Full circle

Sarah: Now that we are finished with the semester program, we have been working on finishing up other projects. One of those has been painting the building. We did not paint it, but hired some local guys to paint both the inside and outside. The outside went smoothly, and they were actually able to finish that before the semester even ended. We waited to have them start the inside until we had no groups here so we could be free to move all of the furniture out of the room they were painting at the time. The upstairs went easy, and we put everything back together within a matter of a couple days. The downstairs was quite a bit more difficult, as it took us a long time to even stay ahead of the painters by tearing apart a room. Thankfully, Ana was a big help, and she basically took care of our whole apartment for us - taking it apart AND putting it back together. That woman sure likes to organize!

The lab and storage were the most difficult to take apart, and we found quickly that the lab was FULL of stuff in the middle of the room. It reminded us of our first month here at QERC...

When we first arrived to this job almost 4 years ago, most everything was disorganized and a mess, and we took it upon ourselves to go through the lab and storage to try to make some sense of it. It took weeks, but after pulling everything out and going through it all, we found a home for every piece of equipment. We find ourselves finishing up our time similar to the way we started, having come full circle. Here is a picture from 4 years ago, and a picture from a few days ago:










On a separate note, this past weekend brought some more visitors for us. We hosted a group from Pitzer College, and also welcomed back NNU professor Dr. John Cossel. Along with John came his daughter Jessie, and 2 researchers - one of them being a former student of ours, Kyle Luthman. It was great to spend time reconnecting with Kyle, and we we enjoyed having the whole NNU group here for a few days of hanging out.