Fossils

I need to clear something up. Geology is the study of rocks, not fossils. The study of fossils is paleontology. People are always confused by that. It's understandable I suppose, because pretty much all geologists really like fossils, and the rocks they are found in are really quite interesting to paleontologists. Quite a lot of overlap, very confusing.

Acrocanthosaurus at the beach.

Over thanksgiving break we dragged the kids around to see and collect some fossils. Our first stop was Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose Texas. Here you can see some of the best preserved dinosaur tracks in the world sitting on the riverbed of the Paluxy River. It's a cool place. About 113 million years ago the area was the edge of a shallow sea. The beach wasn't like we normally think of a beach, it was gooey calcareous mud. One day, a herd of Pleorocoelus (like a brontosaurus but with a shorter neck and tail) walked down the beach. They were followed by a couple of Acrocanthosaurus (like a t-rex but a bit smaller) who were presumably trying to catch up and eat them. This probably happened a lot, but the tracks from this particular day were covered and preserved. When the Paluxy river wore away limey shales over this old beach, the tracks were exposed. They've been extensively studied and a large section of them has been cut out of the rock and placed on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This was really a good thing to do as the action of the river naturally erodes the tracks and something that is 113 million years old can degrade within one human lifetime. I don't know if they are still on display there but I'd love it if someone would stop by and let me know. Luckily there are several tracks that are still visible and in great shape at the park. We had a great time hiking around and seeing the tracks and exploring and talking about dinosaurs.

Fantastic ammonite cast.

Our second fossil stop of the trip was to Lake Benbrook outside Fort Worth Texas. This is the one time when the drought in Texas is working to our advantage. The lake level is really really low so much of the shore that you can walk on and explore now is usually under water. This was easily the best fossil hunting day I've ever had. We found dozens of partial ammonites, tons of clams of various sorts, quite a few snail shells and one small sand dollar. All of the kids could easily find fossils and we ended up hauling quite a lot of them back to the truck. The recommended place to fossil hunt isn't actually on the shore where we were (because it's usually under water) but in the rock cut for the dam spillway. This is probably a great spot to find fossils and we did find a few, including a couple of incredible ammonite casts. If we hadn't already found such easy and abundant fossils on the lake bed we would have loved it, but we were spoiled. These fossils are from a younger rock, only 70-85 million years old, and were formed by a shallow sea. We had a good time discussing the fact that ammonites, which are like a squid in a shell, not a snail, are extinct but snails and clams and sand dollars are not. Extinctions happen, but life itself lives on. So far.
 We had a great trip, found some of the best fossils of our lives and got to see real dinosaur tracks. Can't beat that.

Greek Yogurt

 Now that you know how to make yogurt, the next obvious step is greek yogurt. Judging by the yogurt cooler at the store over the past few years, greek yogurt has gotten very popular. It is also quite expensive and seems to be a bit of a mystery to people. Lots of people are buying it, and more people should be making it. Greek yogurt is nothing more than regular yogurt with most of the whey removed. It's much thicker, almost like a soft creme cheese. In fact, I've spread it on a bagel or two and been quite happy with the results.

Greek yogurt production apparatus.

How to remove the whey? The easiest way is with a coffee filter and a funnel. Just put the filter in the funnel and the yogurt in the filter and set the whole thing on top of a cup to catch the whey. Set it in the fridge and in the morning you have greek yogurt in the filter, and whey in the cup. In my experience, you get about half of what you put in the filter back out as greek yogurt, the rest drains out as whey. This means that if you want 1/2 cup of greek yogurt for breakfast, put one cup of yogurt in the filter. If you regularly ate 1/2 cup of yogurt and now you're eating 1/2 cup of greek yogurt, clearly your costs have doubled. This is a pretty good explanation for why greek yogurt is so expensive in stores. You can use any plain yogurt that you want to make greek yogurt. Full fat, half fat, no fat, it all works. You do have to use actual yogurt though, if your yogurt has any ingredients other than milk and cultures, your results may vary dramatically from what I show here.

Finished product, delicious.

I don't make greek yogurt too often, it makes me sad to throw away the whey. In fact, about the only time I make it is when I actually need whey for something. What could I need whey for? Whey is a fetid bacterial slurry that is quite useful when starting a batch of sauerkraut. You can start your kraut naturally of course, but like when I made my sourdough starter, if you add some of the correct little beasties at the beginning, your wait is less. I'll write more about my kraut later, I just started a batch today. For now, if you have a batch of yogurt around and have wanted to try greek yogurt, or if you already like greek yogurt and want to figure out if you can make it cheaper than you can buy it, give this a try.

Mud

Mud is one of those things that really illustrates the cognitive dissonance that I have as a parent. On the one hand, mud is awesome. I know this from personal experience as a kid. Mud is squishy and dirty and just awesome. On the other hand, four kids spending five minutes in the mud creates a hour of bathing and a full load of laundry.
When I only had two kids, I was much more likely to let things slide and let the kids play in the mud. My two older kids had quite a few afternoons spent splashing in the yard. They were small and they both fit in the bathtub at the same time and I could put their clothes to soak for a day or so until I had a full load of laundry to do. Back then I only had to do laundry twice a week. Those were the days. The third one changed that subtle dynamic. If you only have one kid, how much fun can they have alone in the mud? Well, a lot, but not as much fun at two together. Two is perfect, you have fun but your parents can still handle the carnage. Three just puts you over the edge, so my third and fourth haven't had as much mud time.

Here I approve. It will not last.

When they do get mud time, it's usually because they lie. They tell me that they're just going to play a little bit. Just walk through the puddles in their boots. Not splash. Just poke the mud with sticks. Float some leaf boats in the puddles. I believe that they think they're telling the truth, but I know they're lying, even if they don't. The walking becomes running which causes splashing. The poking with sticks turns into digging which requires hands to really effectively accomplish the task. Just a bit of mud on the hands gets wiped on the face and in the hair do deal with itches. A wet cuff gradually creeps upward until they're muddy to the elbows.
I see all of this out the windows and I allow it. They think they're not being watched, but they are. And that's really my biggest problem with the whole deal. It's not the kids, they're just being kids. Dirty and sneaky and irresponsible and just kids. It's me. I find that I can't just approve of playing in the mud. I can't look outside in the morning and see the puddles and tell the kids to get on their boots and play. They ask if they can, and I say no, and they end up doing it anyway, and I get a little grumpy when I have to bathe all of them and they still have a great time. Being subversive is something we do as kids and as adults. It's not like lying, really. You do something you know that you're not supposed to do, knowing that you'll get caught in the end, but knowing that the here and now is worth it and through your actions you can maybe, just maybe bring about change. I honestly think my kids are tying to show me that playing in the mud isn't so bad, but the only way that can show me is to break a rule and do it in the first place. Maybe all of this is teaching them some great important life lesson.
Maybe it's just mud, and it's awesome.

Texas Petting Zoo

Note: I'm going to make some generalizations about Texas that are in the name of comedy. If you are a native son of Texas and are easily offended when people are silly when talking about Texas, let this be your warning. Also, the pictures I've included aren't the best wildlife pictures that we took, but they are the pictures that best show how unique your interaction with the wildlife can be.

Good morning, welcome to Fossil Rim.

Early morning traffic.

When you live outside of Texas, you hear stories about Texas. Everyone in Texas drives a pickup. Everyone wears cowboy hats. There are more cows than people (and they're smarter). Everything is bigger in Texas. The stars at night are big and bright. The legends abound, and some of them are true. Sort of.

Hey guys, got any treats?

If a Texan were to design a Texas-style petting zoo, it would be Fossil Rim Wildlife Center outside Glen Rose, Texas. For starters, it would be 1700 acres. That's big. Then it would have over 50 kinds of native and exotic species, including giraffes, cheetahs, zebras and rhinos. Next, you'd build a nine mile road throughout the facility so that you would visit and see the animals without ever getting out of your car, no walking or other physical exertion here. Finally, you'd build a snack bar/restaurant at the midway point of your drive so you didn't have to risk going three whole hours without food. Compare that to your regular petting zoo with 5 goats and a pot bellied pig and a llama. The Texas-style petting zoo wins in every metric. Except actually petting of course, because zebras bite and cheetahs will eat your children and rhinos will crush your car.
Fossil Rim is awesome. This is the second time we have visited. Both times have gone on Thanksgiving weekend and both times have been early in the morning so I can only tell you about our experience during that brief window. From what I read, the only two complaints that anyone has about Fossil Rim are that when it's hot, the animals all go hide in the shade, and when it's busy, you experience a very, very slow motion wildlife-induced traffic jam. We solve both of those problems by going when it's cool and by making sure that we're there right when it opens at 8:30. Both are highly recommended.

Glad to have a fence for these.

I know you have more, GIVE ME MORE!

We had a really good time. We saw almost every species of animal listed on the visitor's guide sheet:  zebras, oryx, scmitar-horned oryx, giraffes, red deer, blackbuck, aoudad, ostrich, wild turkeys, cheetahs, rhinos, white tailed bucks that would make any hunter fall out of his tree stand, and a bunch of others. There were animals from the first 50 feet of our drive right up to the gate at the end with very few places in the middle where we simply had to enjoy the incredible scenery. The kids enjoyed interacting with the wildlife in a way that simply isn't possible in the actual wild. The hoofed mammals are well conditioned to coming up to the cars to ask for treats. The animals that are dangerous, the rhinos and the cheetas, are fenced in but very visible. We had a better view of the cheetahs in a multi acre enclosure than you do when you see them in a tiny pen at the zoo. Most importantly, you get to see the animals out in an environment that closely approximates the wild. Yes, they are fed, and yes, they are conditioned to people, but when you see the giraffes walking in a herd among the trees and out onto the grassy plains of the park, with no fence in sight, you realize that this is probably how we should be going to the zoo. The enclosures at even the best zoos can't approximate the freedom that these animals have. It's wonderful.

Hey guys, any giraffe treats?

I wanted to take him home.  And eat him.

If you're wondering, they actually do have a petting zoo with goats and a pot bellied pig and a llama at the midway point of the drive along with the cafe and gift shop. The petting zoo wasn't open yet because we were there too early, but really, who wants to pet a goat when you can hop back in the car and have a red deer stick his head in the window.

Among Us

An emerging mushroom

Very bright gelatinous fungus

At the end of this post I reviewed the book Kingdom Fungi. Since starting to read it a month ago I haven't been able to step outside without seeing fungi everywhere. When my daughter and I were walking in the woods two weekends ago we saw several different varieties. We even saw puffball mushrooms at several stages of maturity and I was able to tear open the immature ones and show her how the inside ripened and got hollow. We then found a mature one and I showed her how a gentle tap would release spores through the hole in the top. I explained that they probably released the spores when they were hit with raindrops and the small concussions poofed out the spores. It was cool. I thought I might get away from them when I was up north last weekend. It was cold after all, below freezing for much of the time, not exactly mushroom weather. But I was so wrong, there were still fungi everywhere. I saw many many more mushrooms than I saw deer.  I finally had to start taking pictures of them.

Same log, different fungus.

I've walked in the woods a lot in my life, and I've seen a lot of mushrooms. It wasn't until I learned about them that I really began to see them though. Everywhere lots were rotting, there was a fungus. If it was moist and dark and there were old leaves, there was fungus. Standing trees that were dead or dying, more fungus. Open sandy patches where nothing would grow? Lichen, fungus and green algae living a pleasant symbiotic life together. Each providing for the other. There were traditional gilled mushrooms, rubbery gelatinous growths, hard woody protruding fungus with growth rings like trees. Trees with grotesque bulges from the effects of a fungal invasion. They were everywhere and for the first time, I understood them. At least a bit.

Lichen, fungus and bacteria living in harmony.

This is why I learn about things. About everything. The more you know about things, the more you see them and understand them. It's not just fungus, it's trees and insects and the weather and man made things. My engineering background lets me look at bridges and see why they were built like they were. I wish I knew more about architecture so when I look at the exposed structures in the airport I could figure out not only what they were trying to accomplish structurally, but artistically. Knowing more about art will make trips to the museum better. Learning to play the violin has made watching the orchestra at the ballet as much fun as watching the dancers. I love being able to answer questions when my kids ask them. I also love knowing that if I don't know the answer, I can say so and we can go off together and learn about it.

Different Lichen, same harmony.

The more you know about the word, the more you see in the world. Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently wrote in a discussion on Reddit -"My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer." Now, he's a really smart guy. He's certainly learned more and understands more than I can ever hope to, and he's amazed by the world on a daily basis. I don't think you can ever learn so much that you know enough to be bored by the world. It's the contrary, the more you know, the more amazing everything is. By learning constantly I'm able to keep that sense of wonder alive and by keeping it alive I'm hopefully going to be able to pass it on to my children. Hopefully. If nothing else, I'll be able to tell them all about the fungus that is among us.

Books I've finished this week :
World War Z, Max Brooks

More fungus.

You Can't Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe
WWZ is a great fun book that will give you the heebie jeebies. It's structured as a series of interviews of the survivors of the zombie apocalypse. He 'interviews' enough people from enough different backgrounds that you're bound to love some, hate others, and feel great sympathy with more than a few. It's really quite brilliantly written. Highly recommended.

Beautiful petite fungus.

You Can't Go Home is written by Thomas Wolfe who lived from 1900 to 1938, not to be confused with Tom Wolfe who is also a writer, but was born in 1931 and is still kicking around.  You Can't Go Home Again is considered his most popular and influential book. It's a combination of autobiographical fiction and personal philosophy and good story telling. It's a fascinating read. It discusses the Great Depression and the early beginnings of Nazi Germany and the events and people in between. Ranging from the rich to the incredibly down trodden and the experiences of a writer during it all. The book is structured about the author writing a successful book and the backlash of the town he grew up in about the autobiographical bits. Parts of the book nearly slip into a stream of consciousness philosophical tirade. They can be hard to read but there are some true nuggets of brilliant writing in them. The rest of the book, the story, is outstanding. If one could separate the story from the philosophy and publish them separately then both of them would be fantastic on their own. Together they are remarkable, but occasionally difficult. Give yourself a block of time for this one, it's almost 600 pages and parts of it don't exactly fly by. I think it's a book worth reading though, and should be mandatory if you're interested in writing anything for public consumption.

Fungus reaching for great heights.

Another short week of posting this week. We're headed off on an adventure for a few days. I'll return with stories of dinosaurs and drill rigs and giraffes and Thanksgiving Dinner.

Not a fungus, but caused by one.

Lunch #2

I'm pretty serious about feeding my kids. I don't focus on organic or local (although I do buy wild gulf shrimp) instead I focus on making real food from real ingredients. I try to be low on the white grains and sugars and high on the veggies, fruits and meats. I want my kids to grow up with a proper idea of what food is. You don't buy it in a box and heat it up. You buy ingredients and make it.
So when I go away for my 3 day solo vacation each year to decompress and theoretically hunt deer and get all lonely and want to come home again, I eat like crap. It's my way of rebelling against myself.  This year was mini powdered doughnuts, fritos and bean dip, a frozen pizza and a block of cheese. By the time I got home all I wanted was real meat and veggies. I craved them. Leftover lunch yesterday saved and restored me.
Looking in the fridge revealed a lone zucchini and two left over pork chops. I pulled out two carrots, a block of meunster cheese, a few cloves of garlic and some butter and olive oil. I heated up the oil and butter and put in the carrots I'd sliced. A few minutes later the sliced zucchini and the chopped garlic went in. When it was almost done, the cut up pork chops were added to warm them, and then off to a plate and topped with cheese. This one meal has transformed me. I went from feeling lethargic and terrible to feeling bouncy and full of energy and ready to accomplish something.
Good food is good.
In other food related news, I watched my three year old create instant rice crispy treats for breakfast. He started off with a bowl of rice crispies with honey and milk. After he finished that he decided he wanted a second bowl, but with no milk. Not what I'd call nutritionally perfect, but it was his second bowl so I thought I'd roll with it. The boy is brilliant. The rice crispies stuck together in little clumps around the honey and it was as if he'd made a bowl of fresh sticky rice crispie treats, just like that. I need to watch this one, he might be a little too clever.

Licking Armrests

I was flying yesterday and ended up reminiscing about all of the times my wife and I flew with little kids. There were lots and lots of babies in the airport so it was easy to get all misty eyed remembering the fun we had. I've got several stories about flying, but one always pops into my head when I'm sitting in the rows of seats in the waiting for the plane to board.
This was back when we only had one solitary child, and we were flying home for Christmas. She was about 10 months old and like all kids her age, she thought her mouth was a primary sensory organ. All exploration involved either placing the object in her mouth, or if the object was too big to be moved, chewing, gnawing, or generally licking it. We all have to deal with this with our kids. Every object needs to be analyzed for it's appropriateness for mouth exploration. Is it so small that it will be swallowed? Will they attempt to swallow it thinking that perhaps they're a python and instead choke on it? Will they fit it in their mouth and carry it around all day like a chipmunk? Is the object clean? Or even clean-ish? Just as there's a continuity of size, there is a continuity of clean. It ranges from a freshly washed teething toy to a truck stop urinal. Everything falls somewhere along that line and as a parent you often have to make snap decisions about what's appropriate. Most of your toys are on the good list. Chew on them like you're a terrier. Things outside in nature are probably ok from a germ perspective, but chewing on rocks and sticks presents other hazards, so they're probably not so good. Animals are on the no go list, but that situation seems to be naturally self correcting. The handle of the shopping cart? I'd rather they didn't but acknowledge that the likelihood of them contracting a serious disease from it is low. I won't freak out, but I will say no.
These decisions need to be automatic and fairly consistent. You don't want to make a well reasoned analytical decision when your toddler has picked up a dog turd and is aiming it toward their mouth. You need to freak out, just a bit, enough to get them to drop it and freak out themselves, just a bit. You need to do that every time, so that they eventually see dog turds and their primitive reptilian brain starts to associate dog turds with a mildly exploding dad. This is learning at it's finest.

A row of chew toys.

Which brings me to the airport. It's so so hard to keep a toddler entertained between the time you get through security and the time you board the plane. They want to move. They want to try running and fall on their faces in front of strangers who stare horrified at the sight of a toddler getting carpet burn right next to their carry on. They have no idea that everything isn't theirs. Everyone's luggage, food, and clothing is a potential for grabbing and exploration. Other kids toys are, well, toys. Toys are awesome and should be grabbed and played with, regardless of ownership. And the chairs, oh the chairs. When you're a toddler, it's like a never ending jungle gym. You can climb over them and under them and run around them and go from seat to seat and fall off of them in so many creative ways. As a parent you know that burning off this energy is good. Any energy burned off now means less available on the plane, but other passengers tend to give you looks suggesting that you have no control over your wild children. They don't understand that these acrobatics are actually for their benefit. You're tying to help them when your toddler does a double back flip onto their laptop bag. Really! And the armrests, they're at just the right height, and are just the right texture for licking chewing and slobbering upon. Armrests fall into the 'don't but you're not going to die' category. It's worthy of a 'don't do that', but not worthy of an 'OHMYGODSTOPTHAT!'. With a ratio of two adults to one child, the seating area still ends up looking like the previous round of passengers were all letting their pet snails out for a walk before the flight.
Even with all of that, I was a bit jealous of those parents that had babies and toddlers on the flights that I was on. When you're flying with kids you're not worried so much about petty things like the plane leaving on time and whether or not they will have a beverage service. You're much more concerned about surviving the flight and what diseases your child is going to come down with in the next week from licking the armrests.  Those were the days.

My Wife Hates Me.

I have a problem, and I'm getting absolutely no sympathy at home. In fact, my problem is being received with thinly veiled hostility. As I mentioned in this post, I'm running again. It's only two days a week and I'm only running half a hour at a time. In a week I only cover between 6 and 7 miles. Using a calorie estimator here I'm burning a maximum of 784 calories a week running. Really though, if you subtract off the calories that I'd burn anyway just because I'm alive during that hour, I burn 661 calories that I wouldn't have burned if I just laid around and watched the birds fly by instead of running. That's less than 100 calories a day. That's 15 of the wonderful cocoa covered almonds that I eat for a snack after running. Except I eat about 50 of them. And an apple. And a banana. And beef jerky. And then an hour later I eat lunch.

Half Marathon 2004. Have not repeated.

You see, my body is kind of a pain in the ass. Whenever I start running it becomes convinced that this whole running thing would be much easier if I weighed less. It's right, but it doesn't need to be so demanding about it. Whenever I start running, I have to start eating aggressively to counter my stupid body. This sounds like a great problem to have in theory, especially because my wife is really attracted to the skinny runner look and food is delicious, but my body has another annoying quirk. Whenever I my weight drops below about 150 lbs (at 5' 10" that's pretty damn skinny) it starts to recover from any physical exertion much more slowly. That means that my runs start to hurt more and my wrists hurt from lifting weights and I start to feel like an old man. I either have to stop running for a while so I can gain back some weight or I have to basically force feed myself. Running is good for me though, and I sort of enjoy it, so I'm eating half a summer sausage as I type this in the hopes that it will digest in time for me to have lunch. Blargh.
The only two places in the world that my wife would be considered overweight are a New York Fashion Week catwalk or a refugee camp. In the real world she gets dirty accusing looks from women when they find out that she has given birth four times instead of the zero times that it looks like. She's hot. But like most women in their 30's who have had multiple children, she's hot on purpose, through attention to her eating and exercise. She doesn't accidentally lose weight and complain about it like me.
Consequently, I get no sympathy for my plight at home. She doesn't see that taking seconds at dinner isn't as pleasant as it seems. Remembering to eat a snack between breakfast and lunch so I have time to digest everything is hard. When I pour a half cup of cream into the mixer and whip it up for a snack after the kids go to bed (400 calories or so) she doesn't feel bad for me. I'm pouring my heart out here on my blog because when I do it at home, my wife sort of hates me. Somebody please feel bad for me. Please?

No posting for the rest of the week. I'm going to be far away from technology, but I will return. I'll probably even get back to posting about kids or being a dad or something related to the point of this blog.

My 36th Year

Well, I'm now twice as old as a high schooler. That's pretty old. Feels pretty old any way. I'm quite happy with what I did last year. Among other things, I learned to juggle and play the violin. One mental skill, one physical skill. Neither one of them particularly useful in any meaningful way, but both of them fun.

I need to be better at this.

I've been wondering if that was my mid life crisis. An affirmation that I can still accomplish a task that is usually accomplished by a much younger person. If that's what it is then I'm ok with it, and I think I should continue crisising. What do do this year? About a month ago I started working on doing handstands with the idea that I can eventually work up to a free standing hand stand push-up. Since I can't yet hold a handstand for more than about 5 seconds, that seems like a pretty good road to continue down for the year. What's more useless than a handstand push-up?
I'll tell you what, clocks. Not that clocks aren't useful, but building a clock, that can't be a functional use of time. And I'm not talking about building a cabinet and putting a movement inside. No, I want to build the movement, from scratch, from wood. I'm thinking of starting by asking for a pre-cut kit for Christmas and assembling it to get a feel for what's involved. There's lots of gears and the pendulum and the escapement and a lot of stuff that I've read about, but I think I need to handle to really wrap my mind around it. Then I need to figure out how to actually do the work myself, to cut and shape the gears by hand and assemble it into a working clock. That sounds like a task that I can really immerse myself in.
Stay tuned to watch a very small mid life crisis unfold.

Kleen Kanteen Steel Pint Review

Hot or cold, perfection in a cup.

Kleen Kanteen has solved all of my dad related drinking problems. That sounds bad. They have produced a cup that solves the problems I had with cups for me and my kids. Those two problems were as follows:
1. I hate plastic. It makes things taste funny and feels terrible agianst my mouth.
2. My kids break evertything that isn't plastic. Glass has a terrifyingly short life around here.
Kleen Kanteen has solved both of those problems with their new Steel Pint. The cups are 16 oz which is a perfect size for basically everything, adult or child. They are indestructible. They're stainless steel so they don't change the taste of anything and they feel good against my tender lips. I love them so much. They're not absolutely perfect. These cups conduct heat quickly so they sweat a lot when you have a cold drink in them. Because they conduct heat well you need to be careful with hot beverages, though Kleen Kanteen doesn't explicitly say this, you can burn your lips or hands pretty easy if your coffee is hot and you're not careful. I do like to drink coffee out of them though. I don't understand people who like really hot coffee. You can't drink it until it cools down so what's the point? Coffee cools down quickly in these cups and you can easily check the temperature with your hand. If you can touch it, you can drink it. I drink coffee fast when it's at the right temperature so these cups are perfect for my type of coffee drinking. They're actually perfect for everything.
These cups rule and every dad should get a set for Christmas. In fact, I need more, so all my readers can keep that in mind when they go shopping for me.

Short post today, sorry about that. I'm between coats of paint in the bathroom and my in-laws are coming tomorrow. That's right, I'm painting the bathroom the day before my in-laws come. I'm an idiot.

Throwing Toddlers

Every dad has a version of this game. It ranges from the quick pick up to literally, well, throwing. I'm the kind of guy who regularly drops things, so I never went for a full release myself. I've watched my brother pitch his kids frighteningly high into the air and catch them without a worry. Of course, whereas he played baseball in high school, when I played T-ball I played left field. Even then I had to wear a batting helmet as a fielder because twice, not once, but twice, I went to catch a fly ball only to miss it and have it hit me in the head. The coaches were quite worried about me and though the helmet would reduce the likelihood of a lawsuit. Anyway, I was smart enough to not actually throw my kids. Just a quick jump, a yank on the arms, and a flight onto the big puffy couch. They'd do it for hours until my arms were sore.
They finally got too big to throw around in the house and for a few years we were limited to spinning and airplanes and other versions of rotation based silliness. This summer though my older son finally learned to swim well enough that we could start all over again with pitching him in the water. I'm not throwing him off a dock or anything crazy like that. I have him stand in my cupped hands and I throw him like a Scotsman throwing a caber at the Highland Games. I'm less concerned about hurting them in the water than I ever was on the couch. I was always just a bit nervous about the possibility of having to explain why my two year old had hit the ceiling and needed medical attention. With water all I have to worry about is drowning, and that's....better?

Dear Tampon Company

Dear Tampon Company,
 I'm a stay at home dad. I do all of the shopping. That means that I buy tampons when more tampons are needed. I don't have a problem with this. I don't pick them up last so I don't have to worry about people seeing them in my cart. I don't hide them under other things in the cart or on the checkout belt. I don't go through the self check to avoid embarrassment. In fact, I'm not embarrassed buying them. I'm a husband who has a wife that isn't pregnant. This is how the world works. In fact I think it's probably more embarrassing for women to buy tampons. When I buy them it doesn't indicate anything at all about me except for the fact that I'm a caring modern open minded guy. Tampons in my cart say I'm awesome. Tampons in a girl's cart just let guys know that it's probably not a great time to ask for her phone number. That's got to be worse.

NO! Bad tampon company!

So I don't have a problem buying tampons. What I do have a problem with is new packaging. I'm sent to the store with a very specific note on what to buy. That's what I buy. Deviating from this list would be bad. Or it could be bad, I don't even know. I don't have the knowledge to be able to figure out if there is something else on that huge shelf of options that would work just as well as what I've been sent to get. So when you change your packaging Tampon Companies, it's bad. All of a sudden, I can't find what I need to find. That characteristic box, the one that I know, the one that I can grab without even stopping the cart as I breeze through the isle where man seldom walks, isn't there. It's just not there. Now I have to stop and start reading the boxes. I have to sort out the supers from the regulars from the multi-packs from the slenders from the sports from the unscented from the fresh scents from everything else. And that's assuming that you haven't changed the boxes so much that I can't even find your brand any more. So basically, I'm standing there contemplating which tampons to buy. I'm not equipped for this. I have women walking by giving me very very nervous looks. What am I doing? Do I think my wife needs something else? Who can think that about their wife? How would they know? How can any man think he knows these things? Bastard! I feel like I need to make a joke about my allergies. Lots of pollen lately, hard to sleep without waking up at night to blow my nose, trying to decide if regulars will take care of it or if I need supers. Ha Ha! It's not embarrassing buying tampons, but it is embarrassing shopping for them. And it's not like I can just abandon the mission, this is not the week to tell my wife that I can't accomplish a simple task. Making her unhappy with me would be very bad.
So, Tampon Companies, stop it. Please pick a design and stick with it. I'm thinking that if you just keep the same packaging for the next 25 years or so, I'll be in the clear.

Thank you,
Tampon Buying Husband


Books this week -
The Kingdom Fungi, Steven L. Stephenson
A Canticle for Leibowitz,
Fungi was an awesome book but sooooo hard to read. It bills itself as and introduction to the kingdom of fungi, but it's written more like an introductory text book. Books like this should really not be written by an expert, or they should be co-written with an expert at the most. Buried in all of the technical aspects and termonology were some amazing facts. There is a fungus that grows on the poop of herbivores. This fungus passes through the animal unharmed and then grows and fruits on the pile. The fruits are a little pressure chamber that shoots spores up to 6 feet which is pretty amazing, and they can aim the spores at the brightest light source thereby making sure they shoot at an opening in the plant cover to get maximum distance, but there's more. The spores have a sticky side to stick to plants and the other side is hydrophobic (water hating) so if it lands on a dewy leaf, it will flip itself sticky side down which increases the chance that another herbovore will eat it and start the cycle over again. But wait, there's even more! There is a parasitic nematode that preys on herbavores that has figured out how to climb out of the poop and up the stalk and hitch a ride on the shooting spores so that it can increase it's chances of being eaten as well. Amazing stuff. Trudging through the book is a battle of painful confusion and moments of amazing clarity of writing that reveal a lot about the world of fungus and lichen and all sorts of stuff. Worth it if you can stand it.
Leibowitz is a pretty ok book. Initially set 600 years after a nuclear holocaust it reveals a world that has been purged of literacy and learning. The only books and reading that have survived are in a monastery in the desert well guarded by Catholic monks. It covers the initial mystery of these texts, the scientific leaps 800 years later when the information is finally decoded and used, and the eventual destruction of man again 800 years after that. Religion and learning and human nature in a post apocalyptic world with a little too much Latin mixed in for my taste. Not the best post apocalyptic fiction, but pretty good.

Yogurt - Hippie Merit Badge

I always think of yogurt making as a very hippie endevour. I'm not sure why. If I were to think about the popular culture of yogurt, (ha, culture of yogurt) in advertising at least, I'd have to think that yogurt is more of a women who can't poop thing than a hippie thing. That's not how I want to think of yogurt though, I'd much rather relate it to hippies.
So, why make yogurt? If you don't eat a lot of yogurt, don't. If you do, then check out the economics. I eat about two quarts of yogurt a week. Dannon plain yogurt is $2.34 per quart. A gallon of milk is $3.45. Since milk is the only ingredient in yogurt, I can compare them directly. Yogurt would cost me $4.68 a week, making yogurt costs me $1.73 a week. Lets say I eat it 50 weeks a year, that's a savings of $147.50. Ok, it's not that much, but it's better than a poke in the head with a sharp stick. On to making yougurt.

Heating milk, notice the skin that has formed.

All you need is milk, at least one pot, a thermometer, a heating pad, and some old yogurt. The steps are as follows.
1. Heat milk to 185 degrees in a pot. If you set up a double boiler you're less likely to scorch the milk.
2. Cool the milk back down to 110 degrees.
3. Add 4-5 tbs of yogurt.
4. Keep warm for 4-7 hours with a heating pad on low/medium or in periodically refreshed hot water bath.
5. Stir the dickens out of it and chill.
Easy peasy. You can get a better explanation than I can type here: How To Make Yogurt

Mmmm, that's good. Makes me want to stop showering.

I'll just fill in a few personal observations after making it myself for a while. First thing is that when you heat your milk you have to either stir it constantly or it will form a skin at about 140 degrees. I used to stir it to prevent that, now I just wait until it gets to 185 and skim the skin off. The end result is the same and I can sit and read a book instead of stirring while it warms. Second, they're not kidding about vigorous stirring after it's done. The better you stir it the smoother the final cooled yogurt will be. Lumpy yogurt tastes just fine but it looks like it might kill you. Third, you can control the sour bite your yogurt has by changing the amount of time you let the little bacteria eat your milk. When you make it the first time it's likely to be more sour than just about any yogurt you buy at the store. Keep it warm for less the next time and you can make it more mild.
I eat yogurt plain but my kids don't like it unless there's some sweetness in it. Maple syrup is awesome for this. Honey, jelly, fruit, granola, lots of things to add. It's also the perfect base for frozen yogurt, which I highly recommend.
 So go make some yogurt, and if you do, let me know. I'll send you your very own Hippie Merit Badge. Seriously.

I Walk The Line

Like many kids, my kids are playing sports. Like many parents, I'd like to just show up and watch them and tell them how good then did and go home. I want it to be easy and painless and, like the introvert that I am, I don't want any more forced interaction than are necessary. I have guilt though. Stupid guilt. This comes from the realization that kids sports are run by volunteers. Somebody has to step up organize and coach if these organized sports leagues are going to be possible. If I only had one kid I could probably convince myself that we were a really small load on the system so I didn't really need to help. I have four though. When two of them end up on the same soccer team we're 1/4 of the whole team. My family makes up a significant enough portion of the players that I feel like not giving back is sort of like stealing. Stupid guilt.

I coached little league basketball for two years and simultaneously loved and hated it. For the most part I loved coaching the kids. This was the youngest age group so nobody could really shoot and at least half of them couldn't dribble when we started. By the end of a single season everyone could dribble and pass and had an understanding of what basketball was. They could defend and get open for a pass. Even though I had a terrible win/loss ratio both years, all of my players scored during a game. I was proud of the boys and it was fun. I hated dealing with the parents. Hated it. Most were nice but it only takes a couple that really want to get involved verbally, but not at all with the actual work of coaching, to make the situation miserable. Couple that with other coaches that were poor sports or poor at dealing with children or poor at both and I faced every game with a combination of joy and terror.
When my kids switched to soccer I convinced my wife that it was her time to coach before I got an ulcer or had a nervous breakdown. She's coached for two years and has been spectacular it it. So wonderful in fact that people request to be on the team that she's coaching. She still has a few issues with parents but they are a magnitude or two less than I had in basketball. When she went to her first coaches meeting she did manage to find a way to keep me involved. She volunteered me as the field striper. Once a week I have to head up to the fields and take out my trusty little painting cart and make the lines straight and pretty. I do it when there's nobody there and it's one of the most peaceful and satisfying hours of my week. I've often daydreamed while I'm walking along painting the fields of seeking employment with a NFL team. Then I realize that they're probably a bit more advanced than one guy with a striping cart. They probably have a whole crew and striping robots with GPS and it's probably quite a high pressure job and I don't want any part of that.
As a stay at home day you're going to hear the phrase "You don't work, you can help!" more than a few times over the years. You need resist the urge to choke the person who has been quietly typing at their desk all day while you have been dealing with screaming toddlers for 12 hours. Sometimes, if you look around, you can find a calming, peaceful, lonely, guilt assuaging job like field maintenance.

Bread: Sourdough 3

I have a confession to make. Bread was supposed to be the second sourdough post, but I almost killed my starter. I'm not sure what happened, but I went to make a loaf of bread and it just wouldn't rise. I started in in the morning and by 10 that night it has risen just a bit in the bowl. I put it in the bread pan in the fridge overnight and it took the whole next day to properly rise, I baked it right before bed. I had to feed and nurture the starter daily for 3 days to get it going again. Now it's fine, but things were a little touch and go for a while. Anyway, on to bread.

White Sourdough Bread - derived from a variety of recipes, distilled to simplicity.
6 cups white flour
1 3/4 cups water
1 tbs salt
1/2 cup starter (don't forget to keep a bit of starter for the next batch!) or 1/2 tsp yeast

Well developed gluten. And flavor.

Mix the starter, 5 cups flour, the salt and the water together in a bowl and try your best to get them into a ball. Reserve the 6th cup of flour and use it for dusting the counter and adding to the dough to get it the right consistency. I knead the dough by hand, mostly because that way I can really feel when it's ready. You can also use a mixer with a dough hook or theoretically a bread machine. What you're going for is a sticky mass that has come together well enough that it pulls pretty cleanly away from the counter when you're kneading it or away from the side of the bowl with the dough hook. Dough changes as you knead. It's sticky and loose and then not as sticky and firmer as the gluten forms. Resist the urge to add too much flour too early. There are plenty of articles online about kneading dough and what proper dough consistency is. There are also plenty of different opinions about what the final dough will look and feel like. The dough in this recipe is fairly loose for a bread dough (though heavier than my pizza dough) because I bake it in a pan. A loaf that will be baked free on a stone should probably be a bit stiffer to hold it's shape better. I prefer baking in a pan mostly because my kids use the bread for sandwiches and by using a pan I can make sure that those sandwiches fit in a standard lunch bag. You can use a regular glass pan that you bake quick breads in (though you should probably reduce the flour to five cups and the water to 1.5 cups) but I really really like my Pullman Pan. It makes a perfect sized loaf and, for me at least, never sticks. I've sort of gotten off track here. You've now kneaded you dough for 10 minutes or so. Now flop it back into the bowl and cover until it has about doubled in size. I don't know how long this will take for your dough. It might take 4 hours, it might take over night. It depends on how lively your starter is and how warm it is. It's actually cooling down in Texas finally, so I'm letting my first rise happen on the counter over night. From 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. is about 9 hours. That seems to work. I will say that a long rise is necessary for good flavor and gluten development in bread. You can make the recipe here with a whole packet of yeast (2.5 tsp) and it will rise faster and you'll be able to get it baked faster. It won't taste as good as if you use the suggested 1/2 tsp and just wait longer. If you don't believe me, then try it, you'll be a convert. Time is the one ingredient that absolutely cannot be replaced in great bread. Ask any baker, all great breads take time. Now you have to shape the dough or flop it in the pan. I'm the wrong man to talk to about shaping bread, go do a search. I just peel the dough out of the bowl, get it vaguely log shaped and drop it in the bread pan. I'm such a lazy baker. Then take a piece of plastic wrap and lightly butter it and cover the pan. This lets the bread rise to the top of the pan without sticking to the covering. When the bread has about doubled in size in the bread pan, or reached the top, heat the oven to 400 and bake for 40-50 minutes. When you knock on it and it sounds hollow it's probably done.

I think my bread is so pretty that it deserves an outdoor photo.

It will take you a few loaves of bread to get the hang of all of this. It's not hard, but it does require some experience doing it. If you want to be really scientific about it, keep a journal of your baking. Exactly how much went into the loaf, what the dough felt like, how long the rise was (note the temperature in your kitchen) and how long your bake was. After 4-6 loaves you'll have a very good idea what's going on and what you can expect the next time you bake. You should be able to make a wonderful aromatic beautiful loaf of sourdough bread with a little practice. It will put to shame anything you can buy in the grocery store and you probably won't be able to buy anything it's equal anywhere for less than $5-7 a loaf. This is real artisan stuff here. Don't be afraid to pick up a book or two on baking bread from the library. There is also a ton of information about baking online especially from King Arthur Flour. You could also drive my sister insane by hitting her up at The Naked Elm, her bakery and cafe in Blue Mounds Wisconsin. She loves baking and will gladly tell you that I actually suck at baking and set you straight on how it's done.

Go bake some bread. It's one of those things that you need to do to really learn. You can spend all day reading about rock climbing or sailing or riding a motorcycle or baking bread, but when it comes right down to it, you can't really learn about it until you actually do it.

Vermin

When I got guineas I knew that the biggest challenge to keeping them alive was the local wildlife. The resident red tailed hawk and great horned owl were very real concerns when the birds were little and I did lose one to a bird of prey in the beginning. Nothing attracts possums and raccoons like fowl, and they were always the real worry. When the guineas first moved out of the bathroom I put a strand of electric fence about four inches off the ground all around the coop. I plugged it in every night and didn't have any problems. Eventually the birds got big enough to roost, and once they started that nonsense there was no way to convince them that the coop was a safer place to sleep then high in the trees. They were more susceptible to predators in the trees though and it caused problems to no end.  Opossums and raccoons are pretty resourceful when it comes to getting something to eat. They can't catch the birds on roost but they sure can scare them off and then chase then around the yard all night trying to get a bite to eat. The strategy isn't terribly effective but by morning I've got birds all over the yard and the neighbor's yard and out in the road and my morning starts off with a guinea roundup.
The birds got chased out of the tree exactly one time before I headed off to the store for a live trap. One thing you can be sure of, if a opossum has a choice between trying to hunt a live bird and eating a piece of leftover salmon, they'll always go for the salmon. I was pretty sure I could catch whatever what causing the problems, but what to do with them? We live in a pretty suburban area and I didn't just want to trap something in my yard and drop it off five miles away in someone else's yard. That's not very nice. I could have just killed them, which would have made sense. But no, I decided that I could use this as an opportunity to teach my children about killing/not killing things. They know that I hunt and kill things to eat. They know where the chicken and beef that they eat comes from. They had very recently eaten the chickens that we had raised with the guineas. I thought that since I had been driving home the fact that in order to eat meat something has to die, I could also drive home the fact that we shouldn't kill things just because it's the easiest solution to the problem. Instead we could release them in the Sam Houston National Forest where they could get on with their wild lives without trying to eat my birds. This was an outstanding plan. In theory.
The first night I put out my trap I caught a small opossum. I loaded the kids up and drove him the 25 miles to his new home in the National Forest. They were all able to see an opossum up close for the first time, and watch it play dead, and finally watch it's very odd gait as it ran into the forest. We talked about how creepy opossums looked and how they were marsupials like kangaroos and how our opossum was now going to go on living his opossum life. When we got back home I set the trap again just to make sure. I caught another one. Again I drove it to the National Forest and dropped it off. Three days later I caught a third opossum and sent it to live with it's friends. All was quiet for a while until I started catching raccoons. This time the kids learned that raccoons aren't cute curious loving little animals. They are in fact hulking, snarling merchants of death that want to bite your face off, and they can run really fast when you release them. My kids are now afraid of raccoons. When the numbers are tallied, I've caught seven opossums and four raccoons in the last year and a half. I've driven more than 550 miles transporting these animals and I've still managed to lose 3 or 4 guineas to them. Mostly I've learned that, as a parent, once you've assigned a morally righteous position an action, you must continue with that action. Choose wisely.

Welcome

I want to say hello and welcome to all of the new readers that have shown up this week. With the increase in readers I'm feeling a little pressure to write about subjects that are actually interesting to people instead of things that randomly pop into my head. This post is simply a call to you readers for post suggestions. What do you want to hear about? More diaper stories? Breastfeeding as a dad? What sounds good? I'm planning to write about bread, yogurt, opossums, sports field maintenance, and my complaints with tampon companies in the next week, but I'm open for anything. One of my most endearing and annoying qualities is that if you have a subject, I probably have something to say about it. So head to the comments and let me know what you want to hear about, and thanks for reading.

High Security

Nobody gives you a baby gate at a baby shower. You get clothes and towels and and blankets and all of those things. We received a baby bathtub and a breast pump and some other really useful stuff. Relatives even sent us a rocking chair. But no baby gate. People even mentioned that we needed a changing table and outlet covers and some other stuff that we really didn't need. Nobody mentioned a baby gate. Perhaps they thought that we just knew? We knew about diapers and clothes and people still bought us those, so that can't be it. Perhaps people really don't like to talk about containment procedures for small children. They feel weird having conversations about how to turn your living room into a toddler jail. Well, not me. Baby containment was a vital part of my parenting strategy.

Hey Dad! What are you working on?

Sometimes in life you get lucky. When we bought our house, we got lucky for a variety of reasons, most of which weren't obvious at the time. One of those reasons was the single, normal width, doorway connecting our living room to the rest of the house. Not that there was much else to the house. It was the kitchen, a single bathroom, a single bedroom, and the living room which was half the square footage of the whole building. You could say that the house plan didn't flow very well, but when we bought it you could stand in one spot and reach your arm into each of the 4 rooms. Flow wasn't really necessary. The point is, that unless you wanted to go outside, there was only one way in and one way out of the living room, and you could stand in the kitchen or the bathroom and see in. This is an ideal arrangement for containing small children.
You can lock them out. You can prepare food without worrying about them trying to grab hot things or put their head in the oven. You can change the laundry around without anyone trying to climb in the dryer. You can pee without having a small child try to look into the bowl while you try to aim around them. That last one is particularity problematic. When we remodeled the house to add two more bedrooms we had to add another door to the living room. The very first thing we did was add a gate to keep small hands off of the power tools.
Not that gates are all good. Aside from the fact that people who visit think you're running a small scale prison, there are other issues. At 5' 10" I could stretch and just step over the gate, my wife had a harder time. I could step over empty handed but I was always just a little worried about slipping while holding a baby and it's hard to open the gate when you're holding an infant and a bottle and trying not to drop either one of them. The kids were not always happy to be on the other side and some epic screaming fits occurred. Nobody could open the gates the first time they visited. This resulted in my mother in law needing to ask me to open the gate so she could go pee. Awkward. Less awkward but still problematic was the fact that the gate separated the bathroom from potty training. Eventually the gate was moved to allow access to the bathroom so I didn't have to open and shut it every 45 seconds because everyone had to pee when I was stirring something on the stove or was up to my elbows in bread dough.
Overall though, the baby gate was one of the best pieces of parenting equipment ever. It simplified safe parenting and allowed me to get things done just out of the arms reach of tiny arms. I was still there, my kids could see me and I could see them due to the design of our house, nobody felt abandoned. I don't give away baby gates at baby showers even though I kind of want to. Not everyone thinks they want to confine their children (though they will, oh they will) or has a house that makes is convenient or even possible to do so. I do always mention to the parents to be, "You know, with a gate there and a gate there, you'd have this room sealed off". I often get weird looks, but if I visit their house when they have a two year old, I feel vindicated, because the gates are always there.

Dad Image

Look Mommy, a hobo!

Mirrors are funny things. They show you yourself as the world sees you, which is not always how you see yourself. I age faster than the self image of myself. For a very long time my self image was me when I was about 13. This lasted into my early 20's when I was briefly able to see myself as approximately who I was, a long haired hippie looking rock climber. Comfortable with that, I developed a bit of self confidence that the 13 year old me didn't have, and promptly found a girlfriend and then a wife. Then work, then babies, and now I was stay at home dad that still looked like a hippie rock climber. Except when you are single and in your early 20's and you look like a hippie rock climber it's awesome and chicks dig it (some of them at least). When you are in your late 20's and are carting around two babies, you just look like a dirty guy who doesn't want a job. The guy who has his wife go out and work while he barely keeps everyone alive and just sits home and plays video games all day. Sometimes, not all the time, but often enough, people treat you like that guy if you look like that guy. That sucks.
I could let it roll off of me pretty well, but I wondered about my kids. What difference would it make to them if they saw people treat me poorly as they grew up? I'm a kindly well educated guy, I read, I'm better off financially then my laundry habits might indicate, and I'm well spoken after I've had my coffee in the morning. People who knew me treated me well, I'm likable after all, but people who didn't know me often didn't. This might be hard to digest for my kids. Added confusion in a confusing world. To top it off, I don't meet many stay at home dads. Lots of people say they know another one, but there are very few of us that are identifiable in the wild. The checkout ladies at the store and the ladies at the bank soon knew me as "the stay at home dad" indicating to me that I was the only one they knew. Was I representing stay at home dads for the whole world? For even part of a population? Were people developing a lower opinion of stay at home dads because of me? That's bad.

Would you trust this mustache?

So I cleaned myself up. My mother couldn't convince me to do it. The job market after school couldn't convince me to do it. For some inexplicable reason my clean and normal wife didn't even seem to have a desire to do it. But having kids and having societal expectations associated with being the primary caregiver for those kids did it. I shaved more often. I wore clothes that were cleaner and had been purchased new instead of second hand from old guys who had exceptional taste in plaid pants. I learned how to buy a shirt that fit. I learned how to tie a tie. I learned how to tie a bow tie and wore them quite often. I might have gone a little too far with the bow ties, but I still think they're awesome. I have a suit that is nice enough that I can't ever gain or lose enough weight to change my size. I will be a 38R until I die. I didn't cut my hair though. I was that rare animal, a clean cut guy with long hair. I had long hair until 4 years ago when I underwent an unintentional, extremely rapid combustion based exfoliation event. The hair that survived that ordeal was cut off to even up the difference between the areas of my head that escaped harm and those that looked like the rest of my face. It's a long story but it's enough to say that I'm very lucky to be alive and as normal looking as I am.
So here I am, a normal, mid 30's clean cut stay at home dad and my mental self image is about what I see when I look in the mirror. It feels good. I never quite get used to seeing myself with a beard, and my recent super awesome Sheriff Mustache made me giggle every time I walked into the bathroom. It's good to see myself in the mirror and see who I expect to see again. Except for the gray hair, that's a bit surprising, the guy in the mirror is getting old.

This guy seems legit.

Literally the morning after I shaved my awesome cowboy sheriff mustache, I learned about Movember. Movember is sort of like breast cancer awareness month, but for dudes. Instead of wearing pink, you grow a mustache. It's used to raise money and awareness for men's health issues, especially prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. Our friend Jake is participating in Movember out in Colorado. Jake is a cool guy. My wife and I interviewed him at a bar while she was 8 months pregnant. I'll leave the details to your imagination, but he was hired as an intern and eventually as a full time geologist. He was the best intern ever. When we went on vacation we asked him to cat sit for us, and he did. What's that? You're not supposed to use your summer interns for cat sitting? Abuse of power you say? Maybe, maybe not. But I still contend that Jake was awesome even without the cat sitting and there is no better guy to donate money to for Movember. You can donate to him here: http://us.movember.com/mospace/1828512/  Why don't I participate if it's so awesome? Well, I just got out of a long term relationship with my mustache and I'm not ready for that kind of commitment again so soon. Maybe next year. Movember is still cool.

Books this week:
For the Love of Physics - Walter Lewin
Innumeracy, Mathematical Illetracy and its Consequences - John Allen Paulos
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

For the Love of Physics is written by a professor from MIT who has all of his lectures online. He's awesome. You should watch them here - http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/ or on youtube. Do a search, he's awesome. I didn't learn much new aside from a few rainbow facts, but the quality of writing made it worth it.
Innumeracy is an interesting read. It's aimed mostly at people that are educated but for one reason or another suck at math. It give a lot of really clear examples of the problems that innumeracy causes and how simple math illuminates them. It also gives suggestions for teaching that would eliminate a lot of innumeracy in schools. The book was written in 1988 and a lot of his suggestions, story problems, estimating, real life solutions, I can see in my kids homework to a much greater degree than I had at their age. I suspect that Paulos, or others like him have had an impact.
Oryx and Crake - Fiction! I do read fiction, I love it. This was a post apocalyptic story. The basic story line was great actually. Separation of the haves and the have nots, increasing mucking around with genetics and creating new life forms, climate change, and all that those things together bringing about the end of man. The story was great, what was annoying was the back and forth between the present dead world, and the main characters semi crazy thoughts in it, and the linear story that got him there. I'm not sure that it was necessary or made the story better. I understand non-linear literary devices and how they can be used, I just think that good stories are often better told without them. Good enough book that I finished in in a day and a half and I'm going to get the sequel from the library.