China? For me, only via local buffet...

OK, so it's been a scant 2 1/2 weeks since my last post regarding the trip to China, and there has been a major development. Namely, I'm not going. I've thought and prayed about it a lot, and I just think it's a particularly bad year to be making this trip. Finances are going to be the tightest they've ever been, not to mention the added work and stress of a new baby. I think my time and money are best spent at home right now. I'm feeling good about my decision, and I've always felt that peace is the best indication that I've made a good decision.

So now we wait, wait, wait for the baby to come. Rachel is 37 weeks pregnant today, which means that the baby should arrive in 3 weeks or less. Everything is ready. The nursery is (once again) complete. Ethan's moved into his new room. All bags are packed, all arrangement have been made. Tick tock tick tock. We're so ready to meet this new little person.

Oh, one other nice bit of news. I was awarded the "Employee of the Month" award at work. Apparently the time spent on that difficult project earlier in the month paid off. As my reward, I get to park in one of the very front parking spaces for the next month. This may seem lame, but I'm usually relegated to the very back parking lot, which comes complete with 1/4 mile hike to my office. Plus, there's a cash award of some kind, which is supposed to show up on my next paycheck. So, a pretty nice honor. It's amazing how God turned that project around. Even when we whine and complain, God's still so good to us!

Movin' on up (to the east side)

Wow, another 11 days since posting. Tragic.

Our good friends RD and Jill moved on Saturday. We met them about 16 months ago, and in that relatively short time they have become our closest and dearest friends. And, best of all, they only live 2 streets away. So, we've spent tons of time together, and learned so much about one another. But, it's not like they're moving to another state - just to the east side of Indianapolis. But, it'll be a change, and my ability to cheerfully tolerate change is declining as I get older.

I think back to my college days, when I had a different roomate every year, and I was always packing my stuff up and heading to or from school. I especially remember the night in 1998 that I moved everything from my apartment in Houston back to Austin. In the trunk and backseat of a Mustang. Now, the thought of packing up our house and moving gives me a headache. And, after seeing RD and Jill pack up their house and moos, it's even less attrative. Rachel and I have discussed it, and we think we only want to move one more time, into the house that we'll plan on staying in for the "long haul". Now, I know that life moves fast, and it's becoming less and less common for people to stay in one place for years and years. But, unless my career changes drastically, I'm content to stay here. Sure, I miss all my friends in Texas and all my family in Virginia. But, it's still not a good enough reason to uproot my whole family and move. So, in a couple of years, we hope to move to a new house nearby, and get about the business of making it our "permanant" home. Enough room for the kids to grow, with lots of opportunities for home improvement projects over the years. After seeing all that RD and Jill have gone through in thr last few months, I'm starting to realize what a big stress moving can be. So, I think a 2-year prep time is reasonable. :-)

I also learned that, while I won't be 30 until September, I'm definitely not as spry and limber as I was in my teens. I am SO sore today. Tylenol will be my friend.

My dreams of a Texas baseball/football/basketball championship trifecta were dashed by LSU yesterday. Cheers to Texas for making it to the Elite Eight. Time to start rooting for the underdog. Go George Mason!!

I like Chinese...I like Chinese...(sing with me!)

Last night I had another China Missions Trip team meeting. It looks like the team is slowly coming together. I'm pretty committed to going now, which means that I'm going to have to start working on raising funds. I've paid $600 already, which leaves $2400 more to go. This is not exactly the best year for extra expenses, so I'm really relying on God to make this thing happen. Rachel's last day at Lakeview is April 7th, after which we will no longer have her income. I heard from a co-worker that the hospital cost of having a new baby is about $14000, of which we will need to pay 10%, or $1400. The China trip will cost $3000, and I still need $2400. So, a 40% income drop and an additional $3800 in expenses weighs a little heavy on my mind. At church, we hear lots of stories about God providing money in unexpected ways. But, it's hard to internalize that and believe that God is interested in doing something like that for ME. I'm definitely a "man of science" when it comes to money. But, God provided unexpected money for me and Rachel for the trip to Holland in 2004, so I'm praying that He does a miracle again.

To celebrate my victory over the dreaded Z4HP assay at work (my previously-mentioned, ultra-challenging project), I bought a new board game last Friday. It's called Memoir '44, and it's a military skirmish game that re-creates battles from WWII on and around D-Day. I've never been much of a wargamer, but I had read that this game is a good "wargame for non-wargamers". RD and I played on Sunday night, and I LOVE it. The board is configurable, so you can set it up for different terrain and scenarios. The rulesbook includes 16 scenarios, so replayability is very high. We tried the "Omaha Beach" scenario, which is pretty much a re-creation of the first 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan". We played twice, with each of us trying our hand a the Axis and Allied forces. In both games, the Axis player pretty much cleaned up. Anyway, it's a really fun game, and it doesn't take hours and hours to play. Which is nice, because I rarely have hours and hours to do anything these days.

I didn't check my weight this weekend, so I'll have to report on that later this week.

Work sucks less now!!

This has been kind of a strange week, preceded by an even stranger weekend. As I've mentioned, I've been working on this rather important project at work, trying to fix an assay that's been "broken" for quite a few weeks. Well, after a breakthough last Friday, and a ton of weekend work, we were able to present data to the visiting client on Tuesday that they were quite pleased with. It's pretty miraculous how quick things went from "this looks like crap" to "wow, it works". Many others will say that it was a result of hard work, determination, and good science. But, I give the credit to God, and a lot of prayer. He turned it around at the last minute, in the manner that God tends to like to work. It gives me comfort to know that God is ultimately in control of everything, even bioanalytical chemistry. Since I worked on Sunday, I'm taking Friday off, and so is Rachel! We're going to take Ethan to daycare and spend the day together. An actual date! Brilliant!

The weight loss and exercise program cotninues, although the past week's crazy work schedule has hindered my progress a bit. But, at least I'm not gaining:

Date: 09MAR06
Weight: 274.0 lbs

I'm not really frustrated about the lack of significant weight loss. Grated, I would like to be a certain weight in time for Garza's wedding, so I can get a few 'Wow!'s from my friends. But, I need to be realistic. I'm only about 4 weeks away from the arrival of our second baby. I'm going to be tired and more than a little stressed. The likelyhood of making great progress in the next couple of months is small. But, as long as I'm continuing to incorporate exercise into my life and trying to eat less, it'll be a victory.

Oh, and today is our cat Callie's birthday. At least, we think it is. The paerwork we got with her last year listed her birthdate as MArch 9th, and that she was 2 years old. So, now she's an old lady of 3. I never thought I would enjoy having a pet so much. She's sweet, friendly, funny, and very cute. She'll definitely be getting a few extra treats today.

1:15am: Not a good time to be at Covance

It's 1:15am, and I'm still sitting at my desk at work. This has been a VERY long week, and the fact that I have to work most of the day on Sunday is an indication that it will be a VERY short weekend. No sense in delving into the boring details of why I'm still at work at this hour. Needless to say, I'm working on a very challenging project, and I'll be glad when it's over.

Not much else to report, except that we've almost finished getting Ethan's new room ready. It looks REALLY cool, and it's been a fun project for Rachel and I to work on together. And, Ethan seems to love it, too. We're planning on hanging up some Indianapolis Colts posters tomorrow, but he's already calling it his "Colts room". We painted on Tuesday night, and Rachel put of the curtain today and bought a nice rug. RD helped me assemble these neat storage bins for Ethan's toys last night. I would have done it myself, but the Communist instruction manual erroneously stated that the thing could be assembled with "just a Philips screwdriver". That was pretty much a load of crap. A Philips screwdriver and Hulk Hogan's arm torque, maybe. So, goodbye screwdriver, hello RD's drill. Ah, the joy of power tools. :-)

Time to head home and zzzzzzzzzzz....

9 days later....(I must be a slacker)

Wow, time flies. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd posted. Anyway, not a whole lot to report. Last night, Rachel and I painted Ethan's new room. We went ahead and spent the money on some higher quality paint, so we only needed one coat and some touch-ups. Looks pretty good.

Work kind of sucks right now. I'm in the middle of trying to troublshoot an assay that just doesn't seem to want to work. It worked 2 years ago when we ran more than 1000 samples. But now, there's severe lack of sensitivity. The scientific part of it would be difficult enough, but it's made even more challenging by the fact that the client will be visiting our lab next week, and wants to see some good looking data. I feel like I've kind of been left to twist in the wind on this one. All the other staff scientists are busy with other projects, and they've assigned this difficult, high-profile project to me, the junior member of the methods development department. We had a meeting yesterday afternoon, and our lab director said she was disappointed in the progress we had made in the last 2 weeks. I tried not to take that personally, and she kind of backpedaled when she realized what she had said, but it still hurt my feelings a little. I came home early and kind of had a mini stress attack. Luckily, my technical manager called a few minutes later and gave me a nice pep talk, followed by and even nicer pep talk from Rachel. This is turning out to be a pretty hard job. I guess I should expect that, given that they're paying me more money to do it. I'm not really looking forward to going back to work today, but calling in "sick" is definitely not an option.

I went ahead and committed to going to China, and I paid my $100 deposit. I don't really have a clue as to how I'm going to come up with the $3000 for the trip, but at least I have $100 already paid! Fortunately, it looks like everyone else who wants to go is dealing with similar issues of finance. So at least I'm not alone.

All right, time to hit the shower and head to work. More soon!