Sleepin' Like a Dog

Not much has been going on lately. Nothing but work and school. I should just get used to the fact that I won't have a life for a few more years. We're managing to have a bit of fun now and then. We had a lab Wii party last weekend and managed to squish ten people into our little living room and swing controllers back and forth. This weekend will be low key and relaxing with no big plans.

Riley's doing well. He's been a bit of a pill the past week. He keeps getting up around 3am to go to the bathroom. One night he woke us up five times! He vomited at 1am, wanted to go out at 3am, vomited again at 4am and 5am, and wanted to go out again at 6am. Kevin insists he vomited at least one more time during that night, but I don't remember it. (Riley's fine, by the way. He had swallowed some indigestible bone fragments). Riley has also started an annoying habit of rolling in the covers that hang off the side of the bed, pulling them off of us. He does that when he wants attention. He also walks along side the bed and bumps into it. He'll walk all the way around the bed to the other side, bumping into the side as he goes, then turns around and bumps his way back. Last night he got thrown out of the bedroom after being let out at 1am, apparently for an emergency roll in the snow. After he was shut out of our room, I proceeded to have the best nights sleep in weeks.

Und fur Ulli-- Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! Grosse Leibe! Hope you had a fun birthday and were able to avoid any Elmo encounters.

Funny Onion Article

Too Cold!!

It's just me again. I tried to rename the blog, but unfortunately "Look! Becky has a blog that has been dumped by her husband because he's too busy playing World of Warcraft to spend five minutes writing an entry- too!" is too long for Blogger. Bummer. Anyways, Kevin is still addicted to World of Warcraft and is now in the process of getting our friend Dave hooked. He has no shame. Anyways, it was a busy past week. Besides the regular seminars, classes, and meetings, the Notre Dame Biology Department hosted graduate recruits over the weekend. That meant the labs had to be available to meet and talk with the potential recruits. Saturday was super busy. I left home around 8:15am and didn't get home until 10:00pm. Dr. Ferdig asked us to be in the lab from 9am-12:15pm so recruits could visit the lab. The lab decided that since we had to be in on a Saturday, we might as well make it fun. We brought food, games, and Simpsons. Even our lab techs, who weren't required to be there on Saturday, came in. We had a great time and even managed to get some work done. I met a lot of cool people. Another BYU alumni is considering Notre Dame. He knows both me and Dave. He took icthyology from my dad when Dave was TA'ing it, and he came on some field trips for an ecology lab I took as a master's student. Hopefully he'll come. We're always trying to build our numbers here.

Riley is now a year old!! We didn't celebrate his birthday much. We weren't sure if it'd make us crazy dog owners to throw him a party, but luckily our friend Tom stepped up. He took Riley during the day while we were at work. Riley played all day with his pal Gretchen and came back home to us completely worn out. He ate his dinner and promptly fell asleep. Tom and Gretchen gave Riley some nice gifts too. All in all, I think Riley had a good birthday.

Tom took me and Kevin to Bethel College's Romeo and Juliet on Friday too. We had a good time and were very impressed with Bethel's acting department. Maybe we'll go to more plays there.

The big story here is the cold weather. We were planning on going to Chicago on Sunday for the Chinese New Year parade but got trapped at home. The temperature got up to 5 degrees with a wind chill of -30 degrees. The wind gusts were up to 50 mph. The visibility was so poor in South Bend that the police department issued a No-Drive warning with white-out conditions. We figured we'd be safer and happier staying home. Maybe next year.

More Winter Fun

Welcome to another entry in "Look! Becky has a blog that has been dumped by her husband because he's too busy playing World of Warcraft to spend five minutes writing an entry- too!" Another busy week has gone by. Kevin spent most of the week in Chicago for some training meetings. I missed him, but Riley kept me good company. I actually got more sleep since I was able to go to bed earlier and didn't have a loud snorer next to me (Riley does snore but not as loudly as Kevin). Our neighbors were awesome and stepped in for Kevin. Tom took Riley for the whole day and watched him for me. Riley came home tuckered out from playing with Tom's labrador Gretchen the whole day. Our neighbors also gave me rides to and from school and agility classes. I love our neighbors!

The weather has been a bit wacky here. I was actually able to ride my bike to school on Tuesday. It was raining and got up to 48 degrees--in January! After our warm day, the temperature plummeted to minus 25 degrees. Crazy Indiana weather! As soon as you get used to the weather, it promptly changes. The worst part of the weather changes is the heat in our building. The building I work in is actually a conglomerate of three buildings. Different sections were added on at various times. My lab happens to be in the oldest, most dilapidated portion of the building, meaning our ventilation (along with other things) is very poor. Once the heat is turned on for the building, it can't be shut off without significant effort. Well, if the temperature fluctuates (which it does frequently in Indiana), the heat can't be adjusted, so we fry. With the weather this week, our lab reached 84 degrees inside. It made us a bit sluggish, but it's not as bad as a few weeks ago when our lab reached a record 94 degrees for a whole week. We ended up buying four box fans and setting them up in the lab to try to get some air flow. It's not the smartest thing to do in a molecular lab, but we couldn't stand the lab otherwise.

Our big activity this week was snow tubing at Wilson Park in Mishawaka. Most of my lab mates came, along with Dave and Kevin. Kevin ended up taking more pictures than actually tubing. The snow was great! We just got a foot of snow in a 24 hour period from Thursday to Friday. We all had a blast. It was great taking Asako and Upeka tubing for the first time. I'll turn them into adrenaline junkies yet. We'll definitely have to go again, especially since Kevin had to leave early. He was on call and had to go save Crowe.

Happy Birthday to Natalie!! She's 30 now! I told her not to worry about that since she still acts like a 12 year old.

It's going to be another busy week. We have graduate recruitment weekend this week. Our lab will be busy hosting potential students. Should be fun.