It’s 10:37 am. I don’t feel I have too much to say today. Yesterday I spoke with a regulatory consultant about getting the paperwork in place for the cartilage FDA approval. I worked out in the afternoon, doing my push routine. That felt good. Dinner was spinach, some clams with lettuce and roots dish, and chicken soup with noodles. Very good! I enjoyed having dinner with the family. After dinner we went to the library to get some more books. I found the Thomas books that Alexandra likes. We went to bed early, like at 9:45 pm, but then I woke up at 6 am. I could have left for work early but I wanted to at least get the kids to breakfast and say bye to them before I left. Ended up getting work at 8 am and working on a bunch of random email-driven tasks rather than on this blog and then my class, as I planned. Oh well. 🙂 It’s 10:41 am.
It’s 9:30 am. This morning I dropped the kids and Yingying off at Notasium. They told Yingying that the kids had to wear socks but no shoes. I told them Alexandra needed her lift in her shoe, so they made an exemption for her. They were excited to play at Notasium.
Last Saturday night we met Ben Yellen, Jinqi, Jinqi’s mom and Jacob at the neighborhood pool. Jacob had an airplane float that I pushed Harvey and Alexandra around in. They loved that. Ben is staying in Silicon Valley these days to further develop his company and raise money. I told Jinqi it looks like you lost weight, and asked if she was exercising. She said no, people lose weight when they are unhappy. I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not.
Sunday we hung out at home, went to Walmart, then I chatted with Audrey on facetime. Audrey seemed pretty tired dealing with all her projects and the chamber of commerce. Hopefully she can cut out the activities she’s not passionate about.
In the afternoon I tried to install my new Bidet, but there was a leak in one of the connectors I couldn’t fix, so I had to go to the hardware store and buy a new one. Fortunately, that fixed the problem and I could spray water on my butthole. It definitely makes you feel cleaner down there. Keira cleaned the chicken coop and took some interesting pictures with her deer. Dude is molting so she only has a couple of feathers left in her tail.
Dinner was hot pot. For some reason, Harvey didn’t want to eat his meat so he whined a lot. It was pretty annoying. I took him to bed for 5 minutes and that seemed to reset him so he could eat some broccoli.
After dinner, we went to the blueberry farm. There was more blueberry there than we expected, maybe because it was so hot this weekend nobody picked in the daytime. We got 5 pounds in 45 minutes. Alexandra picked 1 pound just by herself. After we put the kids to bed Keira and I ate blueberries with vanilla ice cream. It’s 9:40 am.
Starting this at 4 pm on Saturday afternoon during the kids nap time.
This morning I got up around 7:30 am and got out to mow the lawn by 8:30. Keira has been bugging me to mow for awhile. I didn’t mow last weekend because it was so hot in the afternoon, so its been 3 weeks since the last mow. I said how about I go out and mow in the morning. While mowing I listened to the book “pathways to possibility”, the sequel to “The art of possibility”. The author talked about how as adults we unconsciously live out patterns that are the result of coping mechanisms we developed as very small children, and gave examples of how to rewrite our story so that we can move beyond acting out our inner children. This brief summary doesn’t do it justice, it’s a good book. I think both of these books definitely give me more insight into my consciousness, emotions, and relationships.
Yesterday at work was a slog, but I managed to get in my NSF report for my grant. I also spoke with Dushyanth about this STTR grant for the gel we got rejected on Thursday. This was the fifth grant I got rejected for that project. I think the problem is not the project, but the fact that I’m not in the cartilage repair field, I’m unknown and without papers in that field. I’ve learned over the years that it is very difficult to get funding for work in your field, and nearly impossible to get funding for work in a field unrelated to your own. It is too bad as it stifles creativity, but also a completely understandable result of a review system run by humans who want to fund friends and known colleagues.
Went out with the group to lunch at Sushi Love to celebrate Myung Jun’s publication and award. I was thinking I should do a toast to Myung Jun but I ended up not doing so. I thought maybe others would feel bad if they didn’t’ get similar treatment in the future. Anyway, I think I should have toasted him. I enjoyed chatting with the undergraduates at lunch, learning more about their family backgrounds. I wish I could connect more with the group members but I’m not sure how to do so.
Dinner was pumpkin, cabbage, steamed egg, and tofu with ground pork. Yum! After dinner we hung out in the pool.
After mowing today we went to Duke garden. It was super hot, but fun. I rolled down a grass hill to shown the kids and then my legs got all itchy We had a picknick by the old tobacco barn.
