I made it back to Waco - YAY! We had a long but safe drive, and it feels so great to be back in the humidity. 
Yesterday Bryan and I went to Olive Garden with his family for his mother's birthday. And today I've been contacting every realtor in South Austin looking for a place. Slim pickings is what I'm running into, however. Wish me luck!
Fertile Minds
Today was my second to last day team teaching a science/computer camp. Its been a three hour long job, for four days a week, and I'm making more than I was at Academy full time. And I love it.
Today we got lazy and let the kids watch a history channel movie entitled 'How the Earth was Made'. The kids were totally amazed by tectonic plate movement, Pangea and the 'SUPER ICE AGE'. I had fun stopping the movie and explaining everything to them. Just to watch their faces light up with understanding is one of the most rewarding actions I have ever encountered. The kids that Stacy and I have are so damned smart - I wish every kid was like these are. Oh, they make the morning fly by. It is going to be sad to have it come to an end tomorrow.
The Bryan countdown is down to NINE days. Yes. Very excited about seeing my goober. I can't wait.
Oh, but I have competitive news to Bryan's arrival - I just landed my third rotation at MD ANDERSON. I get to do three ten week lab rotations with different 'prospective mentor/professors'. Okay, so I already had two down: One in reproductive cancers (and xenoestrogens) with Dr. Walker, and a second in epigenetic factors of carcinogens and teratogens with Dr. Bedford. Guess who I'm doing my third one with??? Oh yeah, that's right: The Dean.
Dr. Richie, the dean of Research Park, asked me to do a rotation through her lab. She specializes in studies of the thymus (that organ above your heart that produces young antibodies). When you're about twenty years old, your thymus stops producing naive T cells and begins to turn to fat through a process called involution. This means that after this time, your body won't recognize and fight any new diseases that you encounter. Dr. Richie's research interest is in either keeping the thymus from involution OR being able to restart the thymus' ability to produce new T cells through a motif on an outer thymus cell's DNA. While talking to her today, she made the comment that they basically have this theory explained by data, and now are just looking for a way to make it happen in the animal model. If her lab group can actually pull of 'restarting' the thymus, elderly susceptability to common diseases like the flu and TB would be irraticated. IRRATICATED!!!!!
...And I could be one of those partners in that lab. Pretty cool, huh?
Oooh, I'm so ready to get back to CenTx. It's going to be an AWESOME fall.
