It's A Nerdy X-Mas!

With Mara having a brain full of anatomical jargon, we decided to revisit the Body Worlds 3 exhibit that was being shown in St. Louis (about 4 hours away). No better way for science nerds to spend X-Mas Eve! We headed out at about 8am and got to St. Louis around 12, and found an awesome Indian Cafe to eat at. The exhibit will soon be in Milwaukee and Mara and I URGE you to go see it. It is one of the BEST things you can do to see human bodies in their most preserved state. Absolutely fascinating, even for the non-science oriented. There were quite a few people with kids, parents, friends, so anyone can go. Some people didn't quite get the idea behind it, but it really does make you think about yourself in a different light. And YES, they are real bodies...like the picture in this post.
The exhibit is the 3rd installment of the touring shows. The first we saw in Chicago on our honeymoon, and the 2nd we saw on our 1 year anniversary. We were really glad to see it again on X-Mas eve!
We did find some time to walk around the prestigious Washington University (WashU), while sipping on some Starbucks of course, before we headed back to Kirksville. It was a solid 9 hours in the car that day, but worth every second!

Sorry for the "All-At-Once" blogging, but we've been busy! :) Scroll down to see the last few days of blogs...

Happy 30th Birthday Josh!

(The most recent picture I have of Josh, practicing the "baby thing" with our nephew, Sam.)
Mike & I went up to wish Josh a happy 30th birthday in Ottumwa, IA on Sunday, 12/23. I can hardly believe Josh is 30, it seems like just a few years ago he was pinning me to the ground and letting spit dangle to my face only to slurp it back in at the last minute, demonstrating a face wash on me with some freshly fallen snow, or teaching me to swear and then telling on me when I did...ahh, what wonderful memories of the "big brother"! All kidding aside, he's a pretty great older brother:)
It's really nice having Josh, Debora, & soon-to-be Baby Bacon only 1 hour away. We haven't really had too many opportunities to visit with our crazy schedules and their jet setting but we hope to take advantage of the closeness in the future. It will be really nice to have a nephew close by since the next closest niece/nephew is 4 hours away. Love those nieces/nephews! So fun to spoil and give them back:) We can't wait to meet Thomas!!!!
Josh and Debora have the house nearly ready for baby Bacon, they are too cute!
It was a nice evening and the weather cooperated, no crappy roads or loss of power! Josh & Debora's had gone out the night before for a few hours. IA/MO's way of losing power is quite foreign to this Wisconsinite, I can't remember the last time we lost power in WI not due to lightning!

Icy Hike

When we had another 12" of ice/snow coming our way, we HAD to get out of the house and hike a little before we were stranded indoors. I'm not sure who had to get outdoors more, us or the dogs! We went back out to Thousand Hills State Park on Saturday (12/22) and hiked around our favorite lake. It was a little muddy, but we brought extra clothes to change into. We were so desperate to go outside we were willing to brave the wintery cold rain (34°C), muddy trails, and brisk wind. The dogs could care less, and they actually got their first taste of a frozen lake! Lucy was deterred only for a minute until she got her footing figured out, then we had to yell to keep her from the middle of the (barely) frozen water where it was so thin we could see the water rippling under her feet as she was walking! That was a pretty eerie site.
We went for about a 5 mile hike, and then turned back when the rain started to get a little heavier. The dogs were a little tired when they get back. My parents and Grandma were supposed to come down from Eldridge, but with the inclement weather they (wisely) chose to head to Wisconsin instead. We only ended up getting about 2-3" out of the whole storm, but North of us got some high winds, and Wisconsin ended u p with another 8" or so. Hopefully we'll be able to meet up with them sooner or later... :)

Winter Break has begun!

It's only been 4 weeks since Thanksgiving break, but we are very ready for the longer winter break. It's amazing how much information they can cram into a month. We had exams in 4 classes and 3 practicals in the last week. This quarter is a little busier than first quarter.
Hopefully this break will be more relaxation and more family time!

New Bat-Phones! (Same Bat-Numbers)

You gotta LOVE the retention departments! These are departments that cell phone companies set up to retain your business. They are authorized to give you pretty much whatever you want, just to keep your business. You do sometimes have to bargain with them, but with that not being my strong point I was still able to haggle new phones, unlimited data pack (surf the internet, e-mail, etc.), unlimited text messages, nights & weekends at 7pm, and a bunch of other services for FREE! These companies can do it because it make sense from a business standpoint. If you give someone $200 in free equipment and services (I'm sure it cost Sprint even less than THAT!), and sign them to a 2 year deal for ~$75/month, your still making $1600!
The phones kick butt too! They were just released a week before we bought them, and should have cost $500 each! I am usually on the forefront of technology, but normally don't want to spend the money to use it, but if it's free...hell yeah.
Mara likes it for the PDA and calender functions, and I like the nerdy techy stuff. It even has GPS so we can find where we are when I get us lost at Thousand Hills State Park...:)
Blogger also has a cool function where we can upload our photos, videos and text messages directly to a blog so whenever we are out and about, we can rub it in that we're having a great time! (Or how boring our life of studying can be...)
Instead of cluttering this blog with pointless photos and such, we are also going to have this blog: http://syringmobile.blogspot.com/. You don't have to memorize it, there will be a link on the left hand side of our blog if you want to check it out sometime. It probably won't be updated too often, but since it's a fun, new toy to play with, I'm sure we'll mess with it a little bit. I uploaded some fun picture of Mara and the puppies...:)
If you ever change phone companies and want to know what to say to get free stuff, just call me and I'll give you some hints. We've already got the same phones and plan for friends of ours here. Since they've already given it to us, they HAVE to give it to whoever asks for it (or at least the equivalent). And it you don't have to have Sprint to do it either, every company has these department, you just have to ask the right questions...

Holiday Season

It's hard to believe that it's Mid-December and the holidays are nearly here. We've been so busy lately and up until this last weekend, the weather has been mild, 50s and sunny, so it hasn't seemed like winter or Christmas yet. It finally (yup, that's sarcasm) snowed last week, just in time for holiday parties. Mike had a couple of holiday parties this last week through ATSU. The study break was welcome and we enjoyed getting dressed up and having some appetizers and a few glasses of wine with professors. As you can see we wore matching orange:)

We Love Missouri

Iced in...between last nights 1" of ice and tonight's forecast of 1.5", we'll be covered in 2.5" inches of solid ice by tomorrow morning. Milwaukee (well, WI in general) prepared us for cold wintery weather, but we definitely weren't prepared for the ice storms that are common winter weather around here.
We are so glad we have a fireplace and a garage! The fireplace has been awesome to study and warm up by, and best of all, if we lose power (as predicted...), we'll still be cozy warm. We ordered a full cord of wood (4'x8'x16') 2 months ago, and still have over 2/3 of it sitting in our garage, nice and dry. We've seen plenty of people ice-picking their way through their wood pile, but not us! Our car is also sitting in the garage, dry and ice-less. It's nice to drive to school and see everyone who had to scrape a little 2'x2' window in their windshield, and our car is spotless.
We both got the day off of work/school since they canceled classes at KCOM, and Mike didn't have to work since ATSU is part of the same college. He did have a final at Truman today, which still held classes. I think Truman was the only school still open, all public and private were closed today and I'm sure a few will be tomorrow. Seems kind of funny to have an "Ice Day" instead of a snow day, not that we're complaining.
We saw something interesting on our way home from Truman. We stopped at Hy-Vee to get some food for supper (mmm...meatloaf) and I noticed a tree smoking. One of the branches had fallen on the power lines and was starting to smolder and smoke. We called 911 from across the street and while we were on the phone with them the tree caught on fire. A few seconds later the line started buzzing and then snapped, landing on someones front porch. The police showed up soon after, but it was really neat to watch (from a safe distance). That power line is one of two downed lines we saw within 0.5 miles of our house, I'm sure it's only time before one is close enough to take out our power.
The icy weather kind of stinks but the trees behind our house look pretty...

Happy Solar Minimum!

OK...that doesn't have the best ring to it, but right now the sun is at it's least active state. There is a satellite orbiting Earth called SOHO which has been imaging the sun for the last 12 years. The sun has a solar cycle that has to do with activity such as sun flares & coronal mass ejections (see other post). Anyway, SOHO took images in the ultraviolet wavelength, which is a good indication of energy, over the last 11 years, capturing the complete solar cycle. The most activity was seen in 2001, which means we are on the other end of the cycle now. Solar flares are what can cause really nice auras (Northern Lights). I would like to make a trip up North to see them someday, but Alaska will have to wait until after school...:)
You can check out Astronomy Picture of the Day for a better explanation

Hope this nerds up your Tuesday!!!