Getting ready-

Well, the plan to get a bunch of things done around the house kind of crashed and burned when I developed some medical problems and ended up needing surgery. However, I should still be good to leave on June 4th. I have a hotel reservation for my stay near the airport - still need to get parking arranged for on campus.

I will be taking a ceramics class every Wed night to try and keep the right and left sides of the brain balanced. I am also going to get a zoo pass while I am there and practice shooting wildlife with my camera. Columbus is reputed to have a wonderful zoo and aquarium, and I am excited to check those out.

I have been going over the papers sent to me about the study, and using wikipedia to define terms I do not know - way too many of them, I am afraid! But I feel a lot more confident about understanding what we are measuring and studying now than I did upon first read. I have talked to some professors at Meredith and asked for their insight on what they thought, and that was very helpful.

The first three days in Ohio we will spend in conferences in the Biomedical Research Tower - where I will normally be spending my days. The first day will be the Cancer Systems Biology Annual Workshop with many speakers talking about things far over my head, probably. Epigenetics and studies used to examine RNA and figure out why some parts of genes activate, and some stay dormant, as far as I can tell from the limited study I have done. The next two days will be at the illumina Sequencing Users Meeting where I learn about how they are doing the studies and collecting the data we will be using, and new technologies that they have coming up. I love learning about new things, so this should be exciting, if not overwhelming. I hope I can keep up decently.

In the meantime, this next week will be filled with packing, recuperating, and laundry. I am taking hobbies that have gone neglected due to lack of time and focus - sewing some quilts to donate, the ceramics class, and lessons on the new laptop to keep me busy in off hours, along with photography of the area, and learning photo editing. Columbus has an LDS temple I would like to get to visit, and I have a good friend in Indiana that I hope to see during my stay. My new semester at Meredith will begin not long after the study ends, so I also need to try to prepare for that.

This should be a great experience, and really help me nail down what I want to focus on in my studies and career.

Leslie