor. EVS really wants more consistent data before we submit this final paper and I really really really want to get this paper out since I'm not sure if my post-doc will deliver on the paper front. The whole doing a sorta industry post-doc means chances of papers are slim.

On the home front, stuff is moving out. It was really sad to see the sofa and chair that I bought to move to Athens be sold. I didn't think I was attached to them but apparently I was. We moved the futon out to the living room so we have somewhere to sit but tonight after the bedroom furniture is gone it is going to be really weird. We already have cardboxes as nightstands so not having any other furniture is just going to add to the weirdness. I'm still pretty cranky at people that tell me they are going to buy something and then email back saying they aren't. I mean it is just frustrating. I'm learning a lot about being a saleswoman I guess.

The looking for a place to live thing is going pretty well. One place that I found seems great. The sublease ends Dec 1st which is right after we are supposed to be heading to California so no extra money spent on the whole "you must have a 6 month lease." The weird thing is the renters are having new carpet installed in the 1st floor. Now it could be that the management got a great deal and is putting it in. Or it could be the renters killed somebody and had to have it replaced :) I really hope it is the first one. We are going to have Joe, a friend of John's from college or Tasha/Matt look at them for us because we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into at this point. It would be great if we could do a little looking around but too much to do here and too little money to just fly out there and look around for a 4 month lease. I'm just hoping for no bugs and little danger.

I'm worried about the traveling as well. I mean how many times can you play I Spy with my little eye when you are traveling through the desert of New Mexico and Arizona. I'm thinking this car trip will be a growing experience for John and me. We've spent very few days apart since we started dating and fewer apart since we got married but there was always time "away" from each other either at work or even at home we had at least a distance between us. So being less than 2 feet from each other will definitely different :)

By the way, aren't I supposed to be feeling more relaxed now that the defense is over? My skin is overly dry, my stomach is still nervous and some days it feels like my heart is going to jump out of my chest all signs that I am still stressed. So now is it going to be the move to Texas will finally calm me down or once we get to California or am I just going to stay stressed forever?

Chromatography and the waiting game

2008-07-15T09:12:00.000-05:00

When purifying protien, it's often a waiting game. Wait for the culture to grow, wait for the protein to induce, wait for the centrifuge, wait on buffers or you sample to flow through the column. This I'm all used to. Done it enough times. What bugs me is when I'm waiting for something unexpected. I'm waiting on radio labeled chemicals to show up so I can test the activity of my protein. I know this type of paper work and delivery screw up can happen anywhere. Key people get sick, and things get backed up. It seems to happen here more than I like though. But, then again, I'm kind of impatient. (Calls have been placed, radiation is coming at 1pm)

One more defense yesterday, and a great party went with it. Many pitched in to get it going, Wendy, Barny, Joy, Dawn, Vanessa, Caran all worked on various aspects. Good job all around.

Now I'm just waiting for my own defense (4 Days.) I've got the talk together, need to run through it again, as I keep chaning the slides. I'd hate to get up there and be surpirsed by something on the screen. I do know from my practices I need to slow down my speach pacing. More practice will help with that too.

A couple more leads have poped up onthe housing search. Got to get some eyes on those properties. Maybe by this Saturday we'll have a place to live sqaured away.

More of our stuff continues to be sold, and that's a good thing, don't want to jinx it, but a number of larger pieces should be out the door tonight. All the more money to fund the move and buy new/used stuff for us to take to CA.

Speaking of which. Anyone know any good "car games?" You know, like the alphabet game? Things you can do on long distance car trips to stave off boredom? With two long car trips coming up, it is something I am concerned with. They don't need to be car specific though. And two player games would be best, as the chinchilla can't participate much.

Sunday, Favre, and Moving

2008-07-13T14:31:00.000-05:00

First Sunday of Blogging.

Before the craziness began, Sunday was a very quite time in our household, Dawn and I would get up late, and make breakfast foods, or go to the Grit, and try and keep up with a few house chores or go to work for a light day of work. Today has been the first Sunday in a long time where we've spent a majority of it at home. Now, it hasn't been entirely relaxing. The quest for housing continues. so that ends up being high tension, and I've got protein purification to do tomorrow as well, but I've got the mechanics of that down, so that shouldn't be so bad. We've got one more defense to get to, I'll need to schedule around that too. We also need to get to the local giant food discount store to pick up supplies for that party. The selling of stuff continues, and we've got appointments to take care of some of that stuff too. I've got to plan around that too. Makes Sunday sound real relaxing no?

Just got a call from a potential location in CS, TX, it was looking good until I found out it was a Special Enforcement by the Police area. Not so good. As soon as I get done with this, it's a call back and a no.

I know it's not worth it to even write an opinion on this, but Brett Favre is annoying me, but so is the coverage surrounding Brett's reinstatement. The reporting mostly "General Franco is still dead," stuff. And really, despite all the text messages, (reporting on text messages for cripes sake...OMG, UR MY BFF, I WNT 2 PLY again!!!!!) and now formal letters, Favre is still retired. As far as not "accepting" a back-up role in GB, what does he want? Remember when others would hold out on their contracts? He'd say, publicly, that they signed the contract, they are bound to honor it. Guess what? Brett's got two years left on his contract. If he want's to play, he does what the Packers want. I can't imagine being Rogers back as being all that bad of a spot anyway. Rogers, because of injuries, has never appeared in two games in a row (I think.) The odds of the back-up laying are pretty good.

And furthermore, why does he want to play again? Sure, he still can play, and he's relatively healthy. Why have an injury kick you out of the game for good. Be happy you can walk, complete a sentence, and throw a football. Stay away, Brett. Stay home.

The calls are out and the waiting game

2008-07-13T14:25:00.000-05:00

So I think between John and I we have emailed/called at least a hundred different places to live. I for some reason just can't stop check craigslist to see if someone else posted somewhere. One may say I have a slight obsession but I'm done for the day. I just can't take it anymore not knowing where we are going to live. We've got some good feelers out there and one place that we're going to see if Matt/Tasha or John's friend Joe can check out for us. I'm afraid that we'll end up with college old party hearty neighbors but hey its only for 4 months right :) John actually got a call back from someone that said the apartment was an area that is targeted by the local police (eek). I really hope we can find a nice place where routine police attention won't be part of it.

Today we are going to prepare for James and Emily's After Defense social. It is going to be awesome hopefully. Cheeses, bruschetta, and the all. I'm going to try and make a fruit salsa; however, the first round a mango/tequila mix is a little less than great but I think I'm going to try something else. Found a pretty cool one that is more sweet so I might try that one tonight. I just want it to be great for them especially since they are combining their social and they are such great people and super smart scientists.

Noone came over yesterday to look at stuff even though they said they would. I guess I just don't understand this whole selling thing very well. When you say you're going to come over and look at something I kind of expect you to follow through. Not something I should do I guess.

John's First Post

2008-07-12T13:48:00.001-05:00

Like Dawn says, it's pretty crazy around here. Lots of boxes in the house. We counted this morning how many times each of us has had a different address, and while I won that count, (more than 20,) I've never had to move with someone the way I am now. I've also never had more stuff worth keeping than I do now. Most of the time, the sum total of my possessions fit into either three suitcases, or at the high point, a sedan. Oh sure, I've rented moving trucks before, but I could've tossed that stuff just as easily. I got most of my furniture for free before now. Now it's worth keeping. By the way, so far, big props to PODS. Their customer service has been incredible friendly, fast and helpful. Also $1000 cheaper then the professional movers. For now though, it's time to give the cell phone a rest, and try and get some work done. Before Dawn and I can leave, with both have experiments to do.

I think we're both excited about our move to Texas, and I'm trying to take things one at a time. Trying to keep my self focused by thinking about the next experiment, the next hour, the next day. Trying to avoid thinking too far into the future, and the second part of our trip to California.

It's been big doings at the Micro department lately, along with Dawn finishing her defense, two other friends of ours defended, another defends Monday, and I defend Friday. The department ears are going to be worn out from too many words by the time I hit the stage.

The beginning of a crazy time

2008-07-12T13:17:00.000-05:00

So here we are trying blogging for the first time. We thought it might be worthwhile to record this crazy time in our lives. I just finished defending my thesis and John is defending next Friday. We're now down a car since it sold and our furniture is slowly disappearing as it sells on craigslist. It's pretty weird being in a semi-empty house and still living here :) Today it is all about finding a place to live in College Station. Short term leases (ie 4 months) are few and far between and I'm starting to worry whether we will have a place to live there. I'm not even trying to think about what is going to happen in San Diego. Hopefully, it will all work out and we'll find a place to live and live happily ever after for the few months we're in College Station.