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.

Week 79 - Lovebirds

This week ends with my first meeting on the graduate student council but since it is pretty frustrating and raises my blood pressure just to think about the incompetence and pettiness, it will go first. This story begins over a year ago when I was a grad representative on the graduate studies committee. In close quarters with our department chair, he "asked" that I take up the role of departmental representative to the council of graduate students. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done as the elections process was riddled with errors and it took five months and several signatures to finally get onto the council. Of course, these kids are career undergraduate school government politicians, and they think nothing of planning meetings for hours during the work day. It was four meetings before I was even able to attend one, and weeks of drama about graduate leadership and faked feelings of oppression (damn MA in theater studies...) by the time I got to a meeting. I got there just to find out that my committee role had been cut because the chair wasn't able to read emails correctly. And I sat there for two hours as graduate students argued about why they should give money - that wasn't theirs and had been sitting in a bank account blocking future influx to same-said bank account from Coca-Cola student funds - to students trying to perform research abroad. What a waste of my time! I plan to resign from this ASAP, there is no progress to be make with these stone-hearted, numb-witted cousins of Moses' Pharaoh. To top it all off, I had to bike back in a freak snowstorm because I was stuck in the meeting for so long. At least I had my anger to keep me warm.

Cyclocross! Nothing like a bit of snow biking on road tires.

My proposal is in! After a weekend to relax and refocus, the last of the proposal was finished this week and submitted four hours ahead of the deadline. I have to give a lot of credit to our grant development specialist for all of her help in navigating the websites and proofreading some of the sections. My advisor says I stand a decent chance of funding based on the quality of the proposal, but I know there were 500-odd submissions and only 50 will be funded. Rough odds still look just that - rough.

Right after finishing up the grant and while I was waiting for the final recommendation letters from the other side of the water, I went to attend a seminar by a visiting professor from Nigeria who did his graduate work here in 1987. Just a few years ago... I have only a few notes from this seminar, that was attended by about 20 people, five of them fellow Nigerians. We delved into a discussion late about the deficit of funding and the struggle for educational quality in Nigeria. I guess I didn't realize the seminar was to be a pitch for funding, and based on our chair's reaction I'm not sure he was ready for it either. But there were three big takeaways from this professor that I want to share with you all.

1) He said he had a bit of life-coaching for the young ones in the room. "If you want to be successful in life, don't die." Yes, that was his simple advice and it's certainly a fair way to start. Even deeper though, if you think about failure, the only way to achieve success amidst failure is to keep on going. Keep trying, don't give up, don't die.
2) The speaker had done some great outreach work in his home region with the simplest of resources. Too often my peers seem to think they must have the newest technology in order to complete their research. Sure, the new gadgets or programming are nice but it is the mind that must be freshest and sharpest if you want to have an impact on science and your community.
3) A funny story goes something like this... When said professor was just a a student and was getting ready to head off to America to begin his graduate program, the village leaders wanted to bestow on him magical powers to protect him in the big world. So they used magic to make him bulletproof with this vest that would protect him in his adventures. But he said that night he couldn't sleep; he wanted to know if it worked. So he went back to the guy and said he wanted to know if it works. "Well," says the magician, "Put it on." "No! Is there another way we can test it?" "Do you have a goat?" And off they went, tying a village goat to a tree with this bulletproof vest wrapped around its unsuspecting body. They sight up the goat and pull the trigger. Something in the vest bursts into flames and the goat dies and is incinerated immediately. In a flash of fire, the goat is dead and gone. I guess years later he was still pretty glad he didn't test the vest out himself...

Jasmine and Daisy outside at last.

So late in this week was snowy and cold, but early during the work week it was actually pretty nice. The sun came out, the snow melted a bit and we finally let Jasmine and her mother out to run around. They were so happy to be out of the barn, and Phil was glad for the company. There's not really any grass for them to eat but they are happy to run around and rummage through the leaf pile. Jasmine is eating a little bit and so the next step is to get her trained to eat inside an area with specialized panes that are only big enough to let her through. There, she can eat her special lamb starter with greater protein concentration to support her growth and we don't waste that good feed on her mother who doesn't need it. We also have to settle on a name soon. Part of the law with raising sheep is that they get tagged with a state ID tag. This makes it easier to track animals back to their birthplace in case of a disease outbreak just by using their eartags. So my wife and I need to come up with a farm name to register and get this special tags from our state DOA.

I suppose it's been a while since I graced all of you with alcohol conversation, so for you scotch fans out there, this one's for you. Back at the beginning of February, my best man and long-time best friend proposed to his wonderful girlfriend. They surprised my wife and I with a visit the next week and honored us with the request to be the best man and matron of honor! I'm the matron, of course. We are very excited for this and it really reflects how much we value their friendship, too. They have been great friends, awesome support and gobs of fun. Many a game of euchre has gone late into the night. And somewhere along the way last year a bucket list item came up that my best man would really like to drink some Glenlivet 18. "Every man should have it on their list." Well, that was all we needed. That, and the permission to spend $100 on a bottle of liquor from our significant others. That permission came during a rare euchre skunking by the guys over the girls, breaking a long-time streak of female dominance in the games. No matter where I've lived, house rules have always been that a skunking either sends the losers running 1 lap around the house naked (in current -10F that wouldn't have been advisable) or the winners get free booze. It wasn't free, but it might has well have been. Now we only needed an occasion to celebrate with such a fantastic prize. Enter his engagement and my candidacy exams. Check.

So we broke out the Glenlivet this week and it was worth every penny. There was a time that I couldn't have appreciated it, but that time expired with my liver's ability to save me from vodka-induced poisoning sessions. This scotch was smokey, but sweet, with fragrance of fruit/honey. I savored every sip. "There's a special place in hell reserved for men who waste fine scotch...", and I was not one of them.

So much grease with fried jowl.

One thing that I was not afraid to waste was some of the smoked pork jowl that I fried up this week. My wife said it was disgusting, and she wasn't too far off. In truth, there were salvageable pieces that required a lot of precision trimming, but almost all of it was fat so that it even discouraged Betsy after a while. Yes, to calm the rumors, I did put the trimmed part on my macaroni and cheese. I have a soft spot for mac and cheese with pork, bbq sauce and parmesan cheese. I don't know, don't ask. This was just a bit too greasy and I ended up picking it off before I ate the rest of the mix because it just wasn't quite the same as pulled pork or bacon on top. Trust me, pulled pork with mac/cheese is definitely good. Jowl, not so much.

Hannah has discovered the toy bin. Now we just have to teach her to clean it up.

At the end of last weekend, we also got to celebrate Valentine's Day in a non-conventional way that demonstrates the uniqueness of both of us in this crazy marriage. It was my plan just to make dinner reservations and go out for a nice break after all the craziness with candidacy and proposals. But my wife had other ideas and wanted to find something out of the ordinary. That chance came just a few days before the holiday with an email from our zoo about a chance to do dinner under the frozen Christmas lights, eat hors d'ouevres (<-- freaking French spelling) and visit with the zookeepers and the koalas, polar bears, elephants and fishies. It was a cold night out, but above freezing so we walked around for a few hours, listened to zookeepers talk about animal mating and courtship, and drank champagne with the manatees. A historical carousel was also open and we rode it around until I was starting to get dizzy. We watched the baby elephant play with a plastic barrel and enthrall dozens of people for more than 20 minutes. All in all, we had a great, cold time. The best of it was being able to see the polar bears down by the chilly water in the moonlight. A great way to cap off a relaxing night together.

Pronghorn don't seem too bothered by the snow.

Reindeer also want to know what the fuss is about the weather.

A "dory" fish!

Another happy-looking fish.

Rae, the manatee. It's nice not having 200 people in your view.

This woman is the love of my life and I'm so blessed to have her in my life.

Week 78 - Passed!

That's right, folks. At 5.30 pm, a committee member emerged from the room and shook my hand - beating my advisor who is the traditional bearer of news. A minute later, it was his smiling face that I had been awaiting. He told me I had done a nice job. A short time later, I was truly humbled by the joy of my committee at how my examination went. My committee was happy with my work, some even impressed. And just like that, I was passed. I have a few notes from my exam but it was mostly based on questions I didn't quite get right. In the end, what I didn't get right doesn't really matter to you all but suffice it to say that I have been examined on nearly everything, including: termite guts, astronomy, experimental power, amino acid absorption, milk protein synthesis, adipose tissue, rumen thermodynamics, the Wolfe Cycle, hydrogenases, open-circuit chambers, Type I vs. II error, experimental design, and modeling theory. Passing is a great feeling, but I hope that someday people will read this who are approaching their own exams as a necessary stage towards a doctorate. And so I want to give the best advice that can be given about exams; it was given to me about a year ago and I will add in a few sidethoughts as well.

Hannah and mommy are so happy to have their dad back. :)

1) You are picking mentors, not examiners. First, your exam is not about your committee proving they are smarter than you. Instead, my advisor said that by the end, you should be more knowledgeable on the specific research you are doing than any one person on your committee. Your committee is responsible for making sure that you know the foundational information in the areas they are experts so that they can support you through your research to become a unique expert yourself. If a committee member does not contribute expertise to your doctoral research, you have wasted a spot. Be judicious in your selection and make sure each person fills a role that is neither duplicated nor unnecessary. By doing so, your exam will be more meaningful and less like a necessary evil.

2) You can pass your exam if you challenge yourself. Your advisor should never let you pass the writtens or even take them if he/she does not feel comfortable that you are ready to prove yourself in front of your committee. However, it is the sole responsibility of the student to be prepared. Only you know yourself, your weaknesses and your strengths. If you do not take the time to determine your weak points and ask the necessary questions to bolster your knowledge, you fail yourself. Even if you pass you will not have maximized this learning opportunity and challenged yourself to reach a new level of competence.

3) You will get questions wrong. Any committee would be concerned if you did not answer questions wrong. This is due to the nature of science and your prematurity in the field. Foremost, you are a novice in a room full of tenure-track professors. You should not be expected to get everything perfect, just as they would not expect themselves to recite everything. Also, as science is always changing, the "right" answer is not a constant. Rote memorization develops poor scientists who are unwilling to think the box. This doesn't mean that you should challenge fact, but you should also not subscribe to the most recent theory just because it was published in "Science" or "Nature". Be critical. And be willing to admit when you do not know or when you are wrong.

4) Think critically. In the end, your exam is not about your ability to recite correct answers but about your ability to think critically. You must be able to look at a research paper and determine what was done wrong. And you must be able to say how it would have been better. You should be able to think of a creative way to test a hypothesis using known methodologies in your field. And you must be able to identify possible causal sources for an unusual experimental observation. These are not right vs. wrong answers, they test the bounds of your analytical and critical thinking. To be a PhD you must be able to do this above and beyond anything else. Science will change over your life, but the process will remain the same and it must be followed for the sake of future research.

5) Know your proposal. Your proposal is the first step towards you becoming an expert. There will be things in that proposal that should not be known by all the members of your committee. And so you should be expected to know your proposal and the literature that led you to that proposal. Your committee should never ask you a question about the research you proposed to do (hypothesis, methods, theory, previous similar efforts, expected value range for data) that you cannot answer. You must be the end-all on your proposal. My advisor asked if I printed mine to take into my exam and I told him that if I couldn't remember what was on my own proposal and why I wrote it, I didn't deserve to pass. If you get uncomfortable easily, you might want a copy of it to help you feel more confident, but you shouldn't need to read it to answer their questions.

7) Don't study. I saved the most controversial for last, and my wife would tell you that I studied all the time. But I called it studying because that was easier to explain. Don't study - learn. There is a distinct difference that relates back to thinking critically. Sure, there are some facts to memorize and maybe some industry benchmarks to know so that you don't look like an idiot about the real world. But studying leads to memorization in most peoples' books. What you need is to learn. Learn processes and how they can change. Learn the history of research in your field and how ideas have changed. Know the literature and how it guided you to your proposal.

So there, that's all the help I got, except one final comment about being a good graduate student in general. The previous PhD candidate in our lab told me that I should always read 1 manuscript a day. This keeps you up to date on research and allows you to look back into past work. I keep a running list of potential reads on my desktop and work through them daily, adding to the list when I find something new. If you read an article every day through graduate school you can't help but know the literature well.

Now that I am done I get to spend more time with this pretty baby.

Now that I passed, I got to sleep in. And so did Betsy.

A graduate student asked me if I felt better after the exam, as if a monkey got lifted off my back. I laughed and said that I was certainly relieved but never uncomfortable in the exam room. But the hour or two before the exam I ran out of things to do in the lab and started to get very anxious, even calling my wife just to talk and calm down. I said that then it felt like the monkey on my back had been given Xanax (a little poke at recent history) but after my exam the monkey was thrown in front of a bus. No, the monkey wasn't lifted off my back - it was thrown. The level of relief at passing will be rivaled only by the joy of my dissertation defense. If only that wasn't so far away...

Speaking of passage, this week also marks the approval of a new farm bill (about time!) that is encouraging if not positive. The good news, the SNAP program (food stamps for you old-timers) received a cut in millions of dollars. The bad news is that this was preached as a sacrifice woeful to the poor, but in reality it only cut down on abuses of the system and amounted to something like 1% of the total expenditure. Meanwhile, agricultural subsidies continue to come under fire and people neglect the cold hard fact that we must subsidize our agriculture. If we don't, it will move to China like everything else. No matter how you feel about jobs moving to other countries and capitalism, you have to see that when you food is produced outside your country, it is a security threat. People are blind because of the rhetoric surrounding agriculture but they need to open their eyes. Either you start paying more for food so that subsidies aren't necessary to protect the industry, or you will pay more in taxes (or imaginary government money) to secure that food at low cost and prevent outside competition. That is the way of it. Besides, with our ability to produce food in this country being more efficient than anywhere else on the planet, it is a service to the world to protect that food production (in case you were looking for moral hills). I wasn't as negative or positive about the farm bill as some, but if you want to read more, you should. Try clicking here or here.

The farm bill is a lot like mom's birthday cake. The biggest three pieces are the SNAP program.

Beautiful ice this week as we approach Valentine's Day weekend. Since my wife and I didn't celebrate until Sunday, I saved our little romantic story for the next post. But keep reading, we're only 4 weeks away from being caught up again. A few pictures to close out the week.

The sunrise through Jack Frost's best work on our barn windows.

A cold sunrise lights up the few walking paths to the gate and barn. Record snowfall in decades this year.

This crossed my Facebook page this week and I couldn't agree more.

Week 77 - Jasmine

Another round of snow this week and wouldn't you know that's exactly when our ewe decided to lamb. It seems like every time that the weather changes drastically for the worse, the sheep decide to give birth. Of course, it's not that simple but there is definitely a weather component to the process. My folks' lambs started coming last week with the brutally cold shift in weather and ours came this week. This lamb is special because she is the first lamb born on our new place. Yes, we had sheep here the last year but these sheep were born at my parents' place, even if they were ours. This little lamb is an exciting new start for my wife and I who have our roots in sheep. One of my favorite memories I have of her in high school and into college is our interactions at the state fair and within the sheep barn.

Our lamb is also special because she captures two very different gene pools in a 1/2 Shropshire ewe "Daisy" - daughter of Peach, who I bought when we went to an auction together when we first started dating - and "Phil", a Polypay ram from my wife's home. This combination gives our little lamb princess, "Jasmine", a brockle face. Basically, a brockle face is spotted both dark and light and has a bit of a gray mixture. She is very cute but I failed to get a decent picture of her yet. I will share one as soon as the weather perks up with some daylight.

Down on campus, we have our own animal addition to the decor. Really, the horse isn't new, but it is new to the outdoors. A few years ago, a local ironworks meshed together all kinds of scrap metal and fashioned an iron horse. The thing is insanely heavy and came with a base and two hooks just to lift it around and balance it, but the parts chosen by the sculpters really captures the physiology of the horse. I think it is really cool, but it has been a topic of mixed emotion in our department. A long time resident of the garage due to debate on a permanent location, it spent last year puzzling students and parents alike in our department lobby. Now it has been moved outside and the size is much less overwhelming. The trick will be just to see how long it stays before some fraternity drives in at night and steals it away. I know at my undergraduate school that horse wouldn't have lasted 2 days alone outside without being cemented to the ground.

I am now complete with my final three written exams and can breathe a slight sigh of relief. Of course, the oral exam still looms over me, scheduled for Feb. 12th at 3.00 pm. Because one of my committee members is in New Zealand, we had to do the exam in the afternoon. And because one of my committee members teaches a class until 2.45 pm, we couldn't do it until 3.00 pm. Luckily, the exam will last about 2 hours and so we can still be done at a reasonable hour. I have to commend my committee for being so easy to work with and great about communication and scheduling for this exam. When I talked with a previous mentee with similar committee members and advisor, he noted great struggle in settling on a date, to the extent that he said trying to get it all scheduled and completed in 2 months was insane. He expected it to take me over 6 months to get everything done. But in just 2 short weeks after 6 weeks of scheduling, it will all be over. I can't wait, and now that the exams are done I'm starting to get just a little bit nervous. The exams this week stretched my understanding more than last week's questions, particularly exam #3. I am fairly certain that I didn't answer them all correctly and that makes me more uncomfortable than anything. But at least I have a week to look for the correct answers and make sure I am better prepared for next week.

In my absence over the weekend, my wife took our daughter out to have her pictures taken. I wasn't super crazy about more pictures, but my wife was very excited and with all she's had to deal with as I prepare for candidacy and write this grant proposal she deserved to have something to look forward to and enjoy. The pictures were totally worth it, too. Hannah was absolutely adorable - the photographer did a great job and is always so good at getting kids to smile and look natural.

The other big news is that Hannah stood up on her own this week! I just barely missed it the first time because I was a bit late getting back from work, but she was fortunately willing to show off for me again. And then once she got up she didn't want to stop. She just kept trying to climb higher and higher up her little walker play thing (<-- I obviously have no idea what it's really called, but she loves the darn thing). Such a great big moment in her life, and I am so proud of how much of a champion she is. When she falls, she barely whimpers and she goes right back at it again. When she really wants something and gets a taste of victory, she doesn't let off. Here's to hoping she can keep that self-motivation throughout life - it will serve her well.

Week 76 - Calzones

I'm pretty sure that this is how our interns think of me. One of our interns who works very closely with me on some of the hydrogen research asked me a few questions about where we would take our research from where we are. Well, I mentioned a few things about variation of our measurements and got some confused looks. So we tore right into the dry erase board, outlining daily variation in our measurement and discussing how would would test the accuracy of our protocol over real life samples. One thing led to another and next thing I know, we're talking about designing a new sampling apparatus for rumen fluid that will more efficiently filter protozoa without leaking dissolved gases. At the end, I took a picture of the board mostly because I don't know if I could replicate everything I wrote out, and I wanted to be able to revisit the exact conversation again if needed. Since then, we've started down the path of proving the hydrogen sampling method and haven't had a lot of progress because the calibration of the gas system has been pretty difficult.

The infamous board.

Calibration of our gas analyzer is always more difficult than it should be and this started as soon as we bought the equipment. It would seem that most people just don't calibrate their systems because when I went to do it the instructions weren't even detailed! I believe the exact quote was, "Calibration should be done as often as necessary." What does that even mean? I didn't know, and so I contacted the company for more explicit directions for the calibration. They had to write them first. And so since then the calibration has always been a fight, as I edit the calibration instructions to mesh them with the programming.

Good news, the freeze dryer is up and running. Check out this frozen reverse icicle!

My first two exams are out of the way without too much pain and suffering. To be honest, I really enjoyed the first day and felt pretty good about the second one. The questions are strictly confidential until after the oral examination, and I think I will probably never talk about them. To take the mystery out of the candidacy exams would weaken the rite of passage of taking the exams. Suffice it to say that the exams were challenging, but I felt like I could answer them well and didn't struggle to beat the time limit. The most crushing part was getting finished just to hear from my advisor that the bureaucracy that is my great university rejected my committee. They require four members from my home institution and so there will now be five members on my committee. We have added a bioenergy and fermentation expert, and I now have a fifth exam next week. What was so crushing was that I intentionally scheduled my exams around my wife's birthday so that I would be done with the writtens and celebrate a night with her and Hannah. I can only hope that I finish the fifth exam early so that we can still celebrate. That was my motivation all through the last two exam days.

This weekend I got to watch Hannah a bit, and captured this video to show how quickly she moves.

I also needed a bit of a break this weekend and let the redneck out. The wasps have been a problem for a while and I used the paintball gun to soften up the nest a bit. My wife thought I was nuts, of course, and more so when I started throwing logs at it to break off the top part of the nest. No luck, so the rest of the next will remain. And a lot of people are probably still scratching theirs heads about the crazy neighbor.

They called them "Ohio tumbleweeds". I've never seen them before but this year they are everywhere.

The wind rolled the snow like a sleeping bag. This one is over a foot in diameter.

Never know what you'll see at work. Pigs walking in the snow?

So, one of the Christmas gifts that I gave to Amanda this year was a calzone maker courtesy of Williams Sonoma. As a guy, I have to say that this is the coolest cooking and baking goods store. So many fun gadgets! The rest of the pictures in this post will demonstrate this fun little piece. As we try to eat more home-cooked food, this was just one fun addition to our repertoire. It may sound corny, but it is fun to make food with my wife.

Behold the mold. Be sure to dust with flour - or you'll be peeling dough.

Fill with dough and pizza sauce. I like more, she likes less.

Cheese, pepperoni and such. Duh.

Close the mold and have the dough hanging out.

Cut off the extra dough on the outside.

VERY carefully, remove from the mold. This doesn't go well.

And bake. All the cheese in the middle is from one that broke loose. Hence the careful.