Science Monkey

Emma and I had a couple friends over last night to play Risk, one of whom had never played before. Guess who lost? Guess who got his ass completely handed to him? If you guessed that I did, you’re right!

I was pretty stupid in my original set-up. I gambled that I could quickly dominate Asia while Emma and Chris fought over the Americas and Deborah was bottled up in Australia. Yeah, not so much. In my first battle, my 10+ Chinese armies lost to Deborah’s 4 in India, and then it was downhill from there. If I had managed to win that battle, the outcome may have been different (but probably not). By losing that battle, I was suddenly too thinly spread out along my other borders to attack and only barely strong enough to defend some of the territories. Within three turns — not more than four — I was gone.

It was a small comfort that Emma was the next person out, because she usually wins when we play. Not much of a comfort, though, because I was already out. Deborah put up a decent battle for a while, but then Chris swarmed over Asia and routed her back to New Guinea, where he magnanimously offered her a truce. “Go live with the native tribes,” he offered. Heh.

Here are Deborah, Emma, and Chris (clockwise from left) just after Chris’ rampage through Asia. He is yellow (and green), she is red.

Then, on his next turn, poor Deborah had little chance.

Even though I got royally creamed, I had a good time. We’ll totally have to do this again in the future, and maybe then I’ll be a little better. Asia is just not something you can win early in the game. Focus on Australia, Africa, and South America first, then work northward. Lesson learned.

Look who popped into my office this afternoon. I wonder if it’s because we bought car insurance from Geico last night?

I’ve got a bunch of pictures to share with you guys today. As usual, the larger-sized pictures are available on my Flickr page.

First and foremost, a picture of Emma with our new car.

Isn’t she cute?

Next, how about a garden update? I mentioned the other day that we had ash falling from recent wildfires, so I went out a took a picture before it washed away. All of the gray flecks are bits of ash that fell.

Otherwise, the garden is doing very well. The cucumber bed is doing exceptionally well and the tomatoes are coming along nicely. As Emma said the other day, we’re going to be eating a lot of Greek salads this summer. Now if only I liked tomatoes…

Next I’d like to share with you a little bit about our local squirrels and the hard lives they lead. We buy snooty bird seed from the local Wild Birds store, which comes in convenient, resealable plastic bags. We’ve been keeping the bags on the breezeway with all of the other animal food. About a week ago when I went out to feed the chickens, I noticed that somebody had chewed through the bag and had eaten a little of the seed, scattering a few sunflower seeds around the floor. ‘Stupid cats can’t catch a mouse,’ I thought to myself and moved the feed up higher, where I thought it wouldn’t be accessible. A few days later, the bags had been knocked to the floor and a larger hole bitten open. ‘Smart mouse,’ I thought to myself. ‘Or perhaps an ROUS?’ Shortly after that, Emma and I bought a plastic box to keep the birdseed in, thinking that would end the pilfering. Not so. The very next day after we moved the birdseed into the plastic box, they started attacking the box, chewing off the soft plastic handle in the first 24 hours. At this point, I start to suspect that it’s something bigger than mice, but squirrel has not entered my mind. Yet. The next day, there’s a tiny little hole where the handle used to attach (which is across the floor, thank you very much). The day after that, look what I walked out to discover:

As there wasn’t a mouse or two now trapped in the birdseed container, I finally wise up to the idea that squirrels are getting into the breezeway. I haven’t yet fixed the hole in the screen that they’re getting in through, because a few days later I saw how tough their life is.

Earlier this spring I put up a birdfeeder on a wrought iron hook outside of my office, where I could see it when I was working. A few birds got to eat from it, but quickly the squirrels discovered that they could knock it off of the hook completely and eat all of the seed, rather than just a little bit at a time. ‘Fine,’ I said to myself, ‘if the squirrels are going to eat the seed, we should at least get some amusement out of it.’ So I hung the feeder in a shrub just outside of the front window where the cats could watch the squirrels (one of their favorite hobbies) and the squirrels wouldn’t be able to knock the feeder down. Yesterday morning the cats were at their usual posts, watching what I assumed was a squirrel eat from the feeder.

After I got my camera, I realized what was going on. A tiny little bird was eating from the feeder and scaring the squirrels away! Although the bird was small, its chirp was huge and was enough to fend off the hungry squirrel. It would eat a little, look over its shoulder, chirp at the approaching squirrel, then eat a little more and repeat the cycle.

The poor squirrel was stuck up high in the bush until the bird few away, fifteen minutes later.

With this in mind, I’m not begrudging the squirrels their birdseed thievery, at least not for the time being. I’m going to go find a better box, though. Let’s see them break into that…

Well, that’s probably enough pictures for now. I’m going to go take a little nap then get back to work cleaning the house. Emma invited her ex-boyfriend over on Sunday to play Risk, so I invited a friend of mine (well, both of ours, actually) to help serve as a buffer. Hey! If you play Risk and want to come over, send me an email for directions. We’re starting at about 4. Game on.

At last I can tell what I was so excited about earlier this week. Emma and I bought a new car! It’s a 2007 white Toyota Matrix. Technically it’s not a new car — it has about 14k miles — but it has been a long-term demo car; we’re her first owners. Whee!

So for several years now I’ve been saying to Emma that she should see the Matrix, that I thought it was a car she’d really like. She loves hatchbacks and cars with four doors, and here’s a four-door hatchback! Plus it’s a Toyota, so it’s built well, will get decent gas mileage, and should be pretty reliable. Years, I tell you.

Tuesday afternoon, Emma picked me up from work. We’re driving to find an early dinner when she says to me, “The Toyota Matrix is a really cute car. Have you seen it?” Years, I tell you. I’m glad to know how well she listens. (Love you, honey)

So she takes me to dinner at Hops, a chain restaurant but one that brews its own beer. Two glasses of Powder Horn Pilsner later (in me, not in her) we’re driving to the dealership to “look” at a Matrix. We didn’t have any intention of actually buying a car. But then we saw the car, took it for a test drive, and Emma fell in love. Half an hour later we’re talking with a closer about price. Half an hour after that, we’re talking with the financing guy, and before we know it, we’re driving it home (well, after making a down payment, of course).

The whole thing is still pretty unreal. I can’t believe they just let us take the car after signing a few papers. And they’ve let us keep it. Nobody’s shown up saying, “Sorry, we made a big mistake.” Yeah, Emma’s a doctor, but it’s not like she’s getting paid a huge amount of money. And we’ve got some pretty serious debt between our credit cards and her med school loans. I think we got a pretty decent deal. It’s basically a new car and we got it for a few thousand dollars less than an actual new car. It’s an automatic — which is slightly suboptimal — but it’s ours. Power steering, power locks, power windows (so we need to buy a car hammer and stick it in the glove box).

The car is Emma’s, naturally. She’s going to be paying for it with her moonlighting, so it seems only fair. We kept the Saturn as a beater car, for me to drive around town as needed.

Pictures to come tomorrow!

I have some exciting news, but I’m forbidden from blogging about it for the time being. If you ask, I’ll talk to you about it in person, but we don’t necessarily want it to be public knowledge for the time being. No, it’s not a baby.

I’ve had a really nice few days since I wrote to you last. When was that? Thursday? Friday? I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s been good. I’ve been able to spend some decent time with my lovely wife which has been a nice change. Pain management is good. Well, the pain management rotation is good. Chronic pain management is probably good, as well, but I’m not making any statements about that at this point in time. Yesterday, for example, I rode in with Emma to work so we were able to go out to both breakfast in the morning and dinner at night. How cool is that? And on a Tuesday, no less.

I also went and gave blood yesterday, which always makes me feel good. I feel good every time that I donate, but then put off donating when I’m next able to for months and months. I’ve been eligible to donate since approximately Thanksgiving, but kept putting it off for minor, trivial reasons. Maybe this time I’ll remember. I did a “double red” again, which is where they take out two units’ worth of red blood cells, centrifuge them, then return the plasma. My hematocrit was 17.2…I guess I had hemoglobin to spare. Since it’s a two-unit donation, I’m not eligible to donate again for twice the time, so I can give again in September. Somebody remind me, eh? The t-shirt is totally cool, too, so there’s a reasonable chance that Emma’s going to steal it from me before I get a chance to wear it. Heh.

Emma and I also got to go see Spider-Man this weekend. It was okay, I thought. Not great, but not as horrible as some of the reviews had intimated. Most of the action sequences were really great-looking. There was definitely too much extraneous plot — I mean, who cares about MJ’s horrid singing, anyway? — and I thought it was about half an hour or so too long. I’m glad we saw it on the big screen, though…the fight scenes won’t be quite as cool on a home TV.

Enough for now. I’m going to go do a little work, rather than dither on my computer all day. I’ll just dither most of the day, rather than all of it.

Okay, this is just silly. Now there’s *ash* falling from the sky in addition to the smoke. It’s almost like it’s snowing except, well, the white flakes falling from the sky aren’t cold or made of water or good for skiing. Actually, I’m not sure about that last one. Maybe they’re good for skiing. I’ll let you know if there are any ashdrifts when I get up in the morning.

Okay. As of this morning, I am officially over the wildfire smoke. I’m done with it. Finis. Kaput. Now will it please go away? My bike rides home have left me gasping for air more lately than ever, which is saying something. So no more smoke? KTHNXBAI.

As I mentioned earlier, my sister graduated from college this weekend. Both of my aunts and uncles came to town and it was nice seeing them again. I think the last time I saw them was Grandma Heggestad’s 90th birthday, but I can’t remember if that was before or after Blake and Donna’s wedding…I seem not to have taken my camera to that, so it’s harder to date. Before, I think, so I saw them at the wedding most recently. At any rate, that was several years ago.

You know what I’m not good at? Explaining what I do. Um…molecular biology? Oh, more specific than that. It’s called genomic imprinting. *eyesglazeover* Sigh. That probably means I don’t really understand what I’m doing well enough. At least I’m able to describe Prader-Willi and Angelman Syndromes, then hit them with the “both of these diseases come from the exact same deletion” bit, which I still think is pretty damned cool.

The rest of the weekend went by quickly. Graduation festivities took up most of Sunday, so I really just had Saturday “off.” Emma was on call — poor dear — so I bummed around the house most of the day. I didn’t do a whole lot that was productive, but I did do a little vacuuming, just in case somebody wanted to come by. The house wasn’t clean enough for me to actually *invite* anybody over, but it was clean enough that I wouldn’t be mortified if anybody wanted to. Lauren and her roommates had a party for their families at the folks’ house on Saturday evening which was fun. I had a cool drive home, too. But do you know what I missed? My uncle Jim likes going to Irish bars when he’s traveling (or when he’s home too, I suspect), and I completely forgot! I told him that next time he’s in town we’re taking him to the Shamrock. It probably would’ve been crazy downtown, the Saturday of graduation weekend, but it was a good opportunity missed. One of these days I’ll just jump out of my shell and go by myself, or find someone who wants to go drink a pint or seven of Guinness so I’ll have company. Drinking by myself seems like a bad idea, eh?

Sigh. The water bath is warm, so it’s time to do go my thing. Nice typing to you all, the lurkers who read my ramblings. Maybe I’ll hear something from the rest of you one day, eh? ;-D

When I went out this morning to feed the chickens I was surprised to see not three animals, as I would have predicted, but four. A terrestrial turtle of some sort had gotten itself into the coop, but then was stuck! Poor guy.

The sides of the ground floor are just chickenwire at ground level, so he was able to push himself into the coop fairly easily. Unfortunately for him, the chickens have been excavating their bottom level — they might be putting in a basement — and I don’t think he could get back up and through the wire. I, of course, thought this was pretty cool, so I ran inside and got Emma to see. We (she, mostly) got the turtle out of the coop and I took some pictures. He’s really cute…my best guess is that he’s some sort of box turtle, as those are the common terrestrial turtles in Florida, but he doesn’t look quite like any of the pictures I’ve found.

Emma put him down and he basked in the sun for a while, then wandered off, back towards the woods behind our house. Can I tell you how much I love our house and our neighborhood? We live not a mile north of UF, but still have wild rabbits and turtles in our backyard, and a great variety of birds almost year-round.

It’s been a busy, work-filled last few days, so I don’t have anything terribly exciting to report. I’ve spent at least ten hours at the lab the past few days, which is a pretty good number for me. Compared to my wife’s wacko schedule it’s not so impressive, but for me, not bad.

Speaking of my wife, she’s feeling a lot better, so she’s not Super Coma Wife any more. Have I written about that before? When Emma gets sick — in particular when she has a fever — she becomes Super Coma Wife, sleeping constantly. She slept essentially all day Saturday, worked Saturday overnight then slept the rest of Sunday, went to work for a half day on Monday (then slept from Monday afternoon essentially through until Tuesday morning). She seems to have caught the Biochemistry rotovirus which has been running rampant through my department the past week. I feel a little bad because I probably was the vector between the department and her, and I haven’t gotten sick. It could be a coincidence, but the timing is awfully suspicious.

Beyond that, life has been okay overall. The chickens are still in the coop, which makes me happy. Although, as I mentioned to a friend the other day, they could be leaving during the day and then coming back in by the late afternoon, and I’d never know. Hmm…time to get back to work on the chickencam, I think. Heh.

Time to stop screwing around on the computer and get to work. Have a nice day, my friends. I’ll type to you soon.