From where I’m at…

...things are lookin' pretty good.

2008-2009 Recap, Part 1

So here we are, back in Ontario. What a year it’s been… up and down… up and down. We have supported and loved each other through several defining events this past year and we will hopefully get the chance to sit down and ponder the past year over the next little while. I think we will still keep this blog going because it will be a good way for us to “memoire” about the past year.

For now, I will start this part of my recap by looking forward – with a list of small things that I want to remember to incorporate into my every day life:

1)  Drink more water during the day.

2)  Do push-ups or sit-ups when I’m upset or angry, rather than sit in a corner and cry (this one was Drew’s idea!)

3)  Try a new vegetable dish every week (inspired by Julie & Julia, excellent movie, and with the desire to become more creative with our 5-10 a day)

4)  Write a little every day – my own personal “memoire”… not necessarily for anyone else to see, but a good way for me to document life, what I like, what I don’t like, what’s working, what’s not and make sense of it!

5)  Spend quality time with the people I love – we missed having our family and friends close by when we were in Philly.  Made me realize (even more strongly) how important these connections are to me.  Now with several people so close by, I don’t have an excuse (except maybe their busy schedules!)

More to come… I’m moving into new territory – “temporary retirement”, career crossroads, family growth potential.  I am loved, I am lucky, and I can make a good contribution to this world!  I’ll get there.

Until next time, enjoy your veggies (i’ll post some of the winning recipes!!)

Nadine

Oot and aboot, eh

I still marvel at the fact that most Americans that I meet think we really talk like that.  Yes, we have a distinctive accent, but it’s not quite oot and aboot.  On that note, Nadine and I have really (read: finally!) started to see more of the city since the spring.

Easter brunch chez les Dunk-Grahams

We kicked things off by hosting some friends at our house for Easter Sunday brunch.  The spread included bacon, eggs, french toast (with Canadian maple syrup, of course!), tea biscuits (whipped up by yours truly), fresh fruit, juices, coffee, and tea.  While the rate of food production didn’t quite meet the demands (we have a small kitchen and we hosted about a dozen people), hopefully the quality was sufficient.

Anniversary brunch chez oot’n’aboot

On Mother’s Day weekend we celebrated our 1st anniversary with a fancy brunch at the London Grill.  The food was great and it’s an interesting building.  I felt that the service was a little sub-par for the faciness of the place, but it was busy (Mother’s Day brunch).  We then wandered down to Center City (downtown) and through Reading Terminal Market.  It’s a market place that has many stalls selling all kinds of fresh and prepared foods (we opted for coffee and produce).  On to the LOVE park:

LOVE Park

It was really fun watching all the skateboarders fall down.  There was also a random guy who would offer to take a picture of you and your loved one in front of the LOVE statue…and then ask you for money.  We opted to move on…

Family visitation

Our cousins Lisa and Derek were in town on vacation for a few days at the end of May.  Needless to say they saw more sights in Philly in 4 1/2 days than we have in 10 months… Any way, we met them at their hotel in Center City to guide them to the restaurant of our choosing…which ended up being the same one they had eaten at the night before!  This was our third time at Pietro’s Coal Oven Pizzeria, and I’d go back for sure.  I know it’s a chain, but it’s good food at good prices and they offer take out.  That said, Nadine and I had chosen the restaurant and when we arrived with Lisa and Derek, it turned out that they had already eaten there a couple of nights before…

The next morning we joined Lisa and Derek again for the Galileo Exhibit at the Franklin Institute:

Franklin Institute

The Institute was overall quite good and worth the trip, but I felt a little disappointed with the Galileo exhibit.  I think I was tired and didn’t feel like reading as much as was required.  A lot of cool stuff about his contributions to physics and astronomy, including one of only two original telescopes built (and signed) by Galileo himself that are known to exist in the world.  I think my brother-in-law Tim would have really enjoyed it given his interest in astronomy.

Steeeeeerike!!!

We joined Nadine’s labmates for a night of bowling at the very cool North Bowl.  From my experience here in the US, bowling alleys are much better kept and have much better food than some of the sketchier places I’ve been north of the border.  Good beer, good food, good times.

Pre-Tour warm-up

We joined our friends Graham and Christine to watch the Pro Cycling Tour race here in Philly:

Chillin' out watchin' guys sweat in spandex...

...sweaty guys in spandex.

That was good times until we saw a crash inside of 1000 m to go, with one rider looking like he had broken his collar bone:

Crash = bad...

Oh ya, Graham also picked up a kinda-creepy guy who I believe started a conversation with Graham by saying he was a former professional cyclist and then proceeded to follow the four of us around while we went to the wine store on our way back to our house for dinner.  We left him in line at the wine store as he was trying to pick up a young woman with a suggestive neck line.  She was also appeared to be having none of it.

FOOOOOOOOOUUUR!!!

I discovered Sedgley Woods Disc Golf Course earlier in the spring on a run one day.  It’s 27 well-maintained disc golf holes that meander their way through a patch of woods in Fairmount Park.  Maintained by the Friends of Sedgley Woods and free to play.  I’ve only played a couple of other disc golf courses in the past but this one is pretty cool.  Nadine and I went a couple of times, this time in the rain (we didn’t have too much company!):

Putting it in...

Nadine from the "rough"...

Miscellaneous…

We’ve also been around the city road and mountain biking, running, playing ultimate frisbee (Nadine is playing in the Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance summer league), slo-pitch, running, etc.  June was wet but July so far has been pretty fantastic for weather.  It’s usually very hot and humid for most of the summer so we have been taking advantage of the abnormally tolerable conditions.  And yes, there has been a little work in there as well…

Tick tock goes the clock

The moral of the story:

If you have a rash, get it checked out by a doctor!

I developed an itchy circular (~5 cm dimater) rash on my left side below my armpit early last week.  I didn’t think much of it until I noticed two things: 1) it was shaped like a bullseye (nature typically doesn’t play around with that sort of sign!), and 2) it was growing…fast!  It had approximatly doubled in diameter in about 4 days.

This picture was taken today, about 9 hours after I began my antibiotic treatment:

Bullseye rash on my left thorax.

Unfortunately this picture doesn’t do justice to the red centre, pale inner ring, and red outer ring appearance.  According to the nurse and the doctor I saw this morning, my rash was “Wow! Impressive! I’m glad you came in to see us!” and “Textbook!”, respectively.

Backing up 24 hours, after remembering an entry I read on a friend’s blog posting about ticks in Canada, I had my suspicions.  A few minutes of web searching and I was pretty sure I had my culprit — Borrelia Burgdorferi.  It goes like this:

1. You enjoy the great outdoors.
2. You brush up against a plant, some grass, a tree, etc…
3. A blacklegged tick inhabiting said plant mistakes your manoeuvre for foreplay and climbs aboard you or your clothing.
4. The tick roams around until it finds a suitible place and then:

Boo-Ya! Tick biting human skin (source: Medicinenet.com).

5.  In the process, the tick can infect you with our new friend, Borrelia Burgdorferi.

Most (70-80%) infected individuals get a rash like mine above in the early stages of the disease.  Getting on antibiotics SOON is essential.  If left untreated, symptoms can progress and increase in severity, including:

• neurological disorders,
• chronic fatigue,
• joint and muscle pain,
• heart problems.

Needless to say: go see your doctor!

In addition to the CBC article that Eva posted on her blog, here are some interesting and reliable resources:

• Health Canada’s take on Lyme Disease,
• CanLyme – the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation’s website,
• U.S. Center for Disease Control information.

There has also been a recent, award-winning documentary, called Under Our Skin, which appears to promote awareness of Lyme Disease and the controversy that surrounds it.  I haven’t see it but the trailer looks good.  If you like that sort of thing.

Lastly, I think I was probably bitten while tromping about in one of the Philadelphia parks (either mountain biking, running, or playing disc golf).  I’m not surprised considering this map of reported cases in the U.S. in 2007 (I have added the red dot showing the approximate location of Philly):

Blue dots = reported cases. Philly = red dot. (source: cdc.gov)

I don’t remember getting bitten but apparently it’s pretty common to miss it, and although I try to check for ticks whenever I’ve been out, the young ones at this time of year are especially hard to spot.  Moral #2 of the story: make a friend and check each other thoroughly!

New directions

I’m now a few weeks into a new job at the University of Pennsylvania working in the lab of a cardiologist.  This lab is primarily interested in examining the potential for stem cells (both originating in bone marrow and those residing in heart tissue) to repair failing heart muscle in adult humans.  The idea is that with a better understanding of how these stem cells participate in cardiac repair, it might be possible to manipulate this system to better handle the high volume cardiac cell death that happens in many heart diseases.  The power of this type of medical intervention is that it could have much better implications for the patient compared to, for instance, a heart transplant where the patient has to deal with potential rejection of the transplanted tissue and the side effects of taking immunosuppressive drugs.

It’s certainly a change of pace from my post-doc experience in several ways, but I’ll spare those details.  So far I have found that this new experience is a good mixture of cool hands-on tasks which I have acquired and more theoretical thinking-type activities, such as assessing and re-vamping the cell isolation set-up and protocol.

I will only be in this position until I move back to Ontario at the end of the summer when I will take a lecturing position in the Kinesiology program offered jointly by University of Guelph and Humber College.  In the Guelph-Humber position I will teach 2 courses in the fall term (Biochemistry & Metabolism and Natural Health Products & Physical Activity) and 2 courses in the winter term (both are Biochemistry & Metabolism).

This choice to leave Philadelphia is both good and bad on a few different levels.  From a career standpiont, I really like my current position and I can see that staying in it for longer would give some nice continuity to the job.  My supervisor has also expressed that he would like for me to stay past the end of August.  However, I’m also really excited about the new opportunity for me back in Ontario.  I am interested in exploring the teaching side of academia and I believe that this will be a good test of the waters.  I ultimately know I am really lucky to have these kinds of opportunities, especially in the current economic environment.

On a more personal level, the decision I have made to move back to Canada in the fall was really difficult.  Since Nadine feels the best thing for her is to stay here in Philly to continue her post-doctoral training, it will mean that we are living apart for the next 8-12 months.  My fall classes are all scheduled between Tuesday and Thursday and this will hopefully allow me to visit Philadelphia regularly, however this will still be quite an adjustment for us.

Fundamentally we both feel that this decision is a step towards me establishing an academic career in a place where we would like to settle down.  In our minds this is analagous to saving money for the future in that when it comes time to make the transition back to Canada, we will have a head start.  In the end it is an experiment, the results of which are unpredictable.  At this point we have made our hypotheses, which we believe to be sound, and have decided on a method.  Come September, the experiment will begin and we will keep a running tally on the data and tweak the details of the protocol until we can make conclusions from the results.

Back in the “cleats” again…

It’s been over 8 months since we’ve been living in Philadelphia.  And for the past few weeks, I’ve finally felt as though I can let loose a bit on the weekends and not have to work!  A little while back, I also decided that it was high time to start re-integrating some extra-curriculars back into my daily routine.  So I signed up to play ultimate with the Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance (PADA). 

From what I understand, the league does not allow entire teams to sign up – everyone signs up as an individual and the members of the team are selected in a series of drafts.  It’s kind of nice for a newbie not knowing anyone, because the chances of me being on a team with members who have played together for years are slim.  I’m a little intrigued about how the whole “draft” goes down, but those details I can figure out later.

Drew didn’t join the league because he wanted to focus on his running and MTB’ing.  Turns out that our games are located in the heart of Fairmount Park, where there appear to be lots of trails for MTB’ing!  So, we discussed plans of biking out to the fields together and he hits the trails while I’m playing ulti.

I rode my road bike out to find the fields yesterday, down the recreational path along the Schuylkill River, and it’s quite a lovely ride.  It’s relatively short (about 8.5km to the field) but there’s a bit of a long uphill from the River up to the “Plateau” where the fields are!  I think I’m going to have to give myself a little bit of time to arrive at the fields and take a nap after climbing that hill!

Anyway, first game is tomorrow… I’m kind of excited, kind of nervous.  I haven’t set foot on an ultimate field since the Fall 2007 when I played with the UW women’s team.  I couldn’t even locate my old cleats (they very well could be at the bottom of some box at my father-in-law’s house in Guelph!).  So, I will break in both my body and my new cleats in my game tomorrow!

More to come from the ultimate field!

Nadine

Lady and the tamp

Uniformly applied pressure helps produce a robust crema

My favourite corner in the house: the coffee corner.  Our Sirena that was a very generous pre-wedding gift from our friends last year along with the fantastic Rattleware tamper that Nadine got me for my birthday this year.  A tamper is used to pack down the coffee grounds with sufficient and uniformly applied pressure, which helps proper extraction of the grounds.  It was a big step for me as a novice espresso dude.  Previously I was tamping my grounds with a plastic scoop from a container of Gatorade powder.  This did the trick in a pinch (read: for nearly a year) and I was tired of pinching.  Now it is 57 mm of machined stainless steel doing the job.  And very handily, I might add.

Let it roll

Four days of hurt and a couple of pretty tight IT bands were the price paid for working out too soon after starting up again.  Now having a couple of weeks of reasonably steady training under my belt I am actually starting to feel like an athlete again.  Go figure.

The past several runs have either been longer (16-18km), faster (3:45-4:00 min/km), or both and have felt pretty good.  I have also done my first real ride of the season and it also felt pretty good until my rear started complaining.  Gotta get used to that saddle again!

Also, having lived reasonably close to trails my whole life, I’ve been feeling kind of trapped here in the heart of Philly.  Up until my run today, the only bona fide trails (we’re talking singletrack in the woods) I knew of were 12km from our house.  Then today I discovered a reasonable facsimile of trails that I can run to in about 15 min and that go at least as far as I took them (4.5 km one way) and are reasonably hilly.  I’m sure I’ll make use of them often!

Lastly, as I have said before, I promise to include more pictures in the future.  For now, this one of the blooms on the cherry tree (I think) outside our house will have to do.

A bit of natural colour on the street

This is actually one of the latest of the many blooming trees all over the city.  It’s nice that spring comes so early down here, however I fear that summer may be many months of oppressive heat and humidity…

Saddle up

I’ve just finished a solid four months of everything else in my life taking a higher priority than my training.  I am ashamed to say that I can count on one hand the number of times I have run or biked since the marathon last November.  Training has been a cornerstone for me over the past 17 years and in the last four months I have lost this grounding in life.  It is high time to get back on the horse.

As I was getting ready to head out the door for a run today it crossed my mind that I just needed to jump in the deep end.  Throwing caution to the wind, I headed out for the most basic of workouts: 5 x (2 min on + 1 min off).  In proper used-to-be-an-athlete style, the thought of doing an actual workout got me so fired up that my warm-up was too fast.  Then my first interval was too fast.  I took it back a notch on the second one, but of course by 1/2 way through the third 2-minute interval I was in survival mode.  It didn’t help that I stupidly decided to do my workout around part of Fairmount Park that is right on the bank of the Schuylkill River and frigging hilly.  The saving grace was that my fourth interval was essentially downhill to flat, which of course restored an idiotic sense of empowerment in me.  This caused me to choose a course for the fifth and final interval that began at the river level and finished high on the hill behind the art museum.  Note to self: running hard uphill for 2 minutes at the end of my first (and premature) workout back is a bad idea.  While I managed not to puke the thought did occur to me.

Now back home, stretched out and showered up, I can honestly say it feels really really good.  If I can take anything good from this unplanned hiatus, it is that I now really appreciate the feeling of something as simple as going for a run.  I won’t make the mistake of forgetting what that feels like for a while.

A storm’s a-brewin’

The "major" storm...

…an entire 7.5 mm.  Whew!  Take a picture before it rains for 3 days straight!

The major brew...

…a “Black eye” or, as they say down under, a “Boilermaker”.  Two shots of espresso pulled into a tall mug of dark, bold coffee.  This is definitely a git’r’dun kinda drink, pictured here with one of my favourite review articles.  Doesn’t the crema ring on the top of this particular boilermaker remind you of a nascent atheromatous plaque beginning to impinge upon the vascular lumen?  Me too.  Yes, I condone both science geekdom and coffee geekdom, as they seem to compliment each other very well.