We Jammin'

Saturday we got the chance to go up to the Canyons Ski Resort to a free Wailers concert (the band who used to perform with Bob Marley). It was quite the experience. The band was amazing. The guy they had impersonating Bob Marley sounds exactly like him! It's crazy because it's just some white dude. We were quite impressed. The most interesting part of the whole experience was trying to dodge all the constant puffs of pot smoke surrounding us. I did my best to not expose our poor unborn child!

This is a pretty bad picture, but you can see that this guy is the most unlikely person you'd expect to sound like Bob.


It was a gorgeous day. I'm glad we got to get out and see a little sunshine between these crazy snow storms.

Thank goodness for Al Gore

What would we do without the internet?

And Bigger Still

What can I say? It just keeps growing.

Waiting to have the baby, waiting to see where he will live

So we still haven't heard from any schools where I interviewed, and it is starting to make us crazy. I am pretty much in a constant state of anxiety - every day I expect letters from my two best prospects that say something like "sorry, due to the economic downturn we aren't accepting many students this year". There are still several schools who haven't weighed in on my application one way or the other.




We are hanging in there (that one is for you, Harold), trying to save money by cutting my fast food budget since we don't know where we might be or how much it might cost to move. I was donating plasma, but I guess that wasn't meant to be because now they have lost my chart at the plasma center.

I'm litteraly clawing my way through the 19 credit hours of this semester - I have some very tough classes and I'm always cramming right up to the second of each test. Kristine is toughing out some serious punishment from H.W. He likes to punch and kick the ribs. She threatened to birth him if he didn's stop, but he called her on it and now he already knows we may be bluffing when we threaten consequences.

Things are good and we are so lucky and blessed to have family around and helping us, even if we don't have time to get out and see everyone often. We are trying to relax and enjoy our last 3 months of freedom in spite of our stress.

Third Trimester, Finally!

I've finally reached the final home stretch. Bring on the pain!

Someday...

Ryan and I have been wanting to get a dog ever since we were dating. We've looked at all sorts of breeds, most of them bigger, because both of us have always had bigger dogs. As we've been thinking more about where we are going to end up in the next few months we have come to realize that getting a bigger dog might be hard if we are going to have to live in an apartment for another 5 or so years. So we started looking into smaller breeds. It so happens that someone in our neighborhood has some yorkshire puppies for sale. Last night we made the mistake of going to play with them. Pretty irresistible!

No we didn't buy one, but we really wanted to! I think we'll try to birth this child first and see how that goes.

Grad School Update

WARNING - LONG POST - Do not read unless you are really interested in my grad school diliberations!

I still don't know where I will be, but things are starting to come into focus. I interviewed at BYU, and my professor I have been doing research with there actually decided to ask the graduate committee to accept me and if there is a question about funding, he will pay my stipend, tuition, and insurance out of his own pocket (meaning from his personal lab grants, not his checking account, but still he is committing up to around 100,000 dollars - if not a little more if he had to cover the whole ammount, and with the state of the economy grants are not easy to come by) so he seems to think that is a pretty much done deal. I'll still feel much better about it when BYU gives me an actual official offer, but if the committee doesn't have to worry about funding a student and a faculty member wants him, there is no reason not to take him. If I get an offer in the next week, I will have about 4 weeks to accept and committ to BYU. I really like working with my research mentor and he is very good at what he does, and very good at teaching other people how to do it. I worry that if I leave BYU I might not find another professor so teaching-oriented who still manages to publish a lot of work. If I do find one, there would be competition to get into the lab. Many professors seem to either teach well or research and publish well, but not always both. The other huge advantage with staying in the lab is that I have already been doing research on related projects for over a year, and it is very possible that I could have a big publication ready during my first year if I stayed. That is huge considering you only need 2 to finish your Ph.D (in addition to other candidacy requirements). I would be able to be doing productive work immediately and could potentially finish up my Ph.D with a couple of extra papers on top of the minimum requirements, which would be a huge advantage when applying to post-doc positions. The offer was (and is) still very much unofficial, but the professor is one of the 4 on the graduate committee and he felt like it would definately go through.

I am still waiting to hear back from VCU Medical College. I really enjoyed my visit there, and we really liked Richmond. The stipend is a little higher, and the research is a little more focused in on my areas of interest. I felt like the interview went really well, and after my interview, VCU was my top choice, but I tend to be more excited about the schools that seem more excited about having me, and I don't know when VCU will be telling me their decision. I guess I will find out in the next 4 weeks, but I don't know anything more specific than that. Most professors have said if they flew me out for the interview and I felt it went well, they would most likely extend an offer. While a change in lab, research area, and venue would be refreshing and maybe even helpful in my transition to Ph.D from undergrad work, I would have to start over searching for a professor who was a good fit for me and then I would have to start at ground zero learning about their work. It would take me about a year to be up and running on productive research.

Unless someone comes in and really suprises me, I will be going to one of these two programs (unless I don't get into either, and then i'll try 7-11). I feel pretty good having 2 pretty solid prospects to hopefully choose from, but I will be very relieved when I have some kind of official offer in hand.