New Orleans

From New Orleans ASA Conference 2009

I went to New Orleans a couple of weeks ago, and enjoyed the city. Although I have no burning desire to go back, I think it is a great place to visit at least once. The food is amazing and the music is great. Here are some (crappy iPhone) photos if you are interested.

It's Autumn, Fall, and Halloween

From Autumn 09

Today I woke up to leaves. NOW I understand why Americans call it Fall and not Autumn, all to do with this crazy process of leaves falling off trees. Who would have thought such a thing was possible?

Yesterday Betsey took me to a haunted forest. We had to keep calling out "tippy toes" so that the 4 year old we were with I wasn't too scared. It was a lot of fun, normally I'm not one to appreciate screaming children, but somehow last night it was OK.

Tonight is my first REAL Halloween. We are armed to the teeth with candy, but Betsey wont let me have any of it :(.

Work, work, work...

We've been keeping ourselves busy with work for the past few weeks. Cayne has just left for New Orleans for an Anesthesia Conference to demonstrate (and hopefully sell) their software. So he's been busy designing updates to the software and adding new features, etc. in preparation for this.

I'm working with the graduate students to prepare for our November 10th Research Symposium where they get to showcase the research they've been working on to the entire NIH. I'm also getting ready to attend 2 conferences: the GREAT Group in St. Louis later this week and ABRCMS in Phoenix November 4-7th. And we've been interviewing for our new position in the GPP -- hopefully that search will be finalized soon!

I recently got a Montgomery County library card so that I can take advantage of "checking out" audiobooks (anyone who knows me know I'm not likely to read a library book) and this gives me something to listen to while waiting for the bus to/from work. I've been trying to listen to leadership and management books to gear up for supervising someone new at work. Not that I haven't supervised in the past but there are some pretty interesting theories out there about how to be a "good" manager that I wouldn't have thought of.

September Update

Now that it's October and we went almost the whole month without a single post, I thought I'd give a brief update on what's been going on with us.

We are pretty settled into the new house. Granted, one bedroom is still a wreck but by the end of this month, it should be set up as a guest bedroom/Betsey's office. We got a new sofa from Macy's that we love so my old Sealy Futon will no longer be our only seating arrangement. Right now the futon is in the dining room, waiting to be moved to it's new home -- the future guest bedroom. But we have to take it apart to get it down the hall and into the room. And we have to clear some of the junk out of the way in the room.

The same day we bought the sofa, we bought three area rugs from Lowe's. It was a bit of a hassle getting our Lowe's order delivered (I think they called 6 times telling us our order would be delivered the next day and 5 times the next morning saying our order wouldn't be in for a couple weeks). But now we have something on our floors that will be much more pleasant than hard wood once it gets cold this winter. We also got a grill from Lowe's and still need to find somewhere in the area where we can fill up the propane tank. I'm looking forward to having Cayne grill steaks and burgers, etc for our dinner!

Our major September excursion was to Siesta Key, Florida where we attended Chris and Christine's beautiful beach wedding. We had a blast in Florida and Cayne even got me to go swimming in the ocean. For those of you who don't know we well, I haven't been in the ocean past my ankles in over 15 years. It was OK mainly because all the Germans were as afraid of the stingrays as I was. :)