Ups and Downs

It has been ~3 weeks since our last post. Hope all are doing well!

We've been riding the wilder parts of the rollercoaster of life lately: some fun and some not so fun. Personally, I'm ready for the flat parts again. First, our XBox 360 died. Fortunately, it was still under warranty and so we would not be out any money while it was being fixed. However, >2 weeks without an XBox caused some serious withdrawls around here.

Second, our computer (3 years old at the end of the month) died. Technically it was the hard disk drive that failed. Badly. They were unable to recover anything. We lost all of the files since our last backup to the external drive. Since I last backed it up just before moving out here in January, this means that we lost all of the videos and pictures that were saved on our computer for nearly the entire time that we've lived in Colorado. While the computer was under warranty (great timing since the warranty is up at the end of this month), and we now have it back with an entirely new hard disk drive, it doesn't make up for the loss of all of those memories. I've re-grabbed a lot of the pictures of the past year back from the blog and photobucket (I'm glad we put that DVD of the summer reunion together!), but those are just a small handful of the pictures we had. I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage everyone to purchase an external drive, and to back up their hard drive every month or more depending on how often you use it.

Thirdly, our furnace died. On Monday we had it serviced in preparation for the winter months ahead and they noticed a crack (~2 inches and very thin) in the heat exchange. The pilot light was also yellow at the tip when it should always be blue throughout. We learned that this indicates that it is leaking CO (carbon monoxide, not Colorado), and that a greater amount would be generated and leaked when the furnace is on. Of course we turned down the thermostat and purchased new CO detectors in order to be safe until we can afford to replace the furnace. However, this morning it had turned itself off completely - we woke up to a 58'F house and could not get it to turn on using the thermostat. Upon inspection we noticed that the pilot light had gone out. This suggests that it had detected a problem and turned itself off. Looks like we better get it replaced soon. Unfortunately, this 18 year old furnace does not have an active warranty, but on the bright side it is supposed to be a warm week ahead!

Last night Austin and I went out on the town. That is until we noticed that we had a flat tire. Fortunately, the tires are only 14 months old and have lifetime warranties for repairs/replacement if damaged (notice a theme here do ya? warranties are good!). We'll have to take the time to get it repaired/replaced tomorrow.

We do have several positive things to report as well. First, Austin has survived the high school basketball cuts and is now a member of the freshman team! "Tryouts" were actually spread out among 3 consecutive days of >2 hours per day. After the first day of tryouts Austin and 3 other freshman were asked to come to the JV and varsity tryouts for the next two days. Needless to say the competition was much more difficult and the boys were much bigger and more skilled. However, from my unbiased observations Austin fit in very well there. The fact that he was still taller than 85% of them probably helped. At the end of these much more stressful days he had his one-on-one interview with the coach and was told that he was on the border, but that they were going to place him with the freshman for now. He later found out that only one freshman of the 4 had found a spot on the JV team. I personally think that this is for the best: he will get to play more, won't be frustrated from the tougher competition, will gain more confidence, and will have more fun. Besides, it would not be surprising to see him moved up later in the season if need be. Austin is also doing very well in school. He has 4 A's and 2 B's that he is trying to move back up to A's by the end of the semester. One B is in his Honors Biology class and the other in Spanish. I think he can do it!

Nathan has also indicated a desire to play basketball (Yeah!!). We've never put any pressure on which sports the kids want to play, but we have always encouraged them to play something. Now Nathan is all signed up for his 7th grade team and we are looking forward to watching him play this winter!

Lisa just finished her favorite time of the year, Halloween, where she had the opportunity to dress up as a witch for her class. She looked great and is enjoying her new job at the pre-school. She has also found a great cinnamon roll recipe - just in time for the cold months ahead - that we are all thankful for!

My research is going very well. I just registered to present my data at the April 2009 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting in Denver, and have co-authored a patent that we just submitted. This was the 3rd Biology patent that our company has ever submitted. Since we started out 10 years ago as a company with a novel chemistry technology for identifying "druggable" compounds it is no surprise that most of our past patents have been for chemistry-type intellectual property. The patent writing process was very interesting. It is much different from writing research manuscripts. Lastly, at our bi-annual meeting of all of Biology I was recognized for having co-authored a patent and earned the "Atta Boy" award for the meeting ($75 gift card).

All-in-all we are still very happy and are glad to have the opportunity to be reminded of just what is important in life: not money (did I just write that?), not possessions, just each other.