Sean's First Day of Work

My job is going to be really cool. I had orientation stuff today, but more exciting things are on the way.

The campus is beautiful, and you can see outside from just about everywhere. They have a cafeteria where the food is sold at cost. I had excellent tortellini with primavera sauce for about $3. A few people have mentioned that new employees at Janelia often experience something similar to The Freshman 15. But they have a gym on campus, so hopefully that won't happen. But the cookie(s) was(were) really good.

I can grab any lab coat from the supplies room and wear it until I'm tired of it, then I throw it into the hamper and get a new one! The old dirty coats magically disappear.

Every person I met there was super nice. I suspect that in the long term that may be the best part. I'm working with a team of five others and a leader, and they all seem like great people. We are working on something called the Fly Olympiad. I'll explain more when I understand everything better, but it looks like Olympiad is a pretty good word for it. We send many, many flies through lots and lots of experiments. But in the real Olympics, people aren't killed when they fail. Well. They aren't killed on site anyways. I was a little worried when China hosted the Olympics.

Remember that game you used to play as a kid where you had to get across the room without touching the floor because it was "lava"?

Some homes were more fun than others

One experiment I'll be doing involves putting a whole bunch of flies on a surface in the middle of several concentric rings that increase in size and thickness as you go out. Each ring is actually a sharp trench filled with liquid Fly Killing Stuff (lava). Flies that make it out of all the circles win, and they get to have babies. The cowardly flies who don't try to make it out don't get to make babies. But the ones who try but fall into the rings really don't get to make babies because they are dead.

This effectively sorts out the more active and agile flies. I'm very excited, and you'll hear more details later on.

A Good Day

We've just been hanging around D.C. over this last week, but now we're finally getting somewhere. We had been looking for a house and today we signed a lease for a pleasant little condo in Sterling, Virginia! We're hopefully moving in on Tuesday. Here's a picture I took from the porch while we were checking it out:

The porch features railings so you don't fall and get injured to death

The community is called Dominion Station, and behind that building is the pool! I know, we'll probably never use it. But still. It's a POOL!

The next step is moving all of our stuff here from College Place, Washington. I've been getting quotes from moving companies, and we're looking at around $4500. So that might not work. Our new home might be a little bit... spacious. At least until we figure out how to get our stuff here.

Heidi got a job as a lead teacher at a preschool about three miles from our new home! So that means her commute probably won't be too much more than an hour! Not bad. She starts work this Monday.

I also finally got that job I've been pushing to get for a few months. I'm excited and relieved. The job is going to be perfect. It's at Janelia Farm Research Campus, which is under Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The place itself is gorgeous and modern. Here's a picture:

The whole place looks AT LEAST this cool

I've heard it referred to as "Science Heaven." I'll talk more about the job some other time, but to over-succinctify, I'll be doing Science there. Lots of the people there are my age! That's good. I'm starting work on October 4.

We found out about both our jobs and our new home today. So today was good.

I'm going to have a couple more weeks to do whatever I feel like. I think I may choose to spend most of that time with you, my faithful reader, by blogging four times a day.

Epic Road Trip, Days 7-9, etc.

You didn't miss much! Heidi got an interview in D.C., so we drove over right quick. About 25 hours of driving in three days, in fact. But we enjoyed it. Heidi is interviewing for a tutoring job as we speak, and I'm in the same coffee shop watching her impress the interviewer. A job interview in a coffee shop! How cool is that? My job is still somewhat up in the air, but I'm pretty sure I've got it. The job would be incredibly awesome.

So we're probably moving to D.C.!

Or more like the Ashburn area. It's not too far from D.C.

We don't have a home yet, so we're casually looking for a place to rent. After Heidi's interview, we're touring a little townhouse. Of course, we can't rent until we're sure we've got jobs, but we're right on the verge of being sure.

"You look terrible, Sean." "Quiet, self!" "You're talking to yourself, Sean."

Sorry we haven't taken pictures in a while. The driving was uneventful (fortunately) and now that we're in D.C. we've been PTSD-triggeringly busy. Driving to interviews in D.C. is stressful. Our nerves are about shot what with the intense driving, interviewing, and homelessness (we've found a week-long place to stay for cheap, so we're okay).

Fun? Yes. Terrifying? Yes.

We're back!

It's been over a year since we've updated this blog. You didn't miss TOO much. We spent another Summer in Rosario where I did my research.

Fresh Cut Improv was a major project of ours over this last school year, and we're proud of how it's been going. We spent Christmas in Baja and Spring Break in Las Vegas.

I wrote and successfully defended my thesis, "Temporal patterns in preening of Glaucous-winged Gulls." I graduated with a Masters in Biology while Heidi graduated with a Masters of Arts in Teaching. And lastly, I learned that when you click on the Comments button below you are bombarded with Obscene Amounts of Orangeness.

So where are we now? Heidi has some tutoring jobs lined up in Washington, DC, and I've applied for several jobs over there too. I'm REALLY hoping to get one of them. We had to move out of our house since we graduated, so we've been hanging out with family the last couple weeks. But if we're going to DC (and it looks likely), our families will want to know what we're doing, which is why this blog is going to be updated more frequently. I promise.