Week 53 - Endurance

Nothing like seeing all the girls taking a nap after the morning milking and bunk time.

Happy 2 Months to our baby girl!

This week has been one of my more random and unpredictable in a while, so I will just stick to the skinny that appropriately accompanies the photos. Starting with our little girl who has turned 2 months old this week! Out comes another block picture and some more cute photos. My wife is getting pretty good at taking these, and while you'll never see me in the photo, my hands are back there holding up the blanket and keeping her from tilting. Her eyes are so expressive, and more so every day. Hard to believe how much she has grown over the past month.

This is how I hope my PI feels at work.

As I sit around and wait for the parts to come in for our fermenters, there's not a lot going on in the lab for me. We've finished the protozoal process, and so I've just been sitting around and trying to learn more about modeling. This involves a lot of reading, and I am trying to get caught up on a lot of manuscripts in general that have been sitting on my desk or digital desktop for the past months. It's hard to focus and believe that all of this waiting isn't holding me back on my graduation, but I just keep trying to get stuff done while I wait and push forward. Final ship date for my fermenter heating rods is September 6th. Here's to hoping it's on time and we can push forward.

Me and the girl with our Octoberfest.

And as the summer comes to a close, we say farewell to our lab interns, a masters student and another undergrad senior. We went out to a local Irish pub and had some beers as a lab group. And when my lab goes out, we definitely go out. Good showing from everyone, lots of beer, loud conversation and plenty of food to make the other nutrition labs with their health nuts gawk and feel sorry for us. Hannah made a celebrity appearance as well, and after that night, I stole down a photo from someone's Facebook after our night out to give you a better feel for our group. Her caption was, "Feeding a baby in a bar, totally normal", Our lab just keeps getting emptier and quieter as people move on.




I also got to paint again this week. I've b!tc#3d enough about that already, so you can guess how I felt when they asked us to go back in with 1-day notice and repaint the walls after the ceiling guys trashed the places again and didn't clean it up. I was pretty hot under the collar about it, and only a bit of New Amsterdam was able to mellow me out before I told people what I really think. On the flip side, we did manage to leave a bit of a paint trail through the new parking lot, so maybe we're even now.

Finally, this marked my second endurance bike race, and I am starting to feel a bit more prepared for these. You might remember my notes from the first race (read more) and how beat up/exhausted I was from that one. Well, this time we did finish, and I got 13th out of 20-some-odd racers. We rode 65 miles on casual MTB trail. I rode the Bianchi Denali again, and all went pretty well in general. About halfway through the ride I wrecked pretty bad by running into a big tree and then falling over, impaling my rib cage on the bike handlebars which were conveniently locked into the ground. It hurt pretty bad and left a nice mark which I documented within a few hours. Ouch. But nothing more than fractured ribs and that means the rest should probably be able to heal soon. It definitely is gonna slow me down for a long while.

If at first you don't succeed, get back in another race.

Week 52 - Hanna

The man in the video above is just one of the reasons that I ended up pursuing the path I chose.As a kid, I didn't really know him or of him that well. There wasn't cable TV with his jungle adventures, and we certainly didn't watch late night television. But National Geographic and Nature documentaries lead to a love of wild animals, and little did I know but he was cultivating one of the best places to go see those animals. Mind you, the Columbus Zoo didn't turn out to be the #1 US zoo overnight. No, it took decades of hard work by Jack Hanna and his team to build the zoo up into a respected exhibition and conservation location for all kinds of wild species. And the work hasn't stopped. Just this week, he was telling us about a new cheetah exhibit that will allow them to reach 60+ mph, one of the only in the United States.

He sure does love animals, and I could go on forever about all the great things he has done for Columbus, the zoo, the animals, the state of Ohio, our country and the world's awareness of endangered species, their habits and our interaction with them. His handling of the Zanesville "accident" a couple years ago was professional and balanced a consideration for the well-being of the animals with the safety of the local human residents. I know he got a lot of flak for that, but he did a good job using his celebrity persona to make a difference in a disaster.

The clouded leopard made a brief appearance this weekend. :)

But this post really isn't all about how great Jack Hanna is. My wife says I'm pretty creepy for how much I like him, but when we had the chance to meet him this week at a cancer research fundraiser hosted by a local farmer impacted by cancer, I jumped all over it. So we got to meet him, and get our picture taken with him and I told him how much I appreciated his speaking at my graduation back in December (read more). And we got our picture taken with him! And he signed a picture over to our little girl; he got a kick out of the fact that they both had the same name. :)

Daddy and baby girl looking at the rhino.

Ironically, this was also our first week out at the zoo. I really believe that all of the time I would spend at the zoo growing up sparked my curiosity, practiced my reading, gave me great exercise and improved my conversational relationship with my family. It is not just the knowledge of the animals, but the observation of them and the appreciation for them that develops over time that make a zoo membership worth it, over and above just a simple trip there on a yearly basis. And it is this love of animals and nature that I hope we will be able to nourish in Hannah as well. She is following in the footsteps of two parents who truly believe in taking care of this world around us, protecting the enviroment and habitats, and raising wholesome food for the community. And before she can learn to plant the seeds or shear a sheep, she will learn to watch the moose in their solemn quiet, the bears in their slumber, the gorillas in their playfulness and the elephants in their discovery.

Our baby girl at the zoo with the old grizzly bears.

In other news this week, I finally got my car cleaned. My wife said I had to if I wanted to ever haul our little Hannah in it. There is a great place down off of campus that will vacuum your car, clean the interior and wash it for about $15. It takes around 15-20 minutes, and they do a really good job. In preparation, I pulled all of the junk out of my car (and there was a lot of it) and put it all in the garage (where it has since been all put away, I promise). In the process, I found a little toad living in my doorjam, doubtless surviving on all the good bugs living in my car. When I picked up the car from the carwash, I also came away with 2 extra pocketknives that I had given up for lost (and since then I have lost 2 others). All in all, it was a pretty good day for a carwash, and I am now approved to transport the little girl, just in time for daycare next week.

And in case you are wondering how the little girl is doing...

 

She is going pretty great. :)

On the work front, I have finally gotten the protocol put together for our lab to take protozoal video and turn it into objective data for the motility and size of protozoa under the influence of different treatments. This is pretty big for our lab and hopefully will lead to some real good data down the road. Finally, I have made a unique impact on the productivity and value of our lab. Of course, I owe some thanks along the way, especially to the guy who shared "Tetratracker" plugin with us for the ImageJ (even though he didn't know much about how to use it), and to two of my interns, Logan and Brooklyn, who have put in a fair bit of time on this over the summer, as well as the muscle biology lab for the microscope. But my primary gratitude is towards J. Pederson for his very helpful instructions on cleaning up videos with the binary conversion and image subtraction in ImageJ. If anyone needs help learning this process, I recommend you search his YouTube channel for lots of image analysis problem-solving.

He is how I learned to take a video like this in grayscale...

Correct the contrast and subtract the non-motile background...

And end up with clearly defined moving objects to use with any multitracker plugin.

Until next time, just keep your chin up and smile. :)

Week 51 - Painting

This week I learned a new skill at work, one that was severely understated in my job description on arriving here. In truth, I did sort of ask for this, though, so I won't complain too much. After years of mouse poop, ratty ceilings (literally), half-assed A/C fixes and floor cleanings, and every form of biological abuse you can imagine for our office, the department finally decided to redo the administrative suite upstairs again. No, not just kidding. Then, the powers that be thought it would be good to repaint the hallways, toss out all of the traditional furniture and "modernize" our lobby. Of course, it makes perfect sense to complete this during student recruitment over the summer, so our whole building was trashed. And as the projects dragged on and we were repeated decontaminated for asbestos (each time, we had to request they consider that - the university would always just start right in tearing out ceiling and pipes above our heads), the powers that be decided to extend the project to the basement. 

Once the project moved to the basement, I got even a bit hotter about things. Not only were they blocking my project from happening and trying to tell me that it would just be a couple of day delay (without predictability, during a continuous culture experiment), but they were leaving our office out of the mix. Well, one of the grad students mentioned this to the department chair and he promptly made sure that the renovations team got our office added to the list. And then began the exodus. True to form, they hired movers to clean out their offices upstairs, but then said we needed to have everything out by a certain day on our own. Not being the complaining type, I voiced that we would like to have cardboard boxes to do the moving, and that I didn't plan to assemble a team to move the furniture. As the wheel got squeakier (as much as I hate being that guy), we were given move-out dates, crates for belongings, and also asked if we would like the office painted. I volunteered our labor to paint the office if they would supply everything and they jumped on this opportunity. Apparently painters get paid a lot by the hour - and a lot more than graduate research associates with "departmental obligations".

As I mentioned before, I had also spent a great deal of time vocalizing my frustrations at the inconsiderate behavior of the project contractors who intended to block our lab access without communication and remove the asbestos and ceiling tiles. "Only for a couple days, shouldn't be a big deal; we will let you know the day before we do it." Yeah, for those of you who have done culture work, you know that a day notice before a two-day block renders your entire summer useless if you don't force a schedule and clarify that blocking your lab is not acceptable. So... the next thing I know I'm in planning meetings with our lab manager. Wouldn't have been too bad if they had stuck to their schedule that we finally agreed on, but that's another story.

Anyhow, so as the summer has progressed on, this saga has deepened to where I am one of two main points of contact for project timing in the basement and one of two contacts for our office as well. Come Wednesday of this week, we get an email requesting our help painting the room - "shouldn't take 2-3 people more than 2-3 days". "Will you have it done by Monday? The ceiling guys will be here Tuesday and you must be out." Fantastic. So not only do we need to paint the room over the weekend, but it's been turned into a deadline for a voluntary project. And again, we got short notice. 

Ciudad de Juarez, 2005.

So Thursday we get the paint supplies and I start early with a couple of people cleaning the walls of all the shit that came down when they tore out the ceilings and didn't clean up after us. We should've thought to take a "before" picture, but it was too late. I am honestly very proud of our office; we all came together and got the room done that day. Mind you, it wasn't pretty, but it was done. I had only painted once before in my entire life, and that was in Mexico back 8+ years ago. Not much has changed, I'm still too OCD to enjoy it and too easily distracted to stay a details guy. Good thing that only one of us had ever painted before! But in all, 7-8 people showed up to help and we all learned a thing or two about painting through the day which I'd like to share with you now.

1) Scaffolds make a huge difference in large rooms with high ceilings. Don't think twice about it.

2) Paint doesn't dry as quickly as I thought. Pour it out to prevent so many trips back and forth to the source.

3) Clean the walls that you are going to paint, especially if you aren't using primer. It makes a huge difference and keeps all your paint clean, too.

4) Drink heavily. That's self-explanatory.

5) Don't worry about getting messy - it's inevitable.

6) Teach your help proper rolling techniques. Apparently this involves steady rolling motions and adequate paint coverage of the whole roller. Otherwise you can see fade-in/fade-out spots from a bad job.

A picture of our group painting the office.

So now after a day and a half, we have the room done. Good thing, too, because the ceiling guys came in Friday morning while we were still working and said the office staff told them they could start Thursday if they wanted to. Sometimes I freaking hate administration staff.

Sorry that my frustrations will fill the bulk of this week's post, but let me fill you in on a few other things of note via pictures/captions. 

 

This week we are fully supporting our little head! So cute!

My custom TSX Bianchi looks BEAUTIFUL with the new stem and wrap.

My 4th Pelotonia was this week.

It was great to see our little girl at the end and she stole everyone's attention.

There was lots of great food and beer to be had at the end of Pelotonia, day 1.

Day 2 was equally beautiful. Great cause and great weather.

Our family at one of the rest stops on day 2. We took it a bit easier on the way back.

The bikes after putting 180 miles on them for cancer research.

Week 50 - Revoir

The sun was just dropping past home plate when we arrived at the game this weekend.

This week was one of the more sad of the week, as the Brazilians started to say their goodbyes, and they flew out home on Wednesday. It seems like just yesterday that I was picking them up at the airport, dragging them around work for introductions and mounds of paperwork, and driving them through 2-hour traffic to their new home with us in April. Not every thing about them was easy or pleasant, but neither is it for anyone else. They were very hard workers, always positive and non-cliques unlike the most of their nationality that visits here. We had a lot of good times while they were here and I only wish we could have gotten more research work done. With the freeze-dryer dead for 3 weeks now, and the fermenters period 4 dying this past week, and nobody running PCR or taking the time to teach them (and me being too busy to help them with this), they probably didn't get as much out of the trip as we had hoped, but I know that they are much better at their English and their fermenter work than before. And they got to work and meet many famous people to their own university while they were here.

To celebrate their time here and say farewell, our PI took us out to the Clippers for a mLB baseball game. The Clippers haven't been traditionally good, but they have had a couple of good years recently, as if to encourage people to come out and watch them in their new stadium. I am a big fan of the new stadium, and shot many pictures with my iPhone during the evening to give you a feel for the game experience here in town. Our stadium is near the downtime high life but surrounded by good parking and traffic managers who are familiar with heavy attendance events. Neither my PI or I had the foresight to purchase tickets ahead of time and so we were lucky that the scalpers outside had a set of tickets near the outfielders which turned out to be a good show with home runs and good catches galore. Since it was dime-a-dog night, we did our part to consume copious cheap carbs and mysterious ground meat, combined with beers pricey enough to bring the balance back to the norm.

What really struck me about the game this year was that we were in the hot dog line when the national anthem was introduced. You could just barely hear it over the crowd, but as the stands stood and most (should be all!) removed their hats and covered their hearts, a silence fell on the food stands. These, these are the people who get it. They work every game in the park, all summer, and they drop it all when the song symbolic of all their dreams, and the freedom of the game is played and sung for all. Their respect for the flag, the song and all it represents was inspiring to me. The great American game is still alive with great American patriotism. You don't have to love the game to want to go, you just have to love this country and the people in it.

I told the Brazilians that there is nothing as American as a hotdog and a ball game on a summer day.

The stadium as the lights came on. With so many hits, it was a long game.

A panorama of the field from our seats as the sunset's colors faded away.

Full on dark at the game.

A view down as it rains.

In other news, I am in hardcore training mode for the Pelotonia this year. If you are interested in donating money to cancer research, please Google Pelotonia and make a tax-deductible contribution to a fund dedicated to cancer research here until there is a cure found. The research is local, but the impact is global and I am proud to be a part of what I hope to be a difference-maker for the betterment and enjoyable extension of my childrens' lives.

Crop-duster flew over my bike.

Of course, as I ride, my skill improves, and I am finally cutting into better times that are respectable among my peers. This week I have finally climbed up into the top 7 for my area, and am 2 minutes behind the leader for our 13-mile stretch of road. My goal is to catch the leader by this fall and pass him, but these last couple miles per hour are tough to tackle and I really need to lose a few more pounds to lighten the ride. Losing pounds is incredibly hard, and I have started using a new app, LoseIt, which I hope will help with the loss. If I can achieve my goals with it, you can count on me posting a special post about the use of it and the long road to weight loss, but for now I am happy to regulate intake and trade fat for muscle, even if the weight isn't going anywhere.


The state fair is still in full swing, and I took our baby girl on a tour of the animals around the grounds. Here's just a few of the pictures from our trip. Other notable stops include a diaper change at both the cattlemen's association booth and the lumberjack competition, a bottle-feeding at the poultry barn, a walk-by of the sea lions (which I never got to see up close because they were out in the bright sunlight) and a short stroll through carnie-town.

Us, with the little piglets and safe animal handling display.

Us, with my brother's fancy chicken.

Us, with my brother's crazy rabbits.

Us drinking a bottle, promoting our favorite stock industry.

Post-game relaxing w/Dad.

"You're picking that up?"

Every fair needs a little bit of post-fair partying, and my best man and his girlfriend were over to hang out this weekend and celebrate the end of the week with some good-spirited, competitive euchre. Our little girl has been quite the celebrity, and got passed around to guest-play for everyone. She does make it a bit hard to focus on the game since she's so precious, but she is learning to play a family tradition early, and I am looking forward to many good times to come.

So, the time has come to say goodbye to a good chapter in our lives, as we wind up the summer, our time at home with baby Hannah, and the stay of the Brazilians. It has been a good summer, and I am not quite ready to let it all go. This was definitely one of those nostalgic weeks where you look back and try to hold on to what is passing with your toughest grip. But, in the end, time marches on, whether we are ready for it or not. This summer was a great adventure, a fine new chapter in my life. As we say goodbye to Brazilians, I am reminded of saying goodbye to our friends in the Netherlands when I came home. Not just goodbye, but "au revoir", because I know we will see each other again.

Believe it or not, they did not pack half of America in all that luggage. Just a "few" things.

Week 49 - Video

Most of this week was absorbed by 4-H camp, so I will summarize briefly. It rained, a lot. I heard something like 4 inches of rain over a 4 day camp. The creek flooded and washed logs over the car bridge, but we had a pro group of counselors this year and they did a great job keeping the kids and their peers positive. Despite some of the worst weather for a summer camp, I think the kids this year had more fun as a group than many previous years. Less injuries despite the fact that kids don't get any smarter, I am sure of it (expect a future post on the failure of parents to educate their children). This was the first year that we offered a teen-specific camp and I think that despite some simple changes to make, it was a smashing hit. Of course, now that it turned out well, our debbie-downer of the group has decided it was her great project for the year. Luckily my wife isn't out campaigning for credit for the things she does and is willing to let it go. I taught some mountain biking, some tower climbing and zipping, and got to watch Dan give kids the talk about working hard and making your own breakfast.

Btw... we launched a balloon monkey with a bottle rocket.

Our little baby girl had 2 special visitors this week. First, her aunt finally came home from Prague and we met her at the airport. I classed up the place with a blowout diaper change in the luggage claim which helped clear the area and give us a quiet place to celebrate Sis's return to the states. Technology can help you visit with people, but there is still no replacement for seeing someone in person. I think the picture of them meeting for the first time is perfect evidence of why all our electronics will still not be replacing personal contact anytime soon. And of course, there is also the possibility that our little girl was a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. But she took it in stride, looking around with those expressive eyes and filling a diaper nonchalantly. Now she has finally met all of the close family.

Hannah also got to meet a professor friend of the family from Australia who was in town to visit this week. This woman was the former teacher of the class I was a part of during the technology upgrades for online learning. She has done similar work in Australia since her time here and both classes have grown in popularity. With her came the most interesting stuffed animal Hannah has received (and there've been some doozies with the Dr. Seuss theme, trust me). All the way from Australia, she now has a stuffed wombat. And it apparently is relatively lifelike, because my wife says Betsy went crazy about it when it came home sitting in the carseat. Again, it just goes to show how blessed we are to have so many friends around the world who care so much for us, and for Hannah.

Our little bug with her new wombat!

Later this week also marked the start of the state fair. Here, we have a great fairgrounds managed by a good team who really care about the balance between culture expectations of a fairgrounds and the historic tradition of agriculture exposition. Our state government supports the grounds and the board of directors is very active and forward thinking. My family's involvement over the years has been increasingly concentrated around the sheep show, specifically Shropshires and my little brother had another great showing this year, winning an exhibitor award and placing in the top 5 with sheep bred and raised on our own farm. Coming from such a limited agricultural background and nourished over the years in our pursuit of knowledge and excellence, it is a proud moment to see the youngest of the family finally recognized publicly for his hard work and knowing that it was a family effort to get to this point. And now we are bringing up the next generation in this great environment and lifestyle.

So, the main point of my post today was more related to my work side of life. We made some big time progress this week in the video realm (see the clip below) with the intern's camera. At first, there was some trouble capturing video with the SLR (or even pictures), but we figured out that with the Nikon, it will only function without a lens attached (built in sensor) if you set the camera in manual mode. Once we did this, we needed to push the "live view" button, and then if we pushed the "ok/select" button, it would record video. The video isn't perfect, but with good focus and the ability to use the LCD screen to improve this focus (the focus won't be the same as what is seen in the viewfinder since they are slightly different distances from the stage), we were able to capture the videos we need to proceed with the experiments.

What you see in this video is a group of isotrichs/entodiniomorphs swimming around in flocculated rumen fluid. Basically, we sample rumen fluid by squeezing it through cheesecloth from digesta samples out of a rumen cannulated Jersey dairy cow in the morning, approximately 1 hour post-feeding when the protozoa are up and swimming around amidst the food. Then we take the fluid back to the lab and put it into a separatory funnel. Over about an hour, the feed particles will mostly float to the top with fermentation activity and the protozoa will settle to the bottom. Then the feed and whatnot is removed from the top by aspiration and the remainder is dispensed into a CO2 flushed container. From there we distribute to a series of anaerobic tubes with different diet treatments. Then we take a sub-sample over to the microscope, throw it up on a slide and take the video. For a size perspective, the larger, fuzzy protozoa are isotrichids and they are about 150-200 um in size. To capture this with a $600 camera is really amazing and the possibilities for where we take the research next are endless and will have great relevance to our ongoing projects. Enjoy!

Week 48 - Growing...

...like a weed. Our little girl is definitely all that and the end of this week marked her 1 month birthday. Of course, with all the hussle of getting ourselves out the door for 4-H camp, we didn't have time to celebrate it in style, but will postpone that "special moments" whiskey on the rocks for another milestone month in the near future. Thankfully, my wife had the foresight to create these super cute little blocks with colored numbers to mark the passing of time. And thankfully twice, she had the good  memory to take the picture you see on the right. That hit the background on my phone faster than bugs on a Ferrari grill. Hannah has such wonderful expression and personality for 1 month. She is certainly a treasure to cherish (just like her mom!).

Little baby girl is fast asleep with mom at 4-H camp this week.

Speaking of growing, we have been growing up just a few groups of protozoa in the lab, and while other members work on new filtration techniques for live rumen protozoa (since they are anaerobic, this is no easy feat), we have been working on hooking up a camera to a microscope in another lab. This has been met with limited success, starting with a QCapture setup which I have to say was found to be lacking. The firewire takes forever to communicate lighting adjustments and realtime viewing/focus, while the image clarity is challenging and the pixelation is disappointing. Limited software support for video capture also prevents this from being a viable option.

So then I pulled out all the cameras from my house and took them down to work. Without adaptors for the open view, the video cameras and point-and-shoot cameras I brought were completely worthless. However, the old Canon Rebel XT was finally able to capture some first images, and examples of these are below. The SLR allows for much better light control and the manual aspect of the camera combined with rudimentary memory of camera function was all I needed to get some pictures taken. Well, that and some electric tape. Since the camera was on the microscope, but open (no lens) and balanced, I wanted to prevent it from being trashed in this fragile state. The electric tape leaves little residue and served to secure the camera body against the microscope opening to prevent dust contamination to either object and to prevent me from clutzing my camera right off the top to its death (almost happened once).

Isotrichid amidst entodiniomorphs, notice the cilia moving all over the body.

For scale, the entire distance on the gridline is 1000 um.

While these pictures are great, there are still 2 main drawbacks which we need to address on image capture. First, my camera doesn't take video. Next week when I am back from camp, my intern will be bringing in her camera to take some video. It is a Nikon D5000 and promises great improvements in light sensitivity, color and video capture over my current situation. Plus, she was gracious enough to offer it for free since it benefits her undergrad research project. Second, we still cannot capture dark field contrast images. The dark field stage is important to me because I think it offers the best opportunity down the road for projecting movement and correcting for protozoal dodging between particle clumps of various origin. Right now the protozoal movement seems to be random and we classify their activity based on chemoattraction or random motion (you can see a rough video below, thanks to the iPhone). However, when you examine the protozoal movement on dark field where bacterial colonies are highlighted (2nd video below, kinda looks like a starry night sky), then you notice that the movement is less random than we supposed. Instead, they are also dodging around lots of different particles in the space provided. It is important when we proceed with our motility analysis to take this into consideration, especially since we will be scoring them on 2 distinct categories: distance traveled versus location change over time.

This has been a generally productive week at work, as we were also trained to use the new GreenFeed system. This system is automatically programmed to read RFID tagged dairy cattle and dose them with a treat (conditioning reflex). While they are eating it, it measures their gas production and we will be using it for some large-scale live animal projects. It might sound like a bit of work, but the design is really creative and effective, and we will be able to do some great research with it. Even though I'm probably not the primary research student to use the equipment, I am excited to be a part of this progressive methodology.

Our lab attending a training meeting for the new cattle gas sampler.

This week also marked our 3rd year of partnership with OFBF for the Pelotonia.

Week 47 - Indy

It's been a long time since my wife and I took a vacation, and this was far from it, but still it was nice to get out of town together on a trip to anywhere but work. So this week with the national joint annual meetings for my associations being so close in Indianapolis, I was pretty excited to finally be returning to the meetings to attend presentations, network with peers and betters, and leave the fermenters behind to do some brainstorming. Period 3 crashed and died over the weekend, so we restarted them and set off earlier than originally anticipated (was going to have to stick around for sample collections Tuesday am). We dropped down to visit my wife's grandma on the way out and by pure chance missed a good portion of the traffic backed up from a bad wreck on I-70 thanks to our late departure and a warning text from my adivsor.

Me presenting a poster at my first JAM in 2007.

Different priorities back in the day...

Indianapolis as a town wasn't much of a draw to me, having poor memories of it the last I was there as an undergrad recruiter for Michigan State at the National FFA Convention. Turns out, FFA has a way of down-funning a town (sobriety and all that, responsibilities for manning a booth, role modeling, etc.). But either my initial impression of the city was wrong or the place has improved over the last 5 years. There were lots of great places to eat, a nice shopping mall and beautiful parks/monuments. The skywalk/sidewalks between places was effective and pleasant (minus the random temperature/humidity flares). Our hotel was very nice and I think we had a good time there in general. I was struck by the cleanness and structure of the downtown area, not something I remembered from the last time I was there. Of course, I suppose it's all really about what you're looking for in a place. It was definitely better than Des Moines (read more here).

This was our first trip with the newest member of the family, and for the most part it was uneventful. We did have to make a couple of pitstops to refuel her and grab some coffee. I did a Wal-mart special and changed her diaper in the car with the door open. We also had a diaper change go amiss when she decided she wasn't quite done yet. That turned out to be while she was in my wife's lap (woops!). All things considered, not a bad trip for a baby of 3 weeks.

Having not seen many of my friends within my field in a while, our little girl was the "belle of the ball". I felt like I couldn't go anywhere without hearing how beautiful or cute she was from people who had seen her or held her before I'd even see them. I can already tell that our little girl is going to be one of those who is known by many more people in her childhood than she can remember. She is truly blessed to have so many people who care about her and we are blessed to count them among our friends.

A view of Indy from my phone.

I saw many cases of bad science ("educational indictments") at the conference, but also some great work and ideas as well. Our own work in instructional technology (see previous post) went over very well and it was exciting to see so many people interested in enhancing the classroom with technology. In general, I came away feeling like I had accomplished a lot of learning in a short period of time. My wife helping to watch Hannah really allowed me to maximize my short time with so many people in one place and I spent the days reading, listening and questioning, and the nights shaking hands and making contacts, the difference of which should be inherently obvious.

Me with Burk and Jeff.

One special moment from the conference was the symposium in honor of a long-time researcher in the field, coincidentally the MS advisor for my mother-in-law. He has done much of the research with the protozoal field, and is responsible for the drawings of the rumen protozoa that we take for granted when doing ID and other work. An accomplished scientist and friend of my advisor, it was nice to get to know him on our trip to Chicago (backstory) but this presentation let so much more light in on his work and the esteem that his colleagues have for him. It was the best 3 hours of the conference for me and that was before I even knew what surprise my mother-in-law had for me. After the meetings, she showed me the original textbook she had brought with her to be signed. I knew she had been excited about this for a while, but when I opened it up inside, it was signed to me! Wishing me the best in my future studies, she had him sign the book over to me. It is a moment I will remember for a long time. I can only hope that any of my work will have as much impact as what he has done.