Almost PhD Candidate!

After four months of reviewing and studying the literature, writing, and reviewing lecture notes, I made it past my PhD qualifier exam! Now I can call myself almost a PhD candidate!

Taking the weekend off to take a bit of a break and get caught up on some computer maintenance tasks (swapping out some dying hard drives), and then back to work on the research.

Next step will be to figure out what software I want to use for my Monte Carlo simulations, plan out the simulations I want to run, and what data I need to collect.

Roses!

The rose bushes had an easier time this past winter than they did last year.

First roses of the season
First roses of the season

First roses of the season opened up this week, and there are a lot of them.

Lots of roses!

Charleston Eats: Coastal Coffee Roasters

My favourite coffee bean dealer shop, Coastal Coffee Roasters, has grown quite a bit over the years, and has been offering tasty baked goods in the cafe part for a while now.

Stopped by today to grab some more coffee, and thought I’d grab one of their giant cinnamon rolls while I was there. These things are seriously huge, like the size of your head. They also had similarly sized scones today, but I’ll try those another day.

Giant cinnamon roll. The size of your head!

Here it is with a banana for scale.

Giant cinnamon roll. Banana for scale.

20 years at work!

Today begins decade #3 at work. 20 years ago today, I started working here. To say that there’s been a lot of changes at work since I started would be a bit of an understatement.

I’ve gone from having everything all nice and contained within the main campus to now having multiple locations across the tri-county area with imaging equipment that I need to visit. The amount of imaging equipment I lay hands on has also gone up by about 3x since I started. It definitely keeps me busy, but doesn’t leave much time for working on other things like I used to have.

Lots of interesting things happening now, and there’s going to be a lot of new equipment arriving over the next few years: new hospital buildings, new clinic sites, new imaging technology. With any luck, we’ll be able to get a diagnostic imaging residency program started in the near future too.

Next few years should be an interesting time.

Goodbye, Simba

It was with much sadness that we said goodbye to Simba today. This morning, he only wanted to eat a few pieces of chicken and left the rest. After that, I decided that maybe it’s time.

We went down to the vet clinic this morning and two of the vet techs there that have known Simba since he was an 8 week old puppy were able to see him and say goodbye as well. Unfortunately his regular vets weren’t in the clinic today so Simba didn’t get to see them.

4 week old SImba
4 week old SImba
4 week old SImba
4 week old SImba

Simba was the happiest dog (he could also be a bit growly at times, especially when other dogs wanted his ball). The dog park was one of his favourite places, and he loved visiting all of them. He was a bit of a ball fiend and chasing the ball was one of his favourite activities. He’d run after the ball until he got tired, and then stop bringing the ball back. If he picked up the ball and walked away from me before I could grab it to throw again, that was when it was time for a rest.

One time when chasing after the ball, he got T-boned pretty hard by another dog zooming around the dog park. After that, whenever dogs got to running and chasing each other, he’d run over and try to break up the shenanigans.

Happy 4 year old Simba
Happy 4 year old Simba
Simba getting snowed on
Simba getting snowed on

Simba also made a good first impression on Connie too, eating her jury summons.

Simba on his 13th birthday
Simba on his 13th birthday
Out in the yard

Simba was the best boy. I miss him a lot.