Where I spend my days....

So it occurred to me that most of you don't know how I spend my days at work. I won't bore you with the details of what we actually do in the lab... I've found that telling people I'm a biochemist is one of the fastest conversation killers ever known. Most people just smile and nod, or say "oh, wow", and then change the conversation to something else. Occasionally the brave soul tries to actually converse with me about my job, and ventures a question like, "What do you actually do, what do you study?" I usually make it about 2-3 sentences, including words like Ubiquitin, protein degradation, or enzyme kinetics, before their poor little eyes glaze over, and I lose them completely. I can almost hear them thinking ..." what will I eat for dinner tonight?" or "boy, I hope my TiVo is recording Grey's Anatomy" or "I hope the star of my fantasy football team didn't get hurt today".
So like I said, I won't bore you with the details. But since everyone likes pictures, here's a few of the lab where I spend my days.....

Lunar Eclipse

I read about the lunar eclipse on Monday, and had every good intention of getting up at 5am on tuesday to see it. However, because I like to sleep so much, I decided not to set my alarm for it. I figured since I've been waking up just about every 1/2 hour between 1am and 5am every night anyway (oh, do I miss the days when I was a heavy sleeper... now if I hear any little noise, I sit up wide awake, and then toss and turn for the next few hours), I'd wake up for it anyway.

So I fell sound asleep around 10:30, and was sleeping the sleep of the dead ... when I was jolted awake by violent coughing and gasping at 4:30am. Jeff, who is still fighting off bronchitis after a full month, 2 rounds of antibiotics, a week's worth of steroid treatments, and several visits to the doctor, was sitting up on the edge of bed trying to breath and failing miserably.

So after a couple minutes more of wheezing, gasping, coughing, and turning red and then purple, he finally got some air in and settled back down. By this time, I was wide awake, ready to call 911 in case he stopped breathing all together, and there was pretty much no going back to sleep.
I glanced over at the clock and saw that it was around 5am ... time for the lunar eclipse! So I put on some flipflops, and wandered out to the patio to watch the show. I took some pictures, but they didn't turn out very well since my camera only has a 3x zoom... but here's what it would have looked like with a better camera or a telescope....

I was pleasantly surprised to have some company out in the yard, when Jeff, Baxter, and Sake all came out to sit on the patio with me. Though it was a pleasant night, no wind and no bugs, I found out something about Louisiana after hot, humid days and steamy nights.... It Stinks.... Literally. Our yard smelled like a combination of sewage and swamp. So much for the pleasant smell of ginger and jasmine, both of which are growning in our back yard... and what about that lavendar growing on the patio in my herb garden?!?

Funny how I've never noticed that smell during the day. The sun must burn the stench right out!

An afternoon of hard work ... and a lot of sweating.

On Sunday after brunch, I decided to tackle the issue of our messy shed, which has been on my to do list for at least a month, starting back when I bought a pulley system to hang mom's bike from the shed ceiling after seeing Chuck and Erin's bike's new home hanging from their shed ceiling. So I finally opened the box from walmart, assembled my pulley system, and headed out to the shed to get started.

I lasted all of about 10 minutes standing on top of a table in the shed, which was about 120 degrees, before heading back inside to change into shorts and a sport bra. Once I had the bike hung up, I figured I should just continue with the project, despite the heat, and get it done.

So about 3 hours, and 5 lbs of sweat, later, here's the final result.....

If you look closely, you can see our hockey sticks and snow shovel on the shelf in the back. We also have two pairs of ice skates stashed in here. I'm not sure why we are keeping them, but my minnesota man didn't seem ready to part with his winter gear.

Elizabeth's for Brunch, served with a side of Ray Nagin

On Sunday morning, Jeff and I met Traci, Ruth, and Sue for breakfast at Elizabeth's in the bywater.

For those of you who have visited, I'm sure you remember the praline bacon, drunkin' bananas, and stuffed french toast, and probably have dreams about returning here to eat.

I had the "Crabby Eggs", which are poached eggs served on top of crab cakes, and topped with hollandaise sauce, accompanied by a side of cheese grits. YUM! This is my new favorite breakfast, though crab cakes seem to be my new favorite food for any time of the day.

Jeff had his usual, the "Louisiana Strawberry Stuffed French Toast", which is two huge pieces of french bread, stuffed with cream cheese and strawberries. Delicious!

When we arrived, we saw that Mayor Ray Nagin was enjoying Elizabeth's brunch as well. After eating, he made his way around to every table to say hello, and schmooze with his future voters for the upcoming elections in which he is planning to run for governor. Thinking ahead for pictures for my blog, I switched off the flash on my camera to try to be a little discreet, and snapped some quick photos.

Goodbye Marjorie...

On Saturday evening, we went to a goodbye party for Marjorie at Bridget and April's house in Uptown.

This time, Marjorie was there. When we got to Bridget and April's house, we started laughing because during our house hunting in uptown (back when we were trying to move because we thought we'd be able to sell our metairie house ... Yeah, right.), we had biked past their house and admired it. It's a bit unusual for an uptown home, being brick, and not really facing the street. But it's got this incredible courtyard on the side, overlooked a by a balcony that extends almost the entire length of the house, which I assume is connected to the bedrooms upstairs. And in the backyard, they have a really nice inground pool with a covered patio. I didn't take a picture of the outside of the house, but here are some pictures from the party...

Jeff and I brought rum, fresh mint from our herb garden, and lime juice for Mojito making. Jeff made the first round, and our drinks were coveted by many at the party. When I went to make the second round, I had barely gotten started when I had requests for three others. I didn't really know what I was doing, but the Mojitos must have turned out okay, because after that round, there were requests for more! We finished up the mint and spiced rum in no time at all.

Tracy brought her famous jello shots.....

And a good time was had by all!

We'll miss you Marjorie!

Orange Beach Goodbye Party, without the guest of honor

This weekend was supposed to be a goodbye party girl's trip to the beach for one of the volleyball girls here who is moving to Germany at the end of August. Some of the girls planned a little get away to Orange Beach, Alabama for us, but at the last minute, Marjorie, the guest of honor, couldn't go because of work.

So..........

we went without her!

Tracy, Julie, and Ruth picked me up on Saturday morning, and we drove three hours to Orange Beach where we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express right on the Gulf! Here's the view from our balcony...

We spent the day on the beach, passing the volleyball around, relaxing, reading, and hanging out by the pool.

In the evening, we went to "Bubba's" for dinner,

and then headed to one of those ridiculous souvenir shops where Julie, Tracy, and Ruth had a good time with the silly hats and visors.

After a late night walk on the beach, we crashed for the night.

We got up early the next morning for some free breakfast at the hotel, and headed out for some more shopping. We had some time to kill before the Tanger Outlet mall in Foley opened, so we went to a couple more of the surf shops. Around 11, we made our way to the outlet mall, for a speedy shopping trip. We hit the road again around 12:30 because Julie and Ruth were playing in a volleyball tournament at Coconut Beach at 4pm. We got back to Coconut's just in time for Julie and Ruth to change clothes, and hit the beach again!

CheeWeez

On Friday night, we went to New Orleans Daquiris to see the Chee Weez play.

The CheeWeez, as we found out after living here for a while and making various "Cheese Wiz" jokes every time we heard about them, are a fun,popular band here in New Orleans which plays for many of the festivals around town. The guys are usually in costumes, but for friday night's show, they wore their Saint's jerseys for the beginning of Football season. They play mostly cover music, with the occasional twist on the lyrics here and there.

Friday night's show included some lyrics about "mean Dean", the first major 2007 hurricane brewing out in the Carribean. If you'd like to check out their website, feel free... http://www.cheeweez.com/.
Becky, Jeff, and I met up with Jessica, who used to work at LSU, at the show. Her fiance plays in the band.

It still fits!!!!!

August 12 again! We've now been married for 7 years! It's both hard and easy to believe it's been that long already .... wait, it's even more difficult to believe that we've been together for almost 12 years.

So as august rolls around, it's time for my yearly tradition ... I try on my wedding dress to see if it still fits. I guess it's sort of my marriage weight control scheme. The zipper has always zipped, but in 2003 it was getting awfully tough to get that last 3 inches zipped ... Enter the South Beach Diet in 2004.

So.... here it is....

It still fits!!!!

Well, actually it's a little big because I'm currently holding at around 15 lbs less than when we got married. But, it's still awfully fun to feel like a princess every august!

First Annual LSU-NOLA girls trip, Double Springs, AL

We are attempting to start a new tradition ... an annual (or maybe more often?!?) girls trip for a group of us girls who work, or used to work, at LSU in the Biochem department. As you probably recall, I mentioned that our friends Meg and John, who lost their home during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, relocated to Oregon after the storm. Meg's family is in the Birmingham area, and while she was home visiting last month, she suggested that Becky, Beth (both also from LSU's biochem dept), and I drive up to Double Springs where her parent's have a home on a lake for a girl's weekend.... and so the tradition has begun.

We ate and we drank.

We swam,

We waterskied, tubed (well, Becky did), and jetskied (Becky and Beth).

We hot tubbed,

We relaxed in the sun,

We Talked and We Laughed ..... It was Wonderful.

It's great to have girlfriends.

Hey girls, I can't wait for our next trip!

A hole in One... make that two!

At the beginning of July, I went back to Milwaukee after being home from camping just one week. Mom had what will hopefully be her last surgery due to the accident. Because the blood supply to her hip was never restored after the accident, she needed a full hip replacement on her right side. She did very well with the surgery, but struggled a bit immediately afterwards with low blood pressure issues. But she is well on the road to recovery now. In fact, just this week, she told me that she went for a long walk around the block with only one crutch! Most importantly, she's not in pain anymore!

While I was home, we got together with Sally, Cliff, and Meg.

We also went to Butler to watch the fireworks with my parent's neighbors.

And Dad took me to a driving range to hit some golf balls and play some mini golf. I found out that I still consistently slice to the right, regardless of what club I'm using.

And the highlight of the trip... I beat dad in Minigolf... including a 30ft hole in one, which I promptly repeated to win a $5 bet!