Posts

Posted on

Changing (because of) Babies

Well, we’re moving forward with all this “baby stuff,” especially making room for new things in our Soulard apartment. The weekend before Thanksgiving, we switched our bedrooms such that our old one will house the baby and all her stuff, and our bed got moved into what was (or “is still”) the office. The futon is in the Baby Room (“Nursery?”), but who knows if it’ll get used. Right now, we’re planning on keeping the bassinet in our bedroom with us initially, and considering that we’re hoping to move sometime in May, the baby may only ever sleep in our room with us and won’t ever sleep in the Baby Room.

Speaking of “bassinets,” we brought the Plochberger family bassinet with us from Columbia. This particular one has been passed down longer than my Mom can remember: Mom most certainly used it, and so did my eldest aunt, Doris, but we don’t know if it came from the previous generation or if Aunt Doris was the first one to use it. So yeah, the baby will sleep in the bassinet initially before being moved to the crib we inherited.

We also painted the old dresser in our room white, so it’ll match the bassinet. The crib will get painted at some point, also white.

Speaking of cribs, we’ve started accumulating various baby-related furniture items now. As mentioned, we inherited an old crib from Brooke’s co-worker that seems to be in pretty good shape (and before you post, no, I have no idea if this crib was recalled…so don’t ask!!). We had our first baby shower this past weekend with my side of the family, where we got a play pen, high chair, a travel high chair, and a stroller/car seat combo (the latter of which came from Brooke’s parents, actually, so technically, we got it before the shower).

To make room for all of this stuff, we cleared 20+ shopping bags of clothes, shoes, etc. from our closets and took them to Goodwill. They also take textbooks, so we got rid of those as well (apparently, textbooks are a heavy seller at Goodwill…who knew?).

So, in summary, we own too much stuff, and even when we get rid of some of it, we end up accumulating more. It’s the American way, eh?

Posted on

The Plan

1. We’ll leave today for Hannibal and stay for lots of food and probably some shopping until Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. Edie has an appointment with Rachel’s dogs’ vet Friday morning to try to get to the bottom of her chewing, but it should be pretty relaxing.
2. We’ll head to Columbia Friday afternoon or Saturday morning to spend some time with Andy’s family and to play at St. Andrew’s with Mike Will from Missouri UMC on Saturday night. Sunday, Andy’s aunts have a baby shower in Lohman planned for us, then we’ll head back home.
3. It will probably take us four days to unload everything that we’ll have accumulated over the weekend, so we’ll see you late next week!!!

Posted on

One more off the list…

DSCN1026

Brooke mentioned a few weeks ago that we hadn’t made it to a Blues game yet while living here in St. Louis. We’ve attended many Cardinals games in our years here, and one Rams game, but the Blues had eluded us so far. Really, neither of us have ever had any interest in hockey, so it wasn’t exactly a priority. Still, it’s one of those things that people tell us is fun, so we wanted to go at some point.

Well, as it happened, the Graduate Student Association at SLU (of which I’m President) was hosting a social event where we could get student rate tickets. Due to high cheapness, we got both or tickets for $30 (total), and that included a hot dog and a soda for each of us (about a $10 value). So yeah, a great deal! The seats weren’t anything spectacular, but the view was surprisingly good. It doesn’t seem like there’s a bad seat in that rink, honestly. The seats we had were something like $35 normally, so those “nosebleed” seats are still a far cry from the over $60 “nosebleed” seats at a Rams game.

A hockey game, it seems, is also tremendously more entertaining than an NFL game, as well. The action was constant, there were some fights breaking out, and overall, the speed and pace of the game was faster. Of course, the scoring doesn’t happen all that often, but with all the shots toward the net, it still gave us much to pay attention to.

Anyway, that’s another event we can cross off the list. We had a good time, but left early. Apparently, we should have stayed longer, as the Blues ended up winning (!!!!).

Maybe next time! Believe you me, I’m much more likely to go to an NHL game in the future than any NFL game.

Posted on

Monster??

sam

It seems that Sam, our cat, has made it his personal mission to prepare us for parenthood: yowling incessantly while trying to take a Sunday afternoon nap; constantly needing to be picked up and carried around; inhibiting showers, meals, dishes, sewing, hair curling, and pretty much everything you NEED to get done right now; and the usual eating, shedding, puking, trying to escape, and annoying the dog. Anybody want a cute orange monster in February??

Posted on

Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

We hadn’t seen a movie in awhile and this one caught my eye a few weeks ago when I first saw the advertisements. It’s actually based on a book by Jon Ronson about how the U.S. military so wisely spent our tax dollars investigating “alternative methods” of fighting other nations, including mind control, trying to pass through walls, and making another living being’s heart stop by staring at them (e.g. a goat). Ronson was on The Daily Show awhile back talking about his 2004 book, so I’d already been exposed to this crazy idea: then they made it into a movie. Keep in mind that the movie is based on concepts from the book, so parts of the movie are factually-based, but then there are large parts that aren’t.

The Men Who Stare at Goats stars quite a few heavy hitters, including George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, so on paper, the movie is already off to a good start. It centers around a news reporter (McGregor) that is trying to “make it” in the business by going to Iraq during the most recent Iraq War. Part-way through his journey, he comes across Clooney’s character, Lyn Cassady, who promptly tells him of a secret government program beginning in Vietnam that tried to make super soldiers, not through any genetic engineering, but through trying to get them to learn mind control techniques, amongst other things. Obviously, McGregor finds this difficult to believe in the beginning, but as the 1.5 hour long movie progresses, he begins to question the reality he knows.

I highlight “1.5 hours long” because that was a pretty good length, and I’m glad it wasn’t any longer. By the time they hit the last 30 minutes of the movie, it was getting harder to follow, and just generally more convoluted. Actually, a good 20-30 minutes of the movie really dealt with how McGregor and Clooney get into Iraq in the first place, and while it does introduce McGregor’s character to the concepts of this shadowy military troop, it doesn’t really end up being that pertinent to the story. So yes, I think “convoluted” is a pretty good word to describe this movie.

The movie is pretty funny, for the most part, but really mostly in a “chuckle” sort of way, rather than a “laugh out loud” manner. I guess I would say it’s more “amusing” than “funny,” in all honesty, and I was hoping for the film to err more on the side of the latter. In either case, it was still pretty entertaining. Certainly, the acting was as good as you’d expect from these actors, but I would have liked to see more out of Kevin Spacey. He did well for what he was given, but paying a high-profile actor like him to play this relatively minor role (compared to the other three) may have been a touch excessive.

I will say, however, that the movie did score hella points with me by playing up the fact that the military, apparently, experimented with using the “I Love You, You Love Me” song from Barney & Friends as a torture device against terrorists. I’ve always said that’d be a good idea.

In short, I liked the movie and thought it was an entertaining and amusing way to spend an evening, but I could have waited to rent it. At the very least, it makes you wonder where your tax dollars are going…

Posted on

Happy 40th Birthday, Sesame Street!

It’s hard to believe Sesame Street is as old as it is, and still kicking.  Today marks the beginning of its 40th season, with Michelle Obama as the guest, talking about healthy eating, amongst other things. It’s crazy knowing there are literally over 4000 episodes of Sesame Street, providing quality television for young children now for generations of people.  I learned to count to 10 in Spanish from Sesame Street, amongst all the other things.  This is a show that taught kids it was alright to be different, that reading is fun, and that playing outside is good for you…oh, and cookies are yummy.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Cookie Monster
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

By the way, I still enjoy seeing celebrities go on Sesame Street.  You can always tell that they have fun with it, even though they’re standing next to muppets.

Brooke and I were hoping to ask for Sesame Street DVDs for Christmas this year, but at least on Amazon, it looks like you can only get DVD sets for the really early years, and some Elmo-specific compilations.  So if you run across any collections from the 80s, let us know.  That, or they’d make excellent baby shower gifts. 🙂

Posted on

Travels: Part I

Brooke and I were in different parts of the Midwest last week (or even two weeks ago, almost).  Here’s the first post relating to all that – Brooke’s will follow once she pulls pictures off the camera.

So, I went to Chicago this year for our annual Society for Neuroscience meeting (I only took a few pictures, but here they are if you care…).  We decided to take the train this time around, as something of a change from the typical “hop on a plane” experience.  To be honest, the trip up there via Amtrak was actually pretty nice compared to flying Coach on an airplane: you get much more leg room, slightly more comfortable seats, AC plugins for your laptop (if you want to watch a movie, for example…no WiFi available, sadly…), roomy bathrooms, and a full-service snack car.  The trip was a bit over 5 hours, so it was basically as long as a car ride, but quite a bit more comfortable.

Anyway, we made it to Chicago and got off at Union Station.  Once there, we found a taxi and started heading toward it.  A “gentleman” grabbed our bags and put them in the trunk of the car.  At this point, Dr. Macarthur got in the back seat, and we both noticed that the driver of said car was still in the car, making me wonder who this guy was.  He then demanded a tip.  I was, of course, rather confused by this whole situation, not being used to taxi service in major metropolitan areas, but Dr. Macarthur was kind enough to get rid of him for me.  Once we started driving, Dr. Macarthur told him “Palmer House Hilton” as the destination.  The driver was talking on his cell phone (which he wasn’t supposed to do…), and a few minutes later, we made it to the Hilton Chicago.  Not where we wanted to go.  Then Dr. Macarthur tried explaining this to him, and he actually argued with her about it.  She was not pleased about this, of course.  Long story short, he ended up turning off the meter so we weren’t double-charged, so that was a bit better…  My first exposure to “Chicago,” proper.

The conference itself was pretty good.  Over 30,000 attended, making it pretty crowded.  I wasn’t a huge fan of McCormick Place (the convention center), as it seems pretty poorly laid out (multiple levels, funky entrances, etc.) and not in an area populated by any restaurants, making lunch a bit difficult.  We saw some interesting posters and heard a talk from Dr. Francis Collins, the current head of the National Institutes of Health.  My presentation wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon, the final day of the conference, making me wonder if anyone would still even be around to see my stuff.  Thankfully, I garnered some interest and got to present it multiple times…not as many as last year, but still, much more than I’d expected.

So, we left Wednesday afternoon, again via taxi.  This time, the driver didn’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign, so we got chased by a cop on a 4-wheeler (yes, they have those in Chicago…with sirens…).  The cop was on a power trip, taking advantage of this poor Asian guy that spoke little English.  When the cop went back to his 4-wheeler to input the license and registration information, the driver made the unfortunate choice of getting out of the car to go talk to the cop, who then proceded to yell at the driver: “GET BACK IN THE VEHICLE!  DO NOT EXIT YOUR VEHICLE!”  He knows better now, I guess…  Considering how many people don’t come to complete stops at stop signs, I kinda felt sorry for this particular driver, as he was actually a much better driver than the vast majority of taxi drivers out there, weaving in and out of lanes.  How about you cops on 4-wheelers try picking up some of them, eh?

Finally, we hop on the train for the ride home.  About 5 minutes north of Joliet, IL (which is around 30 minutes outside of Chicago…), we stopped to allow freight traffic to pass by.  Well, they couldn’t re-start our train.  Apparently, one of the computers wasn’t rebooting properly (probably running Windows Vista…).  We spent 2 hours sitting there waiting for the train to get going, and during that time, we were low on power as they’d shut the engines down.  Without power, you a). don’t have lights (making reading difficult) and b). don’t have snack car service, as you can’t use the cash register and can’t use the microwave.   They never actually re-started the train, but instead waited for the next train from Chicago to come down and attach itself to us, so we ended up having two trains heading down to St. Louis, making two stops at each town on the way because there were two trains-worth of people trying to get to their destinations.  Thankfully, Brooke was kind enough to pick us up 2 hours later than planned (12:45 am…).

So, that was my trip.  There were more good things than this (restaurants, some sights, etc.), but these are the more interesting aspects to report.

Posted on

Let’s Do The Locomotion

So, tomorrow I’ll be embarking on my first train ride.  Not to say that I haven’t used light-rail metro systems, but this will be the first Amtrak system that I hit up.  I’ll be leaving (eeeaaaaarrrly…) for Chicago to attend this year’s annual Society for Neuroscience meeting.  2008’s was in Washington, D.C. and 2007’s was in San Diego, so Chicago is considerably less interesting to me, but perhaps a train ride will make things a bit more interesting.

We basically decided that, rather than waiting at the airport and flying, we may as well take the 5.5 hr train ride instead.  As I understand it, these trains have quite a bit of leg room (compared to the Coach area of a plane) and a snack car, so it should be more comfortable.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the trip.  We’ll probably get a chance to head by a few “sights” while in Chicago, as it seems that there is relatively little to see at the meeting on Monday and Tuesday (I present late on Wednesday).  It looks like they put the majority of Parkinson’s-related research on Saturday (when I’m not there) and Wednesday (while I’m also presenting it), so we’ll probably dabble a bit in some posters and then go to Shedd Aquarium or something.

This will also be my last formal presentation of data at a meeting like this, certainly while a grad student at SLU.  I at least think I’m going out with some good work, and the poster looks pretty.  I’ve got some fluorescent images on there to add a bit more color to otherwise boring graphs (I had Brooke help me with some of the color choices, of course, as my Mom saw fit to give me color-blindness…).

Also, as this is my last trip as a grad student, I’ll also be hitting up the NeuroJobs portion of the conference, seeing if I can land a job somewhere.  I’ve sent the resume to a few places, but haven’t really concentrated on it much yet because of various school-related things, and, well, doing experiments and such.  After this week, I’ll be hitting that up in earnest.

Regardless, it doesn’t look like the busy-ness of the last few months is going away anytime soon.  Guess I should get used to it.

Posted on

Soup!

Last week, in an attempt to cheer ourselves up amidst 3 days in a row of rain, my coworkers and I went out to lunch at The Piccadilly a few blocks from our office.  The food was great, especially the beer cheese soup.  So, last night, I tried my best to recreate it and did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.  I wasn’t expecting such great results, so didn’t take any pictures, but here’s the recipe anyway:

1.  Make a rue in a big pot (my enameled cast iron is great for this).  Melt about 4 tablespoons of butter over medium heat, then add about 2 heaping tablespoons of flour to the butter, stir, and let cook until it doesn’t smell like raw flour and turns a golden brown color.

2.  Add 1 bottle of beer (we had an Oktoberfest in the fridge, but I think a pale would be awesome too) and a cup or so of chicken broth to the flour/butter mixture, keeping the medium heat going.  Bring to a boil until it begins to thicken, then add 1/2 cup to a cup of cream, half and half, or milk (depending on how rich you want your soup to be).

3.  Lower the heat a bit and add 3 cups of cheese (something with a lot of flavor, especially with a darker beer, like the sharp cheddar I used).  Stir together, adding a spice cabinet raid (I used white pepper, mustard powder, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, chili powder, and a tiny sprinkling of nutmeg) of whatever sounds good.  Keep stirring until the cheese is incorporated and not stringy.

This recipe made enough for two dinner sized bowlfuls and enough for my lunch today.

Posted on

Review: Zombieland

First of all, $9.25 is far too much to charge for a matinee showing, regardless of “Digital Projection” or what have you.

Secondly, “Zombieland” is one of those movies that I probably would have paid little attention to normally, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen one in theaters and Brooke was (surprisingly) willing to go along and see it (likely in return for Wild Cherry Pepsi and Sno-caps).

Anyway, “Zombieland” is about a group of strangers that meet up randomly whilst traveling across the southwestern United States after a zombie outbreak has brought civilization to a screeching halt.  Unlike your typical George A. Romero zombie movie, this one takes a more humorous look (a la “Shaun of the Dead“).  The movie is surprisingly funny, with plenty of creative ways to kill zombies throughout.  And the humor is genuinely funny, rarely forced – even Brooke was laughing throughout (though, admittedly, not as much as me).  You actually kinda care for the characters throughout, which is more than I can say for most other zombie movies.  This is probably the best movie Woody Harrelson has been in that I can remember, and certainly the most amusing.

I mean, the climactic end takes place in an amusement park.  Just think about all the fun you could have with zombies at the carnival.  🙂

There’s not much more to say about it, really, without giving away the more surprising bits of the film.  It’s not a movie that I plan on buying, but I’m quite glad I saw it.  It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon: a fun, and entertaining ride.