New Year, New Things

As the story goes, when the Romans made their calendar they chose to name the first month after Janus, the god of doors and gates who oversaw all beginnings and endings. And so it is that now, on January 1, we celebrate another planetary rotation and step out of what we called the year 2016 and into 2017. It's a good time to embrace change, whether we like it or not.

Coincidentally, the new year brings lots of new changes for Becky and I that are unrelated to the cosmos.

Of course, there is our little mancub Alex, who is now 38 days old. Since I've posted plenty about him previously, I'll just say that a new baby for new parents means the beginning of many new things related to child care, doctor appointments, learning to operate car seats and so on. And also the ending of old things such as seven to eight hours of continuous sleep and now, my paternity leave period.

All of that leads to another change for us: a new car. 

For the past seven years I have been driving a 1998 Ford Escort ZX2 2-door coupe that I bought from my friend Dave for $500 when we were both in graduate school. It was the best $500 I ever spent because it lasted past 250,000 miles for me without too many problems, and it still has a lot of life left in it. 

Fig. 1. My old Ford Escort (above) and our new Subie (below).

But baby seats don't go well with two-door cars. So I decided it was time to upgrade since we have accumulated some savings and I had some extra time to do some car shopping. I was attracted to the idea of a Subaru Outback since they combine the family-friendly functionality of a station wagon with the flannel-friendly ruggedness of an all-wheel drive SUV that can tackle any road. Obviously, I hope to take my family on many camping trips in the future. 

Although I actually like the unique station wagon-like design of the older (pre-2009) Outbacks, I decided to get a used 2010 model with a bit more life in it even though the newer models kind of do look like another small SUV, which are everywhere now it seems. We got it from a small dealership in Phoenix run by this guy and his son that seemed legit. Anyway, so far we really like it. It is well-designed, it looks nice, it handles well, it has very high safety ratings and it is a lot of fun to drive. 

It also has all the storage space we need for baby stuff. This weekend we loaded up our Schwinn jogging stroller in the back and drove out to the Gilbert Riparian Preserve and walked along the dirt trails for over an hour like we did when we were dating, except with little Alexander in tow. It was great.

In other news worthy of the Roman god Janus, I will be wrapping up my current job at Arizona State University this week, and starting a new job the following week. 

Fig. 2. A view from above in the Biodesign Institute, where sometimes Dr. Blattman would play flamenco guitar music at the end of the day.

I have been at ASU for over 10 years now -- five years as a graduate student, and then another five years as a post-doctoral fellow over at the Biodesign Institute. I've been on the hunt for a new job for the greater part of 2016, and finally landed the offer for my new job on the same day that Becky went into labor. I wrote a post about my experience over on my other blog if you want to know more details about what it is like to be a PhD level biochemist on the job market.

My new job will take me to Phoenix, working at the Arizona Department of Health Services in their virology lab. My responsibility there will be to perform the laboratory testing needed to identify viruses that are circulating in the community, such as influenza, West Nile, rabies or Zika if it makes its way to Arizona. It will be application driven, and therefore a departure from some aspects of the research environment that I am used to. But I am really excited to begin a new professional chapter in my life, and even more excited to be done with the job hunt.

Becky is also beginning a new job (kind of). Her boss retired and transferred her business over to a new owner. In this scenario, Becky retains her old clients and so there aren't too many other changes besides the fact that she is cutting back a bit on her workload because of Alex.

Today we got our new batch of Sunbeams in Primary. We've enjoyed watching the last group grow, and look forward to getting to know the newbies.

And to wrap it up, I also got myself a new laptop recently after my old one was destroyed in the Apple Cider Incident of 2016. It is a Thinkpad X1 Carbon like my old one was (which I was very happy with), but a newer generation of it. It's actually my third Thinkpad now; I like them mostly because they are one of the few laptops that still have a mouse pointer on the keyboard. It saves a lot of time to not have to take your hand off the keyboard to use the mouse while you are typing. Anyway, it has pretty much all the same specs as the new 13" MacBook Pro, except that it is a half a pound lighter, slightly larger, a bit cheaper, and it doesn't need a bunch of adapters because it has a variety of ports (sorry Mac fans!).

Fig. 3. Three generations of Thinkpads. Black, boring, sturdy, functional and reliable - that's how I like my laptops.

And finally, our orchid plant that we've had for about a year decided to flower this past week (shown at the top). This represents the most success that I have ever had with a houseplant.

Happy 2017!