Croatia: Saturday and Sunday

We've arrived in Dubrovnik without significant incident. All of the flights were on time, nothing particularly stressful about the trip, other than some minor turbulence over the Atlantic. Maya did as we had hoped and slept the entire long haul flight. And most of both of the shorter ones (coach is apparently much more comfortable if you're only 2 feet tall). Bringing her carseat along was most definitely the best decision:


We've checked into our hotel (Hotel Croatia). It's great, and the reception is extremely impressive. We received a very personal greeting, were immediately handed our room keys (no imprint of our credit card needed!), and had a bellhop take our luggage up for us. When we got to our room, the baby bed was already assembled and made up, and we had even forgotten to ask about it when we checked in. We've also had time to take a little walk along the hotel's patios and down to the "beach" (which is just a set of stone steps that plunge into the ocean). We'll try this out (perhaps all of us other than Maya) and the hotel's two saltwater pools sometime later in the week.

Here are some views from the hotel:


We went back up to the room to clean off the travel grime; Maya immediately conked out:


Soon, we're off to dinner in Cavtat. I'll try to keep you all as updated as possible, though the internet access is not as great as I had hoped. It is free, which is good, and it also seems to be fast. But it's only in the hotel's public areas. The network is teasing me; my computer can see it from our hotel room but can't quite seem to get enough signal to get connected to it. I'll keep trying. More soon!

Finally Finished!

On July 12, the work began on our back yard. Yesterday, everything was finally finished. Here are some photos of the completed work:





Our extreme gratitude to Audrey and Arthur who've been keeping the dogs all this time. I'm sure they're looking forward to our return next week...

Maya likes the new yard:


Or maybe not:

Our Little Invalid

Maya went for her four month checkup yesterday (a little early, but in time to get her shots before next week's big trip). She checked out great; she's growing like a weed: 90th percentile for height and 95th for weight. But, for some reason, Maya doesn't believe in "well-baby" visits. She got the beginnings of a cold Sunday night, and now she has the full-blown thing. She's lost her "voice," so in addition to the phlegmy breathing and hacky cough, she has the most pitiful almost silent cry. It's horrible. About the only thing that's making her happy today (other than napping in my lap) is her electonic star:

And from Maya's perspective:

If one toy goes with us on the trip next week, that's it.

More Progress

So they're threatening to be done with our backyard this week. That would be great, since we'll be gone next week. It will give the sod some time to get watered in before the dogs come home. Here are some updated pictures. First, the patio pavers. Then a couple of views of the patio.

The Live Music Capital of the World

Austin is known for it's live music. We're not really "plugged in," but we enjoy some music now and again. With the arrival of sweet Maya, we've been staying in more recently. But this week, we went out to the last night of "Blues on the Green" here in Austin. It's a free blues concert every other Wednesday all summer long. We took some sandwiches and sodas and enjoyed an hour or so before Maya thought it was time to call it quits.




We did get to meet an Austin... um... celebrity. Leslie wandered by and kneeled down next to Maya. She was a bit... um... overwhelemed and she started crying. You know what they say... "Keep Austin Weird."

On Bananas, Avocados, and Ethylene

So I found out my first or second year of graduate school that I was "allergic" to bananas. It was a weird sudden thing; I used to be able to eat bananas without any ill-effects, but, all of the sudden, even a bite of raw banana would send my stomach writhing in excruciating cramps. Over the next couple of years, I tried again a couple of times but always with the same results. So it was that I resigned myself to not eating bananas. Strangely enough, however, cooked bananas seem fine. (Which is stupendous, since I love banana bread... no nuts, please.)

At the time, I did some internet searching, but I really couldn't find much about the problem, so I just assumed I was some crazy freak of nature.

Fast forward several years...

Today, I had a very tasty "Turkey Chipotle Wrap" for lunch; it had turkey, cheese, avocado, lettuce, and some chipotle sauce. About fifteen minutes after finishing it, my stomach started to take a turn for the worse. I was initially concerned about food poisoning, but after another 15 minutes or so, it felt just like the banana reaction. So I did some searching. And it turns out the Internet has grown since 2001! There's quite a list of people with exactly the same symptoms (including onset in their 20s!). Some links on this page led me to some bona fide research (I actually read an article from the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology).

From what I could decipher, bananas, avocados, and kiwi (and some other fruits and veggies) contribute to something the literature calls the "latex-fruit syndrome." Scientists have isolated the problem to stem from an enzyme (a chitinase, if you're keeping score) present in lots of produce. The problem seems to be isolated to a particular group of fruits because these fruits produce ethylene, which hastens the ripening process. Something about the ethylene appears to be correlated with the chitinase causing things like severe stomach cramps. And, for the record, heating the fruit seems to inactivate the enzyme.

Ethylene produced by fruits to speed ripening is a natural process. As the concentration of the ambient ethylene increases, the fruit ripens more, and produces more ethylene, in a cycle. (This is why you put fruit in a paper bag to help it ripen; the bag concentrates the ethylene around the fruit.) However, fruit distributors are apparently using this to their advantage to control when the fruit ripens (because, clearly, they want it to be exactly ripe at the store). They pick the fruit early (before it's ripe) and then they can store it for longer periods of time. Right before they deliver it to the grocery store, they spray it down with ethylene, inducing that ripening process. Some people conjecture that this less natural ripening process contributes to the allergies. Some people with the allergy report that eating fruit they KNOW hasn't been sprayed with ethylene prevents the response.

For me, I'm not willing to take the chance. No bananas, avocado, or kiwi for me.

Learning to Think Before You Speak, Part 2

Oh, I love my job. I love the flexibility and creativity of it, and I love working with students. But the nature of the field is that it is sorely lacking in women. I have very few female colleagues. And usually it doesn't bother me. But my male colleagues are so oblivious to what they say and how it is perceived that it is, at times, annoying. Just now, I've received an email sent to a list of assistant professors addressed "Gents." Now, I am the only woman on this list, but he knows me and he should know I'm on the list--he should have known better. As another example, when I was ~5 months pregnant last year, a male colleague said to me in the elevator, "So, looks like you're cooking something up in there." Geez.

Now, both of these guys are people I'm generally friendly with, and I really honestly believe that they're not actively trying to keep women down. In fact, I don't believe that either of these guys is against promoting women to join the field (you may be surprised to learn that there are some people who still think a women's place is not in engineering). But if you happen to be in a field where your sex dominates (and I've heard this happens the other way around to men in female-dominated fields), have a care, and THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK!