Yet another Illinois adventure

It's only been an evening, but already Illinois is yet again proving to be adventurous for Fragile X lab GRAs!  Our flights were nice and smooth this time (well, except for the massively hard landing at O'hare!), but getting to our hotel was somewhat less smooth.  While driving on a four-lane highway, 3 teenage boys decided to jaywalk across the street.  But they didn't simply cross the street.  They walked out into my lane, and stayed there.  As I approached, they walked toward us and very slowly sidled out of the way (into the other lane).  Even after honking and glaring at them, they didn't seem to think it a bit strange to be meandering among the highway lanes.  A few miles later, things got more frightening.  The highway had filled up since we were approaching the business district, and this meant that cars were frequently making turns into and out of lanes and driveways.  The driver of one particularly large pick-up truck decided that she should be able to turn into our lane even if we were right there.  So she did.  And I swerved into the other lane.  Thankfully there was no one there.  I am beginning to wonder if this rental car is invisible!

Something about the Midwest

What is it about Indiana and Illinois that mean we often have crazy trips??

This time, we managed to remember that the family lives very near the Central/Eastern timezone border.   However, this time we nearly had a repeat of the disastrous Illinois trip from summer 2010.  The problem began when, for some reason, our layover in Atlanta became short.  The flight from KC was on time - despite leaving late - so we thought we had enough time to get from our arrival gate to our departure gate and even have time for a pit stop and a brief break.  We thought wrong.  After making said pit stop, we walk to our gate, only to find that they are no longer 'boarding' - they've 'boarded'.  We were the last two on the plane, and there was still 20 minutes until our scheduled departure time!  Moments after we took our seats, the plane pushed back from the gate.  We then proceeded to sit on the tarmac for about 30 minutes while we waited for clearance to take off.  We arrived in Evansville on time, but quite jostled from flying over the tornado storm system.  I went to get our rental car (which ended up being a brand new 300 with 103 miles!!), while my colleague waited for the suitcase.  And waited.  And waited. Yep, you guessed it.  Delta had made our layover so short that they couldn't get the suitcase from one plane to the other before we left.  Uh oh.  My colleague and I made the necessary arrangements to have the bag brought to our hotel after it arrived on the next available flight.  Well, that flight got delayed 2 hours because of the tornado storm system. Rather than stay up past midnight, we asked the front desk to call us once the bag made it.  When the call finally came at 1:30am, we didn't care what time it was, we were just glad the flight hadn't been canceled!  The next morning, we retrieved the suitcase and the rest of the trip went off without a hitch. 

Local Visit

Our visit to one of our Kansas families went very nicely today.  We were training our newest travel GRA, so the family's house was a bit crowded, but they didn't seem to mind.  This child is adorable and cooperative, so even though the family can be difficult to track down, it's not hard once you get there.  It did feel strange to do an assessment on Friday and not have to fly there or back!  I had a trip and still had my weekend!

New Bern, NC

This weekend's trip was ... interesting.  I'm not sure if there's a better word for it or not. 

We traveled to a town on the North Carolina coast named New Bern.  It's the birthplace of Pepsi, and during our time there, we got to visit the location of the original pharmacy where Pepsi was first served.  I got to buy some Mountain Dew swag! =)  In addition to that stop, part of what made this trip neat for me was my current novel.  I've been reading the very popular Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  During this trip, I finished the fourth book (Drums of Autumn) and began the fifth book (The Fiery Cross).  In both books, the main characters are living in a relatively uninhabited area of pre-Revolution North Carolina.  The closest minor town is Cross Creek, and the closest major town is New Bern.  The governor of North Carolina is Governor William Tryon, whose palace is a notable historic landmark in modern times.  So cool!!  How often does it happen that you read a historical novel describing a relatively obscure place, then end up visiting that place while you're reading about it without making explicit plans to do so?? 

New Bern, like most of the East Coast, had been hit by hurricane Irene last month, so we'd postponed our trip to allow the family some time to recover.  Thankfully their house wasn't badly damaged.  I won't go into details about the visit itself, but suffice it to say it was exhausting - mentally and physically.  To make a long story short, we were not able to make our originally scheduled return flight, which meant we had to wait for the next one.  Unfortunately, Delta only has 2 flights per day from New Bern to Atlanta.  We were scheduled to take the second one on Sunday.  So, we found ourselves stuck in New Bern for an extra day.  It wasn't as bad as it could've been - the weather was beautiful and we were able to gather all the data we needed from the family.  We just hadn't planned on an extra day away from home.  Thankfully, we were able to make a quick Target run to get some necessities.  We did make it home safely Monday evening, but for me it meant today's slate of classes was much tougher since I'd been up much of Monday night finishing up the homework I'd planned to have all of Monday to complete.

I guess our trips had been going too smoothly lately.  Here's to hoping my next two trips go better than this one did!

New Jersey

I love it when I can combine a work trip with some fun.  Especially when that fun involves seeing one of my best friends from college!  Last weekend I went to New Jersey and spent two days on vacation and two days seeing families.  I got to sail on and swim in the Delaware River a few miles from where George Washington crossed it, despite an adventure involving a rope wrapped around the boat's propeller just before low tide.  The next day, my friend showed me Princeton University, including historic Nassau Hall as well as some of the buildings filmed in Transformers 2 and the opening scenes of House.  Later, my colleague and I got to enjoy the Jersey beach and swim in the Atlantic Ocean.  The water was chilly but totally worth it!  Both of our family visits went well, so I deemed the extended weekend a success!!

On the Delaware River

Our view of the Atlantic Ocean at lunch

Now, I've gotta get all the presenters lined up for this fall's Proseminar and make a dent in writing my master's thesis before I go on my next adventure!

Illness in Illinois

In case you were wondering, it hurts very badly to fly when your ears are plugged because of a cold.  Descending is the worst.  And then you look silly because half the time you're trying to yawn as big as you can on the off-chance that your ears might clear and the rest of the time you're shaking your head or grabbing your ears.  One plus: you can't hear the shrieking toddler who is two rows away.

Despite my discomfort, the double trip to Illinois went very well this weekend.  We worked with two wonderful families and a couple sweet kids.  The suitcase made it to Peoria (see my post from Feb 2010) this time, and there were no other mishaps.  I drove a Nissan Cube, which was interesting.  I'm definitely not a fan of the way it looks from the outside, but it was quite spacious inside, and the cup holder to the left of the steering wheel was perfect.  My colleague enjoyed pointing out the sights to me as we drove from Peoria to Chicago (she went to undergrad nearby).  I particularly liked the wind farm.  I've seen modern windmills before, but never so many in one place!  After a successful visit and only a 1-hour delay in O'Hare, I made it home in time to see the second half of the KU game.  Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

First Proseminar Presentation

Today was a big day for me in the life of the Child Language program at KU.  I gave a talk at Proseminar today for the first time.  It was also the first time I formally presented my own research that was not required for a class.  Though I participated in the poster session last week in San Antonio, today I had to talk about my work, not just stand by my poster and answer questions.  Overall, I think it went well.  It was short, but I knew it would be.  I fielded questions throughout and at the end, and I didn't get flustered.  It would be interesting to see a video of myself, though I might be terrified by what I see!

Blizzard Day

Well, apparently I managed to miss posting in all of January.  As far as work goes, it wasn't terribly exciting for me.  My colleagues did have a couple interesting trips, and I did have a good time working with our family in Topeka, but no major snow dramas or anything.  Personally, I got to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of my best friend from middle school.  We've known each other for nearly 15 years.  I'm super happy for her!!

We're welcoming February 2011 in with a serious blizzard.  KU is closed today, so I'm attempting to be productive from home.  At least it's warm and cozy here.  I'm sure the lab would be absolutely frigid today since it's quite chilly on warmer days.  It's been snowing for several hours, but the wind is blowing so hard it's difficult to tell how much snow we've actually gotten.  The 1/10 inch of ice is definitely there, though! 

Newest GRA's first visit

My Halloween weekend consisted of going on a trip with our newest GRA.  It was her first real assessment and she'd never flown before!!  I was very glad there were no surprises in terms of travel.  The assessment itself went very smoothly.  We got to see a cute kid with a wonderful family and beautiful house in the suburbs of Chicago.

Thankfully we were only going to Chicago so it wasn't an especially long or bumpy flight.  Turns out she loves flying!  She also enjoyed staying an extra day to see her family.  She hadn't been home since she moved to Lawrence, so she was very excited to see her family and dog and house and such.  I could relate - I remember feeling that way about the same time last year.

On Saturday we finished in plenty of time for me to make my flight, so after I dropped her off with her family I went shopping at the Woodfield mall.  I needed some dressy clothes for my next adventure: my first conference!  It was nice to have a couple hours to wander around such a huge mall, especially knowing I could buy something if I liked it!  It helped, too, that I knew I could put anything I bought in the lab's suitcase to get it back home, so space wasn't an issue at all.

All in all, it was one of the better trips I've had lately.

We are Go for Year 2

I feel like I should have something profound to say in the two days before I begin my second year as a graduate student, but nothing comes to mind.  I did get more unpacking done this evening, but there's still a ways to go.  Thankfully the weather is more or less cooperating so our two-week excessive heat warning has been lifted.  That makes carting boxes to the garage(!) much nicer. Yes, I do have a garage.  It is amazing.  It will be even more amazing once the snow starts this winter.  It was great during the heat wave because it meant the car didn't get nearly so hot.  Now, this is only at home, so the car still bakes in the parking lot at work, but hey, I'll take what I can get when it comes to cooling off my car!  Oh, and I suppose having the A/C checked and fixed had something to do with the fact that my car quickly becomes an igloo.  Speaking of my car, I got to work via driving and riding the Park & Ride bus for the first time today.  I think it's gonna work, and it sure will save me a lot of hassle trying to find a spot to park either in the close parking lot or on the street near work.  And the Park & Ride bus drops me off right across the street from work, so you can't get much better than that.  Hopefully I'll still feel the same about it come Thursday when the rest of KU's student body emerges from the summer!

This will be an interesting but busy semester since I'll be enrolled in only 3 classes so that I can work on my Master's thesis.  This time next fall I should have my MA in Child Language!  I was accepted to be on Dr. Mabel Rice's training grant for this year, which means I'll make a little more money but I'll have more responsibilities.  The point of the traineeship is to train new researchers in Child Language via coursework and multiple research experiences.  So, in addition to my current work in the Fragile X lab, I'll also be starting a secondary lab experience in Dr. Hugh Catts' reading lab.  It should be interesting.  Oh, and in the FXS lab we're almost finished with data collection for Time 4, which means we are talking about posters and papers to draft in the very near future.  I can't wait! 

Rental Car Frustration. Again.

When we went to Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago, I had just recently gotten my Kansas driver's license.  Most states nowadays print you the real card right there while you wait.  But not Kansas.  They gave me a piece of paper that was the size of a receipt with my DL number, info, and picture on it.  Talk about old-fashioned.  It didn't help that the picture was 3 times the size it is on the card.  Anyway, they told me my real card would come in the mail in 2-3 weeks and that this paper one was perfectly valid and would be accepted if I got pulled over (which thankfully didn't happen).  Well, we left on a Friday for Pennsylvania and the card hadn't arrived yet.  So, I brought my passport to get through airport security because I figured they wouldn't appreciate the paper license ID in Kansas City and they'd really put up a fuss in Philly.  With the passport, of course, I made it through.  Once in Philly, we took the customary rental car facility shuttle to Alamo and I got in line to pick up our car.  I approached the counter and the CSR and I began finalizing my rental.  All went well, until...she asked for my driver's license.  I handed her my perfectly valid paper license.  She looked at it, looked at me (I matched the picture!), then informed me she couldn't accept it.  I was furious.  Absolutely furious.  Thankfully, my colleague was able to rent the car so we were able to continue our trip.  Alamo wouldn't let me pay for the rental, though, even when we returned the car.  That was even more infuriating because I'd received an advance from the grant for the amount of the rental and I would therefore owe them money.  It's just not fun coming home from one of these trips and having to write a check to the people who usually owe you money.  To top off the whole thing, I checked my mail on Monday afternoon and there was my new license in card form.  Aaaggghhh!!!

Boston - City of Potential Disaster??

Our trip to Boston, MA, at the end of last week nearly ended in disaster several times.  Upon arrival at Logan International, we proceeded to the rental car facility.  Once there, I signed the required paperwork, we chose our vehicle, plugged our hotel in the GPS, and left, glad we weren't quite exhausted and that we would get to sleep in a bit the next day.  Little did we know how much we would need it!

Just past the tollbooth on I-90 we entered the tunnel under Boston Harbor.  I drove through the first of what would be many stretches of road where four lanes became two without any warning.  Thankfully this time there weren't any other cars on the highway.  At one of the merging areas in the tunnel, I looked to my right to check for incoming cars.  As I did so, we heard a rushing/sucking noise.  In horror I watched the passenger door of our Hyundai Santa Fe swing open!  My colleague, sitting in that passenger seat, immediately grabbed the door and hauled it back toward the body of the vehicle as I avoided the incoming car (which almost got a windshield full of door) and steadied the car.  The door opening while driving is frightening and startling, but it was even more so in this case because the doors were LOCKED just before this happened!

I searched for the next exit, which of course did not appear for another few miles and a second tollbooth.  My heart racing, I drove as carefully as I could to a well-lit (it was fully dark now) area I could temporarily park.  My poor colleague held onto the door for dear life.  Once safely parked, we jumped out and opened and closed all the doors.  Turns out the passenger door sounded different while slamming.  How did we not notice this at the rental car facility?  We climbed back in and drove back to the rental car facility.  Since we certainly didn't trust the latch on the door anymore, my colleague held on tight the whole way back.  I began to chatter, of course, so I'm sure we made quite a pair.  To top it off, as I waited for an opening large enough for the Santa Fe to squeeze through, the car behind me thought it would be helpful to lay on the horn and not stop till I moved.  Did the driver really want me to mow down two cars just to get out of the way.  Interestingly, that car followed us onto the interstate, so I'm not sure what the driver was so upset about.

Once back at the rental facility, we proceeded straight to the counter (there was no line) and began to explain what happened.  Most of the clerks were talking with one another, but one promptly helped us.  One of the nearby ladies overheard us saying something about the door, and apparently she misheard because she shrieked "the door flew off??".  We laughed and said, "no, it just opened."  Still, it was pretty scary.  The clerk upgraded me at no charge and told me to go pick out a full-size SUV/crossover.  I chose a Dodge Journey, and thankfully that was the end of the car malfunctions.

We successfully made it to our hotel this time, had a good night's sleep, and even had time for breakfast in the morning.  The visit with the family went very smoothly and was shorter than usual, which is always nice but was especially so this time.  We were worried that since the mom asked us to reschedule for later in the day after we'd bought plane tickets we wouldn't make it back to Logan International in time to return the car, check a bag, and make the flight.

Driving back into Boston was an experience.  I had planned on traffic for rush hour and Memorial Day, but what I didn't plan on was the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic having Game 6 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals in Boston that evening.  So there was lots of traffic.  I steeled myself for angry drivers and honking.  For once I was glad I wasn't driving a stick shift - the stop-and-go traffic would have been even worse then.  At one point as I made my way through a left turn onto the road I would follow for a while, I noticed that there were a total of four lanes merging.  There were only two lanes ahead, though.  How all of us managed to make it from four to two lanes without any dings, dents, or scratches, I have no idea. 

This pattern continued for the rest of the drive to the airport.  What should have taken about 50 minutes ended up taking about 2.5 hours.  I narrowly missed being sideswiped, T-boned, and rear-ended about a dozen times within about 3 miles.  We did get to see the land-water "duck" tour buses, which was interesting.  Picture a colorful Noah's Ark cruising down a 6-lane arterial.  I was surprised, but throughout all this my colleague and I were not stressing in the least bit about our flight.  We'd realized about an hour ago that we'd miss it and that rushing wouldn't help us at all.

We successfully returned the car, hopped on the shuttle, and took our place in what seemed an especially long line.  Now we knew we'd never make our flight.  We were worried about covering the change fees and the price difference between our current tickets and those of whatever flight we would get on.  We were also interested to overhear other customers talking about their direct flight to Kansas City.  Why hadn't we been able to get that one??  (the same thing happened when we left Kansas City - there was a direct flight to Boston, but it was delayed).  As we neared the counter, one of the clerks asked if anyone in line was confirmed on the 5:45 to Milwaukee, so we made our way forward - interestingly no one in line at any time seemed to be angry at the delay at any point.  Turns out the airline's computer system was down.  They were doubling checking passengers against printed lists and hand-writing tickets! 

Between this technological trouble and the bad weather in Pennsylvania, all the flights were messed up.  We ended up waiting 3 hours for our '5:45' flight to take off.  Guess we didn't miss it after all.  There were 2 other flights scheduled to go to Milwaukee and/or Kansas City between 5:45 and 8ish.  All three flights finally left in succession between 8:30 and 9pm.  Thankfully Boston Logan has free wifi!  Of course with the computers down the seat assignments were out of whack as well, but everyone was especially cooperative.  Once settled on the plane, we had a rather bumpy flight to Milwaukee.  We deplaned at Milwaukee only to discover that, yes, our plane was the one continuing on to Kansas City.  So we stood in line for boarding passes (because Boston certainly didn't have them!) and reboarded the plane.  The flight to Kansas City was equally bumpy, so I decided I didn't particularly like our pilot that evening, even though he took the time to explain to us what was going on with the delay.  As we deplaned in Kansas City, we were handed vouchers for $100 off our next flight.  We were worried about missing our flight, which would have been our fault, and here we ended up making the flight and getting vouchers because it was their fault!

Hopefully our trip to Miami in a week or two won't be so eventful.  We'll try to avoid dengue fever.

Business Trip #2

Had a whirlwind business trip to Rochester, NY, on Friday and Saturday.  We landed in the Rochester airport Friday afternoon, and then flew out again less than 24 hours later.  The assessment went well, and the flights were smooth, despite a 3-hour layover in Chicago.  I ate in an airport restaurant for the 1st and 2nd times!  Been pretty tired today, but glad I can chill out with football.

I'm finally getting sick for the first time this season, and it seems that I'm skipping the cold stage and going straight to bronchitis.  I've got too much going on in the next 6 weeks to get sick!