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?
The next day, it was on to Debbie's parents' to celebrate with her immediate family and her brother Jon's dog Jezebel. 
On Christmas Day, we went to Debbie's Grandparents' house to celebrate with Taffy
Roman
Lucky
and Alexander.
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.
Then I used the 4x6 crop in photoshop to get a picture that was mainly him (because I want to print it out on a normal 4x6 print at a photodeveloper).
Then I used the Define and Sharpen action from PW's first action set to bring out a few more details:
Finally, I used the Quick Edge Burn action (also from PW's first set of actions), to get sort of a haloed effect around him. Overall, I kind of like how it turned out:
I also tried it without the Define and Sharpen action to see if there would be much difference and you can see with that action some of the shadows are a bit crisper than without (but I'm still debating which way I like better):
