So I had a nice Thanksgiving break. Good to get away from work and hang out with the family. Even better to escape the cold and live it up in So Cal sunny weather. Little did I know that I would return to a winter wonderland! Our place is covered in like 5 inches of snow. Driving down to Pullman from the airport we watched the thermometer drop to -4, yes that is a negative sign! Crazy. My friend Jason who picked us up has a big old truck (but not snow tires) and it got stuck in front of my house. So I helped him fish it out of the snow when suddenly my hands just started hurting like mad. I forgot that I probably should cover up my hands while in below zero weather. I think I was like 10 min away from frostbite. Warming them by the fire just plain hurt. I really cannot comprehend that it really is that cold outside. Like my brain cannot compute that absence of heat. I am so looking forward to tomorrow. Here's the weather report- morning wake up temp - 0, a warm 12 during lunch time. Currently its -2 outside. And still- I had to have a bowl of ice cream... We'll take some photos tomorrow and post them.

Well, it snowed the other day. I actually live in a place where it snows... Of course the day it snowed was a nightmare for me. Lucas had not pooped in like 5 days and I thought was going to die. Perhaps I'll back up. Any that know my one year old son, know that he grunts it out a couple times a week, but he gets the job done. Well he suddenly just stopped all together. So we went to the doctor and they suggested milk of magnesia. On the bottle it says that if this doesn't work consult a doctor because you might have a serious medical problem. So I was like great... Of course it did nothing, and so I went down the whole my kid has a disease route. So, I was at the store picking up an enema- lovely I know- and I get a phone call from the car. Lucas is throwing up. So perhaps I watch to many dramatic medical shows, but whenever there is vomit involved it is always a deadly result. So I demand that Rachel go to the doctors immediately. Luckily she is calm and tells me that she will go at her appointment time since the doctor is not even there yet. So I disheartingly agree, wondering if this decision is going to result in my child's death and I will never forgive myself. Well the hours go by, and the doctor gives him the enema. Well let me tell you, that did the trick. Oh god did it do the trick. Rachel described the immediate explosion at the doctors office, and the repeat performance a few hours later at home. I didn't really get to appreciate it until later that night when a third clearing event occurred. I'll spare you the details. Good news is that now he is fine. Just everytime he goes now (which is a couple times a day) we have to give him a bath. Yeah, Hershey squirt meets 1 gallon bucket of water spilling out- sorry... Just be glad I don't post photos. The oddest part is that I somehow developed sympathy shits. I was willing him to crap so much that I literally went like 5 times that day. Oh crap, I hear him now. God only knows what awaits....

Happy news! I have made the "short list" at University of Louisville. What that means is that I am likely one of the ten or so they have selected to phone interview out of the 200ish applications. This is a big time research school, so I am quite hyped about the opportunity! Louisville looks like a nice place to live as well. Apparently, it consistently lands in one of the top ten most desirable places to live in the US. Hopefully this is the first of many...

Halloween photo I promised. We went today to a Washington State Basketball game. Much warmer than football! It was an exhibition game, so it was free and not too crowded. Lucas got to give the Couger mascot a high five! Should have brought the camera...

Sorry, still no photos. The wireless at home is acting up. But I thought I would provide you all a list of where I am applying (so far).
University of Oregon, Sacramento State University, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Yale University, Villanova University, University of Louisville, Texas Christian University, Stony Brook University, Rice University, College of William and Mary, Cal Poly San Louis Obispo, Loyola Marymount University, James Madison University, Eastern Connecticut State University, Penn State University, Oklahoma State University, Fordham University, University of Houston, Brown University, Cal State Channel Islands, Southern Illinois University, Florida State University, UC Irvine, and Eastern Michigan University.
That's it... for now. Only 24 so far...
I better get at least one interview or I will feel like a loser.

I have some awesome photos of Lucas in his Halloween costume, I will have to post them here and on the web site. I just had to make a statement announcing the start of the Lakers season tonight. Ahh, life is good...

I also finished re-creating the lab website- check it out. There are a few bugs I need to fix. Especially on my page... Gotta give those potential search committees something to look at. Two more job apps out today. I don't even know how many that makes now. Real question is how many interviews will I get?

Just a quick second to blog... Brother came up this past weekend, always a good time. Smoked cigars as always, but this time my bro picked up a tobacco pipe and we switched the inlet of lung cancer causation. The best part of his visit was the search for a pipe. We at first went to a place in Pullman, and quickly realized that it wasn't a glass shop for like windows, but rather an elaborate bong shop. They had everything there, even scales! It was funny that I had to ask the guy if there was a "regular" pipe shop nearby. He directed us to Moscow, Idaho about 10 miles away. So we took the trip out there and got the speal on what to look for in a pipe by a nicely girthed women who kept leaving us to puff on her cigarette she kept by the register. Oh yes, it was incredible. From the 80 year old guy with the oxygen tank coming in to pick up some cigarettes, to the guy they made wait outside because only two people were allowed in the humidor room. I became aware of the fact that Idaho has a very low tax on tobacco, or rather CA has a high one, because the prices for everything was substantially cheaper. My brother spent $40 in the tobacco store on $100 worth of goods. I then took him to WinCo which is nearby to do some grocery shopping. He was perplexed by why we were going there to buy groceries and then to Safeway afterwards (because they have specific things we wanted- like corn bread). Once we went inside WinCo, my brother was dumbfounded by the cheap goods. So much so that he literally bought two sticks of deodorant because they were so cheap! LOL. I had to hold him back, but apparently when I go down for Christmas he will be sending me on a trip for cheap tobacco and toiletries...
The other cool part of the trip was the football game. Clearly the Cougs got killed, but Lucas sat on his uncle's lap for the entire first half. Which is quite remarkable since he never sits still for any reason longer than two min (save if Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is on TV- and even then he has to get up to dance to the Hot Dog song at the end). I am sure that it was because Matt gave him an Elmo doll he was convinced that Matt must be Elmo's dad and that he had to be cool... ha. Ok, enough blogging and back to work. Oregon game this weekend, Rachel's friend from high school, Jen, and her husband Darren are coming out. Should be fun!

Big time... It is funny when I go here to blog something and then realize no one really will know what the hell I am talking about. Anyway, here it goes! I might get to be a PI on 2 million dollar grant with some big whig scientists. PI stands for Principal investigator- and just means that you are one of the main thinkers behind the grant. What it really means is that I will be able to put on my resume that I am PI on a big grant with some big names, and that should turn some heads. Since all these big schools primarily care about are big money grants, it will give me some credibility that I am serious business. We'll see what happens. I need to file some paperwork through the school since it is unorthodox for a post doc to be a PI (and hence why it is special), and get the other PIs to agree to it. Which I hope won't be an issue considering one is my PhD advisor and the other is someone I know pretty well already. It also means I am cutting my Thanksgiving short, flying down on Monday instead of Friday like we originally planned, but that is fine because I can only handle my sister out-law Amy for so long anyway :). Being a post doc is fun!!! haha.
On another note, I am also fired up because my brother is coming to town on Friday. We are going to see the Cal-Wash State game and smoke lots of cigars. Should be interesting considering it was in the 20s last night. Might be time to start smoking in the garage... He is bringing Lucas an Elmo doll as a bribe to break the ice. Once Lucas sees that thing, Matt will easily be his favorite person in the world. Either that, or he will cry and grab onto my leg in absolute fear... Hopefully I can get my crap together and put some photos on here. Oh wait, I think I do have one from the last game we went to: USC vs Wash State. My best friend from high school came up, Jason. It was great to see him and hang out. It is really nice have a big place and an extra room. Good for guests, hint hint.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. So many decisions. Where do I apply? Where coud I live? What do I want to do? There are a lot of good jobs out there this year. And now with this post-doc I feel like I have a legitimate shot at them. Of course, in this field, you can never really count on anything. So I won't be surprised if I get interviews at most of them, or none of them. Okay, I might be surprised if I didn't get an interview at one! I just found a job opening at Loyola Marymount in community ecology. Close to family, close to study sites I have been working at for the past 12 years, small school like Pepperdine. I actually took a chemistry summer school course there! So we'll see how that pans out. There is also a behavioral ecologist position at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. A bit further from family, but on the ocean... that is nice. They have a masters program as well. Then there are cool places all over the country- Texas, Connecticut, New York. At this stage, it is tough to get excited about any one place because it is hard to know where I'll get the call from. So more so, I am just enjoying my time here. The pay is tough with Rachel staying at home, but it is worth it considering how much I am learning and the opportunity that Rachel has to stay at home. Admittedly, I was a bit bummed to get so many interviews last year and not land the jobs I wanted- but I can see now how much more I have grown by this experience. It really makes a lot more sense to me why search committees kept going with the post-docs over me. Hopefully, that will work to my favor this time around. Ok, my DNA elutions should be warmed by now, time for some nanodropping!!!

It's my birthday! I spent the morning doing molecular biology, preparing 3 plates to run PCR on. The plates will be done in an hour and then I get to run some gels. It has been fun learning all these techniques- I thought it would actually be a bit harder, but really so far it is just a bunch of "recipes". After today, I'll be able to tell for sure which salamanders were infected with virus and which were not. Before, I would just look to see if they looked diseased- but now that I am big time we clip a piece of the tail, extract the DNA from it and amplify a particular region of DNA that the virus has and the salamander does not. If nothing shows up in the gel, no virus. If something does- it has it. Not sure if you care, but there it is.
Yeah, so been pretty busy. Running an experiment and now analyzing it, writing up the doctoral research, creating a lab web site, applying for jobs, learning molecular biology techniques, reading up on disease ecology, and having a family. Pretty much had no time to relax. It is fun though and I am enjoying myself. The weather here is going to turn soon apparently. Tomorrow's high is in the 50s and it will stay that way through the weekend. Windy too. I had to break out pants today... ha. I know I am going to totally geek out when it snows here. People are going to have to calm me down. Anyways, got to grab lunch now (I get to eat out for my birthday!). And lasagna for dinner tonight... mmm cannot wait!!!