Theft

We were all shocked this week when my co-worker's wallet was stolen out of her backpack. Claudia and Mike share an office next door to mine. These offices are in a hallway with several faculty offices and are just a few feet away from the lab. We make an effort to keep the office doors closed and locked at all times, but it's easy to become lax.
However, on Wednesday around lunchtime Mike found an unfamiliar young man standing in his office. The young man seemed flustered and said that he was looking for "the woman who works at this desk", gesturing to Claudia's desk. Mike is a nice, honest guy, so though he found it strange that this guy had entered the office on his own, he offered to take the him to talk to Claudia directly. As they stepped out of the office, Mike noticed the man put a pink object in his pocket. The man talked to Claudia and said that he was a psychology major and was interested in doing some undergraduate research. After he left, Claudia mentioned to Mike that it seemed kind of strange that a psychology major would be interested in working in a microbiology lab AND that the guy just seemed kind of weird in general. That prompted Mike to mention the mysterious pink object in the guy's pocket. Claudia rushed back to the office and checked her backpack (which was hidden back behind her desk) and sure enough, her wallet was gone. That's right - this guy found the office unlocked, rifled through Claudia's backpack, pocketed her wallet, and then stood there and had a conversation with her WHILE her wallet was in his pocket. Crazy.
Here's comes the amazing part: Claudia and Mike called the police. When the description of the guy went out over the radio, there just happened to be an officer sitting in his car in the parking lot of a grocery store close to campus. He saw a guy who matched the description walking into the grocery store and detained him. The police drove Claudia and Mike over to ID the guy and sure enough, it was him. The guy was arrested and Claudia got her wallet back. Amazing. I was so impressed with the UF police. In the HOURS of discussion that resulted from this mess, we learned that several people had seen this guy wandering around that day and all had offered to help him find whatever he was looking for instead of suspecting him of trying to steal things. So now we've all learned to be more careful AND suspicious.

Memorial Day visit

I had a special treat for memorial Day weekend - my friend Katherine visited from Los Angeles. We met as a grad students at UCLA where she is currently wrapping up her PhD. She was only here for a short time, but we managed to make the most of it.
On Saturday evening we grabbed dinner at a great Latin restaurant (Mi'Apa Latin Cafe) and saw the new Indiana Jones movie (good, but not as good as any of the first three).
We were up bright and early Sunday morning to go tubing at Ichetucknee Springs. This place is unbelievably gorgeous (video here) and is so different from the typical Orlando/Sea World tourist spots that people associate with Florida. I am very pleased that I was able to share it with Katherine. The leisurely float down the river was a great opportunity to relax and chat.When we were done tubing, we had a great picnic lunch and went back to Gainesville and to visit campus. We toured the lab that I work in and then visited Lake Alice so Katherine could see a gator in person.










Then we drove over to St Augustine, which was especially exciting because Katherine had never seen the Atlantic Ocean.




















After our trip to the beach, we checked out the famed St Augustine Lighthouse - and even climbed the 14 stories to the top of it. Then we headed over to historic St Augustine to visit the fort, grab dinner and make several impulse purchases involving seashells and/or chocolate. We had a fantastic time. Then sadly, Katherine had to fly back to Los Angeles on Monday morning. It was all over way too fast and Sheba and I were very sad to see her go. There are more pictures here.

Disney Weekend

My family recently spent a wonderful weekend at Disneyworld in Orlando. My sister and brother-in-law received a few days at a Disney-area resort as a Christmas gift and were kind enough to invite my parents and me to join them. There are pictures here. We have a group photo taken by the Disney people, but it's kind of hard to access.

We spent Saturday at the Magic Kingdom. Pretty standard fare there - character greetings, "It's a Small World", "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Space Mountain" and "The Haunted Mansion" (the last two I snuck off and rode on my own). The best ride experience was when all of us (minus my dad) squished into a single Teacup - what a blast! My niece and nephew were extremely well behaved and lasted the whole day. We had a "character dinner" with the Pooh characters and then everyone else went back to the hotel and I went to Epcott to watch the fireworks show (I was determined to squeeze every minute of pleasure from my tickets). As always, I was extremely impressed by the great customer service and cleanliness at Disney. And they do a really good job with managing the wait times. Rides explicitly state the expected wait time AND some rides have the FastPass option, where you stop by at say 2pm and get a ticket that gives you near-immediate boarding for a later time (say 5-6pm).

On Sunday we visited the Animal Kingdom (and we wore matching shirts). I had never been there and given my love of zoos, I was very excited about it. However, I had a hard time meshing the zoo/theme park aspect. In a zoo, you stroll around and look at all of the exhibits. At a theme park, I like to sprint from ride to ride. So it was hard to get used to the dual aspects. But still, it was very nice. They had a great "African Safari" ride. Everyone loaded into a big truck and the story was framed as if we were going on two-week safari on an African game reserve. We drove through some open-air exhibit (including giraffes, okapi, elephants, ostrich, wildebeest, oryx, lion) and this story unfolded of the game wardens finding some poachers and an orphaned (animatronic) baby elephant. At some point we even went over a "rickety" bridge that started to tilt precariously. It was cute how they had a story to keep the kids interested AND see some great animals up close. They also had a walk-through African section with gorillas and gerenucks. Very cool. During our day at the Animal Kingdom we also saw two live shows. Like the movies, The Lion King show was AWESOME and Finding Nemo was just OK. The final cool experience at the Animal Kingdom was their "Expedition Everest" roller coaster. Again, Disney was genius by having a "single rider" line, so I was on within 25 minutes. And it was a really fun! That night we headed back to the Magic Kingdom to see their Spectromagic parade. Then, sadly, it was time for me to head home while the rest of the family stayed for a few more days.

Back in Gainesville, the weather has been pretty much ideal. For the past week we've had clear blue skies with puffy white clouds and a constant light breeze. It's been so lovely that I've been walking to and from work (and to and from home for lunch) nearly every day. The walking saves gas AND earns me some "activity points" so that I can have more dessert! I keep saying that calories are my new alternative fuel, LOL. I'm sure this great weather won't last much longer, so I'm trying to enjoy it. Is anyone else doing anything special to enjoy Spring?