An Epic Ballade of Texas

Every two years, the Genetics Society of America hosts a conference at UCLA bringing together people from around the world who work on C. elegans worms. I have attended these conferences many times in the past. This was my first time attending as a big grown-up professor. In fact, I was also joined by the first Norris Lab graduate student! [First night at the conference: image source: https://twitter.com/SSerenaDing/status/1141933928137351169] I also spent a lot of time skipping conference sessions to catch up with all sorts of family and friends, including... Kyle, at Santa Monica Beach.  [Living the SoCal life!] Rafael, for brunch/lunch in Beverly Hills. And my parents, at The Getty Villa. I did in fact do some productive things at the meeting. I gave a talk and my graduate student presented a poster. Also, while we were in transit between LAX and UCLA, we learned that the lab's first paper had been accepted by a journal! (More on that in a futur...

Mom turned 60 this year, and her family surprised her by showing up for a vacation at Yosemite National Park.   [Surprise!] My part of the family first made its way from Dallas, TX to San Jose, CA. There we met Brian, and spent some time at the Googleplex. Elliot enjoyed the free food and games on campus.   [Mmmmmmm.... kale smoothie!] We all rendezvoused  at an Airbnb just outside Yosemite, where we surprised Mom! We mimicked the camping life with campfires in the backyard. During the days, we entered the park. Here are the Norris Boys napping at the top of Vernal Falls. Elliot and Micaiah had a hilarious time together, as usual. Here they are "Playing Frisbee" And here they are in their favorite TV-watching poses. Elliot is definitely a water baby, so it was no surprise that he loved Yosemite. He wanted to play in / get in / point at every bit of water he saw. Finally, time to go home. Here'...

Fall 2018 was my first semester as a full-grown professor. I finally started performing my big teaching responsibility. The course was BIOL 3304: Genetics. The course consisted of two separate classes, each class containing ~75 students. One meeting was MWF at 11 am, and the other immediately thereafter, MWF at noon. In other words, I got to give a lecture for one hour, then turn around and give the same lecture again the next hour, 3X a week! Here's a photo I snapped during the final exam, for a sense of scale. Here I am posing with two of the most useful tools for the course: our genetics textbook, and a hoodie. The hoodie displays two strands of DNA (of the famous double helix ). The zipper represents the hydrogen bonds by which individual DNA bases from one strand interact with their counterparts on the other strand. The students loved it!     Meanwhile, The Norris Lab continues to grow! Two Ph.D. students, one technician, six undergraduates, one Profess...

As per tradition, we headed west to spend time with family for Christmas, and had a lovely time. Here's the whole Shearer gang at Grandma's (aka GG's) house. And here's the Norris gang out for a hike. Looks like we're in Utah, right? But we're actually still in Orange County. Last year  at this time Elliot met his cousin Micaiah for the first time. I posted this picture of them "sharing hands": Well here they are, one year later, still going strong: While in California, Micaiah spurred Elliot on to walk, and now Elliot is walking all over the place! One last picture of Elliot doing two of his favorite things: (1) being a Cool Dude, and (2) chewing on a fresh-cucumber-scented-baby-wipe. Finally, while we were in California, my brother turned THIRTY! We all sang him this song.

Elliot just turned ONE YEAR OLD! To celebrate, his grandparents came to visit. Here's everybody celebrating at Elliot's baby work (aka daycare).  [That's his baby work boss in the back] On the day of his birthday, Elliot's second cousins came over (the Sanchez family) and we all played at the park.   [Elliot "opening presents"]  Most kids get to make a giant cake mess on their birthday. Well *my* son chose to make the world a cleaner place:   Elliot is really enjoying his new birthday toys. At first, however, his favorite part was sitting on the boxes they came in: Later while my parents were still out, the WHOLE NORRIS CLAN went out and played tennis. Happy Birthday sweet baby!

Meg and I celebrated our 7th Anniversary by heading to the cooler climes of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. What is there to do in the Twin Cities? Well, for starters, we headed over to the largest mall in the USA: [Yes, we are overlooking an amusement park, inside the mall] We visited a modern art museum in Minneapolis, where we "participated" in one of the works of art.     Did you know that Minneapolis was the "Flour Milling Capital of the World" in the 1800s? Well it was, and now you can visit some of the "ruins" of abandoned mills along the Mississippi River, and observe re-enactments of how the mills worked. [We're on the 7th floor of a now-defunct General Mills flour mill] We headed over to St. Paul, where you can visit earthen mounds thousands of years old, built by Native Americans on a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River. We also took some time to enjoy Northern (Scandinavian, that is) food. ...

  Now that I'm my own boss, I get to choose which conferences I go to. This year, go figure, there was a conference about C. elegans in Barcelona! The meeting was held at a big convention center / hotel / cruise ship port of call. It's the big bowl-shaped building at the tip of the pier in this photo. In my free time I visited a museum dedicated to the art of legendary Barcelona artist Joan Miró .  I found a painting that looks remarkably like C. elegans worms crawling around on a petri dish. Maybe he was a fan! Here's a photo of the whole gang of worm researchers at the meeting. I'll also mention just one tourist attraction. La Sagrada Família is a cathedral, and is currently the longest-running construction project in the world (began in 1882). I've been to a lot of cathedrals in my lifetime, and this one takes the cake. The outside entrance is a nativity scene that looks like it's made of melting wax. Unique features include angels pl...