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