Category: mostly unimportant

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Still here!

Well, I’m sitting in the convention center in San Diego, CA waiting another hour before I present my poster… It’s been an informative and interesting trip, to say the least, but I’m ready to come home…there’s only so much neuroscience that a brain can handle… 😛

I’ll try and recount the experiences in a few days after I’ve recovered a bit – I fly back to St. Louis tomorrow morning, so it’ll be busy for the rest of today and tomorrow. Until then, I’ve got a few pictures up on my Picasa page (click on the Picasa Web Albums plug-in to the right-hand side of this page) if you wanna see what’s been going on so far in the trip.

On another note, it’s about 65 F here…and I hear it got into the mid 30s last night in Missouri… 😉

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Awesome Creation

Not to brag or anything, but the dinner I made up for tonight was pretty good.  I had some “Mediterranean” cheese crumbles in the fridge and some ground pork that I needed to use, so I made Greek  burgers.

1.  Ingredients:
english muffins
1/2 lb. pork (I think turkey would be good for this, too, but I’d add something else, like some cheese or apple juice to make it stick together)
Greek seasoning (find any recipe online to make your own, like I did, or buy some premade)
Mediterranean cheese (the stuff I got on sale was provolone, feta, and parmesan)
Olive salad (whatever you want to add to some chopped up olives – mine was a handful of green olives with pimento, about a quarter of an onion, finely chopped, 2 mashed cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar)

2.    Toast english muffins.  Mix together pork and about 2 tablespoons of Greek seasoning.  Form into patties (I made 4 small ones).

3.  Wait until your husband finally decides to make his way home, even though you’re super excited to get started on this endeavor.

4.  Cook burgers however you want.  Broil some of the cheese on the bottoms of the muffins, until it’s melty and a little bit brown.

5.  Put the burgers on the cheesy muffin bottoms, top with olive salad (I put more on mine than on Andy’s, since I knew I’d like it more.)

6.  That’s it.  We also had some diced potatoes cooked with olive oil and some more of the Greek seasoning in a cast iron skillet and some steamed California blend (see, Andy does eat green things!).

I’d been thinking of this pretty much all day long, since I didn’t have any inspiration for dinner otherwise and I think it turned out very well.  Hopefully I’ll be able to put it together the same way another time, but chances are I forgot to include something I did that made it good, but feel free to try it too, and let me know if you do anything differently.

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Mmmmm…Missouri Backcountry…

Well, Brooke got to go backpacking for the first time this weekend. We hit the Ozark Trail’s Current River section Friday afternoon, which is located kinda between Bonne Terre, MO and Eminence, MO…but by “between,” I mean “there’s nothing but forest there, so it’s kinda far from both.”

Anyway, we got started Friday night but really only had time to pitch a tent and collect firewood. We even got to chop down a tree with our nifty new hatchet (picture coming…) in the dark, which was rather sweet… The night proved mostly uneventful, but it was still good… The real problem was the heat. I mean, it cooled off a bit, but being in the trees with little or no breeze meant that the humidity just kinda hung around. As a result, Brooke didn’t sleep all that well…

We got up the next morning and hit the trail. The hiking itself was pretty straight-forward, but we weren’t as close to water as I’d hoped. I mean, yes, the trail generally follows the Current River, but as many of you know, there are lots of bluffs along the water, which means that while we were usually “close” to it, we still couldn’t actually get to it except at a few points… We did get to eat lunch by the river, which was lovely, and get our feet wet once or twice.

But, the heat was still pretty annoying and we did 10 miles of hiking (give or take…) in a relatively short span of time… By the time we had done the hiking we had planned to do, and hiked back, we realized we were only an hour from the car… So yeah, dripping with sweat and with blisters on our feet (well, mine at least…), we headed back to the car and just decided to come home rather than stick it out another night… We got back last night and picked up the dog from Jo and Lisa’s (thanks!).

Anyway, it was a good, albeit brief and warm, trip. While the weather wasn’t what we would have preferred, we did get some good scenery and some good exercise…

Back to the “real world” now, I guess……

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W.W.J.D.?

So, Pastor Paul mentioned a month ago when Brooke and I visited Columbia that he’s looking for people to talk to the 9th grade confirmation class about “what Jesus means to you,” and as I understand it, in the context of where your life has gone since the 9th grade. He was shooting to get a relatively wide range of age groups represented, and needed someone in their mid-20s. Somehow, I got asked… 😛

Anyway, I’ve been contemplating how exactly to go about this. In all honesty, I’d never really thought about the issue, certainly not in recent years. It is further complicated by the fact that I’ve got that whole “go to church on Sunday” thing and then “do science and research” for the rest of the week – two things that don’t necessarily jive well with everyone, but is still certainly doable. There are certain things with Christianity and science that tend to not mix, but are rather key… For example, while one could argue that “Creation” occurred, the specifics behind how that came about would be looked at very differently if you asked someone on the street and if you asked someone with a heavy science background (i.e. me). Or, the immaculate conception…or many of the miracles talked about in the Bible.

Therefore, for the purposes of the discussion on Sunday, I think I’m going to steer away from those issues, but still acknowledge that it’s something that I struggle with frequently, even as I get older and learn more about life. It’s something that it’s O.K. to struggle with and, in my opinion, it makes your beliefs stronger when you feel that you can question them and that it’s alright to really think hard about the Bible and how things should be placed in the context of those that were writing it back nearly 2000 years ago…

So, I guess I view Jesus himself (as that’s really what I’m supposed to talk about…not Christianity as a whole…) as a representation of who we all should strive to be. Someone that taught by his actions. If someone was sick, he healed them. If someone needed defending, he defended them. It didn’t matter who you were, you deserved the same treatment as everyone else. And, at least according to the Bible, he didn’t scold you for being who you were, either.

The man lived by example, and that’s the thing that many Christians don’t do today, in my opinion. Many of them go to church on Sunday and then on Monday return to having the same prejudices against Arabs and homosexuals and unwed mothers that they had earlier. It’s as if many of us today took that message and forgot the “forgiveness” part, and that’s the key. Whether you believe Jesus actually turned water into wine, or died and rose again is a plus…but for me, it’s more important to know what he stood for and how he stood for it, rather than all the “neat stuff” he did, too.

So “What Would Jesus Do?” He’d show his beliefs by his actions, not by telling you you’re wrong. He’d lend his help to anyone that needed it, including his enemies.

And that’s what Jesus means to me.

Any thoughts?

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A good weekend for one and all…

…well, hopefully… 😛

So yeah, Yanela was out of town at church this weekend (our Worship Leader), so I got to run the show this weekend…and as I got to be in charge, I got to recruit the people I wanted to…and Mom and Kristen got the call (Dad, you would have too, but you don’t play the recorder all that well…sorry! ;-)). Brooke played bass (of course), I played guitar, Mom played piano and Kristen sang. We did some old songs and some new ones, all of which seemed to turn out pretty well! Thanks, family!!

Otherwise, Mom and Dad left on Sunday (after a lovely brunch at Norton’s…great place…we should go again sometime…), and then Kristen, Brooke and I tried going to Fast Eddie’s in Alton, IL. This place, apparently, Alton Brown went to in his “Feasting on Asphalt” show on the Food Network. Well, they’ve got really cheap eats and a nifty biker atmosphere (where I don’t exactly fit in, needless to say…). And, they were rather packed. As in, not a seat available in the house. And a long line for food. And lines of people watching for empty tables. We ended up leaving, unfortunately, so we’ll have to try going back some other time. We ended up just going to Joanie’s (after we tried going to Ferraro’s Pizza…which wasn’t open, dammit…).

We went to the zoo the next morning, saw the penguins (w00t!), and then Kristen went home… And today, of course, we’re back to the real world…

Guess I’d better prepare my lecture for this Friday… I’ve gotta shape young minds!

Edit: Oh yeah, and by the way, the Kansas City Royals have a better record than 9 other teams in Major League Baseball. Just wanted to throw that out there…. 😛

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Craziness…

Yeah, this past week got pretty nuts at work/school… While I’m not taking classes, per se, I’m still required to get a few things done…namely, my Prelim… At this rate, I need to have the 8-page treatment done by mid-October so it can be approved before doing the 25-page version for mid-November. After it’s approved, I can do my Oral Defense in early/mid-December and life will be good. I chatted with Dr. Macarthur earlier in the week about where I stand thus far and I think I’m in decent shape, but there’s a lot of research to do.

This process is different from a more classical undergrad “research paper” in that there’s a lot more critical thinking involved. You have to determine whether your science is sound, whether there is evidence to support the ideas you’re putting forward, and whether they’re even do-able experiments. At Truman, all I had to do was look up a subject and write about it – there wasn’t very much “opinion” needed… Now, theoretically, my opinion matters and I have to defend it on paper…and then to five professors… So yeah, while 8 pages doesn’t sound all that hard, there’s a lot of thought that goes into it…that I need to really get started on.

That, and I’ve got two lectures to deliver, one on September 7th and one on September 10th…both on alcohol (I know…no first-hand experience there, right?). I’ve got last year’s PowerPoint presentations to start from, but I’ve still got to update them a bit and learn the material before the 7th. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on the science that goes into it, but some refreshing would be useful…

On top of both those things, Dr. Macarthur wants me to start putting together all my data from the last year (plus a bit more…) so it can be published. I’ve got some decent data, but there’s a little more I’d like to get… I really need to get started on the Prelim, though, so I’ll likely shut down all experiments for a few weeks while I get started, then fire them back up toward the end of September. That way, I can do additions to my Prelim (’cause it’ll already be pretty far along) and I won’t have lectures to accomplish anymore… If all goes well, I should be able to get a paper done for publication by the end of the year, and that’d be sweet to get a paper out already, ’cause I’ve still got a few years left…

Anyone else busy already? The school year has barely started!!

Shenanigans, I tell you…

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Bear Grylls vs Les Stroud

So, does anyone watch the Discovery Channel? If you do, you’ve undoubtably seen advertisements for one of their latest darlings, Man vs. Wild, hosted by Bear Grylls. The premise is that Grylls is dropped via parachute in places like the Scottish highlands, a glacier in Greenland, or the deserts of Mexico (amongst others), and he has to survive until he can find his way out. He finds water to drink, eats spiders, and builds shelters, and shows his viewers what they need to do to stay alive.

Now, we’re now in the second season of this show (on Friday nights at 10:00 pm, I think), and we only started watching it because of Les Stroud.

Stroud hosts another show, “Survivorman,” which was originally on the Discovery-owned Science Channel, then appeared on the Discovery Channel last year in reruns… It’s very similar to “Man vs Wild,” but with a few differences I’ll get to shortly. Thankfully, while the show only lasted one season, it’s returning on August 10th to the Discovery Channel! Brooke and I are excited…

Anyway, here’s the thing: Stroud and Grylls are both very capable, but while Grylls goes off with a camera crew, Stroud goes alone. He carries 50 lbs of camera equipment with him (and a pocket knife!), sets them up along the way so he can tape himself walking by, then backtracks to pick it up again. Stroud doesn’t do anything stupid, because he doesn’t have a camera crew with him – Grylls will jump down a waterfall to show you the “safe” way to do it, but in reality, the “safe” way is to simply avoid the waterfall altogether. He can only do it because there’s a group of people with him in case he screws up.

That, and Grylls will do things like drink his pee to retain water. Stroud never does that – he would instead extract water from nearby trees or harvest it from a contraption he built to catch dew in the morning… It seems like Grylls has a bit more “shock factor” than Stroud cares to (i.e. not quite as based in what I call “realistic situations”…).

And that’s where the controversy begins. Last week, I happened to have Letterman on and he brought up some “questions” that are being asked by a news organization in Britain. Apparently, having that camera crew with you has its advantages, like allowing you to stay in a hotel, or having an accompanying survival specialist do most of the work at crafting the raft that gets you off a deserted island.

These are questions Brooke and I had from the beginning of the show… We don’t have these questions with “Survivorman,” however, as it’s quite obvious that no one is with the man for 7 days. We also like the fact that Stroud mentions that he doesn’t like killing animals, “but if you’re in a survival situation, it’s all fair game” – Grylls, instead, makes no such mention and seems to revel in catching a rabbit (or turtle) and killing it on camera. Stroud isn’t preachy about it at all…we’re just glad he mentions it briefly and moves right on…

Anyway, you ought to check it out…both shows…see what you think. This week is Shark Week on Discovery though, so neither one is on (but Les Stroud is hosting!), but next week, you can catch reruns and new episodes of each. “Survivorman” is the superior show, but “Man vs Wild” is still entertaining…

Anyone ever watch these shows? Besides Brooke? I’m sure no one cares…just had to get it out there… 😛

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Changes?

So, I’m getting a bit bored with my old WordPress theme, so I’m looking around for other options… This one is called Mandigo and seems to have plenty of options, including a 1024 px setting, rather than simply 800 px (i.e. it fills the screen now…). I have yet to figure out how to really streamline all the links to the right-hand side of the blog, however, so I’ll have to toy with that…

Look okay? Or is the old one better? This one is “widget-enabled,” which theoretically allows me to add some nifty plugins (like a plugin that will randomly rotate photos from my Picasa site…).

Anyway, we’ll see…maybe I’ll switch back…but for now, I’m giving it a try… I’m sure you all care tremendously… 😛

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A question…

So, we had this conversation last week on the way to our annual lab float trip (which was lovely, by the way…), but I was wondering about the quality of certain decades of music… As in, personally, I’ve never cared for music from the 80s, but I really like music from the 90s. I can listen to the LAUNCHcast “90s Rock” station and consistently find great stuff from Live, Bush, Nirvana, Chili Peppers (you know, back when they didn’t suck…), Pearl Jam, and more…but if I listen to the “80s Rock” station, it’s all generally terrible.

My question, thus, is whether a). music in the 1980s was actually worse than music in the 1990s, or b). because I grew up in the 1990s, is my perception of 1990s music more favorable?

I kinda lean toward answer (a). myself, largely because it seems to me that people can listen to music from the 60s, 70s and 90s with little or no problem, but you have to have a “special taste” for music from the 80s… But then again, perhaps it’s just because I have a softer spot in my heart (yes, I have one, dammit…) for music of the 90s…

Of course, there are exceptions to these rules…there are plenty of bad songs from the 1990s and there are some decent songs from the 1980s… I’m just speaking on a broad basis here…

Thoughts?

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Help!!

Yeah, I know probably no one is left who looks at this, but I hate failure and am desperate….anyway, I’m trying to learn to crochet and am miserable at it. Anyone know of a good crochet-er in St. Louis who can teach me what I’m doing wrong?