Author: andy

Posted on

The Holidays

Brooke had to hold Meg's arm still for this one...
Brooke had to hold Meg’s arm still for this one…

To be honest, I haven’t been posting all that much recently because I haven’t had much to say. At the same time, it’s been pretty busy, for one reason or another. With Christmas falling in the middle of the week, I feel like my schedule has been thrown radically off course for the past few weeks, and am only just now getting back in the swing of things.

Christmas was good, of course.  We went to Louisiana, MO for the Baumann (extended) family Christmas on Sunday the 23rd, then continued north to Hannibal for the Baumann (immediate) family Christmas on the 24th.  It was odd seeing how much snow was on the ground up there, as we really hadn’t gotten any in St. Louis beforehand.  At the very least, it still felt like we got a “White Christmas” out of the deal.  After that, we attended our traditional Christmas Eve service back in Louisiana before heading down to St. Louis that night, so that Meg could open her presents under her own tree on Christmas morning.

However, since we didn’t get home until 10:00 pm on Christmas Eve, Meg was quite content to stay in bed until 8:00 am the next morning, meaning we had to wake her up to get her to church on Christmas Day (thus, leaving Meg enough time to open one present before leaving).  Still, it all worked out.  Meg wanted to play with everything she opened immediately, rather than waiting until after everything was opened to choose something to play with.  Perhaps it was better to only get one first.

“Pez? What’s a ‘Pez’?”

We typically don’t go to Christmas Day services, but as we were in town, didn’t have to go anywhere, and our new pastor wanted to have a service on that day (we usually don’t), we went along and had a good time.  There were even some folks in pajamas, bringing a good “family atmosphere” to the proceedings.  It was a short-ish service, but was nice to participate in.

Brooke went to work the next few days, and Meg went to school.  I, being the lazy one, stayed home, getting a few things done while watching the Extended Editions of “The Lord of the Rings” (in preparation for “The Hobbit,” which I still haven’t seen!).  I assembled Meg’s new “big girl bed” (which she’s now sleeping in, most nights), hung out with a few friends, kept up on laundry, etc.  Overall, a good mix of productivity and laziness, so I was satisfied!

We then went to Columbia last Friday for the Linsenbardt (immediate) family Christmas.  Jake and Kristen couldn’t get there around Christmas, so this is the first year I can remember where we pushed things off a few days.  In the end, it was probably better this way as we didn’t feel as rushed, traveling between towns without much lag time.  Still, we had a good time and got to hit up Flat Branch and Shakespeare’s while we were there (making it more than worth the trip).

Always need more Sesame Street books!
Always need more Sesame Street books!

Meg stayed in Columbia with my parents while Brooke, Edie and I returned to St. Louis for New Year’s.  Brooke actually went in to work for a little bit on New Year’s Eve while I took down the tree and did a few other things around the house.  We hung out with Adam and Kelley that night, which was rather nice because we typically have them over to our house (as Meg is usually in bed by 7:30, and they live 20+ min away from our house, making dinner a difficult prospect).  Regardless, good food and good times with friends, so it was a nice way to ring in 2013.

And now, I’m back at work.  I had a good time over break, but am ready to get back to a typical routine, even if it means getting up “early” and putting clothes on instead of staying in PJs all day.  We won’t have any easy weekends coming up, though, as my cousin gets married on Saturday (the bachelor party is tonight, and the rehearsal is tomorrow…I’m an usher and Meg’s flower girl-ing…), so we’ve got our work cut out for us.

But thankfully, Cabin Fever is next Saturday.  Can’t wait for that one. 🙂

Posted on

A Few Changes

WordPress released updated software today, so in setting it up, I opted to mess with the new default theme and new image features.  Specifically, the ability to add galleries like…well…this one!

Anyway, as usual when I do silly things like this, I’ll probably change a few things around aesthetically before I settle on something I’m happy with.  For now, this is what you get.  So far, I’m pretty happy with all the options within the default theme (being used currently) and am pretty impressed with now nice images look within the galleries.  Also, the site should work pretty well on cell phones and tablets now.

Neat stuff!

Posted on

“Stuff”

Here’s the DVD collection…and some strategically placed pictures…

I think I may be reaching a turning point (a fork stuck in the road).  I think it’s been a few years coming, but hasn’t really crystallized until recently.

I want “The Avengers” on Bluray (~$25).  I’d kinda like “The Amazing Spider-man” on Bluray (~$19).

But, I can rent each movie from Amazon for $3.99.  And let’s be honest: how often do I watch the same movie twice within a year?

Perhaps I should back up a step.  I love movies.  I have four shelves (or five, if you count the DVDs not currently “shelved”) of DVDs, some TV shows, some motion pictures.  I’ve got all of the Star Trek, Star Wars, The Matrix, Spider-man, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Evil Dead and Lord of the Rings (among countless others).  I like having those at my disposal at all times.  But, being completely honest, I haven’t watched any of the Matrix, Back to the Future, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings movies in the last 2 years.  There’s always new stuff available, we’ve got Netflix bringing me a steady stream of content, my Hulu queue is chock full of hours of stuff I still need to watch before they expire…

…and along with all that, I’ve got a job, I still play video games, I have responsibilities at church, I’ve got chores around the house…and I’ve got a 2+ year old to play with for most of my time at home.

Some of this is simply derived from the changing times.  When I started buying DVDs in 2000, there was no “Netflix”, and cable was only available in the “common rooms” of the dorms unless you paid extra for it.  Movies were how we entertained ourselves.  Granted, as a Freshman in college, your time is seemingly endless, so there are many hours to fill.  Over the years, my DVD purchasing slowed to a trickle, around 2 or 3 per year, and we even traded in a box of them after we moved back to St. Louis just to make room on the shelf (which is good, because Meg got a ton of movies for Christmas last year).

But as the years have worn on, technology has changed, high-speed internet is more available, my free time has decreased on most nights, and I’ve moved four times in the last 7 years.  And each box of DVDs serves as a reminder of how much stuff I’ve got.  The DVDs by themselves take up multiple boxes, but we’ve also got tons of books (heavy ones, in fact…), we’ve got board games we rarely play, we’ve got musical instruments I wish I had more time to enjoy (though, I likely will in the near future, thankfully).  We’ve got camping gear in the basement I get to use once a year if I’m lucky.

Some of these feelings have been stirred up by the Christmas season.  This year, for the first time in many years, I didn’t buy anything on Black Friday (at least nothing on sale…).  There were plenty of game sales, movie sales, computer hardware sales…but nothing was really appealing this time around.  Also this year, Brooke and I decided against writing Christmas lists for ourselves (though we’ll make one up for Meg).  We both have plenty of “stuff” sitting around the house.  We’ve got clothes.  We’ve got “toys.”  We’ve got things we don’t have the time to use.  That isn’t to say we don’t want anything for Christmas, but we’d rather not put a long list out there for our parents and siblings to fill out or draw from.  A few thoughtful things are great: twenty is more than we need.

There’s a growing movement that gets revisited around Black Friday each year, and was recently discussed on my usual NPR program, OnPoint (I haven’t listened yet, but it’s in my queue…).  There are folks out there who try to live on 100 items or less, making it something of a challenge to have literally 100 total items to your name (socks count as 2 “items,” if that gives you a feel for this concept).  Now, we could never, uh, ever do that, but the idea behind it is still worth considering: if an individual can live on 100 items and find happiness, could we stand to get rid of some stuff, too?

So yeah, while I would love to have “The Avengers” and “The Amazing Spider-Man” on my shelf, I know I’ll just watch each one once and then pick them up again next year or in two years when their sequels come out.  At which point, I could just spend $4 to watch it now and $3 (or less…) to watch it again in a few years.  $7 is less than $25.

And it’ll save my Dad’s back to have a few less DVDs in boxes when he helps us move next time. 🙂

Posted on

Review: Skyfall

After some pretty dire financial troubles for MGM, the holder of the James Bond franchise, they finally got around to producing and releasing the newest iteration in the series, Skyfall, with Daniel Craig reprising the role in time for the 50th Anniversary of Bond movies.  The reviews have been pretty spectacular, and as I enjoyed the previous outings, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, I expected to be blown away.  To be honest, I think it’s a very strong movie, perhaps the strongest in some key areas, but in the end, I still prefer Casino Royale, so far as Daniel Craig Bond movies go.

The movie is centered around an attack on MI6, the British secret service organization Bond works for.  The “attack” in question spans multiple components, from collecting the secret identities of agents (and assassinating them), to a bombing, to targeting MI6 officials directly, and so on.  In short: someone intimately familiar with the inner-workings of MI6 is out to get them (for reasons you can probably guess…), and it’s up to James Bond to stop them.

The trouble is, many of these attacks are built upon new ways of thinking.  A brave new world of espionage that has emerged in the last decade, one that the Sean Connery-era James Bond wouldn’t know the first thing about how to deal with.  It is this theme that permeates the movie, possibly most evident from his interactions with the new “Q” (Ben Whishaw), a much, much younger tech nerd who seems like more of a hacker than a gadget producer.  There’s even a clever crack about how Q Branch doesn’t make exploding pens anymore, a callback to an earlier era where brute force and explosions were an effective deterrent to terrorists.  In today’s world, however, the terrorists don’t have to come within a few hundred miles to wreak havoc: they can do it from any computer screen.

Thus, much of the movie centers around the theme of James Bond being old and broken, useless in a today’s world.  At the same time, that “new world” doesn’t know how to deal with a relic like James Bond, so the tension rises accordingly, leading to a few striking action scenes and some strong (and creepy…) moments between Craig and the villain, played by Javier Bardem.  To be honest, I wanted a bit more “action” out of this movie, as I thought the previous movies had more “Bond moments” and more spectacular sequences (don’t get me wrong, they’re still there, but there just aren’t as many).  At the same time, as is the message for the movie, this is a different time and it calls for a different Bond.  Less action, more intrigue, and surprisingly little “Bond Babe” activity.  Indeed, Daniel Craig was shirtless for longer in this movie than there were actual romance scenes to hold it in, a far cry from previous films.

In some ways, I see this more as a Bourne Identity-style spy movie, where there are action scenes, but much of it centers on the story and the characters.  This isn’t a bad thing by any stretch, but it isn’t necessarily a Bond thing, either.

So, that’s where I fall on it.  As a “Bond Movie,” I prefer Casino Royale.  As a movie, I think it was very strong, had good writing, had good action, had a good payoff in the end, and had some excellent callbacks to Dr. No.  It’s absolutely worth seeing, Craig is still a wonderful James Bond, and the producers have proven they can not only make a whiz-bang action flick, but can also take a more serious look at where in the world the character of “James Bond” fits.  If anything, it proves the character is still relevant, but also that an old dog can most definitely learn some new tricks.

Posted on

On Ending ‘The Connection’ at WHUMC

These remarks were delivered by me as part of a “testimonial” during our regular church service today.  I thought it appropriate to post them here, as well.  I’ll probably write more on the subject eventually, but for right now, just know that our regular Sunday morning church service, The Connection, will be ending next week as we consolidate the two regular church services into a single one, beginning officially in January.  We have some details to work out on what this service will look like, but in short, what we’ve been doing at Webster Hills for the last few years will cease to be after next Sunday.

Brooke and I moved to St. Louis after graduating college in 2005 so I could start graduate school at Saint Louis University.  We were both active in the Wesley Foundation at Truman State University and wanted to continue in the Methodist church after moving.  We had a few criteria in the kind of church we were looking for, but above all else, we sought a church that had not only a worship service geared toward more “contemporary” music and liturgy, but specifically a service that did not occur at the same time as Sunday School.  Of the churches in the southern half of St. Louis, the only option we found was Webster Hills UMC.  While this was the initial reason to attend, we found the congregation to be warm and inviting, the music to be similar to what we knew from our days at the Wesley House, and the opportunities to participate and contribute to the overall mission of the church to be plentiful.

For the next several years, our experience with the band, service, and church as a whole evolved to encompass not only participating in the music, but the altar design, management of the media system, and more.  In short, just about everything that goes on before and after this service, we have had our hands on at some point or another.  Ultimately, we were involved in leading the band on an interim basis between our previous worship director, Yanela Sheets, and Ryan Gibbs, a period that also saw a re-envisioning of the service and this space, including the introduction of more comfortable chairs, carpets, the crosses, and other facets that has hopefully made this space and worship service more inviting to the regular congregants and newcomers alike.

To say that this service has meant a great deal to my family would be an understatement.  Between 2005 and 2010, we put ourselves into what evolved into The Connection, and The Connection and its congregants became a part of us.  However, in 2010, we moved to Iowa after I completed my graduate work, yet our new church home never felt quite the same.  Webster Hills was still where we belonged.  And as fate would have it, the opportunity arose to return to St. Louis in late-2011, and thankfully, there was still The Connection, with open arms for any and all who wished to participate.

I keep using the term “participate” because Brooke and I feel that one of the great strengths of this service, over just about any we have ever attended, is that everyone can contribute in their own way, everyone can come as they are, and everyone is welcome.  In some ways, it’s the embodiment of Jesus’ most profound teachings: all people are welcome at the table, all they have to do is take that step forward and accept it.

As many of you know, this service will be ending next Sunday.  While it disappoints me greatly, at the same time, I trust that the spirit this service has embodied will continue to thrive, just in another form, at another place, at another time.  The opportunities to contribute toward the body and soul of this church are still plentiful, and as the sun sets on The Connection, something new is on the horizon, something that can and will do great things.

It’s been said that the night is darkest just before the dawn.  Apparently, that phrase comes from the English theologian, Thomas Fuller, though honestly, I know it from Harvey Dent in “The Dark Knight.”  Regardless, it’s a phrase that comes to mind in thinking about endings like this one, and the potential beginnings yet to come.  Brooke and I have always sought to contribute as best as we can, using whatever talents we have available to us.  The Connection afforded us that possibility, and we are eternally grateful for it.  Though this service will be ending soon, we will look upon it fondly as some small thing we could do, together, to help bring others closer to Christ.

Posted on

Neuroscience 2012

A shot from inside the conference hall, looking toward the poster boards.

Yeah, yeah, I know this happened almost a month ago now, but I’ve been meaning to post something about my trip to New Orleans and just haven’t had a ton of spare time to get it done.  Better late than never, eh?

It’s been almost three years since I last attended the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting.  On previous occasions, I’d gone to San Diego (2007), Washington, D.C. (2008), and then my last one in Chicago (2009).  Ever since starting grad school at SLU, I’d heard stories about “the last one in New Orleans” (that will go undescribed here…), but unfortunately, due to Hurricane Katrina, the SfN meeting couldn’t return on schedule.

That is, until 2012, when, coincidentally, I had my next chance to go.

Taking a step back, the reason why this conference is held in a few specific cities is that there are only a few specific cities capable of hosting about 28,500 conference attendees.  New Orleans was one such city, and taking it out of the rotation meant that Chicago had to be substituted, as it had a conference center large enough, and also enough hotels within a reasonable distance to hold all those people.  Unfortunately, Chicago’s conference center just isn’t in a very good location and its overall configuration isn’t ideal for this particular convention (the locations of stair cases, the number of floors, etc).  The logistics of handling 28,500 people can be handled much easier in New Orleans, San Diego, and D.C., at least so far as I’ve seen.

Regardless, I flew down on Friday, October 12th and returned on Wednesday, October 17th.  I presented a poster during the very first session, Saturday afternoon, and had a bit more traffic than I expected to have, as most attendees are arriving on Saturday and/or Sunday and could easily miss my poster.  Still, it was nice to get it out of the way early, freeing up additional time for the rest of the week.  Overall, I attended some good talks, wrote plenty of notes, and got a few ideas on new experiments to run.

Crescent City Blues and BBQ Festival

 Of course, this is New Orleans, after all, so the meeting wasn’t where all the fun was had.  I was splitting time between lab members from here at Wash U, and others from SLU.  Mostly, that split depended on what time of the evening it was: if it was early, it was the Wash U crowd, and if it was late, it was the SLU crowd.  One important exception was Friday night, after watching the Cardinals win Game 5 of the Wild Card Series against the Washington Nationals, we stayed out a bit late.  That weekend, there was a BBQ & Blues Festival going on, so we stopped by for some good food and tunes on Friday and Saturday evening for dinner.  They had it set up with a series of tents hosting a variety of different wares, and then a live stage with different musicians taking their turns.

I should remind you that Brooke and I took a trip to New Orleans in 2005, just after we got married and before Katrina rolled through, so I had already done much of the “touristy” things you’re supposed to do on a visit to the area.  This time was more focused on the food and night life (and science, of course… :-)).   I still stopped by Central Grocery for a muffuletta, had some Pasta Jambalaya at Crescent City Brewhouse, and had Po’ Boys from a few different vendors.  Needless to say, the food was spectacular.

I tried an oyster, though.  That was, perhaps, the absolute worst thing I have ever ingested.  Never.  Again.

Bourbon Street...er...late at night...

Again, last time around, Brooke was still falling asleep around 9:00 pm (well, she still does, to a degree, but she can stay up later now than she used to…), so we didn’t really stay out late.  This time, however, I was hanging out with night owls, so we hit up a variety of different establishments up and down Bourbon Street and, believe you me, I was genuinely surprised at the number of people out at 2:00 am on a Sunday night in mid-October.  I can’t imagine what it would be like during Mardi Gras.  The number of folks we saw in Soulard for a single day for Mardi Gras in February was probably approaching what I was seeing on a given weekend in October in New Orleans, and I don’t think the number of people was directly related to the number of geeky scientists that also happened to be in town.

Regardless, I had a really fun time down in New Orleans.  The city seemed a bit nicer than it was in 2005, the populace seemed genuinely happy to have us all there (28,500 people bring in a lot of sales tax revenue), and I think the conference, as a whole, was glad to go someplace warm, instead of Chicago.  It was great to hang out with good friends in a different setting, learn some new stuff at a large science conference, and “get away for awhile” (though, Brooke did a good job potty training Meg in my absence!!).  I hope I get the opportunity to go back sometime!

Posted on

The Walking Dead

I usually reserve the month of October to partake in some “scary movies,” but this month has been a bit busier than usual with me being out of town for a conference and the Cardinals being in the playoffs.  As they so spectacularly collapsed at the end of the NLCS, I’ve got a bit more time to catch up on movies I’ve been waiting to watch…

However, I did find the time to watch the second season of “The Walking Dead,” as it appeared on Netflix a few weeks ago.  The third season has just started on AMC.

The reason I find this concept so fascinating is perfectly encapsulated in the tagline to the third season: “Fight the dead.  Fear the living.”  The story of The Walking Dead is essentially the same one that’s been told for decades in other zombie movies: an unexplained infection causes the dead to start walking, eating the flesh of the living, leaving a limited number of survivors to fend for themselves.  The distinction with this particular story is that much of the focus is on the survivors, not on the zombies.  Indeed, there are lengthy portions of the show (as in, 40 out of 50 minutes) that don’t involve zombies at all: the story focuses on whether the survivors can work together, whether they support each other, or whether they are willing to sacrifice another human in order to save themselves from “the walkers.”

“The Walking Dead” actually began as a comic book in 2003, written by Robert Kirkman.  I have never read the comic, though it continues to this day with over 100 issues.  It seems like many transitions from comics to other mediums, be it video games or movies, suffer because the interpretation by the new producer does not translate the original intentions of the author.  It took decades before Marvel and DC took a long, hard look at how their material was being portrayed in other mediums and actually put the effort into ensuring their properties were represented in the spirit they originally intended (think the difference between Adam West’s “Batman” series versus Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins“).

In “The Walking Dead,” Robert Kirkman is an Executive Producer, giving him some say in how the story is portrayed and how the feel of the comic is translated into a television format.  The series was developed by Frank Darabont, best known for his work directing “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” both of which also set in the deep south, much like “The Walking Dead” (which is filmed in Georgia).

Alongside the TV series, I have been playing “The Walking Dead” adventure game.  An “adventure game” is a bit different from many other traditional games in that it’s more focused on story and less on action.  There’s absolutely “action” at points, and “quick response”-kinds of reactions, but much of the game is like the TV show: conversations with other characters where you choose what to say and who to say it to.  In some instances, you can make a friend or make an enemy, and the words you choose, or the people you choose to save (you are frequently given a choice between one survivor and another: you can’t always save both) affects the course of the story.

This game is released “episodically,” so each episode is released every month or two and lasts about 3 hours.  Four episodes have been released so far, with the fifth and final episode releasing next month.  This story is completely new, not coming from the comics or TV show, but is still set in the same world with the same themes.  In that way, it’s nice because it doesn’t try to re-tell a story you already know (thus affecting your decisions as you play the game), but also introducing new characters and new problems in the same world.  The critical reception has been pretty spectacular.

So that’s “The Walking Dead.”  It’s a fascinating world to interact with, though definitely gruesome and violent.  But if you go into it wanting to experience the relationships between survivors that just happen to be fighting a zombie apocalypse, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had.  The first season is 6 episodes long and the second season has 13 episodes, both of which are available via Netflix Instant.

Posted on

Empiricism vs Rationalism

As part of the grant I’m on at work, I am expected to attend “continuing ethics training” each year.  Last Wednesday was the first of two sessions, each a little over an hour long, and I ended up presenting a case study to the other folks in the room regarding the way science is conducted and how it is perceived by the general public.  This past Wednesday, however, we had a guest speaker in the form of Stephen Lefrak, a pulmonary physician that also has research interests in medical ethics.

He covered a range of subjects, but he specifically highlighted a series of studies he was involved with over 10 years ago, studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine, among other high profile journals.  Studies funded by the NIH and carried out by the National Emphysema Treatment Trial Research Group (NETT).  These studies involved a surgical procedure for patients with emphysema, where portions of the lung with damaged tissue would be removed, and the rest of the lung (presumably healthy tissue) would be restructured to form a better-functioning respiratory organ.  Lefrak and his colleague here at Wash U were involved early on with the trial, but left after they had serious ethical concerns, one of which centered on the idea of a “randomized controlled trial (RCT).”

For the sake of simplicity, an RCT is essentially the idea that you apply one of two (or more) potential treatments to a given individual, and that individual is selected at random from a given group.  In this case, the treatment was the surgical removal of lung tissue (presumably damaged) in order to refashion a healthier lung, and the group was emphysema patients.  However, and importantly, it was known at the time that you can’t just do this to someone that has lung damage spread throughout the lung: it only works if there is healthy tissue still in there to salvage.

Lefrak knew it wouldn’t work if the trials were carried out at random (i.e. paying no attention to the quality of the patients lungs, or whether they had healthy lung tissue remaining, or whether they had a “homogeneous” mix of damaged and undamaged tissue).  However, when this concern was raised in the pages of NEJM, he was essentially told that he couldn’t “know” it because an RCT had not been done to prove it.

As a result, almost 50% of the patients it was tried on ended up dying, for the very reason Lefrak and colleagues warned them about.

Which brings us to the title of this post: empiricism vs rationalism.  “Empiricism” is what drives the belief that an RCT is essential to making the claim that this kind of lung surgery is “dangerous” to a subset of individuals.  “Rationalism” is behind the idea that we actually know things about how the body works and can make an informed inference as to what the outcome would be without having to do the RCT to “prove” it.

The example Lefrak gave is that an RCT to prove that you need a parachute to jump out of a plane would be silly.  We already know the answer.

As Lefrak talked about his experience, it got me thinking about where our knowledge comes from and how we build upon it.  Whether I concern myself, personally, with “evidence” more than I should, without thinking rationally about a particular subject in order to come to a conclusion.  I’d consider myself to be a “rational” person, but perhaps not.  Then again, as he described what the surgery was seeking to do, my physiology training assured me that I would have been on his side from the beginning, rather than advocating the continuation of the NETT work.

It’s just something we, as scientists, ought to consider more often than we typically do, I guess.

Posted on

Pedometer Experiment Revisited

Back in February, we thought it would be helpful to get an idea of just how much physical activity we were getting on a daily basis at work and at home.  As of this weekend, I completed 6 months of data collection and figure I can stop wearing a pedometer for awhile.

As a reminder, most literature suggests you try to get to 10,000 steps/day, which is approximately 5 mi of walking.  We were able to achieve that on some days, but generally speaking, we were below that on average.  Still, part of the reason to do this in the first place is to know just how much walking you’re doing and whether you’re even close to where you “should” be.

I should note that Brooke wore hers through mid-June and then switched off to an Android app that allows you to keep track of calorie intake.  Between March and mid-June, her average number of steps was 6,388.7 each day.  These charts only reflect data collected on me (my “global” average for the 6 months was 7,078.7 steps/day).

I separated out the data by month to help paint a clear picture of where that “7,078.7” comes from.  You’ll see that my activity level was a little less in the colder months of the year, while activity increased during the warmer months of the year.  I haven’t subdivided it all out, but my activity on weekends varied widely, where some days I’d be lucky to hit 4000 steps (yay, couch and TV days!) and others I’d clear 12,000 steps (mowing, working outside, going to the park, etc).

Case-in-point, my “most active” day was August 24th, with 15,631 steps.  On that day, we were in Minnesota and visited the Mall of America…twice.

Overall, I’m glad the data suggest that I’m “trending upwards” on my walking each month, though I’m sure it will just go down again as it gets colder.  My monthly average is probably accurate for a given year.  While 10,000 steps/day is ideal, I can’t say I’m all that disappointed with 7,000 steps/day as a daily average.

Though, it would have been interesting to wear a pedometer back when I was spending 2 hrs each week mowing the lawn up in Iowa…

Note: We were pretty busy last month with a variety of things, so sorry we haven’t posted anything since, uh, early September!  Got more on the way. 🙂