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.