One down... One to go!

A long time coming.... I finally finished my Ph.D. in Physiology. My defense was in 2 parts (because one of my committee members forgot that he was on my committee, and was out of town); so I gave seminar on Wednesday of last week and then answered questions for my committee on Friday afternoon. The seminar was the part that i was more worried about - the committee meeting wasn't bad - the professors on my committee are nice and I know them all pretty well. Not to mention that I took them food (Yummy Lenny's sandiches, cookies and chips) :) which makes everything a little better.
My mentor then took our whole lab plus Anthony (and her daughter too) out to celebrate at Shapley's. When she finished grad school, her mentor took her out to celebrate and she passed along the tradition. If I ever have a grad student I'll take the lab out to celebrate their Ph.D. completion as well.
I really enjoyed my time in the lab, but I'm looking forward to going back to med school in June. I start my rotations on Family Medicine, then Surgery, OB/GYN, Peds, then Med/Neuro. I'm still pretty sure that I want to do Neurology in the long run, so it's ok that it's last- I'll have an idea of how the hospital works by then hopefully. But before I start M3 - I've got a whirl-wind of trips and meetings. I leave late Sat Apr 18 driving to New Orleans for Experimental Biology 2009 (after a friend's wedding, but I wouldnt' miss it - even though everyone else is partying on the Amtrak on Friday afternoon), return to Jackson on Apr 22. Then leave on the 23 for an APSA meeting in Chicago, then leave Chicago on the 26th for Seattle and the American Academy of Neurology Meeting. Then Anthony is going to meet me in Seattle on May 2- and we're going to tour the upper Northwest, specifically, Seattle and Portland for a week. And we'll return to Jackson May 9 :).
Then... about 3 weeks left to 1) finish the yearbook 2) finish up in the lab and 3) try to remember medicine and what a patient is! :)

Taos Ski Adventure.

Click the picture to link to Kodak Gallery: Taos Ski trip

I'm a little overdue blogging this but better late than never, right? Anthony & I had the opportunity to go to Taos, NM in January in the guise of a Keystone Symposia (aka nerd science meeting for mechanotransduction - little bitty things that make cells move in response to some sort of outside stimulus) . Really though, my mentor invited me to go to this meeting in New Mexico last year, and of course I jumped on the opportunity to see more of our great country, smooze with the big dogs, and present my data (this is really exciting, and borderline cool for us research folks!). Anthony got his vacation schedule moved so he could go with me. The great thing was that the meeting was scheduled from 8-11 am and then reconveined at 5:30pm; so we had all afternoon to go and try to learn how to ski! Neither Anthony nor I had ever been skiing before, so it was quite an experience. We took lessons all but our last day there, and the last day we spent the whole day skiing. THe name of the place we went was Taos Ski Valley . It was one of the most beautiful places that i've ever seen. We flew into Albuquerque, NM then took a little bitty van 3 hours north to Taos. The hotel that we stayed in -Sagebrush Inn was equally fabulous. They have free and fantastic breakfast every morning, and they have relatively reliable wireless internet (these are the 2 main requirements for any hotel that I stay in). The people were really nice. My mentor brought her two kids, and the little boy latched onto Anthony. The girl was my buddy some; and i think my mentor was glad to have a short break, even if it was just during dinner hour.
As for the meeting, there were a lot of people interested in the pathway of the cell contraction, but not many people interested in why it mattered, or the physiology behind it; that's what we/ our lab is interested in. My talk was ok, my mentor got cut off b/c everyone wanted to see Obama's innaguration - and that would have been fine, but they cut her off in time to hear Ms. Franklin sing. which was nice too, but we were there for science afterall. just a little rude i thought.
As for skiing itself, it was a really unique experince. You look up the mountain, and think 'wow wouldn't that be fun to come down' then when you're actually at the top - you think, "OMG- the only way down this thing is to ski! What was i thinking?!" We had our share of falls, bumps, and bruises - including me falling off the ski lift (don't worry too much - only at the end b/c i crossed my skiis - i didn't fall more than a foot, but i nearly broke a tail bone I think!). We had a good trip overall. Enjoy the pics!