Feels good

Since I skipped graduation (let's be honest, does anyone really enjoy sitting through them?) I was a little anxious if I really had done everything needed to have my degree officially conferred. I worry no more. Just received the following email:

Dear Cristen,

Congratulations on your graduation ... We have posted the following degree to your academic record:

Doctor of Philosophy
Bioengineering

Your transcript reflects this information. The diploma will be mailed ... 

Let the fun begin?

Rent

I'm back home now, so along with that comes the urge to do projects. Since I'm living at home, I'm not paying rent. In this area, that's quite a lot of savings. I feel I should contribute somehow for my rent, so I've taken to looking around the house for fixer-uppers. When doing my first load of laundry, I recognized my first opportunity.

While I have never been subjected to its wrath, the dryer has been known to be particularly brutal on buttons and zipper pulls. We all knew why, and various fixes had been implemented over the years, but still no permanent fix had been found. Also, in cleaning out the linen trap, it was obvious there was quite the accumulation of link in the "exhaust" piping. This excess lint has actually caused other dryers I've dad to fail (gets on the coil, starts a small fire which causes the wire to break). What started out as a simple cleaning project quickly grew into something much bigger. Here's what I found

The recovered items:


The culprit - the crack/gap in the lower right of the opening:


I ended up taking the dryer completely apart, including the blower/motor on the bottom. In this picture, I've cleaned the ducting as well as the inside of the dryer and have reattached everything. I over-filled the vacuum getting all the lint!


While I really wanted to fix it completely that day, we couldn't find a local parts store. We did find one online that offered the items for about half of what they would cost from GE directly so placed and order and waited for them to arrive. Incidentally, in the process we learned that there are 4 teflon gliders that the drum sits on. They help reduce friction and therefore motor wear as it turns. As you can guess, they'd never been replaced and the dryer is at least 15 years old. I figured they had probably long-since worn out.

Yes they had! To make it more obvious, here is a picture of the replacement parts next to the old parts. The drum had worn down the bearing guide so much that it, too needed to be replaced.


It all snaps in pretty easily so I actually installed all this before heading into work on Tuesday. Here is a view of the finished project from the inside...


plus one from the outside. Sorry for the rotation, but blogger is insisting on importing it in this orientation even though I've rotated the original.


And with that, my first project at home is completed!

Moving (well, moved now)

Yeah, it's been a while since I've updated anything here. That's mostly because I had nothing new to report. However, I have made some very big changes and should probably update this.

I have, after many, many years, have finally finished grad school. I don't yet have my diploma but I DO have a letter certifying I have earned my degree. I have been in an all out sprint to finish everything as fast as possible since October-ish. It was miserable, including almost all of Christmas break. I defended Jan 6 and passed!!! I had some edits that I tried to turn around as fast as possible because I accepted a post-doc position in Boston that was slated to start Feb 1.

I finished my last edits on my submission on Jan 31 and left for Boston Feb 1. I had intended to just go directly East, but Mother Nature had other plans meaning a nasty storm across Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska slated to dump ~15 inches of snow. It probably didn't, but I didn't want to find out. It was either sit in my apartment with my car fully loaded for another weekend or head south and spend it with family. I completely surprised Katy and Micah, arriving around 9 pm Friday evening.



Driving pics: Canyonlands




Apache Nation





And then the batteries died...

I spent the entire weekend, leaving early Monday and drove 1200 miles in 16 hours to get back on track with the other stop-overs I had scheduled, including the farm and the Catskills. The farm was great and included a day of hanging with the 2nd cousins. It had been far too long since I'd been there. Next, Bruce was kind enough to 1) let me drive the Hummer and 2) take me for an 8 hour hike. After all that time in the car, getting out was great.

Escarpment Trail:






The weather was getting a little scary and I did leave when the snow started falling pretty heavy, but after dropping in elevation, it wasn't even raining. I finally arrived home Saturday at 10:30 pm. And so ends one chapter of my life and begins another.

Wishing...

An odd title, I know. However, we've all got our wishes. I wish I was done with school, my parents wish I was married, and I wish people would stop bugging me about it. See? These are just some simple examples.

I also have some wishes that involve you. I wish you could get to know my good friend Erin. While we're at it, I wish I could explain why all my good friends are under the age of 15!


I wish I hadn't gotten to know Erin for the reasons I did. Erin is my former roommate's daughter. I got to know her while she was receiving treatments for leukemia at the hospital I work at. I wish she hadn't had to endure 6 months of basically living in a hospital room, chemotherapy, sicknesses, non-stop Dora the Explorer, and a few other things I'm sure. To be fair, she did like Dora, but her parents might not be as messed up as they are if it hadn't been for that one ;)

Speaking of her parents, I wish you could meet them as well. I'm not sure I have ever met anyone with such a positive outlook on life. I just don't see how John could have lived with me as long as he did and not have my rosy outlook on life. I blame Jill - she must have undone all my hard work.


I wish you could meet their kids as well. They are the sweetest, happiest, mellowest kids I know. I'm sure they have their moments, but I've never seen it. Meeting them just reinforces to me what I observed in their parents.

So why all this wishing? Well, because all these pictures are from Erin's Make-A-Wish party. All my wishes so far I have no power or ability to grant. However, for the Make-A-Wish party, I had an in - Renee was in charge of it! Erin was going to Disneyworld to meet princesses and we got to throw her a send-off party.


It started with a carriage ride to the ball. Don't you just love the costumes?


A relative of Steve's made Erin her own princess dress. Check this outfit out! Isn't it amazing? Matching hat and purse, too!


My fun was that I finally got to wear my Prince Charming costume I showed you earlier. Betsy and company did an awesome job finishing it up. It was awesome! You'd never know that was all stitched together DI supplies!


I had a lot of favorite parts that day, so I'll just explain a couple of them. When I first got to talk to Erin, she was so excited to show me she had hair! Last time I saw her, she was still pretty bald. I was surprised she knew I hadn't seen her hair yet.

The next fun part for me was this next picture. I had just asked her is we could sit with her, meaning at her table. She said yes and then immediately sat down! See, she's sitting with us! Love how literal kids are.


As everyone was cleaning up, I tried my hand at entertaining her for a bit. It was easy enough in her hospital room - she was a captive audience. However, I tried playing a game we had made up in the hospital: Hot Dog! It consists of just saying hot dog in as many weird ways as you can think of. Each time you say it, Erin will jump. It only worked a couple times in the hospital before she got bored of it, but it worked here! Again, I was surprised she remembered.

I really wish you could hear her deep belly laugh as she does this, as well as see the sparkle in her eye when she looks up at you while laughing. Priceless. It's amazing how five minutes of that could completely make my day. It hits this invisible reset button in your heart that helps you refocus your priorities. You can't help but leave smiling.


And now for my favorite picture from the day. I wish I could explain why I love this picture so much, but I can't. To me, it just somehow captures Erin's trust and friendship to me as well as my desire to help and protect her. I also love how her big sister is there helping her. If you have time, you should read through Erin's blog to see all the nice and simple ways she watches out for her little sister.


If you now wish you could meet Erin, I wish you would join us this weekend! Erin will be participating at a fundraising walk and everyone is invited! You can join her team here.

And in closing, my other favorite story from that day. I decided that two hours at the party wasn't enough time with them, so the night before, I called John to invite them to join me and my family for a barbeque at Nikki's. The conversation went about like this:
me: John, do you guys have dinner plans tomorrow?
John: No, why?
me: Well, I was thinking two hours isn't enough time to catch up, so we should do dinner.
John: Oh, ok. Um, would you like to join us for dinner? We don't have anything special planned, but you're welcome to come join us.

And that simple conversation alone should say all I need to say about why I absolutely love these guys. As a final edit, they did come to Nikki's instead of me going there, and they didn't have to bring a thing.

Conference season

Today has been an interesting and exciting day for me with email. It started off when I received the following email from Anesthesiology, the flagship journal for the American Society of Anesthesiologists. It took me quite off guard.

Dear Mr. Cris:

The Anesthesiology Editorial Office utilizes a Web-based manuscript submission and tracking system, Editorial Manager (EM). We have entered your name and address information into the EM system, as a REVIEWER, in anticipation of inviting you to review a manuscript. As a matter of information:

Once you have been invited to review a manuscript submission, we hope you will agree to provide this service for the Journal.

We look forward to working with you as an Anesthesiology reviewer. Thank you for your commitment.

Anesthesiology Editorial Office

Interesting. I've only just started writing yet they have asked me to be a peer reviewer for the journal. Interesting and flattering. My first paper was just published, so maybe that's why? There might not be too many people out there doing my type of research.

At the end of the day I received a second email. As background, it is the "season" of writing and submitting abstracts for research conferences for me. I received the following email on one I had submitted. This happens to be the official conference for anesthesiologists, with roughly 20,000 people attending. This is HUGE and is a nice nod to the work we've been doing. Renee will remember me desperately trying to submit them while at her apartment hijacking some poor neighbor's wireless.

Dear Mr. Cris,

It is my pleasure to inform you that your abstract, Remifentanil-Propofol Effect-Site Concentrations that Lead to Airway Obstruction and/or Intolerable Ventilatory Depression: Building a Response Surface Model for Respiratory Compromise, has been chosen for presentation in the 2011 ASA Best Abstracts. Congratulations! There were many outstanding abstracts this year, and yours was among the top chosen for this session. This will be an oral presentation, and you will receive a formal notice from the ASA in the next few weeks providing the full details.

Anesthesiology sponsors sessions at the ASA Annual Meeting in order to highlight important research in our specialty and to recruit manuscript submissions from these special sessions to highlight in the Journal. As you may have seen, the April 2011 issue of the Journal consists entirely of original investigations and review articles from the sessions we sponsored last year, and we hope to do this in the coming year as well.

I therefore invite you to prepare a full length manuscript for submission to us for consideration for publication in the April 2012 issue of Anesthesiology.

Please let me know if you have any questions, and please respond to this email to the Editorial Office on whether you intend to submit your work for consideration for publication in Anesthesiology. Thank you for your consideration, and, again, congratulations on your outstanding work!

Sincerely,


James C. Eisenach, MD
Editor-In-Chief, Anesthesiology

Projects to fill the rainy days...

If you haven't heard, there have been a lot of changes here for singles. As part of that, I just finished moving my stake office again (2x in one month). It's been a couple long days, but I'm now expert at setting up networks, sharing drives, and configuring routers and print servers. However, that is not the fun I want to share. What is amazing is the office. The only thing I have to say is WOW! A little more ornate than your typical High Council room, don't you think? Here's a view from the head of the table.


Here's one from the other end. Please make note that yes, there is a couch against the wall as well.


As for my other projects to distract me during the rainy and sometimes snowy days, here's one from work: building an enclosure to house some equipment. I had the equipment but had to find everything else. I added an easy access panel at the top.


Here's a view of the inside - had to figure out how to tie everything down. And that's steel, mind you. I spent four hours last Saturday in Ace Hardware looking at all their connectors and trying to figure out what would work. It also included a trip to Lowes (and three more trips back to Ace), but worked out in the end.


Here's the finished product. It weighs a bit more than I would like, but it's protective!


While that's all fun, the real fun project has been making a Prince Charming costume. I've been thinking about how to do this for about a month now. It's going to be for a princess ball put on by Make-a-Wish for Erin. I don't think I've ever put this much effort (or money) into a costume before! That same day I was at Ace for four hours I also put in a couple hours at 4 different DI's looking for "inspiration". Here's what I came up with.


Shoes: $6
Pants: $6
Jacket: $6
Belt: $2
Assorted accessories from Walmart: $8 (Yes, I accessorized)

I spent all of yesterday with my sisters piecing everything together. We did quite a bit of sewing, adjusting, and modeling to get to this stage (10 hours later!). I just want to point out that I did the collar, cuffs and buttons all by myself! Thankfully, Renee and Betsy did the epilephs. Anyone remember what Laree did? :-p


All we need to add now is a sash and button holes. I'm pretty excited! And if you happen to know them, don't let Erin's parents know!


Apologies for the weird look. What can I say? It was Betsy taking the picture - I was probably trying to defend myself.
Special thanks to this picture for the inspiration, and this website for the instructions.

Christmas 2010

How long has this been sitting here? I apparently forgot to publish this post. Might as well get it up.

This was probably the smallest Christmas yet at home. Just Laree and I plus the 'rents. Mother nature cooperated by absolutely dumping on us - it wreaked havoc on the airports and delayed everything all week. It also gave me plenty to do since mom and dad got very generous on their desire to shovel everyone out!

These are the clues I gave them for what their Christmas present was: kites, a spoonful of sugar, and this poem.


Being a typical girl in the family, Laree is always cold. Therefore, she got some nice new attire to keep her warm.


Michelle made everyone Christmas ornaments. The best, hands down, was mom's cows.


On a slightly more somber note, the day after Christmas a police officer in my hometown was shot and killed while chasing a burglar. We were actually on our way home from dinner that night when we had to stop at an intersection while a cop car came flying by headed to the scene. It stuck out because it was in the middle of a pretty bad snow storm, so something pretty bad had to be going on for him to be moving that fast.

Anyway, we live right on the main road to the highway as well as just down the street from the cemetery so those who were here went out to pay our respects. This was the first time an officer in our town had been killed.

Another visitor...

I've decided that one of the best decisions I've ever made was to go visit Katy in Riga before she went home. Why? Because I am continually running into people I met there. I became fast friends with the same group of people Katy was friends with. Since then, I have had an opportunity to meet up with at least six of them here.

This past week gave me a chance to greet Olga as she came here to enter the MTC. Again, I'll probably get killed for putting this picture up, but here is a picture from when we first met in 2005. Olga is the blond. Oh wait... The one in white. Wait... Ok she's the one on Katy's left.


This picture is a bit better glimpse into her personality (in pink). This was after virtually 48 hours straight of hanging out, so all shyness was completely gone.


There were only a few of us at the airport, but I don't think you could have asked for a better reception. We had a sign, excited kids, and then this family: Matt, his wife and daughter. Matt is the elder who baptized Olga. I'm not sure who she knew would be there, but she was all smiles.


I was hoping to be able to give her a ride to the MTC. I got permission from the MTC and everything. Even had Laree waiting to go out to dinner with us. Alas, Matt wanted to give her a ride as well. No doubt that in this situation, I lose. He definitely got first dibs on that. After convincing them all that she did not have to ride the shuttle down, they were off.

Just as we were leaving, I realized I hadn't taken a picture of us yet, so here is a shot just as we are leaving the airport.


Several things about this night make it special. First, that I can meet up with someone from so far away here. Second, that a friendship that developed in a relatively short amount of time can last so long and third, the things she has overcome to even be here in the first place. Makes my life seem pretty wimpy in comparison.