Dr. Stratford!

Last Thursday was a very important day in our household. After many long years of dedicated work, Jeran defended his doctoral dissertation! He did such a fantastic job! He got the dissertation turned in a week or two ago and had only about a week to create his PowerPoint presentation and rehearse it. Considering he had mounds of data and information that he has collected and knows, he did an amazing job keeping it short and understandable while still relaying the full message of his project, which dealt with understanding the underlying biology and mechanisms of pancreatic cancer.

(thanks to Bryan for pictures at the defense)

Presenting Dr. Stratford!*

*But don't call him that - he'll probably get mad or at least roll his eyes. As we like to say, he's "not the kind of doctor that helps people".

Jeran's mom came out to be here on the big day. Hooray! His presentation was really quite exceptional and I wish everyone could have been here. His labmates threw a very thoughtful and awesome party afterwards, including some of Jeran's favorite foods and his typical lunch foods too. Jeran requested the US-Belgium game be playing at the party also since he had missed watching it and several other World Cup games to prepare.

We later went and wandered around Duke Gardens.

Jan and Jeran at Duke Gardens

This log had 5 turtles on it sunning themselves! Another nearby had two or three on it. Some of them were moving around, displacing each other, and it was very entertaining to watch.

The Future

Many of you that we have talked to in person already know this, but we finally have definite plans for what Jeran will do after he receives his PhD this summer.

Jeran's PhD defense is set for July 3 and we are VERY ready for it to come. Or at least I am very ready and Jeran is very stressed and busy getting ready for it to come. He has to submit his dissertation a few weeks in advance and also prepare a presentation. He also needs to submit a paper for publishing by then, but luckily that is part of the dissertation, not a completely separate thing.

So after the defense, he will have a week or two to finish making any adjustments and finalize things (I'm not really clear on what this entails, thus the vagueness, but he said he would need this time to finish work), and then several weeks off before he starts a Masters in Biostatistics at UNC-Chapel Hill. Hooray!

At least I think it will be "hooray" and not "groan". He would like to go more in the analysis direction so this should help him get there and give him training that would make his skills more broadly marketable. We are excited for the change in pace this will bring and are curious what going back to being a full-time regular student will be like after so long. And really anything would be better than what he is doing now because he is so burned out on his work and not thrilled with how his PhD career has gone.

It is a two year program, with some chance of being able to finish a semester early, but we aren't counting on that. Jeran will likely do an internship, teaching or research assistanceship, or part time job to make some money and gain applicable experience and network with useful contacts already in the field.

We will not have to move, although our intention is to gradually make some repairs to our house and then put it on the market next summer or so, so we won't be in a big rush to take any offer we get. Then if it did sell we would rent somewhere (which would also be weird to go back to).

In some ways, I've wanted to move for a while because we've had so many friends move away from us and we've long anticipated Jeran finishing his PhD and then needing to move, so not moving seems weird, but I think the change in his schooling will provide enough of a change of pace to satisfy me right now. And a Masters won't drag out indefinitely like a PhD can. It will be hard whenever we do move away because we have really liked the area we are in and our ward, although it goes through huge transition periods, is pretty much the nicest, friendliest church ward of mostly people in very similar circumstances to us. And the weather here is pretty awesome.

Anyways, we are both excited for this small but major change.

Wherein we are in Utah for Alyna's Wedding

We went to Utah last month for my sister's wedding. The wedding was fabulous, and there was a lot more going on besides!

All the sons and sons-in-law grew mustaches to match my dad's mustache to take a fun family picture together. Luckily, Jeran (and all the others, too) grew a full beard and just shaved down to a mustache at the last minute. Then they all shaved down to their normal, clean-shaven selves. Except Dad, because that wouldn't have been normal at all. :)

All the guys and their mustaches!

Alyna and Kevin had a nice reception in Logan. Surprisingly I think it was the first time I've been in the Skyroom at USU. There was a candy buffet, which was awesome. I got to talk to a lot of family and friends there. Then the next day, the wedding was performed in the Mt Timpanogos temple. It was lovely. Then we had pie in the cafeteria. I had some amazing creamy peanut butter pie.

 The beautiful couple!

 Alyna's dress was so gorgeous. I love it. Unfortunately it was so cold and windy outside for pictures - I hope they turn out all right.

I can hardly believe it; all of my siblings are married! It's so strange! Congratulations Alyna and Kevin! You guys are amazingly awesome!

We also celebrated my birthday with my family and Jeran's family while we were in Utah. Everyone was so nice and wonderful. We had awesome Chinese food and played fun games with Jeran's family. It was a really fun evening. With my family, we also had dinner and played a game: Family Chronology.

At the beginning of the year I was in Utah for business and stayed with my parents. Lisa and Cameron and kids were also there completing their Christmas visit. We all played a fun game of Lisa and Cameron's called Chronology. I thought it would be fun to make a family version of the game so I harassed all my family members through the next few months to send me important or interesting events that had happened in their life and their spouse's and kids' lives. I also added some stories from our ancestors (thank you, new familysearch.org features!) and some historical events that are significant to my family, like Church, state, national, or world events of particular interest, releases of favorite family movies, etc. We got stories and events from our grandparents lives and anything else relevant we could think of. I compiled these all together and we printed them on cards. We played this game of Family Chronology on my birthday and it was such fun! It was great to relive funny stories, learn new things about our in-laws, and be surprised about when things actually happened. I think it is a fun way to do some family history too. I hope we can keep adding to this game and replay it over the years. I love love love our personalized family version.

(Mom, I borrowed your pictures. Thanks.)

Jeran and I were a bit too familiar with all the cards to fairly compete so we read the cards and led the game. It is quite a bit easier to play the family version than the real version, so we had to up the winning card quantity, and then play single elimination, and then speed version.

There were so many people that we had to play in teams and push the table up against the island counter. Sooooo awesome. Thanks everyone who contributed or played!

A bunch of other stuff happened too:

• I had some important work meetings and goings on, and they went well.
• We got to spend the night at Raymond and Molly's new house and spend more time with their family than we have in the past. It was really nice to get to know our cute niece and nephews better!
• We went snowboarding at Snowbasin with family and friends. It was super warm and sunny, but the snow was pretty good. We got really sunburned but luckily it peeled or faded before most of our family pictures and the wedding pictures.
• We got to spend the night with our good friends Dan and Carrie and be entertained by their kids - it was especially entertaining to watch Frozen and see Elizabeth dance and the guys fall asleep. We went to a restaurant in Ogden and got the most interesting chicken pot pie I've ever seen. It was essentially a really tasty soup/sauce with a gigantic (like size of a ream of paper) crispy, flaky, airy croissant thing that you break into the bowl. I should have taken a picture!
• "Baby Tannow" (Tanner) was blessed. I'm glad we got to be there for that.

It was such a wonderful, action-packed trip that I'm sure I've forgotten to write about some other things we did. Thank you everybody who let us stay at your house and for being our family and friends! We love you!

We really needed a break from work too, so the timing of this trip was great. Now we're back home, focusing on getting Jeran done with graduate school, and figuring out what to do next!

Trunk or Treat

We went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat this year, or as I was always accidentally calling it, Trick-or-Trunk, which sounds a bit more sinister.  Our ward does this every year but we had never been before. Jeran and I dressed up this year and decorated our trunk and handed out candy too.  Jeran isn't big on dressing up but I proposed an idea he just couldn't pass up.

We were astronauts.

And our trunk was the moon.

It was pretty sweet.

In case you're wondering, here are some details on the different pieces.

The Portable Life Support Systems (PLSS) units, are the backpack-like things the astronauts carried to provide them with oxygen and perhaps a few other features. Ours were made from a few cardboard boxes pieced together and painted white (just white primer rolled on). We printed a flag, an Apollo mission patch, and the Water Reservoir Recharge label and used spray glue to attach them, and the straps were made from an old shirt and stuck through slits with dowels holding them in place.

The helmets were made from papier maché. The forms were punch balloons with cereal box bases around the neck area. I actually had to make three helmets because I had two punch balloons but one of them had a slow leak. I discovered this half way through applying the paper mache and attempted to keep it alive until it dried by frequently reinflating it, but it ended up drying more like a shriveled brain than a helmet. 

(Aside: The failed helmet was really pretty weird looking and I thought it would be great or something else although I couldn't think what, but apparently Jeran is grossed out by wet paper mache and the paste, so I just threw it out. See the picture at the very end of this post.) 

So after the first set was dry, I deflated the good balloon and made a second with that. I used newspaper strips with flour and water paste, with white paper on the outside layer to make painting easier. I cut out the face holes and some shoulder divots and we spray painted them white. Jeran painted a red stripe on his to indicate that he was the mission commander.

This is the Luner Excursion Module (LEM). Jeran made it from cereal boxes and a balsa stick. He spray painted the top and covered the bottom in shimmery copper scrapbook paper. It looks great!

The suits were just white pants we already had and I got two long sleeve white t shirts at Target. I figured we would want to glue things on them and didn't want to wreck any of our own shirts. We had a flag on the left arm, the NASA patch, the Apollo mission patch, a name, and several valve covers, which were really milk, salad dressing, syrup, etc. caps that we collected over the past month or two and painted red and blue. We hot glued or spray glued these all on. Jeran also got the red arm bands as the mission commander.

Ta da! Houston, we are go for launch!


For the trunk, we got black butcher paper (or bulletin board paper) and put that up around the edges, with glow-in-the-dark stars taped to it and a print-out of the earth from space. The lunar surface was a gray fitted sheet wrapped around our trunk liner with a few bowls and soccer cones underneath and some light colored rocks from Michael's strewn about. (Aside: I can't believe how hard it is to just "find" rocks around here! Growing up in Utah, we would just walk outside and have millions of rocks of every color, shape, and size to choose from. Here I have to beg or buy rocks.) We were pretty happy with how it all turned out and it was really fun getting everything ready. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Here is a picture of the failed helmet.

Failure vs. Success. Apparently it is quite important that the underlying object stays about the same size while  the paper mache is drying. I guess if we'd had a third party, someone could have been a pretty scary alien with that on their head.

July 2012

Hi again. Just an update to prove we are still alive.  Life is proceeding at it's normal carefree pace. We have been doing the usual stuff, that is, work and eating and sleeping. We have also been watching quite a bit of the Olympics which is very fun, although I wish they didn't show it all so late at night!

My work is going well and I'm enjoying it - usually - and keeping busy most of the time. Jeran is working also, and while I'm not sure if he's enjoying it much,  he's working hard to get things done.

Jeran had a birthday this past week. I made a really delicious root beer float ice cream cake. It was pretty easy. It's basically white cake mix plus root beer and vanilla ice cream. While I was assembling it Jeran commented from the other room that it was sounding pretty sketchy based on the frequency of "Oops!", "Oh nooo!", "Aaaack!", etc. coming from the kitchen. Mostly it was really hard to get the cake intact out of the pan so maybe next time I'll use parchment paper or something. So the cake was looking pretty poorly when it was assembled, but then you top the whole thing in whipped cream and it amazing hides the worst flaws. And it's frozen so something that may have fallen to pieces stays nicely hard and stuck together. Anyways, this cake was forgiving and it was a success and I'm still enjoying the leftovers.

We got to go spend a weekend in Atlanta with my sister Jessica and Aunt Kara. Jessica, Jeran and I went to the Georgia Aquarium, which is always awesome, even though there were about a billion people there. The sea otters were really active and leaping in and out of the water and wrestling and chasing each other and just being funny - they were the highlight for me. I think for Jeran it was the giant tank with an underwater tunnel and huge viewing side containing sharks, whale sharks, manta rays, guitarfish, groupers, and lots more. He also enjoyed talking to the aquarium employees about diving and interesting dive sites.

Then we had Chick-Fil-A complete with Georgia peach milkshakes. Yum. After a nap, we went to Stone Mountain and despite the occasional raindrop and ominous clouds, climbed to the top and surveyed the beautiful area. It's a very nice view because although there are lots of buildings nearby, there are so many trees that you can't see many of them, although farther off you can see the huge Atlanta skyline.  After eating the sandwiches we packed for dinner and hiking down, we parked it on the wet lawn to wait for the laser light show. We ate snacks and watched the show and then headed home to dry off. It was a fun weekend.

I can't believe it is August already. 2012 will be over before we know it and then we'll be in an odd year: 2013. Not odd as in even/odd, but strange. 2013 sounds like a strange number for a year. Oh well.

Random Facts: I like potatoes. I like air conditioning. I like clouds and trees.I need to paint my toenails (opinion?). Some crossword puzzles are hard. I like summer but spring and fall are nicer to enjoy. I do not like calling the season "autumn" because that seems to me to be referring only to colored leaves and pumpkins. 2013 is not really a weird number, but it is an odd number.

Motorcycle!

Drum roll! After years of working on it, Jeran has completed the rebuild and cleaning of his motorcycle! We are fortunate enough to have friends who very patiently allowed the motorcycle a corner of their garage for all that time. Jeran washed and de-grimed pretty much every piece of the bike and replaced all the broken or really worn pieces. He also got the frame repainted and it looks much, much better. It really needed an attentive tune-up because before he started this there was some trouble with the brakes and also the clutch cable broke while he was riding it. Yeah, not good. Anyways, without further ado, here are some before, during and after pictures:

Before

During

 After

Hooray for finished projects!

30 Days: Day 7

Day 7: A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you

Published

I forgot to post when this happened, but last month, Jeran was first author on a paper! "A Six-Gene Signature Predicts Survival of Patients with Localized Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma" was published in PloS Medicine in July. Hooray for Stratford JK et al.!

All Aboard the "Adidas Express"

Jeran likes walking. Sometimes, he would rather spend a long time walking somewhere than bother to call any of the large number of people who would be willing to pick him up if he is stranded at school or some such thing.

In response to questions like, "How did you get here?", he has often been known to say things like, "I took the Adidas Express." Anyone who doesn't understand at this point will have their eyes directed to his shoes, which are almost always the Adidas SS2Gs. (At this point I usually throw in an eye roll or an exasperated, "Why didn't you call me?!")

Any time the current pair are looking pretty beat up, it is time to get a new pair and shift all the other shoes down a rank:

Nice shoes,

not-terrible-but-not-great-looking sport or work shoes,

dirty work shoes,

I-don't-really-care-if-these-shoes-get-ruined activity shoes.

In a way, it is really nice. If we find a good sale on them, we can buy multiple pairs at once. And he usually doesn't have to spend much time deciding what he wants when we go shoe shopping.

When this picture was taken, he had long ago thrown out some of his older pairs. I have to say, I had a pair of women's adidas shoes that were a similar style and they were my favorite ever and if I could ever find them again, I would buy them.

Long live the Adidas Express!

The Return of Orville Burnenbacher

Apparently Jeran has been holding out on me. Hiding his candle under a bushel. Withholding his secret talent.

I have long known that Jeran has claimed to be able to make popcorn in a pan on the stove, which is something I had never seen done (seems strange in retrospect). So the other day, he finally demonstrated his mad popcorn popping skills.

Pan + oil + heat + kernels + lid = Amazement! and Popcorn!

(As an aside, my reaction seeing this was just like when I learned that you can make syrup instead of buying it or the first time I ground up wheat! Wow!)

Jeran made a batch of very perfect stove popcorn with fewer kernels left than microwave popcorn usually has and none of it was burnt. He flavored it with some butter-flavored salt and it was pretty darn good. I think we'll make those yummy popcorn balls some time now.

As for the name, Jeran says "Orville Burnenbacher" is a funny nickname he once had but he definitely didn't live up to the Burnenbacher part this time!

Thanks for the demonstration and popcorn, Jeran!

They finally found him

Jeran got some exciting mail this week.




The evening gown event should be interesting.