March: I displayed my first scientific poster ever at a convention. It was really neat to talk with people about my project and meet other DoD public health professionals. The conference was in Hampton so I had to go through the Hampton Roads Bridge tunnel every day. For those of you who don't know the Naval station here is home to the second fleet and from the road to the tunnel you can look at the Elizabeth river and see carriers, battleships, and subs anchored in the harbor while Naval helicopters practice search and rescue missions in the bay and planes fly overhead. Trust me it's a way cool sight. So here I was coming home every afternoon looking at the awe inspiring site of 2 carriers anchored at port and thinking to myself "I work for the Navy, my job helps that ship go to sea", it was an exciting thought and reenergized me for the busy work days I've been having.
Another highlight of March/April is when the parents came out to visit for easter. Time always flies by when you're having fun and we enjoyed several days together. I was able to go fishing with Dad, to the art museum with Mom, and spend time enjoying being together again.
April continued the trend of major electronic appliances dying on me. So far this year I have bought a cell phone, new electric blanket, and now.... a new computer. For a few weeks my old dell would randomly pop up the blue screen of death with messages such as "Driver IRQC less or equal", "memory management", and finally "ummountable_boot_volume" which turned out to be the last blue screen of death for me. I talked to the geek squad and they basically told me that my hard drive was gone and that for $500 they could put a new one into my 7 year old computer. Praise the Lord the day before my computer finally crashed I backed up all my files, pictures, and itunes library I had acquired since moving to VA.
After weighing my options I decided to bite the bullet and succumb to my apple envy which had been building for 3 years. Thanks to a great financing plan I know own a macbook pro and after using the mac operating system I don't know why it took so long for me to switch.
It sounds kind of silly but it was hard to send my old computer away to be recycled. It had been with me through my entire collegiate career from undergrad to grad school and I had spent many, many hours with it typing papers and doing research. It was a good computer and it never let me down and somehow, like an old horse put out to pasture, I wish their were something more I could do for it..... and how ironic is this, the last cd that I played in it (which I had to manually remove from the dead computer) was Mozart's Requiem (or the music he wrote for his funeral). I laughed at that one.
Anyway that is what's going on right now. I'm looking forward to doing some business traveling and the way my summer is shaping up this could be the last post for a while but hey at least I wrote this one!
