Shot out of a cannon

That is how I feel.  Last Monday I left for work, and I don't think that I have stopped since then.  It won't stop tomorrow.  It won't stop Tuesday.  It definitely won't stop on Wednesday, when I have to be on an airplane at 7:10 AM (F*CK!)  Maybe Wednesday night I can try to go to bed early, but most likely I will have to go out to dinner with fellow researchers and socialize.  Thursday?  I can fly home and then go straight home without stopping at work?  Maybe.

I am tired.  Really, really tired.

Tomorrow we have to leave the house by 8:00, so I can drop the kids off and then get to class.  While that is not very early to normal people, I have kids who are now accustomed to getting up at 8:30 or so, so 7:00 AM comes really early.  Oh well.

I am not complaining.  I am just whining a bit. 

Oh sh*t.  I forgot to finish the laundry.  Crap.

Well, now that the dishes are done, I can go do that before I go to bed.

NPR

8882589966 (call now, with your pledge!)
That's 8882589866
Let me say it 14 more times, just in case you didn't hear me 2 seconds ago:
8882589866
8882589866
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8882589866
8882589866 (how much should you send in?  well, that is up to you!)
8882589866
8882589866 (but we are looking for a dollar a day)
8882589866
8882589866 (or maybe a dollar a week)
8882589866
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8882589866 (or whatever you want!)
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I want to kill myself.

Before I do, I should will all of my money to NPR.
8882589866

 I was going to do a calculation of how much time is spent in commercials on a normal radio station over a year, and then add up all of the "commercials" during a normal day on NPR, and then take the 2 solid weeks a year (more like 20 days...) in which we are bombarded with 8882589866 (call now with your pledge!)  I bet that my NPR station spends almost as much time as a commercial station if you factor in the two pledge drives.

8882589866

AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!

Mike Doughty

Last night, Crab Mama and I went to see Mike Doughty in concert.  It was at a very small venue, with only about 200 people there.  It was probably the most intimate concert that I have ever been to.  We were in the 5th row, which is just crazy.  It was a great deal of fun.  He had a Question Jar where you could put questions in and he would answer them.  It was hilarious (e.g., What elevates a normal Bon Bon to a Super Bon Bon?)  Crab Mama and I had seen Soul Coughing in concert in about 1997 (with Geggy Tah - ha!) in Subaru, CO.

I should have taken my camera, but I am lame.

Subaru

Boulder, CO, should be called Subaru, CO.  I would estimate that 10% of all cars in Subaru are Subarus (Subari?)  That might not sound like much, but imagine if every 10th car that you saw looked identical.  That is what it is like!  Subaru is a homogeneous city of outdoor loving, vegan, smart, Subaru-loving left-wing nut-jobs!

Ok.  I am just saying that.  Subaru is a great city.  It is just freakish in its love for Subari.

On Travel

Again.

But this time it is a bit different.  Crab Boy and I are in the great state of Colorado, at meeting on how the aurora is affected climate change.  Wow.  It is a bit of a stretch, but this is what scientists do - leave no stone unturned!

The most interesting talk that I heard was from a woman who is quite unique.  She has to be about 75 years old, and wears dresses with flowers all over them.  She also wears a flower in her hair.  Unique.  She got up and gave a talk on why the idea of airlines worrying about flying over the poles because of high energy particle precipitation is complete bull sh*t.  She pretty much used those words.  It was hilarious.  I expected that her talk would be quite boring and casually dismissed, since she is an "old guard" scientist - no using any data from after I was born, but it was inspiring.  She looked back at ice core data and other long term data (old school!) and came up with the highest energy precipitation events that have EVER occurred.  Then she figured out how much exposure airplanes would have gotten during the events, and concluded that they would have had to fly around for something like 2000 hours in the middle of the storm (which lasted < 2 days), to get a dose that anyone would consider dangerous.  Now - she did say that a pregnant woman would have only had to fly around for something like 20 hours.

The very next talk was a report on some grant that people had gotten to study this very thing.  They used the latest, greatest data and models, and came to the exact same conclusion - but didn't actually say that it was then worthless.  They reported the numbers in the exposures that you would get, but didn't say anything about maximum dose rates or anything.  If you remembered from the previous talk, the numbers were almost exactly the same, so they were the same tiny dose.  They concluded that they had a great product and that the airlines should use their models.  I think that they concluded that the airlines don't need to use their models....

Crab Boy and I have eaten out a few time, gone on a hike, and had a good time with some friends.  We have hung out together and basically just enjoyed being together, which is what this whole trip was about (well, the science was there too...)

I discovered an interesting thing about children today - they don't know how to tie shoes anymore, since all of their shoes are either slip-on or Velcro.  Crab Boy just (re)learned how to tie his shoes this last week, after the purchase of a pair of new tennis shoes.  Here is a picture of his accomplishment this morning of tying his shoe for the 3rd time ever!  I would say that I almost cried, but, in truth, I almost cried when I found out that he couldn't tie his shoes in the first place.  But, after thinking about it, I can't actually remember the last pair of shoes that he had in which he actually had to tie them.  Ahhh... modern technology.  Tying shoes is so, like, iPods with buttons.

Pandora Love

Yesterday I did a system upgrade on my laptop, which makes you reboot.  One of the things that was installed was iTunes 9.0.  So, when I fired up iTunes today, I got to wait for about an hour while it refigured out the gapless play list crap.  So, while it did that, I rediscovered Pandora.

God, I love Pandora.  It is the best website ever.  We besides google.  And Wikipedia.  Well, better than Wikipedia.  But, you get the idea.  It is really, really, really good.

So, if you have never pandoraed, I would highly recommend going to pandora.com, getting an account, typing in your favorite artist, and start listening.  Then type in other artists, and see what comes up.  You won't be disappointed.

Would I lie to you?  Would I say something that wasn't true?

Got a car today.  2005 Subaru Outback Sport.  Silver.  5-speed manual.  Very nice.

Mirror Images

Looking at my kids, I see a large amount of myself in both of them.  It is often very scary.  For example, my daughter likes better to set things up than to actually do them.  Getting folders and pencils and paper and everything for school is exciting, but to actually write is a drag.  She has joined a robotics club and she is working on a robot, but is not really all that excited about building the robot.  She knows the wiring diagram by heart and can do it, but just doesn't really want to.  When I have done it "for her", she then is very happy and quite excited to clean it up (i.e., redo the whole thing with shorter wires, making it all look much neater).  She also doesn't have much interest in programming on the robot, although that comes and goes.  With the Lego robots, she figured out how to do the programming and basically dropped it after that - even though she really only scratched the surface of it.

I definitely see myself in this behavior.  I think that since I am older now, I have much more patience, and can actually see that there are important things left to learn.  I also think that some of the issues are with fear of failure.  She shows that she can pick up the stuff that is mildly challenging with ease, but doesn't want to delve any deeper for fear of not being able to do it.  Maybe.  I think that I do this, and so am pushing my emotional whateverness onto her.

Anyways, it can sometimes be quite frustrating, since we start doing these projects together, and we are both sort of excited by them, and then she loses interest.

Well, I probably should just be happy that I can get my pre-teen daughter's interest in anything, let alone stuff that interests me too.

Now, my son.  I have to say that he is a complete mirror image of me.  I think that someone took some of my cells, cloned them, and stuck them in my wife.  If there is a part of her in him, I am not sure where it is.  Actually - he is MUCH more adventurous than I am.  That is definitely from my wife, which may shock some of you who know her.  While he is not fearless, he will try new foods and is not nearly as fearful of new things as my daughter and I are.  This is definitely a good thing.  So, he is just like me, but better!

Ok, now that sounds like I love my son and have issues with my daughter....  That is really not true at all.  My son is just like me, which means that he is a loud-mouth pain in the *ss.  They are both great kids and wonderful to have around.  They are, by far, the best things that have ever happened to me.  (Even if I do yell at them sometimes.)