UPDATE: After I wrote the post below, I stopped posting to this blog for several years. During that time, I got married, converted to Judaism (although it still feels weird to call myself a Jew, mostly because my husband is not so observant – he did not ask me to convert, by the way –  and I am agnostic), had a baby, finished my PhD, and started working as a Project Scientist in Jonathan Eisen’s lab. Most of my previous posts were about hiking and a road trip that I took from Davis to Durham to attend a workshop on Phyloinformatics at NESCent. During that road trip, I stopped along the way to collect Drosophila because I thought that the Drosophila-microbiome interaction was going to be the main focus of my dissertation research. One of my strokes of genius was to solicit the help of big-name Drosophila biologists at regular intervals along the way to help me out. I asked them to take me collecting with them when I got to their town. My plan was to camp all the way from Davis to Durham and back. Without fail, everyone I contacted either offered to take me out collecting, put me up for the night, spent an entire day with me, identifying and sorting species in their lab, or all of the above. It was an awesome experience that I really should write a book about.

Anyway, I’ve finished the PhD and feel like this new chapter in my life should be accompanied by a renewed dedication to this blog. So here we are.

Post proper:

I’ve been a slacker about this, so I’m going to try to slowly catch up to the present. On my way home from Angel Island in April, my car hit a milestone. Here it is:

I didn’t know at the time, but this marks the beginning of the era in my car’s life in which most everything falls apart. I guess you could think of it as a time for a re-commitment to my car. Time to re-invest the purchase price.

Buying a 1992 used VW Cabriolet: $2000.
Keeping the car running for the next 100,000 miles: well over $2000 (I’m afraid to add it all up.)
Getting out of Davis whenever I want to: priceless