More bugs and the conference

My favorite time to write blogs is while sitting on the train on my way to DC. I have to go into the capitol every few weeks for some sort of event, which is a nice way to mix things up. Today (and tomorrow), the event is actually a resilience conference that I have been working on since I came to the Center. Of course, other people were the lead organizers but I feel happy that I have at least some feeling of ownership of what we are doing.
The unfortunate thing about the ownership feeling is that it was the deciding factor in getting out of bed this morning. Two nights ago, both Greg and I were struck with a nasty stomach bug. It’s the first time either of us have thrown up from a virus/bacteria/parasite since before college, possibly high school. I didn’t leave the house all day but fortunately, I can work from home so I didn’t have to take the day off. I will admit that it wasn’t my most productive day but I had some things that needed to get done.
I’m feeling better today but after making it official last night that it was too soon to eat, I’ve been running on empty for over a day. That’s ok though, because I am only occasionally hungry. The thing I am working on is being able to drink water without stomach pain. Still, with the exception of occasional stomach cramps I really do feel fairly good, and I figure that I have a few more days to go without food and at least 1 without much water before I get into trouble.

Update: Well, the conference went well and on the first day I was actually able to eat soup at lunch with only about 5 minute of worry. By dinner time I was totally fine and even felt confident about getting a drink when the whole day was over.
This is where the good story starts. A few of the analysts and Greg and I went to the hotel bar and I ordered something called a “wild orchid” I don’t know what it is but it was pretty good and had some chili spices added to it. I was about a quarter of the way through the drink when Greg realized that one of the floating specks of spice was not spice at all and instead was a fly. Ew. So I flagged over the waitress and asked her to get me a new one. The second one comes and I decided to check through all the floating specks to make sure none of them had wings. Well, I was almost about to declare it fine when I found ANOTHER FLY! So I returned that one, got a clear margarita and the manager came over and bought all of us our drinks. NICE! I figure there was enough craziness going on in my stomach already that fly juice really wasn’t going to be that much of a challenge and that the free drinks made it worth it (probably because I don’t yet know what kinds of crazy diseases I could have gotten – at least there was alcohol in there!)
Anyway, today, the main part of the conference went really well and I was happy to hear a few of my ideas and come out in parts of the event. Yay, I contributed – maybe our country will be slightly more resilient because of some of the work I did. Which reminds me – though resilience is much more than personal preparedness – I hope that everyone reading this has a disaster plan and a kit! Got to http://www.ready.gov or http://www.shakeout.org/ to read more and in the later to watch a great preparedness video. If you want to see what the conference was about head to the biosecurity website http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/ in a few days.

The bug

Greg and I have been excited over the last few days to get our new house ready for Christmas. We put a few Christmas decorations up and bought a little potted Blue Spruce to hang ornaments on. Nice! Maybe it will make it to next year. We also got some firewood to have a little fire at some point in one of our fireplaces. It seems so silly to buy firewood when I have stacked so much firewood at my parents' house over the years - especially when they only have a gas fireplace now! But flying firewood across the country is not going to work out so we'll be purchasing our firewood out here.
Thanksgiving was a great holiday - Greg and I spent the week with Justin and Kelty at Justin's parents' house in Virginia. It was nice not to have to try to travel on the most crazy travel week of the year but still have close friends to be with. Plus Justin's family is so welcoming - we felt totally comfortable. Greg played in the Turkey bowl and even scored a touchdown!
Yesterday I had my first real taste of winter weather. It snowed a lot, all day, but it didn't stick. I wasn't sure if I wanted it to stick or not. Once we had made it back to the house from our shopping trips I wouldn't have minded but I was glad we weren't trying to drive home in snow. Some of my colleagues at work told me that if snow is predicted the people of Baltimore rush out to buy milk, bread, and toilet paper and you can't find any in the stores. I'm guessing that people here are all lactose absorbers (HA, I am going to laugh at my own HumBio joke).
One event of note - the other day I was in bed and Ms. Jackson jumped up. I glanced at her and it looked like she had something black on her nose, which was hard to see because her nose is black too. But then she tried to lick her nose and the thing didn't move. Uh-oh. I grabbed her and there was a big black bug clinging to her nose! (We eventually decided that it was a long nosed weevil) I made Greg try to grab it but it wouldn't move and Ms. Jackson started freaking out when he pulled on it. Somehow this bug was really stuck to her! Apparently, it had several legs curled around the inside of her nose and was holding on with all of it's claws. Eventually Greg pried the legs off with tweezers and jerked it off of her nose but it was so gross! I was wierded out all night.

Our first visit!

This past week my parents visited us and became our first house guests! I worked some of the time but we also got to visit some museums in DC, wander Federal Hill, and explore Fort McHenry (where the Americans turned back the British fleet in the British-American war and inspired the star spangled banner). My mom kept talking about how much she liked our house and where we lived so that made me proud and happy. We had a good time hanging out (I definitely think that kids learn to appreciate their parents more and more as they get older - so you parents of teenagers don't lose faith!) and fortunately, there are a ton of other historical sites on the east coast so my parents will always have something to entertain them when they come to visit.
The weather is definitely getting interesting out here. While my parents were here we were also visited by the remnants of Hurricane Ida. There wasn't much left of her but things were still fairly windy, rainy, and chilly.
The leaves have turned and, for the most part, fallen. When I drive along the freeway or look out the train windows the woods look like piles of bones. It is strange to me, because the woods of the Pacific Northwest that I'm used to just seem to have a damp sleepiness in the winter. Instead, these forests are bare, with occasional pockets of fiery leaves, and you can see right through them.
Some people (Greg) get really excited about the changing season because they really feel like it is football season. Well, I'm fine with the weather too, if I get to sit inside and watch Stanford destroy USC (and it was their alumni weekend - I wonder if it will affect their athletic department's bottom line?). That game was awesome! But then again, so was last week's vs. Oregon. It's nice that Stanford is good enough this year to get their games on TV all the way over here on the east coast. I still watch the last half of Stanford games with a quickly beating heart (who can forget the late game losses that seem to be the Stanford hallmark) but we've pulled it out enough times that I'm beginning to have faith.

A tour of our house

When I was back in Palo Alto for Alumni Weekend (we won the football game - yay! And it was really great to see all my friends from school and the team) I had several people ask me to show them pictures of my new house. Well, I decided to do it on video instead because I wanted to see if it would work (in the end it took 3 days and new software). Sorry about the crazy bed head but that's just what my hair likes to do in the morning. Enjoy!

Now, some of you avid video watchers may have noticed the moment when I accidentally called Ms. Jackson "Greg". Whatever, that's what I say. My mom goes through my dad, me, and Dana before she gets to yelling at their cat. So, I figured that I would just leave it and you could get a kick out of it.
In other news - Greg and I had our first laid back weekend last weekend. It was great. We just lounged around in our PJs and relaxed. It sounds boring but it was amazing! With all the running around, unpacking, and traveling that we've been doing recently it was so nice to sleep in and make a liesurely breakfast, watch some TV and not even know where my iphone was.
We did get ourselves up for Halloween though because everyone was telling us that hundreds of kids would be coming by. I had my cowboy hat out and we bought 4 bags of candy from Costco. Unfortunately, we were on the street that everyone seemed to skip. I could hear the kids out there, screaming on their sugar highs, all around us. But we thought it would be kind of creepy to go out and tell them all to come to our house. So we only got 4 groups and ended up with huge Costco bags of candy left - even though I was pouring it into kids bags at the end. We ate our fill and then donated it to the candy bowl at work. Good riddance!
Last week we also joined a gym. I thought that it was time. Even though I swam better than expected at the Alumni meet (really, in my opinion, going a 30 in the 50 br is petty decent when you have only been in the water 3 times in the last 6 months) I felt that maybe I should exercise at least a couple times a week. The lack of exercise hadn't caught up with me yet but I'd rather not wait until it does!
Oh yeah, on last thing to report. I am now officially a Sell (though I really do prefer Tara Kirk Sell rather than Mrs. Gregory Sell - I have a name you know!) since I got things taken care of at the Social Security office on Wednesday and got a new drivers license today at the MVA. So yeah, it's now official - Greg and I are the Sells (but you can still call us the Skirkells).

Back in Palo Alto!

As I write, Greg and I are sitting on a plane on our way back to Palo Alto for Alumni weekend! Before I tell you all about our adventures over the past few weeks let me first make a little detour to mention how tightly packed our American Airlines flight is. Seriously, I am not a big person and I barely fit. Plus, the guy ahead of me decided to lean back as soon as we took off so now my face is about 10 inches from the back of his head – and really, all I can notice is that he would be wise to invest in some prophylactic Rogaine. (Greg is in the same boat but it is way worse because he has 9 inches on me and his legs never fit in the first place – he’s just sitting here with a blank miserable look on his face).
Anyway, with the house, Greg and I are now pretty much at the point where we can have the occasional laid back evening. We got over the biggest hurdle, which was getting a new washer and dryer that could make it in the house. The hall and right turn into the doorway was 29 by 28 and involved stairs. We went about as small as we could with appliances that were 28 ¼ by 27. We were worried but our delivery guys were pros and they didn’t even have to take the doors off the appliances or the house. The house isn’t fully put together but now all we have to do is take care of the little details. This is a really good thing – especially since Greg and I nearly killed ourselves with our separate outings last weekend.
I went to Phoenix for a wedding and got to hang out with Andrew and Lacey and Lacey’s parents and a bunch of new and old friends from school. The exact right number (1) of groomsmen hit on me - enough for my ego but not enough to be annoying. I got to dance and learn what a great drink Whisky Sours are (Megan’s idea) – it was a great time (though I brought my dress to the dry cleaners and they were properly horrified by the condition it was in by the end of the night). The difficult thing was that I got up at 5 (east coast time) on Saturday to make my flight and then we partied until midnight (pacific time) at the wedding. So I was pretty exhausted from going for 21 hours straight. Apparently, though, it was nothing compared to Greg.
Greg got to skip the wedding and instead went with Steve, Steve’s friends, and the Colnitises on an amazing football excursion. He left Thursday to head to South Bend to watch the Notre Dame/USC football game on Saturday and then flew to Minneapolis to watch the Vikings Ravens game. When he wasn’t at a game, I gather that he was at a bar, - we are still amazed that he is alive. As for the games, he is a bad luck charm (that explains all those Stanford losses!), but he did get hooked up with amazing seats. At the Vikings/Ravens game he was apparently on the 50 yard line, 6 rows back from the field. He said that Brett Favre looks old.
This week has mostly been Greg getting over the sickness he got and me not trying not to get sick. When your head is full of H1N1 statistics all day you start to wash your hands a lot more often (especially since it seems to be hitting a disproportionately large amount of young people). Work is either interesting or an interesting version of boring. The other day I had to search through all of our congressional members to see whose staffers we should invite to our conference and then call and get their names and email addresses. This was tedious and boring but also a unique window into the formation of national policy. It was also at times infuriating because some offices wouldn’t even give me names – as if the identity and email addresses of their staff are sooooo important. Seriously – people want my email address more!
But today I got a rare treat. I wanted a book to read for my flight and one of the founders of our Center – D.A. Henderson – has a book out about how he destroyed smallpox (and when I say this I literally mean that he eradicated smallpox from the human population – amazing!). The ladies who organize everything at the Center found me a copy (It’s called Smallpox: The death of a disease) and sent me in to get it signed.
D.A. Henderson is seriously my idol. When I was in the swimming world I’d often do interviews where people would ask who my hero was and I would say that it was him. Sadly, it caused so much confusion that I had to go with my second choice (still a good one – Jenny Thompson). But he is my real hero and I think even Dr. Thompson would think he is amazing. It was such a thrill to get to talk to him. He invited me to sit down and told me the history of the Center and his adventures getting our country prepared for a biological weapon of mass destruction. So cool.
I also had the first moment in my job where I learned something that truly scared me. I had been under the impression that after it had been eradicated, small amounts of smallpox had just sat in a couple freezers in the Soviet Union (as well as the CDC) and with all the chaos there in the last 20 years it had probably died during some brown-out. Well, in our conversation D.A. told me that the Soviet bioweapons program was extremely advanced and that they made some truly horrifying accomplishments with smallpox. According to his book they regularly manufactured and stored weapons-grade smallpox in twenty-ton containers (Imagine me screaming in horror) and they don’t even know where all the scientists went (Imagine me screaming in horror more)! It’s a lot easier to imagine a tiny sample going missing from hundreds of tons of smallpox than a few vials in long forgotten freezers. Fortunately, he’s good at his job so we now have about 200 million doses of vaccine to help us out if we need it. Thank goodness!

New in Town

It’s been 4 days since I arrived in Baltimore and things have been very interesting so far! But let me start back a few days to get you all caught up. On Thursday I sent Greg off to Baltimore to go and close on our house. I stayed in Bremerton because Dana and I were being inducted into the Kitsap County Bremerton Athletic Roundtable Hall of Fame.
It was an honor to be recognized by my home community – my 4th grade teacher even came out to watch. Some of the speeches rambled on a bit (I had prepared myself for this, having seen too many people take a microphone in their hands and gallop off with it). However, it was still a great event and very humbling to see all those people who only wanted success and good things for me.
After the Hall of Fame I headed to the airport with Ms. Jackson to make my trip out to Baltimore. She wasn’t a huge fan of flying but only had one attack of the meows. One thing I have to mention here is that Ms. Jackson’s ticket was more expensive than Greg’s – though, she did get to fly first class for half of the trip because I upgraded us with miles. We finally got in at about 10:30 AM and found Greg sitting there just outside of security to help me with all of my bags. What a nice guy!
After we grabbed our bags, we all headed out to our house (!!!) and Greg carried me over the threshold. Then we dropped off Ms. Jackson – who promptly hid in the basement behind the water heater – and headed out of town to the Colnitis’s house to watch the Raven’s game. Their son is a good friend of Greg’s and was a groomsman in Greg’s wedding. He pretty much lived in their game room for most of his youth. The Raven’s game was disappointing but we still had a great time!
Monday dawned and I was ready to start my first day of work! Even though we’d been camping in our spare bedroom (the only room with carpet) I slept wonderfully – probably because I hadn’t slept the night before. The Center was really great, the people there were really nice, and the work is very interesting. A little after five I headed home on foot and thought that the rest of the day was going to be pretty much entirely trying to unpack our stuff – which had arrived that day. That was pretty much true…except for the part when a high-speed chase went zooming down our street!!!
This chase had everything! There was a helicopter with a spot light, a (slight) car crash, even driving on the sidewalk! And later the helicopter addressed our street specifically over loud speakers and announced when cars would be speeding down our street! Now parents, I know that you are now worried about the safety of your favorite children, but I think that this was abnormal occurrence. Other people seemed pretty interested and we really did buy in a good neighborhood. But yeah – a high speed chase!
After that exciting first night things have been intense in a sort of banal way. At the Center, it feels like I’ve been busy every minute of the day but that there is always more to read or do in order to get up to speed with everything. When I get home, I immediately start unpacking and do that until it is time to go to sleep. Greg has been taking care of getting everything into the house, dealing with the movers as they tried to get our furniture through our second floor windows or over our third floor patio, and spending hours at the MVA getting the car situated. We can’t wait to get into a more regular routine.

In the midst of moving

It's been forever since I last wrote so I have no idea if anyone but our parents is reading this anymore. Still, here is the update on our still crazy lives. On Friday last week we (with the help of our dedicated friends) packed up our moving van in Palo Alto. But we didn't actually head out right then because we stayed to have one last hurrah with Andrew and Lacey and the wineries in Gilroy. So it wasn't until super early Sunday morning that we had our goodbye with Tim and Kerrie and spent the long day driving us, Ms. Jackson, and all of our things up to Washington. Then, the next day, we transferred everything into our moving POD, adding the furniture that my parents were giving us, and sent that off to Baltimore (our car had already left from Palo Alto). After that it was smooth sailing, or so we thought.
I called the PODS company a few days ago to figure out when they thought that our POD was going to be delivered (so we could reserve a parking spot for it) and found out that even though we had planned around having it delivered on the 3rd of Oct. they now discovered that they couldn't deliver it until the 5th. After planning flights and everything around the arrival of our stuff, our move logistics are now completely mucked up (they are reviewing the original call to see if they are to blame). Anyway, we will figure a way around that.
Prep for our arrival in Baltimore came to a halt however, when we left for a 2 and half day backpacking trip to Mildred Lakes in the Olympic Mountains. My dad, his friend Mic, Greg, and I, hiked into the lakes on our first day and I was glad for our steep hiking practice in the Andes. Though the Olympics are small by comparison, the trail was rough and nearly straight up in long sections. However, we made it in in time to do a little fishing and make up a nice fried trout dinner.
The next day we decided to try and find Lincoln Lake, a rarely visited lake somewhere on the other side of the ridge line that rose up from the back of our camp site, supposedly filled huge monster trout ready to bite on any hook that came near them. Like many of Greg's and my recent exploring experiences, we got a little off course and so we were trailblazing for about 5 hours through steep terrain before we finally made it to a ridge on the far side of Lincoln lake. Unfortunately, the ridge was like a knife in the sky and tapered to a razor edge in the direction we wanted to go. So instead, we backtracked and went down and around the lake and then climbed back up to it on the other side.
We had to head back right away though because we were worried that we wouldn't make it back before dark but we did manage to land a few trout as we purified some more water for the trip back. Instead of taking the same tortuous way back, we decided to try and take a more direct route that had us climbing straight up to a ridge line and then descending down steep cuts in the mountain. We were pretty worried that we would end up cliff bound or fall down the mountainside but Greg and I really wanted to avoid any of the tricky around-the-bush stuff that had gotten us in that situation in the first place. It got a little scary at times but everyone miraculously made it out without serious injury (though you should see my shins) so we were ok. After that, our steep descent out the following day didn't seem so steep and we made it back in time for dinner and a shower. Nice!
My final comment for this blog is that lately, we've been missing our friends and family from Palo Alto a bit. Moving is sad! We are consoling ourselves with the fact that we will get to see them in our October travels. Still, it won't be the same.