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!!