So what have the other members of the family been up to since July? Knowing that I would need to find another position meant that Brandon also had to begin looking for a new job (a daunting prospect in today’s economy). He had contact with several recruiters who were looking to fill contract positions, something we would rather avoid, for while it might mean more pay, it would also be a temporary position with no benefits. And since my postdoc comes with student benefits, we were really hoping that he could find a permanent job.
Iris Room at Carol's Garden Inn
While we were in North Carolina in December, he had an in-person interview with a company in Research Triangle Park, and had a formal job offer the week after we returned. We have managed to find a lovely house to rent, and a nice in-home daycare for Charlie in 2.5 days. Not much of a vacation, since many of the houses on our list were either already rented, too small, had cat doors in all of the bedrooms, or some combination thereof. We spent our evenings at Carol’s Garden Inn in Durham, a lovely century old farmhouse, with much-appreciated upgrades like Jacuzzi tubs.
I so want one of these
In the meantime, we decided that since we would likely be moving in the middle of Kaity’s senior year, we enrolled her in a virtual school. She can finish out the year and graduate from a Kansas high school, and the whole family can move at the same time, rather than me going out early and Brandon staying here with the girls until the end of the school year.
Charlie showing off the goods at the garage sale
We spent the last few months of 2011 packing up the house, cramming in all the quality time we could with Brae and Hannah (who we won’t see again until summer), and off-loading as much stuff as possible. We had two garage sales, made half a dozen trips to Half-Price books, dropped a couple of carloads of kids’ stuff at a consignment shop downtown, and several more carloads at Good Will. The stuff that was too big to transport we listed on Craigslist and Freecycle. Hopefully everything that’s left will fit in a 20′ U-Haul.
Happy New Year
For us, 2011 has been about wrapping up the old and preparing for new opportunities. We will miss the dear friends we have made in Lawrence, and the family that will now be even farther away, but we look forward to having them visit, and to sharing our adventures as we start this new phase of our lives.
We had a plan. Kaity was going to take over the blog in August, and post about life as a high school senior. Another Project 365 thing, only from the perspective of our oldest. Our intent was to have a 3 week hiatus. So…yeah. That worked out. Teenagers.
Things have been crazy busy around here, and there’s a lot of news. Most of the immediate family knows most of it by now, but Nana pointed out this week that there are other people who might like to know what is going on here in Lawrence. Susan, this post is for you.
So, where to start. Let’s back up to August 2009. I started a postdoc position at the medical center in Kansas City two months after finishing my doctorate, and 6 weeks after Charlie was born. One of the requirements of my fellowship was that I earn an additional master’s degree, either a Masters in Public Health or a Master of Science in Clinical Research. Because the second degree had a biostatistics track, that was the one I chose, since I thought it would be more applicable to my long term career goals. For the last 2.5 years, I have been taking additional classes in biostatistics and epidemiology, and had my last final exam in Advanced Epidemiological Methods (Poisson regression and Survival Analysis) yesterday. I defended my thesis last week, and with exception of a few revisions, the requirements for my degree are done, or will be by Friday.
Another requirement of my postdoc was that I learn how to write grants, and apply for independent funding for my research. My postdoc position had been funded by a training grant which ended this summer, which was not renewed in the most recent funding cycle. I had applied for several small internal research grants and mentored training grants during my fellowship, the most recent one in July. Of 33 original applicants, my application was one of 10 selected for committee review. Great! I knew people who didn’t make the first cut, so I was optimistic that my pilot project would be funded and this new grant would cover my salary for a couple of years while providing some additional training in bioinformatics.
Of the 10 proposals selected for review, six were funded. Mine was not one of them. I heard later that some of the criticisms of my proposal were that it was not in my primary mentor’s area (true) and that I had no publications in the area in which I was proposing to work (also true). And neither something I could fix in my current position. It was a translational proposal, meaning that it pulled together basic and clinical sciences, with me being the basic science person and my mentor being the clinical science person. Turns out most of the funded proposals went to clinicians or junior faculty who were working on extensions of their mentor’s projects.
The upshot of all this was that my funding was running out soon, and the chances of my department being able to cover me for another year were not good. So I started looking for a new job, something that would be a better fit for me professionally, and maybe also allow me to qualify for the loan repayment program through NIH.
My room at the Carolina Inn
At the end of August, I flew to Chapel Hill for an interview with a team of epidemiologists who work on cardiovascular disease genetics. Using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of large data sets (~20,000 subjects, long-term cohort studies where participants are followed for years), they try to tease out genetic risk factors for heart disease and obesity. In October, I accepted a postdoc position at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health to work with data from the Add Health project, a long-term cohort study of adolescent health started in 1994. We will be leaving Lawrence and setting up house in North Carolina in January (I’m writing part of this post from the airport, waiting on the flight to Raleigh to scope out potential housing).
Welcome cookie
This is a tremendous opportunity for me, to learn how to analyze big genomic data sets, something that no one at my current institution does, or even has the potential to do in the next several years.
Brandon has started looking for a new job, and has been contacted by several recruiters and had a few interviews. His current employer has agreed to keep him on as a remote employee for a while, to give him time to find a job in NC, and also give his team mate time to enjoy her brand new baby, who was born December 6. She’s on maternity leave until March. Brandon’s replacement will start soon, giving him a chance to get familiar with the Linux systems before we leave.
***
So that’s what’s new with us. Considering the length of this post, I’ll save the kid updates for next time.
икониToday marks the last day of this project 365. Work was pretty quiet today. Kaity had a dinner date with Nick, and Kris had a grad student stopping by to discuss her area statement exam at 8:00 PM, so we went out to Encore for dinner. When the grad student arrived, Kaity and Nick entertained Charlie.
We took Charlie to Culver’s for her birthday lunch. We redeemed some vouchers Kris has been collecting and got Concretes for everyone. Afterwards, we went grocery shopping. Once we’d unloaded everything, we watched a few episodes of Bones. We took a break to go to the Library and turn in everyones’ Summer Reading Program logs. While we were out, we went to the toy store downtown and picked out a baby stroller for Charlie.
Charlie at the Library
For dinner, we cooked Fake Stroganoff, which Charlie enjoys immensely. For dessert, we went to the Cupcake Construction Company.
I got up around 9:00 AM. I decided to mow before the heat got unbearable. About 2/3 of the way through the front yard, the mower suddenly got really difficult to maneuver. I noticed the right front tire was flat and the seal with the rim was broken.
Flat Tire
I finished the front yard and took the tire to the neighbors to reset the tire on the rim and air it up (his air compressor is much bigger than mine). By this time, it was the heat of the day, so I will finish the mowing tomorrow. We went to India Palace for lunch, then came home and watched several episode of Bones. For dinner, we tried a new 30-Minute Suppers recipe, a new twist on Broccoli, Chicken, and Rice Casserole. The twists are that it uses Parmesan cheese and Dijon mustard in the sauce. It was interesting. We’re going to play with the recipe and see if we can make it awesome. After dinner, we watched one more episode of Bones, then I went to work for our regularly scheduled monthly maintenance night. As I write this, it is nearly midnight, and they are almost finished with the last item before I can put my systems back into normal operation.
Kris planned to work from home today, and convinced me to “stay home with sick kids” so I could go see the last Harry Potter movie with her. We forbade Kaity from even uttering the words “Harry Potter” until we’ve seen the movie under threat of extreme grounding, and her head almost exploded.
So, Kris and I dropped Charlie off at the babysitters this morning and went to Milton’s for breakfast. We were so stuffed that we ended up going to Juice Stop for lunch because we still weren’t hungry. Our showing started at 1:30 PM.
It was a good movie, pretty true to the book. After the movie, we both had bad headaches (probably a combination of the heat and light lunch), so we went home for aspirin before going to get Charlie. We took a short nap, then gathered Kaity up and went to get Charlie for an early dinner. We had Mad Greek for dinner, then came home and watched a few episodes of Bones.
The rumors in the Apple universe have reached a fever pitch with the expectation that today Uncle Steve would see fit to allow us to give him money for those newest things which we covet and can’t live without (even though they never existed before): OS X Lion and new MacBook Air laptops. Alas, today has come and gone, and there are no new MacBook Airs or OS X Lion. Sad Panda .
Work was pretty quiet. A good friend of mine called in sick today. His co-workers decided to make him wish he’d come to work instead:
Why you shouldn't call in sick
It was another scorcher outside. We went to Ingredient for dinner, then walked over to the Cupcake Construction Company for dessert. That was all the walking we got in. It was still 97F at sunset
It was a typical Wednesday at work. Nothing meaningful got done. It took two meetings with the same 8 people to write one email.
Kaity was eating dinner when I got home because she was attending a pool party for the evening. Kris and Charlie and I went to The Basil Leaf for dinner, then actually went on a walk on campus! It wasn’t 100F for the first time in days. It was quite pleasant, like 85F. After our walk, we took Charlie to the park to swing for a while and listen to the end of the Lawrence City Band’s final concert of the summer.
Happy baby
They had a big fireworks display at the end. When we got home, I gave Charlie a bath in the sink while Kris mailed off some material to the editors for an upcoming publication.
The morning started with a trip to the doctor for Charlie. We noticed late yesterday evening that her right ankle was swollen around the ankle bone and oozing clear liquid from a pin hole. We weren’t sure what had happened, or how. We were concerned it was a Brown Recluse spider bite. We researched it, and talked to a nurse, and decided it was probably not a brown recluse bite and it would be OK to just take her to the doctor this morning, since she wasn’t running a temperature and seemed to feel just fine. Neither one of us slept very well, though. I kept checking on her during the night to make sure she was OK. Kris slept very lightly.
Well, the doctor diagnosed it as a probable spider bite. Now, in a ddition to the skin rash ointment she was prescribed last Friday, she is on an oral antibiotic, a topical antibiotic, hydro cortisone, and Benadryl.
Charlie's Drug Cocktail
Once we determined she wasn’t going to die, we took her to the babysitters and went to work. It was crazy busy at work. When I got home, we decided not to cook. I tried my hand at Gazpacho, and we had tomato and mozzarella salad. We finished off the evening with last night’s episode of True Blood.
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