Mary Bellamy

Long time, no blog. And big updates, too!

As you can tell, we survived India and returned to Alaska. The first weekend back proved especially exciting. After not getting more than 15 hours of sleep in total since Monday, I finally went to sleep on Saturday. And there I remained, dead to the world, until Monday night, when I roused myself enough to request medical assistance. One quick ambulance ride to the hospital later, and I found myself hooked to an IV. Diagnosis: Acute dehydration. The result of not eating or drinking for about 60-ish hours. On the bright side, I weighed myself when I got home, and I had lost around 8 pounds in the process! Not the best way to achieve sustainable weight loss, though.

The next two weeks were a whirlwind at work, which concluded with a "Good Luck, Mary!" cake. Yes, I was offered the position I interviewed for from our hotel room in Mount Abu. Obviously I accepted. It was bittersweet to leave ARSC, because I truly didn't want to leave. It was one of the best jobs I'd ever had, with some of the greatest co-workers. However, the DoD contract was gone, and I knew I had to protect myself financially.

Last week, I began my new job as UAF's Intellectual Property and Commercialization Coordinator. So far, the job has consisted of trying to get the office set up. No one has been officially working in the office for some time since it was shifted from one part of UAF to another, so I am the first official employee and am working with the people who had been trying to take care of the IP issues in addition to their regular jobs. To add to the problem, we have set up the office in an off-campus building, in a space not previously used by UAF. This means no phones, no wired network connections. It took me three tries to get a key that actually works in the front door. We're still trying to figure out how much more furniture we need for the office.

Part of the work in setting up the office is moving all the old files from the previous space into the new one. On Tuesday, I got some help and we loaded up 8 boxes of stuff and moved them. After emptying all the boxes, I put them back in my car on Wednesday for Round 2. When I arrived at the building and tried to grab the boxes from the backseat of my car I did something to my thumb. Please don't ask what. I'm not even sure and it's all a blur. All I know is that I quickly found myself staring at my left thumb, which now had half of the nail mostly ripped off. In shock, I got in my car and started driving home to care for it. Just before my road, the shock wore off and the pain kicked in, and I turned around and drove myself to the emergency walk-in clinic. After more than 6 years working at UAF, it took me only 2.5 days in my new job to file a worker's comp claim. Lovely. Fingernail stuff kind of freaks me out, so I'll just say that I will be wearing a splint on my thumb to protect it until the injured area grows out.

Beau and I headed down to Anchorage after work on Friday. 5:30 departure + 6-hour drive = very tired when we got here. He's been busy moving stuff from Kulis to the new base, while I have engaged in some retail therapy. When he's done today, he has to fix a server that blew up, and then we'll be on the road again. Unlike our December trip, we did not encounter any raging blizzards on the drive down. Plus, this time we have random Rajasthani music cds to keep us entertained.