Adventures in planting blueberries

I have been all talk about this for about a year, but I finally decided to take action and plant some blueberry bushes in our backyard.  Now, I must disclose that I am not a gardener.  In fact, my ability to keep houseplants alive is really not good.  But I really wanted to give this a go because I think it would be really cool to have some sort of fruit-bearing plant right there in my yard.  Plus, I think Ally would get a kick out of picking berries.  So I took the plunge and purchased a set of 3 blueberry plants from Burpee.com. 

Now, I will admit, I kind of thought that the plants we were going to get in the mail would be fairly substantial looking, like this:

I had found something online that said we were supposed to dig holes 2 ft across by 2 ft deep.  So last Saturday, Ben and I went to work digging 3 holes in our yard 2ft across by 2 ft deep.  Well, actually Ben did most of the digging as I am 7.5 months pregnant and not exactly in the best physical shape right now.  It took a pretty good chunk of time to do this, and we ended up with holes looking something like this:

But what came in the mail looked something like this:

As you can imagine, I felt a little silly having had Ben spend a greater part of our Saturday morning digging 3 ginormous holes for tiny seedlings.  Also, I came to the realization that we probably wouldn't have a blueberry crop until next summer.  So last night, we back-filled our 3 holes with dirt and peat moss and planted the little seedlings in the backyard.  Now they look something like this:

My next task is to construct some wire cages to put around the plants so that the deer and rabbits don't get to them.  I guess in about 14 months, we'll be swimming in blueberries!  I did find something at Lowe's yesterday that might give me a little more instant gratification though:  hanging potted strawberry plants.  I'm going to get one today and try it out.

A pregnancy brain moment

I think it was last week sometime, I had fixed myself a mug of ice cream for dessert after putting Ally to bed.  Now, we all know that ice cream belongs in the freezer, right?  Well, not this particular night.  The next morning when I opened the fridge to get some orange juice, there was the carton of ice cream.  Apparently, in a moment of pregnancy-induced absentmindedness, I had put the ice cream in the fridge instead of the freezer.  Of course, it was completely melted.  Ultimately no harm was done, as I put it back in the freezer and that night, I once again had a mug of frozen, albeit slightly icy, ice cream.

Third trimester already???!!!

Man, this pregnancy is going so fast!  Friday, I ushered in the last trimester of my pregnancy by going to the doctor and taking the oral glucose tolerance test.  At least I did not have to exercise afterwards!  At least the sick-to-my-stomach feeling passed pretty quickly this time; no one should ever ingest that much sugar at one time.  It is just gross.

Of course, there are still things that need to get done in these next 12 weeks, and the one that is in my mind's forefront is to finish my dissertation data collection.  I have 14 subjects left to complete, and as long as no one gets sick, decides to drop out, cancels their sessions, or gets disqualified from the study, I think I can get all my subjects through before May.  But my dissertation has thrown me curve balls in the past, and babies do come earlier than their due date, so I guess I just have to be prepared for anything at this point.

In other news, I went on an interview a couple weeks ago for a faculty position at another area institution.  It was a really good experience, and we'll just have to see what comes of it.  There is another employment opportunity in the works around here as well that seems promising, but as nothing is official yet, I need to speak in vague terms.  And I should also give a shout out to my friend Michelle who successfully defended her dissertation a couple weeks ago at Duke.  So I guess there really is a light at the end of this PhD tunnel!

Family cold

It is no secret that toddlers stink at keep their germs to themselves.  Ally has had a couple colds this winter, and of course, I have caught all of them too.  The three of us are just now getting over one.  Ally had the runny nose first and sure enough, Ben and I had runny noses a couple days later.  I will not lie, the mucus output in our house was quite plentiful.  Ally's and Ben's upper respiratory tracts have now cleared up, but mine is not quite there yet.  I don't know if these sorts of infections hit you harder when you're pregnant, but I sure am looking forward to being able to smell and hear normally again.

Actually, I did find one positive aspect of having a cold.  In my Physiology class last week, I was teaching my students about the parts of the brain, and I brought in a cadaver brain for show and tell.  Of course, the thing had been preserved in formaldehyde, or whatever similar chemical they use these days, and so it had a pretty strong preservative smell.  I am not a fan of that smell, and in my pregnant state, my gag reflex is a lot more sensitive than usual.  But because I had a completely stuffed up nose, I couldn't smell a thing! 

And in case you are wondering, yes, it is a little weird to hold a former person's brain in your hands.  And yep, it is pretty squishy.

The data collection plugs along

Not much excitement in the lab except that I keep plugging along with my data collection.  It is at times tiring and stressful.  Well, the actual data collecting part isn't bad, it's the part afterwards that can be a little tricky.  I run all my blood samples on a flow cytometer to measure my NK cell proportions, and I'm never 100% sure if the machine will cooperate with me.  Last Friday, the flow cytometer was not nice to me; maybe it sensed that it was Friday the 13th.  But this morning, everything seemed to work fine.  Maybe it was because my advisor tagged along (he was not familiar with flow cytometry), and so the machine sensed there was a guest and decided to behave.

I am definitely experiencing whatever version of "senioritis" corresponds with the final year of a PhD program.  I am so ready to be done with this data collection because I really want to see the results.  But I know that patience is the key here.  Also, I think I am ready for a change, meaning that I am really looking forward to transitioning from Beth the doc student to Dr. Evans the faculty member.  I hope to know something more on that front in the next month or so.

In the meantime, we keep plugging along. . .

The colon is a funny organ

Last week, Ben's family came to visit.  We had bunches of fun with a total of 13 people and 1 large dog in our house.  Of course, the food was plentiful, and we took turns cooking meals.  Ben's brother Paul made this really good bean dish that was kind of like baked beans with sausage and peppers in it.  I do want to emphasize though that is was pretty heavy on the beans, and I'm not going to lie, several members of the family experienced some "outgassing" shall we say.  You can't really talk about lower digestive system issues without it getting pretty funny, which brought to mind a column written by the humorist Dave Berry.  It first appeared in 2008, and is about his experience getting his first colonoscopy.  I have re-read it several times, and each time, I can't help but laugh.  I am posting the link to his colonoscopy column here.  Enjoy!

Major things I'm looking forward to this year

In no particular order:

1.  Graduating with my PhD
2.  The arrival of Baby #2
3.  The transition from graduate student to some sort of faculty-ish employment
4.  The Olympics
5.  The presidential election

Happy New Year!