Chemistry and Good Friends

Back in October (before I was pregnant and long before we found out we were having twins), I submitted two abstracts to the American Chemical Society's national spring meeting. I submitted one as an oral presentation and the other as a poster -- posters, especially by students, are hardly ever rejected, so I thought there was a very good chance that I'd be able to present at least one of my research projects at the conference. I was a little surprised, though, when both abstracts were accepted -- and the organizers asked if I'd present the research that I had submitted as a poster in an oral presentation! So, I prepared two twenty-minute oral presentations on my two research projects.

The best part about this conference is that it was held in Anaheim, CA -- near enough to our college friends who have never left LA (or who left and later returned) that we decided to make it a family trip and extend the trip three days after the conference ended.

There wasn't much going on the first day of the conference, so we met Liz and Connor at one of Connor's favorite hang-outs, the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific. The kids checked out the sea lions while Dale and I caught up with Liz.


As we were leaving the sea lion exhibit, Connor found a good-sized puddle and immediately started stomping and splashing in it. Adelaida watched for a minute, not quite sure what her crazy new friend was doing, then tentatively stepped in the puddle herself. She must have discovered the joy of splashing in a puddle -- she laughed and then stomped as if she knew just what to do in a puddle. We spent more time at the puddle than at any of the other aquarium exhibits!


The next four days we each went our separate ways: Dale left every morning to work in Seal Beach, returning home in time to take us to dinner; I did my conference things, attending symposia and talking with other chemists; and Adelaida went to her "California school" every day. The "California school" was really a free daycare program that the conference provided, conveniently located in a hotel just across the street from our hotel. The conference provided free daycare for kids 2-12 (OK, their website said ages 2-12 when I signed Adelaida up; they later changed it to 3-12, so she was by far the youngest one there!), every day of the conference. The kids were separated into groups based on their ages; the preschool group (ages 2 - 4) had four kids enrolled in the program and two caregivers. Of course, all of the kids didn't go every day, so Adelaida's group generally had two kids and two caregivers -- and one day she was the only kid there! Adelaida quickly became attached to Miss Anna and Miss Erika, and I think they kind of liked her too. With tons of toys to play with, meals and snacks provided, and two great teachers, I was as fond of the ACS daycare as Adelaida was. I highly recommend it to other chemists with kids!

I presented my papers on Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon, and then the conference was over -- but our vacation was just beginning! We moved from Anaheim up to Pasadena, where we spent the next few days logging as much friend-time as we could. On Friday evening we met at the Rathskeller for dinner -- a surreal dining experience that included five kids running around our (fortunately private) dining room, exciting news of a new arrival in the Johnson family, and gastrointestinal pyrotechnics by Connor (due apparently to lots of popcorn and lots of running around).

Saturday, with Connor pronounced well, we all met again at a local hot dog eatery, joined now by Ron. It's amazing how we can be away from these friends for months to years and, when we do meet, pick up like we've never been apart!

Saturday evening the Williams clan had us over for dinner and playtime for the kids. Adelaida loved Anara's slide.


And she thought it was really cool to sit next to Connor to eat.


As the kids wound down, I found myself reading a book to Connor, Anara, and Adelaida. Aren't these kids just adorable?


On Sunday we invited the group to our hotel to take advantage of the swimming pool. Anara arrived mid-nap and never did get in the pool, but Connor and Adelaida both enjoyed swimming with their daddies.


Don't Dale and Adelaida look like they are having fun!


Adelaida's favorite part of swimming was being thrown in the air out of the swimming pool. Dale made sure I had the camera ready each and every time he tossed her. After he did it the first time, all we heard from Adelaida was "try again, Daddy!"


Eventually the vacation was over and we returned to our mundane lives in Albuquerque, but had a great time and collected so many good memories. Thanks LA friends!

Update

It's been almost six weeks since I posted anything, but not because nothing blog-worthy has been happening! We've been very busy for the past six weeks, and I hope to post to the blog frequently to catch you all up on everything that's happened in our lives recently.

Two big events have occurred in the past six weeks that affect me directly, and are most of the reason that I haven't had time to post any new blogs. The first was an important meeting with my dissertation committee on May 10. I met with my committee (four UNM faculty members) for an annual meeting at which I updated them on the research I have completed and how I hope to finish the research for my degree. This necessitated a relatively formal research presentation, which took a long time to prepare. And of course, as I prepared the presentation, I found things that needed to be done and things that needed to be redone before giving the presentation, so I was very busy doing more research during that time as well. The meeting went well -- I learned about a lot of things that I need to be doing differently, but have a good plan for continuing my research. The best part of this meeting was that I finally feel like I know what I need to do to finish my degree and can complete it in the (relatively) near future!

The second big event in my life recently is that I was offered a summer internship at Sandia National Laboratories and started yesterday! I wasn't exactly looking for this job, but when I heard about it I knew it would be a great experience for me so decided to take it. I'll be working full-time, for approximately the next fourteen weeks, which means Adelaida will be in school full-time for the summer. That will be hard for her and hard on me, but we can do it for three months. I'm putting my research on hold during the internship (or almost on hold; I plan to continue working on it, but at a drastically reduced pace), which means it may take a bit longer for me to finish my degree, but it will be well worth the benefits of this internship.

It's time to wake Adelaida up, so I will leave you with a recent picture of her, and a promise to write more soon.

Salt Lake City

Disclaimer: This blog post is not about Adelaida. I may mention her a few times in passing, but the story here will not revolve around her. Feel free to stop reading now if you like.

When I set up this blog a few months ago, I vowed to keep it up with frequent posts--my goal was an average of two posts a week. Looking over the blog now, I see I've only written three posts in almost four weeks! It isn't that I don't have anything to write about, but rather that I can't seem to find the time to write. With Adelaida, chemistry, work, rental properties, travel, visitors, cleaning, cooking, laundry, and so much more to keep me busy, taking ten minutes to write a blog post has been hard to justify. For that, I apologize to you, my faithful reader!

One of the things that has kept me so busy for the past month or so has been preparing for the American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting. The ACS is the nation's largest society for chemists; they hold national meetings twice a year and generally attract 12 000 to 20 000 attendees for each meeting.

This year, my advisor's PhD advisor (my academic "grandfather") was being honored by the ACS for his "distinguished service in the advancement of inorganic chemistry" and my advisor put together a symposium within the national meeting to celebrate the award. The other grad students in our lab and I saw this as a great opportunity to travel to Salt Lake City, to present our research at a national meeting, and to meet people who might be interested in giving us jobs one day. So, our entire lab (my advisor, the lab's staff scientist, the lab's postdoc, and all five grad students) traveled to Salt Lake City for a week of chemistry lectures, posters, and discussions.

Not wanting to leave a three-month-old baby at home for a week, I took Adelaida with me, and my mom met us in Salt Lake City to babysit for Adelaida while I went to the conference. I won't bore you all with the chemistry details, but did have a fabulous time, including two great poster sessions and several discussions with people who were interested in the research I presented ("Computational Insights into Palladium-Hydride Bond Polarization and Molecular Oxygen Insertion").

I was a little apprehensive about driving 650 miles with a baby, but it actually turned out to be quite easy. My friend Diane, who is also the post-doc in our lab, bravely agreed to travel with us, and we took a leisurely two days to drive up to Salt Lake City and two days to drive back. Adelaida was an angel in the car, falling asleep within two minutes each time we put her in the car. Acutally, the trip was going so well that on the second day of driving to Salt Lake City, we stopped by Utah's Arches National Park for a couple of short hikes around the arches, which were absolutely beautiful.

Highlights of our time in Salt Lake City included:

Dinner on Saturday night with the entire group, at which our waiter Adam serenaded Rick with an impressive rendition of a song that wasn't "Happy Birthday."


Touring Temple Square. The weather wasn't the best (rainy-snowy, cold, and overcast), but the grounds were beautiful and the tour was interesting.


Driving out to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, where we tasted the water (yup, it's salty!) and had a close encounter with a group of American bison.


All in all, it was a great trip and made me much more confident that I can successfully travel to Indiana with Adelaida this weekend.