Week 84 - Redneckified

This week it was finally time to boil down the maple sap to syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Since I had collected 5 gallons of sap and left the rest at the parentals', I was hoping to get maybe a pint or two of real maple syrup. Without a burner to boil it off and fighting the urge to put 4+ gallons of condensation on my kitchen ceiling, I decided to build a bit of a wood stove outside.

Stacking all our old foundation blocks that we found in the pasture, I built a little oven. Then some old woven fence made for a nice grill top. I balanced the pot on top and shoved in tons of old leftover wood from last year. It took all day just to get rid of three and a half gallons and then I removed the last gallon of water the next day off the stove. In the dark the fire looked like some sort of witches convention. Large fire, the pot rolling and spurting while the wood crackled. It was quite eerie. But the end product is sweet with a bit of smokey flavor. Waffles on Sunday mornings just got even better.
 
Hannah is really starting to get around the house quicker. She crawls quickly and remembers places she's been. So this means she will boogie to right where she wants to be and she doesn't want to be taken anywhere else. This has opened up a lot of learning opportunities for her as she explores the house and checks in on things throughout the week. For example, she is fascinated by the process of dishwasher loading and then the subsequent unloading of clean dishes. And she loves to ride in the laundry basket atop a fresh batch of clothes out of the dryer.

In other news, Hannah is now a big cousin to a new addition to the family. And I have finally become an uncle. We all went to visit baby Andrew at the hospital and Hannah was mostly oblivious to what we were really doing. But there was a point that she seemed to realize there was another baby worth paying attention to. And the moment where she sat up on the bed and smiled at him was pretty priceless. They have many years together ahead of them.

Hannah meeting her baby cousin.

Hannah has also learned a few other things recently that I would be remiss if I didn't mention. She loves to play the piano now and plays copycat to me. She likes to play more when I'm playing along, but sometimes she will sneak over to the piano and pull herself up to peck away at some keys. It's pretty cute.

We have also learned to climb stairs. Bottles can be good motivation.

I have to embarrass my interns from last summer for just a minute. This week was the university-wide research forum and while they didn't place, they sure did look sharp. I was genuinely proud of them for all their hard work over the past year. They have learned a lot and have helped us make good progress on a variety of projects. Sure, they didn't win anything (although they did get 1st and 2nd in the college forum), but they represented with class.

One last thought... animal behavior towards other species is based on relative experiences. And Jasmine is now best friends with the dog.

Week 83 - Ellipsoid

Hannah is now 9 months old! It's hard to believe that time is passing so quickly. The daily groove of getting up, getting out the door, going to work and coming home to pick her up makes time pass so quickly. We have settled into a few favorite stuffed animals, but Clarence the cow is still the winning choice right now. I think that's because we spent so much time propping Hannah's bottle up with him when she was younger. Hannah is still in a nice little sleep pattern, out by 8ish and up in the morning by 7ish. She naps a lot, like any baby, but really likes her sleep. And who can blame her? I love my sleep, too.

Her personality continues to grow and she has become a pretty spunky baby. Her expressive eyes and happy nature makes her pretty easy to get along with and she is getting used to being the center of attention.

Mom took us to work this week!

Maple sap collection continues to roll on. With the abrupt changes in weather, it's really important to be careful about not getting the sap once it turns bitter. Once the weather stops cooling off in the evenings below freezing and then is always above freezing the sap will start to turn a bitter taste. This is also linked with budding on the maple trees. Since I don't really have the time to keep an eye on this, my little brother volunteered. Of course, I wasn't really expecting the pictorial updates I received at work of him licking the trees, drinking sap and "getting in touch with nature". He was literally perched to catch the drops as they ran out the spout. That is pure dedication to the maple project - and also a slight touch of very weirdness. Anyhow, apparently the sap is still good and someday you'll laugh when you see your picture made the blog like this.

St. Patrick's Day was this week and I broke out the old flag from undergrad to celebrate.

With St. Patrick's Day rolling around, I went on good behavior and forewent a party this year. I think I've had enough good times in the past to let one go every now and then. With St. Patty's on a Monday, I did go out to the bar for a lunch meeting over green beer. Now for those of you who don't believe in the lunch beer with co-workers, let me try and persuade you. When you meet at work to discuss projects or ideas, many people are uncomfortable to ask questions or bring up ideas. But as soon as you move into a more comfortable environment where everyone feels like they are equals, it opens the door for more relaxed and productive conversations. I think that I do more teaching at the bar to my fellow graduate students than I do in the office.

And this trip out was another success. We have been working for a while to more accurately determine protozoa volume. The problem is that they twist and turn while they swim and so it reveals that they could easily be a much different shape than the coefficient*cylindrical approach of eariler generations. Turns out that by using our ability to capture video we can bypass a video analysis for protozoa volume (have had trouble finding a programmer to write the auto-detect and integrations) and use freeze frames for measuring area. By measuring area as an ellipsis, I found a measurement tool that takes a "feret" diameter. This ends up giving me the equation for the area of the ellipsis. By tracking the smallest and largest parts of the protozoa as it swims around in solution, we can identify to sets of ferets. These give me an averaged length and two alternate radii. This all adds for the calculations of the volume of an ellipsoid. Compared to other methods, this ellipsoid calculation decreases our standard deviation of volume by more than 25%. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Week 82 - DUIs

This week marks one year since our ill-fated attempt at awesomeness in the hills of Brown County, Indiana. And unfortunately, with an impending birth signaling my uncledom, I will not be participating in this year's death march. But not for lack of wishing. This year they're even going to include horses in the competition! 'Cause that's what everyone wants - to top a hill on a mountain bike going 30 mph and run smack into a 1500 lb. horse. But I will miss it and I look forward to participating again next year. In honor of all those that will struggle through the mud and glory of it all - here's a picture from the website this year. Yes, that's right, the old hickory tower climb has been ended. Good thing, too, because it was pretty rickety last year with big guys rushing up and down it for the 45 minute time bonus. I guess either the park service or the organizers of the race started thinking that having hundreds of people running up the stairs and back down again wasn't such a great idea.

The view from the top of the table last year.

This week after work I chanced into a great evening of Red Wings. Our IT guy (who is a true blessing to the department for all his hard work and enthusiasm) really likes hockey and particularly the Blue Jackets. With them playing the Red Wings this week, I was looking forward to watching the game on TV because their series has been good for a few years now and they are likely to be competing for the last couple spots in the playoffs. Imagine my surprise when he texts me and asks if I want to go to the game. It then followed that he was also short two other seats and asked if I knew anyone else that would want to go to the game. So three of us Detroit fans got to go with him to the game on Tuesday night, but he got the last laugh. He got to sit there and cheer about all the goals scored on Howard right in front of three disappointed fans. Still, the experience was classic. I don't need to go to very many games but it's nice to see a pro hockey game in person every so often.

View of the game from our seats. The crowd keeps getting more excited and louder.

To get me in the hockey spirit, someone let snow blow in my office window?

At home this week, my wife and I had a bit of a power scare. We came home one night and I put some stuff in the microwave to heat up for making dinner. There was a pop and then the power on the whole back side of the house went out. At first, I thought there was something wrong with the microwave but then we noticed the refrigerator was out, too. The more we searched the more stuff we realized was out. And then the search for the breaker began. We looked everywhere and couldn't find the source of the outage. The next morning our power company came out to check things out. Found a burned out connection from the lines to the house. Betsy made friends with the repair guy but I was just glad they didn't ask about what our little power sharing scheme with the neighbors back in the winter might have done to the connection. Now we'll never know...

A new experience this week was being an invited speaker to a lamb clinic to talk about club lamb nutrition. I prepared a nice powerpoint, drove over an hour to get there and was all jammed up to influence some kids down the right path to healthy lamb nutrition. I think we still got down that path a bit, but the fact that the clinic wasn't equipped to run powerpoint and they forgot to mention they didn't have a computer compatible with screen projector plugs might have negated a lot of my hard work. Shame but I think I still got a few main points across to the kids.

1) There are five main nutrient categories: Energy, Protein, Water, Vitamins and Minerals. Each one is important for nutrition.
2) Lambs have one stomach, just like pigs. The difference is the compartments of the stomach. Sheep have 4 and each serves a different purpose.
3) Hay is vital to balancing the microbial environment and keeping all the bugs happy. Too many kids (or their parents) try to nix hay without thinking about the consequences on the productivity, health and appearance of the sheep in question.

On the way home, I passed by a bitter memory. Six years ago I was in a fight with a girl, arguing back and forth as we drove home from seeing Jake Owens and Blake Shelton for free at a county fair. Lots of people came that night and the traffic was just letting up. As I accelerated down the road, I was distracted by the fight and barely noticed a pair of headlights swerving towards us and then banking hard the opposite direction. I barely had time to breath a sigh of relief before the truck with snowplow skipped off a tree, blew through a mailbox and embedded in the embankment. My mind raced as I realized how petty our argument was, we had almost just been killed by a drunk driver.

One place where my guardian angel came through for me in 2008.

My head boiled with rage as I swung the car around into the driveway adjacent to the truck. The guy was lucky I found his door open and him on the run. I was seeing too red and the chase down to a creek gave me a bit of time to cool off. Two highschoolers followed me down the hill in the dark and I had to talk the kid back out of the bushes to take him up to his doom. We dragged him back up to the house where the police were waiting. As we filed official statements and the family thanked us for stopping (just doing my civic duty - and making sure adequate punishment was reaped), the dude emptied his pockets of beer and passed out in the cruiser. The moral of the story...  Folks, please don't drink and drive. It's dangerous for you, deadly to others, royally pisses me off, and it will ruin your life forever. It's just not worth it.

Week 81 - Mapling

This post was better - but Mozilla and Google seem to hate each other and are always fighting about who gets to freeze up and crash my computer.

Not much happening on the work front again this week but a lot to talk about at home. It's going to be a pretty weird year for making maple syrup. Just like that it was 50F, the sun was out and the sap started running. And once it starts running, you'd better tap those trees before they're done for the season. It doesn't really hurt the trees even though you can see scars from the year before. We like to pull the taps and allow the tree to heal between years but some people are lazy and just leave the taps in for the tree to grow around. Ouch! This year I decided not to tap the trees at our own house because I didn't want to pay for shipping from Lehman's for new metal taps. Instead, Dad said I could help them out and share the sap from their trees. My main contribution will be to check the trees while they're on vacation, collect sap into buckets that I provide because they are never able to keep clean buckets from being used on something horrible (probably blame my younger brother?) and burn wood to help boil all the sap.

When it comes to boiling sap, not all trees are created equal. Bigger trees make more gallons of sap and so faster growing maple species are more likely to be bigger and make more sap. But slowing growing maples, like the sugar maple invest more heavily in their sap and make less of it. It's very similar to the difference between Holstein and Jersey dairy cows, except in this case we're talking about brix (sugar content) instead of butterfat differences. My dad says the best trees, or "super maples", are the ones that look just a bit gnarly on the branches and we have plenty of these close to the family home. They aren't big because they grow a bit slower but even a tree 1 foot in diameter can yield a gallon of sap a day. It's not fast but it adds up over the course of a day. The trick with this year is that it might be a few days in between sap runs because the weather has been so drastically dynamic.

One day sun, the next a blizzard. The sheep seem to feel it coming on.

That weather has done a number on the sheep, wearing them down and desensitizing them to the brutal changes in the weather. And it has also done a number on the local roads. I was the beneficiary of a huge hole down near wear I work. I was on my way home from playing basketball and couldn't see it in the dark. It swallowed poor Scoot (my green Corolla) and spat us out on the other side short a tire and riding a bent wheel. My sincere thanks to Goodyear for beating the crap out of the wheel the next day to get it back into shape. You saved me a dreaded trip around the junkyards to find a replacement and made my day seem so much better.

The other big happening this week was our first authentic king cake to celebrate Mardi Gras. Back in February, I snuck a couples' Valentines Day dinner behind my wife's back and she returned the favor for Mardi Gras. I stared in surprise as our friends pulled into the drive and walked into the house to find her pulling out a king cake shipped all the way from Cajun country Louisiana. Wow! And so much sugar on the thing. I sure felt penitent the next day, but that's what Fat Tuesday is all about, right? The cake was great and nobody choked to death on the plastic baby inside.

This year our pastor encouraged the church not to give things up for Lent but rather to add something new to your life for the better. I'm unfortunately already committed to my decision for this year but will keep this concept in play for next year. This time around I plan to replace so of my more questionable music with Christian radio in an effort to be a nicer driver on the road and a better role model for our daughter. Here's to hoping, anyway...

Week 80 - Droolcicle

I'm delinquent again, I know, but these posts will be updated ASAP - I promise. Being a dad and a graduate student are not complicit with running a timely blog, but hopefully you still have interest in what has been happening the past 15 weeks. It's time to bring you out of the dark...

The first week missing was the last of February, and now that winter is over I can tell you it was the coldest winter in my lifetime and in my parents' lifetimes. Every time we thought it was finally going to thaw the cold wind would blow in from the North and plunge us back into another "arctic vortex". I literally prayed not to hear those words again on the news. It's even been so cold that Betsy came back inside after her teeth cleaning and her anesthetic-induced drool had formed a two-inch droolcicle on her lip.

Of course, since there was no time to delay any longer, Jasmine had to be let outside the barn with Daisy so that they would stop going crazy and keep Phil some company. Sheep are so well equipped for the outdoors and they handled that cold better than any of us. Thick wool and a break from the wind left them with all they needed to survive. Jasmine is growing quickly as a single birth and looks like she will easily rival her mother's size as an adult.

Just an example of my drive and our (lack of) weather predictability.

This was on the same drive, 10 minutes later.

Meanwhile, I've been indoors making good use of this!

With the grant submitted, I've taken it upon myself to slow down a bit at work and try to relax until Spring break. So much pressure has released and it's almost impossible to focus. First the exams, and then the grant, and then I needed to spend a bit of time rehashing my class notes from my departmental micro course. Since our department has so much diversity, this one class encompasses everything from baby intestinal development to yogurt production, biofuels and dairy cow microbial species. It has been quite a push to get caught up on all this class that I missed, but at least I finally got a break to do so.

As I let my mind wander and relax, we've been able to watch the Olympics and enjoy the U.S. Ice Dancing victory. We celebrated this especially because we had the opportunity to meet them back in 2011 for a wedding. Good kids with a great American work ethic and story. It was a triumph that wasn't any less sweet by being a landslide.

Over at Mom and Dad's, their lambs are just now getting playful. Jumping on Mom is their favorite pasttime.