Chelle And BryanOur lives, together, a day at a time…

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!

And I’ll be huggin’ my girl in El Paso!!! 

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. 

Michelle showed “Evening Lucky.”  Here’s how he usually dresses.

He woke me up at 6am this morning cause he was hungry and I couldn’t get back to sleep.  Damned cat!

Alright, it’s been a while since I last wrote.  I know I’m guilty of laziness sometimes, but I blame my office chair.  Yes.  I slouch a lot.  I slouch so much in fact that my chair at work has started to lean back so far that it’s not comfortable to type when I’m leaning back that far.  I blame any lack of productivity on my chair- bad chair.

So!  Last night I went and lost $10 poker.  We were playing over in Baylor Plaza 2 with Jeremy, Burke, and a bunch of other guys that I didn’t really know.  Anyways, it was fun all in all…  I just didn’t play a few hands very well and got unlucky on a couple of hands.

MORE IMPORTANTLY – - I’ve got a plane ticket to El Paso for the 25 of July.  I’m going to fly out there and help Michelle drive back to CenTex.  I’m really looking forward to seeing her.  We will have been apart for just over a month- way too long.  I love this girl and it’s not been fun to be so far apart this summer.  Hopefully we won’t have to go through this kind of distance again for a long time.

In the meantime, I’ve got Nightcrawler back living with me.  I love that cat.  He woke me up this morning just a few minutes before my alarm clock went off and was purring and meowing and rubbing his head up against my leg.  Crazy cat…  it’s been good to have him around.  The apartment is really empty without Mbagnick (room mate) around and he’s not coming back till the end of the month.

Alright– I better end this here.

Oh poor, poor Lucky…  met a skunk in the front yard at about 8pm this evening.  And proceeded to get sprayed all over his poor wittle face.

I didn’t notice anything until my parents started asking about which dog was sprayed.  Sadly, I couldn’t really smell it – guess my nose isn’t as keen as I thought! So, after a thirty minute long baking soda and peroxide bath, I had one relieved and neutralized pooch.  I figured he’d probably get into a skunk at some point, since my next door neighbor thinks its cruel to evict the family of them living in her run down horse barn.  But I never thought he’d get it full-on in the face!  What an idiot!  It apparently traumatized him, because he came in after his bath and wouldn’t get back out of his bed.  Poor guy.

On other fronts, I worked my last day at the shoe store job a few days ago – it was brilliantly rewarding!  I never thought I’d enjoy quitting as much as I did.  AND I started my new summer camp job today, which I love.  The kids are so smart, sweet, and well behaved.  We built lawn chairs, draw bridges and robots out of legos today, and they even enjoyed my little lesson in excel! The hours flew by, and I can’t wait to see what they create tomorrow (We’re making motorized levers!)!  See people, I do love kids.  I just don’t want any for the next, say, eight years? 

Bryan made me giddy today by buying a plane ticket to EPT.  He’s going to be driving back with me to Waco on the 26th.  That drive sucks the life out of you, one mile at a time.  Only 18 more days until I get to see his happy face!  This distance has been tough, but I also know I won’t be seeing the people in El Paso for at least six months once I leave, while I get to see him on a regular basis. 

I do say, it will be great when I’m back in the real state of Texas.