We have a crib!

Our crib arrived yesterday, and Jimmy put it together last night. We now have all the furniture we plan to get - a crib, glider and changing table. Photos of all three are up on Flickr.

July-August-September Update
Now Playing: NU vs. UNH

Well, it's not quite what we did all summer, but here's a summary of the past six weeks or so (links are to photos). 

Our 6^th wedding anniversary was the weekend after Jimmy's birthday, and we headed to NYC to see Yankee Stadium (since supposedly the Yankees are only going to play there a couple more years). We flew in to LaGuardia on Friday and got to our hotel at about 2 p.m. We stayed at the Wellington, which is a couple blocks south of Central Park. It was a really great location for walking midtown Manhattan, and since we were only in town until 6 p.m. Sunday, that's pretty much all of NYC that we saw. 

Once we arrived, we wandered around for a few hours, strolled through Central Park and checked out some stores on and off 5^th Avenue (including the Apple Store). We then changed for dinner, which we had at the restaurant attached to the hotel (totally by happenstance – we were looking a reviews in Fodors, picked a restaurant, and then noticed that the address was the same as our hotel). The restaurant, Molyvos, was amazing. We were so stuffed afterwards that we decided to walk to the Nederlander to see Rent (we had planned to take a cab) just so we could sit comfortably for 3 hours. The walk was great – the weather was perfect, and we got to walk through Times Square at a fairly quiet hour.

Rent was fantastic. The actors were all pretty good, and we're pretty sure that the actor who we saw play Angel played the Life Café waiter in the movie. Afterwards, we tried to walk back to the hotel thru Times Square again, but with all the shows getting out, there was just too many people, so we ended up walking up a quieter (and less interesting) street a couple blocks over.

Saturday, we got up early and walked down to the Empire State building, where we discovered that we had stumbled on the best time to get to the viewing level – there's hardly any line at 9 a.m., and what line there was, we skipped by having bought our tickets online in advance. After looking around for a while, and listening to all the stops on the audio tour, we headed back down and went over to the Port Authority to meet up with our friend Lisa, who came in from Boston to celebrate our anniversary with us. After grabbing some lunch, we took the subway (not without adventure – it took a bit to figure out which train we wanted) to Yankee Stadium. The Stadium was pretty cool – unfortunately, not literally, as it was about 95 degrees out that afternoon. Luckily, our seats were in the shade most of the game. We got to see the Golden Knights (Army parachute team) drop into the Stadium before the game, and then watched the Devil Rays cream the Yankees. All in all, very enjoyable.

Sunday, we walked to St. Patrick's for church, going thru Rockefeller Center on the way. We then went to Jimmy's cousin's for brunch, and on his advice, went to the Frick Collection afterwards (we were going to go to the Guggenheim, but it's under construction, which limits the enjoyment of the architecture). The Frick was interesting – it is all the art collected by Henry Frick, housed in his mansion on Central Park East. It was the perfect size to view everything in the time we had available. After the Frick, we headed back to LaGuardia.

At the airport, we got lucky – there had been no traffic on the way there, and there was no line at security. We checked in for our flight and discovered that another flight to Detroit was leaving in 20 minutes – we ran to that gate and got on that plane, and got back to Detroit two hours earlier than we had originally planned. It was the perfect ending to a trip of lucky chances.

On the second weekend of August, we were back on the road again, this time in the car. We drove (well, Jimmy did all the actual driving) to Chicago for our friend Jason's 30^th birthday party. We got into town early enough to meet up with UrbanTherapy for some Chipotle (yum) and then hung out with Jason & his family at the party for a while. The next day, we went to Sheil for mass, then had brunch at the Noyes Street Café with our friends the Lums, whom we haven't seen for a while (both their daughters were off at college, and this was the first time all six of us had be able to get together in a year or more).

I had most of a day back in AA before going back to Chicago for work Monday night. Tuesday, I met up with UrbanTherapy, Kim & Nick, Donna & Dave (and Will made a brief appearance) at Ada's for dinner.

The following week was travel-free for me, although Jimmy had to go to a departmental retreat. That meant that I got to have lunch with one of Jimmy's high school friends at a vegetarian restaurant in AA, although it was bittersweet – we'd been planning to have lunch together for ages, and finally managed to do it just before she moved out of town.

The last week of August/Labor day weekend was filled with more travel. First, I went back to Chicago for a couple days. Thursday, we had our monthly check-in to make sure the kid is ok (all is still well). Friday, I flew out to San Diego for a baby shower (and managed to lose my ID somewhere along the way, although I didn't realize it until I was packing Saturday night).

The shower was fun – the baby got lots of cute clothes & necessities. Our friend Christine helped me sort and pack everything up afterwards (thanks again), and then the two of us had dinner at our friend Karin's parent's house. Our friend Maria and her daughter came over after dinner and we all hung out for a while.

Sunday, I got to discover the fun of flying without an ID – I got patted down and had all of my luggage searched. However, since I had called the night before, I had left plenty of time, and made my flight without issue.

Jimmy had his own adventures on Sunday – he flew to Chicago to see our friends' Ginny and Robert's daughter baptized at Sheil. He flew back and got to Detroit about an hour before I did, just long enough to go get the car from the long-term parking lot where he had left it that morning and grab some dinner before picking me up.

Monday, we took the day off. No travel. Yay! We did go to Target & Babies R Us to return some dupes from the shower, but spent most of the day watching the House season 1 DVD we had checked out from the library.

Tuesday, I had to go to the DMV to get a new driver's license. Jimmy very nicely came with me, and we only ended up standing in line for about an hour. Ah well.

Ok, that's it – that's the summary of our past six weeks. Add in a few study appointments at the hospital, and you've got everything. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to a few calm weeks here before the end of the month and my next trip.

Cuteness

Thanks, Troy & Eulalia! Too darn cute.  

 And, I thought I'd give Flickr a try to post shower photos (and some GhettoAlums stuff from the past couple of years). Here's our page.

What have we been up to, you ask? Insanely running around the country. But I'm done with major travel for a while, and Jimmy only has a few more trips before the end of the year. We'll try to put up a big "what we did over the past month" post shortly.

 P.S. Jimmy liked my Flickr idea so much he set up another account so we could add more sets. Here's that link.

Life Evaluation
Now Playing: In The End - Linkin Park

Well, today is my 30th birthday. I've heard tell that many people get depressed on their birthdays, thinking about all that they have not accomplished. On this "I'm officially OLD" day, I must say that I am rather content with where my life is and where my life is headed. I'm married to the love of my life, have a job I love where I'm paid to learn new things and basically play with lots of toys (scientific instruments), have more good friends than I can count easily, and my first kid is about five months out. At the risk of tempting the gods to smite me down, I have to say that my life is better than I ever hoped it could be.

Now, just watch, since I've waxed rhapsodic about the joy that is my life, my experiments today are all going to crash and burn... ;)

Sonogram Photos

We went to get new sonogram photos yesterday - our first new photos since week 7, when the baby was pretty much a blob. At week 16, however, the baby looks like, well, a baby. Our favorites are below, and you can click here to see the whole set.

Profile (Head and Hand, waving)

Profile (waving hand)

We'll next be getting photos at the end of the month, then more a couple weeks after that . How are we getting so many sonograms? We signed up for a study - one of the benefits of being near a major research hospital. Anywho, enjoy!

Back in Ann Arbor
Well, Kathleen and I are back together in Ann Arbor. We flew back in last evening at the end of a long but relatively stress-free day of travel.

I'll probably write up a longer post later, but I wanted to put up two links. First, this link leads to the web page for the Tierrasanta Kiwanis Foundation, the organization that is handling the memorial scholarship in Dad's name: Kiwanis Foundation of Tierrasanta

Second, the SD Union Tribune published a really nice article on Dad yesterday, and I thought I'd link to it in case any of you would like to read it: Union Tribune article on Dad

Thanks again to everyone for the thoughts and prayers...we really appreciate all the love and support we've received from you all.

Recent news
Some of you have already heard about much of the recent news that will be discussed below, but Kathleen and I wanted to make sure we got the most current information out there for everyone.

As many of you know, Kathleen’s father passed away this past Wednesday. He suffered a massive stroke Tuesday morning, following which he never regained consciousness. Kathleen was able to get out to San Diego to be with her family by late Tuesday evening, and I followed along early Wednesday morning. Following Dad’s wishes, he was able to give the gift of life to another gentleman through organ donation. We have since been working through making arrangements and getting life into some form of order, during which time we’ve been overwhelming blessed by the prayers, love, and help that the community and family have extended to Kathleen’s mother and to us all.

Services for Dad will be held at the family church in San Diego on Monday, July 3rd. In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting that donations be made to a memorial scholarship fund that has been established in Dad’s name. Anybody who needs specific info or details, please email me.

Kathleen is staying out in San Diego through to the services next week- luckily, when one telecommutes, Ann Arbor and San Diego are equidistant from Chicago ;) I am flying back to Ann Arbor (on the plane right now, actually) to take care of business at home, and I’ll be heading back out to San Diego next Sunday. So, again, if anyone needs info or details please feel free to email me or call my cell- on a somewhat humorous aside, I think my cell phone is sore from all the new numbers I’ve put into it in the last few days.

On a much more joyful note, Kathleen and I also wanted to let everyone know that we are expecting our first child! The new member of the family is due Dec. 28th, and we are experiencing the fun of sonograms and more doctor appointments than either of us have had in many years. In fact, before we had told everyone about the imminent arrival I had been telling my lab mates that I had all these doctor appointments for myself. Some of my poor coworkers began to get seriously worried about my health, convinced that I was hiding some dreadful health conditions from them! Needless to say, they were thrilled to learn that my subterfuge was hiding very happy news.

Kathleen and I wanted to thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers as we begin the process of adjusting to life with Dad watching over us from above. Although we’ve always known how lucky we are to be blessed with the friends we have, the last few days have truly opened our eyes to the limitless abundance of love, friendship, and support that our friends and families shower upon us. Please know that your support has helped to ease our burdens and brought light to the shadows of recent days.

Hot! Hot! Hot!
We went to the Tigers/Yankees game yesterday. After all, what better way is there to celebrate the official start of summer than to go to a baseball game? Of course, we didn't count on the 93 degree game-time temp :)

It was one of those days where you're so hot that you don't want to eat... where your sweat seems to dry instantly on your skin... and where no matter how "sweatproof" your sunblock is, you still feel like it's dripping off.

However, it was our first MLB game of the season, and for that reason we enjoyed it. Plus, for $12, our seats weren't bad. Comerica has generally good sightlines, no matter where you sit, and there wasn't a single play that we couldn't see. (At least, not because of our seat location. There were a couple we missed because people stood up in front of us.)

Another college graduate in the family
Mood:  happy
I went back to Rock Island last Thursday to attend a graduation- my mom’s graduation from college! She had gone back to school to get her associate’s degree in child development so she could finally become a full-fledged teacher. Turns out she graduated magna cum laude and she was inducted into Phi Theta Kappa, which is the two-year college equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa. So, basically, my mom kicked a** and took names on her way to getting her college degree ;) She’s now going to be a teacher in a specialized pre-school at the community college, working with two year olds.

I’m still working on getting my head around my mom’s achievement. I mean, I’ve gotten my bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D., and I’m now staff at a major research institution, but I think that what my mom has accomplished goes far beyond anything I’ve been able to pull off. I’ve had the luxury of a support system that has always let me focus on my education and training, whereas Mom went back to school to achieve one of her dreams while still working and taking care of the household. I guess her getting her degree just reinforces in my mind how lucky I have been in life and what an amazing woman I have for a mother.

Here’s my mom in all her cap and gown splendor:

Easter in Ann Arbor
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: The Next Food Network Star
Today - well, last night actually - was the first Easter Vigil we’ve spent away from Sheil in quite a while (over 10 years for me). We went to vigil at our church here in Ann Arbor. The liturgy was very nice – about 10-15 people were baptized into the church, and over 30 people were confirmed. In fact, they cut back from the customary seven readings to four reading to keep the whole vigil running at a crisp three hours ;). Afterwards, we went to Denny’s to satisfy Kathleen’s craving for fried mozzarella sticks and my craving for caffeine, which I’d given up for Lent.

We had a bunch of people from lab over for Easter dinner today. Between the outrageous amount of food, Violet’s quest for treats from everybody, and me getting my a** kicked in MLB Slugfest by a guy who never had played the game before, it was a great and relaxing day.

In other news, I’ve finally finished all my postdoc fellowship applications and can now get back on the bench full time. My head is so full of experiments I want to do, it’s just a matter of getting them done. Good situation to be in.*
*Kathleen says "Good situation in which to be", and scolds me for the split infinitve. Guess that $100,000 M e d i l l education is worth something after all ;)

Random observations and occurrences-
1) I flew back to Chicago on Thursday; I took off from Detroit at 8:45 AM, landed in Chicago at 8:40 AM - and they say time travel is impossible…
2) Time spent cleaning and organizing the apartment is so worth it…
3) I think about 55 percent of the food we give Violet is turned into fur she sheds three days later…
4) The Ann Arbor library system, with its online item request system, is my favorite new toy…
5) We just watched “This Old Cub” on Friday night. If you haven’t seen it and really want to see an truly inspirational story of positive attitude overcoming adversity, I highly recommend it…
6) Oh yeah, and go Reggie for the Next Food Network Star!!!