We got the fung.

Here's what I found in our backyard:

We are not going to eat them.

Ultimate weekend!

Mark made it to Ultimate Masters Nationals on the Austin TX team Tejas, and they were played in Denver (well, Commerce City) this weekend. We went to spectate on Saturday. Mark played in two of the three games, and they won those two games! Looking at the final scores, Tejas seems to have placed exactly as they should have, beating for a second time all the teams they encountered at Regionals. Whoop!

The first game, versus Slow Country Boil:

Fleet like a gazelle.

Oscar Interlude

Oscar is still enjoying this bug-like Mardi Gras throw. It has so many legs to suck on!

Last game, versus Borderline (a team from the Northeast, with Canadian members).

Mark made a scoring pass in this game, whoop! 

It was great to get to see him and to show off Oscar. The weather was just perfect - not too hot, not too cloudy. The rain held off until after the last game was over and we were on our way to dinner. We got to sit on a hill overlooking the field, under the one tree with any significant shade, for the whole day. Eric had planned on going back up to Fort Collins around five to tutor, but his student called and asked to just do more on Sunday. So we got to change our plans and stay for the whole day! It was nice to be able to just change plans like that, and really nice to sit outside all day long.

The next day, though, we were beat! I can't imagine how the players felt, since they weren't just sitting in the grass all day, and they're all from sea level. Oscar did a lot of good sleeping on Sunday.

Last Thursday we went to Pat's house for a lab dinner (which is almost the weekend, so I include it here). Armeda sent me this photo she took.

Sleepy Oscar!

inchworm

It's raining a lot right now! Thank goodness!

commuting

Oscar goes to the office today! This video brought to you by the letter K.



In other news, I hate having the option to "work from home". When I am at home I have other stuff to work on! Sitting on the computer messing with spreadsheets is not one of them! Also I am already working plenty not at home! It just makes me feel guilty when I decide to relax. So I'm not going to do it any more. (Working, not relaxing. Relaxing will continue as long as there are popsicles.) So there.

Here is the first raspberry harvest. The red ones are only just starting to ripen. Luckily this year we know that most of them will just get slightly pink!

Garage found himself another baby thing to occupy!

Oh no! Look out Garage!

Sleepy boy

Oscar thinks the bunny is hilarious, and he thinks barking is hilarious, and the two combined make him very happy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nfPPThUtek

In other news, going to work is the worst! It isn't even that science is so terrible (although it is frustrating right now). It's that the lab is being poorly run and I have no power to make it better. All I can do is stop caring and just get my work done, but that is not a fun attitude!

Elizabeth complained

And she's all alone up in Boston, so here's a cheerful video for her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrPq1mq7s5I

Look, ma!

No feet! It is hilarious to dress him in clothes that are too big. Also, why are there pockets on baby clothes?

The cat tormenter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn5f8FOwGGk

Oscar loves all the cat toys, but this one's the best since he and the cats can use it at the same time!

PS, somebody's coming home today! !!!!!!

Playtime's fun, come on everyone!

It was raining this afternoon so we had to forego our peepee pool time. Instead we made one in the kitchen!

Yes that is a giant puddle on the kitchen floor! It was due for a cleaning anyway.

Here's a picture from yesterday's outside time: the first encounter of Oslo and Oscar.

Neither one seems too excited about the other, which makes things easier for right now. The cats have realized, finally, that Oscar is a menace and have started avoiding him - except for Pocky. All attention is good attention in her mind.

My turn to be be sweet!

My wife is the best.  That much should be obvious by now.  She relinquished me for three weeks to go do something I am passionate about.  Meanwhile she has taken on the responsibility of taking care of our child, our house, our animals, our house, and so much more.  During this span we "celebrated" our two year anniversary and her thirtieth birthday alone (and sometimes with friends).  In three weeks she has not complained about me or what I am doing while supporting me completely... I don't know how that is possible.  I guess by now I just assume she is super-human.  To say that I am lucky is an understatement.  How I ever found such a stable, kind, and beautiful woman is bewildering... why she puts up with me I will never be able to understand.   That's enough preamble...

I will return to Colorado in less then 48 hours and I couldn't be more excited.  When I get home I have my best friend and wife, my home, my family, and my whole life waiting for me.  I have never wanted anything more then to have her here with me experiencing what I have (I wonder if we could both teach here next year).  Sometimes its incredibly hard for me to be sensitive or sentimental but I feel its important for me to say in a (semi) public domain that I love her and that my life could not be possible without her.  She is the rock my entire world has come to revolve around.  Margaret, without you this would not be possible.  I look forward to the rest of our life and all the wonderful years to come.  How did I ever function without you.
Thank you.

This is a picture of 2013 session 1 zoology class from Bristol Rhode Island.  They will never know how instrumental you were in this ever happening.

I Love You.

Seven months old!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuwvhJuJDxw

Tummy time

Somebody loves trying out his new trick! Especially when he's supposed to be sleeping.

Hand in mouth - classic style.

Pickee up!

Happy birthday to me!

I'm painting a tree! (A representation of a tree, to be precise. I have known people to be confused about this...) 

It was a real nice birthday. Oscar and I went for a hike very early in the morning and sat by a stream with no one else around and discussed the important things in life. Mostly he giggled. Then we came home and both took naps. Then I did some painting, and Pat and Jen came over for dinner. Oscar refused to go to sleep, he just knew there was a party going on, so he stayed up much too late and giggled like a fiend. I left all the things that I don't want to do for tomorrow. I did wash and brush my hair today, which says something about how my priorities have changed, since clearly that was not something that I didn't want to do.

Happy birthday!

Caught!

Somebody made the mistake of letting me watch them roll over! He still doesn't like going from front to back, I think he doesn't see the point. 

It's much more impressive in person, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdoI_z8rax8

Botanical items

Sue's lovely wildflower bouquet - it smells delicious!

The peach for this year. I'm giving it lots of encouragement but I doubt there will be much peach jam this year.

It begins! There are sunflowers and coneflowers all over the back yard right now, and this is the first one to bloom.

Cute little alpine poppy!

And the first day lily! I got this one a few weeks ago and I'm glad it seems to be happy. It also smells, nice and yellow.

Baby birds eat cottage cheese and peaches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmuEp9gq7Q4

I particularly like the ending. I managed to save the food from going on the floor but he certainly has good instincts and speed!

Fluorescent plants

This is what I worked on this afternoon! These are the roots of Arabidopsis plants, progeny of the ones that showed resistance on the kanamycin plates from a few weeks ago. I took one picture with regular white light (on the left) and then took another picture with fancy light and a filter (on the right). The top two pictures are of non-fluorescing plants, to make sure there is no background fluorescence. If you tilt the computer screen just right, and are in a dark room, you can just see the fluorescence in that one. The bottom two pictures are from my transgenic plants, and as you can see the fluorescence is gangbusters in these guys. The exposures are the same for both the fluorescence images.

I have been working on making these plants for a year and a half, longer if you count the time I spent making the DNA to insert into the plants. Now I am absolutely certain I will graduate!

The red color is because these plants are making a protein called tdTomato, which is a red fluorescent protein. When light of the right wavelength (in this case green) hits the protein, the protein then emits light itself of a longer wavelength (in this case red). In plant leaves a red fluorescent protein isn't always the best thing to use, because chlorophyll, when exposed to green light, also emits red light, so it isn't clear whether the red you see is from the chlorophyll or from your protein. However, in the roots, there is no chlorophyll, so that is no longer an issue.

This particular batch of plants is producing a hybrid protein, so the tdTomato protein has an extra bit attached to it, which is what I am interested in investigating. This extra bit should be able to become covalently attached to the cell wall, so it will cause some interesting physiological effects that I will be able to measure, aside from just looking at the glowing roots.

I love looking at my plants in the microscope. Since they are alive, they are still making tdTomato while they are under the microscope, and I can actually see little bundles of red moving around inside the cell. It is breathtaking. It also means it takes forever for me to get all my pictures, because I spend so much time lollygagging! (I took a lot more pictures than those four up there, for documentation purposes.)

I got to show Pat these plants in the microscope today, and she gave me a high five. Whoop!

Good morning!

Oscar was being hilarious this morning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGZ9K274Ruw

Happy baby!

This is how Oscar wakes me up in the morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGdskVXZeTw

two videos for tuesday

Oscar loves those coasters! If he sees them from afar he will try to fall on top of them and then of course get them in his mouth.

Look what I found

Some cats escaping the heat by lying right on top of each other - a nice picture totally made of wood - the famous pig. Everyone needs one of these. This one, you can see, has "pig" written around the edge, a nice touch.

I found the pictures at the habitat for humanity ReStore, which is very close to our house and has lots of nice junk. I also found a wicker cabinet to go in the front hallway. I had Oscar with me when I got it, so a gentleman helped me get it to and into the car. Unfortunately he wasn't very clever, and insisted on putting it in sideways so that it blocked the gearshift. After he went back inside, and I had installed Oscar in his carseat, I flipped it around myself and was pleased by how much more roomy the car felt, and by how I could now put the car in reverse and get out of there!