July marks the arrival of new students and trainees. This year, I took on a new role as Associate Director of Davis-based Medical Student Research, for which I will help UCD med students in Sac find labs in Davis. This meant summer BBQs and pool parties with new MD-PhD and ARC-MD students, and reconnecting with the vision science folks at Ed & Marie’s vineyard in Winters. Even Westley joined in the fun in his swimsuit and got to compete in cornhole. In lab, I took on a pair of high school students from the Young Scholars Program, which along with my niece brought some youthful energy. At home, we kicked off the month celebrating Westley’s friend Shaan’s birthday at the Rocknasium, shared snacks and a chaotic game of Uno with the Dea’s at the July 4th fireworks at Community Park, then hosted our retina year-end gathering to celebrate the incoming and graduating fellows over burgers, wings, and kulfi popsicles to beat the heat. We sent Westley to UCD Youth Camps to buff his athletic and swimming skills, despite having to pack lunch and snacks every day. He tried to show us his bowling skills at Memorial Union afterwards, but we forgot to bring socks and broke out our cue sticks for some 8-ball instead. Despite record temperatures, we kept up pruning our Japanese maples and propagating the kurapia, although my 8-year-old ficus bonsai did not survive the heat wave. We shared our loss with Melody’s family at her Aunt Audrey’s memorial this weekend, which gave us a chance to visit her parents and old stomping ground. At work, we successfully dosed our first human patient at UCD with ocular gene therapy last week, which hopefully will pave the way to our eye center becoming a center of excellence for regenerative therapy.