Week 39 - Mouse

This past week I've been spending a lot of time in the office, prepping for the new project with the Brazilians. This requires acid mixes, buffer calculations for allowing sub-acute acidosis conditions, formalin, fermenter part repairs and sampling extra rumen fluid for coenzymes for my rumen cultures (among other things). Anyhow, I've been sitting at my desk a lot, double-checking manuscripts, and drawing up a game plan and sampling needs. As I sat at my desk earlier this week, a mouse dropped out of the ceiling onto my desk near my laptop. I yelled "Mouse!", but apparently the response to kill the mouse was solely mine, as my Brazilian desk-neighbor watched him scurry away. Just a few days later, the same thing happens. Mouse drops out of the ceiling and I grabbed the closest thing to hit him with. I swung with my iPhone, but no dice. It derailed him from his path, but he made it past my Brazilian neighbor again before I could end it. Suffice it to say - we need a renovation in the worst way. Ever since, I find myself occasionally looking up at the ceiling, waiting for that Ratatouille moment where the rats all fall out of the ceiling. I tried to find you a video of it but it didn't exist on YouTube. Instead, I'll share this one on the Black Death, which my co-workers seemed convinced I would catch for drinking my coffee after the mouse fell on it.

In my efforts to tidy up our buffer calculations, I was led to a buffer spreadsheet designed by a professor at Sao Paulo State University in Brazil. Ironic, since that's where our visitors are from, and I was the one sharing this with them. But it is a very cool sheet, enabling us to calculate buffers that are flexible to the fluctuations in the rumen throughout the day in a simulated environment, while also accurately predicting what this range will be. After testing our buffers out for a few weeks, I feel fairly confident that not only is this sheet the real deal, our buffers work great and the treatments are now locked for our research work. If you'd like to check it out, you can find it here.

During my time in academia, I've been guilty of more than a few bad powerpoint presentations; I would like to think that I give ones better than the average with limited input time. But my wife shared this with me this past week that you should look at and share with all those bad presenters that you can. I took a couple of pointers away from it and the presentation world would be a better place the more that people take these simple messages to heart.

Completely different topic, but have you seen the video to the new song, "Radioactive"? I find the tune catchy and was listening to it on YouTube to see if I liked it enough to burn some free Amazon mp3 credit that I had. Verdict was yes, but not before seeing some creepy puppet fight rings.

Life on the homefront continues forward, with Phil (the ram) calming Betsy down and helping her not to run after sheep. If we can break her of this bad habit by introducing sheep that don't run in the first place, then life for us and the future sheep becomes much simpler. So far, the ram has no backdown in his vocabulary and Betsy knows it from his days back at the in-laws'. Most of the garden is planted and my "solution" to the county domain over my front 30' has been placed. Invasive ground cover that will choke out brush is the gameplan; we'll see how it pans out. First we need some rain to help it root in. For how wet the end of April was, the ground looks pretty dry for the 3rd week of May. Remember to "make hay while the sun shines", because you never know when you'll get this kind of stretch again.

US 315 southbound from Henderson footbridge.

Olentangy River southbound from Henderson footbridge.

Speaking of, I got out on my first couple of real bike rides this week, starting with a ride down the Olentangy River Trail. This bike path is pretty hazardous when populated by a lethal combination of stupid teenagers, fat adults "training" for a marathon, and hardcore bikers trying to rip 25 mph out on a 10 mile trail (there's only so fast you can get your bike turned back around the other direction). However, we hopped in just North of the last road detour and the path is calmer up this direction as well. What was really interesting to me, though, was the dichotomy between the busy highway and the peaceful, scenic Olentangy. These two views were even from the same bridge, just 80 yards apart. I bet most of the people driving back and forth to work every day have no idea of the natural beauty they breeze past; they are in too much of a hurry to enjoy the wonderful, small things around them.