onomatopoopa

Here is our prediction of how the debates will turn out.






Also, see below for a recent post and check the vacation blog for an additional post.

We had quite the welcome back to Philadelphia Monday night, when we heard a bunch of sirens outside our door at 8:30pm. When we abandoned our Oatmeal Creme Pies and cold milk to see what was going on, we saw this:



Shortly after the first video, but before the fire got really huge, Katie got some nice footage of the firemen using a circular saw to cut through the metal garage door.



It proceeded to grow from there to a three-alarm fire, requiring multiple fire hydrants several blocks away and dozens of fire engines.


What was burning? A lamination shop -- in addition to the wood and boxes burning, the cans of glue and laminate made some impressive explosions.


We were more fortunate than most of the surrounding blocks. The wind was blowing away from our house, so were only displaced for 1 1/2 hours and our house doesn't smell like smoke. Shockingly our car didn't smell like smoke either, and neither the fire nor the firemen put any dents or marks on it, even though it was next to the fire hydrant and 25 feet from the burning building!


For more pictures, video, and local news coverage see this link:
http://www.nbc10.com/news/17534146/detail.html

Thanks to a last-minute purchase from an online re-seller of tickets, we got the chance to do something that normally would be way out of our budget -- we got to see an Eagles game! They played against the New York Jets. Unfortunately, they lost. But we had a great time watching them! We even got to see a new member of our branch, who just signed with them, play in his first NFL game.

We had a really cool video to attach, but the format wasn't compatible. Sorry! Better luck next time to us (and the Eagles--they lost by 7).

This is the poster I presented at the Translational Control meeting last week at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, NY. As you can see, the layout and colors are fantastic, thanks to Katie! (People at the conference noticed, too, and complimented her.)

It went really well. People were interested in my work, the poster was clear, I made some good contacts, and had some good discussions. All in all, a successful week.

Thanks for your prayers and well-wishes!

This week Bart is going to a Translational Control conference in New York to present a poster entitled, "Nucleoside modifications modulate activation of RNA-dependent protein kinase (PKR)." I'm sure you all know what that means. The picture below represents my mind (top) when I think about that title. The bottom picture probably represents Bart's mind.

Anyway, here's a link to the site where you can see Bart's name listed as a presenter:

http://meetings.cshl.edu/meetings/abstracts/2008transc_absstat.html

Good luck Bart!