A New Year

At the end of December, John and I celebrated almost 3 weeks of Christmas. First in Cabo, then in Kansas, and finally back to Galveston. We had a great time and needed a break.

John had been studying very hard and was rewarded with good rankings in his classes. He was #3 in Anatomy and #14 in Molecules, Cells, and Tissues. Overall, I think that will make him very competitive for his future career. However, those scores did not come without alot of studying, so he was happy for the break. He started back to medical school on the 3rd of January. This course is called Pathobiology and Host Defense. In addition to medical school, John and Dr. Barral, his mentor from this summer, have been working on an abstract for a couple of contests that John wants to enter. One is a National Student Research Forum. It will be held at UMTB in late April. There is a small cash prize. The second contest is a Neuroscience competition for those students at UTMB. It carries a $5,000 prize. He would submit the same research to both contests. He is also hoping to submit a complete manuscript to a scientific journal for publication soon. The title of his paper/abstract is "Sacsin: A Novel Cytoskeleton-Interacting Protein Involved in Neurodegenerative Disease". Whatever that means! The long and the short of it is that he has alot of things up in the air.

I was also happy for Christmas break. I was not allowed any time off from work for the first six months, although I did take one sick day. It was restful break, but I was ready to go back to work. My classes do not start again until Jan 16. Unfortunately, I had to sign up for one night classes this semester so all of my evenings will be full until May. I have exactly one week until the Houston Half Marathon I am participating in. It is on January 14 at 7 am. My running partner and I are actually feeling pretty good about it. The training has gone well. I do have one setback. My right knee has been swelling up after the long distance runs and it takes a day for two to feel better. My Fundraiser for the HIV program has raised $890 exceeding my goal of $500. That was with much thanks for many of you.

I can speak for both John and myself, when I say that we had a good year. We enjoy Galveston and UTMB. We are content with our church, and we have slowly been making friends. We are very grateful for the blessings this year. It has sure flown by. With that, I will leave you with some pictures of Christmas 2006. Happy New Year!