getting caught up

Three new posts in a new, that's a record for me. But seeing that it's been almost two months since my last posting binge....
Things are going well here, I'm just staying very busy with work. And I've also been doing some traveling. I made a great weekend trip to Nashville to visit with one of my dearest friends. We had a great time together, hanging out, catching up and eating. It was funny to read our old yearbook entries - 15 years later and we are still talking about the same stuff! I also visited with family and friends at Mammoth Cave -there's a post about that below this one. And I have two more trips coming up. Next weekend I'm leaving for the "Society for Industrial Microbiology" conference in Toronto. The conference lasts Sunday - Friday and then a grad school friend and I are going to tour the city for the weekend. Then in mid-August my parents and I will be making a road trip through South Dakota. My dad is doing a great job planning that trip.
Otherwise I'm mainly busy with work. A major part of my research involves "CBiRC", the Center for Biorenewable Chemicals. It's funded by the National Science Foundation and they came out for a visit in early May to make sure we were using their money properly. It went pretty well, all things considered. A collaborator and I submitted a proposal to the National Institute of Health in mid-June. We won't hear a response until early next year, but it was helpful just to get our thoughts written down. And now I'm trying to finish up my "CAREER" proposal for NSF. NSF has a great program for young faculty where you can write a proposal for a 5-year project. You have three chances to submit, and I'm going to try this year. I'm not very hopeful of getting it, but at least I'll get some feedback for my next attempt. That's due on Wednesday and I have a ton of stuff left to do - which is why I've spent all of today doing housework and blogging. Makes sense, no? I also learned a very important lesson with the CAREER proposal preparation. I had this great project all written up, had found the references, made the figures and THEN did my budget. And found that I was 30% over the maximum allowed budget. So then I had to go through a cut a lot of stuff and I was really mad about having to cut things that took a while to formulate/write. So now I've learned that I need to start thinking about the budget BEFORE I write the whole darn thing. And that's the important thing, right? That it was a learning experience?
I do have one small project that's been awarded funding. It's a collaboration with an Ames-based nutraceutical company. They've been great to work with so far, now I just need to hire a postdoc to work on the project! I interview a great candidate, but they ended up taking another job. So now I'm looking for more applicants....
Who's seen the newest Harry Potter movie? I caught on showing on Thursday. It was good, but just couldn't hold my attention. And I missed the fun of standing in line in Hollywood and the campy atmosphere. Tonight I'll be catching a showing of "Angels and Demons" at the local second-run theatre. Has anyone else seen it? Enjoyed it or no?

Mammoth Cave visit

Recently I had the great opportunity to catch up with grad school friends AND family by making a visit to central Kentucky. My grad school friends and I had decided that we should all get together for a trip sometime during the summer. Mammoth Cave National Park was the decided-upon location. This is the longest cave system in the world. I visited many times as a child, as well as last Thanksgiving, but none of my friends had been before. None of them had even spent much time in Kentucky before. So it was great to share the experience with them.
We all met up at the Louisville airport. It was interesting to see the discrepancy in our travel times. Four people had direct flights, I had to get up at 3am in order to catch my flight out of Des Moines, and Katherine and Linh had to take overnight flights from the west coast. Once we drove to Cave City, the real cultural experience began with a visit to Cracker Barrel for lunch.
We took two great cave tours - the "Star Chamber Tour" through the main section of the cave by lantern light and the "River Styx" tour, which goes through some of the twisty-turny passages and goes down to the lowest level of the cave. Both were very impressive.
We also checked out a more commercial cave in nearby Bowling Green. The "Lost River Cave" takes visitors on a boat tour through a large cave. There was an interesting difference between this tour and the ones given at Mammoth Cave National Park. At Mammoth Cave, they practically beg you not to go on the tour. They list all of the possible health concerns (weak heart, bad knees, etc) and warn patrons that a medical evacuation could take up to two hours. And then it ends up not being bad at all. But at Lost River, there were no warnings whatsoever. But once they had us all loaded in the boat and floating away from the dock, we went under this super low spot where you practically had to put your head between your knees to keep from knocking your head off. Crazy. The visit to Bowling Green also enabled another cultural experience - a visit to Waffle House.
We also had time for a nice hike, even though the trail was wet and had some obstacles. But the best part was just getting caught up and hanging out. We played some old favorite games (mancala) and learned some new ones. Hopefully we'll be able to get together again next year.
After 3 days of fun, my friends left to head back to the airport. And then 10 minutes later my parents arrived at the cabin, quickly followed by my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew. And then we spent 2 fun days together as a family. We took a quick cave tour, went horseback riding (Tiffany, Abby and I), and I even got my parents into a canoe! We also made a trip to Bowling Green to see a minor league baseball game. Overall we had a great time, only throwing two temper tantrums at the local fast food outlets (me at McDonald's, dad at Wendy's, I learned from the best). It was a great few days away from my computer and the stress of work, and it's always good to visit with dear friends and family. There are more pictures here.

Gardening Update

Our garden is coming along very well. Already we've made good use of the rhubarb, snow peas, broccoli and TONS of fresh greens. I just made a batch of pesto from the basil and packed five lunch salads from the greens. We've had the pleasure of at least tasting a few cherry tomatoes and raspberries, hopefully a taste of things to come. But over the past few weeks the real excitement has begun - the butternut squash are growing like crazy and baby eggplants and this morning I found five little melons. I'm extremely excited about the melons because for the longest time they showed no indication of life whatsoever. The sweet potatoes have been the biggest disappointment - we planted three "slips". One is doing OK, a second is at least growing and the other 4 are hopeless. There are progress pictures here, but here are a few of my favorite shots from this morning.