August 2021

Here is a link to photos and videos from this month. There is not much of interest to report on besides our vacation trip out west and a new job offer. More on that below.

Visit to Utah

We haven't been out west as a family to visit our families there since summer of 2018, so we were excited to plan a trip to visit this year. We planned to visit my family in Utah the last week of August, while Becky and Alex would continue on to Arizona to see Becky's family the first week of September and I would fly back to New York to go back to work. It was a lot of planning that involved four airports, two airlines, lots of driving, and three Covid tests for Alex to meet travel requirements since he won't wear a mask on the plane.

The journey didn't start out well, as we hit a wall on traffic on the way to the airport in Scanton due to a fatal accident involving an RV and semi-truck. We had to move the flight to the next day, and grab a nearby hotel somewhere in the Poconos. Our roadside hotel booking led us to what turned out to be a dive bar with a flophouse above it that did not allow kids. We had to cancel our booking when we got there (which took at least an hour due to issues with a third-party booking site) and opted for the much nicer, albeit more expensive, Comfort Inn. We lost a day with family on our planned trip, but on the bright side we got IHOP for dinner and then visited the mall in Scranton and Steamtown, which is an old railroad station turned into a National Park. We've been to both places before on a previous trip to see Scranton in hommage to The Office.

We were worried about how Alex would do on the plane, because it's a long time for him to sit in one place. Once he figured out what we were doing though, he seemed really excited to be flying on a plane. The last time we flew with him he was not quite two, and less aware of what we were doing. After a couple flights/layovers during the trip, he was eager to get in line, board the plane, put his seatbelt on, and try to look out the window above him as we prepared for takeoff.

We arrived at the new Salt Lake airport late Saturday night, and Victoria and Erik were kind to pick us up. We stayed at my parents house in the basement, where they have a couple of beds and somewhat empty bedrooms. Alex always enjoys exploring new surroundings, but he wasn't thrilled about the jumpy dog. Over the time we stayed there, the dog calmed down a bit and Alex became tolerant enough of it. 

Sunday the entire Lawrence family gathered at Linda and Alan's in Heber where we had food and a family photo with all of us in it. Here we met Alexa's husband Simeon for the first time (just married a few weeks prior), and Jim and Melanie's 2-year old Elise for the first time.  Getting all kids, spouses, and grandkids together hasn't happened in a long time and probably won't happen again in a long time.  

Monday we got Cafe Rio and had lunch at Jim and Melanie's house. Later we drove out to Lehi to meet some friends, Julianne and Brendan, for dinner at a park where we could chat while the kids played for a while. Afterwards, my friend Britton stopped by to say hi as he happened to be staying at this parents' house two doors down.

Tuesday we took a walk along the Jordan River Parkway to a few playgrounds along the way. Later we went to Fashion Place mall, which is not the same mall it was when I was a teenager. Alex found a blue mini Cobra (the kind you put a dollar in for play) that is exactly like the one in a mall in New York that he obsesses over. We had to pry him away from it after an hour, while we took turns hanging out with him and eating a blizzard. Later for dinner we went over to Jim and Melanie's for pizza and an evening of kids running wild in their fun backyard. Although Alex doesn't show much interest in his cousins (or any other children for that matter), he sure enjoyed playing with their toys and could have stayed there forever.

Wednesday morning we visited Wheeler Farm, where Alex could see all the tractors and take a tractor ride. He's not as crazy about tractors as he was a year ago, but he still enjoyed it. Later we went over to Victoria and Erik's to visit for a bit, then we met our friend Shane for dinner and pickleball at a park in Saratoga Springs that also had an amazing playground that Alex enjoyed. 

Thursday we took an afternoon trip to the Gateway Children's Museum and enjoyed a couple hours there before Becky and Alex continued on their journey to Arizona that evening. More on that next month.

I stayed until Sunday, which gave me time to go through boxes of my old stuff that has been stored away and try to decide what to get rid of and what to keep. This led to the discovery of some personal items belonging to an old roommate of Bill's who was a con-man and stole his friend's car and drove to Canada, Bill said. And also the discovery of many other items not belonging to strangers, but with interesting stories from the past attached to them nonetheless. I got to see David and Brie's place out in Magna and go hiking with much of the family up a mountain in Draper. And I got to hear my niece Isabelle give a talk in church before she leaves on her mission to Bolivia. I went straight from there to the airport without much time to spare, so that timing worked out.

It was great to see everyone again after so long, and I only wish we had time for more visits and activities. But hopefully it won't be so long before our next visit.

Taking the Red Pill

Last month I mentioned that I had a job interview with Baylor College of Medicine for a science editor position. This month I continued those discussions to the point where they made me a job offer. In the film "The Matrix," the protagonist Neo discovers the matrix and is offered a choice by Morpheus: take the blue pill and return to life as he knew it before, or take the red pill and follow Morpheus into Wonderland to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.  This is how having a new job offer feels to me. My current job is comfortable now that I've been there for 3.5 years. The benefits are great, I feel appreciated, I like my colleagues, and it's not too stressful. But it requires me to be away from Alex and Becky during the week, as it is a couple hours away from the clinic where Alex has school/therapy. The new job would solve this problem by allowing m e to work remotely full time. Furthermore, it would merge my most recent experience doing grant proposals with my prior experience doing laboratory research in virology, as I would be working on proposals specifically for someone in the section of infectious diseases. I would be doing less administrative work and more technical work -- helping write publications, helping create figures and other visuals, and training grad students and postdocs on things related to communicating their research -- all things I'm interested in doing, but I don't do in my current role. Basically, I would be dusting off my PhD and becoming a member of lab group (although not in the lab) like I was before as an undergrad, grad student, and postdoc, which feels like my natural habitat. So that opportunity would be great, the major downside is that the benefits are worse than what I have now, including the healthcare coverage for the services we use for Alex. The offer was for a bit more than I make in my current position, but a union-negotiated 2% annual pay increase just kicked in so the salaries are now about the same. So those are the tradeoffs. I talked it over with Becky and also with my family a bit while visiting Utah, and decided to take the red pill - I'll be starting work at Baylor College of Medicine in mid-September, and sadly saying goodbye to my colleagues at Binghamton University. More on that next month.