Bird's of Belize

Although I should give you a general run-down of our itinerary, I'm going to skip straight to the birds because I am so excited about them. In the many kinds of places we went, there were always amazing birds, but we specificaly stayed at 3 nature preserves (Community Baboon Sanctuary, Cockscomb Basin and Crooked Tree Preserve) that had an abundance of amazing birds.

The first morning at the "Baboon" (actually, Howler Monkey) Sanctuary, I woke up at sunrise to the sounds of wild bird calls. We snuck down to the river (the Belize River set one boundary of the Lodge) to look at the birds. We repeated this routine all over the place- for some reason we were always waking up at dawn (which is 6:30 in December), and you may as well go look at the birds.

Belize is positively lousy with colorful birds. I finally broke down and bought Jones' "The Birds of Belize" because I knew I would never remember them all. On our first day, we were seeing Snowy Egrits, 3 kinds of Herons, bright yellow fly catchers and little yellow warblers. We saw, I think, rufus tailed hummingbirds in several places- probably because there are so many flowers and flowering trees. The red spot (top wire of the fence- this is why we don't have many bird pictures) in this photo is a Vermillion Fly catcher- he's dashing!

While not birds, I'll include them because they fly, we also encountered lots of bats. There were some living in the Community Baboon Visitor center, there were some swooping through the night blooming flowers on Caye Caulker and there were some living along the river to the ruins of Lamanai. Good thing I'm not afraid of bats. In the picture, you should be able to see 4 brown spots on the burnt underside of the tree that are 4 sleeping proboscis bats.

Betty arranged for us to take several tours, and one of my favorites was the early morning bird tour at Crooked Tree. We rose at 5:30 to get (coffee and papaya, then) to a little motorboat at 6 to peer at the Early Birds. And there were tons! Spotted Sandpipers ran along the shoreline, and Northern Janaca's walked on the lily pads that scops were dabbling from. Herons and Egrits waded along the shoreline, and when out boat picked up speed we were positively blitzed by 3 kinds of swallows (mangrove, barn and northern roughwing). Overhead, Snail catcher kites drifted idly. Oh! And we saw WILD parrots! How ridiculous is that??

The video shows a bit of the terrain, but watch for the swallows to dart along the edge of the boat- Ruben, our guide, said the boat scares of bugs that they were eating. The second video is of the Northern Jacana, also known at the Jesus Christ Bird for its ability to walk on water. It's one of my favorite birds, and so Matt staked this one out so you could see it's fantastic colors.

And as fantastic as this was, we were approached by several people- especially at Crooked Tree, who seemed worried that we weren't seeing the best birds. They were sorry we hadn't come in March to see the Jabiru stork and the Roseate Spoonbill. I tried to explain to the park ranger that the dozen or so kinds of birds we saw by the hundreds that morning were all birds we'd never seen before- so really, we felt we were having a sufficiently splendid time. Really, it's the kind of place that could inspire you to start a Life List.

More adventures with Rental Baby

So I wrote the blog post from yesterday at around 8:30 or 9 PM last night, which is notable mostly because Jessie was asleep at that point. I stayed up for another few hours and then conked out next to her, and then I had to wake her up at 8:30 the next day. That’s right, Jess slept for about 12 hours. Being pregnant is *rough*.

Anyway, when we woke up Rental Baby was already here and being cute. Mom Swanson had to run off and do some errands, and we decided to babysit for her so she didn’t have to deal with all her stuff *and* keep track of a baby. I know how hard that is, now.

So we were in charge of him for quite a while. I changed his diaper successfully, Jess played with him a bunch, and I introduced him to my laptop. What is it with me and introducing florida family to technology? Anyway, rental baby thought opening and closing my mac to see the light turn on and off was a blast, and he liked hammering on the keyboard, too. Also, my mac is delicious.

After that, though, he seemed to get a little anxious, and Jess and I both successfully diagnosed this as ‘needing a nap’. Being a baby, he fought against the tendency, but I just laid him down in bed and hummed to him for a while, and when Jess came in to see if I needed any help, Rental Baby was drifting off to sleep. I feel accomplished.

Another lesson learned, however. When you put a baby to sleep in a bed, you have to hang around them so that they don’t wake up and fall off. In the future, they’ll definitely have to nap in a crib or bassinet or something. Somebody write that down!

-N

Delicious Belize!

Matt and I are back from our most awesomest vacation to Belize. It was such an amazing time, we had great adventures, saw fantastic things, met interesting people and it was all thanks to my most talented mother-in-law, who managed to find some of the most interesting and unique things to do in Belize, and fit them into a 12 day span that didn't seem hurried, but punctuated regularly with splendid-ness. I'll get to more of that later though, at her suggestion, I am going to break down the follow-up posts by theme, and I'll start with food. I'm also planning to do Birds, Animals, Maya (past and present), People and a general post of our itinerary, and more might occur to me too. But loading the photos is slow, and food seems to require the fewest.

Another reason that I wanted to start with Food is that it highlights the Language. The national Language of Belize is English, but locally people speak Kriol. The effect is like using a volume knob on the accent, they would speak to us in the gently accented (think generally Caribbean island), then turn to eachother and the accent would become impenetrable. When you see it written (as here), you can usually get the phonetics, but the spoken word flies by so fast!

Belizean (Bileezan- yeah, I was saying that wrong) Kriol has no past tense, which is why menus are always peppered with such charming dishes as Stew Chicken, and Fry Beans. These were some of the foods we ate the most of, so it made quite an impression. Stew chicken was always served, fall-off-the-bone soft, in a broth with annato and lime. It usually came next to a giant pile of rice and beans, although occasionally we would get beans and rice. I'm not trying to be funny- Rice and Beans is a Vigo-like dish with coconut milk to season it, while Stew Beans and white rice usually came in two separate vessels. I LOVED the Rice and Beans- one of my favorite souvenirs is the cook book I bought from the Woman's Group in Crooked Tree, that has recipes for all these things. When we were very lucky, there would be a couple fried plantains as well, and often a tiny salad or coleslaw. And every table always had a bottle of Maria Sharps Hot Sauce, a habanero sauce with a bit of carrot for color.


We also got to over-indulge in a lot of fresh fruit. Papaya was just coming into season, we polished off a 3 lb one for breakfast on Christmas morning. Citrus and bananas are also grown all through the country. We got to drive the Hummingbird Highway a couple times, where long stretches are lined with citrus groves and banana plantations- and let me tell you, a seriously fresh banana puts our fruits to shame. The picture is a banana plantation- the banana's hide blue pesticide bags. Another highlight, both fruit-wise and Belize-is-awesome-wise, was having our host at the Cocoa Farm knock some end of season starfruit off his tree so we could eat truly fresh starfruit, which is citrusy sweet and tart but not ascorbic.

While at the Cocoa farm, we also tried the fruits of the cocoa tree, which has a creamy mango-banana-pineapple flavor. Not sure why anyone ever decided to process the seeds, but I sure am glad they did. Our host, Juan Cho, of Cyrila's Chocolates, showed us how cocoa is grown on his organic farm, how it is processed, and even walked us through grinding it into a chocolate paste (by hand! See picture!). We tried Cocoa fruit wine he makes, and the chocolate- which is so amazing. It is more coarsely ground, and unendingly rich. These are the same beans that go into Green&Black's Maya Gold bar (one of my favorites), but when his wife makes it... let's just say I didn't bring back nearly enough, and all my luggage smells like chocolate. This was one of the best things we did in Belize, not just for the deliciousness, Juan and his wife Abelina were really charming and it was a delight to meet them.


We also sampled some other wines- not that anyone grows grapes. Cashews are fairly common, and the cashew fruit wine is considered a holiday beverage. This is raiseny and sweet, like a port almost. Although, I felt the black berry wine was very similar. Belize also has an affection for bitters, and we tried the most popular one- Kid B's Bittaz. This wasn't as bitter as Campari, and had a warm almost anise flavor, which is surprising since it is brewed from a mixture of jungle herbs. The other fairly common possibly holiday drink we had was a Rumpunch, or as it was called on Caye Caulker, a Pante Rippa. This is pineapple juice and rum, and out on the island, several places included this free with the meal, all you can drink.

And cake! One morning over a breakfast of Egg Bean and Fry Jacks (~Indian Fry Bread), our Garifuna hostess came in to cut a piece of cake for another customer, and when she caught us looking, insisted we try some (Choo, have some cayke, Eets da holidays!). She gave us Black Cake (a moist molassas cake with citron fruits) and Lite Cake (lite because it isn't black- it's actually a buttery pound cake). She also insisted we try the garifuna standby- Cassava bread. This is made by grate and straining cassava ("You get your fattest friends to sit on the strainer"), then sieved and baked into a flat, crispy tortilla shape. She said it keeps for years- Matt thinks it must be like dwarf bread- not really for eating. I think it is more like hard tack, not glamorous, but staple.

I am planning on hosting a New Year's Even party for my friends who are in town. I think I'll make a pot of Rice and Beans, and some Stew Chicken, and bowl of Rumpunch. That should commemorate the trip pretty well. I'll try and get some posts with pictures up soon- but we had a great trip and a great holiday!

Post-Christmas Sub-adventures

So other than massive holiday festivities, this break has had a few other nice highlights. Here’s a sampling of them:

-Jess knows a lot of people with Babies that are around our age. And what with our first on the way, we’re getting a lot of advice and some significant practice. In fact, I’ve gotten a lot of practice with the baby that Mom Swanson babysits most days. We’ll call him Rental Baby. Rental baby is about a year old, and very even tempered. Suspiciously so, in fact. I suspect that he’s being all nice to us so that we get over the initial fear of being parents, and so that by the time we have our own and realize it’s all totally different, it’ll be too late for us to do anything about it. Tricky baby.

Lifestyle changes notwithstanding, I have managed to get several important skills well practiced. The best is my new Baby Bjorn, one of my Christmas presents from Jessie. We put it together and looked over the instructions, but nothing beats practice with the real thing, so we loaded Rental Baby in and went out on the town for a while. After a few times, I was strapping him in and taking him out with well-practiced ease, and he really seemed to like the thing. it had plenty of support, he felt nice and safe, and I had my hands free to wander around Best Buy to make a fancy new laptop purchase for Mom Swanson.

I also got tips from Mom Swanson on changing diapers (she is a master!) and I got to practice feeding Rental Baby, too. A bottle one day, and baby food the next. The bottle went just fine, and I very nearly transitioned him neatly into napping afterwards by rocking and humming afterwards. The spoon feeding was nice, too. He definitely knows how the system works, and we got down the applesauce without effort. The veggie-food he didn’t feel like eating, and he did make the cutest face in the world to show is disapproval. We did manage to sneak some vegetables into him by feeding him fries and alternating them with green beans. He could tell there was a difference, but his body-programming just kept putting stuff into his mouth. He would have done better if he possessed more teeth, but I give him full marks for the effort.

I also got a taste, and just a taste, of what being a parent feels like. It’s just having this completely dependent person with you all the time. Clearly there are other emotions and concerns involved, but you really feel the difference when you realize that you have to add ‘and a baby’ to everything you do. Possible, but definitely different.

- Jess and i spent wednesday meandering around Ft. Lauderdale by car. We stopped off at the swap meet where we wandered around and looked at a whole bunch of stuff we didn’t want, and then we wandered by the farmers market on the way out. I got a 5 feet long piece of sugarcane. Turns out the only culinary thing you can do with them is chew on them, turn them into juice, or use them as skewers for something else. But for three bucks, it’s worth the pictures alone.

We also wandered around some shops near downtown and found a chocolatier, in much the same vein as we had found in Belgum when we went. There were definitely some flashback moments when we bought a bunch of little chocolate treats and then went out on the street to try them out. We got extras of the truffles and Spicy Aztec Chocolates. Yum.

-N

The orgy of unwrapping has finished

Aaaah...

Merry Christmas, everyone. Over on the east coast, we have finished opening our presents and are enjoying the post-gift-giving afterglow. All is well here in Florida. The flight went uneventfully and we’ve been enjoying time with our Florida-family ever since we landed. Jess even ran into one of her TXRD buddies who was going to Florida: also for christmas, also for family, also with her husband, and also while pregnant. The parallels are *eerie*.

Oh, and if I may aside for just a minute: if flying to your location involves going through a full-body scanner, I’m not flying there anymore. And that means that if Austin gets body scanners, I’m not flying anywhere anymore. Think about it this way: make a list of the activities that you would do that would offerer even a *chance* of your wife or *child* to be seen naked by strangers or actually, properly molested. If your list has more than zero entries, you should reconsider. It’s a downer, I know, but I’m just not having it. Until our country get it’s head out of the rear end of the TSA, I’m done.

On to better news: presents! All the gifts given by us were quite well received. In fact, William is playing Sonic Colors as we speak! We got an air hockey table (mini-sized) for Johnny, and as soon as Jessie wakes up from her nap, I look forward to her wiping the floor with me. Lots of presents for the boys: lots of Harry Potter stuff, and random clothing. The big ones: William got a Bike, and Johnny got a laptop, and they botch got to go to see NC State (dad’s Alma mater) at a bowl game and then go to disney world afterwards. Yay! Jess really liked her presents from me, some more Venture Brothers, card games she wanted, and some certificates to let her be lazy and have her husband take over all responsibilities for after the baby shows up and she needs a break.

Oh, and she’s getting us a *baby*, so that’s nice of her also.

I suppose the rest of the week will be some baby shower and a lot of relaxing. I’ll probably get plenty of video game time with the boys as they challenge me to various games or show off how good they are at their favorites. Also, I got a new Wii game for Christmas, and so I’ll probably shanghai their system for a while to check it out.

In other ‘being adult’ news, Jess and I are putting together a list of things to do, hopefully before the baby shows up. We want to paint the room and get a few more things, but also stuff like visit a financial planner or consolidate our bank accounts. We’ve already done some of that: I’ve officially closed by bank of america account, which means one less thing to keep track of...and also that I don’t have my credit card number memorized anymore, which was always convenient. Also starting up a college fund for Tyler. Time is the best lever for stuff like that.

Oh, and when visiting the mom/grammie house yesterday, we went across the street to visit ‘J’ and ‘J’ and their little baby ‘J’. I got to hold him and we waited until Santa came down the street with a police escort. Good practice in holding up a heavy baby, I need to do some more bicep curls. But he didn’t fuss or anything. I felt pretty sharp.

Responsibility, ahoy!

-N

I am Less Exciting

Well after the initial flurry of pregnancy related craziness, the last few weeks have been relatively sedate. Tyler is still getting his daily workouts, though, and the kicks are getting stronger and stronger. I’m hoping that when he gets large enough, he won’t have the space to really wind up before delivering swift kicks to Jessie’s insides. He’s certainly getting stronger now, but he still gets a little performance anxiety whenever I put my hand on him. I can usually get him to wake up and kick around by talking to him, though.

Judo continues: our teacher is even opening up another school. It sounds like it’s a combination of factors, including space, the fact that the rent is pretty cheap, and that we might get kicked out of our current space. It’s a little bit farther away from me, but not significantly so. Certainly not so far that I wouldn’t drive to go learn.

Jessie got her raise today. Let me reiterate. Jessie got her RAISE today. I won’t discuss specific numbers, but remember how we used to have pretty much the same income? THAT ISN’T THE CASE ANYMORE. There are some big numbers on that sheet. BIG ONES! I’m really quite proud of her, because she works hard, gets important things done and, most importantly, her bosses *recognize* her hard work. It really is a great company to work for. I am jealous, but only because I wish that I was that well regarded and rewarded. So jealous in a ‘want to work harder so I get better’ way, not a ‘wish Jessie got worse’ way.

In a real sense, this means it’s looking more and more like I’m going to start stepping down to part time. We both still make enough that having us work is worth the investment in child care and whatnot, but if we have the opportunity to take less time working and more time for family, we might as well take it. Tyler is only going to be a baby once. We’ve floated the ideas to our higher-ups, but they understand that our plans must remain somewhat fluid because we’re about to have a BABY so things can change pretty quickly.

So proud of Jessie! Applause for her!

In ‘clothing my future son’ news, we have discovered a nearby ‘used baby clothes’ store, and I have convinced Jessie that we don’t need to buy them completely out of their stock until at least after christmas. Once that’s done, though, we are going to help those people pay their *bills*. Also, mom sent me some of my old baby clothes (still adorable) including one that I recognized. Jess said I couldn’t have, because it’s baby sized, but I figured it out eventually. It’s the same ‘georgetown’ white t-shirt that I’ve seen on a lot of old pictures of dad when I was a little baby myself. So cute! Also, go georgetown! Woo! Wikipedia.com has just informed me that you are also known as the Hoyas! So go Hoyas, as well!

If anything else interesting happens, I’ll be sure to let you know.

-N

Leaving for Belize - Tomorrow!

One last check in here before we go on our trip to Belize. We've shared around the itinerary with of few people, in case we get lost. We've checked in for our flight, and now we are second guessing our choices of packing.

I am still stuck on Step 1 of the writing process. I've told my boss I am going off the grid for the next week. While this might not be absolutely true- I certainly won't be spending any time redrafting while I am in Belize. I'm sure he'll be relieved to stop hearing from me for a few days, he will be in Israel the whole time.

For the rest of you, we'll endeavor to get online when possible, and hope to have unlocked a phone to use down there. I'll probably be off the blog until we get back and I can brag about how awesome the trip was.

To all my favorite readers- Merry Christmas!

This is the year!

Every year, about this time, I get this serious yen to make Graham Cracker Candy. Well, to eat it actually, but I've been stuck on this first step for year and years now. Every year I get this craving, and I get to thinking about how all the people in my life have never experienced the joy of Graham Cracker Candy, and so I should make some to share with every person I know... Every year, something horrible happens to the recipe, and I end up with a thick syrup with soggy cracker crumbs floating in it. That is, I say that like it is bad- I usually eat this syrup with a spoon until Matt gets so overwhelmed by my bad eating habits he throws is entire gloppy mess away, even though it is stuck amorphously to wax paper. Frankly, eating poorly made graham cracker candy is the nouveau tradition at our house.

Some of you may have been on the receiving end of my tragic email last year about the gooey failure that was "fat-free evaporated milk candy." Nana gently clued me in that candy should be made with fat, and magnanimously sent me a candy thermometer, in case I was ever inclined to butcher the family recipe again.

This year, I got to thinking again about Graham Cracker Candy, and I decided this would be a great gift for a friend of mine, and then I decided I absoloutly can't get through another holiday season without some proper Graham Cracker Candy for myself. This is the trifecta of candy failure- desire for candy, desire to gift candy, and inability to make candy. True to tradition, I got all the ingredients (not all the right ones, I used pecans this year), and in the midst of a lot of other distractions, set to making it.

Picture me in my kitchen, focused on grinding nuts and measuring sugar like I am making TNT, and Matt keeps wandering through the kitchen. At first he tried to help, then he tried to help clean up, and finally he just got on to some other things- namely permethrin treating our clothes to fend off malaria in Belize on the back porch, and then trying to un-treat his hands. I've got TWO candy thermometers going in my pot of boiling sugar, and I am mentally noting every slight change in the bubbling sugar, and completely blocking him out. "Hmm...? What was that about poison control?" I was expecting this to fail, so I started to get stressed when I mixed with graham crackers in and the mixture got really stiff! Like, hard to stir! And then I mashed it all into a shallow pan and gave it a good squish to make it all stick.... and I think it worked! For the first time EVER, it came out crumbly, not gooey!

I cannot recommend a candy thermometer enough. It's the best substitute for actual confectioner skills money can buy. Either classic analog or new fancy digital- as I mentioned, I used both.

I'm including the recipe here, both for posterity and also to include my own incredibly helpful notes- in italics.

Graham Cracker Candy
I always make a 1.5X batch because I don't know what I'd do with a half can of evaporated milk. Suggestions welcome.

In a VERY large stockpot (trust me, you'll thank me later), combine:
2 c sugar
1 c evaporated milk
1/4 t salt
Turn your burner on HIGH and boil this to soft ball stage, or 235F.
As this passes ~180F, it will quadruple in size and the temp can rise quickly. You are trying to drop the liquid content of the sugar, from 220 to 235 will be much slower. The total volume will shrink to nearly half the peak.
Remove from heat and cool slightly.
Add in 1 T butter
1 t vanilla
3 c (2 packages) graham cracker crumbs
1 c chopped walnuts (apparently pecans work too)
3 c mini-marshmallows or 24 large

Stir well. Use wax paper to Pat into a a shallow pan and "store in the icebox over night" or your non-insulated pantry for 20 min. or as long as you think you can wait. Cut into indulgent little squares and share with everyone.

----
As hinted at, Matt and I leave Friday for Belize. It is TWELVE stupid degrees here right now, so I am really looking forward to some Caribbean sunshine, even if it puts us at a slight risk for contracting malaria. That's why Matt was spraying insecticides on our back porch! I was just realizing that this is going to be the longest vacation we've had since we've come here (11 days!), and just in the nick of time, too. Now that the semester is over and I don't have adrenaline to keep me up all night, I can hardly stay away until 10pm. Yes, time for some time off.

Here's how it goes down

I promised you a run down of how I expected the process from writing to publishing this manuscript to go.
Loosely, here are the steps:
1) Write Manuscript
2) Submit to co-authors for critique
3) Incorporate critique
4) Submit to co-authors for acceptance
5) Submit to journal for Review
6) Repeat steps 2-6 until step 7.
7) Acceptance from a Journal
8) Party Time!

First thing you should know, is I have 6 other co-authors- 4 PIs and two students, but I am the main author on this work. This means I will prepare the manuscript the way I think is best, and then the other 6 people will weigh in. It is in all of our best interests to send out a polished manuscript that will be accepted at the highest tier journal as possible, but my co-authors are unlikely to have to do anything about the changes they suggest. Right now I am getting this document into a form I think is acceptable to send around, and then they'll take a couple weeks with it, and send it back with all manner of suggestions- from proofreading, to re organizing to nitpicky stuff with my figures that I'll end up learning photoshop to fix. I am not good with the figures. This may take a long time, or a short time. I don't know some of my coauthors well enough to imagine how they will respond, and in fact, some aren't in my building, so if they are slow, I can't very well drop by and bother them. But before you go hating on the coauthors- I've been a coattail coauthors on several manuscripts, so really, it's my turn to do the hard work.

Once everyone agrees that we've written the best damn manuscript possible, we'll submit it to a high tiered journal in my field. I'm pessimistic that they will love the article for several reasons (what I do is anti-viral research, and this virology journal prefers to publish things about viruses, not the compounds that work on them), and if they don't reject it outright, we have to wait Some Time to get comments, which can range from Accepted, Accepted with criticism (just do a couple more experiments), Rejected (with comments that make you think you can do a couple experiments and resubmit), or Rejected (ouch). You can imagine the decision chart here, helping you decide to resubmit to the same journal, or submit to another journal one tier down, or another journal in a different sub field. We may have the opportunity to use this decision chart a lot.

You see, I know I have done solid science, and everything we are describing is true- but there are some pretty obvious critiques, and some lame political plays that may make it hard for this paper to get out in a timely fashion. Again, this is why I've been impatient to get this process started, since this is going to take a long time to deal with. And I have not interest in graduating without a primary publication in hand- it would be nearly impossible for me to get a job without one.

Dr. Boss and I are meeting this afternoon to look over all the figures to decide on a standard formatting style to get everything in to. He is also going to talk to someone who said a year ago they'd like to try and do some experiments (and we haven't heard from since), to see if that panned out. I have my doubts. I am hoping to give him my manuscript to read/ get permission to give it out to Dr. Rockstar and the other co-authors ASAP.

Finally, some good (science) news

Yesterday, Dr. Boss finally agreed that I was finished with this Most Terrible of Experiments (that tedious thing I've been working on since July, to get around a problem I've had since... last January? Ugh). We both agreed to make some conservative conclusions about the data, and leave it at that. Which is the last figure I need for my manuscript, which means we are back on track. The document is nearly written, and all the figures need to be reformatted (to 8.4cm wide and large bold fonts and some other tedious things to change on graphs), so we are on track to get this out to the collaborators soon. We haven't yet discussed a submission date- I don't really think this will be until late Jan (ergo, my interest in getting this moving ASAP).

I'll write a little more later about how I expect this process to go for my paper (spoiler: Slowly), since this is directly correlated to my ability to graduate, but for now, please join me in an Epic Happy Dance.

A brotherly response to sandlin

I enjoyed your movie so much...



-N

Bioethics- the movie

This is the video I made to show my students in class, summarizing our time together. It is laced with reference, from the total meltdown my students had about the Personal Genomics Contest that declared Migraines the "winning" disease for more research, their resentment money (and the public) interfering with science, and perhaps even the super abrupt way I tend to start and end my class. I guess what I am trying to say is if you don't think it is interesting- that's way. They giggled and then politely clapped. What darlings.

Here is the video- BIOSCI1590, as retold by robots.

Bart, amplifed

It's been three or four days since my bionic left ear was installed . . long enough to begin assessing how much difference it's made.

It's not a miracle cure . . I still ask Jane to repeat herself, but clearly that's a function of being mentally focused elsewhere (like maybe the sports page) and I can work on that without the aid of biomechanical augmentation. (with the aid of divine providence, perhaps yes)

The thing I notice most is when I'm puttering around the house by myself, actually. The sounds of day to day, getting silverware out, food from the fridge, etc. are amplified in a way that feels like the sound track of a movie. Does that make sense?

Even (maybe especially) talking to myself sounds different. Not in a bad way, just different. If you've ever had the experience of talking to a crowd with the aid of a good sound system, you get some idea of the effect.

It's too soon to tell how much difference it makes in overall interactions, but I feel far less likely to lose the thread of a conversation, or to have moments of . . . what was that? Jane thinks my body language will be more alert, less-geezer like and I certainly hope that's true.

Almost done!

You may have noticed I've been a bit distant lately. I can't promise to fix that, but I am going to run out of excuses soon. Tomorrow is my last day of class! I am currently up creating an Xtranormal video to summarize some of the highlights from class. I think I should probably have someone else look at it tomorrow before I show it to my class (in case my subtle sense of humor doesn't translate well to alien robots talking in Stephen Hawking voice. As if.) If it passes QC, I'll share it up here. It's kind of nice to have a 5 min summary of the course content, major themes and running jokes. Right now I am totally cracking myself up with this- but that may just mean it is bed time.

I managed to donate blood today. It's been a while, I was on a 1 year deferment after we went to Mexico, and then I was sick so often I was usually getting on or coming off antibiotics. Finally had success today, only to find out I'll have to wait another year after we get back from Belize. Totally worth it.

Pre X-mas Celebrations

I’ve been hacking away at my to-do list this weekend. Between getting Christmas stuff ready and doing some things with Jessie, it’s been a full couple of days. Here’s the breakdown.

Friday we went to the Ticom Holiday Awards Banquet. We had a nice time, and I got to dress up all fancy in my suit and everything. Jess looked *beautiful* AND she got to go up go stand with all the people who had received Quality Awards. She got one of those because she’s so great and fantastic. Then there was open-bar silliness and the best thing of all, the photobooths were back in effect this year. They snap four pictures of you, and then print out a couple of copies. We took a bunch, and they all came out very nice. Maybe next time I bump into a scanner I’ll get them up on the internet.

Saturday I did some shopping for some...stuff for...people. And then in the evening, we went out to a hockey game. AHL, not NFL, so something like semi-pro, but we went out with some of the derby/hockey girls so Jess got to see her friends again and we got to watch some *fast* hockey. I had a good time, but I gotta say: I really don’t like sports fans. Cheering whenever someone gets smashed up into the wall, booing at the other team, cheering whenever a fight broke out. The ‘home’ team was from Dallas, and the ‘away’ team was from Houston, so there wasn’t even any good reason to have regional attachment. It all seemed very tribal and vaguely unsettling. Good skating, though.

Sunday was put up lights day. Actually, I had something else to do first. I wanted to vacuum, because eventually I’m going to want to put a baby on these floors and I want them to be clean. So I vacuumed the whole house and even moved the cat litter to a more out-of-the-way location so as to minimize tracking litter around on my feet. After that, Jess decided she wanted to put up Christmas lights on the trees, and I didn’t *have* to help, but if you think I’m letting my pregnant wife climb ladders unassisted, you’re crazy. So we got some lights and wrapped up all the trees in front of our house. We would have done the house itself, but most of the front of our house is either stone, two stories tall, or both. So we’ll stick with the trees, for now.

-N

I JUST FELT TYLER KICK!!!!!

He's been kicking for a while (just ask Jessie) but I've never been able to feel it from here on the outside. But today when going to bed (isn't that always the way) Tyler was really active and Jess had me put my hand on her belly, as much because he seems to get shy when I put my hand there as to see if I could feel anything. It's also kinda neat because when I talk to him, sometimes he'll kick in response, which is really neat.

So Jess was laying on her side with my hand on her belly and I felt it! Just the littlest, tiniest little kick! I just stared at Jess with this wide, open-mouthed expression. "Was that a kick?" "Yeah!" "I just felt it!" "You did!" "Yeah...is that another one?" "Yeah."

I can feel his kicks! I'm going to have a baby and he's going to kick things. Woohoo!

-N

Stupid "Lucky" Ice Bucket

It may seem counter-intuitive, but I am VERY superstitious about my work. You might suppose that the quantitative powers of science would banish any kind of superstitious voodoo aside, but there are too many things to account for most days. Some of this has an explanation- if you always take a coffee break at one point in an experiment and it works, then skip your break and it doesn't- well, you need an "incubation" time. Much more of it does not. But I swear my experiments fail if I don't follow the routine.

This is fairly normal in science, believe it or not. Dr. Boss will always say to "wear your lucky socks" on the day of an important experiment. I have being wearing metaphorical ruts in the carpet of my experiments for long enough now that I have The Way I Do Things that Must be Done in part because I need consistency, and in part because I am totally superstitious. For example, I thaw all my reagents first (like in a very tiny PBS cooking show), and use down time to label my hundreds of tubes. This, I think, is justifiable. That I insist on doing all of this in the ONLY yellow ice bucket in the lab, which has been My Lucky Ice bucket for years, is less so.

Here is a recent example. In a typically catastrophic way, nothing I did for the two weeks before Thanksgiving worked (I know! I was using the Lucky Ice Bucket!), and I came back with every intention of fixing that this morning.... but, my ice bucket was missing. Which is crazy- I use that ice bucket almost everyday, no one else knows it is lucky. Morosely, I resigned to performing an experiment in an inferior ice bucket, since it was all Doomed to Fail anyhow.
. . . and it worked. Somehow, I managed success outside of my "Lucky" ice bucket.

There are two possible hypotheses here, and I've dedicated many years of my life to the study of the scientific method, so I should know.

1) The color of the ice bucket in which the experiment is performed has no impact on the results of the experiment.
Or, more likely
2) All of the good science luck has been drained out of my yellow ice bucket after years of hard service, and it needs a chance to recover by participating in someone else's experiments for a while.

The vast body of evidence suggests #2, so I'll be switching to a standard black bucket until I hear good things coming out of the yellow one again.

Practice Thanksgiving

Last time I wrote, I think I was still in the desert, so lest anyone be using these blog entries in the far flung future as a digital, archeological record of the era before everything was captured and recorded on supercomputers: yes, I did return on time. (I read about that in a short story once and I’ve been mildly obsessed with the idea ever sense.)

We’re slowly constructing a baby room from its component atoms: furniture and baby toys. Ever since the gender got out: (it’s a boy, in case you’ve been under a rock) and the presumptive name (Tyler Rex Preecs, cause then we can call him T-Rex) we’ve been flooded with intriguing gifts from all corners of the...well, if not the world yet, then at least the country. Sandlin sent us a fantastic set of nerdy early-development stuff, like a flash card set for numbers that contains Pi, and an alphabet poster that has “J for Jovian Moons”. Good stuff for a nerdy baby, which ours is likely to be. Mom and dad (we think? We’ve just gone off the return phone number) got us some baby onesies with T-Rexes on the front. Ha-dorable.




As for us, we’ve been in charge of slightly more heavy stuff: primarily furniture. We’ve gotten the crib (thanks, consumer reports!) and a chest of drawers/changing table. We’re hoping to paint before it gets too late for us to do so, (read: we get too busy/tired) and we’re excited because we can finally pick something with *color*. I’m intrigued by the possibilities presented here.

I’m whipping Jessie back into shape, which is to say that we’re jogging again. Jess has slowed down due to the fact that she has to carry about 20 pounds of baby around with her at all times, so that’s okay. I come up with things to slow me down, like running back and forth, dropping and doing push-ups, and the like. Good exercise. Judo is also going well. I’ve told the teacher that I need to practice more Shiai (sparing, like what you see at the Olympics) not because I like it. Because I’m bad at it and I therefore need the practice something fierce. There are tournaments to attend, if I wanted. Once I feel either curious about how I would perform (I can probably guess, now) or want to try doing judo with different people I may go to one. But for now? No rush.

I’ve been using tools. An old branch or two has broken off on one of the trees in the backyard. We yanked it down with our fancy tree-cutting kit. It wasn’t easy, but I figured out how to saw halfway into the branch and then get the teeth stuck in it so I could pull it down. Then we sawsalled it into trash-can-sized pieces. Also it’s a little windy and there’s a branch out there that looks to be hanging a little bit awkwardly. I may investigate after I post this.

And finally, and most interestingly, Fake Thanksgiving!

I hope you have your plane tickets already and don’t mind getting groped by strangers or having naked pictures taken of you and posted on the internet because it’s time for Thanksgiving Vacation. A recent spate of Good Eats watching led me back to the Good Eats Thanksgiving special, where Alton Brown (my hero!) talks about his tips for Turkey success, namely:

1) Brine the Turkey
2) Don’t stuff it (at least not with stuffing)
3) Start at 500 degrees, drop to 350 and finish with a probe thermometer

I’ve never got a chance to do any of this, but the Florida Family is perfectly willing to let me take over some thanksgiving cooking duties, so I thought I’d give it a try. I wouldn’t want to try it without knowing what I was doing, though. Who knows what a brined turkey could taste like. So rather than just trying it all blindly next weekend, Jess and I decided to do a preemptive thanksgiving this weekend.



All came out well, as you can see. The turkey, brined, was great. Not too salty, and CRAZY-moist. Really good. Jess made a green bean casserole (from scratch, people) that came out fantastically. The stuffing was from stove top and the rolls came almost-pre-baked, but there’s only so much from scratch I’m willing to do all at once. Anyway, we just finished it up (thanksgiving is always better for lunch) and Jess is, of course, napping, which means success, in my book.

Oh, and I got to use my electric knife again. Thanks person who got it for me for Christmas several years ago. Probably parents.



-N

I'm looking for a job.

Our very good friend packed the last of her belongings up this weekend and headed to her future new job and exciting life in VA. Yeah for her! I've obviously spent the rest of my weekend in sweats moping about missing such a good friend in my life. Matt's way of cheering me up has been to say, it's ok, you are going to move on soon too. Sigh, lately I'm not sure how soon "soon" might really be (we can all look back at this post in 2014 and laugh...).

In an effort to redirect that energy, I've decided to start the process of my own moving on, by thinking about applying for some of the policy fellowships I've mentioned. The first is due Jan 14, and more info about it is here- I am particularly interested in the Initiative to help scientists understand the public. The application is a cover letter. Let's put aside for a moment that I've never had a "real" job, I've also never written a cover letter, esp not one that seems so important.

Right now I've got a word document open that reads:

Reasons why I am the best candidate for the Hellman fellowship:

Strong background in science (ie, dissertation work), previous exposure to a variety of fields, ie, undergrad research projects

Recognizing the important role of politics in science during CUR- Posters on the Hill, and also that many scientists choose to shy away from this interface.

Interest in the relationship between science and the public, first realized at CSPC and developed while teaching BIOSC 1590

Ambition to serve science by providing the best possible environment for good science and scientists to develop ideas that service the public--

Have any of our dear readers ever written a cover letter of this sort? Is this a good way to go about it? I'm try to specifically address some of the notions in the job description and also the initiative... but, I'm starting to feel really under qualified and quite scared about sending out this letter. Help?

My awesome students

There have been ups and downs to this whole teaching gig. It's a lot of work, but it is a really fun distraction. I feel compelled to provide my students with something valuable, and in return, they spend hours preparing for my class. I'm very self conscious of how I give them grades- but the fact is I have a bunch of awesome students.

A pair mind boggling examples:
-As I was tallying the grades from last week's assignments (3% of the final grade), I realized I didn't have one from one of my students. I figured I lost it, since I couldn't find some other articles I thought were with it, and emailed him to ask for another copy. He declined, saying he hadn't done the assignment. Seriously, I basically gave him a free pass to get those points, and he demurred. Wow.

-Two students led last nights discussion, and they did a fantastic job with the material- they brought in some cases I was unfamiliar with, and the rest of the class got on board. It was a really fun discussion. While I was pondering their grades (Do I want to give them an A++ because I am so interested in this stuff, or because they actually did A++ quality work?) after class, they started talking about Med School Interviews. Turns out, one of my students was just on her first interview THAT DAY. Yeah, at Pitt, a top 10 ranked program. And then she came and rocked in my class like it was no big thing.

We are now just 3 weeks from the end of the semester, and by the looks of it, I'll be giving 9 out of 10 As, which I think absolutely describes the quality of work I am getting out of these students. I supposed I should make more of an effort to tell THEM how thrilled I am with the work they have done, but I didn't want to ruin the magic by letting them all realize their grades are basically secure at this point. Perhaps next week's class will start with some epic gushing.

Life in Walla Walla?

I have to say that we starting to really enjoy life in the slow lane. Our backyard neighbors are really quiet and the neighbors on the rest of the block are not much noiser.

We have a double garage, a large driveway, and could park a motorhome in front of the house (if we needed to) . . . which is a huge contrast to hipster Ballard where, at certain times of the week, required us to park two blocks away.

Our neighbors on the circle here, held an open house to welcome us and two other couples who are relatively new. We now have faces to match with about half the names on our block watch list. Again, very different from our previous urban life where we knew maybe six people on the block.

We still have moments of missing some aspects of former life, but we each new contact, each new outing, I feel greater happiness about the fit of this location and our stage of life. (and who knows, I might even do some pictures at some point??)

Success at the kiln!

We cracked open the kiln last night- the only major casualty was a off center bowl I shattered with a log- a fair sacrifice. A lot of stuff turned out really nice, I tried some new things this time, making "tiles," using plaster molds, hand building with "spring cut slabs" (this requires a picture, but it turned out pretty great) and not glazing everything. Some of the unglazed stuff looks great! Also some of it looks just mediocre. I think I am partial to the glazed look, but it is amazing what plain old ash and reduction can do.

I brought in the first round of very extraneous pieces today to share at work. I had 4 boxes of modest size to bring home, so I brought the smallest box of pieces I could part with in. Actually, we do have plenty of bowls at my hour already. I picked and attractive mug and walked it up to Dr. Rockstar, who I imagined would politely accept my childish looking craft. He was actually really thrilled that I would think of him. Which is weird, considering I think of him in almost everything I do, as in- would this be good enough for Dr. Rockstar?

My in-laws are coming tomorrow for a long weekend. I hope they've enjoyed their train trip and are energetic enough to see a bit of the city while they are here. I'll be photographically in debt to the blog by mid next week, so I'll endeavor to get that under control asap.

Another amazing fire

The forecast for the weekend was cold, snow, possible rain, and more cold. This is why I was committed to doing my part to add to global warming- Matt and I spent the weekend at the Laurelville Mennonite Church Center, firing the wood kiln. But first off- let me show you how awesome all the stuff the THREE of us made for this class. Amazing volumes, right?


All that is hand packed into the kiln- it takes most of a day- more than a normal work day for sure, to carefully balance each piece on 'wadding'- clay mixed with sand and wood chips that becomes unstable after the firing, but keeps all the pieces from melting to the surface of the shelves.



We lit the fire at 7- this is the earliest we've lit it, EVER, and a couple hours really seemed to help. Once the kiln was going, we could focus on the business of making wood fired pizzas. Oh yeah.

We share the load in 8 hour shifts, mine were both midday- my coworker Sarah went from 8pm-4am (I did that before- it is tiring), and Swarna did from 4am-noon. I tried to be helpful and stack wood or gives breaks whenever I was awake, since I had the easiest time. During my shift on Saturday, I moved the temp from 800 F to 1700 F- so I was pretty much feeling awesome. My friend J even came out to see what all the fuss was about! But my camera started acting up- so I don't have any more pictures. Frown.


By 7am Sunday, the kiln was up to the temp (2100 F) it needed to be help at for a couple hours (Thank you, Weather!), so my shift was rather abbreviated. We did actually help seal up the kiln this time. This involves slowing the rate we feed the kiln, then choking out the air intakes and sealing the cracks with more wadding. The bravery and skill required to 'mortar' the kind of crack that has 2150 degree flames shooting out of it we left to our teacher. I just dropped the last piece of wood. We seal it up, and let it happily melt the remaining ash into glass while it cools. We'll unseal it on Thursday, and see what we get. There are other photos posted here, but these are quite similar to similar albums of the past.

Fine, fine, pictures

Fine, you want pictures? You get pictures. Never let it be said I don't listen to my audience. :)

From 2010-11, Desert

Playing lots of scrabble with the Vegas family before I left. This is a game Ray and I did. Thems some big words!

From 2010-11, Desert

I really dislike being hungry while having to do these work-out-in-the-field, things. So I mostly brought my own food with me wherever I went. Probably saved a bundle of money this way, too. The fridge was too cold, though. It kept freezing my milk and cream cheese.

From 2010-11, Desert

This is where I spent most of my time. We set up our sensor in the back of an SUV, powered off an inverter connected to the alternator. Then we just let the car idle all day and used it to power our computers. Neat, huh? Mostly just sitting in a car for 4.5 hours a day, though. Unless something needed to get fixed, then it was exciting. But boring success was the norm for this trip which is good news, I guess.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan from up on the hill where we were collecting. By the by, all these pictures were from my cell phone. Pretty neat, huh?

From 2010-11, Desert

There were a *lot* of these driving around. Though not nearly as many as the humvees.

From 2010-11, Desert

Painted rock. Everyone who comes here paints their battalion's symbol on this rock or another nearby one. Neat tradition.

From 2010-11, Desert

Who *is* that handsome lad with the dorky hat?

From 2010-11, Desert

Rattlesnake! Glad I saw him. I'd have taken a better pictures, but my camera doesn't have a very good zoom, and I didn't feel like getting any closer. You understand, yes?

From 2010-11, Desert

Welcome to fake Iraq! Would you like some fake concrete barriers that are actually made out of styrofoam and have blown over in the wind?

From 2010-11, Desert

How about this totally cool-looking fake mosque in the morning sunlight?

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake buildings made out of shipping containers with fake crenelations? How about that fake hospital down at the end of the lane there?

From 2010-11, Desert

I doubt any of these fake, yet expertly messy, phone lines is carrying anything. And I doubt they sprung for the full Sports package on that satellite TV.

From 2010-11, Desert

Check out all these props. Mostly old, junked computer cases and rusted-out bicycles. Certainly adds to the ambiance, yes?

From 2010-11, Desert

Would you like some fruit OH I FOOLED YOU it's also fake. Look closely. You can actually see how it's all molded out of foam. Except for the Bananas and Watermelons. They're just wooden.

From 2010-11, Desert

UXO. Do not mess with. These things were *all over*, though this is the biggest one. Again: taken from a significant distance.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan from up on the hill. You can see our car, too.

From 2010-11, Desert

Down in fake Afghanistan now. Not as cool looking, but much larger, and still under construction. Concrete buildings, too.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan also has its own mosque.

From 2010-11, Desert

And finally, this is what you can do when you're out in the desert and bored, but don't want to disturb *too* many rocks because they might be on top of critters or UXO.

You can click over to the album to see a few more pictures I didn't include.

-N

Notes from the Field: Part 2

Day 10: “This is our second-to-last collect day and it’s been pretty busy, so far, which is good for making time go by, but not so great for the collect.  Anyway, I got up at my customary 4 AM, made lunch, ate breakfast, and then took apart the computer I was using and got it downstairs for the car.  We drove out, got set up, and then went out to Fake Afghanistan, which is less exciting than fake Iraq.  It’s actually still a little under construction, they’re expanding it out some more, so there’s no activities or crazy training exercises going on here, though I did notice a few of those fruit stand props.  Also we’re up on the hill again, in one of the collectors. 

It was a bit of a trick to get up here.  We had to drive out *really* slow because 1) we were behind someone slow and 2) the roads are just dirt, so anytime anyone drives over them it kicks up dust, and in the early morning there’s no wind to blow it away, so it just builds up and makes visibility a pain.  When you’re dealing with tanks potentially coming down the road, you tend to drive a little extra conservatively.  By the time we got out, the sun was coming up, which was good, because our navigation up the hill was a little ad-hoc last time, and we weren’t sure we’d be able to find our location again, especially in the dark.  With the sun, though, we were able to find our old path and meander up the hill. ”

“They gave us a safety briefing when we first got here about Unexploded Ordinance (UXO).  Basically don’t touch anything that isn’t obviously a rock.  I don’t know about unexploded, but there is non-rock stuff all over the place out here.  Old shells, even .50 caliber ones.  Nothing bomb or missile-looking, or we’d definitely call it in, but you had best believe I’m very cautiously watching my step everywhere I go. 

Oh, and I don’t know if I told you: I saw a rattlesnake.  From a distance, mind.  We were walking around ‘painted rock’ where everyone paints their emblem when they come in for rotation, and I spotted one on the ground.  Good thing I was looking out, lots of places for critters to hide among the rocks.  Anyway, I kept well away: he looked pretty small and didn’t even move, which was fine by me.  I want no part of that accident.  And, of course, ever since I’ve been watching my feet when I get out of the car or when walking around.”

And...that’s pretty much it. The majority of our work consisted of driving a car to some predefined location, setting up an antenna and a sensor, and then sitting there and watching it record data for four hours, switching hard drives once in the middle of the test. If everything went correctly, it was really boring. Lots of time to kill, which I passed either by staring out into the desert or messing around on my computer.

And you did read that correctly, traditional wake-up time was 4:00 AM for about two whole weeks there. Which actually isn’t too bad, considering that I’m two hours behind Texas. If I ‘sleep in’ to 5:00, that’s like my normal wake-up time back home, theoretically. It means I get to Skype with Jessie in the morning sometimes, if I don’t have to rush off to work right away.

Also, in case you can’t tell I wrote a *plethora* of e-mails to Jessie, as well as sending her text and picture messages on our sexy new phones all the time. A pretty nice way to stay in communication, as it turns out. The one downside is that when we were downrange (in ‘the box’) we had really spotty cell-phone coverage. Though the fact that we could make phone calls out there *at all* is kind of a marvel of modern technology, wouldn’t you say?

-N

Notes from the Field: Part 1

Well the desert collect has pretty much wrapped up. All that’s left is for me to pack up my things, hang out with the Vegas family for a few days, and then go home to see my pregnant WIFE who I miss so much.

I’ve been writing to Jessie a lot, so allow me to blog by posting some choice quotes from my correspondence with her:

Day 2: “The training for the downrange stuff was mostly boring.  'Here's what you have to do.  Don't play with animals.  Don't touch anything that could even potentially explode.' But there was one point where they actually showed full on video of graphic explosive damage.  Potentially not from here, but GRUESOME.  Hand blown apart.  Messed up face.  Leg in tatters.  They ended with a 6-second shot of a dude *getting his leg amputated*.  Doctor cutting it and everything.  I couldn't even watch.  Snuff film kinda stuff. ”

Day 4: “I’ve been sitting in the car for two hours and we just got a radio call from Ed to remind us to switch hard drives at 10:00. Most excitement we’ve had all day.”

Day 7: “So we’re hanging out in what I’ve dubbed ‘fake Iraq.’  It’s pretty cool, I can show you pictures when I get back.  (This whole thing is unclassified, except for one little uninteresting bit).  Out in ‘the box’ which is the range where they send people out to train for shooting tanks and mortars and other, less interesting things like troop movements and supply stuff, I’m sure.  It’s a pretty big place out here.  Lots of room for different things to be going on at the same time, it’s miles on a side, at least, I’m sure.  Just a big empty space for army training things. 

We’re currently sitting in an SUV at Mediana Jabal which is, and no kidding, a fake Iraqi city. It’s mostly made out of shipping containers, but they’ve done a really impressive job of dressing the whole thing up.  They’ve got fake walls on all the boxes with fake bricks.  Fake two-story buildings with fake crenelations, and a big, pretty, fake mosque in the middle of the town.  There’s a bunch of fake power/phone lines all over the city, all haphazardly.  They even have fake fruit stands and storefronts, like a fake internet cafe and a fake hospital.  The fake fruit is really weird, because it’s all plaster and paint. 

And even better, and I don’t know if it’s for us, or for something else, (I’m guessing someone else) but there’s fake people out there today!  Bunch of army dudes in their fatigues (not fake, it’s real army guys) and dudes and dudettes in fake (?) garb, walking around and doing role-playing stuff.  I’m not sure if they’re doing specific scenarios or what, but there’s a lot of dudes out there.  Mostly Iraqi-looking.  Probably a really good training scenario.  I even saw, no lying, *goats*.  Real ones, being led down the street by some army dudes. Not even sure where those guys come from. ”

“Ooh.  Fake explosion, I think.  Either that or somebody just dropped something really heavy.  Ooh, now gunfire.  Pretty far away, though.  I feel safe.  There’s a whole bunch of people around here, too.  Either it’s real and far away for a different exercise or, and I suspect this one is correct just due to the radio chatter, it’s a fake-ish explosion for whatever training stuff they’re doing over there.  We have a special range radio they can use to communicate with us and I’m monitoring it closely.  If it was a real problem, we’d hear about it, so no need to worry.  We’re safe.  And I’m not getting out of the car anytime soon.”

Day 8: “...while we were setting up and collecting they were doing some pretty serious training.  I didn’t see most of it (definitely trying to stay out of the way) but I definitely heard the explosions, and I was outside the car walking around when one of them went off.  Loud!  And then they had Ambulances drive up.  That’s all I know, cause that’s all I could hear. 

I overheard some other people talking, though.  Evidently it was some sort of IED training, or at least part of it was, and they had a stunt guy pretend to have his leg blown off.  Sounded pretty dramatic. ”

More in a second,

-N

Oh, I got your 'handy'

I learned to break glass today- you know, the purposeful, score and break way. Got me a diamond tipped pencil, shattered half a box of microscope slides - for practice - worked my way up to glass plates until I scored and cut a sheet that was most of a centimeter thick. Boo yeah! And then I went back and split an entire box of glass plates- FOR SCIENCE! Amazing the things you learn in grad school.

We are all ready for the kiln firing this weekend- let's hope it doesn't snow!

WIP- also how much I rocked that seminar

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned that early in the semester there was some confusion with my boss about some seminars he asked me to give (angsty GSR eye-roll, is this HARD to keep straight?). It turned out for the best, I got to give a pair of seminars to two different Cancer audiences. The first one was a 'Prize,' and the second one was a WIP, or Work In Progress talk. The WIP was this morning, and I was worried about how I would stretch the 15 min Prize talk to a 50 min WIP. For cancer people. Since, I don't actually study cancer....

Turns out I had lots of extra stuff to add in, and it's easier to give the slow explanation. And dammit, my work is interesting. Dr. Boss and I drove to the seminar site together (it's off campus), and he was very supportive. He punted me prompts in response to the barrage of questions so I could come off as really bright. He was very gracious about the whole thing, so I felt good about it. I had loads of questions, which makes me feel like I explained myself way and other people think my work is interesting.

- - -
I've had some stressful interactions with students and my class recently, which have been making me question my motivation for teaching long-term. But really I've just been feeling busy, and not thoughtful or reflective, or in any position to respond well to students concern about their grades, or the overall course structure.

This weekend we are going out to the wood kiln- its expected to be cold. Fortunately, we'll have a raging inferno to keep us company, and distract us from real life.

Turning the corner on GSR angst

They tell me the best sign you are ready to graduate is when you can't stand your boss anymore. I've been trying to move past the science equivalent of teen angst ("he doesn't notice how smart I am," "he doesn't understand what it is like to do these experiments!"), and today I think we turned a corner. And it was a corner that I really thought would be a clif. See, I tend to get irritated with my boss when he takes too much interest in what I am doing. He isn't usually up to the minute on things, so I feel like I have to slow way down and reach WAY back to explain things to him. (Picture adolescent eye-roll here) Other methods to tame my attitude were only partially effective (patience, looking for my own errors instead if his, setting my expectations more realistically), but I was pretty confident that the togetherness of actually writing a paper together would push my patience past the brink. Fortunately for everyone involved, I was wrong.

We are writing a part of a paper, for a collaborator, which is serving as a nice dumping ground for some data we can't follow up on. We got involved in this madness about a month ago, at which time Dr. Boss suggested I try (as a Go For It experiment) an extra experiment that would round out the data nicely. We want to get it done by early November. But we needed some more details, and there was waiting, and then I was kinda slacking last week... and yesterday, my slightly flustered boss says they want EVERYthing done by Saturday- which means we need to get it out by Friday, which means.... I need to get that experiment done! And also the written part, and make the figures. Arg!

I didn't want Dr. Boss to think I wasn't taking this opportunity (big opportunity for me) seriously, so I mashed out the data- but the writing, I can't really fake. Fortunately, he can. So I spent half an hour in his office today, writing up one short part of the paper. And it was really good- I felt like the paper was better because we both wrote it, and I felt like he'd say that too. He kept saying things like "Good point" and "Well put." I didn't feel defensive about it (since I didn't have anything written before), so it actually seemed quite collaborative. Awesome!

A relevant side note, my technical writing isn't any better than it was in high school. I still write like you get charged per period, and my liberal use of tenses makes me seem like a time traveler. Ah well, with luck, we'll write a couple more papers.

It’ll be a long day

So...how’s it going for everyone? Good? That’s cool, that’s cool. Me? Sitting in the desert for a few hours, that’s all. Not a whole lot to do. I mean, there’s some tumbleweeds over there. Even got a little green on ‘em. Don’t see that too often, nosir. Quite rare, quite rare. It’s on account of the rain, you see. Had some rain last week. That’s what puts the green on them tumbelweeds, gives em a little color, you understand. Normally, o’course, they’re just brown and dry. Not much water, you understand, on account of it being the desert. Mostly just brown tumbleweeds as far as the eye can see. Not today, though. Nope, today we got a touch of green on those puppies. Just a touch, mind. Ain’t like we’re going to get a whole lot of color all over, but just a touch is enough. Yep, get just a little rain out here and you get just a little green. If we got more rain, we’d be more green, but then we wouldn’t be a desert, y’understand. Then we’d be just like anyplace else, if we got enough rain. Green and trees and whatnot. But out here we don’t get much rain. That rain last week is probably all the rain we’ll get for, oh, at least a month. And this time of year is when we get any rain at all. Yep, during the summer it’s just dry as a bone, and all those tumbleweeds are brown and dry all summer long. They have to wait until it gets on into fall and winter, sometimes, before they get a little rain. But that’s when it turns green, you see, when it gets some water. Plants need it to grow, tumbleweeds no different. Ain’t nothing grows without water, not even in the desert. Nosir. Not unless it rains.

I think this place is getting to me.

So I’ve made it successfully out to Barstow (not Baker, as previously reported to some) and have started my two weeks of work. Not a whole lot to report, actually. The collect is unclassified, but they generally frown on tossing about information too freely, even if it isn’t restricted, so if you want to know about it, you can ask me, but I ain’t postin’ it up on no internet site, nosir. AAH! keep it together, Noel. You’re not a hillbilly yet.

The biggest adjustment has been the wake up time. I got up at 4 AM today, though I could have probably slept in a little bit extra. I didn’t want to have too much to do and not enough time to do it. On the plus side, I did get to see a very pretty desert sunrise, and my rigorous plan of making myself go to bed and get up early paid off, it wasn’t that hard to get moving. For the most part, everything on the project is going quite well, yay for that. And most of my days will probably consist of sitting in cars, letting equipment run and pondering the green-ness of tumbleweed. I’ll take boring success over exciting failure, though, given the choice.

Barstow isn’t bad either, considering I was in China Lake last time. Barstow actually has a population. It’s mostly still fast food joints, but at least it’s got a few healthy ones, and even a Wall Mart and a Home Depot if we need supplies and stuff. I’ve picked up a ton of food, all sitting in my room, at the moment. O’course, there’s not a whole lot of time to appreciate the city. The days may be boring but they can be pretty long, too. Nothing absurd, I don’t think, though.

So I’ll just pass the time blogging and writing e-mails to Jessie. Not much else to do, on account of the isolation.

Yup.

-N

Rachel Maddow in AK

Just in case anyone missed it, Rachel Maddow went to Anchorage to chat with Joe Miller and a few of his supporters.

You may now resume regular programming.

News from Walla Walla

It has been just a week since the trucks pulled into the driveway at our new home, first the rental truck I drove and then the pickup that Dave Berry filled carefully with fragile pictures, boxes also marked ‘fragile’ and some key plant containers.

It has been an up and down week, getting things unpacked, placed and starting the process of learning our way around a new home and a new community. I’m starting to remember which closet lights turn on from the inside right, and which turn on from the outside left, but there still plenty of habits to unlearn and new ones to acquire.

I approach home ownership a bit differently than Noel does . . . a little bit more concerned about thermostats and other devices that come with no instructions or instructions written for contractors needing to know clearance requirements and wiring diagrams.

There is a timer on the gas furnace that seems to turn on a fresh air exchange (for SIX hours a day) that cannot be adjusted other than cranking the timer around to some time zone in the EU so that it doesn’t come on at 2:00 a.m. in our time zone.

“Gas Fireplaces for Dummies” does not appear to be available in a Kindle edition yet but I’m still hoping . . . In Ballard, I took the fireplace apart, cleaned the glass and got it all back together. In WW, I did the same process, and started looking at the pilot light instructions.

The process looked the same in both places but there is a solid looking silver fixture built into the floor next to the fireplace here . . . that’s the gas control, the real estate agent had said confidently. I looked in the “stuff” drawer where the fireplace installation manual was thoughtfully left and sure enough there’s a big brass key marked “fire log valve control.”

But when I go to use the brass key on the silver valve . . . the key has a square opening and the valve in the floor is round. They do not match and I’m at a loss for how to turn the valve on the floor. I tried the pilot-lighting process anyway, and yay, the gas is already turned on, the pilot light sparks up, and when switched on, the fireplace fills the room with cheer and warmth.

Today dawned sunny and warm and we took advantage of the break from yesterday’s rain to walk a few blocks over to the nearest park. Which turns out to feel a lot like Shadle Park, with a lot of play fields, open spaces, and magnificent maple and other deciduous trees, just turning into fall colors.

I have two job interviews next week and have already been to a community meeting sponsored by a group called the “Grandmother Round Table” where a speaker described people like us as "quality of life immigrants."

I think we’re going to like it here.

Home, home on the range

Writing from the Desert, more or less. I’m currently in Barstow (not Baker, as previously reported) a much more civilized home base from which to do testing than was China Lake, which was really just a tiny main street and a bunch of fast food joints. This place has a much larger main street and a whole lot more fast food joints. Some of which even sell healthy food, so I’m excited about that.

I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier as time has progressed, and even though I don’t have to meet anyone until 9:00 today, I still got up at 5:00 because I’m probably going to have to get up at 4:00 tomorrow and I don’t want to waste all the effort. This means I’ve had time for a leisurely breakfast, a stroll around the hotel, and a morning skype-call with Jessie. The internet in this place is unfortunately slow (I’m pretty sure it’s either shared or *dramatically* throttled) so I can’t get video of her, but she can get video of me, which is nice at least.

I’ve also set up my Xbox, so all is well. I’m planning to do a little bit of exercise, take a shower, and then goof off with video games until It’s time to meet up with people. The work promises to be generally boring, but pretty long. Maybe 10 to 12 hour days. I doubt much longer than that. Today is mostly ‘fill out forms and attend safety briefings’ day for me and my travel buddy, and then tomorrow the testing begins in earnest. I’ll try and drop little updates on people as things happen but other than ‘sat in a car for many hours today: glad I brought books’ I doubt there will be much to report.

-N