Survived first teaching!

Oh man was it a long day. But I made it, and had the foresight to leave myself some rice crispy treats to great me at home. It started off terrible : burned my breakfast, computer refused to start, lost my bus pass, wore a hole in my food to get a replacement bus pass... Any other day I might have called a truce and gone back to bed. But today was my first day of class, so no 11 am naps for me. I spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding karma and trying to get my head on straight for teaching. Time well spent.

I just made up my mind about what to in class today, so I was a little nervous about how to do it. I wanted to go through the syllabus, breaking it up to talk with the students as much as possible, and then give them a taste of what the rest of the class will be like with some case studies- based on a photocopied reading, and a YouTube video.

The talking about the syllabus part was dull- as expected, and so I was slightly nervous about the first case study. But, they got talking, they had really different view points, and they were all VERY civil. Phew. My YouTube video slightly failed, as I hadn't considered how to project the sound, but they seemed to glean enough information off my computer's speaker to power another 45 minutes of discussion about "professional guinea pigs." The awesome part was that MANY of them had participated in trials, so were not as ignorant on the subject as a predicted. We did slightly veer out of control as we tottered into areas where no one seemed to quite now how things worked (wait, why is it unhealthy to donate your eggs? How much due diligence is done before a Phase 1 clinical trial?), but I am optimistic that with a bit more time (for them) to prepare, this could be avoided. It is a good group, they seem to be able to listen to each other, and I suspect will prove to be good thinkers as course progresses.

Next week we can skip the awkward start, and jump right into the interesting discussion. Hoorah! I'm confident the rest of the semester will come together well, and hopefully the students will enjoy it.

Sitka mayor??

I don't generally inflict my deep engagment with current affairs (aka.], "rabid political obsessions") on what is clearly a family-type blog. But I have to ask my Alaska connections for any deep background they can offer re your recent primary.

1. The Sitka mayor? Has Dr. G ever chatted with him at the airport?

2. I recall hearing from Sandlin that Lisa Murkowski stopped by her poster session and had a pleasant, intelligent conversation with her. Am I remembering this correctly? Is there a 30-second summary of why her peeps might want to dump her? (I can't even tell from the news online if the outcome's official yet, so forgive my ignorance if I'm behind the times.)

And now let us return to our regular programming . . .

Working at being a DAD

We all have our rolls to play in starting a family. Jessie, as it turns out, gets hers with a *superpower*. It’s one of the things that can happen, evidently, when you become pregnant: your sense of smell gets really sensitive. Hers was already better than mine, which is very, very bad. Now it’s upgraded to downright *legendary*. Literally legendary. People have written epic poems about her olfactory sense. There was some lunch meat that was a little old and I wasn’t sure if it was good, so I had Jess smell it. She made a face and then threw it away. Superpowers!

I on the other hand, am trying to become a DAD.


Take that, debris!

This is my first attempt at proper Dad-hood. Not fatherhood. Being a father is easy. Genetics start the process and everything else goes kinda automatically. Not being a dad. That’s a much harder process. (I still remember some random box with a cover on the top that we had back in, I think, Kentucky, that said “Anyone can be a Father, but it takes someone special to be a DAD." True words.) Anyway, I figured being a dad involves power tools, and I’m pleased to say that I’ve managed to use all the of cool power tool set that dad got me for my housewarming present. The circular saw got used a while ago to cut off a plank of cedar for the cedar plank salmon I grilled up. Very tasty. A week or so ago a storm knocked a medium-sized branch off a tree in the backyard and I got to use my reciprocating saw to chop it down into trash-can-sized pieces. So I own power tools and I can use them. That makes me kind of a Dad, right?

I was pondering this on Saturday while tinkering around in the kitchen. “How am I going to be a good provider?” I thought while I put a load of shortcakes in the oven (they didn’t come out great). “What kind of things could I do for a family?” I asked while taking out the shortcakes and putting in some biscuits (they were pretty good). “What possible skills could I present as a dad?” I pondered while the biscuits came out and the scones went in (they were fantastic!) “Well yes,” I reasoned, as the scones came out and the chicken pot pie went in, “I guess there’s always baking.”

Man I am good at baking. I am so good at it, you have no idea. I can make different kinds of bread, quickbreads, cake, you name it. What do you need. Pizza dough? Pizza dough? Are you kidding? I make the best pizza dough that I’ve ever accidentally dropped on the table. I make it fast, I make it good, I make it fresh. Dads can bake, right?


zzzzzzz

Dads also play video games while wives and cats sleep next to them on the couch.

Man I hope I’ll be good at this.

-N

My computer is full

I'm not really one to procrastinate long term, but having a long term project, like putting together a course in bioethics for a year, has really tried my focus. I'm not really sure why it is so different from the rest of my work- I do sometimes have to sit at my computer and think about things. But that is the fairly exclusive mode of work for teaching. So I'll sit down, open up a spread of documents, start scribbling some notes and brainstorming, which leads to day dreaming...

I've learned to disconnect from the internet when I really need to get something done, but that can only go so far. I am at least fairly self-limited to actually productive activities. I organized my files for work into a smarter folder system. I sorted all the downloaded journal articles off my desktop. All of this is good, but it still isn't working on my syllabus.

The big kicker came yesterday, as I was really about to get serious on this syllabus. My computer popped up a message "Start up disk is nearly full." "Matt, what does this mean?" "... Your computer is full? What do you have on there?" Well! Let's find out! I hand cleared nearly 2 GB of random files (so now I have 2 GB of free space). Thank goodness for Matt's GIANT external hard drive, which serves as a reservoir for the kind of data I don't need to carry back and forth with me all the time. But will 2GB get me through the rest of this program? I don't know. Makes a person think about getting a new laptop- something I would rather do while I have the patience to re-learn all the new software (no, I am not running Office 2007. I like to keep my computer retro). But maybe this baby will pull through, and I'd hate to drop a chunk of change like that for no good reason.

The daily grind

Drug discovery and cancer research might sound real exciting and glamorous, but this summer I've been in a bit of a rut. I've taken on a very data intensive approach to answer a question I've had for a while. That this means is most mornings I set up tubes for 13 reactions, and every time I go through the same thought process.

I have 5 colors of tubes- Pink, Magenta, Yellow, Blue and Green. Pink and Magenta aren't that different, and should be kept apart to avoid confusion. I can save myself a lot of time labeling if I match colors - ie, the reaction is set up in a yellow tube, and I will test 6 time points, each of those should be yellow, and I only label the first tube, not all 7. Following? The timepoints are staggered 20 seconds apart, which means at no point can I use any part of my brain to keep track of this- my lizard brain does color matching and simple pattern recognition.

So each morning, I lay out (13x7=)91 tubes, and try to find the magic combination that will be quickly recognizable (so I don't screw up and waste time), and finish all the colors of tubes at about the same time- so then I can get a new box of tubes all at once.

To clarify how brainless this has been, this summer I used up an entire aliquot of STOP reagent- I use 1 uL to stop each timepoint. There are 1000 uL in one mL, and STOP reagent comes in 1.5 mLs. So yeah, glamorous it is not.
-----
In bad news that is good news that might later be bad news again.... after a bit of confusion, Dr. Boss and I agreed that I should give TWO seminars this fall. One is a "reward" for the poster fair madness. The other is an invited Research in Progress talk. Both are at the Cancer Institute, which is a really good place for me to give talks. I had been worried that my resume was going to be thin after graduating since I haven't had many opportunities to give talks. This helps.

The first talk is 12 minutes, on September 14. I will probably give the same talk I gave in Madison- so, awesome.

Pre-parental planning particulars

Our gradual march towards being *proper* parents and not just theoretical ones continues. Not a whole lot to report, fortunately. At this point it’s all ‘no news is good news’. The really exciting doctors appointments don’t happen for a while, and the ultrasound will be noisy and blob-looking as the baby continues to grow, but Jess is moving on into the second trimester, which is ‘turbo-baby-grow’ time, so we should have some cool looking belly pictures before too long.

Feeding my pregnant wife continues to be a challenge. Never one to back down from food she enjoys, Jess’s size of eyes/size of stomach problem has only gotten worse. When there’s food she wants, she wants it! And it’s often become my job to reel her in or, just as often, not get any food for myself so that when Jess discovers that she can’t eat like a 17-year-old anymore, I can clean up her food. Also, when Jess is hungry but doesn’t feel like eating anything, it’s my job to go through all the different kinds of food I can think of until I stumble upon something that makes her go ‘ooooh’.

We’ve started thinking about the stuff we’ll need for when baby actually shows up, but the critical stuff is on a pretty short list, and it’s more the stuff that we don’t know about yet that concerns me. I know things like breast pumps and diaper creams exist, and clearly there’s a right and wrong way to use them, but I don’t even know what they’re *for* yet. There’s time to learn, though. We’ve signed up for a ‘baby birth 101’ class for next month, and then we can start looking at ‘baby raising 102’. I am generally comforted by the fact that babies only really need four things: Food, sleep, diapers, and love. Five if you count the car seat, which they won’t let you take the baby home without. Everything else is a bonus, though clearly bonuses like ‘having something to carry your baby in’ are pretty high up on the list.

I’m sure other stuff has happened: I made some bread, and we’ve been telling people at work and our friends that we’re going to be parents; their reactions ranging from the traditional congratulations to ‘say goodbye to sleep.’ But next to baby-related stuff, nothing else I’m working on seems as involving.

Oh, except for music, I made another song. You can listen to it by clicking HERE. Tell me what you think, eh?

-N

Data Entry

As it turns out, a large part of my job is data entry, which, when you're working in a non-profit who often has to prove that it's doing well, can be a very important task. Being the youngest person in my department by about 30 years, easily, I am the most computer literate person, which I feel is saying something because I've never thought of myself as much of a Noel.
But now I'm actually kind of excited about it, because I have my own little project to work on. As you may or may not know, I work at a food pantry. If people qualify, they are able to come in to St Francis House once a month and take a certain amount of food according to how many people are in their household. We have the food split up into the food pyramid...basically, sort of. We have sweets, grains, vegetables, fruits, and proteins. It is sort of loose sometimes, depending on what kind of donations we receive that day/week/month.
The last few months we've had record amounts of people coming in(over 100 a day, and that's families, not individual people), and we seem to be going through food really quickly. There is talk about trying to switch up the way we do things, and make people's amount of food based on weight, instead of category. So now it's my job to go through 6 months worth of data and look at each day and average the weight for each family size, then I have to see if there would be an issue of changing the system, and then decide how much weight each family would conceivably get.
So needless to say I can only do data entry for so many hours in a day (i.e. why I'm blogging), but I like looking at the information and seeing averages already.
I can already foresee some issues with making the food distribution weight oriented. For instance, every once in a while we get meat, and some one could easily just take all the meat that their weight allows, and then there wouldn't be enough for everyone else. I may recommend weight by category. But I'm working backwards from August, and I've only gotten to June, so I have some more work to get through.
This job also seems to make me think about food a lot, which may or may not be a good thing. I have become more aware of what kinds of foods are hard for people to get, and what is more important to a diet. Fresh is also really hard to come around. I love the idea of being organic and locally grown, but there's just no way it's possible with prices the way they are, especially in a place like Alaska in the winter.

Other than that, just chugging along at work, learning more every day. Talked to mom the other day about possibly going back to school for a masters in Program Management. The more I think about it, the more appealing it gets, especially because AmeriCorps will give me a little money to go back to school. We'll see, depends on what is available after my year of service. For now though, I think I'll enjoy the fact that I don't have homework to finish up on Sunday nights.

Panic at the Start of the Semester

I'm sure I've mentioned before (a lot, maybe too much), that I am teaching a course in bioethics. In the past, I've been called in to give short workshops on these topics for a group of student researchers. This helped me develop my approach and some of the material I am using this semester, but is my no means equivalent to ACTUALLY teaching this class. The two big differences I see are 1) I have to give them grades, and 2) We will be enduring 14 weeks of eachother's company. These two differences result in a lot more, well, time being put into the effort. And obsessively re-writing my syllabus.

Although I've had a pretty good idea of what I want students to get out of this course for a long time, trying to define that in terms of a syllabus, gradable assignments, specific readings etc has proven to be challenging. Every few days, I'll get some other insight to how I want the course to go, or what the students should do/ get out of the experience, and I re-write the syllabus, re-tool the schedule and start writing new course documents. There is a lot to keep on balance. I want to have a lot of the structure for the course laid out, but still leave a lot of flexibility to cater to the interests of the students. I want to take on challenging subjects, but I don't my students to get incensed with eachother. And then there are my knowledge gaps. Besides the obvious fact that I have no formal training in bioethics, philosophy or social sciences, I am supposed to help my students with their writing, learning how to structure arguments, and I am totally dreading the big Environmental Ethics question.

We are a broad bio department, which means we graduate microbiologists ans ecologists side by side. I felt compelled to include an environmental ethics topics to include these students, and also because it is an important issue that future scientists ought to know about. I was waffling about picking some specific topic (Round-up ready plants, or mining issues), but after some soul searching and talking to Noel, I realized that I need to do for environmental ethics what I did for the other topics. Read up a whole lot, subscribe to blogs, and see what presents itself. And once I started in to that, I realized that I should just do the Big Environmental ethics topic (re-arrange syllabus, again). At the moment, I am thinking about environmental ethics is terms of "What happens when science and politics/economics disagree?" as a kind of capstone case study. I don't have a reading picked, and I don't know if my students will be up to this, but I think we will all benefit from the challenge.

Classes start Aug 30, and mine meets Tuesday nights. One way or another, I need to stop fussing with the syllabus and present it to my 8(! yes, I got an extra!) students. It's so soon!
* * *
The news round-up: summer drags along in a steamy haze. Matt and I went to Kennywood last weekend and rode on the NEW rollercoaster, compliments of our friend J. Tonight we are going to a fundraiser/beer tasting even at the zoo, which promises to be a blast. Matt's back has been troubling him most of the week, so he's been trying to be stoically low key. I'll probably send him to the doctor's next week, he is not a very patient patient. I am currently enjoying the juicy sweetness of a yellow seedless watermelon I bought at a farmer's market- awesome. Also, we are out of Q-tips. We are out of Q-tips because my crazy cat figured out how to get into the closet, so he can get himself Q-tips to chase around the house anytime he likes. Which is often.

My simulation is taking too long to run…

So I’ll write.

It’s been a mostly normal week, all told. Things are beginning to shift now that we can openly talk about being future-parents, but for the most part the big changes are still months away. We make little plans here and there, reading magazines about being new parents, things we can and shouldn’t do, but the whole thing still seems abstract and unreal for now. I’m sure that’ll change when I’ve got my own little one that I *can’t ever give away*.

The best thing for Jessie’s pregnancy pains, many and varied as they are, has actually turned out to be exercise. Whenever she feels down, if she goes out skating, or out to derby or hockey, she always feels far and away improved when she gets done. Of course, exercise is usually the last thing you want to do when you feel bad, but the results speak for themselves. The downside is that it’s summer here. Really summer. And that means that just going out and running for exercise is pretty much out of the question unless it’s so early in the morning that the sun has not successfully blistered the earth to unbearable temperatures, or so late at night that we risk having to run in the dark.

I’m working on music again, which is nice. I’ve lowered my standards of what is acceptable in my music, which is actually really useful, because it allows me to produce more stuff. It’s okay if it doesn’t rock me to my very core. If it sounds good, it’s good enough. And since I’m actually creating things, I’m getting better at the production. And with any luck, someday I’ll actually be good at it. Strange, I know.

Also, hoping to try another neighborhood get-together soon. This time I’ll hold it indoors and serve Ice cream or something else cold, as opposed to outside and grilling. It gets hot. I like meeting my neighbors, especially the ones with kids, and especially the ones with new babies. We can steal their clothes once their baby grows up, which I’m told happens pretty fast.
Hey, it’s done! Back to work.

Oh, but one other thing real quick. Remember that little frog from when we were de-swamping the area next to our house? The one we relocated to the front of the house near the garden? Yeah, we saw him again. Still there. Good for him.

-N

Our very first baby pictures

Head on the left, tail on the right.

Jessie’s pregnant! Though most of you already knew that, we’re starting to announce it to the world. In stages. We’ve told bosses, we’ll tell other people at work tomorrow, and hockey and derby, and then facebook is last, but you can consider the embargo on general baby discussion lifted. We had our first checkup today.



I went in, and the first thing they did was take us into the sonogram room and put Jess down on the table. A little bit of petroleum jelly and before we knew it, we were looking at the baby. Wow. That’s *our* baby right there. The nurse then proceeded to look at all the other boring parts, the uterus, and ovaries, and everything else to make sure all was well, and then she went back to the baby so we could see it better.




It’s still sort of an ill-defined blob at this stage, just about an inch long, but the sonogram showed off some striking details, namely the *heart*, which you can see just beating away like nobodys business. And the round curve of the head at the left end. And then, while we were watching...

...it moved!




We both yelled at that. Very thrilling, I’m all excited to be a dad now.

The doctors appointment continued after that, and the report that we got from the doctor was that everything was just fine. All the numbers check out, the baby looks healthy and is growing fine, and Jess is taking perfect care of it. We got a bag full of random pre-natal stuff including vitamins and magazines, and formula. Somehow the fact that we now are in possession of a bottle nipple really made us both realize that we’re going to have a *baby* soon. And it’s going to need a *lot* of these. Jess also got the ‘ok’ to keep skating, as long as she’s careful with her balance. The ‘relaxin’ hormone is moving through her body now and she’s at increased risk of actually injuring herself due to twists and sprains, and that’s never fun.

We also got a lot of information about classes, the process at the hospital, things of that nature, so we’re feeling much better educated. Another milestone along the path to successful parenthood: we’re starting to feel like we might actually be parents someday.

-N

Weekend Adventures

I wanted to write about this weekend, so let’s get this out of the way real quick...



This is Hamilton Pool, a natural pool in a park about 40 minutes outside of Austin. We drove out there on Saturday and checked it out. It’s *beautiful*. I would travel to Costa Rica for a sight such as this, and it’s in our own backyard. We got there early and walked along the creek, which had some really neat views with some beautiful flora along the path. Then a little later in the day, when it got really hot, we went back to the pool area and swam around for a bit in the cool water. Not super cold, just like a pool. There was even a little waterfall that poured water down on a rock you could sit on. I did, for a while, but the water was pretty sharp with all its velocity and it kinda stung my head. We had a great time, though, that place is so nice.

We went shopping for some clothes on sunday, too, just stuff to fit us both better. I’ve managed to keep off my weight and it would be nice to have a pair of shorts that I don’t need to hold up with a belt.

Oh, and friday I want out with some guys from work and saw The Expendables, which is exactly the kind of movie you expect it to be. Lots of truly preposterous action and a lot of fun. Especially when you see it wit a bunch of other guys. We had a blast watching it, then met up for some drinks and munchies at a restaurant nearby.

Okay, that’s out of the way. Hang on, let me get this other one ready...

-N

Feeling Conflicted

As you most likely already know, the sad news out of Dillingham is the loss of Uncle Ted Stevens, former and disgraced US Senator from Alaska. I am feeling much more sad then I expected. But as I told Matt on the phone, I think I just wanted to be mad at him for all his stupid mistakes forever. It would be easier to have him living under the scrutiny of my petty judgment. Now I am feeling dissapointted loss and defensive affection for him.

Two nights ago, I ran into a former student from my lab class at Costco. He is a very level headed guy, who had told me he wanted to get a Masters in Chemical engineering, so he could get a highly paid job so he could support a family without the kinds of worries his parents faced. I really admired his maturity and his plan. But when I saw him last night, he was just bursting with happiness. He told me he hated chemical engineering, he quit the masters program, and was starting a PhD program in structural biology, which he loves! I was disappointed that his plan hadn't worked out, but he seemed so happy with the new challenges of the program, that I'm resolved to be happy for him.

I'm getting really fixated on what to do after I graduate. It is slightly more difficult to imagine a career path that allows me to stay happily married (ie, keep Matt employed and both of us living in the same zip code), and I'm getting cold feet about sending out personal statements to various programs that offer science policy fellowships. I'm starting to wonder if staying in Pittsburgh another year would help- but I am not sure what it would help. My resume? I can't unequivocally say that moving to Pittsburgh was the perfect choice for me and my family, I think I am scared of making choices with such far reaching consequences again.

Tiny stories from the weekend

Nothing *largely* exciting happened recently, so I present to you a series of small little vignettes from a very nice weekend.

Jess decided she wanted pizza this weekend, so pizza was made. By me. I make great pizza. All you readers have experienced it, I think. I made 7 personal-pizzas worth of dough, and we made a large version of our collective favorite, the Gorgonzola pizza, and two personal pizzas each. Jess kept hers traditional, with another blue cheese and a garlic and cheese pizza, her favorites. I tried some cooked sausage on one and made a taco pizza on the other with some leftover taco meat and spaghetti sauce and pizza cheese on one half, Mexican-blend cheese on the other. Both halves were delicious. It was all topped off by jalapenos I grew in the backyard. Not spicy, but definitely mine.

We got a hammock. Jess came back from derby practice to find me setting it up in the front yard. She had stopped off at a smoothie place and asked for a strawberry banana smoothie for her and ‘something tart’ for me, because she knows what I like. We set up the hammock on the front yard and tested it out by lying down, smoothies in hand, and rocking back and forth under the shade of OUR trees while Jess relaxed on my chest. “This,” I thought, “is why I went to college.”

Much of the rest of Sunday was spent *completely* idle. I spent most of Saturday evening (a bit of Sunday early morning) and most of Sunday playing a game of Civilization 4, an *incredibly* complex society-building strategy game that is heavy on the complexity and light on the explanation. Jess sat next to me running some numbers on refinancing our mortgage and playing game of her own. We topped off the evening with some Rock band, which doubles as exercise, for me.

-N

Quiet Night- and banana candy? anyone?

Noel told me he really likes being "and old man," which I take to mean he enjoys the comfort of the settled and predictable life. I like that, too, about once a month. And this weekend was my weekend for it. Matt and I walked up the hill for bagels, and I spent a couple hours in the coffee shop (I am ready for at least the first 4 week of class, with only another ~5 to REALLY prepare for), and then we made a quick dinner, and the nothing really got into full swing.

I suppose Noel's old man-itude actually involves more doing stuff, which is perhaps why he finds it so fulfilling. After dinner, I made a Cook's Illustrated Banana Bread- which took ages longer that I might have expected. I should have known, it was Cook's Illustrated.

As far as the recipe goes, we determined that some of the basic principles of the recipe were things we already incorporate (who in their right mind ever tried to make banana bread with unspeckled bananas?), so while it was good, it wasn't the usual 3 times better than we could have made on our own. It calls for layering some bananas on the top of the loaf, and then sprinkling the whole thing with sugar. This actually makes a carmely banana candy that reminded me of a seemingly familiar recipe that I cannot place. Does any one remember any sticky sweet recipes that are flavored with ripe banana? I am suspecting that this is something I learned form the Brazilians, but I cannot for the life of me find online.

While the loaf was cooking, the oven was on, and the apartment acted as a protective reservoir for all the leaked heat. Rather than revel in the efficiency, we stepped outside to enjoy a cold beverage in the dark on our porch. We got to talking to our next-door neighbor and watching bugs. Just good ol'fashioned nothing.

Happy Anniversary

I'm pretty lucky.

Today was the kind of day that left me wanting to just glare at a beer in thundery solitude, but instead Matt and I went to celebrate our anniversary at a Belgian pub. Hanging out with Matt can turn me from scowly faced grump to laughing so hard people turn to look.

But that's not why I am so lucky. I am lucky because I married a guy who doesn't mind hanging out with an absentminded klutz who can't eat a Cuban grinder without getting BBQ sauce up her nose. We were made for each other.

Here's to 4 more happy years!

Adventures in Home Ownership: Destroying a tiny ecosystem

Around the north side of our house it gets really wet. It’s in the shade pretty much all day, it’s got a couple of air conditioners shading it too. And we have to use the sprinklers on it because that section also waters our rose bushes et. al. along the side of the house. Not to mention that our air conditioners drain out of there too and I think the neighbors also water our side of the house. So it’s wet, and it stays wet, and it doesn’t really drain away.

This is no good for us home dwellers because the things that like to live around all that moisture are bugs. Lots of ‘em. I noticed the wasps first because of course you notice wasps because they’re crazy. But when exploring over there I’m always getting bit by mosquitoes and seeing other critters crawling around. The water forms into pools and will just sit there, not draining, for days. Definitely a small, but consistent, bug breeding area. So it’s got to go.

Our plan was to just cover much of that area between the A/C units, which is already ugly, with gravel. There still may be some water in there, but as long as it’s hard to get to we, hopefully, won’t have to worry about mosquitoes breeding next to our house. So we got some bricks to form a little barrier and several bags of gravel and one evening after the sun had started to set and let the temperature get down below 90 degrees, we struck.

Most of the work involved was just getting the rocks over there. Jess did the bricks, so I got to do the massive bags of gravel. (Okay, she did cary one, I just had to lift it up for her). Then we blocked off the area with the bricks and started covering up all the muddy, standing-water area with gravel. It seemed to work really well, giving good ground cover and looking pretty nice. And then we saw the frogs.

I felt a little bad, actually. A little brown frog and an even littler brown frog had evidently taken up residence in this micro-swamp, and we were just coming in like humans always do and paving over his home. They hopped away and Jess managed to grab one and relocate it to a drier area of the house, but I doubt he’ll stay. I did feel bad, and then I remembered why I was doing it. Mosquitoes and wasps and who knows what else? It’s not good for us to be having those things breeding near our home. That’s how diseases get spread.

Of course, it’s always nice to leave little pockets of ‘nature’ around: our native flowers, parks and nearby undeveloped (for now) areas. But let’s not kid ourselves. If you want to have nature, real nature, you’re going to have bugs. And a lot of them. And things eating those bugs and those bugs attacking you and trying to eat your food. We tend to romanticize ‘living in tune with nature’, but nature isn’t kind. Everything is trying to eat everything else, and the only reason we’ve become so successful as a species is because we’re the best at the war. The best. We can take any place and make it sterile and safe.

Clearly there’s a balance that needs be struck: if we really tried to win the war we’d just end up wiping out every other species on the planet and killing ourselves off for lack of biodiversity. That’s not healthy either. But sometimes you have to chase away the cute little frogs because you can’t have mosquitoes living near your house. So I felt a little bad that I couldn’t carve out that area for critters to live, but that’s the choice I had to make today. Maybe someday later I’ll be able to make a little pond way, *way* out away from the house where there can be bugs and cockroaches and frogs and snakes and deer and all sorts of crazy animals just eating each other like there’s no tomorrow. But not today.

I just had to make sure my house was safe.

-N

Minnesota- Maxiawesome

Matt and I got to spend the weekend in Minnesota with his extended family. We stayed with his aunt and uncle near the old family homestead between Swanville and Long Prairie, and were bombarded with a constant stream of cousins. The particular reason we went this weekend was a combination mother-in-law's birthday (happy birthday!) and family reunion. And not just the bonanza of first cousin's who were constantly dropping by the house to chat with us, but the second and possibly third cousins on Matt's grandfather's side of the family. We met a lot of people, enjoyed hot dishes and salads and cookies bars, and did some patently farmtown type things- which was fairly touristy of us.

Really, we rolled up like a pair of ignorant city slickers, blithely letting our GPS guide our rented Prius out of the Twin Cities and up into truck territory. It was so charmingly small town that when I told someone at the reunion we had driven past Betty's childhood home, she said, "Are you driving a black car? I am so glad to hear know that was you! I thought it was odd that someone would creep along our road so slowly!" Because, yes, a distant cousin lives on the old family homestead, and yes, they were home at the time of our drive-by. Charming!

We enjoyed the Todd County Fair, which displayed arguably better 4H projects that the ones we saw in WA, although fewer total animals. We also went up the the Brenard Raceway to watch one of Matt's cousins drive in a stock car race. He won his heat, and moved up to third in his league! And we got to enjoy all that smugly from the booth. The highlight for me was touring the dairy farm, which has been in the family for at least a couple generations, currently in the care of a first cousin. They have 100 head of dairy cattle, and keep on a few boys for beef, maintian many acres of feed corn, and some chickens for the household. It was really a case study for a modern family farm- some aspects were mechanized, but it was small, house on site, only a few hired hands.

It was a very mellow weekend out in the quiet country, we enjoyed catching up with Matt's mom and getting a break from the city. I'll post pictures soon, but I wanted to share the fun we had now.