News Flash!

Nothing terribly exciting has happened in the last month. Bummer. Let me see if I can dredge up something interesting to report.Well, let's see. My project is barely moving, but at least it is moving forward again. What you see below is a gel used to seperate DNA bands of various sizes. The uppermost band in the right hand lane indicates a successful reaction. Take a look for yourself!

Exciting huh? Luckily I have that to keep me inspired. My lab has been pretty empty lately, which translates to a lot of work getting done (nice) but the silence can be deafening and distracting too.

Niagara Falls Update

Visited Niagara falls in late July. I can't remember if I blogged about it or not. Here are a couple photos of the trip! It was a 12 hour drive, one way.

apartment upgrade?

My bathroom had a steady stream of drops coming from the ceiling on Friday. I checked with the upstairs tenant to make sure they weren't overfilling the bathtub. I called the complex and they came and cut several holes in the ceiling to check what was going on. They left a lot of debris behind and a few large holes in the ceiling with a note saying they would come back again at the start of next week to fix it. Bummer. My papertowl roll was decimated when I got home that night, I guess they used it to clean their mess (they only cleaned parts of their mess). :)

Petersburg, Jamestown and Yorktown!

Mom and Dad flew out to Charlotte for the week. They drove a couple hours to meet me in Durham and we hung out for a few days. Lori accompanied us on a day trip to Virginia where we saw Petersburg, the site of a civil war battle. Most of the pictures are on my Dad's camera.
From there we drove to Jamestown and spent a couple hours touring the famous landmark. In the early evening we thought we'd try to squeeze one more trip in and drove another 30 mins to Yorktown, site of the revolutionary war surrender of Cornwallis. I have this picture of the house where Cornwallis sent his Lieutenant to surrender on his behalf.

Pontoon Plane

I took a Sea Plane to Lake Union on my way out Seattle. The plane took off from the marina on the island, landed at Lake Union, and I took a 5 minute shuttle to the airport from there. Once I boarded my commercial flight headed for Milwaulkee I snapped some pictures of Mt St. Helens from the air. Enjoy all the photos below.

Camping!

Labor day was fun. Camping in Asheville. It was kind of cheating because rather than actually rough it we stayed at a KOA. I think we had fun. One or two more camping trips and I think Lori will be ready for a backpacking trip. Maybe. We bought the tent, lantern, and chairs at target and rented the campstove. Here’s a picture of the inexpensive, yet nice, tent.

Seattle Conference!

I am at a mini conference in Seattle. I'll be back in Durham on Friday. My boss and I left Tuesday (I left at 6am and his flight at 7am) but we arrived here in Seattle within 10 mins of each other. Next was a 2 hour car ride to the ferry departure point. We tried to take the ferry but got here too late so we had to wait 2 hours for the next one. Here are several photos of the ferry system.




They even loaded an eighteen wheeler on the ferry. Cool.

Here is the ferry dock at Fox Island, our only stopping point on the way to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

At the Fox Harbor dock there was a massive bumper pier designed to keep the ferry from running astray. Here is a game that was on the concrete slab topping the pier.

The objective of the game was to throw small coins from the ferry and try and land them in the old car rim. I imagine someone collects the money occasionally because I estimated there was about 100 dollars total between the four piers.

We finally got in around 7pm. We had a quick dinner because they were shutting down the cafeteria and then we went to our respective bunks. I am rooming with two grad students named Chris and Brandon. They're an interesting group. First morning here and I was the only one up, this place kind of reminds me of summer camp (from
The Parent Trap because I never went to a real one myself) because it is so
heavily wooded and just little cabins around the campus.

Update:
Last night we drove the university van to Lime Kiln lighthouse to watch the sunset. We got there a few mins after sunset, but I did manage to get a photo of the lighthouse.