Father's Day/Malachi's Baptism

The folks and I went to Sterling Heights last weekend to celebrate Father's Day and see little Malachi get baptized. Pictures are here.

Special Delivery

Kara was feeling like she needed a bit of rest for her last few weeks of school and Debbie did offer, so she should be expecting a package in the mail. And yes, we did make sure there were some holes in the box.

The rest of the pictures from our visit yesterday are here.

Easter at Grandma's house

Just thought I'd post a link to the few photos I took at Grandma's house today.

The rest of the photos can be found here.

A visit with Addison and Malachi

Yesterday the folks and I headed over to Detroit to visit the Horvaths.

Got to spend some time with Addison

and meet Malachi

all of the pictures are here and the few I took in Boston before my battery died a couple of weeks back are here.

The animals of my Christmas

I was trying to think of a way to post about my Christmas travels and visits with family and I decided I would mention my visists in reference to the animals I got to see at each stop.  (Links to all the pictures I took at each gathering are below the photo.

The first gathering I went to was of my Dad's side of the family on the Saturday before Christmas.  While the Fullers couldn't make it, we did have a good time (and, apparently, so did the cardinals outside).

                                                                     12/20 pictures

The next day we went to my Grandma Ultz's house as we do every year on the Sunday before Christmas for a celebration with my mom's side of the family.  This year, while there weren't any four-legged animals in the house, we had our share of party animals, including Brandon.

                                                                   12/21a pictures

                                                                                                                         

Then we went back to my parents' house to spend time with both Callie

and Jasmine and did our celebration with my immediate family.

                                                                                                          12/21b pictures

The next day, it was on to Debbie's parents' to celebrate with her immediate family and her brother Jon's dog Jezebel.  

                                                                   12/22 pictures

On Christmas Day, we went to Debbie's Grandparents' house to celebrate with Taffy

Roman

Lucky

and Alexander.

                                                                                      

                                                                    12/25 pictures

Finally, it was back to the house where I'm staying in Haslett, and Emma, the cat who likes to wake me up by knocking open my door if she can (or scratching it and meowing sadly if she can't) at all sorts of awfully early hours while I'm still trying to sleep.  She's definitely a more friendly cat than I'm used to seeing.

                                                                   12/27 pictures

Now, this is not to say that the animals were the most important part of my Christmas by any means.  They're just a way to organize it.  If you follow the links to any of the albums, you'll find many more pictures of the people who were part of my christmas, but there were way too many of them to post them all here, while the animals were easier to list.

My horrible hitting technique

So I've been trying to post a video of my hitting the volleyball for a while so I could get some critique about what I'm doing wrong. I know my form is a complete mess, but by soliciting criticism over at volleyballforums.com, I'm hoping to improve.



Anyway, if you've got any comments on how I could improve what I'm doing, please go over to the proper thread and post them. Just saying my form is a mess isn't really helpful as I know that, I'd like some advice on how to improve it.

thanks.

A Day in the Life (11-7-08)

So Pound has been after me for the longest time to do one of those "A Day in the Life of ___" blog postings where I document everything I do one day. I finally got around to doing it over a month ago, but never got any further than taking the pictures. The day I chose was November 7, an auspicious day because it was my wife Debbie's birthday, and I was supposed to have a phone interview for a possible job that day. So without further ado, here's 11/7/08 in the life of Paul:



Mmm...cereal for breakfast, yummy.



It was a bit more difficult to get around during those couple of weeks as we'd already started packing up for the big move to boston.





Since neither of us had appointments during the month of November (mine ended in August, Debbie's in October) we were (and I still am) using public transportation to get to work. Kind of a pain as it adds an extra hour and a half onto our day, but not much choice in the matter.







It was another beautiful late fall day on MSU's campus.



Ah yes, my bench where all that sciency-looking stuff is used to make the world a better place (or something like that).



And yes, my desk is messy, but I know where everything is and have everything I need close at hand.



For lunch I joined Debbie's lab in going out to celebrate her birthday and that of a labmate who had the same birthday at Sultan's a local middle eastern restuarant.



I had the salad



and baked kibbee and baba ghanoush.



Debbie's labmate, Shoko, drove.







Then back to work labeling and oligonucleotide probes with 32P and purifying them. And yes, that means I was using radioactivity, but no, it wasn't strong enough to do me any damage even had I not been as careful as I was and always am (that one visit from the police and fire department aside--hey I wasn't even using radioactivity that time).



I also spent a significant portion trying to get in contact with the person with whom I was supposed to have the phone interview, but unfortunately, we weren't able to connect that day (and my chances of getting that job don't really look so hot either).



It wasn't a total waste though as I got to listen to some good tunes.







Then off to our regular Friday night of volleyball.



Kind of a pain because, as usual, every time we took a break to get some water between games, all the basketball hordes would try taking over the court and we'd have to kick them off again.



After the volleyball, I took Debbie out to her fabulous birthday dinner at Georgio's Pizza. Actually, I forgot to take a picture of my food, so this is from a more recent visit (hence no plates of her food on the table), but I still got the same food, a slice each of eggplant parmesan and mediterranean pizza. Also, I did take her out to a theoretically nice dinner for her birthday the next night at Ai Fusion. Unfortunately, her dinner of veggie tempura wasn't all that good that night either. My sushi there was awesome, though. Our dumpling appetizer was quite good, so, even though she doesn't eat seafood and wouldn't take some of my sushi, at least she got some good food for her birthday dinner.







Then it was back on the bus and home to our apartment where there were a few presents waiting for her.

Yup, that's it, a day in my life, and not at all exciting, but overall it was a pretty good day (at least I didn't have to use my AK). Aren't you glad you wanted me to post it, Pound?