JawSaw

I saw this on TV the other day, and I know you want one. You can get it discounted through the TV price, so order now! Frankly, it's probably a waste of your money, but it would be cheaper than some peoples' nights out at the bar - and safer too. Why not order it, then break it trying to cut stuff that's too big and whip yourself in the face with the leaves when it all gets tangled up? Why not?

Or you could always just buy the rodenator with a month's worth of bar savings...

In other news, it's the end of another long week. Amanda has a new job at a place which will hopefully make her very happy. Finding your first real job out of college is a challenge, especially after a Masters too, and she toughed it out. Let it be known, I'm really proud of her.

Work is going well, and there may be rumors in my life for a Ph.D. around the corner. My adviser told me he thinks I'll be done with my Masters in June. Goes without saying that I love research, but I can't wait to be done.

Go Green!

Michigan State Spartans got a win in the Shoe!!! It goes without saying that as much as I want Luke Fickell to keep his job and for the Buckeyes to do well, this was the one game where I had to cheer for the visiting team. And we didn't get flicked off by more than a few students, either. Honestly, I was very impressed with the civility of the OSU students around us. Maybe they were just shocked, or maybe they had low expectations for the result of the game, but they hardly bothered us - something that would never fly at MSU where students pelt "traitors" with insults in garbage until they get kicked out or arrested. Anyhow, props to Buckeye student fans for setting a great example. And to those 4 jerks two rows in front of us, well, your mommy probably bought you those Sperrys and brand new baseball caps that float on top of your head but never provide your face any shade, but she'd be ashamed to know you shoved your mouth full of chew and shook your hands unintelligibly at the air for two quarters before you once again left the game. Too bad you only bought football tickets to impress the girls in the seats around you, because you've failed at that.

My sincere gratitude to Dani and Gail for making huge drives to see Amanda and I, and for braving the weather to go to the game with me and cheer for the alma mater. Amanda was right when she said that MSU would always be in my heart, and my heart was glad for the team which has struggled against itself since Saban left.

Go Green!

Homemade Hard Cider

I don't post a lot of how-to's in my blog, mostly because I'm usually the one Googling those same how-to's on other peoples' blogs. But this time it's my turn to tell you about my modified process for making hard apple cider. This comes with the predictable disclaimer: 1) I have a far superior immune system to most people - having lived in a virology laboratory, kicked H1N1 in the butt, swam in dairy farm runoff, swam in virtual sewage flow named the "Red Cedar", and commonly beat the cold up over some Advil and a glass of beer, 2) This method of making cider worked for me but try it at your own risk; I am by no means a brewmaster.

Before I started my first cider, I read up a lot of sites on how to make hard cider. Of course, there's lots of high-maintenance recommendations such as this one (yes, it does link you to "Mother Earth News"), but while I would love to put the time and money into this kind of cider-making, even to peel and press the apples myself, I'm a graduate student who had an interest in making my own alcohol (safely) and had neither the time nor money to dedicate to this exercise. I kept looking and as much as I hate on Cornell at least weekly, I have to commend them for their simple and accurate outline of how to make hard apple cider.

I modified this method slightly. My cider experience begins with delivery of thawed, deep-frozen cider from last year (thanks to Liz and Chris!). The cider was unpasteurized and unpreserved (except for the freezing), thus it was still well-populated with the wild yeast accumulated during the cider-making process. It sat in the fridge for a week or so before I finally had the time to make it down to the Winemaker's Shop and pick up my supplies. I decided to make the cider in the original gallon jug and to keep the wild yeast. This meant I needed only a #6 stopper with a gas release valve (~$2) in order to get started.

Unfortunately, this coincided with our Pelotonia ride. I got up early in the morning and before we left, I opened the cider and attached a funnel through which I poured about 1 pound of sugar. Motivated by fear that the gallon would explode while we were gone, I was in a hurry to get out the door and the sugar activated the yeast in a frenzy of bubbles which shot out of the jug like a Mentos-infested Diet Coke. Needless to say there was some clean-up involved, and I had trouble finding a place in the fridge to shove such a tall contraption (hadn't considered how tall the gas release would make the jug). However, I was afraid to leave it out after the previous explosion, so it went into the fridge. That was the 3rd week of August.

The cider started smelling really good about the 2nd week of September. I started calling knowledgeable beermakers about how I might know if the cider was safe to drink, etc. Everyone assured me to just try it. However, there was a week where the cider got really smelly and I was sure it was gonna go bad. I let it continue to sit in the fridge and just figured that the process needed shook up more often and that the gas valve, which was slightly contaminated during the explosion, could use a little cleaning. It wasn't until my birthday party this past Sunday that I finally found someone brave enough to try the potion with me.

Of course, I should've known Ryan would be game for anything, we've nearly killed each other doing stuff at this point that it's only funny. We each took a shotglass and sipped away. I had to be careful pouring out the cider because it was still in the original jug - I didn't siphon it off like the instructions said I should. This just meant I needed to keep an eye on all the debris that was floating at low levels in the jug. I think I said something along the lines of, "I'm a ... genius." Pretty proud of the taste, we convinced our significant others to partake as well. This was followed by my brother and the originators of this fine Michigan cider.

I have no idea the alcohol content in it, but on the test subjects, a few of us got color in our faces after about 3-4 oz, and one or two reported some lightheadedness similar to a light buzz. It has a lot of bubbles to it, similar to champagne. That will be the biggest challenge because it limits what I can bottle it in. The last thing I want is more exploding glass in the house like back on New Year's. Plans to limit bubbles in my next batch are already in the works, but I'm not really sure how to do that yet. I'm going to try wine yeast for starters to change things up. Also, the temperature might limit how much escapes in the process versus how things act once it's poured. Anyhow, that's the short and very sweet on how I made hard apple cider in the fridge.

Beginning of classes

Well, just like that the Delaware County Fair is in the books again. We'll have the carcass show tonight for the few animals which were purchased and slaughtered and that will be the official end for one more year. There's a lot of pictures from the fair showing up on the website, so check them out. Not only are there great photographers entering in the show (including my wife, who won 3rd place!), but it seems there were a lot of good pictures shot by fairgoers and submitted to the site throughout the week.

As we sort through all of Amanda's pictures, mine have been posted to the Picasa album. Suprisingly, Picasa has not been cooperating well with her Google-brother Blogger, so I'll include the link to the album so you can go there straightaway. In the end, only 25 pictures made my cut onto the site, but as I fill up that site I'm trying to weed out some of my less good shots, including a cut yesterday on some pictures which lacked clarity or subject focus and were just on there for sentimental reasons.

I also began a new photo website which I like less, but they tricked me into joining with a contest for the best geocached photos. I'm a sucker for contests like this so hopefully I'll win something, and if not I've at least put in a little ad online for the Delaware County Fair. Yahoo's Flickr is just a little bit too glitchy and gimmicky for me to use it much yet.

Class is started here on campus and so now i have to adjust to a new schedule once again. I have yet to remember that I TA a class in the morning, so luckily it's for my forgiving mother-in-law because I haven't showed up to it on time yet. Coffee gets me through the long days of adjustment and by November my pigs should start coming off trial. Looking through the fog of chaos to the future of lab work and predictable schedules. Well, here's to hoping anyways...

Pictures!

Brace yourself, it's high volume picture season. This summer I've added about 8 GB of pics to my computer, but during this week alone, another 8-10 GB are added to my computer for the Delaware County Fair. With the addition of Amanda on the photography staff at the county fair, I'm thinking it's about time she got a Picasa album of her own to showcase her good shots. She has some really good pictures, especially from the sheep show last night and we both also have winnings this year again in the open photography show!

I'm toying around with some watermark ideas as well. Some pictures are getting put this year on the county fair website, so I don't want something obnoxious, but I do want something which draws more people to my Picasa album and hopefully eventually some photography gigs someday. I'm still in the growing stages and so looking for practice rather than contracts with expectations - this freelancing for Del. Co. Fair has been perfect. I'd appreciate commentary on two things: 1) watermark locations - I don't want to be obnoxious, 2) keeping the ScotchPine Photos name is a go?

Speaking of pictures, I'll share the MSU photos through this link for the jazzy uniforms to be used in the Michigan game this year (which we'll be at!). There's a lot of debate going on about the MSU uniforms and I agree with most people's intelligent commentary. I realize the traditions of school colors, and also the history lesson in the bronze inclusion - but to paraphrase a LinkedIn comment, "Why bronze, isn't that third?".

Fall again

Well, it's definitely beginning to look a lot like fall again. The summer plants are dying out and the leaves are becoming more brittle. Tomorrow's high is once again predicted to be down in the low 60s and I love this stuff! I love the cool breeze in the morning, and I love being able to throw on some long sleeves and just wear them all day long without worrying about spiked heats. Fall colors are on the way and that means we needed to clear out our garden to make room for some mums.

I've included a picture today of the pumpkin plant we started at the beginning of the year. It's a perfect example of the shortage of bees and other pollinators, because this plant flowered all summer and went without any fruit. Not because it was sterile, but because I literally never saw anything crawl or fly by until it was already into late August. Luckily, our plants out at the parental unit were more successful. Jacob had a vastly successful planting of sweet corn after the first set was flooded out and our pumpkins are turning a good, solid Halloween orange.

County fair is coming up this coming weekend and I can't wait. Lambs and steers look good and it's a great time to have a fair. Look for me as press staff once again, pit passes and inside track for the horse races!!!

10 years ago...

The day was pretty much like any other day in early September. Warm sun coming up later in the morning than the day before, with mist in the air causing a haze along the ground. Dew in the spiderwebs and a cold, light breeze - the cold, light breeze mixed with warming sunshine that makes me love Fall. We were driving to church with the radio on, but it wasn't the same popular music that's always on in the early Sunday mornings. Clips of interviews were on the radio, about 8.30 am, clips of frantic people muttering, cursing, screaming in reaction to a similar day 10 years ago. You can't help but feel something in your heart as you then hear the interviews of people from that day. My heart aches for the families left behind, and the mental anguish of those who worked so hard to save other people that day emotionally eclipsed by the guilt of survival. It's been 10 years, and people are still suffering.


I saw on TV on Sunday live video from the new memorial in New York City. It's a beautiful memorial and truly evokes memory of the day's events in anyone who saw footage from that day. It's a long way from that day 10 years ago, and our country has been struggling since. Struggling in a war against elusive and ruthless terrorism. While a long, costly and controversial struggle, it hasn't been by chance that attack plans have failed since then. And we've been struggling against the economic downturn from the shock of that September day. In this recession which leaves so many hungry and homeless, people are begging for help and leadership. But what was said a few years after the event about the day bringing our nation together in support of patriotism and countrymen has only become more true since then. Don't let the sacrifices of those people 10 years ago until now be in vain. Remember and respect their sacrifice and become engaged in your government and your nation.

Pelotonia Recap

It's been a few weeks now since the Pelotonia and life still hasn't slowed down enough for me to take a break and recap this great ride, so I'm stealing a few minutes at work. It is fresh in my mind because I just wrote the thank you letter we will be sending to our donors and I want to blog just a bit while it's in my head.

The ride was much more fun for me than last year. I know where I'm going now and had trained more properly for the long ride. Hills weren't something I trained for, but at least I'd racked up a few 50 mile rides prior to the big day. Knowing where you're going is not overrated in the slightest. I knew every big hill, dangerous intersection and even when to save water between fill-ups. I guess that's what you'd call a veteran, and at 2 out of the 3 years the ride has existed, I did feel a bit like a pro at it.

Amanda and I were separated the day of the ride. Luckily, she and Mom could ride together, but the 43 milers were released in a different time than the 102 and we couldn't afford to wait the extra hour to go. The early morning hours are so critical when you're riding as far as we were. By the time we got into mile 70, the heat was terrible and an air quality alert was out. If weren't out of the hills by then, the girl riding with us might not have made it. She was already strapped for lung and energy capacity as it was.

I think this year's ride had a lot more gravity to it than last year. Becky, a family friend of Amanda's, died the week of the Pelotonia despite the best treatment available and heartfelt prayers for a miracle until the very end. She left behind a young husband and younger children, one of which is too young to even ever have a memory of her mother. It is for the future of people like this that we rode and I know Becky weighed heavily on both Amanda's and my minds as we rode towards the finish line, only to leave from there to a wake.

The people on this day are so amazing. I know I said this last year too, but as you ride through towns, up hills, past farms, and even at the random hilltop stop in the Hocking Hills, there were people out ringing cowbells, cheering, honking and waving at us. They were so supportive of our efforts and I felt very appreciated. For those of you who supported us during the ride or before it in some way or another, I just want to pass along these peoples' appreciation to you. To quote the great Red Green, "Remember, we're all in this together, and I'm pulling for you."



Pelotonia has already raised $9.5 million and it's still about 40 days from the fundraising ending. We're sending out thank yous now, and in about 2 months this all starts again. It feels like this Pelotonia adventure never ends, especially now that Amanda and I are captaining a group which is ever-expanding (hopefully 10+ riders in 2012). With such a large group, we're going to need bigger corporate sponsors (Thanks this year to Champion Feed & Pet Supply, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation and Amanda Hills Spring Water) totaling close to $10,000. If you know of anyone or want to join our cause, keep an eye out for a link to a Facebook group for 2012. It's the next step after our thank yous.

Our day ended with a country concert by a group called Bomshel. I was pretty content to just sit there and eat big, drink a beer and listen to them. But even though the day was over, our work is far from done. Patients still need treatments, children need to know about preventions, and families need hope for a cure.

Slug Paparazzi

I think I scarred a slug today for life. It's not every day that you crawl out of the grass, roam across the sidewalk at just about 0 mph and find someone waiting for your picture at the end of the long, dry desert. If you want to see the pictures, just follow the sidebar link to my Picasa album's newest pictures. A couple of them turned out very well (these being the only ones you can see on there) but I've post a couple more here too, just snapshots compared with the two I uploaded to the official album.

Slugs and snails have always been something that I found fascinating. You would think for as slowly as they move that they would be some of the easiest living animals for portrait photography that ever were, but that is not the case. The hardest part about shooting photos of them is the fact that they move so slow. You might be stuck staring at them for an eternity, waiting for the scenery or lighting, angle or shadows to change just enough for a good picture. I got a bit lucky with the lighting today and took some different angles to try and find the one that would work best.

You can actually see his eyes looking straight at the camera lens in the photos. Well, I wish you could've seen me taking the photos because I was literally a mere inch away from his head on most of them. My macro lens is touchy at that range for focus, but I got a few decent pictures with appropriate size for enlargement. But I was in his face long enough, that he actually turned 180* and headed back the opposite direction. With him camera shy, I headed to work, just a few minutes late... Take a look at the photos and have a great day! I'm just around the corner from the county fair and photography entries so I welcome any comments on favorites for printing this year. After loading the slug photos up, I can tell they won't be show quality because of the size, but they sure were fun.

Loving Lab Help

I married a saint. Don’t get me wrong, nobody’s perfect, but this woman brings light into the hell that was last week. She stuck with me through the worst I could drag her down into and she helped to get me back up out of it. For that I am grateful. Who knew that pipetting could stir such emotions in my cold, automated heart?

My grad research project officially started the beginning of August. It feels like I’ve been waiting for this forever, but now that It’s here I just can’t wait until it’s over. The way the past three weeks have flown by, I imagine this project will be a blur in my life so I’m going to need to find things like Pelotonia to brighten and accent this high speed pursuit of a couple of letters after my last name. Since I’m doing most of the work by myself without any employees to help me, I would be remiss to not mention those who have volunteered to help me out of a few pickles so far: Lucien, Dare, Dan, Frank and Mike.

Lab work has never been my specialty and I seem to have forgotten that when I wrote the protocol for this experiment. I’ve suddenly been submersed into the dark world of basement labs, working in four different labs and gaining access to BSL2 over at the vet school for culturing of pathogens. The amount I’ve learned in the past week has rivaled all of last year’s classwork, making me question why I ever took classes in the first place because I’m such a hands-on learner. But last week was an extreme baptism into the hellfires of bloodwork.

When Amanda called, I told her to go to her exercise class because I wouldn’t be home for a long time that night. Everything I’d tried to do that day kept dragging out. I’d been at work since 7 am and it was already 6 pm. I still had to do all the hematocrit, plasma and serum spinning and storage, and didn’t even know how long it would take me since I hadn’t done 200 blood samples at once before in my life. I’d memorized protocol and gathered supplies, just starting when the phone rang. Amanda immediately asked if I wanted her help. Her company was more what I wanted, but her help was great too. But I didn’t want to ruin her evening, insisting that she didn’t come down.

She came down anyways, bringing pizza and a hug for the hapless, absent-minded genius who had forgotten to lock down some hematocrit tubes before spinning and was cleaning up broken glass glitter. It’d been over an hour and I’d gone nowhere. We ate and she learned how I wanted samples labeled and pipette and she got straight to work. And we worked, and we worked. This was a bloodwork marathon I don’t intend to duplicate any time soon. Thursday is looming up on me already. Last week we didn’t leave the lab until midnight but it was long before that when I realized I married a saint. Such self-sacrifice doesn’t come easy or often and I really appreciated it. I love you, Amanda.

Bi-weekly Update

The past couple of weeks have once again been an absolute whirlwind. Starting my thesis has turned out to be the single greatest writing endeavour of my life and I think I started it none too soon. Besides trying to write about 1,000 words per day, I’ve also been trying to get amendments in for my protocol and other items around. Combine this with the state fair coming into play and there has been a lot of busy rushing going on.

The vegetables are growing well, with the best cantaloupe plants I’ve ever had. We trained the pumpkins to climb this year and the strength in their trailers is amazing! I’ve included a picture of the trainer a few weeks ago which has not totally filled out with leaves and blooms. I’m not sure how well the vines will hold the pumpkins on, but it’s a fun thing to try anyways. Those little wispies that come out from the vine have been reaching out and pulling the vine along every day, strengthening its position on the cage and providing a lot of entertainment for me.

4-H camp was this past week and over all, I think we’re pretty lucky. With all the heat and enough rain to canoe without damming up the creek, it’s really amazing that we were able to run all of our sessions without being cancelled out by rain except by night. Each day was blazingly hot with stifling humidity (heat indexes well over 100), but we made it through and only lost 1 dehydration patient over the week who had to go home to recover from losing too much fluid. On a funny note, we created a video to instruct campers about the 2 biggest problems we had at camp this year and I will plan on getting that posted as soon as I can get ahold of a copy of it.

I’ve got a bunch of different articles open on my browser, so hang tight and I’ll get them all out this week, but with the state fair and my position as a judge, a volunteer, an employee, a researcher, a sibling and a husband – it’s going to be a fast-paced next couple of weeks. Hang in there with me and stay cool and shady from all the hot weather.

Pelotonia 2011 Update

Well it wasn’t easy, it never is. But Amanda and I have reached our minimum fundraising goal. The final money will be coming in this week, just before the student deadline of next Monday. This includes a bake sale at Champion Feed and Pet Supply in Delaware, and sponsorships from Amanda Hills (water for the bake sale) and the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation. It’s really tough getting my mind in gear for a race which is still over a month away and after the start date of my research project, but Amanda and I have started riding and getting in the habit of riding more often. To be honest, this fundraising and the jersey printing has gotten me even more excited for the race.

I also want to take the time to thank everyone who donated to both mine and to Amanda’s ride. Fundraising last year was a function of some really big sponsorships and that was great, but it was so much more moving to receive small donations from so many people. It is a great and true example of how many people are touched by the suffering of cancer. Every person who donated has their own story, their own motivation for why they donated. I don’t know all of the stories, but I know many of them. And I can tell you that they are my inspiration for riding. My ride serves as my only way to give an embrace of encouragement and gratitude towards the people who have shared, who have struggled and who are praying for a cure.

Cancer is a serious story, and I focus this race often on the serious side – encouraging your support for my ride based on your compassion for those in your community who need your support and the hope that comes through research. But it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t provide a little light entertainment for you as well. And trust me, it’s a real pleasure to embrace fitness through this challenge on behalf of cancer patients and families. So here are a couple of light thoughts to share with you about my Pelotonia experience so you can gain insight into what an average person thinks during preparation for this great event.

Last year’s ride made me want to curl up in a ball and sleep for days. This picture doesn't do justice to the pain and exhaustion I felt at the end of 180 miles. Physically exhausting is how I would describe the first day, the longest ride of my life. Before that day I had never ridden more than 45 miles and I relied on pure youth to pull me through. But if Saturday was physically exhausting, Sunday was a battle of the mind. Singing stupid little songs over and over pounded through my head and I hated groups like the Black-Eyed Peas for their repetitive music that was impossible to clear from my head as a captive listener to my own head as I rode on. It was like an 8 hour trip to the dentist.

This year I decided to try and ride more before the Pelotonia to be in better shape. Great thing about central Ohio is that there are lots of open places to ride. The problem with great rides is that you always want to keep riding. But eventually you have to come home. The return trip is never as fun as the way out, and such was the case last week. I swear the wind always switches directions when you turn around. I had been looking forward to an Irish blessing style, downhill, wind-to-the-back ride on the way home. Instead, the sun started blazing and the wind picked up – in my face. All I could think about on the way home was how I was going to eat all-you-can-eat pizza at Cici’s. An hour after Cici’s, all I could think about was what a terrible idea that was. I probably ate 2 pizzas single-handedly.

The most important part of the ride is the bike. Believe it or not (probably not if you ever see my bikes) but I know a lot about bikes. I know the good brands, the right questions, the things you can afford to fix and the things you can’t. I know how to fix nearly everything, but I would rather pay someone else who was formally trained to do it. I know what a good price is, what is a ripoff and what is a steal. But I also know the value in having a bike that gets you there and leaves some cash in your pocket. That’s where my silver speckled, 1990s Peformance Focus comes into play. It has all the right parts and just gives up a little on the aesthetics side of things. I love the bike more and more every day. In fact, if I have a weakness, it’s that I fall in love with bikes and am unwilling to let them go. I used Craigslist to sell last year’s bike and when I pulled it out I barely was able to let it go. It rode so beautiful, with a 70s style pristine paint coat and basically no rust. But last year it betrayed me and the whole pedal mechanism jumped ship on the ride. I had to keep reminding myself of that as I sold it to a new kid who was less picky than me on what bike he rode to Athens. We’d been through a lot together but it was time to let it go and pick up a new bike, a new story for the next ride.

Compression shorts are awkward. Even more awkward is the fact that they have a changing room for trying them on at the bike store. I remember growing up thinking that I would never look like one of those guys, but I have relinquished in favor of common sense. Athletes wear clothing designed for athletes. It’s lighter, breathes better and wicks away sweat; every pound that I don’t have to haul with me to Athens is a pound faster that I can go. I’m still getting used to the idea of wearing them and I feel pretty exposed biking in them in public. But I’ll get used to it over time; it’s just like any other athletic outfit – designed for specific purposes and let me tell you that it makes the ride SO much better.

Sunglasses are vital to a decent ride (unless you ride in the rain, then your bike is probably rusting away). I don’t have a great history of keeping sunglasses uncrushed, so I try not to spend a lot of money on them. The result is that they break and I just feel less guilty about it. But when they all break and I need some to ride in, out comes the super glue. Amanda’s suggestion turned out to work great. While waiting on hold with an office calll I held the superglued glasses together in a firm grip. I reapplied superglue in thin coats every few minutes and at the end of the call let go. It held together great and now we’re ready for another ride. When it comes down to it, I’d spend money on a water bottle or speedometer any day over a pair of sunglasses.

If you’d like to hear more about the ride, please find us at Champion Feed and Pet Supply this coming weekend for the Pelotonia bake sale fundraiser there. I’d love to talk and tell you more about anything you want to know AND you can shop around a little, too! Champion has been a great partner to work with and we are very excited to be hosted there this weekend for the sale. They also have a nice store with everything for pets, horses and livestock.

As I said, I will have soon reached my sponsorship goal and will likely exceed it, as has Amanda. We are very grateful and still will continue receiving your donations. Every dollar goes toward cancer research and the more we can raise for this great goal, the better. I also encourage you to consider donating to 3 other great people who I know that are riding this year and still working towards their goal. Beth Wenner, Christopher Fullam and Mary Connolly. They are good friends who are riding with great reasons this year. Please check out their profiles on pelotonia.org, and if you feel so moved, consider giving a tax deductible donation to any or all of them, or to myself or Amanda. The biggest key is to give; it all goes towards the greater good: Ending Cancer.

Here’s OSU’s movie for some final thoughts about the Pelotonia. We got an email to be on this movie, since Amanda and I are both a part of Team Buckeye, but it just didn’t fit into the schedule with everything else.

Time Flies... (duplicate post)

...when you're having fun. It looks like my blog has mostly died in the past 2 weeks, but in reality, that's because of all the good things that have been happening around here. I've been super busy and while my busyness encompasses a broad range of stuff, I'll try to lay them out in a series of blogs. Since most of my life has been defined recently by grad school, this first blog will focus there.

I was originally supposed to start my pigs on project the beginning of July, but the project start has been a little delayed by the age of the pigs and their growth. It all is based on when they reach a certain age and so as the pigs were born a bit late, my research was once again inevitably delayed. We're planning now to start the beginning of August, but that is good because it gives me a lot of time to catch up on the other progressions with the project around here.

One of these includes the final formulation of the diets to be used in the project. After balancing out the potential diets, we determined that there was a need for another treatment for comparison and the deletion of a previous diet. Since my focus is still on the impact of organic production, we will be using a commercially available, organic supplement which is intended to benefit the pigs in a similar way to which antibiotics could be used without the actual use of antibiotics. This is a fun little bit of science, but please stay posted and I will either blog my class paper on the issue or I will create a page to upload it. It's too long for this blog already.

We also got a shipment in of pig feeders for use in the indoor housing with outdoor access treatment. Because these pigs were traditionally fed on clean ground we needed to buy and build new feeders. I need to be able to weigh back all of the feed to determine weekly feed intakes and weight change. This will help us get a numerical value for what we call feed conversion which is simply the amount of feed it takes for a pig to gain a pound in body weight. Because we're going to look at economic factors to consider in organic production, the amount of pig feed it takes to grow the pigs will be an integral value in this.


Assembling pig feeders turned into a 2 day process where I ratcheted, un-ratcheted and re-ratcheted all day. The feeder material was sheet metal folded and drilled and it didn't quite all line up. To further complicate the matter, the instructions were not written in the correct order for everything to line up. It took 3 times to finally get an order of assembly which worked. At the end of the second day, covered in dirt and grease, I was finally confident that the pig feeders would work and hold up to the abuse that pigs put on everything in their pens. Hopefully the straw bedding will distract them from demolishing the feeders.

I also got to do my first pig weaning last week. I know it seems odd but I never took a swine class in undergrad and so my trip out to the farm last week turned into another great educational experience. The pig industry is very numbers oriented with records on everything. So as we weaned piglets from their mothers, we weighed them. They were doing pretty well, since some were weaning out at upper 20s. After recording weights, we sorted them into groups of similar weights so that they could grow with other pigs of similar size. This helps to prevent bigger pigs bossing the little ones around and "hogging" all of the feed.

As I mentioned before, we're also using straw in the outdoor access pigs. So while we were out there we helped put straw up in the mow. Stacking straw in the mow (pronounced like "ow" with an 'm' on the front) is hot, dusty, sticky work. We used to do a bit of it when were younger, but I haven't stacked much since high school when I stopped volunteering for sub-minimum wage work. It capped off a super long week last week and gave me sore hands which will once again harden into callouses that I lost in college. Hard work is good for the body.

We've also been doing a lot of training and sponsor recruiting for the Pelotonia. Luckily this is going to start wrapping itself up so we can just focus on the training. People have been very generous; Amanda and I are grateful for all of their support and proud to be riding on behalf of agriculture this year.

Credit to D. Sturtevant for the photo.

Fundraising Boost

Tomorrow marks the first level cutoff for fundraising for my benefit bike ride. As we approach the deadline, I'm still $100 short on my fundraising goal. If you know anyone who has suffered through cancer, any friend who has dealt with the pain of watching a relative suffer, or you personally have experienced this, please consider donating to my ride. 100% of the donations go directly to cancer research to find cures and preventions for the disease which plagues the entire world. (and it's tax deductible!)

Click on this link to donate to my ride. It is not a virtual ride, I am actually biking, sweating and aching 100 miles down to Athens. Even so, this is just a fraction of the effort that cancer patients and their families go through every day just to keep fighting. I hope to be an inspiration to them, and you can be too.

Invisible Fence

Not too long ago, a friend of mine was down to visit us in Columbus. Early in the morning when both of our reaction speeds weren’t up to par, Betsy beat us to the punch and blitzed through the door. My look of shock and surprise didn’t get time to settle on my face before I grabbed sandals and ran out the door shirtless. Around the first corner I hit the slick, wet grass hard with a jaw rattling fall. I would’ve loved to have savored that moment and evaluated for damage but the image of the dog racing away was motivation enough for me to jump back up and keep running.

She stopped a couple of times, freezing to see a rabbit and also to poop, both times I couldn’t catch up to her in time before she would bolt away again, eventually disappearing into the woods along the railroad tracks. Needless to say, this event caused some stress in Amanda’s and my relationship that morning and I was pretty convinced that if I couldn’t find the dog, the marriage was off. After long, unsuccessful searches and trips through developments, we printed up wanted posters and per the suggestion of my brother took up the search again a little later. I found Betsy up at the top of the railroad tracks, panting and covered in everything – including poison ivy.

Luck would have it that we got her back and I am not allergic to poison ivy. Thus, I was able to wash her down and save Amanda a severe reaction. We got breakfast and had a chance to sit and laugh about the traumatic morning. But it brought to light a severe concern of ours - Betsy doesn’t respond to her name once she gets out and runs. So we decided shortly afterwards to actively pursue her training.

This started with moving Betsy to Amanda’s parents for a while. They have an invisible fence system installed there which would allow Betsy the freedom to run and burn energy and also give us an opportunity to teach obedience off of the leash and reward good behavior. Betsy has been out there now for nearly 3 weeks and we miss her a lot but the training has gone very well with very few shocking corrections. The Invisible Fence training man was very nice to work with and their method of training the dog to light current and a beep long before turning up the system to a corrective shot was definitely part of the reason that Betsy was able to learn quickly without being corrected very much. She is now so much happier outside because she is able to run and play without the constrictive leash always getting tangled. Now the training for “come”, “heel” and “stay” can begin in earnest.

Customer Service Failure

I think it’s worthwhile to note every once in a while when people or companies do an outstanding or abominable job with customer service. At this point, most of my readers are well familiar with my extreme disappointment in Best Buy service, but I’d like to add another to that list: Swann Electronics. They also do surveillance units which is why I was working with them.

I don’t know what it is with electronic companies. Dell is the reason I went and dealt with Best Buy in the first place and Best Buy has so many rules in place that it makes it nearly impossible to get help turnaround in anything less than 2 weeks. Even when they do, they refuse to help without a fee, insisting that their warranty doesn’t cover your request. And nearly every time, they are right. The funny thing is, though, that if I just went out and bashed my computer against a wall they would replace it free. So why would they refuse to just fix the original problem? I’m getting closer every day to a freak gasoline fight accident to force them into an early replacement.

But at least both Dell and Best Buy are easy to reach. I assumed when I had to call into Swann about a DVR power source that is burnt out that I would spend an excess of 30 minutes on hold. Absolutely incorrect. Instead I spend about 5 minutes or so every couple of hours trying to just reach someone or something that won’t hang up on me. They use an answering machine for their customer service desk and their entire directory is backwards. I tried emailing the web help but they referred me to a number in the directory that doesn’t even exist, insisting all the while that calling was the only way to even get the problem fixed in the first place. And all of this just to get an order number for a replacement part. Awesome. After 2 weeks of contacting Swann, I have finally gotten an order form faxed in and have yet to have my order acknowledged or a receipt given.

While we’re at it, I’d like to touch on the positives and negatives of Craigslist. Man, if you want to find something, this site is the way to go. Everything is listed on there and if you can deal with the slight crazies you can find whatever you want or didn’t want but now know that you need desperately. And then there was the guy who didn’t know what he was selling online, misclassified it, misdescribed it, and couldn’t give me any more info on it when I called. He refused to talk or help me get to his place, having already given me 2 bad phone numbers. When I saw the item and told him no thanks, he sent me a less than happy email for which I reported him to Craigslist. Great website to use, but not everyone believe the customer is right. Good luck to him ever getting that bike sold now.

Fundraising

I think I might need an organization as misleading as HSUS to help me with my fundraising for the Pelotonia. Or maybe one of the 10 minute infomercial (<-- can't believe that's an official word now) welfare requests. They're sure good at tricking people into donating. I'm just not especially good at asking people for money; it's been something I've struggled with all my life. We never negotiated for allowances with our parents. Our 4-H projects always sold to the people who bid the highest, but not because we had ever sent them letters asking them to buy our animals. If we sent a letter, it was asking them to support the fair and the youth in general, but never just us. Even when I worked at Farm Bureau and my job was specifically to recruit sponsors, I still struggled with asking people for money. Any amount was fine with me just so long as they were giving of their own good will.

But now here I am again, asking for money. My Pelotonia profile says it all: I'm riding to raise money and awareness for cancer research in Ohio. Our Ohio hospitals are making huge progress in treating and preventing cancer and this research will provide hope to many people this year, next year and next decade. Has cancer affected my family in the past? Heck yes, it has. That's the main reason we live in Ohio now, because we moved here to support my grandpa as he fought and ultimately won his battle with cancer. This year two of my friends have also been fighting cancer, both with great outlooks. And a friend at Amanda's church is in a huge struggle this year as we pray for a miracle.

So that's why I'm riding. I don't do cancer research, nor am I a nurse or a doctor, nor am I superb at comforting those who suffer. But I am athletically built enough that I can ride the miles. And so I ride, because that's my part in this. I ride so that you and others know that we are trying to fight cancer and help those who suffer. But riding isn't enough, I have to also actually raise the money for the ride.

And that's where asking comes in. The hardest thing that I have to do for this Pelotonia, harder than the training or the bike search (which is now complete!) is the asking for money. I've posted to Facebook, contacted old friends and even sent out letters now to corporations and politicians, organizations and well-connected friends. And now I'm back to here. If you read this blog and can even spare $5 or less, please consider donating. This link will take you to my profile where you can choose to donate or not after reading mine and other peoples' stories on the Pelotonia website. Please consider giving to support this huge effort which encompasses nearly 4,000 riders.

Saison

I credit the following to my faithful friends at Yahoo! Babel. I don't know French very well, so correct me for any outstanding errors. Now, mind you, that doesn't mean I can't understand some French, but without having ever taken any French, I think it's best I use the translator for this. The translator is great by the way; it's gotten me through a lot of language barriers in the day. You just need to know enough about the language to avoid any serious errors.

Je parle français pauvre, mais je me sens obligé à saisir français pour faire cette justice d'écriture. Pour ceux de vous qui n'a pas su, nous avons assisté à un mariage la semaine dernière au Michigan. Amanda a aidé à commander la cérémonie, alors que j'étais l'un des membres du groupe de mariée. C'était un beau mariage et une beaux mariée et marié.

J'avais prévu pendant longtemps le mariage, en raison de mon amitié avec les deux et aussi parce que j'étais excited pour toute les bière brassée à la maison de marié. Quand nous sommes arrivés à la réception, je n'ai perdu aucune heure en trouvant la bière pour célébrer le mariage et le maître de bière. J'ai une histoire de longue date avec des bières flamandes, et une des bières que la nuit a été brassée pour refléter une histoire de la région française de la Belgique.

Saison: un genre de bière qui a été faite pour des ouvriers à la moisson (et la mort de moi). C'est une bière d'or avec 6% a.b.v. La belle bière a fait un imbécile de danse merveilleux de moi. Qui est étonné? Avec reconnaissance, Amanda était là pour prendre soin de moi. J'ai inclus une image pour votre divertissement. Si seulement le mal de tête le lendemain matin étaient aussi drôle que cette image.

Merci à mon épouse merveilleuse de prendre soin de moi, et les félicitations aux ménages mariés. Bonne chance à tous les deux vous!

1st Anniversary

It's been a whole year now since we Amanda and I said our vows in that church by the lake. Over two years since I first asked her to marry me in the rain, dancing to "Love Me Tender". As I sit here beside her, after a great night out with a great dinner, I just wanted to post a little entry marking such a big day in our lives.

I used to think that marking anniversaries was a waste of time; that we should celebrate every day together and celebrating anniversaries was a disservice to the other 364 days. But this year has been a quite a milestone for us. We have struggled, we have fought, we have partied and we have celebrated random adventures together. But most importantly, we have supported each other through everything and we have had a wonderful home to come back to every night. Her loving arms inspire me through each day and I couldn't do it without her. I love you, Amanda.

Ultrasounding! (duplicate post)

Today was one of those where I am reminded about how great it is to be in school. There are so many knowledgeable and experienced professionals in this university and it is a privilege to work with them. Some days. And by the way, I Googled "ultrasound piglet" to find the images. Let's just say that I did a lot of sorting before finding a good one from Purdue. And I've seen tons of things I never wanted to or expected to see.

Back to topic, today was one of those days for learning great new things. We took a trip out to the farm where I will be conducting my research and brought the ultrasound machine along to preg-check the gilts there at the farm. Preg-check is just short-hand for checking them to see if they're pregnant. Since pregnancy and new life is a critical part of the economic chain on farms, it's important to know whether animals are pregnant and how far along they are so that you're not just sitting around waiting every day or randomly surprised when it starts raining babies.

I've never actually ultrasounded before, so I spent a good part of the first pens just trying to understand what I was looking at. Since you probably haven't done this before either, I'll try and make sense of it for you. If the image is in the right place, determining pregnancy takes less than 2 seconds. We are looking for round dark shapes in the image at this age. Each one of those round dark images is a piglet in the uterus. Where things get tricky is the correct placement of the image itself. If the probe is in the wrong spot, you can get cool (but useless) images of the GI tract which can be misinterpreted for a non-pregnant pig. I also a few times today got images which were blurred in some places by poor contact between skin and probe and these blurrs weren't helpful either.

We went through about a half gallon of vegetable oil today, lubricating up the probe. No, that's not because it was going where the sun doesn't shine. Lubricating the probe helps eliminate image blocking by skin and hair on the underside of the pig. We can better press up against the side of the pig and apply even pressure which leads to a better image. Surprisingly, while there were very few pictures of ultrasound images, there were tons of pictures of people ultrasounding, so I will include one here for you as well. The basic gist of the procedure is to oil up the probe, place it under the pig near the flank and to angle it at about a 45 degree angle through the pig. This should give a good view of the uterus.

This is by no means an easy thing to do, but it is very non-invasive and so it's important to become good at doing this so that we can limit the stress of the mothers and promote a higher pregnancy success rate for them on the farm. My advisor is unbelievably quick at this and was a patient teacher today as I stumbled through my first few before really grasping what I was doing. What a great day for learning!

Approval!

Great news came in today! My project has been approved by the IACUC review committee. I was getting pretty skeptical since we hadn’t heard anything recently and I was starting to get worried about how long we would have to wait to hear back. Then this morning we got a query about correcting a typo and I was even more worried. Were we going to have to go through correcting every typo before the protocol was finally approved? But thankfully it finally came in this afternoon. And none too early.

Logistical issues have already caused us to need to readjust the plan a few times. Nothing ever can work out quite as planned and there is a plethora of research projects out there. Each one says something just a little bit different with slight changes in methods and results. In an effort to streamline the project and eliminate animal stress (including the humans working on this project), and to make sure that this project has real benefit and applicability to society and animals, we keep reevaluating the project details. And while the animal care protocol is approved, this is only the beginning.

The animal care protocol is only for assuring the least harm to the animal and appropriate care and contingency planning for the whole project. Although it is very important to make sure that research projects responsibly minimize impact on the lives of animals, it is also very important to make sure the project has important meaning to the furthering of science. So what still remains are all of the little details. Details that include the exact percentages of feed ingredients, the exact measurements to the inches of the pens, the exact times and camera positions for observations. And again, all of this is based on the literature and findings of all the people before me. As things go on, I will try to keep you updated on the different parts that go into a simple research project.

Summer Pineapples

This post has been over a week in coming, but it took me that long to get the photos uploaded from my camera. Without photos, this post couldn't have been complete because I'm terrible at describing objects. Especially true when it's something most people have never heard of before.

Amanda loves fruit of pretty much all shapes and sizes, some more than others. But lately we've been all about pineapple in particular. As much as I love it though, after the first few, you're kinda tired of the same old thing. So one night when we were grilling out, I decided to try something I did back when I traveled with Chef Pierre for Farm Bureau. I threw some pineapple out on the grill along with the meat.

Grilling gives me time to sit back and drink a beer, reflecting on life, so I like it and it allows me to contribute to dinner sometimes too. Of course, a lot has changed since I last grilled pineapple on the grill and I realized this as I was out there grilling. I'm now freer of all the cares and worries of life that I had dragged around with me at the time. And a careless attitude is essential to grilling anything new or random. Amanda also puts a lot of confidence into my grilling and I yet have to give anyone food poisoning (myself included), so I suppose her faith is validated ever so slightly. The past few years have been a whirlwind of happenings, but I think it's been mostly for the good.

So to the real bulk of this post, the pineapple turned out amazing. And Amanda liked it so much that we started grilling pineapple even more. We got to the point that I was finally good at cutting up fresh pineapple and sick of doing it all at the same time. We've eaten pineapple so often that Betsy even started liking it. And that's when Amanda showed up with a surprise which made my day - a pineapple corer.

This thing (shown in pictures) is pretty much my new favorite kitchen utensil. It was a perfect fit for cutting out the core once the top was removed. And that's not even the good part. It drilled out the pineapple too, resulting in a spiral cut of the edible portion of the pineapple. There was virtually no difference in waste between this method and our traditional method, and it left us with a cute little pineapple bowl afterwards. For those of my old college friends, I'm pretty sure you can quickly conjure up what a pineapple bowl might be good for...

Anyhow, this tool made my day for just about $10, and it made serving one of our best grilled items just that much easier and attractive. Try it out, and the beer in those pictures is pretty good too.

Click It or Ticket Campaign

This past week or so, the national “Click it or Ticket” campaign began, with a slurry of radio and TV ads warning drivers about the seriousness of not wearing a seatbelt. Of course, when you can’t scare a person into being safer, you can always fine them into submission. That’s what the ads claim will happen anyways, showing a guy driving down the road with at least twenty citations floating around his vehicle, chasing him down. Money is a good motivator, but I have trouble actually believing that the method works, taking my own story for example.





I grew up wearing a seatbelt. It was never optional, even though my friends didn’t have to and so I was always the lame one among my friends, following my mom’s rules and buckling up. As I got older and we did more work around the farm, I remember how cumbersome the belt was and stopping putting it on because I was just taking it off again. I figured the half mile I was in the car wouldn’t hurt me, etc. This carried over into college where everything was just the next mile away or I was changing clothes while driving, or trying to reach something in the backseat and then just forgetting to put it on. That was, at least, until my car was blacklisted on campus.

My car was one of two on campus with Ohio Beef license plates and it was easy to tell the two of us apart. Between my junior and senior years at school the local police started breaking down on a lot of driving violations that were prevalent, most notably DUIs and lack of seatbelt buckling. We heard about it nearly every radio commercial break and you knew when you drove past police officers that they were scanning you to see if your belt was unbuckled. Since I worked at the dairy farm on a research project and pretty much hopping in and out of the car all the time to run to the lab and back, I never wore my seatbelt. It finally caught up with me one week in particular, in the summer of 2009.

Sitting at the stoplight without my belt buckled, waiting for the green which would take me back to the dairy, I noticed a motorcycle cop on the opposite side, staring at me through his window. With a penetrating gaze, he quickly made me aware that I wasn’t wearing my belt (habit) and I reached for it to smoothly pull it down and buckle without drawing much attention. He gave me the sunglasses nod, adjusting them on his face while looking straight at me and giving that one bob of the head which said, “Yeah, I saw that. Don’t do it again, buddy.”

A couple of days later I was driving through the same intersection. Headed the opposite direction, again without seatbelt, I saw my new friend propped against the light control box, scanning people for radar speeds. I was speeding and slowed down instinctively to avoid the ticket. He saw me, but wasn’t thinking about my speed at all. He dropped the gun slightly and looked hard at me. I couldn’t put the belt on in time so just conveniently pulled into the parking lot and went inside to the lab. But know I knew it, he knew me and probably wasn’t going to forget it soon.

That’s where time three comes into play. Later that same week, my boss wanted a library book borrowed, copied and returned (thankfully he did the translation from German himself). Not having borrowed a book from the library ever, I set off with my friend to visit the library. Distinctly remembering I was being watched for, I was careful to not get a buckling ticket on the way to the library. We parked and walked in, only to find out that you need your student ID to borrow a book from the library. I asked the librarian if we could just do a drive-by, me dropping off my friend to use my ID to borrow the book. Drive-bys aren’t a term taken lightly at the library judging by the look I got at the counter, but she said that was fine and so we hurried to the car to go around the circle before the librarian forgot.

Hurrying leads to forgetfulness, one of the sources of the proverbial haste waste, which is why I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt when I whipped around the corner going 35 in a 25 zone. The first cop tagged me but let me go as I slowed down. But the second guy had been watching for me all week and he’d finally gotten his kill. I didn’t even bother with typical evasion maneuvers, turning left at the light and pulling over before he’d barely even got his lights on. I knew I was caught and there was no way out of this. My passenger hastily swung her belt on as he walked up in those shiny black boots, but I didn’t even bother.

Rolling down my window, information in hand, I was hoping for only one ticket rather than one for speeding and one for the belt. He asked me, “Sir, do you know why I pulled you over?”. Of course I knew but there was no way I gonna make it that easy. I casually made mention that I might’ve been speeding but he got straight to the point.

Officer: “Do you know it’s the law to wear your seatbelt?”

Me: “Yes, I’d heard that.”

Officer (looking at passenger): “What, did your passenger tell you that?”

Me: “No, sir, something like 50 fricking radio ads.”

Pause at which point he probably wasn’t sure how to process what I’d just told him. I thought best to spill.

Me: “I’m sorry, I’m just not in the habit of wearing a seatbelt ( <-- just told him this was a normal occurrence which he already knew anyways) because where I come from we don’t have to wear them (out of all this truth comes the lie of them all, I obviously had a US driver’s license). I work on a farm and am always just hopping in and out (true, and we smelled like it). We were just up at the library and I didn’t know you had to have your ID to check out a book so we were just going around the circle to pick up that book really quick and I wasn’t thinking about it ( <-- is this guy stupid?).” He walks off for a while back to the motorcycle to think things over and starts writing on a pad of paper. I was screwed.

Officer: “I’m just going to let you go with a warning today, but buckle up or next time it’s gonna be a $65 reminder." Wait a second, did he really just let me go?

When they made wearing seatbelts the law, I made it a mission of mine to defy that law as much as possible when driving around short distances in town, hating any time that laws are used to enforce common sense (Yes, I know that reasoning sounds as stupid as it is, but defiance is often about the ideal, not always straight logic) and counting on my own ability to drive and pay attention to take care of me and too lazy to buckle for the short trips. I still used the belt when I was driving long distance, but not when I was just hopping in and out. Getting that second chance to not get a ticket and knowing my car was blacklisted is what got me started wearing it again. My small moment of defiance was overtaken once again by common sense which told me I might want the belt sometime.

Buckle up, folks. More often than not it will save your life.

My Plate

The new food pyramid came out. Well, it doesn’t really look like a food pyramid anymore. They’ve successfully weaned us completely off the building block design I grew up with, eliminating sweets, fats and sugars from what I’m supposed to eat at all. But who are we kidding? It’s some of the cheapest energy available and has kept Americans kicking butt since we used them for soldiers in the World Wars. Even today they try to ship chocolate to the soldiers in the Middle East, but temperature has been a bit of a limiting factor and I’ve heard the chocolate that can survive that is not really worth eating.

The link I gave you above to the food pyramid comes from a friend’s blog. She gave some interesting input on it and I found it more helpful than the still currently limited information on the USDA blog. I have this sinking feeling that I blogged just last year on a new food pyramid and they probably just finished creating that website, so we’re in for a bit of a wait as they tell us over again how to eat and how to not get as fat as we are. But as time goes on, I’m seeing more that it’s not just how much we eat, it’s how much we do. And I found it ironic that they decided to suggest drinking fat free milk even though the fat provided in milk is much better for people than other fat they could intake. Milk is so great for you, there’s no reason why 1% or 2% milk isn’t just fine. Just remember to limit your fat intake somewhere else.
I didn’t gain weight when I ate a lot, I gained weight when I ate more than I was burning in daily exercise and work. I lose weight when I do physical labor and play sports, regardless of how much I eat or drink during that time. Sure, how much I eat or drink might limit how much weight I lose, but I lose weight. Amanda and I are in the process of tracking our weight change versus how much we walk and I can tell you that already the graphs are pretty interesting for me. I’ve learned a lot about my exercise levels and how much I really do or don’t walk on a given day and I’ll give you 2 fun facts I picked up the past couple weeks. First, stairs at work instead of the elevator isn’t gonna do it unless you work at the Sears Tower. Second, I need to ditch the desk work. Unfortunately neither of these are helpful in my situation so I’ll keep walking as much as I can and limiting unnecessary food intake.

And that’s what really important out of all this. We don’t all have a ton of time to go exercise and be super athletes. I hate lifting, my wife hates running, and our dog can’t go swimming with us. But all of us can find ways to be active, and we can avoid intaking large quantities of food. If you want a health food diet just eat healthy quantities for starters. People who pack themselves full of fiber material such as lettuce just to limit their intake or who starve themselves to limit calories are most likely not enjoying their weight loss strategies for various reasons. And our bodies are designed to be efficient. If your intake balance shifts, your body will find a way to capture as much as possible from what you provide it – that’s just a fact of life and something those of us who work with food animals are acutely aware of. Just like humans, animals adjust to different energy sources or quantities and their bodies naturally do what is efficient. Our problem is that we’re smart enough to provide ourselves more food than we need and then our body is too efficient. We eat too much and then our body stores too much and we get fatter. And we don’t exercise.

The food pyramid provides a great guideline for balancing your meals, but we need to limit how much balanced food we eat. And then we need to get outside and be active.

Garden dries out (duplicate post)

The funny thing about planting gardens on time is that the weather just might end up hating you for it. I couldn’t have predicted when we beat the light rain shower that day that the next 2 weeks would be a continuation of the rainy misery we’ve suffered through here in the Midwest. And now that it’s sunny and my plants are all flooded out, the coast has cleared enough to go in and inspect the damage.

From 3 rows of sweet corn, 5 plants made it through the deluge. The cantaloupe came up in a fury, but I’m worried that it will wilt fast under the weather now because it hasn’t been able to leaf enough to shelter itself. Our herbs are starting to pop bravely back through the soil in the basket but they are behind schedule severely. Pumpkins are up and growing, but I didn’t even mean to plant those; they’re just volunteers from last year. Our strawberry plant drowned and subsequently fried, suffering a death rivaled only by the Spanish Inquisition, while even our indoor tomatoes have slowed their growth because there wasn’t any sunlight for them to absorb. The only two plants which came up nicely were the beans (eaten by our overpopulation of groundhogs and deer) and the peas. Hopefully the peas will survive the sunlight and give us a few flowers before they die from the sudden season change.

It’s a sad time out in the gardens, but since there’s extra seeds we’ll give it one more chance I guess. Hopefully it’ll get better and hopefully my guesses are wrong, but this isn’t looking to be a very wet summer. If I was a farmer, I’d really struggle convincing myself to put in all the effort on the slim chance that my harvest comes out right this year. Good luck to all that are out planting right now or making hay.

No more videos! (duplicate post)

This past week marked a great milestone in my time as a graduate student. Since I arrived last summer, I’ve been assigned to video evaluation of pigs we recorded on farm visits. The main gist of the project was to evaluate a training program’s success in helping farmers learn to limit their pigs’ stress and thus to ultimately benefit the pig by lowering their stress level and improving the interactions with humans. There’s a lot of evidence that points to increased production value of animals which have more positive interactions with humans as opposed to negative interactions with humans and sometimes people just don’t quite understand what can make up a positive or negative interaction. Some things as simple as shouting across the pens to someone else can stress out an animal whereas moving through pens at a moderate volume level and occasionally gently patting animals that are in your way, etc., can help improve their interactions with the livestock caretaker.

So a part of this project consisted of us coming on farm, walking through the pens with a video recorder, and then me going back through later and counting the number of pigs visible in the frame every five seconds. Let’s review: We visit LOTS of farms and record pigs; then I watch the video, stopping every five seconds to count pigs. Yeah, I started last summer and have never caught up. Until now.

This week I finished video number ~130, each one of which took excess of an hour if it went right the first time. The whole time the camera view is being knocked back and forth by pigs on screen that ran into the videographer (not a fun job) so it’s a short matter of time before I got motion sick. There were weeks in the fall where I spent the whole week in a state of motion sickness and headache from so much video analysis. All of this was fit in between classes and other work, and on a time crunch because we’re trying to analyze the project data now. As much fun as that was, I’m very glad to have it done and the time freed up to help on something new. Projects need to be changed up every so often and that one’s been on my plate for over a year now.

Softball Championships

Softball championships were last night and although we made a great run in the playoffs (mostly by showing up when the other team forgot), we were eliminated in a bloodbath in the final. The other team didn’t exhibit great sportsmanship and while we all had good moments the team never got clicking on all four wheels at the same time. I made some great catches to keep us going, but also missed one play early that could’ve limited two runs, had great hits but also couldn’t get on base with them because the fielders in left field and third base were absolutely great. And that’s just life. Unfortunately that’s also what one guy told me as we carried him to his car since he got knocked over playing catcher – “that’s just life”.

At least we didn’t have some all-star professional jerk playing on our team like Pryor. Singlehandedly guilty of wrecking our football program and getting Tressel fired for trying to cover his butt might be an over exaggeration but it’s how I feel. He should be ashamed of his lifestyle and his attitude towards the rest of the team. Not only did he let down a huge fan base, but he got the greatest coach in college football “resigned” from one of the best football schools in the country. He might have seemed a little pretentious with his published morals, but this was a coach who truly “got” Ohio and Columbus. He loved this place and won me over with his classy wins over Michigan, his truthful response in press conferences, his encouragement of the prayer and Carmen Ohio after every game and his speech after winning the 2002 trophy. Nobody’s perfect, but Pryor makes the devil look good this week.

Parkour ruining the park

While we were down in the Hocking Hills, amidst all of the buzzing crowd, there were small groups that stood apart from the rest. As we descended into the Old Man’s Cave area of the trail the first one popped into view. There was a guy hollering in what seemed a falsified Queen’s English accent at a bunch of people who were hanging on the rails of a bridge on the outside. Now, the bridge wasn’t that high above the ground, but they were hanging on like their life depended on it, and exactly like you would expect to see kids aged 5-9ish hanging on a railing. Except they weren’t kids.
These were young adults and adolescents, none of them super fit but all seemingly similar in their mediocre athletic build. As we continued down the trail we saw more and more of them, always in groups and doing random strange things. We saw them lined up off the trail preparing to run and jump through the rocks over the tunnel where the trail continues. We saw them rock hopping and running up the side of the hill towards the ridge through the restoration area which said “stay off” and “not a trail”. It seemed the longer we were hiking that a few things were certain: 1) They were doing some sort of training or simulated training, 2) They were not practicing reading signs and rules, 3) They were paying for these guys to shout at them.

Then we came up past a bridge where they were walking backwards along the arch. I’ve included the picture so you can see just what kind of obnoxious stupidity was going on in the park last weekend. Luckily we moved far past the craziness and were able to enjoy a real walk away from the madness. I’ve also included a couple of videos made by the company putting this on so that you can see what I’m talking about. I see two reasons why anyone would want this skill. Either they haven't grown up yet or they're practicing running from the cops. Or both.





So the question posed after seeing all this and learning about the company (Parkour Horizons), I had a couple of questions which I would love answered. First, how is this company or group allowed to formally come onto park property, regulated by the ODNR, and violate all the rules of the place, posting videos of their park rule violations? They even brought a video crew and set up in the rocks to make a video production out of these shenanigans. Secondly, who would pay for something like this? It’s all just one little taste of the American diversity which made itself known in Hocking Hills last weekend.

The Toad

I think Betsy would eat anything that didn’t eat her first if given the chance. Heck, that’s how she got herself into those tequila shots on Amanda’s birthday and almost killed for the brand new shoes of Amanda's, but her obsession lies primarily with things that live and move. She wants so badly to catch critters but thank goodness she lacks the skill to catch much since she has no idea what she would do with it afterwards. She reminds me of our little kitten Benny back when we still thought he was a girl and she caught a mouse. After catching the mouse, “Bethany” wouldn’t let it go and ran around and around with it in her mouth, unsure of what to do but sure that she didn’t want to share her glory with anyone.

Well, Betsy has two friends in particular that she wants to become better bonded with. The random worms, spiders and puffball miniature pets roaming our complex but what Betsy really wants and the holy grail that drives her crazy are rabbits and the toad. Rabbits are thankfully far too fast and alert for Betsy on the average day but there have been some mornings where she spins around the corner on her leash and I barely hold on before yelling out to her, reminding her that it’s morning and we’re not off to hunt right now.

The rabbits are so plentiful that I couldn’t ever identify just one but the bunches of them are always out there, around every corner, hiding in every bush and just waiting to surprise Betsy, so she’s always on the alert. Not wanting to waste a single opportunity she continuous pops her head into bushes and sniffs around for any sign of them, and then as if to get that closer, more intimate relationship between hunter and hunted, she tries to eat their droppings. Dogs seem to have a strange obsession with feces, something I’ve been trying to talk out of her since the day we got her.
But what she wants more than anything else in this world is the toad. He hopped into her life one day similarly to how she prances around the house every day during playtime. Jumping right across our path she was awe-stricken and immediately obsessed. So obsessed was she that she barely took the time to squat down and pee before running back, jumping through the herb basket and finding… no toad there. While she was gone I had ushered him into the garden where he would be hidden in the dark. That didn’t stop me from being mad at her for flipping the herb basket and so far we have everything growing in the wrong place because of that.

When it gets late at night, the toad hops out to have a look around for tasty treats. Betsy is always laying by the window, jealously observing his movements and I’m not sure if she wants to be out there playing with him or eating him but common sense has reinforced in me the belief that her intentions will not lead to happy days for the toad. The toad and I go way back to last fall when I accidentally sent him to an early hibernation by nearing squishing him to death under my shoe before helping him hobble into the neighbor’s flowers. I washttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif glad to see him return and am bound and determined not to let Betsy be the end of him now. So she sits and waits, waits and whines, whimpering about how unfair life is that she can’t be out playing with the toad.

Credit to legalectric.org for toad pic.

A day of debt and gratitude

If you think about the significance of a day like today, the cliche statement "freedom isn't free" always surfaces to the top. After spending a lot of time at US battlefields both here in the US and overseas in Europe, grave stones, those pale somber tributes are also one of the first things to pop into my mind. And those pale stones are growing in number every day in cemeteries like Arlington as soldiers die in battle, or our veterans from so many great wars before our time pass away. We are truly blessed to have so many people who have sacrificed their lives, their families, and their other career pursuits in defense of the one pivotal, defining and often controversial aspect of this country: freedom. Freedom is never free.

Memorial Day to me as a kid was one of those days we marked in remembrance of those who served our country and in celebration of the freedom we enjoy. It was the long weekend break in the school year with a fighter flyover, tons of grungy flea markets and the deadline for making the first cutting of hay. I saw a lot of people out getting that first cutting down and dry today and it reminded me of times gone by. Pitching manure out of the feedlot by hand, getting the worst sunburned neck of the year and working all day just for a decent grill-out at the end. Because even as we remember and celebrate, time goes on.

Time goes on and unyieldingly requires of us over and over again to prove just how much this freedom we have is worth. Back in high school I spent a weekend with kids from military families in an outreach program and tried to relate to the sacrifice that they feel. Freedom isn't free and it costs as much from the family of the servicemen as it does from those who are deployed. Weekends given up for training, instability for living locations due to re-deployments, the uncertainty of the job risk - never knowing if they wouldn't hear from Mommy or Daddy, or both, ever again. Every call or letter could be the last one and you could see the stress of the situation played out in every kid. Sure, they all applied it to their lives and dealt with it in unique ways but their one unifying condition was stress and uncertainty, because freedom isn't free.

This will be the 3rd year that my dad has been assigned overseas. Thankfully he doesn't often find himself in the line of fire but the stress of him being gone is still trying on the family. It wasn't until he went over that I realized just how diverse and numerous the people were who do the behind the scenes work involved in protecting and sharing our precious freedom globally. And there isn't a day gone by that I haven't missed him here, some days more than others. We don't know what a military family knows in terms of sacrifice, but I can say that I have personally experienced the trials that a family can undergo on behalf of this country's freedom. I know it's worth it; I'm just very grateful to everyone who makes a sacrifice on behalf of our country. I hope you have all find the time to get done what you wanted to accomplish this week, and that you have taken the time to thank those who fight and have fought so that you could enjoy your extended weekend.

Visit to the Hocking Hills

Over the past few months, Betsy has become increasingly a focal part of our family. No weekend has been as strong a testament to this so far as this past one when we took a hiking trip down to the Hocking Hills. Amanda looked up to find out ahead of time that the trails were pet-friendly and so we packed up, gave the dog some easy drugs and embarked on a bonding journey. A short time later, we had arrived in a madhouse that was best described by a man I met last summer: “All the cockroaches come out at a time like that”. I’ll save a specific description for a separate blog post which I have reserved for scathing some idiots, but it was hectic and loaded with crazies to say the least.

For a dog we’ve only had 5 months, Betsy performed with agility and poise among the multitudes of furry friends and their owners. I’ve never seen so many dogs out at a park before and we took quite a while just to get away from the bulk of the people. Amanda says Betsy was probably over-stimulated, but regardless of the cause she was pretty withdrawn throughout the process and politely approached dogs and people only when given permission. We let her play in the water some and ours was of course the embarrassing one which decided to drop and wet right into the water where kids were playing.

Escaping all of the madness we finally got into the quiet of the woods. Betsy loved the walk and proved to have a natural inclination towards agility as we navigated through some places where the trail had completely disintegrated. She hopped up on rocks twice as tall as her and patiently waited in single file passes as people had to come through the opposite direction. I have to attribute a lot of this good behavior to the socialization and walks that Amanda has been taking Betsy on; Amanda should be proud of how great the dog was.

Both of them are troopers for putting up with the misunderstanding of trail distances that occurred. I fully knew that the loop trail we were on was 3 miles each way and tried to tell Amanda this, but it didn’t seem to sink in. I knew we were doomed when we got to the end and Amanda thought we were back to the beginning. With a heavy heart, I informed her we had another 3 miles to go and I started to get concerned about how tired Betsy was going to be. Finally, we made it back to the car and I’ve never seen a dog so droopy and worn out. She slept nearly the whole way back as Amanda and I got a well-earned lunch. Betsy and her little legs walked 6 miles down there and she was still feeling it this morning when we got up. But what a great day!

I’ve added a few pictures from our trip the photo album on my Picasa; please enjoy.