Just a heads-up -- we're almost done with all our paperwork to become permanent residents in Canada! For our application, I mean. It's been a little hairy, but luckily Q's job pays for it. We had to get police clearance certificates from India (and Spain for me), and do blood tests and chest x-rays and extensive background checks. Here's hoping it all works out!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Post-doc land with kids
It's been MONTHS since I posted. Yeesh. Lazy slob. No, actually, I've been busy!
I got lucky, and one of my PhD advisor's friends had a little funding for a half-time postdoc! And the project is awesome. Did I already talk about this? Oh well, I'll say it again. I might get to work on breeding pawpaws, which are native to North America! That would be too fun, breeding a native edible plant! But the funding hasn't come through yet -- maybe next year.
Meanwhile, to keep me busy, they've had me become a pseudo-expert on potato genomics. I say pseudo-expert because it's somewhat ludicrous to think that one can become an expert in potato genomics in 4-6 months. But hey! I'm giving it a shot, and I've been working with a couple other people at UBC to come up with a decent review of marker-assisted selection in potatoes. It's been lots of fun!
AND yes, there's more! My current experimental project is designed to give me 200 F2 progeny of monkeyflowers. Then we're going extract RNA and sequence the entire transcriptome of the progeny! Can you imagine the astounding amounts of data that's going to be???????? (?!?!?!?). I'm really excited, though it sounds like quite a feat to get it all analyzed...
All this on part-time. "And what in the world do you do with the rest of the time?" you ask? Oh my, I don't have an acronym for my 2nd daughter! What to do. Did I already make one up, and I've forgotten? Ah, yes, it's CH. Anyway, I stopped breastfeeding around 3mo. Obviously I didn't manage to correct any "nipple confusion" that resulted from having to supplement in the hospital. Or something. But anyway, it's better than I did with TM! CH is now crawling around like mad. She's adorable. We're sleeping on the floor, so when she wakes up from her nap, she just crawls out the door looking for me. It's absolutely adorable. She's quite the grinning froggy, very happy and adorable.
TM is enjoying kindergarten, as we knew she would. She's making lots of friends, and mentions about once a week how she doesn't want to move from here. I agree -- anyway, we won't be moving 'till the housing market dies down a bit, or we get desperate and have to move south. TM is also doing well in Aikido, and will start up with swimming and ice skating in January. And she has an art class on Saturdays. Overscheduling? Perhaps. But she's SO social and active that she loves it.
Q and I are enjoying our expanded family, and Christmas is almost here!
That's all for now...
I got lucky, and one of my PhD advisor's friends had a little funding for a half-time postdoc! And the project is awesome. Did I already talk about this? Oh well, I'll say it again. I might get to work on breeding pawpaws, which are native to North America! That would be too fun, breeding a native edible plant! But the funding hasn't come through yet -- maybe next year.
Meanwhile, to keep me busy, they've had me become a pseudo-expert on potato genomics. I say pseudo-expert because it's somewhat ludicrous to think that one can become an expert in potato genomics in 4-6 months. But hey! I'm giving it a shot, and I've been working with a couple other people at UBC to come up with a decent review of marker-assisted selection in potatoes. It's been lots of fun!
AND yes, there's more! My current experimental project is designed to give me 200 F2 progeny of monkeyflowers. Then we're going extract RNA and sequence the entire transcriptome of the progeny! Can you imagine the astounding amounts of data that's going to be???????? (?!?!?!?). I'm really excited, though it sounds like quite a feat to get it all analyzed...
All this on part-time. "And what in the world do you do with the rest of the time?" you ask? Oh my, I don't have an acronym for my 2nd daughter! What to do. Did I already make one up, and I've forgotten? Ah, yes, it's CH. Anyway, I stopped breastfeeding around 3mo. Obviously I didn't manage to correct any "nipple confusion" that resulted from having to supplement in the hospital. Or something. But anyway, it's better than I did with TM! CH is now crawling around like mad. She's adorable. We're sleeping on the floor, so when she wakes up from her nap, she just crawls out the door looking for me. It's absolutely adorable. She's quite the grinning froggy, very happy and adorable.
TM is enjoying kindergarten, as we knew she would. She's making lots of friends, and mentions about once a week how she doesn't want to move from here. I agree -- anyway, we won't be moving 'till the housing market dies down a bit, or we get desperate and have to move south. TM is also doing well in Aikido, and will start up with swimming and ice skating in January. And she has an art class on Saturdays. Overscheduling? Perhaps. But she's SO social and active that she loves it.
Q and I are enjoying our expanded family, and Christmas is almost here!
That's all for now...
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