I almost forgot!

Hi all,
I almost forgot about my blog! i can't believe it. My memory has been compromised by my pregnancy-it is amazing how much trouble I am having remembering the littlest things I used to have no problem with. I am getting better recently b/c I ave started writing more down and getting anal about using my online calendar etc but it is not easy to change the habits. I know I need to get used to being more organized BEFORE the baby comes b/c after it will all go to hell I am sure.

Well things have been pretty good the last 2 weeks. I am feeling fine-still tired but no longer baby-nausea. I now have a bit of a baby belly. It sort of "popped" sometime last week. Of course now almost all of my favorite pants don't fit my waist so I was getting really frustrated b/c I have no money to go shop right now. Then I was reading a pregnancy/baby website and I came upon an advert for an amazing invention-the Bella Band! see this linik. It is super simple but a great idea-it holds your un-zipped pants up and covers any extra skin that might be hanging out b/c of your baby belly. and it looks fashionable as well. It just came in the mail and I am wearing it today. It is already excellent and does the trick perfectly. I would highly recommend it to my friends who are going to be pregnant soon.

Well the temperatures are rising around here-it is awesome in the 50's and I can feel spring right around the corner. March is a month for birthdays in my immediate and extended family-many parties-overwhelming but fun. I also have a bunch of friends in denver area with bdays in March! Lora, Amber, Beth, Ferogh! so many wonderful people born in March. Leah & Mike are having a party this weekend, then there will be a big BBQ at Ed's house to honor June's 21st bday on the 18th then a surprise party for Jody's husband Mike (30th bday) at the conservation club on the 24th then a bash at my parent's house for everyone in my immediate fam with bdays (Kelly, Mike, Leah, Hannah, my dad, Georgia) WOW!!!!!!

Georgia, Kelly, Kurt Jr. all made it back home from their travels. They all had wonderful trips and learned alot. Kelly had several very successful interviews in seattle and expects multiple job offers-so K & K will probably be moving to the northwest next fall. It will be so good for them to start a new life together-it was hard for Bill & I to leave our friends, family, and comfort zone in MI in 1999 when we moved to Denver but it turned out to be the best thing ever for us in terms of our relationship & our lives in general. I hope the best for K & K -they have much to look forward to.

I have been really busy with work these last 2 weeks. Several of us from the lab are giving talks at a conference in mid-April in San Fran so we have all been doing extra experiments to boost our data for the talks we will be giving at the meeting. Jeff (grad student in the lab) and I have also been working with the UM tech transfer dept and some UM MBA students to set up a business plan for the biomaterials business Jeff & I are dreaming to start. Everything is really "up in the air" right now but we are hoping that the effort we put forth now will produce something real within the next 2-3 years. It is really hard to think that far into the future for an as yet non-existent scientific company but putting together a business plan is the first step toward getting that all-important seed/start-up funding that is required to start the company. The first hurdle we must overcome is actually getting the funding for our future company to "buy back" our own intellectual property from the university who currently owns the licenses to all the inventions that are developed during the course of our research. this is quite irritating b/c we are the inventors but not the owners and the numbers we are looking at to buy the licenses from UM are in the 15-25K range and that will only let us license our own tehcnology-we will still need lots more $ to actually get our future company performing its own research, development, and small-scale manufacturing. CRAZY!!! I tell ya! craziness.

I have nother doc appt next wednesday so after that I will send a baby update. Here is info on the baby at 14 weeks!
take care,
-SRB