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.