{"id":5416,"date":"2022-09-19T10:06:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T10:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/updates.xephalon.net\/?p=5416"},"modified":"2022-09-19T18:26:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-19T18:26:57","slug":"labor-lab-and-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/2022\/09\/19\/labor-lab-and-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Love, Labor, and Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>The summer heat wave reached temperatures up to 116F which kept us indoors for most of Labor Day weekend. I spent the cooler evenings installing solar yard lights<\/a> while Melody tried her hands at smoking ribs. We also ventured out for dumplings at nearby Yang Kee’s<\/a> soft opening which was respectable for the driving distance. We otherwise spent most of the long weekend lazing about with fuzzy sherpa pillows from Target<\/a> and a Le Pouf<\/a> bean bag<\/a> for Westley. The relaxing weekend helped us rest up for our drive to Monterey the following Saturday for our first lab retreat since the pandemic. After picking up my post-doc Carol, we stopped by Fremont for Taiwanese breakfast crepes and sandwiches at Cafe Mei<\/a>. In Monterey, we studied caterpillars at the Frog Pond Wetland Preserve<\/a>, stopped for disappointing fried seafood at Sea Harvest<\/a>, then met up at the Monterey Bay Aquarium<\/a>. We were wowed by the new “Into the Deep”<\/a> exhibit which introduced us to psychedelic jellies and giant isopods that looked like football-sized roly-polys. At our spacious AirBnb<\/a>, three generations of junior specialists coordinated a grocery run and pizza making that included teams for prepping dough and toppings. Westley joined in for some toy fort building and a round of Uno<\/a> before we cracked into our Pandemic<\/a> board game. We awoke Sunday to pancakes and omelettes to finish off our pizza toppings, then headed to Carmel beach<\/a> where we grooved to Vulfpeck<\/a> while playing badminton and volleyball. Westley tired himself out digging a hole and fell asleep on our drive home. We stopped for lunch in Sunnyvale with excellent dumplings and noodles at Dumpling Depot<\/a>, but our Moomo Tea<\/a> might not have been worth the 30-minute wait. This weekend, we tried out a new piano teacher<\/a>, toured the new Tschannen Eye Institute<\/a> building, then revisited the California State Railroad Museum<\/a> where Westley kept busy building a thingamajig while getting over a non-COVID cold. Melody and I spent the rest of our time researching our Australia trip in February as our excitement grows for our upcoming travels.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The summer heat wave reached temperatures up to 116F which kept us indoors for most of Labor Day weekend. I spent the cooler evenings installing solar yard lights while Melody tried her hands at smoking ribs. We also ventured out … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5416"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5438,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5416\/revisions\/5438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}