Category: life events

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A New(er) Car

So, my 2003 Hyundai Elantra served us well, but a). had 107,000 mi on it; b). needed extensive brake work; and c). needed new tires.  Rather than drop $1000 on various repairs on a car with that many miles on it, and a car that probably wouldn’t perform well in the Iowa winters, we were considering getting something a tad bit newer.

We’d been discussing a 2010 Subaru Forester for awhile, largely because they hold their value substantially longer than other vehicles, they’re reliable, and they have all-wheel drive standard.  However, considering the value of our trade-in (which wasn’t much…), it just wasn’t going to be feasible anytime soon…  Therefore, we expanded our options to look for something closer to what we were paying on our Elantra (i.e. relatively little, compared to what it would be with the Subaru…).  The options are rather limited with those kinds of restrictions, but we were able to find this 2006 Kia Sportage at a local Ford dealer.  It had a few more miles on it than we were initially considering, and it didn’t have 4WD or anything, but it did improve road clearance over our Elantra (let alone Brooke’s Scion xA) and it had more safety features than the Elantra did (e.g. ABS, traction control, ESC, curtain airbags).  Honestly, for the number of miles on the car, I’m shocked the exterior of the car is as pristine as it is. To be fair, the interior isn’t too shabby, either. 😛

Anyway, we’ve got another car now.  This one should get us through winters here, and will certainly be more comfortable traveling on the gravel roads of Iowa (and there are many…).  I’m pleased with it and think it’ll serve us well.  Maybe it’ll end up being Meg’s first car… 😛

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Five Years

June 25, 2005 was our wedding day.  I’m not going to recount that day in particular (besides pointing out how friggin’ hot it was…), and I’m not going to write anything sappy in this post (as that really isn’t our style).  But, instead, I’m going to highlight a few old blog posts here as a reminder of various important (or less important) events in our lives over the course of the past 5 years.

(I’m doing this partially because I’ve been going through a lot of old posts, “tagging” them to make it easier for me to find in the future.  So, I’ve been reminded of quite a few things over the past few days of doing this!)

…and then…there were two…

“Yup, I’m married…crazy, eh? Brooke and I have moved into our new place in St. Louis and are almost done putting everything where it needs to go…by the end of tomorrow, we should be mostly done…until the next volley of wedding presents arrives this weekend…”

…fun with turtles…

“…and on a side-note, I get to play with my new praise band tonight at Webster Hills UMC…those drums won’t know what hit ‘em…”

Al…most…there…

“Otherwise, Brooke and I are preparing to move to Soulard (neighborhood in the City of St. Louis) from our current apartment.”

…what a weekend…

“Arguably the most pertinent part of the weekend, however, came on Sunday… Brooke and I were wanting to get a pet, so we finally did.”

Miracles Happen

“The moral is that it seems that this thing would have happened no matter what Dad was doing or where he was, so it’s pretty amazing that he was at the fire station with capable people instead of anywhere else.”

Meet Edie

“Well, we found Edith Ann at the Humane Society here in St. Louis yesterday…”Edie” for short…”

Yay!!

“So, I had a spur-of-the-moment interview today with a company called Bridges Community Support Services. It went really well, and at the end of the conversation, the CEO/owner offered me a job as a Community Support Worker.”

Edie: Wonder Dog

“We go downstairs to check out how exactly she got the door open. Apparently, as the picture above shows, she didn’t get the door open – she tore a new hole in the bars…”

Meet Meg

“Margaret Jean Linsenbardt (or “Meg,” as she’ll be called) was born at 8:57 am on Friday, March 5th. At birth, she weighed 6 lb 13 oz and measured 19.5″ tall.”

Fin

“Now that I’m out of school, after 22 years, one could argue that I’m finally ready to join the ‘real world.'”

Happy Anniversary, Wife.  🙂


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Passing On

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We went down to Columbia this past weekend for my Grandma’s funeral. She was 95-years-old and took a fall a few weeks ago. Grandma never recovered from it and, thankfully, her pain didn’t last for too long. While my Aunts and Uncles (and Mom…and the whole family, for that matter) were sad to lose her, Grandma lived a very long life and was able to do things on her own for the vast majority of it. She only moved into a nursing home last year, and even then, her heart was always strong.

I’m very happy that Meg got to meet her Great-Grandma. In my case, I actually remember my Dad’s Grandparents (as they passed away in the late-1980s/early-1990s), but I never really knew my Mom’s Grandmother. We do, however, have a picture of Mom’s Grandmother holding me while in the nursing home when I was a baby. Similarly, Meg will probably get to know Brooke’s Grandparents over the next few years (as they’re all in their 70s), but will have a picture (or two) of her being held by my Grandma.

Of course, I now have someone else I can call “Grandma” (or whatever Meg decides to call my Mom, someday :-)).

On another note, some of you may have noticed the server was down over the weekend. We woke up Friday morning to find the server powered down. I tried a few things, but couldn’t get it started again – it wouldn’t power on at all. I was hoping it wasn’t the motherboard, as replacing that would likely have me lose the blog up until my last backup (which was a few weeks ago…grrrrr…). Fortuitously, we were going to Columbia anyway, where I could take advantage of Dad’s stash of components and electrical equipment, so I just took the server with us! Long story short, we tried a few things and eventually figured out it was the video card. The fan on the thing was immovable, suggesting it had overheated. After I removed it, the thing turned back on…but I had to go get a new one from Best Buy in order to actually see anything on the screen. The new card was recognized by Linux without a hitch and it’s all up and running again (obviously). Now I’m investigating ways of automatically backing up the blog database…

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Back Online!

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Well, we’re up in Iowa. I’ve got a picture of the view from our front porch, which is arguably less interesting than the view we had on our deck in Soulard. We’re certainly in the middle of a bunch of fields! Brooke talked with our landlord yesterday and he said that the guy farming the land around us has about 10,000 acres he’s producing from. If “acres” were part of the metric system, I’d have some clue what that means…

Anyway, we loaded up our 22 ft truck on Friday in about 3 hrs, thanks to help from Mom, Dad, Ryan, Annie, Jerry and Jerry. I then proceeded to drive said truck the 4.5 hrs all the way to Swisher, IA while Brooke and Meg stayed the night in Hannibal (Sam came with me, so I wasn’t completely alone). We unloaded the truck shockingly quickly, thanks to help on this end in the form of Mark, Diana, Rachel and Jason. Since then, we’ve spent most our time unpacking and getting to know the area!

I’ll leave it to Brooke to post more later. Otherwise, I’ll be starting my position at the University of Iowa on May 10th! More on that later, too. 🙂

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Fin

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Yesterday was a long time coming. 13 years of primary and secondary education, 5 years of undergraduate education, and 5 years of graduate education…and now I’m done: Ph.D. achieved.

Different graduate programs carry out their various processes in different ways, but the way ours works is that you complete a Preliminary Dissertation (e.g. “comps”) after 2 years in the program, then you carry out your research, write up a Dissertation, and then defend it. In the Pharmacological and Physiological Science Department at SLU, you have a “Private Defense” between you and your Committee, the individuals that have been evaluating you since the Prelim to determine when you’re ready to be done. The meeting was scheduled for 11:00 am and, while it started a little late, it only ended up lasting an hour. After completion of the Private Defense, we moved on to the “Public Defense.” This one was a separate presentation of, essentially, the “story” my Dissertation told. Anyone is allowed to attend this presentation and ask any questions they want, although typically, there aren’t that many questions asked. I had a few and answered them accordingly. After all this, the ballots allowing my graduation were signed by the Committee and I was then granted the Doctor of Philosophy.

After the Defense(s), we had a lovely reception in the main conference room of the department. Food was eaten, beers drunken(?), presents given, and memories remembered. All in all, it was a great experience. I’m certainly sorry to leave SLU, and I’ll miss all the friends I’ve made over the last 5 years. However, it’s time to move on to the next stage of life.

Now that I’m out of school, after 22 years, one could argue that I’m finally ready to join the “real world.”

And I get to join the real world as Andrew J. Linsenbardt, Ph.D. 🙂

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Still Truckin’

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We’ve been doing pretty well these last few weeks, although things have gotten noticeably more hectic. As you can see in the picture above, we’re slowly packing stuff away, getting rid of furniture, and preparing for the move on April 30th (thanks, Baumanns, for all the help on Sunday!). We’re thinking a 14 ft truck will give us plenty of space, but don’t have all the boxes packed, it’s kinda hard to tell. We’ve got a pretty good start, though, and I’m carrying a few packed boxes downstairs every night.

Meg is doing well, and for the most part, she’s letting us get stuff done. She’s been sleeping 5-6 hours straight every night for the last few weeks, but these last few nights, she’s gone 7 to 7.5 hours without waking up. We’re told that’s pretty good for a 5-week-old! This means, however, that she tends to be a bit more active during the day, on average, which makes it difficult to do much packing or dissertating. Meg is getting baptized on Sunday, so we picked out music for the service…which also happens to be our last Sunday at Webster Hills. I think we picked some pretty good tunes for this one – should go out with a bang!

Speaking of “dissertating,” I handed out the “final” copies of the dissertation to my committee yesterday. In less than a week, I’ll be defending it and, hopefully, a Ph.D. 🙂 Way too much stuff to do over the next week! I’m not doing all that much studying yet, but I’ll be doing some reading over the next few days to help prepare.

Either way, we’re flying the the seat of our collective pants. Craziness!

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The Stage is Set

As discussed a few months ago, we’re moving to Iowa City, IA for a postdoctoral fellowship I scored in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Iowa. Up until last week, we weren’t entirely sure what the exact plans were, so far as where we’d be living or when we’d be leaving.

Well. Now we know. 🙂

I talked with my new boss, Dr. Doorn, last Wednesday and worked out various details of my employment in his lab. We had a lengthy conversation about all kinds of details, of course, and settled upon my start date being May 3rd. We opted to shoot for the beginning of May rather than June for a few reasons, one of which being that Brooke already told her current boss that they should have her replacement ready for the beginning of May, but also because the health insurance benefits in Iowa would save us some cash pretty immediately. My position will technically start May 3rd, but I won’t really go into work until May 10th, giving me some “adjustment time.” We’ll be back down on May 13th for my graduation, of course!

Therefore, we’ll be moving out of our apartment in Soulard on April 30th and moving in to our new place in Iowa on May 1st.

We went to Hannibal this past Sunday for Brooke’s Mom’s choir performance (very nice, Diana!), so Brooke stayed in Hannibal with Meg while I went ahead up to Iowa City to look for places to live. Brooke did an excellent job checking out practically every house on Craig’s List, so I visited a few of them and used the Flip Video to send some clips back to Brooke for her approval. I looked at a few properties, and investigated a variety of options, but eventually we settled on a farm house in Swisher, IA, about halfway between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. It’s got 3 bedrooms, one bathroom, a cellar-like basement, a huge attic (i.e. plenty of storage space), a 3 vehicle carport, and appliances (but no fridge…we’ll have to get that…and no dishwasher…so I may have to hire one…). We are expecting the lease to arrive here in St. Louis sometime this week so we can sign off on it.

So yeah, we’ve got one month for me to graduate; for us to pack…everything; and for us to say “see you later” to quite a few friends down here in St. Louis.

Somehow, I expect this April is going to fly by!

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“(It’s been) One Week…”

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Well, we’ve been at home for just over a week, and Meg is 9 days old. Time certainly flies! And we want to thank everyone for all the well wishes and the visits over the last week!

So far, everything’s going shockingly well. We had Meg’s first pediatrician visit last Monday and she checked out just fine. All of her reflexes, color, etc. are within norms, if not above average. Meg’s also been kind enough to let us get a reasonable amount of sleep every night, with Brooke getting around 6 hrs every night and me getting closer to 8 hrs (Brooke has things to do over night, after all). Meg has been pretty good about sleeping through most of the morning, while we do our best to keep her awake over afternoon and into the evening.

On other fronts, I’ve had a cold for the last few days, likely induced by the horribly dry air at the hospital last week. I think my cough is starting to go away (finally), but it’s been bad enough that I slept in the other room for a few nights this week in order to limit my disruption of the baby and Brooke. Brooke has been sore for most of the week, but she’s to the point now where she can walk around without being in much pain.

Not too much scheduled this week, aside from the annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities in my department. We’re hoping to make a trip up to Louisiana, MO so Meg can meet her great-grandparents (Brooke’s side). It’ll be our first extended car trip, although we took a little field trip to Old Navy with Aunt Kristen on Saturday. So far, Meg’s been pretty happy in the car seat – let’s hope it stays that way!

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Another Lesson On Taking Things As They Come

My plan for pregnancy and labor was to treat the whole thing as a natural process, not as treatment for an illness. So, I was adamant that I didn’t want to be induced, didn’t want an epidural, didn’t want to spend very much time in the hospital, and so on. Then, Meg passed her due date by 10 days, my blood pressure shot up, and I started having regular contractions that weren’t productive, throwing all of my plans out the window. We went in to my doctor’s office last Thursday for another fetal nonstress test and amniotic fluid check, which looked fine, but my doctor was not all that excited about letting me go any further without at least having an induction time and date scheduled. So, he called the hospital and they were ready to get me started right then and there and we were quite anxious to get the show on the road, so across the street to St. Mary’s hospital we went!

We got checked in and set up with Pitocin around 1:30 pm on Thursday, at which point the regular, but not painful, contractions I was having became very painful and very regular, so away went the plan for no epidural. However, even though I was having regular contractions, they apparently weren’t really doing much to move things along, so I had to wait until after midnight to receive the epidural, then things sped up quite nicely. I started working on pushing about 4:30am Friday, then Meg was born at 8:57am, after the doctor threatened to get the forceps out if I couldn’t push her out in 10 more minutes.

There are many more gory details to be had, but I’ll save those for anyone who wants to know! I think I’ll choose to remember things as above for now!

All in all, I wouldn’t change a thing, even though pretty much every plan I had was changed. Meg is here and healthy, I feel pretty good, and now we can get back to other things “as planned!”

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Meet Meg

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Margaret Jean Linsenbardt (or “Meg,” as she’ll be called) was born at 8:57 am on Friday, March 5th. At birth, she weighed 6 lb 13 oz and measured 19.5″ tall.

I’ll leave all the details to Brooke, as she’s the one that actually endured the pregnancy. I’ll just say that it was more difficult than she’d originally anticipated, and it ended up being quite the ordeal! Albeit, a rewarding one. 🙂

There are more pictures available after the jump on our Picasa Web Album. I’ll be adding more to that album in the next few days, as we get to know our new daughter a bit better!