Toy Drive

The last few years I have been in charge of getting money from faculty, staff and students to buy toys for children in the CPS system. We raised over $300 dollars for Chasity and Melvin this year. Both are 12 and we found it difficult to buy for such an age when we don't know if they have DVD players, a video game console or what size they are. But Ryan and I bought some fun stuff I think.

Midway through this fundraiser we were asked to get donations for the Big Brothers Big Sisters program in Galveston. This is the 1st time we have helped them out but because of the islands state they were in need. So I emailed friends and family and you all came through. We collected $180 so those kids could have a present at their Christmas party. Thank you all!

I think that this was a very successful year!

Christmas decorating

I know we won't be here for Christmas, but it is my favorite time of year and I love to decorate.

We went to a lot and spent $80 on a 6 foot tree and it doesn't even smell! But it is still better than having a fake tree.

Olive sure enjoyed helping put the tree together. Everyday we come home and find a few ornaments on the ground. We think she is just batting at them... we are praying that the tree doesn't come down too.

Ryan putting up the lights. He did a great job of making them straight! The first day that we were doing this it was in the 70's and the icecream truck drove by! Not very Chirtmas-like weather.

Our outdoor lights- our neighbors have several of the blowup lawn decorations (ugh)

Committee Meeting!

So I had my first committee meeting on Friday and it went really well! It had been postponed due to Ike. I was worried because Alison had hers a few weeks ago and it didn't go well. I was told that I have 1 year and then my mentor wants me out. So I cross my fingers that I will be home next Christmas for a long while. It was strange b/c they didn't ask many questions and they certainly we not trying to stump me. I was also expecting them to send me out of the room at some point to talk behind my back, but they didn't! I also expected that it would go for 3 hrs or so since the majority of them had not heard about my finished work, but it only went about an hour and 45 min. It seemed all too simple. I hope the rest of my time here goes so smoothly.
So Ryan and I went out with some of our friends for some Mexican food and margaritas to celebrate.

Vaccine conference in Boston

So last week I was in Boston for the Vaccine Congress conference. Alison, my labmate, and I did some sight seeing while we were there. I followed the Freedom Trail around town and saw many historical sites. It was my 1st time there. We also ate at several great restaurants. One meal we had a whole lobster! I wasn't brave enough to eat the body. It was very cold and we saw snow one day! Of course the day we went out and did most of our touristy things it rained off and on all day. It felt like OR. On our return trip to Houston it was brought to our attention that it was snowing at home. And it did! Alison has a photo of my house with snow all around (my camera's battery died- I'll try and post it later).

Giving Thanks

I have many things to be thankful for this holiday season.
Among other things, I am thankful for my good health, my loving family, my friends, my job, my house. Its been a tough few months and I am glad that some things are getting back to normal. I am thankful that parts of the island are back on-line. I am thankful that most everyone I know is back in good living situations. I am thankful that my work will be up and running when I return from Christmas.

I am not thankful for the numerous layoffs that occurred last week that will affect research as we know it. I still do not know all those let go, but I know of several faculty members that will be greatly missed. I pray that they can find great positions in the coming months. Even with tenure, it is difficult how easily anyone is dispensable. It has been a very somber couple of weeks.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I hope to see you all over the Christmas holiday.

Evening at "Howl at the Moon"

Ryan and I had a great time last weekend with some friends at a piano bar in Houston called Howl at the Moon. Here are a few photos from the night

npr says it best

follow this link to see what npr has to say about UTMB and the layoffs.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97124797

"UTMB cuts 3,800"

"UTMB cuts 3,800" Quoted from the Galveston Daily News on Thursday. We received a email from our president Wednesday that they met with the UT system regents and they unanimously approved the cut of 3800 full-time UTMB employees, thats 1/3 of our workforce on the island! They are cutting the 550 beds to about 200! Currently the school is losing $40 million a month paying salaries of those that are still not back at work, which is roughly 3000 people. The hospital is still not functional because all of the food services, pharmacy, blood bank, etc were on the 1st floor. I guess the good news is that they will get paid through January.

We all suspect that this is primarily to get rid of the huge population of indigent care we provide. I guess they send them here from surrounding hospitals, but the government doesn't pay us for those services, so we are always in the red. They are also not fixing any of the section 8 housing on the island. I don't know where all of these people are going to go. You may be surprised but there are many people still living in 'the tent city' on the island provided by the Red Cross. FEMA is the worst run agency we have. My fellow students are still waiting on help. Did you know that people are still living in trailers in LA following Katrina! For this reason, they are not sending any trailers to Galveston. The island is still a mess. Piles of debris, non-functional traffic lights, clogged rain drains, etc. Several of favorite restaurants are still not open...and appear to be far from it.

I am still not back to working fully. We can only be there from 8-5 M-F and I still have no animals to work with! I have paperwork to do, but its not urgent so I don't feel like doing it. Unfortunately, I am getting good at wasting away 9 hours of my day! Some things are starting to come back online so I am crossing my fingers and hope that by December things will be back to 'normal'.

Okay I'll quit being a downer and post about the good things in my life

GNL opens

They dedicated the Galveston National Lab on Tuesday. Its a one-of-a-kind building for biosafety level 3 and 4 research. There were many big names at the event including Senator Hutchinson and Dr. Ksiazek from the CDC. Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci, the director of NIAID, was out sick. I was looking forward to hearing him talk about emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Next week I get to take a tour of the facility before it opens for research.

Students helping students

So both Saturday and Sunday last weekend we drove around Houston picking up donated items and delivering them to students' that were flooded and lost everything. We have about 40 houses to pick up from and about 15 to deliver to. Our graduate student organization is doing it all with too few trucks and too many hands...maybe too many brains. It has basically been a organizational nightmare and taken us way too long to get it done. Ryan helped out last Saturday nd was a huge help. Unfortunately we are only half done and will be doing it again this weekend. I can only take one more day of it and plan on skipping out on Sunday. Instead I am hosting a party at my house. It may be smaller than expected croud becasue many of my friends are going to the Houston Dynamo playoff game (soccer for those of you that don't know).

Post Ike House Work

I nearly forgot...here are the changes I made to our house during the weeks following Ike. I painted the master bedroom and bath. I put in before and after photos. I also painted the table legs, restained the tabletop, painted the chairs and put new fabric on the seats.

Hopefully the backyard is our next project.

Halloween

So Ryan and I went to a small Halloween party Friday, but were lame and didn't dress up. Neither of us enjoy it much and Ryan never does anything ahead of time, so I would have had to figure out our costumes. We did, however, carve pumpkins. They turned out pretty good. I was sad that we couldn't go to a pumpkin patch. The ones we bought at the grocery store were of pretty poor quality and from New Mexico! Ryan's pumpkin is on the left and mine on the right.

I am in the process of making scrapbooks for my brothers, Marques and Tanner. They were supposed to be high school graduation presents, but we were a bit slow in rounding up photos. So, I finally have them and thought you might like to see a few that corresponds with halloween...but let me assure you that most of them were not taken on or near Oct 31st!

Photos of UTMB....

It appears that my link to the UTMB website isn't working. I put a few of the photos from the slideshow on.

Pre storm photos- scroll down to see the water rise before the power goes out.

Post Storm water on campus- my building is the one on the left about 6 hours after the eye of the storm passes through

my building is out of the photo, but on the right side. This boat is about 200m from the bay on the left!

So I am still very unproductive at work. Still no diH2O, no autoclave and certainly no animal work. I am currently putting together a fellowship due in January, but with the deadline so far away I am not very motivated to get much done on it. It seems like much of the day is set aside for chatting. It is actually therapeutic to tell our experiences and how we are getting by. Most are still dealing with FEMA and windstorm insurance. Others that will be rebuilding are waiting on a green light from the city or the availability of a contractor. This weekend Ryan and I spent 2 full days picking up donated furniture from Houston and delivering it to Galveston students. It was quite miserable because there were so many homes, so many items and Houston is BIG. We only got half of the items, so we will be at it again this weekend too.

We had an inspector out to the house today and he said that we may need to replace the shingles on one side of the house because they were loose, but luckily there was no water damage in the attic or elsewhere. I think our windstorm deductible is about $600, so this may end up hurting a bit. FEMA won't be helping us because we didn't have to live anywhere else nor were we in a 'mandatory evacuation' area.

Unexpectedly, we have been infested with ghost ants since the storm. We finally had to call out an exterminator because the 50 ant baits throughout the house seem to be doing little. I've had to move the cat food from one end of the kitchen to the other to prevent the ants from finding it temporarily. Luckily we have not had to throw out any food.

On a happy note, we will be coming home for Christmas. Not that we can really afford it with all of the extra expenses lately, but for our sanity, need to. I found out last week that I received 2 scholarships, one for being dedicated to our graduate student organization and the other is an academic scholarship. They were a blessing right now.

Galveston Post Ike

Here is a compilation of some photos that I took today, Tuesday Oct 14th, over a month after Ike hit.

The photos above and below are outside of my old apartment on Ferry Rd... and this is after one time through with the garbage trucks. I didn't take photos last week when the piles were all six feet high and running the entire length of complex. It appears that they went through and gutted all 1st floor apts. Man, am I thankful that if I was still there that we were on the second floor! What really pains me is that I know several classmates that had 1st floor apts elsewhere that did not fair well...and some did not have insurance!

So...the joke is that the highest point on the island is now 57th and Broadway where they have made a temporary dump of an open field. It looked to be about 10ft high and three times the size of a football field!

This is the 1st floor stairwell in my building, Mary Moody Northen Pavilion. It sits up about 4 feet from the street and here it shows another 3 feet of water in it. By the time I got back to campus, last Monday, the entire 1st floor of every school building was gutted. In this building they have made a lot of progress, but it is still comprised of metal framing and plastic sheeting. In my 3rd floor office and lab area we have no damage, but it is still very humid and dusty from the work below. We still do not have running water, so the few days that I have gone into work i leave by noon to find facilities...I can't imagine what a port-o-pottie would be like in this heat and humidity now. Next Monday they said they will be inspecting our labs to make sure we can use it, but it will be a while until we can actually order supplies and get going again. Most of the emergency power seems to work, but we will have to get new tissue culture media and test all of our antibodies and virus stocks first. My boss seems to think that this is his problem and not mine and that I should be graduating in a year or so no matter this delay...at least that is a positive. Classes are supposed to start on the 20th, but I think that my flow cytometry class will be canceled. The school schedule is pushed back into the Christmas break, so I will have to talk with my boss about Christmas. I'll let you all know my plans when I do.

Willie G's is a great seafood restaurant on the bay and its a bit ironic that a boat landed in the parking lot. Many restaurants won't be opening anytime soon, but others have, with limited menus. I think all of the grocery stores are open, but only a portion of the other businesses.

The above house is a few blocks from campus. As you can see, they have marked the waterline. Most of the structures look intact from the outside and had little wind damage,as shown here, but the insides all must be gutted and redone due to the water surge.


Parts of the seawall sidewalk have fallen into the sea. I am saddened because it is not an ideal area to run anymore.

A demonstration of the debris that litters the entire island.


The great Murdochs (above), a great souvenir shop, all but sticks.
The restaurants, fishing piers etc are all but pilings now. At least the seagulls have returned!

OMG- I just got an email from the head of the grad school and he says we won't be back to class until the 20th!!!
I really hope I can get back into the lab before then.

Photos of UTMB

I was recently sent an email with the link to photos taken during and after Ike in the areas surrounding UTMB. http://www.utmb.edu/gallery/4.asp

I still do not have access to the island so I cannot tell you first hand how it all looks. Currently, they are still saying class will resume Oct 6th, but still much of the island is without power etc. (still 25% of Houston is as well!).

Looks like I will catch up on some home projects. I think I will paint the master bedroom and bath, put new cushions on our kitchen chairs and get started on my brothers' scrapbooks.

Miss you all!

Ike's toll on our house

The damage that we found when we came home. Luckily there wasn't much. We pray that everything returns to 'normal' soon.

We spent a few days after the storm in Lubbock and finished up Ryans golf tourney. (yeah he finished tied for 12th). We then started home and decided to stay in Austin because we would have gotten back into town after dark and at this point were unsure whether there would be power. Unfortunately there were few hotels that would take our cats so we headed to San Marcos for the night. Tuesday we returned home with 3 coolers filled with ice. Luckily, we didn't need it and were able to donate it all to others. We had power, water (questionable for drinking for a few days) and gas! The local stores and gas stations were up and running at minimal levels. We were thankful that Home Depot was open and had most supplies everyone seemed to need. There were stocks of plywood, cement, generators, cleaning supplies, 4x4's etc stacked out the in parking lots. Man I have never seen that place so packed!

It looks like school won't start until the Oct 6th, but many of the students won't have living accomadations. I plan to house a few friends, but I think that it is going to be tough for many. I think that many of the apts and frat houses are destroyed. I think that every building was flooded on the 1st floor. My lab, according to my boss, is fine and the freezers were all going. I'll let you know how it looks when I get the chance, as of now only residences of the island and emergency personel are allowed.

Wish everyone in the gulf coast area luck that this will be the last hurricane of the season.

One destroyed screen,

A handful of missing shingles...but not nearly as bad as many homes around us. Luckily we have not found any water damage and we home it stays that way.
One of our two trees has fallen over, but we don't know yet if we can right it. It may have to go...then the homeowners assoc. will be on our case because we don't have 2 trees in our front yard!
Our gate blew off. One two by four was ripped off at ground level and this one chipped off where the hinge was. So we began replacing them.
My honey, the handyman...with his new tool kit, Thanks mom and dad!

Ike Aftermath

Becky liked this photo...her style of fishing.
Harborside Dr, one of the main roads I take to work. Just as you arrive on the island
I-45, the route I take to work everyday. Looks like I wont be getting to work anytime soon.
Murdochs, a great giftshop on the Seawall...well it was!

A great day for a run on the Seawall!