Science Monkey

Short report. All three chickens home safe this afternoon. Cinder block Maginot line effective as expected. Feel like I’m writing a telegram. Stop. Or channeling Hemingway. Too tired to write any more tonight. I’m going to enjoy a Cadbury’s creme egg left by the After-Easter Lizard then hit the sack. Full stop.

Yesterday one of our chickens discovered how to get out of the coop. I presume that it’s Dora, as she has a history of such behavior. It wasn’t such a big deal yesterday afternoon; when I went out to check on them and collect the eggs, she was wandering around outside the coop, ready for me to open the door and let her back in. Last night was a different story.

I was playing in my office about 11 last night, getting ready to go to bed, when I heard a loud scraping noise from outside, followed by a few moments of silence and then loud chicken squawking. I grabbed a flashlight and rushed outside, convinced that a raccoon was attacking the chickens. When I got out, the side door was open (open!) and there was only one chicken in the coop. A second chicken was sitting just outside so I was able to grab her and put her back inside with little resistance. The other? Nowhere to be seen. As I came out there was a loud rustling in the bushes behind the house — presumably her hiding from me — but when I explored there was nothing to be seen. I go to bed, about 25% convinced that a raccoon has gotten her and 75% convinced that she’d be fine…it’s not her first night out, after all.

This morning I expected to see her running around the backyard when I went out to feed the girls. She wasn’t there. The other two were still inside, so I fed them and poked around the backyard for a little while, again finding nothing. Now I think it’s about 40:60 raccoon:fine. I go back inside and continue getting ready to go to the lab when the doorbell rings. It’s our neighbor from diagonally across the street. Luna’s dad. He looks at me a little funny and says something like, “This is a strange question, but do you have a chicken? Because she’s in my front yard, freaking out my dog.” Poor Luna! I apologized profusely — this was about 7 in the morning and I know how loud the chicken can be when she gets her dander up — and we went to his house. Dora had moved to the driveway by this point, which is conveniently bordered by a chain link fence on two sides. While Luna’s dad helped to keep her from running, I managed to grab her and pick her up. I apologized again, thanked him for his help, then brought Dora back home.

Dora didn’t even fight me that much as we walked across the street and into the backyard. I had her supported pretty well, so maybe that’s the trick. She was bobbing her head, looking all around as we walked back to the coop. I got her closed up inside, then found some cinder blocks to place on the side where I think she can get under the chicken wire. It’s not the most aesthetic solution, but for 7 in the morning I think it’ll be sufficiently effective. I’ll see tonight, when I go home.

I’m at work, waiting on some RNA to precipitate in the centrifuge, so I thought I’d share my nice Saturday with you all. For starters, I got to spend yesterday with my wife! How rare is that? We went out to an early breakfast then spent the rest of the morning at the Spring Arts Festival. We bought some art, even…we bought a great gift for some friends who are getting married soon and we bought a print for ourselves. I’ll get a picture up once it’s framed. Afterwards, we went to the tattoo parlor and Emma got herself inked. Look how cool it came out:

While Emma was getting that done, I went out and helped my folks hang some pictures at the house. My aunts and uncles are coming to town for Lauren’s graduation (how the hell did that happen already?!), so mom’s freaking out about the house being perfect. Fun. I did get rewarded for my troubles, though. Dad gave me his old BlackBerry, which his IT guys couldn’t ever get working with their email and calendar servers. Woo! I’ve got it working as my phone already, but I need to do some tweaking. Like adding all my contacts and phone numbers. I have been able to update the OS on the BlackBerry and install the desktop software on my machine. I think I’ve figured out how to get the info synched, too, but I’m probably wrong.

After Emma’s tattoo was done we had another wonderful lunch at Flaco’s. I freaking love that place. Ropa vieja FTW.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet. Emma was pretty exhausted — three hours holding still is pretty tiring, after all — so we went home and lazed around the house. Watched some bad TV, napped, laid in the hammock. Good times.

Oh, we also bought a new toy for the cats. It’s a “crinkle cave,” which makes all sorts of noise when they walk around inside. Guess who likes it the best? That’s right…

My timer’s almost done, so I’ll close now. I’ve got a lovely picture of my elbow online on my Flickr account if you’re interested. It’s probably not for the extremely squeamish, but it’s not all that bad. Happy Sunday!

I had a wreck on my bike today, for the first time in years. I’m okay but skinned myself pretty good. It was such a stupid way to get hurt I’m almost more pained to relate the tale than I am from the spill, but there you go.

I was coming around the corner into our driveway when my back tire went out from under me and I found myself eating pavement. With all the rain, all of the dead, dried leaves have accumulated in our driveway and gutter, so as I turned my back tire continued to go west while the rest of my bike went south, then down. I landed hard on my left side, my weight coming down on my left hip (and phone), elbow, and palm.

Most of the damage was to my elbow, I think, but it seems pretty superficial. I don’t think I broke anything, but I skinned the hell out of it. By the time I got myself up and to the front door, my arm was dripping blood. It was both gross and pretty awesome at the same time.

I also skinned my palm a bit. Fortunately it wasn’t my pipetting hand, so this won’t affect my work life too much. I’m also developing one hell of a bruise on my hip. My phone seems to have survived well, to thank the late Kurt Vonnegut for small favors.

Incidentally, that link goes to one of the most nearly perfect tributes I’ve seen. It was just genius.

Otherwise, I had a decent day. I went to a fantastic dissertation defense this morning, followed by an interesting chromatin journal club presentation. Well, it was all in yeast which isn’t *quite* real life, but it was interesting nonetheless. Lab meeting was blissfully brief and I managed to get some good work done this afternoon.

I kicked off a PCR before I left this evening so we’ll see how that looks in the morning. Here’s hoping for a positive result. I just got a new antibody and am hoping that it worked. We’ll see.

I’m going to go watch the rest of CSI (Lab Geeks Gone Wild tonight!) and then crash. Um, metaphorically crash. I’ve had enough of the literal crashing for one day. G’night, chickens.

Hey, folks. For those of you reading this on my LJ, I just noticed that the crossposter isn’t working quite right. I’ll twiddle with it a bit in the future, but for now there are some entries over the last few days that I’ve just input.

Who’s most l33t now?

Wouldn’t you know that right as I start to go out for a walk, it starts raining? *grumble* If I were diligent I’d go anyway, but it’s cold and I’m not.

I’ve started to write three different things for this post and realized that even I didn’t care about what I was writing. So fuck it. Maybe there’s something mindless to watch on TV. Probably not. Well, I’m sure there’s something mindless, but not that I want to watch.

Dig my most recent purchases! Two new Thinkgeek t-shirts (including the always-popular April Fools’ model) and the new book by Douglas Hofstadter. W00t.

Between last night and the nap I just took, I’ve slept for 11 of the last 13 hours. That doesn’t seem completely healthy, but man, I feel great!

I got to spend about an hour yesterday afternoon wandering around our backyard and taking pictures. Look what I found in our backyard satsuma…can you see it?

A bird’s nest! How cute!

Although it was empty, I of course didn’t disturb it.

I’m going to go finish grading some med student exams…expect me to be back in a few hours spilling vitriol over how poorly they write. “Pancrase”? Really? I assume it’s a typo, but come on. Proofread your stuff, man. There’s four of you in the group.