Easy Sunday

Well, we've had an easy Sunday so far.  It has been nice to kick back and hang out in pjs not doing much.  I'm about to go for a run -- we're up to the warmest part of the day as it nears 26 with a windchill of 13.  It is sunny though and deceptively clear out, so I'll go freeze for a run then come back in to a warm Chris.

This past week I went to my GI doc.  We discussed my visit to the allergist from the beginning of the month.  I was shocked when she agreed with me that the allergist was a jerk.  We talked about how science is constantly evolving and how the allergist seemed to think that the only allergy was an IgE reaction.  There are many many other players in the immune system though, so it is quite limiting to see only one as being the "true" allergy.  This coming week I'm supposed to see a new allergist -- one who does actual research with my GI doc on food allergy related stuff.  He apparently likes to draw blood for everything so we'll see how pricks it takes to get blood from Carolyn this week.  My GI doc is going to warn him about how much my body doesn't like to have blood taken from it, so we'll see if he listens. 

At work Chris continues to work on taking over the stockroom sometime this summer.  They are trying to hammer down all the details about the position and whatnot.  Hopefully we'll know soon so we know if we both need to be looking for jobs or not.  We're hoping they will be reasonable, but precedent doesn't suggest that.

This week was the first week of quizzes for me.  Since I only have quizzes and tests for grades this term, it was round one of getting an idea of questions and such.  Both quizzes were fairly straight forward.  I got a 9/10 on one of them and am unsure about the other one.  I don't think I did too poorly, probably just some spelling errors if anything.  I got all the chemistry right, just not the spelling.  The project I work on is coming along nicely and is slated to start in the classrooms the middle of March.  We will be holding training in the next couple of weeks so hopefully we won't have some of the fiasco it was last semester.  The professors have agreed to play nice for the most part and all seem to be very enthusiastic.  This will be a first so hopefully it will greatly impact the relevancy that the students see to the lab time.

One fun thing from today is that I made waffles that rose.  I've been having a VERY difficult time getting my breads and waffles to rise, but finally managed to do it.  I also made them with no dairy products, so that's cool.  They were quite tasty, but nutty, as I made them with almond meal and almond milk.  Like I said, they rose though so I'm excited.  I'm really trying to work up to making a bread recipe that I can eat, and getting the flours to rise has been a challenge.  

Not much else is new here so I suppose I should go run.  I need to take water, but am pretty sure it would freeze while I'm out running so it will have to be a short run.

The Lull after Vacation

This week has been fairly uneventful, especially compared to the last one.  After getting back from Phoenix we got through the rest of the week and made it to the weekend.  Then slept a lot over the weekend.  We also went downtown for our friend John's B'day.  It was an interesting time, as going out to dinner with me always is.  I know that each chef thinks they are going to be the ones who can make something for me, but really it probably isn't possible to be original with all the restrictions that I have.  I try and humor the managers and the chef's, but really when the main spices you can have are salt and pepper, the only thing to change is the ratio.  Also on Saturday I made brownies and snickerdoodles.  I made the brownies with hazelnut meal and tapioca starch and they turned out really really good. 

Friday I played volleyball.  We were messing around playing basketball (well, I was showing how poorly I play bball) and a ref was like, "You are in the other gym."  The gym was nice and big.  We think that big was the key because we were able to serve and get it in since we weren't so cramped.  We ended up winning and that was nice.  We've got play-offs in a few weeks now.

Sunday we went to a baby shower.  Several of our friends are pregnant and so it is about to be baby shower season.  This particular shower was interesting because it was co-ed.  As Chris said, "You say shower and it immediately implies that I don't need to be there."  I had made the brownies for the shower and everyone loved them.  Most people couldn't tell they were Carolyn-safe brownies.  Maybe I'll figure out how to box them and ship them to people.  

This week proves that school has started as I have quizzes in both of my classes.  They shouldn't be too bad if I can simply remember the DNA base structures.  My biochem TA and I are going to come to terms though soon.  It is just this feeling that I have.  She doesn't speak English well, and doesn't seem to understand people's questions so that makes it that much more difficult. 

Anyway, I suppose I should get to bed.  We've got blowing flurries (it would be blowing snow if there were more coming down, but I think we've gotten an inch of snow fall in the past five or six hours).  Its just enough to be obnoxious and not really do anything but drift.  Hopefully we won't get lots of ice on the walkways.  It did warm up over the weekend so a lot of the ice melted, so that was nice.  Overall I think things are going well here in Chicago land.  We'll see if it holds true when it gets bitter cold again this coming weekend. 

Snow Break 2010

We're going to play, "How badly can I bog down the internet connection." Its this game where I see how many demands I put on the internet and see how it reacts.  Currently I'm uploading pictures of our Arizona trip, a feat I normally do at two in the morning when I can't sleep because it takes up all available bandwidth.  Now I'm blogging while uploading the pictures.  We're talking it takes so much band width to upload the pictures that I can't even get the website to reload the pictures.  As part of my blog I want to upload pictures, so we'll see exactly how well that goes. 

For the more pressing matter at hand -- stories about the desert.  We left on Thursday after work.  We flew down and got off the plane into air that was at least double the temperature of what we left.  It was strange.  Naturally it was dark -- but it was really dark.  Apparently because of an observatory around Tucson they can't have street lights.  I loved looking at the sky!  It was great to be in a semi-big city, be standing in the backyard and finding constellations -- and not just the main stars in the constellations, the small ones too.  We could easily see most of the Seven Sisters and Orion and a few others that I never remember the names of.  Chris did though and was pointing them out with names.  We also saw cactus.  I hadn't ever seen a Saguaro cactus before.  In OK we had prickly pears and such, but never the Saguaro.  At least if I'd seen a Saguaro cactus it hadn't ever been as tall or as majestic as the ones we were seeing.

On Friday we went to the desert museum.  Basically they've cordoned off part of the National park there outside of Tucson (well, I tried to google the name of it, and I got that I couldn't find a server which means there's no extra bandwidth, one point for the internet apparently) and have made a living museum.  They have some animals in enclosures, much like a zoo, but they also have cactus gardens and things that explain desert ecology and stuff.  It was neat.  I liked it a lot, but that's just me.  I really liked the sea of cacti that went on in every directions as far as I could see.  It was wild to think about exactly how old some of the cacti were.  I mean, if the cactus grows an inch a year (roughly) and is twice my height then that cactus has been there a while.  It also takes 100 years to grow an arm, so those with several arms jutting out everywhere were how old exactly?  The skeletons were also really cool. There's a picture of one below.  I also went for a nice easy run on Friday -- it was in the seventies.  I was wearing a singlet and shorts while everyone else was in sweat pants and long sleeve shirts.  It was a CLEAR day and it was nice to run.

Saturday we went to Phoenix.  Emily's mom lives there and so we started by going by Em's mom's place and picking fruit off the trees.  I'd never picked oranges or grapefruits so it was fun to climb trees and pick fruit.  It took us about 15 minutes to get four or five large bags full of oranges.  We also had lemons -- they were HUGE!  It took 5 lemons to fill a regular grocery bag (just to give you an idea of size).  Linda and I climbed the back fence (well, I started to scale it then couldn't so Chris got me a ladder while Linda just went on over) to get grapefruit.  We only picked a bag of those, but that still left us with quite a bit of fresh produce.  After picking fruit we went into Phoenix proper to pick up my race packet.  That was a mad house -- only a small omen of what was to come.  That night we went to see Avatar in IMAX 3D.  Finally.  It was great.  Overall I felt it was more political than actually having a plot line, but the imagery and the language was really neat.  I think I may be a linguist at heart. 

Sunday morning I ran the race.  It was ugly.  There is no other way to put it.  We got to run down strip club boulevard early Sunday morning, and actually circled around parking lots.  I will not be giving it a favorable view rating when I get to rate it.  It was pretty to see the sunrise before the race started, but overall it was an ugly race.  Temperature wise it was great -- it was even cloudy.  I did okay, I think it is my second best time for a half marathon.  Seeing as I hadn't really been eating much except meat and carrots for a few days I did well.  The post race madness was crazy.  It was entertaining to try and get several people who didn't have a clue where they were together.  Then getting back to Em's mom's house was funny too.  We kept following arrow signs pointing in the right direction, yet they never put us on the freeway.  We had talked about going hiking up to some wind caves, but that was vetoed because my foot was hurting as was another person's in the group. We drove back to Tucson and got to see a georgeous sunset.  It was flat with the mountains in the distance.  The mountain rings were everywhere and really cool.

Monday I woke to the sound of rain.  Yes it was sprinkling in the desert.  We didn't do much, just chilled and got ready to go back to snow land.  We didn't really have any troubles once we got on our plane, but it had been delayed for weather problems in Las Vegas (where the plane was coming from).

Today we went back to work.  It was warm here (about 30), but much cooler than the past weekend.

The first week of the year back at work was, well the first week of the year back at work.  We both accomplished quite a bit and mananged to not go crazy.  The biggest thing I suppose was that on Tuesday of last week I went to the allergist.  I had asked to not see this particular allergist as he doesn't think that what I'm eating is causing all my symptoms.  As a scientist I'm pretty sure that they are because when I eat certain foods I get sick.  When I don't eat those foods that make me sick then I don't get sick.  It's a pretty simple experiment that anyone in the third grade could probably do so seeing an allergist for it seems a bit excessive.  I did see him though and am now looking for a good allergist in the Chicagoland area.  I'd prefer someone in the Naperville/Aurora area, but am willing to do a lot for a good doc. 

School started today so it was a hectic busy day for Chris.  I start classes tomorrow as I managed to get Tuesday and Thursday classes again this term.  I've got biochemistry and biotechnology on my plate.  We'll hope it goes well.  I've heard that both of the courses are easy so that makes me kind of nervous.  I tend to not do so hot in classes that others think are easy, so that means I'm on my guard against letting the material get away from me. 

It continues to be winter.  It has been warm enough to snow recently though so it isn't too bad yet.  The two bad storms that have been predicted (one for snow back in Dec, and this one for the "cold" snap we were supposed to get) haven't really been bad.  We did get about 8 inches of snow last thursday though.  Everything has a nice white blanket -- except for the roads and sidewalks.  It is wonderful to be back in an area that deals with the snow well, and snow removal.  They aren't as on top of it as they previously have been so we're thinking that it is probably budget cuts.  We just have to wait for a while for them to clear the snow -- they aren't doing it as instantly as they have the past two winters.

A Christmas Blizzard and Southern State Blitz -- People Documentary

I actually ran out of time with the last post to really talk about all the people we got to see for our southern state tour.  We got to see a lot of people, and it was really great to see everyone.  We missed a lot of people as well, but hopefully we'll catch everyone this year. We managed to see a lot of the families and some surprising friends. 
As opposed to listing them all I think I'm just going to put up several of the pictures from the trip, some with commentary. 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

A Christmas Blizzard and Southern State Blitz -- Travel Documentary

This will be one of the posts dealing with our Christmas vacation, depending on how long they allow one post to be.  I may divide up the posts based on topics, and this post will be divided up as such as well.

One reason I've not managed to post is because I've been in Oklahoma and Arkansas doing family things.  I really did mean to post last week before we left but simply ran out of time.  The past 10 days have been nuts, so hopefully you won't think too badly of me for not posting.

Anyway, our Christmas adventure started last Tuesday, December 22.  We were getting snow in Chicago, it was supposed to stop snowing by nine...then noon, but at two when we left it was still snowing so we're not sure exactly when it stopped.  This is a picture of the car when I went to dust it off to go get Maggie from the airport.  It was snowing quite a bit actually and it continued to snow until we hit Springfield, IL.  We made it to Jeff and Ginger's house in Waynesville Missouri by about nine (weather added a couple of hours) and got to talk and hang out with them for a bit before turning in for the night.

Wednesday, we woke up and started driving to Tulsa.  After about half an hour we hit rain.  These were the storms that helped flood Arkansas, and we almost stopped several times.  We're talking we had 50' visibility.  Chris was driving through the  I normally don't talk a lot about the treacherous conditions we might be driving in, but we didn't have a clue that this would be some of the easiest of the driving we had to do during our week touring Oklahoma and Arkansas.  

Thursday, we woke up and it was raining.  It had been raining a while, but then it started sleeting about noon.  We managed to drive out to my dad's house and see him before it got too bad.  This is a picture of the sleet that had accumulated at my dad's.  I took this just before we left. 

The drive back to Tulsa was slow -- it took us at least twice as long as normal.  When we got in, we decided that we would not be going out in it again.  It was starting to snow by the time we made it back to Tulsa, and the roads were icing since it had rained and sleeted so much the snow was coming down on to a layer of ice.  As we were driving they were starting to shut down highways and there were a couple of fatal accidents.  Since it was snowing it continues to snow for the rest of Thursday (Christmas Eve).  We stayed in and missed church, but since we couldn't get out of the driveway and they canceled church we felt this was appropriate. We had horrific wind to go with the snow so we got a nice Christmas blizzard.  In Oklahoma.  We ended up with around a foot or so of snow when it was all said and done.  There were huge drifts in some places, like the one that blocked in our little Focus.  This picture was from about six at night -- so all of the snow had come down in about two hours.  

John actually was going out at this point in time, which is why you see the foot prints in the snow.  He managed to not make it back until the afternoon of Christmas Day.  He was unable to get up the driveway in his Tahoe.  There were random cars parked all over the streets though from when the cars just wouldn't go any further up a hill.  

Since we were snowed in for Christmas we left for Shawnee from Tulsa the day after Christmas, as opposed to Christmas.  There was so much snow that we couldn't see curbs and thankfully we let several other families brave the snow and packed it down for us so that we didn't have to plow it in our little Focus.

Saturday driving was all sorts of slippery.  We managed to not see many plows which was shocking to us.  Being from the Chicago area we typically see plows with the blades down as soon as there is enough snow on the ground for the blades to do any good.  We were driving on snowpack with the plows next to us and blades up.  We were very confused.  On our trip from Tulsa to Shawnee we counted cars in the ditch to help us pass the time.  We often saw packs of them together and were shocked at how many people were ending up the ditch practically vertical.  Our final count was: 62 cars in the ditch or on the side of the road, 10 plows with only 6 of them having the blades down, and 3 tow trucks (not counting the one in the ditch below).  This was in a 90 mile stretch of road.  Also are a few pictures of the side of the road.  Some of the snow drifts show evidence of lots of wind. 

 Then driving around Shawnee for a couple of days, well, we probably need a new suspension on the car.  They never really plowed and were simply waiting on the snow and ice to melt.  In Oklahoma that is really a good plan most of the time, the only problem is that with this storm it stayed cold for several days after it.  We left Shawnee on Monday (28) and managed to have a dry day of driving.  That was by far the easiest drive of the trip.  We managed to see a few friends on our way to Chris's mom's house, but then we just wanted to stay there for a while.

Yesterday we managed to drive back to Aurora.  We left from Arkansas and it was a good thing as Oklahoma had gotten another couple of inches of snow.  We were also lucky in that we didn't have to go up I-44, which of course was getting snow all day long.  We hit snow about Springfield (again) and it didn't stop from there.  The plows were out salting and moving snow as it was coming down.  We ended up with only an inch or snow from the storm yesterday, enough to cover up all the nasty colored snow that's plowed into nice piles everywhere.

A Mighty Wind

This past week we got our first taste of winter.  The snow storm that hit most the rest of the country managed to only drop about 6 inches here.  With all the wind and such though you would think we got several feet of snow.  We had 30-40 mph winds that were bitter!  It was interesting though -- last Mon & Tues we had snow and it melted, then we got the "blizzard" and the wind and temperature dropped so quickly that it created a very nice skating rink.  When the plows went out they mainly plowed the snow off of the ice and left a nice tractionless surface for everyone to drive on.  Naturally everyone forgot how to drive on the ice and snow, but we did manage to make it home in one piece. We had so much wind that anything leeward of the wind had a lot of snow, while the stuff that was out in the wind had no snow so to speak.  These were some of the trees that were sheltered from the wind by a building and they show quite a bit of snow.  I think they are quite pretty.  I also think it a shame there isn't that much snow everywhere, but I'm weird. 

Thursday was our first sub-zero day and the top of the Sears Tower froze!!  I mean it had frost along the top couple of layers of the tower.  My building was cold -- we had snow on the inside all day.  I'm not sure if it actually blew in (the windows don't always seal the best) or if because of the wind the metal sills became so cold that snow formed from the water moisture inside and just sat on the sills.  The picture of the frozen Sears Tower...

The big news is that I got my endoscopy results back.  The mast cell numbers are still way too high.  Since I'm eating stuff like I'm supposed to this means its not actually food or that there is something I'm continuously ingesting in water or simply by breathing that is making me sick.  I get to go back to the stupid allergist -- the one who decided not to give me shots last fall when I asked for them.  The allergist that had to give me anti-histamines half way through the test because I was reacting so well to them.  The allergist that had to give me the interdermal shots spaced very far a part because simply having the essence of the environmental allergen on my skin reacted half way up my arm, made my eyes itch, and made my arm swell so much they couldn't actually make out what I was allergic to -- but apparently couldn't give me shots because he wanted to try me on medicines I'd already been on and they hadn't done enough.  Also, the doctor who doesn't discuss medicines with me.  My GI doc said she was going to try and get me an appointment with a different doctor, so we'll hope that she can pull those strings and get me in at the other clinic.  

A good note -- the semester is over!  We made it through.  Chris is busy cleaning the labs and getting ready for after the break.  We have one week after we get back from Christmas before the semester starts again.  I will be taking biochemistry and biotechnology next semester so hopefully it will go well.  I don't know my grades for this term yet, but I can't imagine that I didn't pass my classes.  Then in May I will be looking for a job as I finish up a Masters.  I'm already looking really, but in May I'll really need one.