Happy Halloween!

Not a particularly informative post, but hey!  I feel like celebrating!!  We've got trick-or-treaters for the first time since....well...many years.  We never had any out in Crozet (including before hubby and I moved in together) so I was tickled!  Lots of cute kids, hilarious costumes and even football players.  Not much more to say, so here are some pictures -

Boo!

Our doorway with decorations....well, pumpkins and a ghost.  We didn't exactly go wild, but at least made clear we had candy.

Uh, my treat.  Being an adult has its perks, including having a beer with one's chocolate.

Waste not want not!  Pumpkin seeds roasting.

Now back to being a grad student and reading papers.  Hope everybody had a fun Halloween!

Where have I been?

Obviously not on the blog.

I'm sorry dear readers.  Sincerely sorry, but sometimes it's hard to figure out what to say.  I'm not going to harp on an on about my lengthy absence, but instead move forward and hopefully make up for it in posts!

Sooo...what brings about the sudden return?  Other than the massive guilt trips?? (you know who you are....)  How about some down time due to "snowpocalypse" hitting the east coast?  Yes, even though I'm plenty far from the coast, the mountains of Virginia are getting a nice dusting of snow courtesy of H. Sandy.  It's not that bad in my immediate area largely due to the fact it's been balmy up until two days ago and what is hitting the ground is melting.  We'll see what happens tonight when the temp dips further!

In the interest of brevity (and keeping this from turning into a novel) here's what's been going on since we last chatted:

1. Spring semester ends with a...bang?  My dad had a major health scare, prompting me to head north to smack him upside his head in person for scaring me, but in the midst of my finals.  My professors were incredibly understanding and let me post-pone my assignments and exams.  My dad stabilized and was discharged from the hospital and I headed back.  That meant that after a week of brain-melting anxiety I was stuck tackling grant writing/papers/finals....it was painful, my profs were patient, and we all survived.  THANK GOD it's over.  My dad has totally recovered and is doing GREAT!  Moving on...

2. We buy a house.   Immediately after finishing my makeup finals hubby and I dove into the exciting realm of home ownership.  That's really a story for another post, but it's a great place that didn't need any significant work to be totally livable, but has tons of potential for upgrades/updates.  Perfect kind of investment place for two people who have limited resources but lots of tools and know-how (well, at least hubby has the know-how.  I know how to hand him tools.  Many years of training with my father :-) Huge yard, lots of light, much more space.  All the furries are happy as are we!

3. We move out of the appartment and storage unit into the new house, then turn around and drive to Michigan again.   Yeah, not my best idea, I'll admit.  We spent 10 crazy days traveling, helping my dad catch up on stuff that his health had kept him from, had lots of emotional time with family at the memorial for my uncle who passed away, spent quality time with my two nephews, dealt with a 90* heat wave with no A/C, dealt with Haley getting a staph infection due to heat then throwing up in the truck due to meds on the way home, staying in the SKETCHIEST hotel and deciding leaving at 5am was better than catching something from the room, and finding out that Va got hit with a crazy-ass wind storm (a derecho) while we were gone and our house/cat sitter found the doors of our new house blown wide open for who knows how long (nothing was taken, neither cat ran away).
Whew!  Makes me exhausted just to type it all.  As for the move itself, we were prepared, we were organized, and we had some awesome friends to help us so it went as smoothly as we could ask.  Except for Haley discovering a bunny nest in the front yard, eating a baby bunny, then regurgitating it onto the linoleum of our new kitchen.  In front of our friends.  Ah, pets.


Bed is calling, and with the crazy weather I think I'm fighting something off, so this is TO BE CONTINUED SOON.  I promise!

A post in pictures

I've managed to accumulate some pics, and thought I'd do a post using the pics as update prompts!

April showers bring....Well, technically that's a late March shower, as viewed from the front step of the apartment.  We've had an up and down spring so far, with some pretty good thunderstorms rolling through.  During house hunting drama we had an entire weekend of rain, then back to cool days and frosty nights, but now were back to sun and heat!

Warm weather earlier in March along with rains brought on spring blooms in a HUGE way around here.  Can't deny it, Blacksburg is BEAUTIFUL in spring!!

(This is right outside my lab building :-)

We're well beyond cherry blossoms and daffodils now.  The trees are really starting to leaf out - you can watch the line of green creeping up the side of the mountains just outside of town.  It's pretty cool, and something I always loved to watch happen on the Blue Ridge back in Crozet.

With the return of warm weather the last two days (as in 80* +  weather) another spring tradition played out:

"The Great Hair Removal Day"

The pictures never do it justice!  Especially on the pups...although the most dramatic effect on them

is a tactile one.  Before clipping, petting them is just like petting a soft, fluffy dog (duh...metaphor fail).  After clipping, petting them is like rubbing a marine's head!  They've been nicknamed the "crew-cut pups" post-clipping.  Both are very happy and were extra-romping on our walk this evening.  Haley has gotten so used to the clipping that she just lays down in the grass now, and I have to drag her around to do each side.  If anyone else has read the Hunger Games (or seen the movie) then you'll know what I mean when I say I feel like her personal prep-team!  Zack is nervous about it like he's nervous about car rides and baths - thinks he's going to die the entire time then is jumping out of his skin with happiness when he realizes he survived.  Sammy took his butchering in stride...not exactly thrilled, but not caring much either as long as we still pet him.  His Pop-eye forearms always crack me up!

And finally, we've got some help on the home front:

Meet the "Happy Home Buddha".  He was sent to me by my wonderful Godmother to "help us find a happy home."  How sweet is that??  It's also a bit hilarious due to the nature of my relationship with my Godmother.  Her purpose as godmother, according to my parents, was to instill in me a love of Sugar Island (the island I grew up on) and....to teach me to drink beer.  I think I'm remembering that second one right.  Yeah, my family isn't so big on religion or spirituality.  Definitely big on family parties and beer.  (Side note- It's no wonder I married a home-brewing man, and that my family loves him!)

 So it tickled my funnybone that at the age of 31, I am receiving the first spiritual guidance from my Godmother in the form of a garage-sale lucky buddha statue.  This is why I love her!!  And to give her full credit, she also listened to me rant for at least 1hr about the house hunting drama explained in the last post.  

Maybe she actually is part saint!!

More updates soon :-)

Yes, still alive

But not exactly happy.

I've dropped off the blogosphere once again, but house shopping had a lot to do with it.  As in, any free time I had on my computer was devoted to searching Trulia, Zillow, MLS, for sale by owner....you get the idea.

I won't bore you with the unexciting process of identifying a house, but the punch line is hubby and I found a great place!  A 2bed, 2 bath modern-ish, efficient green house!  That we can afford!  That we can bike to work from!!  It's actually an earth-bermed home, meaning it's built into a hillside.  Imagine a house with a full walk-out basement, then chop off the top floor and make the front of the house 1/5 stories tall with floor to ceiling windows.  Nice, eh?

Decision made, we made and offer, came to a reasonable agreement, got a ratified contract and applied for a loan.  So far, so good!

Until the "unique" house didn't qualify for the loan.

Seriously, not me and hubby - we're super qualified.  The house didn't qualify, because being so different, it was impossible to find similar comparable properties to determine an accurate market appraisal.  There are specific guidelines laid out by Fannie Mae and/or Freddie Mac about comparables/appraisal stuff, and if the house doesn't meet them, then you basically can't get any USDA, FHA, etc. mortgage.  There may be other loan types that could still work, but they are way more expensive (as in, like 1.5% higher interest rate).

So we had to cancel the contract today.

We're starting the hunt again and not giving up, but I'm starting to feel like karma is catching up with me.  I've been so lucky with finding nice, unique, affordable places to rent with great landlords.  It's like payback now that we can't manage to snag a nice, unique, affordable place to buy.  Ugh.  I'm totally depressed about it - this place was by far the coolest we'd found.  I honestly don't feel like looking for some place else, but the cramped apartment living is pretty good motivation.

This probably isn't the most exciting update, but I thought you guys deserved something. Off to bed so I'll be bright-eyed for 8am class tomorrow.

And another reason to stay active...

Wow. It was recently discovered that exercise changes gene expression in muscles:

http://www.nature.com/news/a-trip-to-the-gym-alters-dna-1.10176

Summary is that the more we exercise, the more metabolism-boosting genes get expressed.

It's just remarkable how we keep finding more evidence of how our environment and behavior can alter something as fundamental as our DNA.  In some cases those changes can actually be passed to offspring!  I'm talking about epigenetic inheritance, or the phenomenon of inheriting gene expression patterns that are defined beyond the the actual sequence of the DNA.  Bear with me while I attempt to explain this for my non-sciencey readers: a child inherits two copies of a single gene, lets say a gene for eye color.  One copy is from mom, the other copy from dad.  The two copies, if sequenced in a lab, have the exact same code, say for brown eye color.  So one would assume this kid would have brown eyes.  BUT for some environmental reason, dad's copy of the brown eye gene is actually turned off by epigenetic modifications.  That's a big fancy word for basically scrunching up the DNA so tightly that it never gets transcribed into RNA or translated into protein.  silent gene = no protein = no eye color from dad's gene.  So our hypothetical child might not have brown eyes (maybe hazel), even tho he/she inherited two genes for brown eyes.

Before someone blasts me for scientific inaccuracy, I know this is a gross over generalization and I honestly don't know how eye color is inherited - I just used that as an easy-to-visualize example.

But seriously - how cool is that?!??  We actually have some control over how our genes behave.  Now I just need to figure out how to turn off my chocolate-craving genes....

And we have our first fail....

Ok, so I'm a bit back-logged on posts.

So what is the glamorous life of a grad student in March?  Using spring break week as a chance to catch up on lab loose ends while there aren't any classes to mess up the day!  Weeee!

Did a quick visit to C'ville to catch up with friends this past weekend - it was wonderful to see folks and catch up, particularly because two of them are expecting.  It was a talk and food filled weekend, with some beautiful weather on Saturday.  The maples are budding out, crocuses and daffodils in full bloom...oh yes, and hubby snuffling with allergies.  Ah, spring!

Then we came back to Blacksburg:

The weather has been so spastic!  Freezing cold with snow, and 48hrs later it's going to be 63*.  I know it normally bounces around in the spring, but this seems pretty extreme.  I know it's hard on Dax.  She started shedding a few weeks ago, but we've had two bouts of cold snowy weather interspersed with 70* since then.  The good part about her new barn is that she's got lots more shelter and shade options than the previous one.  That combined with quality hay means she's as well equipped as possible to handle the crazy weather, short of putting her in and out of a stall (although she actually has access to one of those too!).

Not a whole lot of exciting stuff going on at the moment, except that....drum roll please...

WE'RE HOUSE SHOPPING AGAIN!!  AAAAAHHHHH!!!!

Brace yourselves!

The Vicious cycle

I'd like to wax philosophical for a moment about how frustrating the cyclical nature of stress/exercise/mood is.

I should probably establish that I always feel best when I've done something physical - I know that sounds desperately cheesy, but even hubby notices it - whether it be a long hike, a bike ride, a horse ride, exercise class, whatever, I'm always happy when I get home.  I know it's not rocket science.  Runner's high, whatever you call it, the body-wide and mood altering effects of exercise are WELL documented.

The problem arises when I get busy.  Busy = less time to play.  Oh, and less time to exercise.  However, busy also = stress.  If life were fair at all, stress would = desire to go jogging, because that's what I really need.  That's what would help me sleep better, maintain my focus in class better, have more energy to better make it through long days.  Yeah, if life were fair.

But it's not.  So for me....

Stress = CHOCOLATE
Stress = LAY ON THE COUCH
Stress = ORDER PIZZA
Stress = WANTS FOOT MASSAGES

Why is that??!?  Why is it that the thing (exercise) that would actually help me relieve stress the most is the thing I least want to do??  How does this make any biological sense?!?!

WHY ARE WE WIRED SO BASSACKWARDS???

*sigh*

On an entirely different note, here are photos of Cato finally.  You can see she's not bald, so no worries that she's freezing.

She always balls up like that!  Even when she had all her hair! 

We also go LOTS of snow out of the storm that hit yesterday - it was beeeee-utiful! (I was born in Michigan - love of snow is in my DNA).  It was also the perfect kind of snow b/c even though we got over 8 inches, it's been so warm that once the plows went through, the roads melted in no time!  Being a student, you might think I would be hoping for a snow day out of a storm like that, but I'm too familiar with the academic system.  Big universities will only shut down for the worst of the worst...it's too costly and difficult to shut down an entire 30,000+ machine for some measly 8" of snow.  Doesn't mean I don't enjoy it any less!  Will try to get some pics of the snow up soon.