Le Crab and Za Vhale

This is for Elizabeth (and other Flemings)

2012-01-23T14:01:00.000-08:00

So I have been playing a new video game that I believe is perfect for Elizabeth (and maybe the rest of you. You might have heard of it but it is still fun to check out I suggest you do. It is a program called FoldIt. It is a protein folding video game that is very addicting and rather competitive. The use people who play the game as protein folders to determine he 3D structure of proteins. Some people even get published from it (See attached link). Anyway it turns out humans are way better at this then computers and therefor I suggest you all give it a try. Let me know if you do

Link to article:
http://techland.time.com/2011/09/19/foldit-gamers-solve-aids-puzzle-that-baffled-scientists-for-decade/

Link to FoldIt:
http://fold.it/portal/

Oh Charlie

2011-12-19T10:16:00.001-08:00

Lets be honest

2011-12-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

Margaret and I are only together because we share in the dream of immortality. So, you know, long term relationships get us a little bit closer to that vision.

Portals...

2011-12-15T08:52:00.001-08:00

Does anyone else see an 80 year old Margaret in this video?

The ghosts of music: past, present, future

2011-12-05T09:42:00.000-08:00

Past

Present

Future

Going visiting!!!

2011-11-28T17:17:00.001-08:00

They got there!

Slicing cher onione

Erica is bigger than a horse.

International traveler, Grand Prix champion. Charlie's saying "Pam Shore's broken both 'er legs an I wanna dance with you."

That's Pat in the background; she owns the horses

Climbing Castle Rock

going visiting 2

2011-11-28T17:07:00.000-08:00

Consider Castle Rock climbed.

It's 7 am!

Ski time!

Erica is not bigger than a mountain,

Delicious Mickey D's brekkie

Erica and Charlie ski!

This is Charlie.

apres-ski what!

Not amused.

They did it yaayy!

Moun-tains. of the eeeeeeerth.

apres-ski indeed. a full day apres.

aww.

hi charlie and erica!

2011-11-27T18:20:00.000-08:00

Hope your travels went well. Now read this:

20 stories

2011-11-03T18:29:00.000-07:00

LMFAO

2011-10-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

Check it out. The fail blog of crafts - things go so, so wrong!

Attn: Mark

2011-10-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

Maybe this will change how you feel about stupid pine nuts. You do hate them, right? From a terrible Outward Bound experience that you wish I would never remind you of?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/world/asia/harvesting-cease-fire-offers-respite-in-afghanistan.html?_r=1

Never Forget

2011-10-03T09:53:00.001-07:00

The Man, The Idea, The Gotee

rabbit update

2011-09-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Oslo has been upgraded! He is now allowed to do controlled exploration around the house, and can army crawl all over. He didn't accept any acupuncture in his feet and flinched for all the ones in his back. He moves his feet together and is very strong.

Also he doesn't seem to be pooping on himself any more, which is a huge plus from our point of view - and really, his too. Rabbits don't like to be smelly.

Yay the bun!

Thoughts of a paralyzed rabbit

2011-09-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

I wonder what it is like being paralyzed. I like to think of it as if your bottom half has fallen asleep and no matter how much you try you cant wake it up. I wonder if Oslo even knows his legs are not working or did he just wake up and realize the walking had become extremely hard for some reason. Either way he doesn't seem to understand physical therapy. I mean for a human, we can rationalize paralysis, realize we have to work to get rid of it and force ourselves to use our legs. A rabbit can do none of these things and therefore all work to get the legs working again has to come from us.

Margaret is exceptionally good at this. Waking up at all hours, going out to see him, comforting my melancholy about the situation, etc. My one comfort is it brings be closer to Oslo. I can learn about his anatomy and bunny hood. This is a good venture into being a bunny owner. I suppose that if I continue to own them for the rest of my life this was bound to happen and now I know what to do. So I guess its not a complete loss but I am sorry for the little guy.

We should start to see significant improvement in 2 or so weeks. So we are hopeful. In the mean time we get to play with him 6 times a day and feed him all the delicious things from our pantry. If this is going to be it for him at least he is going out with a belly full of apples and bok choy.

fun and not fun

2011-09-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

I went to Estes Park today and did a lot of singing. We sound good! It was a beautiful day and everyone brought lots of good food and was very friendly. Fun!

Right before lunch Eric called me. Oslo Buns couldn't move his back legs. Not fun. I had left the car far away in Fort Collins where I met my ride to Estes Park. Ditto not fun.

Turns out one of Oslo's disks collapsed in his spine. We don't know why. He can pee and poop just fine, and has sensitivity all the way to his toes, but the inflammation around the collapsed disk means that his nerves are compressed and not signaling properly. He has to go to acupuncture therapy a couple times a week and we have to do physical therapy with him every few hours. The place Eric took him said they have seen rabbits completely recover from similar in kind but worse in degree injuries. After the first acupuncture treatment today he could wiggle his big toes!

He is a very sad looking rabbit right now. He loves to hop away from people and charging and rearranging things on the floor and now he cannot do these things. If we are petting him too much (he thinks there is such a thing) and wants to get away he cannot. All his rabbity instincts are not functional. Also he had diarrhea for a while so his butt is quite filthy!

Oh Oslo. I am so sad this happened and so glad we can help you get better! Soon you will again be terrorizing our minds!

Not to be out done.

2011-09-22T13:15:00.000-07:00

Margaret has some really great posts but this is good to.

Some deep thoughts.

2011-09-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

1) Eric proposed this thought experiment recently. Is there any condition under which you would assent to 50% of the population dying? That means that you personally have a 50% chance of dying. I say no. But then he proposed, what if the person becomes transmogrified into another living thing, like a tree or a blade of grass or a marmoset or some other endangered organism? Then I think I would say yes. a) overpopulation is the cause of most of the world's problems. b) everything would still be alive! C) I don't think either me or Eric or any of my family would be the ones affected. Even though statistically that's not true.

2) We got the tandem bike back! Dani is moving back to Spain, for real, for good (unless his grant application in Minnesota or whatever comes through) so we bought it from him. Unfortunately for me Chantal took back the seat she bought so it is no longer nearly as squishy and suspensionable as it was. Bumps are quite painful. Eric doesn't know my pain at all, he is no Bill Clinton.

3) I have made great scientific progress this week. I discovered that our SDS solution (sodium dodecyl sulfate, a common ionic detergent found in toothpaste and shampoos and also useful for dissociating ionically bonded proteins) is bad. How does it go bad? I have no idea. Instead of making the solution more basic, as it should, it made the solution acidic. This may be why I have not seen the results I expected when I treated my fluorescent proteins with this SDS. I got some today from Eric's lab and it did not precipitate out and it made the solution (slightly) more basic. So maybe everything will work out just fine. When it does I will let you know and there will be pictures galore on here don't you fear.

4) Kirsten let me have some of her alpaca+gold glitter roving to spin tonight. It spins so much nicer than Dennis hair + wool! I feel like a real good spinner now, even though my spinning wheel is old and I don't take care of it properly.

5) My preliminary exams are on Monday November 7th. This is very important because it is before Thanksgiving i.e. I can enjoy my Thanksgiving break for the first time in three years. Also it is important because it means I will be freaking out more and more before then. Fortunately I have siblings I can visit afterwards so I have something to look forward to. Namely, southwest has cheap flights through tomorrow so I will go visit Annie in San Francisco immediately afterwards and greatly enjoy myself. Also, I am about to learn more about esoteric subjects than I ever knew before, so get ready world! I will lay it on you with abandon!

6) Listeria virus has recently been found in Colorado-grown canteloupe. No canteloupe is now available in Colorado. I know the mechanism by which Listeria operates: normally the virulence genes are not expressed, because the RNA forms a stem-loop structure which the ribosome cannot bypass, so no protein gets transcribed. However, at body temperatures, the RNA stem-loop structure is melted, which is to say the hydrogen bonds between base-pairs are no longer maintained, so the RNA becomes straight and the ribosome can transcribe the virulence genes. This is the first fact I learned in the RNA biology class I took last fall and I still think it is super-cool. The Listeria virus does not become virulent until it is inside an endotherm. And RNA structure is responsible!

7) I think about the fact that I have MS every single day. I don't like it. I can't tell whether I'm tired or my myelin sheathing isn't conducting properly and it makes a difference in how I act which one is responsible. But I go swimming. The pool is cool, it is impossible to get overheated, and I get nice and excercised. Yay goggles! Then I get in the hot tub, it does feel good on my muscles, but when I get out I can't see straight! Am I tired or is are the electrons not moving properly? I cannot trust my body any more! Instead I assume the most helpful hypothesis: my brain IS tired, I MUST take a nap, and then I DO feel better. I recommend that everyone, healthy or not, take naps regularly. It definitely mitigates decision fatigue. Do you love naps or hate them?

Have you lost interest in muffins?

2011-09-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHcH-pFbCWQ&feature=related

No...No you haven't.

2011-09-10T10:17:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, I look to the internet to entertain me, and then I realize there is nothing there for me at all.

A bust.

2011-09-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

The weather is finally fit for normal humans again, so Eric is a little sad. He may need to bring the long undies back next week.

We tried to play an awesome rock n roll show yesterday in Pat's front yard for Tour de Fat. We made the mistake of making noise before the parade started, and got shut down by the police because of "several" noise complaints from "three blocks away". People showed up anyway to hang out and drink beer. Paul blew his horn at the passers-by. I dressed as a fairy princess and was quite pleased with the outfit, which included false eyelashes and a tiara.

The police came a second time because all the partiers had left their bikes on the sidewalk, "blocking traffic". Hmph.

We played a show inside anyway, and we did not play our best but our friends were kind and said we did well.

Then everyone made their way downtown to where the festival was taking place. This was very close to my idea of hell: drunk people in costumes very close to each other in the bright sunlight with loud noises coming from stages all around. And everything was expensive, and there were long lines... I just don't get it, they all seemed to really enjoy this experience. Eric and I convinced Dane and Paul and Eric's parents to go somewhere else, to sit down and enjoy a beer.

We walked to Armadillo's and waited too too long for drinks and for food - but both were excellent when they did arrive. It didn't even look like there was any other table in there. We filled our fill on chips and salsa, that's for sure.

And we rolled our way home and Eric remembered to tell me that he'd invited all the people from Pat's house over to our house for the after-party. I said alright, whatever, I'm taking a nap regardless. And we both slept for many hours, and woke up to find that everyone Eric had invited had forgotten he'd invited them, because they were not at our house, nor had they called anyone. Fine.

I hope we can put together another show before Dani goes but it seems like playing in our backyard won't go over too well - maybe we can get a permit? Maybe we can not play at 9am on a Saturday?

In other news, my experiments are half-working. I was going to go to work this weekend to try getting them completely working but then, really, it's Labor Day weekend and what am I if not a worker? I only got paid for half of August, also, so I feel owed something like a vacation. So I'm not working. Hah!

Finally, swimming technology has really come a long way. I got new goggles for swimming laps and they are amazing! Comfy, leak-proof, fog-proof, UVA-UVB resistant! I should wear them everywhere! But seriously, I want a pair for the house to use while chopping onions.

Pocky

2011-09-02T11:27:00.001-07:00

awolnation hits Plum Street

2011-08-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

The harvest

2011-08-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

Here's our potatoes we grew this summer - no fertilizer, no nothing.

They are delicious.

Jokes Bu.

2011-08-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

So I was in the shower the other day thinking how nice it is to be secular when a joke boiled up from my under developed funny cortex:

What do you call a Christian who follows three atheists?

A Non-Secular!

(Its funny because it sounds like you say non sequitur)

Anyway I thought it was good.

Yo Annie

2011-08-18T19:20:00.001-07:00

Check it out, you've got famous company:

Bill Clinton is a vegan!

Also he weighed 185 pounds when he was 13!

2011-08-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

On Saturday Paul and I had a big day. We went to all the thrift stores except one. At EcoThrift the cashier kept looking at me funny as I was shopping until he rang me up. Then he said, a St. John's graduate I see (I was wearing my red intramural tshirt). He had gone to Santa Fe for one year a loooong time ago and we had a little convo about that, never minding all the other people wanting to buy shit. Even though he had only gone one year he still loved it and thought about it and got requests for money from them. Yay school!

Paul found himself a galileo's thermometer and a wicker basket his fellow teacher may use for a crow's nest, while I had found some new clothes. Like I needed them...

The other stores were boring except one had a birthing stool! And an ancient toaster where the toast isn't popped in and out but instead the sides flap down. Paul did find a lot of good things for his classroom too.

Somehow we were shopping for four hours! Why?! When we got back I treated myself to a refreshing little nappy.

Later on we were all hanging out in the back yard and I mentioned that a fire pit is only $50 from Target. This prompted Eric to immediately begin digging out a pit, and he then coerced Paul into moving all the dirt from the pile that he had made into the garden. Then they burned some scrap wood and then they burned some freshly-pulled thistles. Thistles do not have a pleasant burning smell at all. And they are wet! and smoky! And it was not chilly out at all!

It has gotten a little chillier lately, at least less oppressively hot, and some of the aspen leaves are turning. The wind is making a more rustly sound in the trees too, and school starts next week! So maybe this firepit thing will work out after all...

last day

2011-08-13T21:34:00.001-07:00

So this already happened a while ago but it's worth remembering.

1) We woke up, and packed, and checked out. The shuttle wouldn't be ready for half an hour so we went to breakfast in the hotel. I requested a bagel but they were out of bagels so I had my choice of bread substitute free of charge (I chose an English muffin). I put all the jam I could on that sucker.

2) We got there. We actually saw some of the minisymposia! We went to the very end of one on cell walls and heard someone talking about CesA10-12 and all the different activities of these enzymes. Meh. Then we saw all of one on metal ion issues. The first girl presented on iron-phosphorus homeostasis interactions. The text of her talk was very clear and the logical reasoning was well presented, which is rare, but she was a very nervous speaker. Someone asked her a question at the end and she could barely say that she didn't know the answer. Then someone else, amazingly, asked her another question, and she lost the use of her tongue entirely. Fortunately no one pressed on, although more interesting questions could have been asked.

The next speaker talked about the search for an iron transporter in the mitochondria - which remains to be identified. She found a protein located in the mitochondria but the evidence for iron transport activity was weak. She spoke incredibly loudly and forcefully, particularly in the introduction when she discussed how important iron was for human health.

The next speaker was a chemist who talked about different ways to trace metal uptake and overaccumulation in Arabidopsis. She used radiotracers to examine different mutants to see if their iron or uranium or mercury content and localization differed.

The last speaker was amazing. She works at POSTEK in South Korea and was extremely poised and confident and thoughtful. She talked about arsenic overaccumulation and had found a mutant that allowed more arsenic to be sequestered in the vacuole, so the mutant could grow in soils with higher levels of arsenic. She showed one of Lianne's figures on hyperaccumulation!

Eric was surprised that most of these speakers were graduate students or post-docs presenting their thesis research, instead of being professors as is the case for the symposia. The topics are even just as important and broad as those for the symposia but for whatever reason it is like a fancy poster presentation (and most people did also have posters) instead of a serious "talk".

3) Whew! On to lunch! We went to a sweet cafe in the other direction from the hotel for once. It was called Jerusalem's and had delicious Middle Eastern food. Our waitress had curly hair done in a mohawk and giant dangly earrings. She, like all our other servers, was super friendly and helpful. We sat out on the patio which had a grape-vine ceiling, and talked about the future of the world while we munched on falafels.

4) Zip! Back to the conference! Eric really wanted to skip it, as did I, but my conscience said since it was the last set of talks and it was on biofuels we really should check it out. I think now that we might have skipped it and happily read our books at the airport, or in the park. But some sweet drawings did come out of it.

Speaker one was the Undersecretary for Science. He told us about energy in the US generally, and said how we will never have energy security as long as we rely on liquid fuels. The UK is apparently energy independent and yet their fuel prices fluctuate based on the world price which is still set by OPEC and the like. So electric is probably the way to go. But, the grid needs overhauled in that case. And depending on the source of electricity, the grid would need to be redone in different ways. Also, planes still won't be able to run on electricity, so some renewable fuel options are still worth pursuing. Heavy trucks, too. But, light duty trucks and other cars have just had the fuel standards revised. The light trucks especially have been getting heavier over the years without decreasing the fuel efficiency, which means it will be very easy to increase the fuel efficiency by simply making the trucks lighter. The point being, the energy situation overall sucks, but there are some easy options for making it a little better. Another good thing is energy efficiency in buildings - very easy to improve that without adding to the building's expense just by doing things like adding working blinds and windows that open.

Speaker two was Maureen McCann, wife of Nick Carpita the current ASPB president. She works at a biofuel research place in Illinois doing crazy things like engineering plants to have metal binding sites in them so that the same inorganic metal catalysts that are used for refining petroleum could be used to refine plants. She is very good at explaining things and I hope to get her to speak at CSU.

Speaker three was Dick Sayre, recently at the Photosynthetic Antennae Research Center. They are manipulating microalgae there to have different photosynthetic efficiencies, something people thought nature had already engineered to a T. But, it turns out nature is not entirely focused on energy capture but also on preventing competing organisms from successful energy capture. So the algae absorb all this radiation that they are unable to use, thereby preventing the other lower down algae in the culture from getting as much light. This also means they have to use their metabolism to dissipate all the unusable light energy as heat to prevent damage to their photosystems, and ultimately makes them less efficient at energy capture and storage. Crazy!

Speaker four was Robert Blankenship but Eric and I were so wrapped up in drawing things on the laptop and generally goofing off that we left after fifteen minutes. Also everything was running super late again so we thought we might as well go.

5) To the airport! We walked to the light rail station and rode in to the airport and everything went smoothly. We found the gate, nothing special was happening there, so we got some food and fresh margs at the Tequilaria. I called Elizabeth while we were there and had her check my email and learned that my grant application was not selected for further consideration. This was for the C2B2 Seed Grant program. Oh well. Also Eric called around all his friends trying to find someone who could pick us up at the airport, but they all came back with lame excuses, even though they would get reimbursement from his travel grant. Finally Josh discovered Kristina would be at the airport already anyway - perfect!

6) We landed, taxied up to the gate, everyone's getting off quick as they can. This airplane and the one we took there had weird overhead bins that were extra deep but also extra shallow so there was much squishing of bags to get them in and then pulling like demons to get them out. So it was going slowly. Then the plane's power went out and for a second we were completely in the dark, no air blowing, totally quiet. Eric and I were seated in the next to last row and there was still quite a crowd in front of us. Fortunately the emergency lights turned on and widespread panic was averted.

7) Home at last! Go team! I don't think either of us will go to a conference like that again, at least not for the full length of the conference, unless we're both well-funded and it's a secret vacation. Minneapolis was really cool though and I would like to go back and see the lakes and the sculpture garden with the giant spoon with a cherry in it, and of course Mall of America, the largest indoor mall around.

It took a while to realize that I was falling asleep in all the talks not because I'm dumb or bad at paying attention but because these people are really bad talk-givers! Totally unaware of the audience and their requirements, etc... It was like when I first started reading papers and realized the ones that are really hard to understand are actually just very badly written. Once you have a little background in a subject the scientific jargon becomes less of an obstacle so that well-written papers explaining something complicated don't seem so terrifyingly obscure, and it becomes clear that if the paper is terrifying, it is the fault of the writer and not the reader.

We made it home!

2011-08-12T20:51:00.001-07:00

These are some of the pictures I drew on MSPaint during the boringest talks. Wiley, this one is for you. I had a dream about you having a very successful tshirt printing company, and I was trying to start my own but was unable to model the wares properly. Your best seller was a lavender hoody with a black owl printed on it.

This one Eric drew of me.

This one was on the plane.

And this is the best of all.

penultimate day

2011-08-09T20:07:00.000-07:00

Today we slept in but forgot to bolt the door shut, only having the privacy latch shut. Housekeeping woke us in a timely manner. The only shuttle available brought us there after all the morning talks were done, so we went for lunch straight away at Brit's Pub. There is a bowling green on the roof of this establishment. We thought to eat up there but no one was bowling and it was quite windy, so we escaped back to the indoors. They had fine British beers on tap, and the most excellent fish and chips I've ever sampled. Eric even ate the tartar sauce!

We prepared ourselves for the symposium of the day, on Plant Carbon Cycling. The first speaker was an Australian who seemed like a nice guy and tried to make it interesting, but he just didn't make any sense. He was using equations to discuss modeling of photosynthetic rates in shade leaves versus high light leaves so making sense is a tall task. No one had questions for him.

The second speaker seemed like a business man with a plan for saving the United States - all you have to do, it's very simple really, all you have to do is - instead of planting all this corn for ethanol like you're doing now, well, just plant miscanthus or switchgrass instead.

There are several problems with this simple idea from a business perspective, including, resistance to change, resistance to planting perennial instead of annual crops (because you can't change what you plant if the markets change), no biorefineries in the area, and no cheap conversions of lignocellulosic biomass into liquid fuel. However, from an ecologist's perspective, it's great! The land becomes a carbon and nitrogen sink, so that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, and the biodiversity of the landscape increases from 2 plants (corn and soybean) to 3 or maybe even 4. He got one question.

During the coffee break we sat in the hall and read our books. Eric is devouring the Collected Sherlock Holmes, while I am whizzing through the Anne of Green Gables books. I'm already on Anne's House of Dreams, and I remember some key plot points that I'm just waiting to have divulged. So we reluctantly began to pay attention to the third speaker, Paul Falkowski. I have read his work before on photosynthesis and already had a sense that he is a crank. He told us about the two carbon cycles in the evolution of Earth. The slow cycle is very slow and ancient, and caused all the carbon stores of the Earth to be locked up in rocks. Soil carbon sequestration or biomass turnover mean nothing compared to the carbon content of these rocks. The fast carbon cycle is based on photosynthesis and also relates to oxygen availability. He spoke very quickly and determinedly and I stayed awake for the whole thing. His biggest point was that oceans are an amazing store of carbon as part of the slow cycle - but it's only good for carbon sequestration if inorganic carbon is entering the oceans, such as limestone. The rate of production of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels is unable to be countered by normal oceanic absorption, so if we don't quit it with the fossil fuels we're fucked. Thank you for your attention.

He got many questions.

The last speaker is convening the next international panel on climate change, and reminded me a lot of Pat Reeves. He showed us how we have very good ways of measuring carbon fluxes in the air and the ocean, as well as overall, but carbon flux on the land is just "whatever's left". This is an embarrassing situation for scientists, so he showed us some new tools that might help alleviate this problem. Nevertheless, he agreed with Paul Falkowski that burning fossil fuels is definitely not helping anything.

And that was that. Eric had to do his poster session now, which meant standing by his poster for two hours so that no one could talk to him. This was the even-numbered poster night. I looked in the program for any interesting posters I might check out, and they were all odd-numbered. So I wandered around very bored eating popcorn. Eric had popcorn too, and some people did talk to him - a busybody lady with purple rimmed glasses and a purple backpack and a purple sweatshirt tied around her waist, who told him the only way to get to know people at a convention was to talk to them, and who told him she didn't know anything about copper or laccases. Then a drunk guy talked to him about the drunk guy's project (there was a cash bar set up in the poster hall, so people could get to know each other easier). And a lady from Cold Spring Harbor told him that his microRNA target prediction was all wrong and her way is much better.

But then it was done, and now Eric can take the poster back and hang it in the hallway and put it on his resume. It was a very awkward and boring time all around.

We went back to Brit's Pub to celebrate, and this time it wasn't windy at all and people were bowling on the green, mostly wearing white, which looked very nice. We had some drinks and then the shuttle took us home. Our previous drivers had all been African immigrants but this dude had pink Ray-Bans and a creeper mustache and was very white. He still wore a suit-jacket like the other dudes so it wasn't 100% creepy but still...

We realized that we were still hungry so we finally succumbed to the Wendy's across the street and enjoyed many fine selections from the dollar menu. In Fort Collins just before leaving they all had Wendy's and the fries had so much salt on them they were literally inedible - except to Tai who thought they were a little salty. Stupid guys being tough! These fries, though, were just right, as were the Frosties and the sandwiches.

The pool at the hotel was full of noisy kiddies again, including the hot tub, so we forsake that pleasure in favor of hot showers. Eric has now finished the Collected Stories of Sherlock Holmes and has only the Memoirs left, which he will save to start tomorrow.

Monday, monday

2011-08-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

Well we got there. First we heard about protein targeting to the chloroplast via the Toc/Tic complex, and particularly Toc 159 and its variants, but I fell asleep before we got to hearing about chloroplast biogenesis. Then there was a talk by Roger Hangarter which was awesome. He also told jokes and showed funny pictures and also serious pictures, and also movies. He studies chloroplast movements in response to light. The effect has such subtlety that you can shine a greyscale image on a leaf and after about thirty minutes you can take away the image and view the leaf in normal light and there it will be in greenscale.

So those were cool, and he also had microscope movies of chloroplasts moving within a cell in response to different treatments. He has a postdoc position open but I won't be graduating for a while yet...

For the coffee break we went to a real coffee shop and had breakfast, too. A new crazy lady appeared in our lives, she was very quiet but her eyes were very squinky and her jaws were very gummy. Every time I looked up from the table she was squinking at me, but maybe that's just how her eyes were. She looked like a mumbler when I first saw her, but then once she sat down with her drink and her muffin she was like an ordinary person - except for the eyes.

They had tic-tac-toe games on the paper napkins at this coffee shop, and Eric taught me a few things about x and o strategy. He even let me win a few times. We decided we weren't interested in any more organelle activities, but there wasn't a shuttle from the hotel for a while, and we weren't going to make the mistake of trying to walk again. So we found the bus, and the walk up Industrial Boulevard was actually quite nice without any roller bag to haul around.

Then I took a nap, and Eric read Sherlock Holmes. I woke up in time for us to get back for the Minisymposia but then I decided I'd rather sleep some more. Eric had just gotten an email from Rien saying that the big symposia wore him out and we should be sure to take some breaks, so we felt quite justified in staying in. When I woke up for real I felt a little guilty, because one of the sessions was on Fertilization and Embryo Development, which is what most of Pat's research is on, and another was on Biofuels - except, biofuels in this case meant lipid production from algae. Is this how most professors deal with this conference? Do they pick and choose and have hours and hours every day free? Do they spend a lot of time writing in their hotel rooms, free from distractions? Or do they force themselves to sit through every session and go to all the events? One striking thing is that people rarely ask questions at the end of a presentation. So what are they doing while they're sitting there for half an hour or so? Wool-gathering while looking respectable? It's very frustrating, I'm not sure what we're doing here or what we're supposed to get out of it, especially when truly entertaining talks seem to occur at random. Who would have thought that "Regulation of light-dependent chloroplast movements in leaves" would be so interesting?

But it is our first time at a conference, and no professors are here except Dan Bush who is schmoozing all the time and not taking us out to lunch, so I suppose we can do as we please.

An aside: Rootabaga Stories are available on the Kindle - no illustrations, just the text, but still - I made Eric listen to the first story about Gimme the Axe and his family traveling to the Village of Liver and Onions, and he neither fell asleep nor flew into a rage, so I guess he's a keeper.

Another aside: On Sunday, the second speaker about RNA was utterly unmemorable except for his habit of saying "per se" at the end of every sentence. It was making Eric quite squirmy to hear it after a while, although then he adopted it himself and uses it quite freely now. Per se. I wonder how you would even pick that habit up.

aspb day 2

2011-08-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

Wealll we had room service first of all. What! Fresh toast delivered to my doorstep or threshhold or what-you-will? I'm in! But I had to go swimming in the pool when I awoke, so Eric was left to be roused from his slumber by a demanding door-man. When I got back - with two coffees mind you - Eric was already awake (bonus!).

We feasted and took the free shuttle in to the Convention Center in time for the first talks on regulatory RNAs. I cannot even remember the first two talks because I was dying of sleepiness. I began to think swimming so early might have been a bad idea.

Then there was the coffee break, at last! A woman tried to cut in front of me and I told her, Excuse me, we've all been waiting. She was quite chastised and I happily got my coffee in front of her. Then we stood around for twenty minutes and I felt really dumb for fussing about the line. I had another cup to soothe my nerves.

We went back in and listened to Pam Green, whose lecture I also don't remember, but I do remember her because she was the only woman and she was the organizer. I started feeling like a big failure at this going to conferences thing. Next was Leslie Sieburth, a man, who claimed to have exciting videos related to mRNA decay, so I prevailed on Eric to stay so that we might see these exciting videos. I have no idea how exciting they might have been, because half-way through Johnnie called.

He said he had big news, and I said with my normal volume voice in the hallway devoid of people to absorb the sound waves, Oh, Rachel's pregnant! He said I wish and then told me the real news. I had to walk outside to hear it. Then I had to call Mom.

Mom agreed that the giant symposia on subjects not to your interest sounded sucky, and said I should get her a postcard, so that I would have a mission to fulfill. Instead I took a nap on Eric and then we got lunch at a fancy restaurant.

We made it back in time for the next symposium, on Vegetative Development. The first speaker, Jocelyn Malamy, talked about lateral root mutants and what sort of signals affected lateral roots. It was interesting to look at her pictures of roots until she started talking about the mechanisms. Then Tobias Baskin talked about polarity in roots. He actually made a joke, and spoke with modulated tones, so Eric and I liked his presentation a lot. The next speaker had just gotten a faculty position and was just setting up her lab, so she told us a little of her post-doc work and of what she hoped to do in her lab. This could have been an exciting talk full of potentialities and theories instead of just boring data, but instead she whispered to us about the body plan of mosses. I was out.

We went into the sunshine and light and thought it was such a nice day we might as well walk back to the hotel, especially since it was just 2.7 miles. Again there were the crazies, and the angry young people, and lots of smokers. No one smokes in Colorado, I realize now. We went past the ING building which has crazy patterned marble slabs all around the outside, and many fountains, including one that is a long trench going from the building, which is set back a ways, right up to the sidewalk. The water is carried along several feet above the ground until bam! It falls right in front of you in a glorious sheet.

We walked over the Mississippi River, and I spat in it for good luck. There were apartments on the far side of the river with balconies, and I envied them their umbrellas and their beer buckets and their view. By now we were ready to be done walking, but we were only halfway there. We moved further and further away from the downtown but fortunately the neighborhoods didn't seem too run down. There were also no grocery stores where we might have gotten some food supplies. We saw a couple who had clearly just come from the grocery store, but when we looked down the street they came from it was blocked off with a concrete wall....

Eventually the houses ended and we were back to old Industry-Land. But finally, finally, we got there. Aahhhh. I checked on Google maps and it was 5.2 miles from the convention center to the hotel what?!? So we took our tired feet down to the pool where a family was throwing a ball back and forth, and the one 11 year old boy was dying for their incompetence at keeping it in the air, and letting us all know. The hot tub was closed too.

So we got dinner at the hotel restaurant and thought about what would happen the next day, and rested comfortable in the knowledge that at least we did something with ourselves this day.

aspb 2011!

2011-08-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

So Eric and I are at the American Society of Plant Biologists' Conference here in Minneapolis MN. Minneapolis is a pretty nice town, granted that we're seeing it at its best. Very clean, lots of "ambassadors" to help people find where there going and to help keep it clean. Neat architecture - a few Frank Lloyd Wright houses hiding around. You can look at the outsides of these houses but since people actually live in them there are no tours. Also, and most amazingly to us from Colorado, there is water Everywhere. Fountains and reflecting pools and lakes... In the actual city there are mostly fountains and they are spectacular.

They also love their beer here, not so much the microbrews like Fort Collins although Fat Tire is available at the finer restaurants, but beer generally is adored. The local beer is called Grain Belt Nordeast, a pleasant, unoffensive light beer, and we walk past its distribution center on the way to the hotel.

Now the hotel is interesting. Eric booked it the week before we left. First he wanted some other hotel, that only had smoking rooms and No Pool! that was a little closer to the convention center. I luckily was there to supervise and said No, no, this won't do at all. So we found this place, which is only non smoking rooms and a pool, and 2.7 miles from the convention center. Fine. It's on Industrial Boulevard. Fine.

Our neighbor on the plane here was a Knights of Columbus charity organizer, very friendly, who said there's lots to do in Minneapolis at night but if as newlyweds we just had sex all night that's fine too. He also said we should take the light rail to downtown and then a cab to the hotel.

We took the light rail to downtown and then asked an ambassador for help, and he pointed us to the 61 bus, which went right to Industrial Boulevard.

The bus arrived, the bus dropped us off, and we were left to walk to the hotel. This proved daunting because Industrial Boulevard is home only to distribution centers for 3M, Nordeast, Restaurant Food Supplies, etc., and they found sidewalks unnecessary. It looked like we were walking to the middle of nothing on a fine Friday afternoon - but at last, the hotel sign was sighted, we were checked in, all was well. Eric nobly handled the roller bag through the industrial jungle.

We ate at the hotel and the waitress was from somewhere much warmer in Africa, but she was very cheerful nonetheless.

The next day we took the free shuttle (!) from the hotel to the Convention Center, got Eric's poster set up, and assessed the situation. There was nothing to do until 12:30, when the inaugural speeches began, so we wandered around the downtown area. The KoC dude on the plane told us about a sweet sculpture garden not far from the convention center, but we haven't made it that far yet. Instead we just walked down Nicollett Mall, where there were an astounding number of crazy people. Mostly this manifests as shouting. There was one dude shouting at the street maps next to the bus stops, just "AAAAAAA! AAAAAAA! AAAAAAA!" while holding a shopping bag, mind you, much like the dude in Toronto that Johnnie showed us on YouTube, so upset that the mall was closed, although in this case the source of his frustration was more mysterious. There are also many street performers like a dude with dreds wearing a dress playing the accordion. Fine. Not harmful, not begging neither.

We looked in a rare books and art store, and the guy tending the store vacuumed around us the whole time we were in there. We took it as a sign that we could afford nothing - quite true - although much of the art was just awesome. Hand done sketches of fowl for hunting, or Dr. Seuss prints, or triptychs of hens and ducks - for example. So he effectively chased us out with his dust-sucker, and we took refuge in Barnes&Noble instead, where I found some nice stationery for all the thank-yous we have left to write. (No refuge for Eric, in other words.)

Then we wended back to the Convention Center in time for the opening remarks, which were amazingly embarrassing. First, Nick Carpita (the president of ASPB who I met in Brazil) told us that "We have a lot to learn about plants and the kind of people they are." I wrote that one down. Then a Lakota dude chanted and wailed on a tom-tom, and then spoke for a long time in gobbledy-gook. He tried to translate it for us but kept getting distracted into asides; the gist was that this was Lakota land, right where we were sitting now, and plants were considered a sovereign nation by the Lakota. When they gathered any of the four plants used for big medicines, they prayed to the plant nation. Also, there are plants that he recently learned about that will let people fly, and others that will let women stop their menstrual cycles. We should really check that one out, he said. His whole deal was supposed to take 5 minutes but it took more like 30. Then an ASPB member, also Lakota, and Nick Carpita wrapped him in a blanket that they had made for him, to symbolize wrapping him in the gratitude of our society.

The awards were given next, and then the first symposium of speeches by last year's award winners happened. It was all very boring and we fell asleep alot. Once we had eaten and returned to the hotel we took a little break at the pool yay and got ready to start over the next day, fresh with no mistakes in it yet.

TBC...

This is a post

2011-08-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

This is a picture.

That is also a picture.

Yo-Yo

2011-08-01T13:39:00.000-07:00

Its been a while. Just an update in case ya'll aint keepin up we have another blog you should check out. Surprisingly we manage to post on it even less then this one but it does have some sweet stuff to check out. Pat Reeves our band leader manages it and is always posting new versions of LDS songs (that's Lay Down, Sister...our band for those of you not in the know). If you stop over their you can here some of our tunes with many more on the way. They are in varying stages of completeness from single take recordings to multitrack, 100 hour edits so you never know, like I said if we get new take we usually upload them. There is little else to do oover there but comment. If people start checking it out it will also encourage us to be more active. Anyway that was long and boring so go listen to some garage power country over at:

http://laydownsister.blogspot.com/

Please comment and check back whenever you want to give us virtual high fives.
Kirk out.

Yay the rabbits!

2011-07-25T20:51:00.000-07:00

They are breeding like I don't know what.

This is like our house, really.

2011-07-04T15:08:00.000-07:00

Disapproving rabbit, and Momer the cat.

Say hello to Galaxy!

2011-07-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

Wedding photogs!

2011-06-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

Sam our able photographer has posted pictures of the wedding as they are edited. Some are beautiful and some are hilarious. Good job team!

Here's the site:

Patterson & Fleming Wedding June 21, 2011

It really happened!

2011-06-30T17:55:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the honeymoon! Here's all the pictures we took!

I didn't know Eric took this one until we got home! OOps~

This is the evil cane spider that haunted our dreams and tried to make Eric crazy. It would lay single strands of spider silk across the room only where Eric's head would bonk into them. His bald dome. His pate. Then he would look insane, dancing around waving his hands in the air, saying "Ah! He got me! He got me again!"

This shot is for perspective. This is a giant giant spider.

This is all of the honeymoon fit for your ears, children. But Hawaii is a weird weird place. Check it out sometime.

One week left of the single life!

2011-06-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

It's really happening. Wedding time. Get your party pants on, people, because we're gonna rock it!

Talked to Sam, the photographer, today. Got a marriage license (tiiight! we could be legally married right now if we wanted. But we don't. Not yet.) Paid for the reception site.

For real yo. Foreal.

Sister party! part 1

2011-05-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

The towel covering the shame, the shame of crumbled tortilla chips.

Sippy cup FTW!

Sister party!

2011-05-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

Fresh off the loom

2011-05-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

Hey Mark look what's coming your way!

kitties are the besties! beasties!

2011-04-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

my car has 100,000 miles!

2011-04-10T21:29:00.001-07:00

building a box

2011-04-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

Its been awhile

2011-04-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

So I'm coming back strong.

Freeganism is an anti-consumerist lifestyle whereby people employ alternative living strategies based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources.

Freegans "embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed."[1] Freeganism involves choosing to salvage discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters, known as 'dumpster diving'.
The word "freegan" is a portmanteau of "free" and "vegan";[2] freegans are not necessarily vegetarian, the "egan" comes from vegans who cite ethical rather than health reasons for not eating or using animal products. Freeganism started in the mid 1960s, out of the antiglobalization and environmentalist movements. The movement also has elements of Diggers, an anarchist street theater group based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960s, that gave away rescued food.

The Newt.

2011-03-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

Blast from the past, what!!

This is a post

2011-03-02T10:01:00.001-08:00

This is for annie...

2011-02-23T19:06:00.001-08:00

If she gets an interview as a raw baker (it is a thing look it up).

New Mini!

2011-02-10T17:37:00.000-08:00

This is my Shaman and his pet dino.

The Mysterious World of Onions

2011-02-10T08:55:00.000-08:00

Thanks so much to Sue - this is a real gem.

Subject: Onions

Very important subject.. especially for those who love to eat onions.

In 1919 when the flu killed 40 million people, there was a Doctor that
visited many farmers to see if he could help them combat this flu, as
many of the farmers and their families had contracted it and many had
died.

The doctor came upon this one farmer and, to his surprise, everyone in
his family was very healthy. When the doctor asked what the farmer was
doing that was different, the wife replied that she had placed an
unpeeled onion in a dish in the rooms of the home, ( probably only two
rooms back then). The doctor couldn't believe it and asked if he could
have one of the onions and place it under the microscope. She obliged
and when he tested it, he found that the onion was riddled with flu
virus. It had obviously absorbed the bacteria and therefore, kept the
family healthy.

I heard this story from my hairdresser: she said that several years ago,
many of her employees were coming down with the flu and also many of her
customers. The next year she placed several bowls with onions around in
her shop and, to her surprise, none of her staff got sick (and no, she
is not in the onion business).

So the sensible answer would seem to be, buy some onions and place
them in bowls around your home. If you work at a desk, place one or two
in your office (under your desk or even a windowsill). Try it and see
what happens. We did it last year and none of us contracted the flu.

If this helps you and your loved ones from getting sick, all the
better. If you do get the flu, it just might be a mild case.

Now there is a P.S. to this, for I sent it to a friend in Oregon who
regularly contributes material to me on health issues. She replied with
this most interesting experience about onions:

"Thanks for the reminder. I don't know about the farmers story, but I
do remember that I contracted pneumonia and, needless to say, I was very
ill. I came across an article that said to cut both ends off an onion,
put one end on a fork and then place the forked end into an empty jar,
placing the jar next to the sick patient at night. It said the onion
would be black in the morning from the germs. Sure enough, it happened
just like that.. the onion was a mess and I began to feel better.

Another thing I read in the article was that onions and garlic placed
around the room saved many from the black plague years ago. They have
powerful antibacterial and antiseptic properties."

Here is another point:

LEFT OVER ONIONS ARE POISONOUS!

I have often used an onion which has been left in the fridge and
sometimes don't use a whole one at a time and so save the other half
for later.

Now with this information, I have changed my habits and buy smaller
onions!

I had the wonderful privilege of touring Mullins Food Products, makers
of mayonnaise.

Questions about food poisoning came up and I wanted to share what I'd
learned from a chemist.

The guy who gave us our tour is named Ed.

Keep in mind that Ed is a food chemistry whiz.

During the tour, someone asked if we really needed to worry about
mayonnaise.. people are always worried that mayonnaise will spoil. Ed's
answer will surprise you, as he said that all commercially made Mayo is
completely safe. "It doesn't even have to be refrigerated - there's no
harm in refrigerating it, but it's not really necessary", he explained.
He said that the pH in mayonnaise is set at an environmental point
that bacteria could not survive in and he then talked about the
quintessential picnic, with the bowl of potato salad sitting on the
table and how everyone blames the mayonnaise when someone gets sick. Ed
says that when food poisoning is reported, the first thing the officials
look for is when the victim last ate onions and where those onions came
from (in the potato salad?). Ed says that it's not the mayonnaise (as
long as it's not homemade Mayo) that spoils in the outdoors, it's the
onions and/or the potatoes (ever seen a potato go black? Thought
so..).

He explained that onions are a huge magnet for bacteria, especially
uncooked onions. You should never plan to keep a portion of a sliced
onion and he says it's not even safe if you put it in a zip-lock bag and
put it in your refrigerator. It's already contaminated enough just by
being cut open and exposed to the air for a while and can be a real
danger to you (and doubly watch out for those onions you have put in
your hotdogs and burgers at the vendors!).

Ed says that if you take the leftover onion and cook it like crazy
you'll probably be OK, but if you slice that leftover onion and put it
on your sandwich, then you're asking for trouble. Both the onions and
the moist potato in a potato salad will attract and grow bacteria faster
than any commercial mayonnaise will take to even begin breaking down.

And another point: dogs should never eat onions. Their stomachs cannot
metabolize onions.

Please remember it is dangerous to cut onions to cook the next day.
They become highly poisonous even if just left overnight and create
toxic bacteria which may cause adverse stomach infections because of
excess bile secretions and even food poisoning.

Boooo.

2011-02-10T07:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/arts/09jacques.html?src=me&ref=general

Brian Jacques, Writer of Redwall Series, Dies at 71

By MARGALIT FOX

He was a longshoreman and a long-haul trucker; a merchant mariner and a railway fireman; a boxer, a bus driver and a British bobby. But it wasn’t until he became a milkman that Brian Jacques found his métier.

Nearing midlife, Mr. Jacques (pronounced “Jakes”) took a job driving a milk truck in Liverpool, where he was born and lived to the end of his life. On his route was the Royal School for the Blind.

Invited in for a nice cup of tea one day, he volunteered to read to the students. Over time, he grew dissatisfied with the books available — too much adolescent angst, he later said — and vowed to write his own.

He wrote what he called “a proper story,” brimming with battle and gallantry. Titled “Redwall” and published in 1986, it became the first installment in what is now a best-selling 21-volume children’s fantasy series.

Mr. Jacques died on Saturday in Liverpool, at 71. The death was announced by his North American publisher, Penguin Young Readers Group. The Liverpool newspapers reported that he died after emergency heart surgery.

Set at the pastoral Redwall Abbey in the misty English past, the books are written for children 8 and up. They center on the triumph of good over evil — specifically the hard-won victories of the abbey’s resident mice, badgers and squirrels over the marauding rats, weasels and stoats that perennially threaten their peaceable kingdom.

There are quests and riddles; cunning treachery and chivalric derring-do; and, in a feature that became a hallmark of the entire series, groaning boards spread with sumptuous feasts, lovingly described.

Published in more than 20 countries, the Redwall books have sold more than 20 million copies and inspired an animated series, broadcast on PBS in 2001.

Later titles in the series include “Mossflower” (1988), “Martin the Warrior” (1993), “Doomwyte” (2008) and “The Sable Quean,” published last year.

A truck driver’s son, Brian Jacques was born on June 15, 1939, and reared by the Liverpool docks. At 10, after writing a fine short story about a bird and a crocodile, he was caned by his teacher, who thought it too good to have been the work of a child.

He left school at 15 to work as a merchant seaman, the first in a decades’-long series of blue-collar jobs.

Mr. Jacques’s other books include “The Redwall Cookbook” (2005), a collection of recipes for the dishes featured in the series; his unstinting descriptions of food, he often said, sprang from childhood memories of wartime rationing.

He wrote several non-Redwall books, including a series about the Flying Dutchman, the storied ghost ship.

Mr. Jacques’s survivors include his wife, Maureen; two sons, Marc and David; and a brother, Jim.

His 22nd Redwall book, “The Rogue Crew,” is scheduled to be published in May.

As successful as he became, Mr. Jacques could never quite countenance a life in which labor meant sitting in his garden, under an apple tree, with a typewriter.

“I have a working-class ethic,” he told The New York Times in 2001. “I get up in the morning, and I still feel guilty about being a famous author.”

N3rl> k0r3

2011-02-07T20:18:00.000-08:00

d20's Thats how we roll...

Ross the dog wrote this

2011-02-05T11:31:00.000-08:00

"Who you suckers think you trippin' with? Yes, I'm the fuckin boss

Seven forty-five, white on white, that's fuckin Ross"

Pictures

2011-02-03T10:37:00.000-08:00

Somehow Elizabeth managed to escape from them....

Blargh

2011-01-25T10:19:00.000-08:00

Insomnia makes me sleepy... Wait what?

Lets all go to the airport to pick up Margaret sib. soon to be in law sib.

Thats right. I haven't forgot the wedding yet.

Not sleepy enough!

Ketchup

2011-01-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

All-right blog. Its been awhile since I did this sort of thing but we'll make it through this. 1) I biked to work in the freezing cold. My ears froze. When I came inside the warm building they thawed which gave me the worst brain freeze ever. So bad that I vomited and put my head on my desk for like 10 minutes. Its better now but its been hurting all day making it impossible to do anything. 2) Fable 2 has consumed a small part of my life. I have spent my evenings chopping wood, bar tendering, and blacks smithing. At least tonight band practice will steal me away from video game land for one evening. 3) Did I mention band practice tonight? Oh yah! We are learning Dylans Wagon wheel in the style of Old Crow Medicine show, should be tight or ill or sweet, or nifty, or ... nevermind. 4) Helping students in office hours. 5) Wedding stuff is progressing. We have the concept of the save the date cards (expect them in 2-3 weeks). Hmm what else... oo I know stuff that is awesome
1)Margaret is in the Fort Collins Choral
2)I'm rolling a shaman for Dungeons and Dragons (any idea for character names? My pet is an ankylosaur)
3)Band is gonna drop an album real soon with the new multitrack recorder (its shiney)
4)Rabbits
5)Cats
6)Internships
7)Trips to France!

Ok I think that is enough to fill you in Mr. Bloggity...
Ima eetz un Pear

My dream come true

2011-01-17T07:07:00.001-08:00

I miss these days...

2011-01-15T20:42:00.000-08:00

evidence

2011-01-11T16:20:00.000-08:00

John Carlson is on to something.

2011-01-05T17:44:00.000-08:00

Read about insect eating and pesticides on the NY Times here.

cutest ever

2010-12-28T18:52:00.000-08:00

2010-12-06T12:19:00.001-08:00

2010-12-06T11:42:00.001-08:00

Goodbye, Tintin!

What I did on my vacation

2010-11-28T05:47:00.001-08:00

By Margaret Fleming

1) Got hugs from the Bobcat
2) Did some sewing and some painting!

The back:

The front:

English Rain

2010-11-27T14:51:00.001-08:00

I-Tals doin it the only way they know how.

2010-11-22T09:43:00.001-08:00

A six-week initiative promoted by the Italian lingerie brand Intimissimi essentially exchanges one form of padding for another: used bras collected at its brand name stores throughout Italy will be recycled into insulated and soundproof panels used for construction.

To raise awareness of the “pressing problems that afflict the ecosystem,” Intimissimi is accepting the bras through the end of this month. A multimedia ad campaign featuring the Russian model Irina Shayk urges women to bring used bras to an Intimissimi store to “help save the planet.”

“Doing good for the environment is also a matter of style,” she advises consumers.

For every used bra brought in, a customer receives three euros ($4) toward the purchase of a new bra, an offer more commonly associated here with used cars, refrigerators or air conditioners. “Well, why not bras?” said the orchestrator of the project, Sandro Veronesi, president of the Italian lingerie company Calzedonia Group, which owns Intimissimi.

“There are programs for the scrapping of appliances, but no one thinks about what’s involved in the waste management of brassieres,” he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Veronesi said that bras pose their own particular recycling challenges because they’re made of several different materials. Enter Ovat Campagnari, a Veneto-based company that specializes in the disposal and re-engineering of apparel waste.

The bra fibers are mixed with other textiles to make the soundproof insulating panels. Mirco Campagnari, one of the company’s owners, said he hoped the campaign would generate a greater awareness of the environmental benefits of using recycled materials in construction. “Many companies have been contacting us since the campaign started,” he said.

So far, Ovat’s effort constitutes an experiment. To expand and continue the initiative will require weighing the costs and logistics once all of the bras and related numbers are in.

Initial results have been positive, Mr. Campagnari said. Since the program started on Oct. 18, 30 to 40 percent percent of all bras sold in Intimissimi stores have involved the trade-in bonus.

Intimissimi is not the only ecofriendly lingerie maker on the market. In recent years, Triumph International Japan has designed several brassieres to raise environmental awareness, including one that comes with reusable chopsticks (for markets in Asia, where millions of wooden chopsticks are chucked each year); a bra sold with fold-up reusable bags made from recycled polyester fiber inside the cups; and a bra made from recycled bottles. None of these models were created for mass consumption.

Mr. Veronesi said his company was looking into environmental sustainable materials for manufacturing bras but that the effort was still in the embryonic stage. “For now a synthetic component is necessary for support, but this is a sector that we look to develop,” he said.

Mimmy Osa

2010-11-18T07:17:00.000-08:00

Ok...heres the buns after a groomin'

2010-11-14T14:50:00.000-08:00

Thistle has the tufted ears and juniper has the small head (like Mang0)

Sh'Hallowe'enja

2010-11-11T15:35:00.001-08:00

SHEIK

2010-11-09T16:24:00.001-08:00

What the hell

2010-11-08T17:28:00.000-08:00

Read this vegans and rejoice in your sensibility. This makes me so mad.

Cheese, Grommit!

SULU!

2010-11-05T00:31:00.001-07:00

Guess what's not healthy.

2010-10-20T17:40:00.000-07:00

From the CDC:

Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body. Smoking causes many diseases and reduces the health of smokers in general.¹

Smoking and Death

Smoking causes death.

The adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly one of every five deaths, each year in the United States.^2,3
More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.^2,4
Smoking causes 90% of all lung cancer deaths in men and 80% of all lung cancer deaths in women.¹
An estimated 90% of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung disease are caused by smoking.¹

Compared with nonsmokers, smoking is estimated to increase the risk of—

coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times^1,5
stroke by 2 to 4 times^1,6
men developing lung cancer by 23 times¹
women developing lung cancer by 13 times,¹ and
dying from chronic obstructive lung diseases (such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema) by 12 to 13 times.¹

Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease

Smoking causes coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.¹
Cigarette smoking causes reduced circulation by narrowing the blood vessels (arteries) and puts smokers at risk of developing peripheral vascular disease (i.e., obstruction of the large arteries in the arms and legs that can cause a range of problems from pain to tissue loss or gangrene).^1,7
Smoking causes abdominal aortic aneurysm (i.e., a swelling or weakening of the main artery of the body—the aorta—where it runs through the abdomen).¹

Smoking and Respiratory Disease

Smoking causes lung cancer.^1,2
Smoking causes lung diseases (e.g., emphysema, bronchitis, chronic airway obstruction) by damaging the airways and alveoli (i.e., small air sacs) of the lungs.^1,2

Smoking and Cancer

Smoking causes the following cancers:¹

Acute myeloid leukemia
Bladder cancer
Cancer of the cervix
Cancer of the esophagus
Kidney cancer
Cancer of the larynx (voice box)
Lung cancer
Cancer of the oral cavity (mouth)
Cancer of the pharynx (throat)
Stomach cancer
Cancer of the uterus

Smoking and Other Health Effects

Smoking is associated with the following adverse health effects:

infertility,
preterm delivery,
stillbirth,
low birth weight, and
sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).^1,8

Smoking is associated with the following adverse health effects:⁸

Postmenopausal women who smoke have lower bone density than women who never smoked.
Women who smoke have an increased risk for hip fracture than women who never smoked.

Bout Damn Time

2010-09-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/california-licenses-worlds-biggest-solar-thermal-plant/?hp

And the endangered tortoise wont even know anything about it ...

News

2010-09-17T08:55:00.000-07:00

Eric is getting two angora baby rabbits on Monday.
Annie and Wiley should be here on Sunday.
My tattoo is all colored in (even the feather).
I am a "real molecular biologist" according to my advisor Pat.
We played D&D for over three hours last night.
These are important videos to watch:

and now in technicolor...

2010-09-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

Tour de Fat

2010-09-04T13:27:00.001-07:00

A success! Blisters and sunburn all around. Pictures to follow...

Old Favorites

2010-08-31T17:48:00.000-07:00

Alison Kraus:

Seldom Scene:

Charlie Rich:

Lay down sister!

2010-08-31T06:31:00.000-07:00

Here we are at the dress rehearsal for Tour de Fat. It was an awesome practice, with a fridge full of Budweiser, homemade goat tacos, and chocolate chip cookies. Plus human-powered rocknroll. Afterwards we went out for hamburgers and decided on our band name, since Gutpile was already taken.

So that's Lay Down, Sister: Dane (guitar), Eric (drums), me (bass), Dani (guitar) and Pat (band leader, vocalist, bike builder, guitar)
Who looks better in this outfit? We're going to be well costumed for Tour de Fat.

Brazil photos pt 1

2010-08-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

The view from my room

Hens...they're everywhere

The horse palace

A piglet!

Brazil photos pt 2

2010-08-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

First day of school!

2010-08-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

I had class this morning. Last class ever! (Any others will be purely voluntary.) A colleague said once the best part of getting a PhD is that you don't have to take any exams any more. True dat!

This is the first and only class requiring a textbook. There will be quizzes every class to make sure we do the assigned reading. Bleah. But Eric is in it too, so we only need one textbook, and we can make fun of everyone together.

After class I went to the lab and checked my DNA sequences. I have a guaranteed, bona fide positive clone! Whoop! Then I talked to Amy for an hour, until she went to lunch, and then I waited for Eric and we went to lunch.

After lunch, I talked to Shelley for a long time about our various conferences we've attended. Then I cleaned all the glass slides I used this summer. I met with Pat and we talked for an hour about all I've been doing like going to Brazil and the beach and moving. And Eric and I came home!

We stopped at Jamba Juice - they have specials every day. Today it was all-fruit smoothies, which is what I like anyway. The smoothies were cold and refreshing.

And then, the real stuff started happening. Eric and Dane got on ebay and started bidding on equipment for the recording studio they're setting up in the garage. And I got out the loppers and the gloves and most importantly the clogs, and went to war in the backyard on the shrubberies. There is already a giant brush pile, complete with broken wooden chairs on top, and I made a new pile of equal size in about two hours. Tomorrow I will collect it all into an actual pile. It felt like cutting someone's hair. And now it looks really good! Go me! Time to go get some beers!

Last conference day!

2010-08-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

Today was very special. I skipped the engineers' talks (particularly that of one Ken Reardon, although it wasn't deliberate) because I went for a walk during the coffee break, and during the walk I met up with Marie-Pierre and Annike. We went up to the farm and explored all over the resort campus.

I signed up for the eco-tour tomorrow, and I signed up for horseback riding. The riding happened this afternoon from three to five, so I missed the talks from selected abstracts. Fortunately those abstracts are published in the conference book.

It was the best ever. I was the only one signed up, and so it was me on a donkey and the guy from the farm on a fancy white horse. We rode down a dirt road, and then into a forest, and then galloped down a stream bed and through a tunnel and into the eucalyptus plantation. There was a lot of galloping and dirt flying and splashing. The guy stopped wherever the scenery was nice and had me hand over my camera so he could take my picture. He spoke no English, so all I could say was saodage and obrigada.

When it was done I took a nice shower and laid down and watched crap TV until it was time for dinner. At dinner I talked to Rowan Sage for a long time. He is a photosynthesis guy, particularly C4 photosynthesis. He loves thinking about it and knowing everything about it.

I love horses! I love horsie things, I love everything about them.

Brazilian Barbequeueueue!

2010-08-11T04:55:00.000-07:00

Dinner was an exciting event. There was a new squash sculpture in the shape of a sailing boat. The tables were set up banquet style, so everyone got to talk to everyone else. The samba players were back, with the projector screen behind them.

I sat with Marie-Pierre and Annike from Quebec, Sharon Doty from Washington State University (who works on bioremediation and soil microbes living with poplar and willow), and Julie Plummer from Australia and her husband Greg. Later Margie Gowan joined us, and Mattie from an NGO (who will speak tomorrow).

It was very loud and very fun. Annike ordered a bottle of Chilean wine for the table, and we discussed what all we would do on Thursday. Sharon, who looks meek and wussy, has already used the pool, gone walking around the resort campus, and gone horseback riding. She said the riding went very well, they got to gallop through a stream and in the eucalyptus forest. Maybe I will try that tomorrow morning.

When I went for dessert, I decided I would try to eat a guava. They reminded me of when I tried to make quince edible. The guava has hard, rock-like seeds throughout the inside, and hot pink flesh. It looks like a small hard Bartlett pear. So there is not much flesh once the seeds are taken out, and I suppose these were ripe or they would not have been served, but the flesh itself is hard and there is not much to recommend about it. However, at the dessert table was also guava candy and queso fresco, and Julie recommended that we try them together. She read about it in a travel book. It was very delicious. The cheese by itself was much better than the guava candy, which may have contributed the majority of the deliciousness.

Also I talked to Greg (who is American) about Colorado, and the wedding, and traveling to places like Greece. He had a lot of advice and was very silly. Once Greg and Julie went to bed, though, the conversation turned to Canada, because everyone left but me had lived there. We had a long discussion about winters. Margie, from Saskatoon Saskatchewan, let us have our say but I could tell she was being quietly proud of her real winters.

Meanwhile, a couple danced the samba and was applauded when they were done (the room was too crowded for everyone to dance, but we all wriggled in our seats a little).

I told her how the talk of the Canadian climate reminded me of Robertson Davies, and she said also another good Canadian author is W.O. McNeill. I will look him (?) up. Somehow she got to talking then about the university in Saskatchewan, and how they are establishing a place there in the curricula offered etc. for the aboriginal people. She told all about a student who had worked for her who is now defending a master’s thesis about the changes in the caribou migratory patterns, and the changes were documented by talking to elders throughout the aboriginal communities in the province. It sounds like a pretty interesting and difficult thesis project.

But once she had her diatribe the light conversation was over and so we departed for bed. I laughed a lot this evening. Being with French-type people (those Kanucks!) helped a lot. They will try anything since they are in Brazil.

Today I craunched the marmoset.

2010-08-10T18:19:00.001-07:00

I had toast for breakfast which is always a good start to the day. Also I ate with one C. J. Liu, who works at Brookhaven National Labs on lignin degrading enzymes and also pectin acetyltransferase enzymes. He is from Shanghai, and speaking to him reminded me very much of Iron and Silk. He is the least stuffy professor I have spoken to yet. He told me how in Tokyo, everything is so vertically oriented that even the bathtubs are longer than they are wide, so you sit more upright in them.

The first speaker of the day was Margaret (Margie) Gruber from Canada. She was very proud of how cold Canada is, which made me think of Robertson Davies and the diaries of Samuel Marchbanks (who is always fighting with his furnace and regretting the climate). She was an amazingly bad speaker: coughing into the microphone, unable to manage the clicker and insisting that the A/V guy must advance the slides for her, turning her head away from the microphone to look at the slides so she sounded just like Lina Lamont. Also she had been almost obnoxious on the previous day, questioning people’s statements that Miscanthus was an acceptable energy crop for Canada – because there’s cold and then there’s Cold. And her evidence was that she had seen Miscanthus in Canada and it was not impressive.

Then Maureen McCann spoke, and I liked her talk very much. She is a clear thinker and a clear speaker and I hope to interact with her more. (I think that everyone who knows her and Nick Carpita likes them very much.) She is at a newly established center proposing to transform biomass into fuel via direct catalytic conversion, similarly to how the petrochemical industry makes many interesting materials from a few starting molecules by choosing the appropriate metal/synthetic catalyst.

At the coffee break I saw Ken Reardon, who was trying to work out a tricky travel arrangement. The conference proceedings are over on Wednesday night, and most of us don’t leave until Thursday night. So he wants to spend Wednesday night and Thursday day in Sao Paolo, sight-seeing. This is very difficult for the travel agent to understand. He invited me to come along, and I said I would consider it. During the next set of talks I realized that instead I could go see the sugar cane plantations, as had been promised when the conference was first advertised but later disappeared (because there are too many of us.)

And so at the next break I talked to people and found that the hotel offers an “eco-tourism” trip in a South American-style jeep, which visits waterfalls and souvenir shops and the sugarcane fields. I will sign up for it tomorrow – it sounds like a very relaxing way to experience this area.

At lunch I had rice and beans! Wonderful! And a new steamed vegetable, and lots of fruit. I like the food at this hotel. Also, all or most of it is from the nearby farms, and the irrigation is from the natural mineral water of the area, with no agro-toxins (says the hotel brochure). The water is really tasty. Lots of mineral flavor. A professor from Santiago ate with me, and he was a very awkward man. He sat at dinner the night before as well, and was responsible for making the conversation focused on earthquakes. I remembered how it happened because he tried to do it at lunch also: Chile has few energy resources, and some people are proposing nuclear, but Chile has earthquakes, so that won’t do. Luckily at that point in the conversation Ken had joined us, so he suggested even further alternatives for energy, like tidal fluctuations.

The talks the rest of the day were not as interesting, but I did ask two excellent questions. The first one I asked got me a thumbs-up from Nick Carpita, so I think I righteously craunched the marmoset. There are not many graduate students here, and the ones that are here do not seem to attend the afternoon sessions so much. I think people generally have less interest in attending talks that are not directly related to their area of research. They do not have the same great interdisciplinary attitude…

I realized that I had submitted my abstract twice, because when I tried to resubmit the website was being recalcitrant, so I tried making an entire new submission. Well, both abstracts were accepted, and since I put them in different subject areas, they are both printed in the conference program, and I got two certificates of participation. So that’s the second way I craunched the marmoset. And I realized that the electricity here is the same as the US, so I can recharge all my devices! The computer was almost out of power at the moment I made the realization.

There was a small poster session this evening as well, so I thought I might as well hang out by the poster and see what people say. Ken came and examined it – it is very nice that he is being so interested in the project. At different breaks he keeps interrogating me about it and trying to understand it. (He told me this morning that in Pat’s different grant proposals she is not always very clear about the end goals of the project, so he appreciates that I am having to figure that part out myself.) Also I talked with some Brazilian students. The ones that talk to me are very friendly and full of smiles, and happy to be doing biofuels research. The conference is starting to feel like a self-affirmation session. I don’t mind!

Tonight there is the Brazilian barbeque, out by the pool. It is starting soon I think. I don’t plan to stay long – I want to read more of Grapes of Wrath and lie in the comfy bed – but we shall see!

Brazil day 2

2010-08-09T17:42:00.001-07:00

I am still in Brazil.

It was cold last night and I had bad dreams. Also, I turned off my alarm and woke up just after the first presentation, on the sugarcane system in Brazil. But I got to enjoy a little coffee break on my own.

During the coffee break I met Nick Carpita and his wife, Maureen McCann. They are both very friendly and easy to talk to. They went to the ASPB meeting in Montreal, and then to the Cell Wall meeting in Portugal, and now they are in Brazil. Nick is in charge of reimbursing the students sponsored by ASPB, including me, so I thought it important to introduce myself.

I wore my American flag pin.

Before the next set of talks I met a Canadian involved in miscanthus and fiber production, who was very excited to talk to me about pretreatment and the new pretreatment scheme he is involved in. They grind particles to 2 mm lengths and then pass them through a pump which causes cavitation. The material enters at 50 C and exits at 80 C, after only a second of residence time. Also, the material is now dissolvable and the hemicellulose and lignin are no longer an obstacle. We both agreed that the economics are unfavorable, because of the grinding and high pressure required, but he was still very excited that cavitation could have such an effect. I think he speaks tomorrow.

All the talks have a very general attitude towards the science, which is frustrating because I think all of us are well acquainted with the generalities. I want to see particulars! I will understand what they are talking about! There were short talks in the afternoon selected from abstracts, and these were far more specific about research results rather than scientific trends.

I was able to have rice and beans both for lunch and dinner. Whoop! There is always an impressive array of antipasta – meat and cheese cubes and olives (but no nuts! And this is Brazil!). Also there is a fine assortment of desserts of different fruit flavors. They are all gooey and creamy, not many cookies or cakes or chocolates. Also there is always fresh pineapple and fresh mango.

There is a giant fruit sculpture present at every meal which appears to be two phoenixes or other winged creatures, carved out of a green-skinned, orange-fleshed melon, with beet rosettes for decoration. I hope it is still up tomorrow so I can take a picture of it.

I hung my poster during the afternoon coffee break, when I realized that I had interpreted the dimensions backwards, and the poster should have been taller than it was wide. I later discovered I was not the only American to have made this mistake, which made me feel less embarrassed. As it was the poster seemed to be huge, because it had to have a spot all to itself on the back wall – none of the normal poster locations could accommodate it.

The poster session was right before dinner, and was very poorly attended. It also was not noted on the program schedule. However, I got to explain the idea to several cell wall biologists, and they understood it, and they didn’t think it was bunk. This was very encouraging. Nick Carpita pointed out that the size of Tdtomato might be responsible for the signal retention after SDS treatment – the fluorescent protein may be too large to dissipate through the cell wall pores regardless of whether it is anchored.

I had dinner with Nick Carpita and Maureen McCann and Ariel N--- from Santiago. We talked mostly about earthquakes and tsunamis, and a little bit about exo-glucuronidases. At that point in the conversation I excused myself to go to bed. It feels very late very early, because the sun starts going down between 5:30 and 6. There are no clocks anywhere, and I am keeping my cell phone off to save the battery, so it is hard to know what time it is except when they announce it is meal time. At any rate, the sun was totally down before 7.

Now I know a few more conference people. Tomorrow I hope to meet even more. It is very enlivening to describe research to people who are understanding it. For example, I now have the idea to submit my onion gene gun technique to JOVE, the journal of online visual experiments. Hurray for the Congress!

Brazil day 1!

2010-08-08T18:07:00.001-07:00

Hello from Brazil!

First, I got to Atlanta. The flight from Atlanta for Sao Paolo had been cancelled the day before, so the boarding area was in chaos. But everyone important (me) made it on to the plane. The fellow sitting across the aisle from me helped me put my bags up, so we made conversation for the beginning of the flight. He is an auditor for a company that sells car parts and batteries to car companies.

The flight was long, of course. My legs were most uncomfortable, and somehow there was no tonic water available. I ended up watching an awful movie starring Mel Gibson as crazy Boston detective. His daughter works in the nuclear industry and is dying of radiation poisoning. Mel Gibson eventually dies of the same. He gives an excellent repeat performance of a grieving William Wallace in Braveheart.

Then we were in Sao Paolo! The line for immigration was long, and in it I spotted Ken Reardon. Yay! I also kept spotting the chatty fellow from the flight. Once he pretended that he was going to trip me as I walked past. He was with his girlfriend, too.

Once the lines were all cleared I met up with Ken and the drivers to the hotel and the other speakers. My name was on no list for any shuttle, but Ken had arranged a private car for himself, and agreed that I could ride with him. Yay again!

The drive out of Sao Paolo was incredible. There are really shantytowns there. All the apartments had laundry hanging outside, and the walls were brightly colored. From far away, though, the apartments looked like so much trash littering the hills. Right up close you could see water-carved channels going down the hill, full of real trash. People were riding bikes in the shoulder of the highway – like Lance Armstrong style, not going to the beer store style. I also saw many kites. They had great long sparkly tails, and the kite-flyers made them dance like birds.

Ken and I chatted about our impressions of Brazil. He was a little disappointed to be staying at a resort the whole time. I was amazed that most of the signs were hand-painted, and the different fonts used were all sans-serif. Then we napped.

We awoke to a scene a little like driving through rural Maryland – big hills, with fields on either side of the road full of some crop. The hills are bigger here than Maryland though, seeming more like baby mountains than grandparent mountains. And the crop was all sugarcane. Some fields were full of tall cane; others were burnt to the ground, and others still were just beginning to regrow. We saw one sugarcane processing plant in the middle of the fields. It just looked industrial.

And we got there. Aaaaah. The hotel is enormous, many small buildings on a large campus. There is a swimming pool, and a swimming pool bar. There are horses to ride as well. My room has three single beds and a private balcony. The weather is not very humid here, surprisingly, and it was only about 70F today. Right now it is much cooler, and good sleeping weather. I wonder if my worries about bugs were goofy since it is winter now, or maybe the bugs are year-round biters.

There are trees covered only in neon yellow or neon orange flowers. There are others that seem to be overgrown azaleas (pink), and rhododendrons (purple). Also some commonly grown houseplants, like philodendron, are growing in the wild here.

Once in my room I took a shower (with solar heated water!) and a nap. When I woke up I couldn’t get out of my room because I couldn’t figure out how to unlock the inside lock. A hotel lady came and stood outside the door until I did figure it out.

Then there was the opening remarks, and a talk about sugarcane, and dinner. In the dining room was a samba guitarist and a drummer (with hand drums). Behind them on a big projector screen was movies of other musicians playing, presumably also playing samba. Ken ate with me, and I finally got some tonic water. Here it is delicious, flavored with lemon as well as quinine. There were only meat and cheese and fruit, and no vegetables at all. We had a very pleasant dinner anyway, and now I am back in my room again, getting ready for bed!

Tomorrow is a long day of talks. I am excited but also lonely. I wish I could come back to Brazil as a real tourist. Portuguese is nice to listen to. I say “obrigado” as often as possible (“thank you”), just to practice a little Portuguese.

You engrish is fuking seek.

2010-08-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

Leonard Nimoy is my hero

2010-07-29T08:43:00.001-07:00

He has a photography show all to himself. Read about it in the NY Times.

Purple plants

2010-07-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

I have a purple poplar plant sitting on my table but thats not the best part, the xylem is selectively stained and the plant is still living! After that much excitement the rest of this blog will be boring but what can you do. Starcraft 2 came out today...so thats cool

List of stuff happening this week
1)Band Practice.
2)Moving into a new home with a bunch o' people
3)Cleaning old home
4)Presenting of a paper about manganese uptake. (Manganese is one of my favorite metals because its like magnesium but its not [and it almost sounds like Man-Geese which is a sweet superhero name])
5)Parents are visiting
6)Margaritas!
7)Mad Hustling

livin's easy

2010-07-24T15:53:00.000-07:00

Woke up late, went to breakfast with Alicia. I had the French toast; she had the crab crepe.

Came home, watched Futurama, put on the bathing suit. Saw the sweet cat fort Eric made out of all the cardboard boxes.

Went to Alicia's house and laid on the pool deck. Read some Glamour magazine, talked about whatnot. Got in the water, got a little tan.

Went to Armadillos, had fresh margs and mexican food. Eric joined us. Showed off the tattoo.

And now: naptime.

Is it summer or what?

fancy pants not rosbif

2010-07-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Stuff AAAANNNNDDDD Junk.... Wow

2010-07-19T09:22:00.001-07:00

We are moving into a house on the first that can actually fit all the crabs stuff ... thats gonna rule. The only problem is we have to move out on the 31st and cant move in until the 1st. So for 24 hours are stuff will sit abandoned in the street... Or we buy storage... Second order of business. I think the crab has defected to brazil. By the amount of paperwork with bad spelling piling up thats all I can assume. Thirdly, What do tour de fat, Dane, Freebird and human powered electric generation have in common? Well, just come to CO in September and we might let you know. Finally just wait for Thursday and we will have some sweet pictures. You're gonna be all like 'No way' and were gonna be like 'Way' then you'll be like 'Sweet' and we'll be like 'totally'... Then we light your car on fire and run away into the night... Well maybe not that first bit.

P.S. I feel like this has been a mysterious blog. I hope you don't kill yourself with all these cliffhangers.

Im a sinner...again?

2010-07-16T08:50:00.000-07:00

http://nerdbastards.com/2010/07/12/westboro-baptist-to-protest-at-comic-con/

Trying to Stop Cattle Burps From Heating Up Planet

2010-07-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/science/earth/14australia.html?hpw

Psh ruminants, why cant you be more like the noble Lagomorphs and have hind gut fermentation...

Camping pictures

2010-07-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

Camping time!

2010-07-07T06:09:00.000-07:00

We'll be back late on Friday. But look what I made!

Also, heeere's Pocky!

AHHHHHH 2

2010-07-06T23:26:00.001-07:00

But seriously enjoy the videos we are going camping til fri...later space cowboys.