To answer your question...

Jenny is doing fine, but she is tired a lot (thanks for asking, MaryAnne). Tomorrow is a big day because we hit 21 weeks along and we have our ultrasound to find out the gender of our little tike (great timing, MaryAnne). Jenny is nervous because then we have to actually start doing all the things we have been putting off until we knew our baby's gender. We don't care if it is a boy or a girl--we'll be excied either way--but I just hope the doctor is able to determine the gender. I don't know if I can wait any longer. After the ultrasound, we are scheduled to head over to my parent's house to celebrate and make phone calls. I'll post something here by Thursday so that you're all in the know.

Speaking of determining our baby's gender, we've done some pretty funny "tests" to determine if our baby is a boy or a girl. Jenny filled out something online that was supposed to use Chinese Astrology. She had to put in her birthdate, how old she will be when the baby is born, and other information like that. That test said the little person growing inside Jenny is a girl. Another one we did involved a watermelon and the straw from a broom. A Forest Service employee we were helping to stabilize Theatre in the Pines (more on that in a minute) made us take this test. Jenny had to sit in front of the watermelon while it rested longways on a table in front of her. She then had to hold the broom straw in the middle and place it on the top of the watermelon. If the straw stayed sideways parallel to the watermelon, our baby is a boy, but if the straw turned perpendicular to the watermelon and pointed towards Jenny, our baby was a girl. Well, the straw stayed with the watermelon, so the watermelon-broom straw test says there is a boy growing inside of Jenny. We have also been able to hear our baby's heartbeat a couple of times and it has been above 140 beats per minute both times suggesting we are having a girl (I guess boys' heartbeats are usually below 140 while girls' are usually above 140). I am considering coming up with my own test (maybe using a coin flip) to determine the gender. Whichever gender I picked would have a probability of being correct of about 0.5. Then I could publish my test and become a housenold name in reproductive health (wouldn't that be ironic given my aversion). I'm just kidding, but I wonder if I could develp a test before tomorrow? Hmmm...

I got back from North Carolina a couple of weeks ago and Utah's never looked so good (even after the mission). North Carolina is a great place and I would highly recommend living there to anyone, but all those trees made me closterphobic after a while. I was so glad to see wide open spaces and tall, majestic mountains. I was so excited when I saw Lavell Edwards Stadium and the Marriot Center from the airplane. It was like having a part of me restored.

Before I left NIEHS I had to present what I had completed on my project to the rest of the branch and I got to visit the Epidemiology Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well. My presentation took 30-40 minutes when I practiced it, but it took an hour when I gave it because everybody kept asking me questions or giving suggestions. That was actually good because we are a little bit stumped. The results of our logistic regression analysis were not we had expected and we were unsure why. We have since repeated much of the analysis using Cox proportional hazards regression (thinking that logistic regression wasn't as appropriate for our data) and got essentially the same answer as before. I have a lot left to do to determine if our results are actually what they seem to be, or if we are just not looking at the problem correctly.

My visit with UNC was pretty interesting. I met with a former PhD student who is now a post-doc, three professors, and the student services lady. I came with a two-page list of questions and was a little surprised when they all just let me go down my list. It was very informative and they were pretty positive about my coming there for a PhD in the future. I am not sure yet if I will go on or not, but it was still neat to be there and daydream a bit about what might happen in the future.

The day after I arrived home Jenny took me on two weeks of camping and archaeology for her work. It was really cool. The two weeks were two different Passport In Time (PIT) projects. PIT is a volunteer program run by the Forest Service to get the public involved in preserving our nation's historic and prehistoric heritage. Volunteers come from all over the country to be involved, so it's a great way to meet new people, network, learn about our heritage, and do something worthwhile with our free time. The first project was stabilizing some of the stone walls that make up Theatre in the Pines amphitheatre next to Aspen Grove (above Sundance in Provo Canyon). Theatre in the Pines was built in the 1930's by the CCC and WPA to accomodate the thousands of people that made the annual hike up Mount Timpanogos (discontinued in the 1970's because of all of the damage 5,000 people can cause hiking up a mountain at the same time). Many of the stone walls have needed repair after the 82 years since its completion, so we spent the week adding new concrete and resetting stones.

The second project was recording archaeological sites via hiking and surveying at a place called Vernon (about 40 miles south of Tooele). We found about 40 "tools" used by ancient American Indians. The tools included various arrow heads, scrapers, bifaces, etc. dating from a few hundred to several thousands of years ago. Most tools are left at the sites because real archaeology is preserving what is there, not removing it for one's own profit or interest. I said "most tools", because some tools are removed for diagnostic purposes (i.e., How old is the site? Who made the tool? How did they make it?). These tools are then displayed in museums.

I apologize for such a long post, but it is the first time in a while that I have felt like I actually had time to post. I'll let you know our baby's gender soon.