June/ July update

My, life has been exciting! Since my last update through the middle of June, many thrilling events have occurred. At the end of June, upon returning from Gulf Shores, I went with Madison to an awesome weight-loss camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was the an incredibly fun and empowering experience, not to mention I got to spend 12 days of quality time with Madison in the Michigan wilderness, playing and doing fun activities every day, including canoeing and a trip to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior.


Upon returning from camp, I took Madison to visit her father's family in Kentucky and Indiana for just over 2 weeks. Her first stop was with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in New Haven, playing on the farm. She got to visit with my mom in there too, as well as spend the night with her best friend, Elizabeth, on her (Elizabeth's) birthday. Then she was off for a week with her dad at his new house he just bought in New Albany. Vacation Bible School was happening, with Jerry teaching a section, and her brother Connor was there visiting too the whole time. It sounded like a great visit from Maddie's account. She then went back to New Haven for a couple of days until I picked up her and her best friend, Elizabeth.

While Madison was off visiting her relations, my dad came to visit us in Memphis for a long weekend on the occasion of my birthday. We had a great visit, and he got to be here for the first walk-through of our new house (!!!!) Also, we visited the Memphis Rock and Soul Museum, hung out on Beale Street and caught some good music, went on a dinner boat cruise, and ate lots of barbeque. The fun ended on my birthday when my dad headed back to Va Bch and Andrew left on business trip to St. Louis for 5 days. I finished out my birthday by heading down to the Buccaneer to watch my friends in Groundspeak lay down the funky groove.

With everyone gone, I was planning on staying busy at the lab, and indeed I tried. But a missing meter required us to forego the planned day of sampling and subsequent days of sample processing and analysis. Given that my work plans for the week imploded by Wednesday morning and that my friends, Sam and Katie, were kind enough to watch Cuba and Delta, I did what anyone with no kid and husband 5 hours away, and I headed up to St. Louis to live large on Andrew's $35 per diem up in his Embassy Suites room in St. Louis. The plan was that I would hang out and read papers, which I planned on doing back in Memphis in lieu of fun sampling work, and Andrew would skip his early morning flight back to Memphis on Friday in order to visit a bit of St. Louis and then drive back with me.

On our site-seeing tour, we went to see the Scott Joplin House and then headed to The Hill, as the large Italian district of St. Louis is known. We grabbed some lunch at one place, some coffee at another, some Italian cookies and cheese at an importer grocery, then hit the mother-lode for Andrew, an authentic Italian bakery featuring many varieties of cookies. He had a blast replicating some of the Christmas dessert spreads he remembered from visiting his NYC relations. After a bit, we hit I-55 back to Memphis.

Just after getting back from St. Louis, Andrew and I went to see the Reverend Al Green at Live at the Garden, this groovy series of concerts put on at the Memphis Botanic Garden, about ½ a mile from our house. We met Andrew's sister, Kate, his cousin, Robert, and a couple of doctors, one of which is Madison's pediatrician. We had a lovely time eating and drinking while getting ready for the show. Then Al Green took the stage and blew us all away. We've seen a couple of living legends before, and this doesn't always guarantee a good show. But we forgot about all that and everything else during the time the Reverend was on the stage. It was easily on of my top 5 shows, and that ain't easy.

A day or so later, I went with Sam, a PhD student from my lab, to Jonesboro, Arkansas to visit the fancy agricultural ditches they have on the campus of ASU. We met the gracious and knowledgeable Dr. Farris, who showed us around the facilities they have there. These ditches are cool because the flow and water level can be manipulated, and they're paired with wetland cells. We are hoping to incorporate a coupla these ditches into the field study for next year. It was a great networking opportunity with folks who seem interested in what we're doing and in collaborating with us.

A couple of days later, I went to Kentucky to pick up Madison from New Haven and to bring back her best friend, Elizabeth, with us to spend 9 days in Memphis. I drove up, leaving at 7am, then met up with my mom, who showed me around the Hodgenville downtown renovation, which is really beginning to take shape. While walking around, we stopped in at the Lincoln Museum and Mom got me a cool Lincoln shirt. Then we went to pick up Madison from her New Haven family. Next we all went to Elizabethtown to do a bit more shopping, in honor of my birthday. We picked up Elizabeth, grabbed some dinner, and headed to Mom's. I packed up my car and helped solve Mom's computer issues, then I slept for a couple of hours before hitting the road again back to Memphis.

Since we've been back to Memphis with Elizabeth, we went to the zoo twice, toured the university campus en route to picking up some interlibrary loan articles, saw The Simpsons' Movie, visited the Children's Museum, went swimming at the YMCA several days, canoed a an 8 mile section of the Wolf River, and have generally enjoyed hanging out.

A couple of days ago, we signed a contract for a house about 3 blocks from us. It's the perfect starter home in the neighborhood we love, and all of us are thrilled! It has 2 bedrooms, one bathroom, living room, dining room, den, shed, a spacious attic with major potential, a great fenced-in backyard with several nice trees, a fireplace (!), with all appliances…move-in ready. It just couldn't be better. We close on August 10, while my mom in town that weekend, and she will be an awesome resource for our fixing-up efforts.

Somewhere in there, I signed my contract with the University, and it's official: they're really going to let me teach two sections of the lab for Intro to Biology! Don't they have some higher screening criteria or something?

Tomorrow, I'm headed back to Kentucky with Madison and Elizabeth, to drop off Elizabeth, spend the night with my mom, see some friends, and visit the LaRue County Fair with Mom. Then Maddie and I will head back on Sunday to begin packing.

Well, I guess that's it for now, and that's plenty.
 
Originally posted at www.myspace.com/wannabedutch on 09/03/07.