Essential to my upbringing

I had a conversation with another graduate student who was from Florida once- it was the middle of the Steamy Hot Summer, and we went for lunch and she ordered HOT soup. I could feel myself passing out just looking at it- but she said growing up in Florida, she never ate soup to warm up- she just ate soup. And I realized, that growing up in Alaska, I never eat ice cream to cool off- in fact, I find it disconcerting to have your ice cream melting faster than you can eat it. Keep that in mind.

A recent and welcome addition to the neighborhood is a new Frozen Yogurt shop called RazzyFresh. In a area blocks from a Coldstone, Baskin Robbins, Ben&Jerry's and a Rita's (regional favorite), this seems like a fool hearty venture. But it is SO much better than any of those. You pay by weight, which makes it fun- you can pick any of the flavors of the week, in any quantity that seems sufficient- and ooo the fruit flavors are to die for. Honeydew tastes like fresh melon, raspberry tastes like summer and the Original is a tart 'unsweetened yogurt' flavor that I wish I could eat for breakfast. Swirl a few of those together, and THEN, take it to the toppings bar. Oh yes, a salad bar with an array of fresh chopped fruits, nuts, syrups (including sweetened condensed milk and honey) and all the crumbled cookies and chocolate goobahs a 6 year old could ask for. I've heard other places have similar ventures- if there is anything like this near you- I highly recommend you try it. We got a punch card when the opened at the beginning of last month, and let's just say we are well on our way to getting out 10th free. It such a nice and refreshing treat, and a nice excuse to go out together.

So tonight, oblivious to the 50 degree weather- we walked up to try some (more). It's a teeny little place- just enough space for a couple tables beside the toppings bar. By the time we assembled our raspberry, cheesecake, taro-original swirl with a veritable fruit salad on top, there was no where to sit- so we walked down the street to a bench to share out yogurt. After a few weird looks I suppose it might be considered weird to eat fro-yo with a coat zipped up to your throat, but what do I care? It's delicious.

Jorge Cham! My Hero!

Friday afternoon, our graduate and professional student association hosted a very special speaker. I am not normally one to get involved in GPSA activities; school spirit is lost on the graduate student. I can't even comment on who normally attends such events, but this time I KNEW I had to go. The GPSA was hosting Jorge Cham, of PHD Comics fame. If you are not familiar with these comics, it wouldn't take much perusing of his site to realize that the target audience is graduate students, and he has a knack for recognizing the irony/wit/frustrations of the lifestyle- and formatting it into 4 punchy frames. Many of the punchlines make us laugh and cry, but perhaps not if you aren't so intimately familiar with the structure of academic institutions. But if you can get through that, perhaps it can serve as a bit of a window into my life.

Dr. Cham's talk was very fun, lighthearted, geeky and insightful. The title of the 'tour' is "The Power of Procrastination," which he embodies as someone who makes a career out of the work he did while he was supposed to be getting research done.

Europe!

Yep, we made it.

We're currently in Paris, and have had a couple of busy days already. We head out to Antwerp tomorrow and then on to the rest of the continent. This place is very pretty, but I'll save all the stories for later. Just wanted everyone to know that the volcano was nice enough to let up the ash storm *just* early enough for us to get through with no problems at all.

Love and hugs to all,

-N

I think we're good to go

Yeehaw.

So the skies have cleared, the planes are flying, and it's looking good for our vacation. I suppose something could still go wonky, but that's always a possibility. It's part of the adventure. It's why I wear *adventure pants* when I'm traveling.

They've got lots of pockets.

So yeah, everything is pretty much in place. I'm cycling the music on my I-pod, we have all the chargers and all our clothes selected, and all the adapters to charge everything all over Europe, we hope. We'll take lots of pictures, and I've sworn on my honor as a man that the camera won't get stolen this time, so we can share those when we get back.

My favorite part of the traveling is the journal. Jess had started this, but it's become a nice tradition for us every time we go somewhere interesting. We buy a couple of notebooks, small, with spiral backs and a rubber band to keep it shut, and we take notes about what we did every day. Those things are a blast to look back on, fantastic documentation, and are infinitely helpful when writing blog posts later. I highly recommend them. It's wonderful to back to some of our older ones to see things we've done, emotions we had, and problems we overcame. Consider it a personal travelog, except we're not getting paid to do it. Well, yet, at least. Perhaps someday they will become required reading as 'the artist as a young man'. It's a universe of infinite possibilities out there.

We won't be bringing a laptop, we're traveling super-light, so we'll be mostly incommunicado while we're away. There may be random blog posts or e-mail checking, though, so if we must be reached, you'll be able to figure out how, I should hope.

See you all on the other side.

-N

Way past culture shock

In an effort to embrace our urban lifestyle, Matt and I often walk out for breakfast on weekend mornings. One of our favorite places is the Bagel factory, but there are plenty of other good breakfast choices nearby. This morning we were gearing up to go, and I said I didn't feel like bagels, but you know what would be nice? Blintzes. Where can we get good blintzes? Oh, Kazansky's or Smallman St. would both be good. And I reveled for a moment that is is so nice to live somewhere we have such good breakfast choices in walking distance, before I realized how seamlessly we'd incorporated Jewish food into our diet. Much like when I tried to make pierogies in Spokane for the assembled family, only to find that not enough polish people live in Spokane to warrant keeping any Mrs. T's available.

We've been here long enough that it is inevitable that we'd assimilate a bit, I guess I surprised myself by how much. We are never without a kielbasa in the fridge, and usually also some type of Italian cured meat (currently prosciutto and sopressata). Like many people, our errands revolve around sporting events (although, we prefer to wait until AFTER the game starts to get to the store), and so I know a lot more about the Penguins and the Steelers then I EVER knew about the Mariners, Huskies or Seahawks. While we don't make weekly trips, I would be at a loss without a good asian market, quality deli and Italian grocer on hand- and we used to think the height of ethnic food was Mexican! Who can even imagine how our life would be different if we lived more than 2 blocks from a pet store and a bus stop, or within walking distance of a drug store?

But don't think we've gone soft- I carry my rain coat in the bottom of my bag with an aged clif bar like every good northwesterner. I continue to ignore Washington sports teams and am overzealous about nice weather. I'm sure we'll learn to cope when we come back home.

New Camera, New Plants

Also, this is the 400th post on this blog. Grats to all!

So we got this new camera for our trip, and I thought I'd take a few pictures to try it out and show off my (mediocre) gardening skills. First off, check out these wildflowers:



Do you want more wildflowers? Here you go!



These are from the packet of wildflower mix that I planted back in the fall. It's hard to tell the difference between wildflowers and weeds, sometimes, especially because I don't know what the plants are supposed to look like. We didn't get any bluebells, though, and I thought we were supposed to. There are a bunch of other greeneries growing up around the base of the tree, though, so they may bloom in the future. Maybe even when we're on vacation. Heh.



Check this out. It's a Jalepeno plant. It a bit of an experiment, so I'm growing it in a pot. Hopefully we'll get a bunch of really spicy fruit later this year, assuming I don't mess up and kill it to death somehow.



This is our rose bush. I take no credit, other than trimming it back a few weeks ago, but it seems to have gone completely bonkers, which is nice. Very pretty. Give the bees something to flock to.

So vacation, maybe. We haven't heard anything yet, but Jess and I are keeping our ears to the ground with regards to our flight. We aren't leaving quite yet, but soon, and depending on how the Icelandic volcano decides to behave, we may just get straight canceled. Frustrating, but not devastating. At least we have an itinerary now, and if we need we can just cancel it and then shift the whole thing back into the summer sometime. And if we get lucky, flights will be going as early as this Monday, which would even give some time for all the stranded travelers to get themselves sorted out. We'll have to see how it works. Especially with the train system. Trains are more popular than ever now that they're pretty much the only way to get around.

Oh, and did you now that Iceland has another, larger volcano that hasn't erupted...yet? Last time it did it killed 1/4 of the population of Iceland. How's that for knocking down your travel plans?

Your word of the day is "Volcation", a surprise vacation that you didn't know you were going to take because your plane has been grounded by volcano dust.

Next up for me, a shower. And then I'm going to cook the last of the Omaha steaks we got as a gift several months ago. I've gotten a little better at cooking steaks, but I'm still not properly 'good' yet. Need more practice, but steaks make for terrifying big dinners.

Ciao,

-N

In which I admit I enjoy working with students

This week wraps up the HHMI undergraduate research fellows academic year program, and the last round of students presented their research for the department on Friday. It is such a pleasure to see the culmination of a year of work for these students- these are the students I had the chance to practice my bioethics lessons on, and I would attend their meetings otherwise just to hear what they were up to. I definitely developed an affectionate bias towards them, and I enjoyed sharing in their moment of recognition. The graduating seniors had put together an impressive amount of work, and gave half hours talks summarizing their research career. Two students from our lab gave talks, and fielded their questions really expertly. I got an extra hat tip from a couple of them, because of *wild waggling of eyebrows and shrugging* my work with HHMI.

While I was listening, I was also reflecting on how much I've enjoyed being able to work with these students. Of course, they are a very high performing group, and were very supportive of my efforts to get my class in shape. But I've also enjoyed having the opportunity to advise and mentor some of them, and I wish I had more time for those activities. And that's when it occurred to me that although I am looking forward to being done with benchwork after I graduate, I wouldn't mind working on a college campus. Y'know, career advising, or outreach or something- I am not so sure about teaching and grading and writing syllabuses and stuff yet.

This is in the light of last week's revelation to Mom, that I could be happy doing a lot of different things, as long I was doing them in Seattle. Don't read to much into it.

I'm gonna miss Tuesdays

Some of our favorite people here in Pittsburgh are in the process of moving on. The oft alluded to Waz will be defending his incredible body of work that merits a PhD Plus!, and promptly taking up residence as a tenure track faculty in Virginia. And taking J with him! As excited as I am for their success, well... I am really going to miss them. I've really come to rely on them as a regular part of my life here.

About once a week, Tuesdays, we get together to share dinner- not dinner-party-impress-each-other food. More like, just cooking for the family food, which is how I've learned to think of them- just part of our very extended family. Ok, sometimes we get carried away with the food aspect, but it's really about sharing some companionable time with some really compatible people. They explain to us about weird Pittsburgh things, we talk about how hard or awesome science can be sometimes, Matt offers mechanical advice, and we just get to share some time with some very generous and loving people. They have supported and encouraged us, shared in some wild adventures and let us spend time with their families. I am trying not to act panicked when I think about them moving away- and in the not so distant future now, but it is going to be impossible to fill in the whole they'll leave when the go.

I'll try and cheer myself up, like, 'now we'll have some reason to check out fun stuff in Virginia,' and 'if Waz is graduating without much ado, maybe I can too.' But there is part of me that wishes there were someway to stay this way longer, because continuing the rigors of grad school would be worth keeping such dear friends close.

With three days to spare...

I have this image of myself as fairly with it, not a serial procrastinator, I like dispensing with my obligations as soon as I can. I am also financially savvy enough to know it is easier to pay your bills on time and not get in trouble with anyone than to make magic pennies on the last hour of interest accrued. My feeling is that if you don't get a tax refund you've done something wrong. Keep this in mind when I tell you that our mid-March project got pushed back a bit due to unforeseen circumstances (and a dose of sloth).

A pit in my stomach reminded me that we had yet to file our 2009 taxes, and that the window was closing fast. Fortunately, my dear husband was able to feed Turbo Tax while I was in ceramics class, but he stopped short of actually filing. Why? Because the amount of money we owed AGAIN this year was too much for him to part with without a moment of silence. Unfortunately, my HR department refuses to give me any information that might be misconstrued as advice, and his HR department seems to to think he should be square, so it is unclear how we have arrived at such a clear discrepancy. *grumble grumble* But, it is in and filed, and I don't want to think about it for another 12 months (even though I really ought to sort out how Uncle Sam let me borrow a whole extra paycheck for the year).

In other news, I am back to ceramics! This is going to be another wood firing class, but mostly I am just happy to be throwing pots again. It is nice to play with something you can mess up, or do really awesome at and feel equally good about. I have another 5 weeks to make stuff to take to the kiln in May, so if anyone has requests for sturdy ceramics that will be done over in an earthy ash glaze, let me know! (I could point you to pictures if that would help)

Wednesday Waffles

Since Noel is going to be on blogging hiatus, I am obviously going to smash him on overall blogging numbers by the time he gets back. I relish it, especially since I am working on my writing a bit more these days as well. I am trying to develop a "writing portfolio." I say this with giant air quotes, as some of our readership has an Actual Portfolio, for the purpose of benefiting their Actual Writing Career. Of course, I don't have one of those, but I would like to be in a position in the future to show a future employer that I am capable of communicating to a wide audience, and having more than one published piece would go a long way to making me seem literate.

Currently, I am working on a piece for the University's Teaching Times, about a grant that some post-docs I work with are involved in. This is a bit challenging, because the Teaching Times has a very Go Pitt! attitude, and the nature of the grant is to benefit the career of these post-docs once they move beyond this institution. I am trying to find a non-smarmy way to play up the Pitt connection to make it a better fit for this publication. It still needs work. It's on my mind though, because Wednesday is the day I go to the waffle shop with a couple co-workers and work on our particular writing projects.

While I was in Spokane, Matt did a nice job hosting our visitors. Bleary-eyed me made an effort to act like a hostess when I arrived, but Matt had already done all the hard work, and the family seemed reluctant to leave. What can I say, Pittsburgh's appeal is in it's diversity, familiarity, opportunity and optimism, and that it isn't the Bronx. Matt did a nice job playing host, while juggling a range of emotional phone calls from his wife.

Getting back to work has been tough. I was pretty upset when I left work last week, so I didn't leave myself any notes about what I was working on- but I've mostly pieced that back together. Since I was upset when I left, all of my sweet coworkers having been asking me how the trip was, and well... there isn't a good answer for that. All told, I would prefer not to go to anymore funerals. But if you've gotta go, you can only hope your family will assemble from far and wide to trade stories and laugh and hug and try to remember how much you enjoyed life.

It seems inappropriate to say it was a nice time, but I do love seeing my family. But that glosses over the fact that I am still very sad, even though I really hate crying at work. Getting the chance to celebrate all the wonderful things Papa did in his life makes me anxious to get started with mine- so I am trying to use the restless energy to propel myself past the moping stage.

I’ll be over here, not blogging

So apologies in advance. I’ve got all this cool stuff. I got all the audio from a whole bunch of papa stories, including a whole bunch about his bike trip across the country, and even a few bonus Nana stories. Also, lots of pictures from the funeral and associated family gathering. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to do much with them for the last, lets say month. I’ve got to travel again soon, and then there’s three weeks in Europe (awesome!) It just means I’m not going to be able to do a whole lot of extra stuff for a while. I’ll try to get the pictures up where people can see them, but I’m not going to be able to play around with the audio or do much other writing. So, sorry for that, but EUROPE!

Back in Austin after a weekend away. The cats are VERY EXCITED to see us. I’ve nearly tripped over Nagano several times in the morning. He’s cute, but a little underfoot, sometimes. Jess has got a hockey game tonight and I’m going to attend for extra support. Rumor has it that if there are any guys out there that try to push my lady around, I may be called in to beat them up for her. Fingers crossed!

It was really nice to see everyone this weekend, even if the occasion was quite sad. Sandlin, Jess and I got to have a ‘wake’ with the cousins. Which is to say we went to a bar and had a few beers, talked about a variety of very silly things, and often toasted ‘to Papa’. I like to think he would have approved, except that he wouldn’t have been there because we were up quite late and Papa would not be holding with missing his bedtime. But hugs were given to and received by all, the funeral was very nice, and several spectacular speeches were made by members of the family. Well written and well read by all.

So, from Austin once again, hugs and love to all. I’ll see you all pretty soon, even if it will take me a while to be able to write again. No doubt I’ll have plenty of stories to tell whenever I get back to blogging here again.

Love,

-N