It’s 7:06 am. I’m writing the blog from home today because I have to take Alexandra and Harvey to check out a day care center around 10 am.
Yesterday I ended up spending like an hour on the blog to get all the pictures and video’s converted to a smaller size and stick them on the website with the text. Wonder how I can reduce that time.
After that I ended up spending a couple hours putting together a list of faculty from the top 20 schools that started around the same time as me. This was requested to assist with my full professor package evaluation. It always feels a bit weird to be compared to others so explicitly, but the process of putting the list together gave me a better familiarity of what my peer group is working on.
At 11:15 I had to go pick up Alexandra, Harvey, and Ling Ling from Notasium, where Alexandra has her music lesson. Below are some pics of them playing that Ling Ling took. Alexandra was very happy to see me, it seemed she had a really good time at class. I was happy to pick them up. We went home for lunch where I wolfed down a huge salad and beans before driving back to work. The kids and Ling Ling had dumplings and some meat. Harvey just likes to eat meat mostly.
Back at work, I called Dana Nettles, who had previously worked on an osteochondral goat study at Duke back in 2008, but was now in Minnesota. I wanted to find out where they got the goats and what pasture they used, as well as the protocol. She directed me to contact Lori Setton, the PI on the study, who by email directed me to Steve Johnson, the vet who took care of the goats. He’s retired, so now I have to track him down. Also learned why one of the goats died – somebody fed it prior to surgery and it choked to death after anesthesia! So don’t eat before surgery!
I met with my graduate students about their projects in the afternoon. Feichen and Jiachen were making good progress on the cartilage gel study. Huayu had an update about the 3D printed tissue phantom study, and Mutya was making progress on the single-crystal copper study to find out why Cu microplates grow with Iodide.
After the meetings, I headed over to the gym to do my “push” weightlifting routine. While walking over to the gym, I chatted with Dushyanth at Sparta bio about meeting with a regulatory consultant next Monday, and what I had learned about goat studies at Duke. Headed home for dinner at 5pm, where Keira had prepared two steaks, rice, cauliflower, and cooked lettuce. After dinner, we went to the library. I went through this encyclopedia with pictures with Harvey. Alexandra kept picking books of the shelves. I found a book of myths that reminded me of Mom reading myths to me as a kid. I loved the Greek myths.
Kids woke up and I had to break for breakfast, 7:57 am now. I had my normal mix of oats, blueberries, bannanas, sunflower seeds, and cacao powder with almond/coconut milk. Harvey ate 5 strawberries with cheese. Alexandra had her bread with jam. Yingying ate some rice porridge with some pickles. Time to start the day!
Wrong mother in laws name: yingying
Thanks for the correction, fixed now!