Student SPHere 2008-09

So time away from school (academic life) has been almost as busy as during school. Megan and I flew out to Colorado to visit my family on the 23rd of December. It was one of the more nerve-racking flights I have had in a long time...just two days prior to our departure a plane crashed at Denver International Airport (where we were flying to). Thankfully, we did not have any problems, aside from airlines being stupid. We spent the next 5 days at my place in the Denver metro area. It was an interesting time...I am the oldest of 4 boys. Our usual roughhousing is not usual anymore...my brothers are really growing up. The youngest is now a junior in high school. Its a far cry from when I left home for my undergrad in Iowa, almost seven years ago. We have fun playing games and catching up with family.

The last time I was home for Christmas we had blizzard after blizzard...I have never shoveled so much snow in my life. This time, it did not even snow. It was nice to go to a warmer climate too...most days were about 40. It was about 11 below when we left the cities. We came back to a surprise at the house. Evidently it got warm in the last few days we were in Colorado and our driveway was a sheet of ice. Silly me forgot to give the kid doing our driveway, access to our salt.

We both worked for a few days, before heading down to Iowa for New Years/Christmas with Megan’s family. It was a nice trip. Got to watch some football, played board games/cards and relaxed a bit. Our drive back was crazy. We knew we were going to deal with some weather, it was supposed to snow/sleet on Saturday (3rd) and be blowing (possible white out) on Sunday (4th), so we got out of town a little early on Saturday hoping to get a leg on the storm. Well we managed to get about an hour into the drive (3.5 hr trip) before the storm hit. It was nasty...ended up driving the rest of the way at around 40 mph on I-35. We counted 27 cars in the ditch. It always amazes me how people drive. I noted to Megan when one guy passed us, that we would see him in a ditch. Sure enough he was in the ditch about a mile or two down the road.

Work has been keeping me busy. We are in the midst of lots of projects. Its exciting as these project will eventually serve as the foundations for the PhD. I am kinda anxious for classes to start. I have Epi 2, Biostats 2 and Molecular Epi. It should be a good semester.