Travels to... Cincinnati: Day 1

This week I will be mobile blogging from Cincinnati. A fellow postdoc and myself drove up to Cincinnati Children's Hospital/University of Cincinnati to learn a cool new technique recently featured in Nature. We will be here the whole week. We left Nash today around 3 and basically drove straight across Kentucky... My first time in Kentucky. It was a pretty, quick drive.




From there, we headed straight for the medical center, as our hotel is across the street.




And from there, we needed dinner! The time had changed and now we were in Eastern time and in the thick of the midwest so we wondered if anything would be open at 8pm... We drove a bit and thanks to the wonders of GPS and my iPhone, we found The Spicy Pickle down in the university district.




It was yummy!
And yah, the pickles were spicy!
Here's Yang, my fellow postdoc:




And of course, me!




Time to head to bed! More from Cincy tomorrow!
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Potty-update!

You know you're a parent when you post this following update:

She did it! She went on the potty for the first time this morning!

(You also know you're a parent when this type of thing makes you dance around your tiny bathroom like and idiot. :-))

Potty time!

There's a new contraption in the Powell house!




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True Oregonians

This heart-Oregon logo is many places in our lives- on a t-shirt, on my water bottle I use all day long, etc etc. We made this little change to our car a while back, but it makes me smile every time I get in. (I'll admit to actually shedding real tears the day we had to give up our Oregon plates on our Audi.... luckily, Bruiser, our Land Cruiser, still has his for a bit...)

So, if you needed further proof that we are true Oregonians (beyond our extensive rain gear, and our five ways to brew coffee and forever-quest for good, cheap organic food), here it is:

The little sticker fits perfectly in the middle between the 2 sets of letters/numbers... and conveniently right over the top of the logo for the state of Tennessee!! And generates lots of conversation when we run across others from the Pacific Northwest! (Which we do, actually, quite often!)

Time to buy a real slide?

Lately we walk to the elementary school nearby where she can play on a slide. Last night, she walked over to the rain gutter flow guard and sat down. Poor Ev.

















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Trip to Oregon

The Powells just got back from a glorious week long trip to Oregon.
Flying into PDX, we spent the first few days out in Scappoose and attended our niece's wedding on Sauvie Island. I was lucky enough to get to do my 25k marathon benchmark with my marathoning partner-in-crime, Carole on Saturday morning (58 degrees, NO humidity and nearly 100% flat!! YESSS!!!) and then run a trail race with my sister in law, Jess, and our brother Brian's girlfriend, Monica, on Sunday. After that we headed to Brendon's family's home in Dufur, OR, where we left Ev with her grandparents and took a dayhike on Mt. Hood. We intended to do Cooper Spur with B's brothers and their significant others, but the snow was still too low to go without snowshoes, ice axes, etc. and we weren't set up for that, so we opted for the Tilly Jane/Cloud Cap hike.  It was gorgeous. (We miss Mt. Hood so much and it was actually a hike we hadn't been on before.)  In our time in Dufur, we also got to visit the cabin we built on his parent's land and spend some much-needed, good quality time with Ma and Pa Powell.

From there we headed back into Portland, having dinner with some family and then OHSU grad school friends mid-week.  We finished up the week staying with some of our best friends who live in Vancouver.   It was a whirl-wind trip, but we really enjoyed it. Below are some pictures. (As a side note, I've made a list of the less-than-obvious ways living Oregon is different from Tennessee -for better or for worse-, which became apparent to me while I was there.... will post in an upcoming blog.)

On a personal note, in all honesty, the trip was really quite hard on me. Moving away was tough and I have always known that I miss it,  but don't think I realized how much.  There are so many things to miss- mainly the weather and the weather and landscape is the most obvious thing: maybe it's the Montanan in me, but give me cloudy/slightly rainy in July, some "real" mountains and streams and some evergreen trees and I am one happy girl. Part of it as well, is the memories of 11 years living there. I think that we are making some new, good memories in Tennessee and don't get us wrong- we are happy with our decision to have moved here- but I think it's ok to just admit that life in Tennessee isn't for us in the long-term and just try to enjoy the time we have here.

After traveling back, I can say with nearly absolute certainty that I will live in Oregon again one day. In the business of science (especially academic science), one can never be 100% sure, but I will do everything possible to live there again. (Of course, all good things in this world come from Oregon, as you can see in our sidebar. If you can think of others things to add to the list, please let me know!)

All in all, it was a wonderful trip and while it may be some time before we get back there again, we feel lucky to have had the chance to visit.

Oh the joys of first time parenting: rash update.

So from what we can tell, Ev has just gone through a bout with roseola.  She battled a fever for a few days last week, along with runny nose, but she has teeth coming in, so we blamed it on that. However, when we were loading her into the car in Portland on Friday, Brendon noticed some raised bumps on her. We undressed her right  there and found a widespead rash.  Of course, we were flying back to Nashville on Saturday, so I was worried it would get worse (like a friend of ours' kiddo who is a few weeks younger than Ev had a very scary episode with a rash earlier in the year) and that we shouldn't get on the plane where we wouldn't have access to medical care for much of the day.  I called Vanderbilt and they reassured me that what I was describing was a classic viral rash and likely roseola: 3 days of fever, fever ends and then 3 days of rash.  (Other mom friends in Nashville have experienced the same thing and diagnosed it as such via text, whereas my Portland moms had no idea what I was talking about. Regional illness?)   Anyways, the rash started on her neck, back and tummy on Friday. (Luckily, it doesn't itch!) Got much worse yesterday on our flights home, nearly covering those spaces and crept onto her face.

Ev's back

Today those places look less raised and much less discolored, but it started in on her legs and arms...    It seemed much better tonight and we will send her to daycare tomorrow, as she is no longer contagious, but sheesh! This parenting thing is scary sometimes!! :-)

Nothing like a little rash

First mobile blog from the Denver airport en route back to Nashville. Trip was great- we miss Oregon already, but we won't miss these spots that showed up yesterday on our last day in Portland.



(its on her chest- forgive the peach yogurt mustache!)
Advice nurse from Vanderbilt says it's likely a run of the mill viral rash and we sure hope so. Started off small yesterday and now covers nearly all of her torso, back and neck and has started to go onto her face. Oh the wonders of human physiology...

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Location:Denver, CO

Trip to Oregon (teaser...)

We are currently in the midst of our summer excursion home to Oregon.  Here are a few pics of the trip so far (trail racing, wedding and family reunion and Mount Hood dayhike...)

Fourth of July fun at the Powell's house!

Marathon training update

Thought I would give a quick update of how my training is going!

Just finished up week 10 of my 25 week program. 12 mile run this morning, 10 next week and 15.5 the weekend after that. Basically, I'll be running right around a half marathon every weekend from now until September 22, with the exception of one 15.5, one 18.6 and one 21 miler. Much more aggressive than my last training plan, but so far things are going really well. The heat of the summer has definitely set in here in Nashville (this morning, when we finished it was 89 degrees. Whew.), so I am typically running my weekday mileage, (which is generally 4-5 miles 3x in the week) from 6:15a-7a, and then weekend runs usually don't start 'til 7a or 730a. The heat has dragged down my mile times, but the same thing happened last year and the bounced back (by over a minute!) in the Fall, so I am just trying to get out there and get it done and let my body take care of itself.

All in all, I'd say my training is going really well and I am definitely feeling stronger and more confident in my running than during my marathon training in '07. For example, I ran 4.5 yesterday, 12.1 today and will run 5.8 tomorrow- nearly 23 miles in 3 days. I'm going to be tired, but its very doable for where my level of fitness is at right now. No way I could have done that last time without a rest day somewhere. (I think having put in over 2,000 miles since then helps! ...as well as all the hill training. I run on the steepest routes available here in Nash, which I think is REALLY going to help me in San Francisco.)

Lastly, a huge shout out to my husband who has been pushing the jogger along side me for my long runs... and who bought me my new absolute FAVE running tank, bra and shorts from Lululemon for my birthday! Thanks, babe!

Headed to Portland next weekend for our niece's wedding and I'm running a 10k trail race (plus 4 additional miles to get my distance in) on Sunday with my sister in law. So excited. Hoping all my hill work will have paid off!!

Princess shoes

Today Ev tried on her green princess shoes in preparation for next weekend's Portland wedding.

Evelyn, where are the airplanes?

"UP!"