Category: mostly unimportant

Posted on

Flag Day

There are certain random dates I know of because of equally random reasons, and June 14th is one such day: Flag Day.  The only reason I know it’s Flag Day is because, around the time this post is going live, just about 15 years ago, my wonderful parents were driving me around in our old Chevy Suburban putting up the Stars and Stripes at various locations around Downtown Columbia, then going back later that night to pick them all up again.  I don’t remember the exact number, but I’m pretty sure it was close to 50 flags.  Our Boy Scout Troop put up the flags as a fundraiser on the different patriotic holidays throughout the year, and Flag Day is one of the common ones my family usually chose, as we were frequently available.

Flag Day always serves as a reminder of my time in Boy Scouts, something I haven’t really thought too hard about in the last decade (and then some) after completing my Eagle Scout rank.  It’s one of those things I kinda hope I can get back to some day, preferably with a son in tow.  In retrospect, it reminds me quite a bit of getting through graduate school.  In both processes, you select a committee, you present a project to them, you update the committee on your progress on a regular basis and they give you pointers and support to get you through it, culminating in one final test at the end of it that really isn’t much of a test, as much as it is a conversation about your experience throughout your time there.  Both are grueling processes, but I can’t help but think that my participation in Boy Scouts, amongst other things, contributed to my ability to get through graduate school.  Definitely not something I considered at the time, but worth telling future scientists working toward their Biology and/or Chemistry merit badges.

So, always remember: June 14th is Flag Day.  And if you see a kid putting flags out in Downtown Columbia, and his poor parents with their 32 oz coffee patiently watching and helping, tell them “thanks.”

Posted on

Good Day for Baseball

We have been meaning to get to a baseball game in Cedar Rapids for awhile now.  Never quite made it last summer, but then again, we had a 6 mo old, so it wasn’t exactly the ideal place to be going on a hot, summer day.  However, with Meg staying with her Grandparents in Missouri this week, we took the opportunity on Memorial Day to take in a ball game at Veterans Memorial Stadium, home of the Cedar Rapids Kernels minor league team (a Los Angeles Angels farm team).

Firstly, let me start by saying that tickets are cheap for these games.  They range from $7 to $10, depending on if you want lawn, bleacher or standard seating.  We opted for bleacher seats ($8 each), though in retrospect, the extra $1 would have been worth it (more on that shortly).  The food/beer prices were also pretty good.  $3 for peanuts, $3.50 for nachos, $4 for a 16 oz beer and $7 for a 32 oz beer.  With regards to beer, while they had your standard A-B, Miller and Coors fare, they also had a selection of other varieties, from Fat Tire to Blue Moon to Leinenkugel’s.  Enough to suit just about any taste.

As you can see above, the stadium itself is relatively small.  Again, we were in the bleacher seats when I took that picture, but you can tell that we were practically sitting on home base.  Unfortunately, however, the bleachers have absolutely no shade whatsoever.  And when it’s 87 F and sunny, that can get tiresome.  It would have been worth the extra $1 to move to actual seats, with the promise of some shade.  We did have our 30 SPF sunscreen on, though, and for the most part, we got out of it unscathed.

The other downside that I certainly didn’t anticipate was the length of the game.  Granted, I tend to expect spending maybe 3 hours at a baseball game, though games are shorter or longer than that, too.  We were sitting there for 2 hours and we had made it through the 4th inning (we got there a bit early…but still…).  The problem, of course, was that the teams weren’t hitting anything – they would go through all counts, strikes and balls, and get bases loaded without bringing any of the runners home.  At the time, the Kernels weren’t doing all that well, and we were sun baked, so we decided to leave.

Of course, as can be expected, the Kernels ended up winning.  The Peoria Chiefs (a Chicago Cubs farm team) were up 0-3 when we left, and by the end of the game, the Kernels won 7-5.  I guess they just needed a few warm up innings?

All in all, we had a good time.  The prices were good, the stadium was easily accessible, and the atmosphere was pretty good.  I’d like to go back, but I’d either a). pick a night game, or b). spend a few bucks extra for some shade.  I can’t fault the team for those particular blunders on my part, though.

A good way to spend Memorial Day, though.  Sun, beer and baseball.  Can’t go wrong.

Posted on

A Year Without Cable

I realized recently that, besides the fact that we’ve now lived in Iowa for the last year, it also means we’ve lived without cable television. After all that time, what have we missed?

Not a whole lot, it turns out.

Sure, there are some things that I would like to have.  Some deficiencies I figured we would see in this newfound lack of endless channels, but there are others I didn’t expect.  For one thing, I knew we’d miss having the ability to record a program on a DVR, as we’d gotten used to having one for the previous 4 years.  I thought that we’d be fine without it, however, as most of the shows we watch were on some kind of digital service, a la Hulu, etc.  And for most shows, we were right.

Unfortunately, a select few of my shows (e.g. Stargate Universe and Sanctuary) have some silly deal with SyFy that makes them show up on Hulu 30 days after premiering.  That, my friends, is an eternity.  Those shows, however, are the only ones that seem to have this problem.  Many of the others, in fact, show up the day after premiering on television, while others show up a week later.  These are time-frames we can deal with.

One thing I didn’t think I’d miss, however, was baseball.  I don’t really watch baseball religiously, but I do like catching the occasional game on a rainy Saturday or Sunday afternoon.  For the most part, many Cardinals games are actually televised up here in Iowa, using KDSK‘s feed.  This isn’t always the case, however, and sometimes, because we’re in Iowa, we get enough wind that the TV station’s antenna is cutting in and out, making my viewing of a game troublesome.  I have considered getting MLB.tv service, which would allow us to watch any baseball game throughout the season in HD through the PS3, but at $90 per season, I just don’t watch enough to make it worth it.

Other than that?  I don’t think we miss all that much.  We watch quite a bit of Netflix, streamed through the PS3 or Wii, and we have a few “standby” shows in our Instant Queue at all times when we get that “we just want to veg out in front of the TV and watch nothing specific” feeling, such as No Reservations, Man v. Food, Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs.  The best part being that we can choose which episodes we want to watch, rather than being at the mercy of whatever theme that particular station is running on that day.  And, no commercials.

We are still watching Hulu through the computer, but it seems to work alright.  I’d prefer to have it on the TV, but I don’t want to run a cable that far, and the 19″ monitor we’re using is “big enough” for our purposes.

In the end, I don’t think we miss cable all that much.  We can find little things here and there that would be nice to see live, but more often than not, we’re living without it.

Not something my parents could have believed they’d ever say, methinks…

Posted on

Looking For Improved Growth

Last year’s garden was remarkably successful, considering that we moved to Iowa in early-May and didn’t get much planted until later that month.  In the end, we had a ridiculous number of tomatoes and squash, but good yields of sweet potatoes, carrots, radishes, and green beans (if you count the latter as “good”…).

This year, however, we more than doubled the size of the garden, partially because everything grew too close together last year, but also because we wanted to expand into some different vegetables.  A few weeks ago, we borrowed our land lord’s tiller, which made short work of the existing garden, but also took care of the surrounding area we didn’t take care of last year.  Believe you me, Iowa dirt is quite a bit easier to till through than Missouri dirt.  I think it took me 10 minutes to go over the whole thing, and I did it again the next day just to make sure I got it all.  Since then, I’ve just used a spade fork to “turn over” the dirt and limit growth of weeds.  Then, two weeks ago, Brooke planted peas, broccoli and spinach, which are three things that we either didn’t grow at all last year, or didn’t find much success in growing.

This past weekend, however, we moved on to the other, larger items.  Brooke is pictured above watering tomato and pepper plants, though she also planted a few rows of two-color hybrid sweet corn.  If I recall,  she ended up planting over 20 plants in the plot she’s watering, and the vast majority of those are tomatoes.  Mostly romas, but also some that should make for reasonable sandwiches, etc.  Some of those plants we inherited from my Mom (thanks!), but the others she started in peat pots indoors awhile back.  I mowed the lawn the next day and saved the grass clippings to help surround the individual plants, hopefully limiting the growth of grass (that you can clearly see growing to the right of Brooke, where the broccoli, peas and spinach are).  Brooke also put some milk jugs around the tomato and pepper plants to help protect them as they get bigger.

The only thing(s) I know of yet to go in are the green beans and the soup beans.  Brooke is starting to plant herbs in pots up closer to the house over this next week, now that the temperatures seem like they’ll stay above freezing (finally…).  We’ll probably get everything else planted by Memorial Day, but then we’ve got a large amount of weeding to take care of, especially over by the peas.  We’ve got pea and spinach plants coming up, so it’s easy to identify the weeds around them.  The carrots, however, haven’t popped up yet, so we’ll have to wait for them.

On a side-note, Meg had great fun playing outside while we were doing all this.  I took some pictures while we were outside, as I tend to do when there’s a camera attached to my phone.  She discovered that eating dirt annoys her parents, though, so we’ll have to keep a close eye on her in the future…

Posted on

Two Hours Well Spent

As I’m sure Mom would tell you, I was never really eager to mow the lawn back in high school.  I would certainly do it, and do a reasonable job at it, but I was never asking Dad, “hey, can I mow the lawn for you?”  In the past year, however, I’ve found that I kinda missed it.  Back in Kirksville or St. Louis, I never had the opportunity or the need to mow any lawns.  For all intents and purposes, I hadn’t actually mowed a lawn in about 10 years before moving to Iowa.  A lot changes in a decade, and apparently, over that decade, I learned to enjoy mowing.

We have a pretty large yard up here in Iowa, and only a self-propelled push mower to do it with (plus an electric trimmer).  It takes me almost 2 hours to mow the whole thing, usually.  Thankfully, the yard is pretty flat, except for a plethora of molehills.  When I tell people up here that I do this lawn with a push mower, they get wide-eyed, probably chuckling in their heads with disbelief.  Somehow, I don’t really see it the same way.

Mowing the lawn has become an excuse to go outside for me and get disconnected.  No need for my headphones, no need for my TV, no need for my computer.  I can’t really use those things while I’m mowing (I probably could use headphones, but I’d have to turn them up loud enough that I’d hasten my need for hearing aides, so I’m avoiding them in this case).  It’s one of the few times that I force myself to go without any form of technology, let alone one of the few times I ever get any exercise.

I will probably change my tune by August, but right now, there’s nothing like sitting down with a beer while surveying a freshly trimmed yard after 2 hours of work.

Oh, and here’s a random picture of Brooke and Meg. 🙂

Posted on

Needling and Bleeding

This used to be a sewing machine needle….

Then my finger got in the way. I’m not sure how I managed to take out two fingers in one night: one thumb with a mandoline while making potato chips, and another finger with the sewing machine. I think it takes real TALENT!

Posted on

And the Oscar goes to…

Brooke has a friend that’s slowly making their way through all the “Best Picture” winners via Netflix, so we figured that, as we aren’t really devoted to a single show right now in our Netflix Queue, we can probably start heading that way, too.  We’ve seen quite a few of the more recent ones, so I’ll just highlight the ones below that we’re going to try and watch.  Movies that aren’t highlighted are those that either we’ve both seen, or one of us has seen and can’t convince the other to watch it (I’m looking at you, “Return of the King” and “Titanic“).

This will take practically forever to accomplish, but I figured it was worth posting.  We’re only going back to the year of my birth, at this point.  Once we get that far, then we’ll re-evaluate whether we want to go further.

Academy Award “Best Picture” Winners

Posted on

Foxy Lady

The last few weeks, heading out to work around 6:30 am, I’ve noticed a fox crossing the road, usually from our side to the opposing side.  As foxes tend to be active at dawn and dusk, this wasn’t too surprising, though we didn’t see any foxes around last year.  Having a fox around the property isn’t our first choice, as we have chickens now, but we kinda hoped that its home was across the street, rather than over here.

Well, I was getting ready to head out for church this morning when I looked out the window to see our friend, the fox, in our yard.  This time, however, the fox was accompanied by two baby foxes.  I quickly grabbed the DSLR, slapped on the zoom lens, and crept outside.  The foxes were over by the outbuildings.  The zoom lens did well, but didn’t get quite close enough for my taste, so I slowly crept further out.  The mother fox saw me from the beginning, but as long as I didn’t make sudden movements, she wasn’t too bothered.  I finally tried moving over to the concrete platform containing our well to sit down, but Momma Fox didn’t like me quite that close, so she moved further away.  The young foxes stayed there, but moved out of my sight.  I figured I’d gotten enough pictures by then, though, so I came inside.

We’ll have to decide what to do about this, I guess.  The hen house is relatively well-protected, but it’s our understanding that, once a fox knows there are hens in the coop, then there’s little you can do to prevent it from getting in…aside from trapping and removing the fox(es) by force.  As this is Brooke’s “project,” though, I’ll be letting her make the appropriate decisions.

Regardless, I posted some of the pictures I took up on Picasa.  It’s probably the closest I’ve ever gotten to a fox – definitely a surprising and cool experience!

Posted on

What does “Rock Chalk” mean, anyway?

This past weekend marked my second scientific meeting since moving up to Iowa for my postdoctoral position.  The first one was last fall, when we hosted the Central States Society of Toxicology meeting here at the University of Iowa.  It didn’t really involve much more than a day’s-worth of work on my part, and was generally a decent time.  This weekend, however, was the first one when we actually went somewhere else.  And that place was Kansas.

We’ll go ahead and get this out of the way now.

I hate Kansas.

Moving right along…

It was the 2011 MIKI Meeting, a conference comprised of four midwestern Medicinal Chemistry programs from the University of Minnesota, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Kansas, and University of Iowa (…hence, “MIKI”).  The meeting rotates between the four universities each year, and next year is Iowa’s turn again.  So it was very useful to see the meeting in action so we could start having some discussions over what needs to be done in preparation for next year’s meeting.

The general structure of the conference was similar-ish to others I’d attended in years past.  We left here by bus on Friday around noon to get down to Lawrence, KS in time for dinner and a mixer at a downtown location called Liberty Hall, where we had some buffet-style food, free beer (woooo!) and a “Trivia Night” competition between the different tables.  It was a good opportunity to interact with some folks from the other programs, which was kinda nice.  Saturday comprised the bulk of the meeting, involving 15 minute mini-talks from graduate students, a 1 hr keynote lecture, and then a 2 hour poster session, which I participated in.  That night, we went to another downtown locale called Van Go Mobile Arts for dinner, and then some of us went out again afterwards.  Sunday morning, we had some more 15 minute talks and then left on the bus by noon, getting back to Iowa City around 6:00ish.

In total, the weekend was pretty good.  This was a 200-person meeting, which is the optimal size, in my opinion.  In many ways, I liken it to a classic church youth trip (a la Youth Congress) where you are stuck in a van or on a bus for hours on end, then you get to where you’re going for the weekend and get placed into situations where you’re somewhat likely to interact with other people from other cities, as well as talk with people from your own group that you may not have interacted with in the past.  The meeting I normally go to, Society for Neuroscience, has more like 30,000 people attending, making it extremely difficult for you to interact with anyone but your own group.  In that respect, a 200 person meeting is much, much better for “networking,” and for learning more about your field and other people’s.

So despite the fact that we had to go to Kansas, the weekend was still pretty fun.  I got to meet some cool people from other places and interact with folks from here that I didn’t know all that well.  And Brooke and Meg survived for a few days without me, though it appears that Meg missed her Daddy to some extent (she did not like it when I left her at daycare today…).  Brooke said that they went to church yesterday and it seemed like Meg was looking for me, expecting me to be there.  Of course, she’ll be without her Daddy again next weekend when Brooke and Meg head down to the Lake for the annual “Girl’s Weekend” with Brooke’s family.

I’m sure Grandma will keep Meg entertained, though…  😉

Posted on

A Weekend At The Movies

Ever since adding another person to the human population, I haven’t been able to watch as many movies as I used to. I’m sure this is mostly, and/or directly, related to the fact that it’s difficult to sit on a couch and watch something for 2 hours without being interrupted in some fashion by our offspring, but I think there have also been other distractions since moving to Iowa. Granted, the colder weather has limited our outdoor excursions, but last summer, we were outside more enjoying the weather or working in the garden (and that’s about to get started again in the next few months).  I’ve also been gaming quite a bit in the past year, more than I had been before.  I think a lot of that is also because it’s a lot easier to fit in 1 hour per day of gaming than it is to fit in half a movie, only to finish it the next day.

Therefore, I think I’m ready for a movie-filled weekend.  Less gaming, more movie-ing.  And with cold weather in store, I imagine that we’ll be parked downstairs in our pajamas for most of the weekend, anyway.  I’ve got a gaggle of DVDs that need some watching, as well as various flicks on Netflix Instant Queue that probably should have been watched long ago.  So here’s a list of the ones I’m considering, some of which I’ll make Brooke watch, too:

Of course, I guarantee that only half of those may actually get watched, but it’s still a worthwhile goal.  And more than likely, I’ll get Brooke on board with this idea and the movie selection will change dramatically.  I figure if I’m not making it to the movie theater as often as I used to, I may as well bring it to the comfort of my own home.  I think I’ve still got a free rental on Vudu through the PS3, so we’ll have a look at their selection as well.

Suggestions?  Apart from this list?  Especially easy-to-get Netflix ones.

Update: In case anyone was wondering what we (or just me…) ended up actually watching, here’s the list:

I’m satisfied with this weekend’s crop.  Should tide me over for awhile, at least.  🙂