That cat sure was getting old

Are you happy, Julie? No more cat!

Badonkadonk

Happy Friday everyone! I just saw this Amazon page linked on a friend's blog. Be sure to check out the customer reviews . Enjoy!

The light at the end of the Ph.D. tunnel....

Most of you know that I (Tom) am an MD/PhD student in the Department of Chemistry and Medical Scholars Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I passed some major milestones in my PhD. career the last few weeks. On Oct. 23 - Mole Day - our paper was finally published (web version) in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. You can see the abstract here. Here's our nifty abstract image:

The white discs have chemicals that we are testing for anti-fungal activity (see below)

I'm not allowed to post the pdf, otherwise I would. But if you are on campus of an educational or research institution, you can probably view the pdf here. Basically, we we work with an antifungal drug called amphotericin B that is used clinically for severe fungal infections. However, it is quite toxic to the kidneys. We chemically "amputated" part of the molecule that is supposed to be critical for the drug to work. Surprisingly, it was still able to kill fungus cells. This result has potential implications for designing a less toxic drug and also suggests that the drug doesn't necessarily work the way everyone thought it did for the last 40 years. So, it's pretty exciting for us! (even if you find it painfully boring....) Here's a picture of me with my advisor, Marty Burke, and my colleague Dan Palacios (an older, more entertaining picture of Dan can be found here - keep hitting refresh until he comes up!):

Dan has some killer hair.

In other news, I had my "prelim" exam which is basically the equivalent of defending a master's thesis, although I don't formally get a master's in my program. I defended my research in front of 4 faculty members and they asked me all sorts of questions for an hour and a half and I passed. Which means that I now have grad school "tenure" for the rest of the PhD process (i.e. they can't kick me out!). So I'm officially a Ph.D. candidate. It's definitely a load off, but it was kind of anticlimactic. Dan also recently passed his prelim, and another group member, Eric Gillis, also just published a paper. My advisor was so happy about all of this that he took us all out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse and then we went back to his house for drinks (I had sparkling cider...everyone else did not).

It's a great day at the Round Barn Farm!!

For our first anniversary Tom surprised Becca with a trip to two places neither of us had ever been - Wisconsin and Minnesota! Our first night, we drove from Champaign up to Madison, Wisconsin, where we tried to check into our reserved hotel but they had overbooked because of a motorcycling convention - there were bikes everywhere! It was 11 pm and raining, and they had to send us to another hotel! We eventually found our new hotel and checked into our room which had VERY comfortable pillows!! Tom had barely slept in 48 hours because he had been working on a proposal to try and get funding from the National Institutes of Health, so it was very nice to have a restful night together! Unfortunately, due to our late arrival, we didn't get to see any of Madison as we had originally planned. But we got totally free accommodations, so we weren't complaining too much!

The next day it was off to Red Wing, Minnesota where we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast called the Round Barn Farm. Here's a picture of the outside:

It's a great day at the round barn farm! (that was there official greeting!!)

This house was built in 2002 using a house plan from the 1800s. It was very cozy - it felt old but looked new. Our room was called the Hearts and Flowers Suite and it had an absolutely amazingly luxurious bed - one of those feather ones that you sink right into but still has enough support. It was a very comfortable place to stay!! There were hearts and flowers all over the walls and the tub was huge heart-shaped, two person whirlpool tub!! It was amazing. Becca is now in love with bubble baths.

The sitting room had comfy chairs, a piano, and a puzzle that we spent a lot of time on. The barn is historic because there are very few original round barns still standing. Robin and Elaine Kleffman, the innkeepers, have refurbished this one and they have wedding receptions and other celebrations inside. It was pretty neat! Robin and Elaine are good Christian folk and it was a delight getting to know them and staying in their Bed and Breakfast.

The breakfasts at this place are decadent! First off, the dining room itself is very impressive. Our first morning we had homebaked sourdough bread and a fruit cup with the fruit doused in vanilla mint syrup made with the mint they grow in their garden. They make all their bread in an outdoor brick oven. The main course was french toast (also homebaked bread) covered in strawberries with a homemade custard syrup. And for dessert (yes, we said dessert!) we had cheescake with a homemade chocolate ganache!!!! Who has dessert for breakfast? Um, that would be us (and everybody else that stays there)!

The second day's breakfast was just as fantastic - they had an oatmeal bread that was amazing and the main course was eggs benedict on their homemade english muffin toast with a, you guessed it, homemade citrus hollandaise sauce!! For dessert they had homemade cherry vanilla ice cream. Wow. We pretty much only had to eat two meals a day while we were there.

This was a Bavarian antique piece that they had in their dining room. I don't even want to know how much it cost....

This is the view from the bluff behind the round barn farm.

While in Minnesota we toured the historic downtown Red Wing area and went to lots of antique shops, ceramic shops, and bakeries. We discovered that the stacker shelves that we had just inherited from University of Illinois were worth upwards of $500.. We also went to Minneapolis where we went on a roller coaster at the Mall of America and then we went to this crazy Asian/Mexican fusion restaurant called Chino Latino. It was loud with crazy lighting and we saw a siamese twin (?) - it was like seeing one person with two heads.

Overall, the trip was very fun and relaxing. On the way home we drove along the banks of the Mississippi River (along the Wisconsin side), an area that William Cullen Bryant said "ought to be visited in the summer by every poet and painter in the land." We also saw the schoolhouse where Laura Ingalls Wilder went to school in Pepin, Wisconsin (she was born in what is now called "Little House Wayside" near Pepin).

We didn't get any better pictures than this, unfortunately.

We got some Wisconsin cheese and bratwurst on the way as well. The cheese was fabulous. While in Wisconsin, we discovered that they still have Piggly Wiggly grocery stores!!!! Here's a picture to prove it:

Sparta, Wisconsin (incidentally, Wisconsin has over 90 Piggly Wiggly stores!)

All in all it was a fantastic little trip!!

Rendezvous in old Nauvoo

We went to Nauvoo this summer to see sites, go to the temple, and see the Nauvoo pageant. It was a fun day! It was Becca's first time visiting Nauvoo. This is a picture of the view of the temple from Parley Street, which was the street the Saints used as they left Nauvoo. We got to go to the temple and had lots of fun seeing the Church sites. We saw the grave of Joseph, Hyrum, and Emma Smith (picture below - sorry it's not a good one).


This is the Mississippi River. It doesn't look like much from this picture, but we were glad to see it after driving down a dirt road for miles (thanks to Mapquest - but hey it got us there!). And below is a picture of us smooching on the banks fo the Mississippi.

Also down there is a picture of Becca with our friends Drew and Aubrey Dokos who were there with us that day. We had fun with them! They got married a month before us and were in the single's ward with us and are in our ward now. The picture is in front of a statue of Joesph and Hyrum at the end of Parley Street where they also have a memorial with all the names of the people who died while crossing the plains.

We saw the Nauvoo pageant which was amazing and very touching. Before the pageant starts they have this big pioneer festival thing with log sawing, square dancing, stick pulling and all sorts of other activities. The cast of the pageant are all walking around in period dress talking to people. It was quite fun (even if Tom and Drew didn't get to saw a log because the line was too long!!) We got home at like 3 AM before 11 AM church, but it was well worth it!

Drew, Aubrey, and Becca

Tom's Beard

Fun pictures of Tom with his beard!! Enjoy!

As promised - a picture of Tom's beard. He grew it out for a month while Becca was (mostly) out of town. Becca didn't like it, and Tom wasn't too crazy about it either. But it was a fun experiment!

We had this big ugly bush right by our front door, and one day when Tom's advisor was out of town he came home early and cut it down to size and dug around it and ripped it out. It's kinda hard to tell, but there's a big hole in front of him in the picture. We filled it in and our yard looks much better now.

When we took the beard off, we took pictures at various stages....

Yeah, I look pretty creepy.....

News from Illinois

Tom is still busy with research and will soon be publishing his first paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Everyone look out for that one because I know you read that journal all the time!! Get your subscriptions now. Or, I can just send everyone a pdf in a month or so and you can open it and look at the pretty pictures. That's about all I understand of it, too, so don't worry. OK, that's not true, but pretty much all my work for the last 8 months has gone into experiments to allow us to make one picture for this paper. Crazy.

Becca is participating in a 3 year program for High School Chemistry teachers here at the University. It is focused on using technology in the chemistry classroom in rural high schools. Right now she is in a 2 week intensive program, and is enjoying learning new programs to use in her lesson plans. She also enjoys meeting all the other teachers (60 of them!) and getting ideas and networking. She gets graduate credit and a $2,000 stipend, so Europe, here we come!!!

We are going to Vienna and Prague over New Years, and we are so excited!!! Becca brought all her German books back so we can learn situational German. And Czech. But we won't be learning Czech from the German books, just in case you were wondering (she also has some Czech books, not to be confused with checkbooks).

We also have new callings in addition to being ward missionaries. Tom is now one of 2 gospel doctrine teachers, which is good because he has been wanting to study the epistles for quite some time. Becca is jealous, but it's OK because she will teach when Tom can't.

Becca is now the 2nd counselor in the YW presidency which means she works with the Beehives which is quite exciting, even if there are only 3 of them. But she is excited to work with the youth because teenagers are funny! And not as scary as primary children, who just cry all the time. But she did her time in primary, don't you worry!

That's all our news!!! Life is busy but really great! We'd love to hear from anyone reading this blog. So write us a stinkin' email!!

Our June travel adventures

We went to Idaho during the first part of June to go to Alex Parent's and Katie Gammon's wedding. They got married in Idaho Falls, so we flew to Boise and then drove over to I.F. the next day for the wedding. It was really neat to see one of our best friends get married. The ceremony was nice, and the sealer was a trip!! He told this huge long story about how one of the sealer's in the I.F. temple once had a bride say "No" at the altar. Everyone in the room was like, "Why is he telling this story?" It was hilarious and everyone was hoping that Katie would not say, "No" also. Of course, she didn't and they are now married.

The Chemistry Couples (Tom and Becca met in Chem 351, Alex and Katie met in Chem 455 when Alex was her TA!!)

Becca's brother Jared and his wife Natalie live in Idaho Falls, so we stayed with them that night. It was Jared's birthday, so we had a lot of food that day between the wedding luncheon, going to dinner with Jared and Natalie, and the reception and the birthday cake!! We had fun celebrating with Jared and Natalie, and the next day we drove over to Yellowstone. It was tons of fun, and we got a lot of good pictures and videos of buffalo, or bison, or whatever.....I can't tell the difference. Well, we got pictures of other stuff, too, but we have a lot of pictures of buffalo. And Old Faithful. And a video of Old Faithful blowing his top. We didn't get any pictures of Old Faithful, just video. Here's the Old Faithful Video:

Here's my best bison photo.

Tom,Becca, Jared, and Natalie at the Continental Divide. Tom set the camera to take the picture automatically and we didn't know how much time we had, so Tom was running and at the last second just grabbed Becca!

This is the Excelsior Geyser. It is huge and up until 1890 would go off in 300 foot high eruptions at fairly regular intervals. The last time it went off was in 1985, but it was only 30 feet. It's thought that the big eruptions damaged the waterways so it won't go off like that again. It's basically a big crater with a bubbling hot spring now.

Also of import on this trip was that Tom added another state to list of states he has visited, Montana -- making in total 39 states that he has visited! Admittedly, we were only in Montana for like 10 minutes, but we got a picture of Tom by the sign anyway.

Tom in front of the Montana sign.

After driving through Yellowstone we also drove through the Teton National Park, and got some good pictures. The Tetons are probably the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen. The great thing about the entire day was that you could see spectacular views just by driving through the parks.

The Tetons

Another Teton shot

At one of the scenic turnouts.

Tom came back to Champaign the following day, but Becca stayed in ID for two more weeks, which was hard because we're newlyweds and we've never been apart (yeah, that was cheesy!). However, it gave Tom a chance to grow out his beard (picture forthcoming....). Oh, yeah, and he also got a lot of stuff done around the house and yard, which made Becca ecstatic, because Tom is usually really lazy. OK, not really. We're both usually really lazy!

Becca went to her 10 year high school reunion (Yeah, she robbed the cradle, cuz Tom's 10 year isn't until NEXT summer!!). Becca got to see all her best friends from High School, which was really fun, and they had lots of girl time together. She had to drive to Utah to see Jennifer because Jennifer couldn't come to ID for the reunion, so she had a fun little jaunt down I-15 to Spanish Fork. On the way she got to see two of our FAVORITE professors from BYU, Dr. Wood and Dr. Fleming (aka Doc). Of which Tom was really jealous. Becca also got to play a lot with our nephew Sean who is adorable and hilarious and has a laugh that Becca adores. He even does it on demand because he knows Becca loves it so much!

Becca had a great time with her family in Boise, and she's really sad to be back in Illinois with Tom. OK, not sad to be with Tom, but the beard kind of scares her!!

Here's a few more pictures of Yellowstone for your perusal:

A river near Excelsior geyser

A river shot taken along the side of the road

Another pool near Exelsior geyser

Another river photo taken from the side of the road.