AWIS Cal Tech Science Writer's Panel

Last night Jenny and I attended a Science Writer's Panel held at Cal Tech in Pasadena, CA. It was co-sponsered by AWIS and the Cal Tech Post-Doc Association. The speakers were fantastic. We had Greg Critser, Dave Zobel, and Jorge Cham. For those of you who do not recognize the name, Jorge Cham writes the Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD) comic strip.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
Everyone I know of in graduate school and post-doc positions loves these comics. He really manages to capture life in academia, and all the ensuing chaos. It was really a lot of fun to meet Dr. Cham, who is a very nice and funny guy in person. I immediately managed to wrangle the position of assistant for the night, helping him out with selling his books before and after the panel talk. I ran the credit card machine and took money, while he signed books and chatted with his fans. Afterwards, he posed for a picture with me and gave me two autographed books. In one he drew a sketch of Jay, and dedicated it to my "sugardaddy" and in the second he gave me a reference for future job searches: Swipes really well. He has a really good sense of humor, and I had so much fun!The above photograph was taken by Sophia Tsai, another AWIS member, of Jorge Cham and me with his latest volume of PhD comics. Thanks so much, Sophia! The entire panel at CalTech was a lot of fun. I have to say, the AWIS events just seem to get better and better.

Adventures as of late

Well, I haven't got any pictures to put up with this post, but I thought you might like to know what we have been up to recently. Following our visit to Joshua Tree National Park, we had a wonderful dinner with our friend Justin Widener. Justin was a labmate of mine in the Duk lab, and we both worked on TLF. He is now a program manager for Merial, and was here on the West Coast for training. J-dawg, it was awesome to see you again! I really miss that guy.

We also attended a play here in Hollywood. Plays are very numerous and popular here, as sometimes you can catch famous actors or actresses getting in some stage time. The play we went to see was called "Photograph 51" after the piece of data taken from Rosalind Franklin's lab and used to develop the structural model of DNA published by Watson and Crick (they did not acknowledge that they had taken her data until after they were awarded the Nobel prize). It was at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood, and Jay and I really enjoyed it. Jay was very involved in drama while in high school, and also during the one year of college he bothered with. I think that we will be attending many more plays, and the Fountain theatre was one of the most intimate settings I have ever been in.

Last weekend I attended a conference in San Diego, Women in Science and Technology. It was awesome, especially because I got a lot of ideas about what I want to do next in my career. I am usually a big planner, with the next 5-10 years of my life detailed out. That has fallen by the wayside since I finished my PhD and started my post-doc. There are a lot of options out there, and I have had a difficult time deciding where I want to go next. Jay is such an open and supportive spouse that no doors have been eliminated based on where he wants to live or what he wants to do (although he is very keen on me going overseas for a while). At any rate, if any of my friends are not current members of AWIS, I encourage you to join and take full advantage of their networks and education offerings. It has been a real boost for me.

Since Jay was left on his own for a couple of days with no one but the cat for company, he made lots of plans with friends. He started Saturday off with a trip to the Renaissance Faire here in LA, and I really wish I had pictures to show you! Don't fear, we are supposed to return there this weekend so I can explore as well. After the faire, he went to see Star Trek with a friend, and then out to dinner. We both crashed pretty hard on Sunday!

Joshua Tree National Park

Last weekend Jay and I headed east for a day trip to Joshua Tree National Park. We had been looking forward to seeing this park for some time, and since the desert flowers and cacti were blooming this seemed like a great time. The trip takes about 2 hours from Los Angeles, so we left early around 8 am. The picture above is of the Cholla cactus garden. The spines of these cacti appear very soft, but if you brush against them they will release dozens into your skin. They will penetrate quite deeply, and are painful to remove. This is just one aspect of the park, however, we found the landscape within the park is amazingly diverse.

This is just one example of some of the rocks and outcroppings we saw. Since this was a day trip, we didn't spend any significant time exploring any one area. We hiked through the cacti gardens, climbed several large rock formations, figured out what exactly a Joshua tree is, and drove through the geology trail. We are looking forward to a longer trip when we can discover some of the oases and abandoned mines.And here we are, resting atop one of the walls we scaled at Hidden Valley. There were some very serious rock climbers there, we only climbed the smaller ones! The weather was fantastic, sunny and in the high 60s. Later this summer the Mojave will be sweltering. We ended the day with dinner at the 29 Palms Inn, and drove back to Los Angeles.

This weekend was much quieter. We hung out around Westwood Village (UCLA), then Sunday we visited the Venice farmer's market and did our chores. Jay is washing dishes now!

I actually did it. Really!

New Photos!

From Horse types

Go Here to see more! I have finally uploaded a few, and will have more up soon. And this time I mean it...

:)

Happy Birthday Jake!

Today is my best friend's birthday. Jake has been a very important part of my life for a very long time. Any friendship you can measure in decades is special, but Jake is really an amazing woman. Happy birthday!!

Bruin 5K for Mattel Children's Hospital

We ran another 5K this weekend, our second one so far. We have a goal to finish at least 2 more 5K this year, and do at least one 10K. Today's 5K was to benefit the Mattel Children's Hospital here at UCLA. It was conveniently located on campus, but we had to be there before 7 am; hence the grumpy expressions! We did a great job running the course, right up until the end when I got a bit ill from not eating anything before the race. Doh! The celebrity host was Dakota Fanning. We saw her, but didn't take any pics. Sorry celebrity watchers; living in LA has made us cynical I guess.

World Baseball Classic Semi-Final

What a busy week this has been! I had an emergency root canal on Friday, and while that sounds terrible, the toothache was much worse than the procedure. I spent most of Saturday running a fever as the last of the infection was killed off by antibiotics. By that evening I felt well enough that we had dinner at The Counter with Alias and his adorable little boy Elijah. Sunday was our big day, though, as we attended the Baseball World Classic Semi-final held at Dodger Stadium. It was the USA vs. Japan, and it was a great game. Unusually enough, it was a chilly and gray day here in LA, but the fun and excitement of the game was worth it. We got to enjoy our roasted peanuts and hot dogs much earlier this year, and see some great ball. Japan won, and then went on to clinch the world championship the next day against Korea. Here we are above, in our baseball gear, freezing but happy!