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.

Busy Week

I'll warn you now that I'm going to have quite a few blogs on the way out in the next couple of days. I've been in the habit of writing blogs and keeping them on my desktop, publishing one a day as I see fit in order to allow me time to focus on writing, but also and more importantly time to focus on what is quickly becoming a more busy work schedule.

It's not that I'm actually doing any more physical work but I've had a lot of projects and the like which are open and running at the same time. All of these things have to come to a close soon, especially as I get ready to finish classes and head into the summer with research and literature reviews. I've been trying to wrap a lot of stuff up this week and the middle of yesterday afternoon finally marked the breaking point where I was mostly done with all pressing matters and I could collapse into temporary complacency on the rest of it. Last night we watched Megamind in honor of that and Amanda graciously sat through a movie which is not her type and smiled along with the dumb humor which I of course was very entertained by.

This week marks the submission of my IACUC proposal for starters which has been a much larger endeavor than I had originally supposed. For those of you who don't know, IACUC is an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and every research institution has one of these committees. The main purpose of the committee is to oversee research that deals with animals and ensure the animals' well-being by reviewing the protocols and making sure that the animals will be well cared far, that the research has a practical use in today's society, that animals will not be wasted needlessly in this research and that there isn't some crazy professor doing horrendous things to animals in the name of science. All of these criteria have some very specific reasoning behind them which focus on the 3 R's of research today: Replacement, Refinement and Reduction. For more on that I'll refer you to a parallel blog of mine where I've already commented on this. Let's just say that I spent over a month now refining my protocol and editing in many people's comments, ensuring the staff for the project were appropriately trained and certified and dotting my i's before it was turned in this week. I'm very glad to have it off my chest.

Second big thing on my plate this week was my last homework for my SAS class. I've got to say that apart from the homework, this hasn't felt like a class at all. I've enjoyed nearly every minute in class and out of it when I've had questions for the professor. He is a great guy and we are lucky to have him teaching here. I finished the homework and immediately after turning it in had regrets on the accuracy and appropriateness of my models; hopefully it went better than my gut feeling is always telling me.

Then the third big thing I had this week was a research seminar on the 3 main manuscripts leading to my research proposal. This was for a class and a satisfactory grade so while I wasn't super concerned about it, I have my own reputation to uphold as well and I want to be known for professionalism and a job well done in these things. I tried to throw a bit of pizazz in the presentation with imaging and using our department's new big screen TV rather than blurring my images through the old slide projector and I was really happy with how that turned out. But the presentation itself sometimes felt more like an interrogation session than a talk I was giving. It's something that I'll have to get used to during my time here pursuing my Masters, I think. Based on my impressions from Masters defenses around here they're just prepping for the big show in the future.

So with all of that off my plate, I can refocus on my other stuff obscuring my desk right now. Lauren and I still owe 4-H our final write-up from March and I have a final exam project for SAS along with finishing up data collection from elapsed video shots (~130 dvds in all!). I can't wait to be done with that, it feels like that's all I've been doing the past year.

My first video chat

I always had a speculation that video chatting was particularly well suited for less legitimate internet purposes, but I cast that close-mindedness aside when I first used my computer webcam this past week for a little chat with an old roommate. The experience was actually pretty cool, but it led to me learning very quickly, or slowly in some cases, things that work well for video chatting someone and things that don't so I thought I'd share a few.

Like many things on my computer, my webcam automatically starts up when triggered by another program. In this case I was called to video chat and my computer responded by opening up that program without even telling me. I came face to face with someone before I even realized they were calling. In this case that was ok, but in the future I plan to have something set up that requests permission before acknowledging and definitely before answering a video chat with video feed. It would be really weird to me to suddenly find out I'm video chatting with someone I don't or barely know. On a side note to that, during the call my video link fell out. That left Tony with just a picture of me but I could still see him; very weird.

Second is where the camera is pointed, etc. I usually sit pretty high above my screen and with the limited range of vision that my webcam has it was pretty much pointed at my chest. Again, while this might have uses in other fields of internet use, Tony was calling to speak face to face with me and so I learned quickly it's important to find a range to sit in where the camera can follow your face the whole time. Similarly, it was important not to move around a lot in the picture. Betsy was running around and I kept trying to pet her or hold her on the couch but then I was rocking the computer screen and moving around a lot - the perfect recipe for the other chatter's motion sickness.

Another important detail is eye contact. I have a strong tendency to multi-task, but answering emails and trying to work on other things at the same time as having a conversation is kind of rude. Unlike just doing this on the phone or in a normal text chat, they can see in this case when you're not paying attention to them or when you're distracted and this is also something to be considerate of during a conversation, depending on how important the other person is to you.

But all in all, I thought for a first call it went pretty well. The voice is kinda choppy and it reminds me of trying to Skype people in a different language with tons of pauses and delays for reactions, etc. Nice thing about it is eliminating the need for stupid type such as "lol", because I can now see if you smile or laugh and don't need to be told what I said was funny. As I posted on my Facebook, very cool little adventure, but welcome to at least a decade ago. I'm pretty sure everyone I know has used that technology before so shame on me for being so far behind.

Parenting Practice

I joked when we got the dog that she was our child that we could return to the pound if she was bad. Of course I'd never return her, but there are days I definitely question our moment of insanity when we got her and I wonder how on earth I'll ever deal with the reality of children for 20 years before they disappear to start their own lives.

Betsy is a lesson in parenting every day since we got her in January. Currently she's digesting some jelly beans she snuck from a box of trash by the door (Amanda trying to motivate us to lose weight by throwing away everything good in the house). I pushed Betsy off the bed after she wouldn't stop whining about nothing thus in my mind deserving loss of privileges such as sitting on furniture. It wasn't two minutes before she came slinking back into the room looking guilty. Upon arriving at me, she rolled over and casually tried to drop a half-eaten lemon jelly bean onto the floor as if she had no idea how it got there. Oh, she knew alright, but I told her it was fine, "You'll deserve it when you throw up now." And pretty soon I think you can see how I'm not quite cut out for parenting yet.

We've been through everything from manners towards strangers, not eating dirt, not wetting the carpet (have to re-learn that every week right now), eating all of our dinner, not getting treats unless we're on good behavior, not whining and crying about nothing, when it's ok to play and when it's not ok to bark loudly. None of these are mutually exclusive and I think I speak for Amanda when I say that both of us are exhausted most days trying to keep up with the dog and her antics. Precious though she may be, she is a challenge and the level of challenge which I can rise to right now. Parenting practice continues for now...