Update on House Construction

Kyllan 2 Comments

After a delay in the construction at the framing stage, the house is finally making progress again.  The insulation was put in on Friday and the sheet rock is set to begin next week, so things should go much smoother and faster now.  I am in the process of preparing documentation to turn in to the mortgage company this week so that we can have a smooth closing.  🙂 The tentative closing is scheduled for August 30th, so hopefully that will stay the same.  Once the sheetrock is up, I will post more pictures.

Thanks to everyone who is checking out the site.  William says I don’t post enough, so I will try to post more often.  If there is something specific you want to know about…Let us know!  

Lab Space

William 2 Comments

My parents had a good trip this weekend. This very well may be the thier last trip to New Orleans until my defense and/or graduation. Who knows when that may be?… They arrived Friday and flew out Sunday, so it was a quick trip. We managed to fit in a tour of the 9th ward and lake view. (These are the same areas on my “Post Katrina” DVD. Sadly, little has changed since I shot the footage 7 months ago.). We stopped by Jaques-Imo’s Friday night for dinner, one of Kyllan’s favorites.

Here are a few photos of the lab space in Denver, shot by the PI’s wife on thier last visit. (I have not been up yet.) There are a couple more on my flickr account. The first is our building, the second is what the lab bays look like.

My voice was heard

William 5 Comments

Kyllan’s sister Kim N. has setup a flickr page. With her permission, I have placed a link in the “Friends & Family” link section of the sidebar. Just in case there are some weirdoes out there, she has hidden her photos. So for all her family members, register for flickr and let her know so she can share them with you. (If you do, you can see Drew learning how to swim!)

Where did the week go? My parent’s will be in town this weekend. It will be their first time seeing New Orleans since the hurricane. My sister and I having both gone to Xavier, my parents are/were very familiar with the city. They will be in for a shock. I am still mad I couldn’t integrate a flash player directly into the page in a previous post (WYSIWYG screwed it up and there has to be a better solution than turning it off…) Maybe I will take some video of their tour and try again. It is really disappointing to see what little progress has been made since the hurricane.

…For anybody looking at the time of this post, I was catching on some reading for the lab. I’m overdue for questioning. I had something else to say, but I’m tired and forgot.

Get flickr Accounts!!! Maybe Skype

William 2 Comments

I guess the lack of post this past week shows just how slow it was. Progress was made in the lab, but nothing you would want to hear about. The power was out for several hours on Saturday, but that is normal here. I was hoping to have several photos to post from my trip to Dallas, but my camera stopped working after the first couple of pictures. I did manage to get a couple of the house and Kyllan got a shot of her toes while trying to fix it. She employed the “slap it really hard” technique. This was the only way I got the few pictures of the house. It only provided temporary results. They are on my flickr account. I didn’t post them because most of the work was wiring and plumbing so you don’t see much progress. (Que Kyllan saying, “What’s taking them so long?”)

I added Skype buttons to the site’s sidebar. I think Skype is great. After I get done convincing some of you use flickr, (Kim P., Kim N., Neil and Jamaal) I will start trying to get you guys on Skype. If you are not familiar with skype, think of it like instant messenger for voice. I know, most IM clients have a voice function. Skype is really a VoIP service. It is voice and webcam first, chat second. The others are visa versa. I won’t go into all the technical stuff. I think Skype is much better than the other options out there. eBay buying them for $2.4 billion says so too. Mom & Dad, you have no choice. Everyone else, take your time. I guess you don’t like sharing photos with friends and family. I understand. Trying things like flickr and Skype is quick and easy can be scary. Your parents want to see pictures of thier grandchildren and do video calls while the kid sits on your lap are happy talking to you on the phone long distance and hearing the kid in the background.

Oh yeah. Here is a picture of the new camera. Well, the new camera box taken with the new camera. I hope you guys have a good 4th of July. I’ll probably end up in the lab. Maybe I’ll go see the new Superman movie.

New Camera

Wedding Planning Weekend

Kyllan 8 Comments

William and I had a great time this past weekend during his visit to Dallas.  As usual, we ate at a few of our favorite restaurants in Dallas, Grand Lux Cafe, Maggiano’s and All Good Cafe (where we ate breakfast the day we got engaged…they have the best pancakes and peppered bacon!), and we tried a few new restaurants as well.  William had the opportunity to visit the Hilton where the reception will be held and is happy with the selection.  We also had the opportunity to meet with some photograpahy vendors.  We were both extremely impressed by one who we will more than likely book for the wedding.  I feel very confident that if we use him, William and I will have ZERO regrets about our decision.  We also had the opportunity to visit a local limo company to see their fleet of vehicles.  Again, we were impressed and seem to have found a vendor for that service as well…..so….. we are making very good progress on the wedding plans.  So far we have the church, reception site, and hopefully now a photographer and limo service.  Next big vendors are florists, bakery for wedding cakes, dj, and videographer and I already have some references for each.  So, that is the wedding plan update. 

The house is still progressing nicely (of course… never as fast as I would like as the excitement has consumed me) and the drywall process should be occurring this week.  I will update pictures as soon as there is something new to show.        

Move Date, Dallas & Vendors

William 2 Comments

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the move to Colorado from friends and family the past few days. The word is that we will move out of the lab on November 1st. Our start date in Colorado will be November 15th. I will keep everyone update as I continue to get information. My PI will be out of town for the next week, so information will be sparse. I will try to get some pictures he took of the new lab space on his last trip when he gets back.

I will be in Dallas this weekend. Kyllan and I are going to meet with a couple of photographers while I am in town. Kyllan will also give me a tour of the Hilton, which is where our reception will be held. (Please send all complaints on lack of wedding and house updates to Kyllan.)

Drip, Drip, Drip…

William Leave a comment

It rained Wednesday, and we know what that means!!! More water damage for William. The water is actually getting into the air duct for the restroom and dripping right out of the vent. It is also seeping through the ceiling in the bathroom and utility closet (pictured right). The apartment complex doesn’t seem to think this is a big deal. (They have repaired this leak twice before.) I called them before I went to work on Thursday to remind them to empty the bucket catching water when they came to survey the damage. Of course I came home to a floor covered in water and my downstairs neighbor is now complaining about water leaking into his apartment. It only took them three months to “repair” this leak after Katrina. I wonder how long it will take them this time… Did I mention that rent is cheaper in Denver? The boss is actually in Denver this weekend house hunting with his wife. They are planning to stop by a few apartment complexes I found on the web and let me know what they think. I am not planning to go down until later this year.

Good bye New Orleans

William 6 Comments

I’ve have known that this deal was in the works for several months, but it now appears to be coming to fruition. At the end of the year the lab will be moving to the University of Colorado. A few months ago, one of the preeminent Pseudomonas researchers in the country asked my PI to apply for a position opening. My PI once described this scientist as being his personal hero in the field, so of course he obliged. None of us, including my PI, thought that they would make him an offer, being that they already had one of the top minds in the field in their department. No doubt they would like him, but surely they would decide to go a different direction. First interview, second interview, third interview…What do you mean Tulane did not counter?… Now they counter?… Wait, they call that a counter? Bam. William is now collecting card board boxes to pack his things. I can’t complain. Colorado made him a really good offer and the facilities are top-notch (NMR, Mass Spec. BioCore, Spinning disc confocal microscopes, EM… the list goes on, and that is just in our building.) I have been instructed not to say anything negative about the current state of our facilities at Tulane… so I will just say that I am positive my PI would have taken this offer even before the hurricane.

How does this affect William? I am taking the qualifiers this summer (delayed due to the transfer from Cornell and hurricane Katrina) and that means that I will get my PhD from Tulane regardless of the move. The move also means a lot of down time. Tack on at least three months to that mysterious date known as graduation (Actually, that would be my dissertation defense. Graduation will just be a ceremony that takes place some time after I receive the degree).

I’ve been in this city a long time. After 4 years at Xavier and the two years I’ve been at Tulane, it really did feel like a second home. DID. This city is not the same and I am not convinced that it ever will be. 2/3 of the city looks like it did the first time I returned after the hurricane. The boats and abandoned cars haven’t even been moved out of the medians (we call them neutral grounds in New Orleans). Every single person I knew from undergrad has left the city. Phone, cable, internet? It may work, it may not. Restaurants? good luck finding one open. Grocery store? Good luck finding more than a fruit roll-up. Rent? It went up? Hole in the roof? Still there… blah, blah, blah. And I am in better shape than most. Still, I think it is time to leave.

The new lab will be in Aurora, just outside of Denver, on a former Army base (Fitzsimmons, named after the first American casualty of WWI). It was closed during the last round of BRAC in 1995 and then was brought by the University of Colorado. We will have more space in the new lab and it will be in a brand new $500 million dollar building. The university is the midst moving the medical school and research from the down town campus to the Fitzsimmons campus in Aurora. In total they plan to spend $1.5 billion over the next 5 years. Our current plans are to move during November or December of this year. The two post-docs plan to stay. The MD/PhD student who was going to join the lab this summer, is no longer joining and the other student is undecided.

In other news, we just got our official Tulane Hurricane evacuation plan today, which includes full evacuation of the facilities 48hrs before a Cat1 makes landfall in the gulf. I think it is safe to assume that if New Orleans receives a major hit this season, we will pack everything up and move immediately.