Here is a bit of an update about what we have been up to:
Travel
Colorado
Over Labor Day weekend we traveled back to Colorado for a visit with family and to go to Amy Wilhoit's wedding. We spent our time with the usual hiking, tennis, card playing, and eating lots of tasty food. Amy & Jeremy's wedding was beautiful out in the Black Forest!
Boston & Wood's Hole
This fall I was lucky enough to attend a special conference all about muscle in beautiful Wood's Hole, Massachusetts. Two other girls from my lab were also going so we decided to head out a few days early to explore Boston and the surrounding area. Melinda finished her master's degree at MIT before coming out to Stanford and had some amazing friends in the area who let us stay at their place. We spent two days exploring the MIT/Harvard area (I never realized how close they were to one another) and historic downtown Boston. We got lots of tasty seafood and some amazing cannolli in town before it was time to head down the cape to Wood's Hole for the conference.
Wood's Hole is a cute tiny town which has mainly marine research facilities. The beautiful surroundings made it difficult to stay inside and listen but the content of the conference was great. A lot of the other conferences are really big so it is difficult to get to know other people but this one was small and included all the experts in the area which was a great opportunity.
Wisconsin
At the end of October we (finally) ventured out to Wisconsin to visit Dan's dad. The weather cooperated more than we thought it would so we got to play 3 different frisbee golf courses while we were out there. These courses were great - especially with the leaves changing colors - who knew Wisconsin would have the best frisbee golf I've seen? We spent the rest of the weekend playing with the dogs, going for hikes, eating tasty cheese and seafood (not together), and just relaxing.
Washington DC
Dan and I really wanted to go for an adventure over Thanksgiving break and after looking into Ireland, Spain, and about a million other places we finally decided upon Washington DC. The combination of cheap airline tickets and an endless supply of free museums sold us on the trip out East. We also got a great deal on a hotel right next to the capital which included an amazing buffet breakfast (and we are suckers for good food).
The red-eye flight was a bit painful but we arrived without any problems at 5:30am, took the bus & subway to our hotel, and the hotel staff was nice enough to let us check in at 7:00am when we arrived. We didn't stay at the hotel for long though and set out to explore the monuments before the museums opened at 10am (that is one of my only complaints about DC ... why do the museums open so late?). We ended up spending the whole day walking around all the monuments. My favorite part was going to the top of the Washington Monument which had amazing panoramic views. On the elevator ride back down they slow down for a bit to show the "fund raising stones" that are on the inside of the monument from fire departments, ladies leagues, etc. I think it would be so cool to be able to walk down from the top. At the Smithsonian Castle we joined in on a "members-only" tour (we get Smithsonian magazine) that let us see the upper flours which was a fun addition to the day. By the end of our grand monument walking tour we were exhausted (I don't think Dan slept at all on the flight) so we found a tasty Irish pub and called it a night.
Our second day was dedicated to government buildings. We started off with a tour of the capitol which was a lot better than I expected. They have a new visitors center which has a good movie and a very organized tour system. If we go back in the future I will definitely "talk to my congress person" a few months before we go so we can get tickets to go up into the dome and see the House of Representatives and Senate. Next we headed over to the Supreme Court and Library of Congress Buildings which included a stop in the Supreme Court cafeteria for lunch. Throughout our trip we found that the food in the government cafeterias was really tasty and about half the price of the food in the museum cafeterias. We finished off the day with a visit to the National Arboretum and American Indian Museum. The Arboretum had a great display of Washington DC buildings and monuments made out of all natural materials. After we got home my mom said they saw the same display in Iowa which seemed like an odd place for such an exhibit. I was also very impressed with the American Indian Museum - all the displays were well organized and not information overload like I experienced at some of the other museums.
The next few days were spent exploring the endless supply of Smithsonian museums. We spent a day each at the Air & Space Museum, Natural History Museum, and American History Museum ... and we probably could have spent even more time. One evening we went to see "Night at the Museum II" on the IMAX at the Natural History Museum which turned out to be a great, and very funny, movie. We also visited a special display of Spanish Armor & Art at the National Gallery of Art which had amazing specimens from the 14-1600s but that was about all we could handle for art museums.Thanksgiving Day our friend An and her mom were kind enough to invite us over for dinner. It was the first Thanksgiving I've had that included egg rolls and soy chicken (someone doesn't like turkey?!) but they also had all the traditional fair and it was delicious. We "worked-off" all the tasty food with a few hours of Wii after dinner.
We had a great time in DC over Thanksgiving and I would definitely recommend it as a great turkey-day destination. The hotels are cheap, the crowds are small, and the weather is still nice. There is so much to see in DC - even after a week there I feel like there are many things that we still didn't have time to see.
Teaching
This fall I took my first ventures into teaching as I co-created and taught a new course along with my labmate Melinda - BIOE282: Performance, Development, and Adaptation of Muscle. Last year we were having a discussion about how we wished Stanford had a good, interdisciplinary course about muscle and a year later we found ourselves teaching a great group of 12 students including juniors, seniors, and graduate students. The field of muscle research is huge and a solid understanding of the fundamentals involves an interplay of biologal, medical, and engineering knowledge. Our hope was to provide students with the basic knowledge required to enter the field ... from a multitude of perspectives ... and to inspire them to work on the many problems still unsolved in the field - all of which have the potential to improve quality of life for millions of people. This was also my first "test" as to whether or not I would enjoy teaching and being a professor and at the end of quarter I can honestly say that I loved organizing and teaching the class. Of course, having a group of highly motivated, hard working, positive, and participatory students helped immensely. You can see a bit more information about our class at bioe282.stanford.edu although the Materials and Resources pages are only available to students.
Our class with their pipe-cleaner models of sarcomeres.Turkey
After returning from Washington DC Dan decided he still wanted to try cooking a turkey and went out and bought the biggest turkey he could find in the turkey sales. We ended up with a 24-lb turkey that just barely fit into our oven and roasting pan but turned out amazing. We still have a bunch of the meat frozen in our freezer and have been using it for sandwiches and leftovers. One of my favorites was this delicious Turkey Tortilla Soup.Tidepools
As Dan headed up to Northern California for the first weekend of turkey season I headed to Moss Beach with some friends to explore the tide pools. It was one of the 'super low-tide' days so we could wander out along the rocks for a couple-hundred feet to explore. I was surprised by how amazing this trip was - there were tons of colorful starfish, sea anemone, and other sea creatures wherever you looked. We ended the day at a nearby restaurant that had fireplaces outback overlooking the sea and sunset - truly idealic.
Tracker (100,000!)
Our 1996 Geo Tracker finally reached 100,000 miles this fall! The momentous mile came as Dan was driving home from work on a rainy day. Dan thinks this marks the perfect opportunity to buy a new car but I'm still not convinced :)
Tasty Treats
Dan and I entered our graduate building's bake-off this fall. Dan's beautiful chocolate cake won 3rd prize!
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