Author: andy

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Things Are Looking Up

Oh, so much better.

To be fair, I think we’ve gotten off with a pretty mild winter here in Iowa, but I’ve been getting increasingly tired of the dreary cloudiness and bitter cold…all…the…time…  As I noted to Brooke a few days ago, it ends up costing quite a bit of propane heating in order to keep the house around 65 F (which is only barely comfortable…) when it’s 0 F outside for most of the day and the sun isn’t out.

But as the forecast dictates, the temps are getting warmer and it looks like we’ll have highs above 35 F at least through February 20th, if the 10-day forecast is to be believed.

I want to believe.

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“Just Imagine The Audience Naked”

I don’t advise doing this, yet it is a common option for those with a fear of speech delivery.

Public speaking has never been something I considered to be a “strong suit” of mine.  There were things I did well growing up, and speaking in front of an audience certainly wasn’t one of them.  In high school, I hated answering questions in class.  I hated delivering speeches.  I didn’t like being singled out in front of the class.  Basically, I feared anything that would put me up in front of a group of my peers, or adults, and I avoided it like the plague.

With that in mind, I wanted to write up a blurb about my lectures last week and wanted to talk about them from the public speaking angle, so I checked into when it was that I last even mentioned “public speaking” on the blog.  Low and behold, I find that it was in a post dated January 8, 2006.  At the time, I was lamenting the fact that I had to deliver a presentation for the biomedical sciences program at SLU, in an event called a Colloquium.  As a graduate student at SLU, in the CORE biomedical sciences program, during your second semester in the program, you needed to pick an academic paper, research it, and present it in front of the rest of the people in the program, including four separate departments.  Usually, this group would involve other students and professors, typically never going above 50 people, but frequently only featuring 20+ people in attendance.  The scary part, of course, is that you were presenting this information in front of professors and they could ask you questions.

Tough questions.  Questions you knew you couldn’t answer, even though they thought you could, or should.

Unfortunately, looking back on that particular presentation, it wasn’t very pretty.  I had chosen a pretty boring paper and I didn’t present it well.  However, as a second-year in the program, you have to do another Colloquium presentation, in front of the same group, but by then you have a bit more knowledge and experience under your belt.  My second one was far better.

Over the intervening years (five of them…eeeeesh…), I  had quite a few opportunities to brush up on my public speaking skills.  I had to present papers in front of our department at SLU – a smaller group (up to 20), yet still including students and professors, still entirely capable of tearing you apart with their questions, making you look like an idiot.  Usually, I would over-prepare for these presentations, running through the talk over and over and over again for at least a week prior to its delivery.  And normally, the talks would go just fine.  Still nervous, though.

Looking back on a life of speaking opportunities, I can come up with a few instances when I wasn’t nervous.  One was Boy Scouts.  Another was teaching the undergrads at SLU in a non-major biology course we, the graduate students, ran.  And, most recently, to graduate students here at Iowa and Pharm.D. students last week.

The common thread that I find in these examples is somewhat cliche, but nonetheless important: confidence.  What I found was that, over the years, I was getting better at choosing when it was appropriate for me to speak in front of a group, and usually, it was appropriate when I felt like I knew more about the subject than the other people in the room did.  In the case of teaching undergrads at SLU, I was telling them about depressants and other neurological drugs.  This wasn’t a problem for me, as I knew deep down that there was no one in that room that knew more about the subject.  I would be able to answer any question they threw at me, and if I didn’t know the answer, I could fashion something workable and then get back to them with more details later. Even delivering my dissertation defense to complete the Ph.D., I was talking about the work I had done for 4+ years at SLU, and since I was the one that did the work, I was the most knowledgeable person in the room to talk about it.  The professors could ask me any question they wanted: I was in full control.

Which brings us to last week, when I spoke in front of, perhaps, the largest group I’ve ever had to: ~110 students.  These were pharmacy students here at the University of Iowa and I was talking to them about biotechnology.  Now, I am not well-versed in biotechnology, but it is material I’ve been taught before…years before…  Therefore, I was and still am no expert in the subject.  However, I still knew, deep down, that I knew more about it than they did, and I was imparting that knowledge to them in the most understandable way I could.  As usual, I still practiced the talks for over a week in advance, re-tooled various slides to ensure that they made sense.  I delivered the lectures, answered questions, and all the while, I didn’t get nervous.

So it may have taken 25+ years, but I think figured out public speaking.  It really doesn’t scare me anymore, at least not to the extent that it used to.  I still have to be somewhat choosy about the times where I want to put myself up in front of a group like that to talk about a subject, but at the very least, I think I have a system that I can work with.

Somewhat important if I plan on being a college-level teacher someday…

…when I grow up…  🙂

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Blizzkrieg 2011

We had a pretty good snow day here in good ol’ Iowa.  The blizzard warning, itself, was over around noon today, after which the wind died down considerably and the sun poked through occasionally.  Still, the high today was 9 F, so the snow isn’t going anywhere for awhile. In the end, Iowa City got 10″ of snow, Cedar Rapids closer to 9.5″, and Swisher got 10.7″.

Yesterday afternoon, the University cancelled classes for the evening and through tomorrow morning at 10:00 am.  I got ahold of my boss, who is also in charge of the class, and he and I decided to go ahead and cancel our 10:30 am class, as we figured very few people would be there anyway, and the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to get there (and I would have been right).  Just before 8:00 am this morning, though, the University canceled class for the remainder of the day.  All was well in the world!

After Meg went down for a (short…) nap this morning, Brooke and I went outside and recorded the video above.  As you can see, there were quite a few snow drifts in our yard, a few of which coming to somewhere between 4 and 6 feet tall.  Needless to say, I’d never seen snow naturally piled to such heights, so it was quite a sight to see.  Unfortunately, it also seemed as if those snow drifts were covering our road to the extent that we wouldn’t be able to get out of here anytime soon.

Thankfully, however, while I was outside in the early afternoon starting to shovel some of the snow out of the way, a very large plow came through and made a route for us.  We took a drive into Swisher to collect Brooke’s car from our friend’s house in town and brought it back here, so now we’re good to go for tomorrow.

So yeah, we watched a few movies and generally stayed inside and stayed warm.  Not a bad Groundhog Day!

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Of Snow Days and Sickly Babies

Our first truly major snow is about to hit in the next few hours.  We’ve actually gotten a decent amount of snow, and snow from weeks ago is still on the ground, yet I don’t think that this much will have fallen in a single bout in this amount of time.  Originally, forecasters were calling for something like 20″ in some parts of Iowa, while we’d probably get closer to 15″ over a period of two days, however that estimate has been reduced.  Last night, we could have gotten up to 4″, but I’d be surprised if we even got 1″.  The problem last night, however, was drifting snow, leading to a near 4′ drift on our sidewalk (very fluffy though, so pretty easy to remove).  As of this posting, they’re forecasting more like 8-10″ for Cedar Rapids, and then 10″-12″ for Iowa City between 3:00 pm today and 9:00 am tomorrow.

Normally, this wouldn’t worry me at all.  My job tends to be flexible such that, if I was snowed in under 12″ of snow, I wouldn’t really have to go anywhere.  Unfortunately, I’m scheduled to teach to the Pharm.D. students tomorrow, so if the University doesn’t cancel classes, I’m still required to get in and there’s no way for me to notify the 100+ students in the class that I won’t be there.  Regardless, I’m thinking of various strategies for solving this problem, but I hope that the University goes ahead and cancels classes ahead of time (i.e. this afternoon!!) so I can sleep well without having to worry about tomorrow morning.  Missouri is getting hammered more than Iowa is and, yesterday, SLU and Wash U in St. Louis both preemptively canceled classes for today.

Aside from snow issues, Meg hasn’t been feeling well.  Really, she hasn’t been feeling well for the past few weeks, but it really started last weekend when she stopped eating as well as she had been and certainly stopped sleeping as well as she had been.  Naptime still happened, and gradually improved as the week drew on, but she still woke up multiple times during the night and would stay awake during that period, crying out any time you’d try to lay her down (and would still cry even after she’d been asleep in your arms…and when I say “asleep,” I mean “out”).

My Mom visited this past weekend and reminded us of the fact that my sister was prone to ear infections around this age, and ear infections that didn’t present with a fever.  Ear infections that seemed to flare up more at night, rather than during the day.  Suffice to say, Brooke took Meg into the doc yesterday and, indeed, Meg has infections in both ears.  She’ll be on antibiotics for 10 days or so and we’ll need to take Meg in again in a few weeks to confirm that the ear infections are cleared up, but hopefully this will set us on a better trend toward sleeping through the night!

Of course, unfortunately, this means that Meg will miss her last few weeks of water babies…

Also, Meg has had a cough for months now.  We hadn’t paid much attention to it, thinking it was related to the fact that she goes to daycare and is exposed to any number of evil demon baby diseases.  She’d seen the doc a few times during that period and the doc agreed.  However, yesterday, the doc was a bit more concerned about it, as the coughing was a bit worse than normal.  She isn’t really sure what the cause is, but she prescribed albuterol treatments, which required us to pick up a nebulizer to actually administer the drug to Meg.  She’s supposed to get the treatments a few times a day, and they take around 10 minutes to allow the albuterol to “nebulize” into her lungs.  As long as you keep her entertained, she inhales most of the drug and you can definitely tell that her coughing gets more productive thereafter.  Hopefully that helps her, too!

Meg turns 11 months this Saturday, which is a pretty crazy thing to consider.  She’s obviously come a long way in that period, and as have we.  While she’s still developing nicely, we’re still waiting on more teeth to come in (she has 1, solitary, lonely tooth…) and we’re waiting on her mobility to increase (she can scoot around and move from one side of the room to the other, but it isn’t really “crawling,” per se…).  We’re anxious to see if this, the 11th month of her life, is when all the other teeth come in and whether she starts to take her first steps.

It would certainly be nice for her to be able to chew on her birthday cake in a little over a month.  🙂

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Primer: Scientific Funding

These posts, tagged “Primer,” are posted for two reasons: 1). to help me get better at teaching non-scientists about science-related topics; and 2). to help non-scientists learn more about things they otherwise would not.  So, while I realize most people won’t read these, I’m going to write them anyway, partially for my own benefit, but mostly for yours.

One would like to think that major universities spend their money on research for their various faculty members, but unfortunately for me, that typically isn’t the case.  Sure, there is a reasonable amount of money going to fund the research carried out by faculty members in biology, physics, and chemistry departments, but the reality is that in order for that research to occur, and moreover almost all of the important discoveries under the umbrella we call “Science,” money must come from sources other than the university.  In many cases, your tenure and rank at your given institution is determined by how much outside funding you bring in and where it comes from.

The majority of scientific funding in the United States comes from the Federal Government, mostly in the form of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and, to a lesser degree, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DoE).  Scientific American did a great job recently summing up how much money goes into which pot at the Federal level with an easy-to-read graphic that I suggest you glance at.  Basically, the NIH gets $28.5 billion to divide amongst its various projects, including grants that professors and other individuals apply for.  The NSF gets $4.2 billion, and the DoE gets about $3.5 billion to devote to research.  For comparison’s sake, the Department of Defense gets $56.2 billion (excluding special funding in war-time).

Obviously, NIH is getting a substantial piece of that pie.  For the most part, if you are doing biomedical research like I am, then the NIH is the first place you apply to.  They will generally fund anything that you can tie to a disease or disorder.  Alternatively, NSF won’t touch any grant that even implies it could help with disease research, instead focusing on really basic research.  Chemists and Physicists can find applications in the NIH, but usually NSF and DoE (or others) are where they have to look for funding.  And that pot is much smaller than the NIH pot.

The process of applying in each agency varies, but for the most part, you go about it the following way:

  1. Find a grant application that applies to your research
  2. Write the application according to their explicit instructions
  3. Submit the grant by a given due date (usually a few times per year)
  4. The grant is assigned to a division of the agency and then further assigned to a committee
  5. The committee is made up of people who should know what they’re doing, and then rank each grant they get in a pile based on its merits, need, and contribution to science
  6. The committee is given a number of grants that they can fund (usually between 5-20% of total grants submitted)
  7. Funding is decided and you are notified of the decision

There are usually three decisions that can be made.  Either a). the funding agency can grant you the money and accept your project as-is; b). the agency can give your grant a rank or score and suggest you make some changes and resubmit it; or c). they can “triage” your grant, basically saying they didn’t even score it, and that it needs significant work to make the cut.  The committee in question will usually give you some kind of pointers as to why your grant was or wasn’t funded, but that experience will vary across agencies and committees.

The NIH has a few different grant series that you can apply for.  Some, like the one I applied for in early December, are considered “training grants.”  So in this case, the grant I applied for was a post-doctoral training grant (designated “F32”) that would pay my salary for 2-3 years, based on the project I outlined to them.  No equipment or anything would be paid for – just my subsistence.  Alternatively, the “Big Daddy” grant to get is designated “R01,” which is a big league research grant that awards up to $5 million to a researcher and their lab, paying for salaries, equipment, and even some travel money to conferences.  At many big academic institutions, you need to get an R01 before you can achieve tenure.  At some of them, you need two.  The going funding rate for these grants has been in the 8-10% range, which is pretty low.  It’s tough to get an R01 and you can spend a lot of your time writing these grants and trying to get them, rather than actually doing research.

There are alternatives to federal money, of course.  You could call these Private, or “Foundation Grants.”  These entities are frequently not-for-profit groups that are set up to fund research according to their specifications.  The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research is one you may have heard of.  The American Heart Association is another.  The grants these foundations fund are typically quite a bit smaller than those funded by the government, rarely reaching in the millions of dollars.  They are also quite competitive, and some could argue more competitive than federal funding.  Generally, you end up spreading yourself thinner across multiple foundation grants if that’s how you have to fund your lab, or you get a single federal grant (or two…).  It all depends on how large your operation is, how many people are under you, and how many projects you have running at a given time.

I’ll leave you with one last point about the funding of science (insert soap box here): the majority of scientific innovations and true breakthroughs come from the funding agencies listed above:  NIH, NSF and DoE.  Private Industry, such as Pfizer or Merck, carry out their own research and development programs, but they rely heavily on basic research carried out in academic settings.  They do this partially because these companies cannot patent what is published in a journal article by someone else, so they have to take other research, apply it to their own needs, and then create a patent that they can make money off of.  When federal funding for science drops or doesn’t even increase with inflation, that means that professors make less money and cannot afford to pay their workers.  That means that less basic research is done.  That means that Private Industry has to devote more money to R&D in order to make new discoveries.  That increases the amount of money they need to put into developing a drug (more on that in a future Primer…).  Finally, that means the drugs and treatments that then go to you cost more money, adding to the sky-rocketing health care costs we already have, mostly because that basic research that Private Industry did is now covered under a patent for 10 years and no one else can make money on it and compete.

Funding of science at the federal level is incredibly important.  It’s hard enough as it is to get a grant, and it is vitally important that the money NIH, NSF, DoE, etc. get does not decrease, but instead increases.  That’s where scientific innovation comes from in the United States.  It’s why people from all over the world come here to get a Ph.D. and do research.  Because the United States values innovation and discovery.

As well they should.

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Bubble Bobble

Within 48 hours of starting fermentation, the airlock at the top of your fermentation vessel should start bubbling as the yeast produce CO2. Here’s the carboy containing our India Pale Ale, 24 hrs after starting fermentation.

You can see small bubbles in the airlock at the top of the carboy, and if this picture were moving, you’d see the small plastic insert inside the airlock bubbling a few times a minute.  However, you can also see the croizen (foam) at the top of the beer within the carboy getting dangerously close to the top of the vessel.  Obviously, this presents a dilemma.

There is little space at the top of the carboy for CO2 to collect, and it is also difficult to escape, as you are trying to limit exposure of the beer to the outside world for fear of contamination by various critters in your cellar-like basement.  Keeping it mostly sealed yields the possibility that you are forming a “beer bomb” that could explode due to the increasing pressure within the sealed vessel.

Therefore, taking my boss’ advice (who’s had this problem in the past), we did the following:

This picture is of the Hefeweizen, a beer that was already filled too high because I overfilled it with water.  Since taking this picture, I’ve also set up the IPA carboy to do the same thing.

Basically, we kept the rubber stopper in the top of the carboy, but rather than use the airlock, we took silicone tubing that came with the beer kit to allow the foam and air to escape into another vessel.  You can see the foam inside the tube, and collecting in the Mason jar Brooke set up to catch the croizen that is escaping from the carboy.

While not ideal, it should help limit contamination as long as we don’t leave it like this permanently.  With the near constant flow of croizen through the tube, bacteria/insects/mice probably won’t be going backwards toward the beer.  Also, the brunt of the croizen production occurs within the first few days, so I’ll be able to remove the tubing and replace it with the original airlock again shortly.

We didn’t have this problem when we were using the 5 gal plastic bucket because there was plenty of space at the top for air to expand into.  Also, the design of the airlock we were using may have been a bit better suited for allowing at least some of the CO2 to escape.  And finally, any time I would open that thing up, all that excess CO2 could escape rapidly, rather than trying to fit all of it through a relatively small opening at the top of a carboy.

Regardless, it’s interesting to see the process in action through glass.  I may only use glass carboys for the secondary fermentation process in the future, to help prevent this kind of thing from occurring, but I’m still glad we did it this way.

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Brewing Update

While Meg was staying at her grandparents house in Hannibal, Brooke and I took it upon ourselves to brew not one, but two, beers in a single day.  From start to finish, the entire process took almost 10 hours, but most of that time was spent cooling down the “wort” (i.e. unfermented beer).  I think we’ll need to invest in a wort chiller, as my chosen method of cooling the pots from boiling down to ~70 F, involving placing the pot outside in the snow, didn’t really speed things up in the least.

Andy checking on his beer

Another change this time around involved brewing the beer in glass carboys, borrowed from my Dad who used to use them for brewing wine.  There are advantages and disadvantages to using these things.  One advantage is that they’re glass, so you can see through them to view how your brewing process is going.  Also, being glass, it is less likely that after years of use, you’ll have residual flavors being imparted by your fermentation vessel, as plastic can do (but really won’t for quite a long time).

IPA on the left; Hefeweizen on the right

One disadvantage, however, is that they’re kinda a pain to clean.  We’ve got a brush that is designed for scrubbing carboys, but due to the small opening at the top of the fermentation vessel, it’s just hard to sterilize the carboy properly.  I think I did a good enough job, but we’ll see.  It’s also very difficult to fill the thing up, due to the aforementioned small opening at the top.  Brooke had to hold a funnel in order for me to take the pot pictured above and pour into the carboy.  It becomes a two-person process, whereas one person could probably do alright using the 5 gal bucket. Finally, it is difficult to know what volume you actually have in these things.  I needed 5 gal in total, and in trying to cool the beer down faster, I poured spring water into the bottom of the carboy before adding the Hefeweizen wort.  As you can see in the picture above, on the right, the beer is pretty close to the top, largely because I had too much volume in there.  This also affected the initial Specific Gravity reading of the wort, which could affect my alcohol calculations toward the end of fermentation.

Another concern with these beers is that the temperature in our basement has dropped since the last time we brewed.  The thermometer is reading consistently around 50 F, if not slightly below, making me wonder how long fermentation will take.

However, after 24 hours downstairs, the yeast had taken off.  [Note: That was another change.  Instead of using liquid yeast, we used the dry yeast the kits normally come with.  I’d never done it this way, but Brooke makes bread regularly, so she’s familiar with what needs to be done.  They worked!]  I may take another picture later this week, but the foam at the top (croizen) is increasing steadily to the point where I had to remove the CO2 trap at the top of the carboy and put a tube in its place.  The tube is running down into a jar that Brooke grabbed, semi-sealed with aluminum foil.  It isn’t the most ideal situation, but it’s the only reasonable option in order to let some of that foam out of the fermentation vessel.  Otherwise, the foam actually pushes out of the carboy and into the CO2 trap at the top.  After a few days of letting the croizen bubble out, I’ll replace the trap, as bubbling will have slowed to some degree.

Regardless, despite all the various changes this time around, it appears that fermentation has begun!  In theory, the Hefeweizen should be ready for bottling in about 2 weeks and the IPA should be ready for bottling in about 6 weeks.  I’ll be transferring the IPA from its primary vessel into a secondary vessel at some point, either the 5 gal plastic bucket from last time, or I’ll put it in the glass carboy that the Hefeweizen is currently inhabiting.  Probably a few weeks down the road.

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Review: True Grit

First of all, I haven’t seen a movie in theaters since May, which is crazy considering how many I’ve seen in past years.  Amazing what having a baby and moving does to your movie schedule.  Secondly, Meg was staying with her grandparents this weekend, giving us extra time to go see something.  There aren’t many movies out this time of year that interest both Brooke and I, but thankfully, “True Grit” was one such movie.

The Coen Brothers have made quite a few movies over the years, and in general, I don’t tend to like them.  “Fargo” and “Burn After Reading” are, perhaps, the only two of theirs that I’ve seen that I enjoyed (“O Brother Where Are Thou” was alright too, I guess).  In general, I think their movies involve useless, unfunny dialog and their plots don’t involve much of an ending or resolution.  With that all in mind, I tell you that “True Grit” was a truly excellent movie, with a great script, great acting, and a wonderful story.  It’s amazing that the Coen Brothers could pull something like this off, but it’s probably only because they stayed close to the source material and didn’t have to do much writing of their own.

“True Grit,” starring Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Hailee Steinfeld, centers upon Steinfeld’s character, Mattie, whose father was murdered by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin).  She seeks revenge, and contracts with Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Bridges), a U.S. Marshall that drinks too much and is known for killing criminals in self-defense (i.e. he chases after them, catches them, and they don’t ever end up in front of a judge).  Matt Damon plays LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger that is also chasing after Chaney for killing a Senator.  The movie deals with these three interacting out on the open range of Arkansas, frequently causing strains between each individual.

The story is very much a western, involving many of the typical trappings including a hanging, duels, chasing the enemy into “Indian country,” and so on.  The imagery of the American West is breathtaking, and makes me want to go backpacking as soon as I can.  Brooke took a class in college titled “The Western Film,” so she watched quite a few classic westerns and she thought this iteration of “True Grit” held true to the ideals put forward in previous movies. “True Grit” will probably go down as one of the best westerns of the early-21st century (which isn’t saying much, ’cause there aren’t that many being made, which is a shame).

It should also be said that Hailee Steinfeld was unbelievable in this movie.  She’s a 14-year-old, playing a 14-year-old, and she’s a better actress than most people two or three times her age.  A truly remarkable performance from a girl whose career is surely only taking off.  Don’t get me wrong, Matt Damon was barely recognizable with his facial hair and George W. Bush-style accent (and that’s a good thing…he really stepped outside his typical roles with this one), and Jeff Bridges was speaking with a drunken slur such that I believed this is how he talks in real life.  But Steinfeld stole the show from both these old-timers.

I have never seen the original “True Grit,” starring John Wayne.  It is my understanding that this current iteration is a more accurate representation of the novel, but we’ll see what the differences are when it comes through Netflix…eventually…  Regardless, this is an excellent movie and I highly recommend it.  By far the best thing the Coen Brothers have ever done.

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Digging a Ditch

Iowa is kinda flat and, well, when it gets windy, snow drifts tend to happen.  Our landlord, Phil, warned us that one of the roads heading up to our place tends to be pretty bad when snow is blowing around.  As the title to this post suggests, he wasn’t wrong.

Meg and I were heading back from daycare this afternoon and turned onto Gable Ave toward home.  The northbound side of Gable was a touch more covered by snow than it was this morning when I was heading south.  By “a touch,” I mean a steady gradient of a few inches into a few feet as you got to the ditch.As such, the southbound side of Gable was just fine – the northbound, not so much.  Anyway, I was going faster than I should have (like…25-30 mph total, Mom…), and too close to the northbound side of the road, causing the car to slide into the embankment after the right wheel hit a deep spot.  We were fine, of course, and close enough to home that Brooke could come by with her car to transfer Meg into a vehicle that was…mobile.

Brooke brought a shovel along.  Sadly didn’t help much.  That car wasn’t moving.  We were ready to call the tow truck.

Thankfully, we live in rural Iowa, where almost everyone has a 4×4 truck.  Two very nice gentlemen, Jeremy and Josh, drove up in their 1/2 ton Chevy truck, attached some cabling between their truck and the frame of the Sportage, I put ‘er in reverse, and they pulled me out right quick.  A large Dodge Ram pulled up after them.  People were lining up to pull a car out of the ditch!

Regardless, it was a brief yet interesting experience.  I complain occasionally about living in the middle of nowhere, but sometimes, you’re glad that’s where you are.  Thanks to Jeremy and Josh and their Silverado.  🙂

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Turning It Up To ’11

There were various blog and Facebook posts bouncing around over the past few weeks discussing the year that was 2010 and the potential for 2011. I decided to spend those first few days not really posting much, mostly out of laziness, but also out of reflection.

2010 is going to go down as a seminal year for me, personally, as well as our family as a whole.  It was a year when I defended my dissertation, culminating in the completion of a Ph.D. and, therefore, the end of my tenure as a student (23 years in the making…).  It was a year marked by leaving the bustling city of St. Louis for the more laid-back trappings of rural Iowa, coinciding with both Brooke and I leaving our previous jobs (if you count being a graduate student as a “job”…) and starting new positions in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, respectively.  There was also a 10 year high school reunion in there.

The move to Iowa brought quite a few other changes.  We now live in a house, not an apartment.  I now have to (get to?) mow a lawn.  Brooke gets the garden she’s always wanted.  I have a longer commute, plus a bus ride, in getting to work.  We had to find a new church and have become more involved that we planned to (but this is how it always goes…).  We had to come to terms with the fact that it’s pretty hard to go out to eat once a week when you can’t just walk to Joanie’s for happy hour after work.  And we live on a gravel road now.  Oh, and it’s a lot colder in Iowa – nice in the summer, crazy in the winter.

Brooke and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary in 2010.  In many ways, we interact just like we did back when we were first married, if not as we did before.  Of course, the obvious big change in that area is the fact that we added a new member to the family, Meg, who was with us (outside of her mother, at least…) for nearly 10 months in 2010.  It’s been a wild ride learning to be a parent (still learning…), but we’re both getting better at it and slowly figuring out how to handle the problems that go with it.

So, when I say that 2010 was a “seminal year,” it’s because of all these things.  Lots of big change that will influence the course of our collective life that we’ll be able to look back on with fondness in a few short years.

What’s in store for 2011, you ask?  Who knows.  Seems hard to top the year that was 2010 when you look at that list.  I’d be just fine scaling the big things down for a bit so we can coast and enjoy the changes we just went through for a bit longer.  I don’t really see much coming over the horizon except for settling down a bit further, and that’s just fine with me.  A few things off the top of my head would be that I’ll find out if my grant gets funded, which will determine how long we’re staying in Iowa; we’ll try a family vacation with a 1+ year old; Brooke will almost triple the size of her garden and get some chickens; and I will brew close to 60 gallons of beer.

Sounds like a good start.  🙂