Just wow

They are so gorgeous, I could stare all day.

image: Rob Illingworth

Near miss

Yesterday, a tornado ripped through a nearby town, Windsor, CO. My friend La Guera and her son live there (about 20 minutes from Fort Collins), and although a tree fell on a corner of her garage, her house is OK and they are both OK.

It's a rare thing, so the news reports this morning are saying, for a tornado to hit so close to the mountains. Apparently conditions just don't get to the point where many tornadoes form around here.

Made me think about how fast situations can change sometimes. And, I'm thankful my house has a basement.

"It's a major award"

I just got back from Mr W's school, where he received an award for being a good communicator. No, he didn't win the leg lamp like Ralphie's old man, but he got recognition from the school during an assembly and I'm very proud of him.

He goes to an IB (International Baccalaureate) school, and they emphasize a very nice list of attributes like communication, cooperation, respect, risk-taking, independence and things like that. They emphasize that the kids are citizens of the world and seek to increase their understanding of people in other places.

Ah, tolerance - start 'em early.

Buying Books

CB was here recently for a visit, and we went to the local Barnes and Noble to see if we could find a decent field guide for Colorado birds. Of course we worked our way around the science and nature section, and I found several books that looked interesting. Alas, the prices were such that I hesitated, and then decided not to purchase anything. It was about $25.00 for a hardback and $15.00 for a paperback.

It got me thinking about my relationship with books. I've had, hmm, let's see, 14 years of post-high school education, so I've made use of a lot of books over the years. I'm not ashamed to admit that I really looked forward to purchasing books each semester, especially in graduate school, where the subject matter was more consistently to my liking. I'd page through the books over the next few days and feel like I was in possession of a sort of treasure.

The downside of all the reading for educational purposes, was that I've been ingrained with the idea that reading for pleasure is an extravagance I cannot afford. I thought this feeling would go away about 2 hours after I graduated this last time (which was two years ago) but I'm sorry to say it hasn't, which indicates to me I need to do something about it. I sincerely believe that being in the middle of a good book is one of life's sublime pleasures, and one I've been missing out on.

I supposed it's a slightly different issue than kvetching about how expensive books are, but it's related. I feel like for the price, I need to make the commitment to read the book and for that price I'd better well like it! Maybe I need to loosen my expectations a bit.

In contrast, let's look at CB's relationship with books. He owns a lot of them. His bedroom has 4 floor-to-ceiling book cases, and they are pretty full. Lots of the books are bird books of one kind or another, and they serve as a reference library for his work. He's got other kinds of books too, but the point is, he sees books as an investment. A tangible something that can be used more than once. I like this attitude.

I tend to run out of time and energy at the end of the day such that I don't read before bed. I just sort of fall in and go to sleep. I'm thinking of maybe trying to get to bed a little earlier to have some reading time before bed. I'm still not ready to plop down $25 on a whim, but I'd like to think I could work towards getting a little more that way. As in, seeing a good read for that much, and deciding it's worth it, even though it's $25.

Suggestions for the next purchase, anyone?

image: invisibleman

Coworker update

I saw my soon-to-be-a-transplant recipient coworker today. Our boss talked to his boss and they agreed that she's worth keeping (I agree) so they will renew her contract and give her a 6 month unpaid leave to get through the transplant and get well enough to work.

How cool is that? She's excited about it, and I think it gives her something to look forward to while going through this arduous process.

Isn't your dog worth it?

Like most pet owners, I want to feed Sally food that is good for her. She's a big girl, about 80 lbs., so I buy "large breed" food. Originally, I fed her some large breed puppy food that I found at what Mr W and I call "the dog food store", or Petsmart.

I guess I'm a victim of marketing, but I was in the mindset that I'd be unable to find quality dog food at Target or the grocery store. I settled on a large breed kind made by Nutromax, and Sally liked it fine. Then I went to the dog food store once and they were out.

Out? Yes, 'it's our most popular brand'. Could you check in the back? Come back Wednesday. I had enough of her old food to tide me over, and went back to the store like a dutiful consumer. I didn't want to switch food on her, as it can give her the runs. She went through that bag, I went to buy more and guess what? Yup, they were out. So I bought a bag of Iams. I gradually mixed more and more Iams large breed food in with her old food and she did just fine.

It's funny. In this day of (I'm not kidding) holistic, organic dog food, there has been some goalpost-moving as to what is touted as the best food for a dog. Iams isn't considered a premium dog food anymore. Is it time to remind everyone that organic food hasn't been shown to be more nutritious? Sure, buy it for the lack of pesticides, but this sense that one is doing the very best for their pet if they feed organic food rings a little hollow with me.

To get some info, I went to the American Veterinary Medical Association's website. Search for dog food recommendations and you will find none. Food recall information from a year or so ago, yes. This says to me that it doesn't matter all that much what brand one picks, as long as it says it's nutritionally complete. So for the time being I will continue to buy Iams because I don't have to make a special trip to get it.

To be fair, I did recently buy rawhide specifically not made in China. I went on the web and found stuff made in the US, due to the general feeling that regulations are rather lax over there.

Reality Check

My coworker came to my cube this morning and said, "can I talk to you for a minute about something?" Sure thing. Cubeville has no privacy, so we go to one end of the office trailer. I like this coworker. Her thing is virology, while mine is population genetics, so we have good discussions about how to go about getting the stuff done that the boss wants done. She's also a mom, so we talk about our kids as well. She had a difficult pregnancy a few years ago, which coincided with the discovery of a tumor on one of her kidneys. They removed the kidney and her daughter was born premature but OK.

Well, turns out her other kidney is failing, and she wanted to talk to me about how to tell the boss. She'll have a kidney transplanted from her brother, and is expected to be out for 5-6 months. She was worried the boss would be disappointed in her because they've got a very busy summer of experiments planned.

Wow.

Can you imagine? She's in her late 20's. The transplant is supposed to make her better for a long time, but she's got to deal with the possibilities brought by her one kidney being in the process of ceasing to function, and all the worry associated with getting an organ transplant.

Hearing about stuff like this makes me want to kiss my kid, hug myself and acknowledge to someone (maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster?) my gratitude. Although I usually wish I were thinner, my body has served me quite well these 40-some years, I am grateful.

A Year Ago

CB and I met face to face a year ago May 10. We had been talking on the phone a lot, and about a month into it, he asked if I would be interested in going to a concert with him. The catch: it was in Los Angeles. I did say yes, and as I thought about it that night, it seemed like the idea should be fraught with red flags, but try as I might, I couldn't find any, which I took as a very good sign.

So I did it, I flew to Phoenix, and we had lunch, where I (mostly) jokingly said something like that was my chance/ our chance to size each other up and decide if we wanted to spend the next eight hours in the car together. Again, no red flags, so off we went. We talked and talked, and drove through the desert, and past those huge wind farms as you get into CA.

We spent a night (two nights?) in Santa Barbara, where we went whale watching and also to their fabulous Botanic Garden. Colorado's got great weather, but growing up in Ohio, I appreciate really nice weather. It's no wonder people want to live out there. The concert was good, loud. CB provided these very effective ear plugs that saved my bacon. We could still sort of shout at each other and understand what each other was saying, but the volume of the music didn't bother me (and it was crazy loud without the earplugs). It was all wonderful and went so fast.

On the day we were to head back, we went to the La Brea tar pits. Very cool, but I, um, how to say this delicately, needed a bathroom as we were walking around outside. To put it into context, it was a pretty stressful few days (all the good kind of stress, but stress nonetheless), so I guess I'm not surprised that the need arose. Anyway, we're back in the building, I feel funny, and I end up fainting. Indeed, not only fainting, but falling into a display case, giving myself a cut over my eye, upsetting some magnets that were for sale and scaring the hell out of CB. I remember him saying, "what's my name?" Of course, as soon as I hit the ground, everything cleared and I felt much better, so I looked at him like he was asking a silly question.

I was fine after that, but it was more drama than I wanted to introduce to the situation. But it makes for a good story, and I am now ever-wary of magnet displays. It was the beginning of a grand adventure that I'm excited to be part of.

Teeth

Mr W has a check up at the dentist today. On the up side, he’s got plenty of room in his jaw, so isn’t expected to need braces. But on the down side, he’s prone to cavities. He had one horrendous appointment where they filled four cavities at once and he was a wreck. I am a wreck as well, because I’m fairly certain that I transfer some of my dentist anxiety to him, although I try my best not to.

I can remember being four myself and sitting in Dr. Rossi’s office. The family story goes that I actually asked him to shut the door so my mom wouldn’t hear me crying. Nowadays, I can easily get through a cleaning like a big girl, but if I have to get work done, my preference is to have both Valium and the nitrous oxide to smooth me out. At that point, they could probably offer to pull them all and I’d drowsily say, “OK”.

Pediatric dentistry has come a long way since the dentist would try to drill without anesthetic because it was “a small one”. They use distraction to give shots, are willing to use the nitrous and have a kid-friendly wait area that looks like a McDonald’s playland. I think it goes a long way to take some of the stigma out of what can arguably be an awful experience for a kid.

I know they’ve been doing this for years, but at his last visit, Mr W had four of his permanent molars sealed. How I wish I could have take advantage of this when I was a kid. The dentist said something like, “there aren’t any guarantees in this life, but sealing teeth against cavities comes pretty close”. So hopefully he’ll have fewer cavities overall, and both he and his mom can breathe a little easier at the dentist.

Update: NO CAVITIES WHOO-HOO!!

Outside the box

How cool is this. There was a design competition to build on a vacant lot in NYC, and this is one of the ideas. Lifted verbatim from http://nymag.com/realestate/vu/2008/04/45963/index1.html:

The Locavore FantasiaWORK AC
It would be a total departure if Work AC’s utopian vision were ever to bear fruit—and we do mean fruit, because it’s an apartment building topped with a working farm. “We thought we’d bring the farm back to the city and stretch it vertically,” says Work AC co-principal Dan Wood. “We are interested in urban farming and the notion of trying to make our cities more sustainable by cutting the miles [food travels],” adds his co-principal (and wife) Amale Andraos. The cheerful if slightly mad design, riffing on a concept they came up with to win the P.S. 1 Young Architects Program, would have different crops on each floor; land laying fallow would be used for play (putting greens, say). Four large water tanks would collect rainwater for irrigation. “Sculpture structures” commissioned from artists would act as columns supporting the building, which leans back to face the crops toward the sun. “We show a Brancusi, but it could be anyone,” says Wood.

Originally found on a very interesting new blog (for me) http://pruned.blogspot.com/

Not-so-pretty Package

I ordered some lab supplies a couple of days ago. The sequencer that I use to generate microsatellite data takes these gel cartridges, which are very convenient to use, although they cost a lot of money. When I order stuff, I look at the catalog and order the thing at the price in the catalog; if there's a discount the nice ladies in Purchasing figure it out, as well as figuring out shipping. They really do a lot for us science-y types here, it merits another post at some point.

Anyway, what I ordered came in 4 boxes, each of which was about 9"x9"x4". However, they came in a phenomenal amount of packaging, consisting of each being wrapped in a padded envelope with two cold packs, and then another dozen more cold packs, all in a styrofoam cooler that was 5x the volume of the product. And there were two coolers, two boxes per cooler. Sheesh. Speaking of the awesome support staff, I put the boxes and cold packs and packaging in the hallway when I'm done, and the custodial staff comes and takes it away. They rock.

Eye Candy

I just love this picture, found on Ketzel Levine's blog on http://www.npr.org/blogs/talkingplants. She has a bunch of photos she calls "Sumptuous Snapshots" and I agree. The blue ones are Nemophila menziesii var. menziesii or Baby Blue Eyes. Common names for plants are not very useful, as you could call them one thing and I could call them another, and we'd both be right, except a little confused. Don't know for sure what the orange ones are, but the shot was taken in CA, so I'm guessing CA poppies, Eschscholzia californica. Lovely.

image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/guissimo/

Mentors, Part 1

As I sit here waiting for samples to thaw, I have a few minutes to post on something I’ve been thinking about lately. I have kept in touch with my former Advisor, as well as two of my committee members. Those two have been important mentors for me and I wanted to sing the praises of mentors for a while.

S and I meet for coffee every few weeks, swap dog stories, and talk about academia related stuff. She not only knows her stuff about plant population genetics, she can teach and write about it as well. Coincidentally, she lives down the street from me.

Over the weekend, I saw her walking her dog while I was out walking Sally. We were chatting, and I mentioned that I probably wouldn’t be able to pursue this great postdoc after all because of the low salary, and that I wished the professor hadn’t withdrawn the tech position.

In a great piece of wisdom from someone who always seems to keep her eye out for the next cool project she says, “well, it doesn’t cost you anything to go and talk to her, now does it?” Hmmm, I thought, no it doesn’t. So I’ll be ready to talk, if and when the professor with the postdoc calls, and we’ll see what happens.

The Butterfly Effect

The Exploratorium in San Francisco has a nice little demo of this effect in the form of a "Lorenz Butterfly" that I'm unable to upload here, so I'll give the link:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/complexity/java/lorenz.html

The idea is that two particles can start out in the same spot, but will eventually the difference in their paths becomes greater. This is an example of "sensitive dependence upon initial conditions". It's fun to look at, too.

Another Poem

My former officemate from grad school sent me this whimsical ditty on Botany. Thanks b!

There should be no monotony
In studying your botany;
It helps to train
And spur the brain—
Unless you haven’t gotany.

It teaches you, does Botany,
To know the plants and spotany,
And learn just why
They live or die—
In case you plant or potany.

You learn, from reading Botany,
Of woolly plants and cottony
That grow on earth,
And what they’re worth,
And why some spots have notany.

You sketch the plants in Botany,
You learn to chart and plotany
Like corn or oats—You jot down notes,
If you know how to jotany.

Your time, if you’ll allotany,
Will teach you how and what any
Old plant or tree
Can do or be—
And that’s the use of Botany!

--Berton Braley

From: Nature Smiles in Verse: A Collection of Bi-Illogical Poems compiled by Bernal R. Weimer (1940)

This just in

CB's coming to visit in just three weeks. Sweet!


I'd better clean my house...






image:
http://www.miltonpark-jun.portsmouth.sch.uk/images/Logos/binoculars.jpg

Phew!

A couple of days ago, I was busily going about my business at work. I was doing several different things in the lab: setting up PCR, running a gel, setting up a run on the sequencer, and was getting done all the stuff I wanted to get done.

I went to my desk, supposedly just for a moment before my daily trudge over to take care of ourinsectary mosquitoes, and started getting emails from my boss, asking for clarifications on this manuscript we've been working on. First one says, "Table 6 is wrong, there's 100 added, where there should be fifty". I go into panic mode because this is a table that was indeed wrong when I gave him the manuscript, and I fixed it just before leaving to go see CB for a long weekend.

I'm not good at keeping track of all the nuances of each analysis done for a manuscript. Granted, this is just the third one I've done, but it I always seem to need to go back to the Excel spreadsheet and see the process of how that figure or table or result came to be in order to say what I did. So I had to do this (again) for good old Table 6, and you know what?

It was correct. He had just transposed a couple of digits when he was reading it. I was relieved, because it would look bad to have an incorrect table twice.

The Season has started

Yes, indeed, the garage sale season has begun. I was looking through our local paper this morning and there are about 30 sales this weekend, good for this town.

Before I went back to school/got pregnant/had Mr W, I would hit the sales most Saturdays during the summer. While I am not a freakishly organized person, I had my street map and different colored pens, and I would map out my route the night before so as to maximize my efforts. I would usually stop at the bagel store after a sale or two for an egg and cheese bagel, and be done around 11:00 am. As I write this, I see several things around that I've picked up from garage sales: lamps, an old school desk, TV table, clothes.

The appeal for me is getting a good deal on stuff that I could use. This doesn’t always happen of course, but that pile in the basement is pretty small. There are some sales where the people think their junk is worth a lot more than other people's junk. As in asking a dollar for a used magazine. Sometimes I'll offer less (always nicely) if I think the item isn't worth the asking price, but I usually don't haggle at all. That's not part of the fun.

The qualifier to garage sale enjoyment is time. I have to feel like I've got the time to spare on such folly. When Mr W was young and I was in grad school, I could take a couple of hours on a Saturday, but always felt like I should be doing something else, which sucked the joy out of the whole thing and I stopped going.

Thankfully, I'm at a point where I can carve out a couple of guilt-free hours AND I can take Mr W along on weekends when he's with me. Yes, I've enticed him with the possibility of cheap toys to make the deal sweeter, but he's pretty willing to do that kind of stuff.

If the weather's nice tomorrow morning, I'm hitting a few and then going in to work.

image from www.nataliedee.com

I miss my sister

My sister died two months ago. Forty-five years old, she was blindsided by a Stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis in November 2006. She did fairly well on the chemo for almost a year, but it was just too aggressive to beat.

She left behind a husband of almost 20 years, and two boys, teenagers. She was a skilled neonatal intensive care nurse, and completed the coursework for her Bachelor's of Science in Nursing while she was undergoing treatment.

She had a bawdy sense of humor, and defended the people she loved fiercely. Her older son, my nephew Patrick was born with Hirschbrung's Disease, and was in and out of the hospital for much of his first two years of life. He had all of his large intestine and some of his small intestine removed - it was a huge strain on the family, but Pat's OK, although side effects from his time in the hospital left him deaf (he's got a cochlear implant, so he's been able to hear since he was about five).

She loved the beach. Loved the feel of the sun and wind and water. She and her husband would have likely retired on a coast somewhere. Even when we were kids, she'd be out in the back yard slathered in tanning oil, and I'd do 5 minutes where all I could think was "my god, it's so hot out here" and hightail it in the house for some kool-aid.

I felt her absence a lot yesterday. Every day since she died, I wake up and check my cell phone, as I did when she was sick, to see if she's called. If she needs me. And when I have a spare few minutes waiting for a train, or hanging out at the dog park, I think to call her. There is simply a hole there that exists because she's gone. She was such a good friend. She was instrumental in helping me through my divorce, and had wisdom beyond her years that came from being a good listener.

I'm trying to remember my network of people during this weird time. CB is one of the greatest empathetic listeners on the planet, and I plan to make use of his patient ear. Friends have been really helpful too, and it's my responsibility to contact them if I need them, as I hope they would do if they needed someone to talk to.

The picture is of Kris from summer of 2006. The summer I flew to OH and we drove to SC to meet up at my brother's house. She was feeling a little tired at the time, but thought it was her hectic schedule. Little did she know she probably had had cancer growing in her for several years. GET YOUR EXAMS, PEOPLE. Anyway, I love this picture because my niece is gnawing on Kris's arm and Kris is showing her professional baby holding technique. She looks strong, confident and happy and that's how I want to remember her. She'd kick my ass if I did anything else.

How can this be?

I filled up my gas tank this morning, after looking down at the gas guage and saying, "oh shit, I need to get gas!" I don't always calculate my gas mileage, but today I bought just about 10 gallons of gas so it was easy to figure it out. I have a 1995 Civic, and got 38 miles to the gallon on the last tank of gas. This included a trip to the Denver airport and back (140 miles), but was city driving otherwise.

Why is this the exception? Why is it so hard to find a new car that gets this kind of gas mileage? What happened so that we Americans accept cars that get 25 miles to the gallon and think that's OK?

With $4.00 a gallon gas looming on the horizon, I feel like we consumers should be awash in options for cars that seat four people, and get 35-40 mpg. The other day, I looked at gas mileage of cars that could fit 5 people and a dog (read: minivans). They get about 15-20 mpg.

*sigh*