Happy 10th Anniversary!

It's been 10 years since one of the most memorable hockey games in my lifetime. "[N]ine fights, 11 goals, 39 penalties, 148 penalty minutes, one hat trick, one "turtle" and two Stanley Cup champion goalies duking it out in an overtime thriller." It fueled the flames of a great rivalry and launched the Wing into their `97 Stanley Cup run (and also Cups in `98 and `02).

Happy anniversary to Red Wings, Avalanche
by Thomas Neumann

Lets go Red Wings!

I heart Joss Whedon

The Legacy of Joss Whedon
by Anthony Letizia

Ten years ago, on March 10, 1997, the cult television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on the now-defunct network The WB. Based on a unsuccessful motion picture of the same name, no one gave the show much of a chance at the time, especially since no one was giving The WB much of a chance to begin with. But succeed it did, for seven seasons, in many ways changing the television landscape — and for the better — in the process... (click on link above for more!)

Favorite non-Simpson?

Coolest Non-Simpson 'Simpsons' Characters

My favorites from this list are Sideshow Bob, Kodos, and Mr. Burns. I'd also add Ralph and Duffman, although they didn't make this particular list.

An Epic Journey

Okay, maybe not epic, but I still had a heck of a time getting home from Rochester on Monday!

For those interested, here are the details:

For reference, it took me 8 hours to get to Rochester when I went out there on Saturday. (It would have been 7 1/2 but I spent a little more time at the border than I was planning on.)

On Monday, I left Rochester at 11:30 AM. The roads were clear, the weather was good. I made it about 20 minutes down I-90 and suddenly ran into completely stopped traffic:

I didn't think this was so bad at first, I mean sometimes you have traffic jams. However, 1 hour and 45 minutes later when I was still sitting in park in exactly the same spot, I felt a little more unhappy about it. However, I did do every single puzzle on the puzzle page of the USA Today that my hotel had given me that morning. Finally, after almost 2 hours traffic got moving. I finally found out what had caused the highway to be completely closed for almost 2 hours:

It was an accident that occurred during a whiteout involving 14 semi-trucks. You can see some of them in this picture on both sides of the road. Remember, this is 2 hours after the accident happened. However, after I got past this accident things went smoothly. There was no wait at all at the border, and in Canada I had about 2 hours of driving where it was even sunny. However, once I got on 403 going inland I met a familiar sight:

This time the car in front of me has an Ontario license plate! Yes, once again a highway was closed because of an accident. This time, they directed everyone off the highway (which took over an hour for me to get to the exit.) So, I was in the-middle-of-nowhere Canada with no idea where to go and the highway closed. So, I improvised. I had a guy from Ontario following me (and I have a Michigan license plate so I obviously didn't know where I was going so I have no idea why he was following me) and together the 2 of us wandered around the back roads for several miles until I finally found my way back to the highway, where it was open! My Ontario friend gave me a triumphant wave as we got back on the highway and moving. Our enthusiasm was short-lived, however:

We had only gone maybe 2 miles (~4 km, since we were in Canada eh) and right where 403 joins 401 we had traffic at a dead stop again. Yes, for the 3rd time on my trip home my highway was closed because of an accident resulting from a whiteout! Then I spent 2 hours sitting on 401. (The pic above is the view behind me from my side mirror.) I went a total of about 1 mile in those 2 hours and finally got to the exit where they were once again kicking everyone off. Luckily there was a truck stop by this exit, (although it was basically chaos because EVERYONE was stopping there,) but I did get to pee and get gas. Then, as I was coming back out to my car trying to decide what to do next, I noticed a heavenly sight: cars were moving on 401 again! I hurried back on the newly re-opened highway and headed for Michigan.

Unfortunately, the whiteouts were not done, and I had to go 25-45 mph for about 60 miles to try to avoid becoming another whiteout accident myself. Then, about 10 miles from the border, it totally cleared up! Michigan welcomed me home! I still had to get all the way across the state, so I didn't actually make it home until 1 AM. So my trip turned into a 13 1/2 hour ordeal. The lesson: uh...it sucks when they close the highway you are traveling on, but it sucks more when they do it to you three times in one day. Thats about all I got from it. Oh and when you are on a road trip, make sure you pee and eat when you get a chance, cuz you never know when you will have to sit in park on the highway for hours.

The Madness of March

McDonalds directly on my way home from campus + Shamrock Shake Season = INEVITABLE!


Actually I've already had 3!

I even got Tom to try one today. The even scarier thing is that I'm about to go on a road trip where I'll actually have to stop at fast food places anyway. Now might be a good time to buy stock in McDonalds! ;-)

In other news:

March certainly had that "in like a lion" thing down today. We had thunder and lightning, rain, freezing rain, sleet, hail, and snow. Here's hoping it means that during nest boxing time at the end of the month the weather will be lamb-like.

My birdfeeder count:
~Junco
~Goldfinch
~Black capped chickadee
~Tufted titmouse
~Nuthatch
~Cardinal

It's about time!

Women players to earn equal pay at Wimbledon

Ummm...

Another chocolate is good for your brain article.

Katie, what are the chances of getting another chocolate order in? :-)

Amazing Race!

In honor of Amazing Race Allstars starting tonight (8 PM, CBS) I was thinking about my all-time favorite TV shows:

Drama:
1. West Wing
2. Grey's Anatomy
3. Buffy
4. Veronica Mars
5. (tie) Lost (the first season) & Firefly (which I only saw after it was canceled)

Comedy:
1. Simpsons
2. Colbert Report
3. Scrubs
4. Arrested Development
5. Seinfeld

Reality/Game show:
1. The Amazing Race
2. Jeopardy
3. Flip This/That House, Property Ladder
4. Iron Chef

Comments? Additions? Deletions? Cries of rage?

C-c-c-c-old!

I got home from the office this afternoon and thought...hmmm it feels cold in here, I think I should turn up the heat. I went to go check the thermostat. It was 58 degrees. (The thermostat was set at 68.) I called maintenance. The guy came and made loud noises in the basement. He went back out, got in his truck, and left. Bad sign. I bundled up. He returned later, made more noises, and finally I heard the heater starting! Good sign! The house got warm again.

I went to a hockey game. The Griffins won! I got home and thought...hmmm it feels cold in here. Bad sign. I went to go check the thermostat. It was 48 degrees. BAD SIGN. I called maintenance. He told me to try turning the switch on the furnace on and off. (Isn't that what you do to your computer when you don't know what is wrong with it and don't know what else to do?) I turned the switch on and off. The furnace started. Good sign? The house is finally almost warm. I just took my coat off two hours after getting home.

It is 7 degrees outside. If I don't ever post again it may be because the heater died again and I froze in my sleep. :(

Did I mention I'm hosting a party tomorrow night? I'm sure my guests won't mind if the house is 48 degrees...

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Winter is here with a vengeance! I think it is trying to get back at us. It is saying "I know you managed to keep me away for longer than usual this year...you had a green Christmas, it was 40 degrees and sunny in the middle of January, but I finally managed to get here and now you are going to pay!!!" We have a blizzard warning today and they have already canceled the home Griffins game that was tonight. DARN YOU WINTER! MESSING WITH MY HOCKEY!!!! And it doesn't look like it will get any better soon. High temperatures are forecasted to be in the single digit with continuing snow for a while. I know that the groundhog didn't see his shadow, but I have trouble believing spring is right around to corner!

So, since I don't have a hockey game to go to anymore tonight, I have time for one of my sporadic updates about what is going on in my life:

I went to the MOST AWESOME TALK EVER at MSU on Wednesday night. Jorge Cham, the author of PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) comics came to MSU!!!! (Check out the link under the "links" list to the right. Also check out my photo-a-day site for a picture of Katie W and me with Jorge afterwards!!!!) His talk was amazingly funny! It was basically a survival guide to grad school. Everything he said had us rolling in the aisles because it was so funny and so completely and perfectly true. He really helped us realize that we are not alone in the unique struggles that grad students face. I was reminded not to give in the to guilt of how there is always something I should be doing, that procrastination is a good coping mechanism, and that no one is ever really happy with their thesis, so I shouldn't be putting so much pressure on myself. (Oh also that F=ma. You don't argue with F=ma!) And I laughed harder than I have laughed in years.

And...on a related note, I gave a talk at KBS about my research on Friday. All of us grads are required to do this each spring. My talk went well and I got some good positive feedback. Also I've very happy that I'm done with it! To celebrate, Katie W stayed overnight and we had a great time hanging out, playing games with our friends (the hat game and doko...I lost doko like usual but was MVP of that hat game...where the East Coast babies beat the West Coast babies twice in a row!), and then veging and watching movies today. And playing with Isis of course, who betrayed me and slept with Katie like usual!

It has been a busy but good week, and I'm looking forward to watching DA BEARS take down the Colts tomorrow!

Picture-a-day 2007

My picture-a-day pictures are up! Email me or comment here if you would like me to send you the link.

Let me just say that Shutterfly and Flickr suck! I tried them both first, but Picasa (Google's photo thingy) is the way to go if you are putting pictures up online! It is leaps and bounds ahead of the others imho. (And I'm not just saying that because I blog on Google's blog thingy! Notice I tried the other 2 first before I even got to Picasa. The first two just didn't satisfy me!) :-)

Get out of the way Isis, I'm trying to take a picture of the cardinal!

I realize that I haven't blogged in a long time. So what's new with me lately?

I finally got some cardinals at my bird feeder! However, as you can tell from the photo above, my efforts to document this fact photographically have so far been fruitless.
My extensive, tremendous species list for this winter now sits at 4:
~Black capped chickadee (2)
~Tufted titmous (2)
~Nuthatch (1)
~Cardinal (3)
All 8 of these birds show up every day. They are going through my seed like crazy!

I have been teaching this semester, and so far it is going very well. I have really missed having this sense of meaning to my weeks. The downside of course is that I am really busy (hence the lack of blogging.)

I'm giving a talk about my research plans for the summer in 2 weeks, so I guess I better figure out what those plans are soon eh?

I'm also working on getting my photo-a-day photos online. Hopefully I will have them up soon.

Comment grab bag

Happy New Year!

Sports comments:

I just watched the ceremony by the Red Wings to retire Steve Yzerman's #19. Stevie Y was the best leader ever in hockey. He was a great captain, player, and person. He is the ultimate example of a humble, decent, and classy athlete.

The Griffins played two amazing games at home this past weekend. Each of our goalies recorded a shutout against the #2 team (Hamilton, 2-0 shutout by Liv) and the #1 team (Rochester, 3-0 shutout by Jimmie Howard) in the division. In addition to solid goaltending, our team defense and motivation actually showed up! The Griffins have been really streaky this year (with exactly a .500 record right now) but if they play like they are capable of this may be a good year after all!

Headline on ESPN.com: "Lions to keep prez Millen despite continuous losing". The losing has technically not actually been continuous, it just feels that way.

The Lions couldn't even lose when they are supposed to! With their upset win against Dallas on Sunday, they lost the #1 draft pick. (Although, see previous comment for why it wouldn't have mattered anyway.)

And I don't even want to bring up the Rose Bowl... :(

Non-sports comment:

I am going to (at least attempt) a photo-a-day project for 2007. Once I get a few more I'll post a link. Does anyone know of a good photo-hosting website for me to use? The only one I know of is Shutterfly, which I'm just figuring out how to use and I'm not sure if I like it.

It had to end sometime

I'm back in the country! I had a great time in Mexico! The weather was perfect (low 80s and sunny), the resort was luxurious and gorgeous, and the food was delicious. Thank you mom and dad! We stayed at the all-inclusive resort the Aventura Spa Palace at Riviera Maya (1 hour from Cancun). We also took a day trip to Tulum to see some Mayan ruins and to Xel Ha, a nature-water park.

Below are some pics. If you'd like to see rest let me know.

Looking out at the ocean over my favorite beach spot to sit and read in the sun

The jacuzzi in our room (yes you heard me!) along with a little towel friend left by the maids

The ruins of a Mayan palace at Tulum from about 1000 AD.

PCR is back!

Thats right, last night I did my first successful PCR in I don't know how many months. I think it was last spring, although I might have done one in July. Anyway, it is still not working totally properly, but I have all my supplies and I can get it to work well enough for my purposes. Woohoo! Now it just has to stay working while I process 300 wren DNA samples. Ahh...pray for me!

In other news, I can definitely confirm that mailboxes look like deer. When you are driving through the countryside at night (say, from KBS to EL and back...just as an example) and you are already hyper-sensitive because you keep seeing lots of deer, some of whom try to cross the road in front of youl, seeing a dark mailbox leaning over the road with a little reflector on it that looks like a deer's eye is really disconcerting! And I'm not crazy or drunk, Emily G agreed with me!

This will probably be my last post before Mexico, so ADIOS!

Anything you can do...

Ability meme...from Tina's blog

You bold anything you can do, italicize anything you wish you could do, and add one new skill you're proud of to the end.

+ Use chopsticks
+ Speak more than one language
+ Roll my tongue
+ Play a musical instrument
+ Name every single pokemon character
+ Sing in tune
+ Use html
+ Cross my eyes
+ Put both feet behind my head
+ Ride a horse
+ Swim
+ Shuffle playing cards with a fancy move
+ Move and wiggle my eyebrows independently of each other
+ Play chess and win
+ Ride a bike
+ Drive
+ Do long division in my head
+ Draw quite convincingly
+ Bake cakes
+ Stand on my head (I could do this as a child...but not anymore!)
+ Do cartwheels (ditto)
+ Spell Czechoslovakia without having to look it up first
+ Identify any garden bird
+ Mix a mean cocktail (I have Aaron for that!)
+ Read music
+ Style hair like a professional
+ Tell the difference between Prada and nada at a glance
+ Whistle
+ Recite whole passages from the Lord Of The Rings books by heart
+ Remember birthdays and anniversaries without being reminded (It's called a calendar!)
+ Tap dance
+ Defuse an argument easily
+ Nurse any sick plant back to health
+ Cook anything
+ Forgive quickly
+ Train a dog (I trained Zoe to play dead...does that count?)
+ Commit things to memory without effort (at least some things)
+ Stick my big toe up and my little toes down
+ Freakishly bend my double-jointed thumb
+ Remove any stain
+ Do anything with makeup
+ Open jars without trouble
+ Charm the pants off people
+ Hold my breath for a minute
+ Roller-skate
+ Understand Shakespeare
+ Listen
+ Sew curtains
+ Decipher morse code
+ Click my fingers
+ Complete crossword puzzles (thanks to crossword puzzle races with Katie L and Kosha during stats lectures)
+ Finish a book once I start it
+ Fold napkins into pretty fan shapes
+ Crochet scarves
+ Cheer people up
+ Write multi-chapter fan fic stories
+ Rock at Six Degrees of Separation
+ Tell a debit from a credit in general ledger accounting
+ Solve legal problems and say 'yes, the answer would be yes, but it all depends you see...'
+ Teach
+ Teach real estate agents
+ Repair a bicycle puncture
+ Assemble flat packed furniture
+ Wiggle my ears without touching them
+ Type over 60 words per minute (never been timed but I am pretty fast)
+ Run a nuclear reactor
+ Take ugly writing and make it pretty (although I'm probably not as good at this as many of my friends who might be reading this blog)
+ Confidently talk about sports with anyone

(For my added one, I was going to do something about capturing or taking blood from wild birds, but I figured fewer people would be able to (or would want to) do that.)

I wish more conservatives thought like this...

"My position is, unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we're not carrying out the full message of Jesus. ... They began to think this might threaten their base or evaporate some of their support, and they said they just couldn't go there."

- Rev. Joel Hunter, explaining his resignation as president-elect of the Christian Coalition, after realizing he would be unable to broaden the organization's focus to include issues such as poverty and the environment. (Source: The Washington Post)

(Quote is from yesterday's Sojomail.)

Isis tales

Two cute Isis stories:

First, she has learned that when I finish my bowl of cereal in the morning, there is some yummy milk left in the bottom. Now, as soon as I start eating breakfast she runs up to me and stares until I finish and let her lick out the bowl. Is this bad for her? Maybe. Can I resist? No!

Also, I just got a birdfeeder. It is the kind that has suction cups which you use to attach it to your window. I thought it would be entertaining for Isis, but I think she is frustrated by the fact that these darn birds keep coming back but she can't catch them! Whenever one lands, she jumps up against the window to scare it away. When she can't catch it she makes funny little peeping noises as she yearns to give chase. I couldn't get any great action shots, but here is one with a bird flying away. Curses, foiled again!

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is officially over but I wanted to take the time to think about some things that I'm thankful for:
-> My wonderful, supportive, caring family
-> My great friends in Lansing, KBS, and GR
-> The fact that I don't have to worry where my next meal will come from, or whether there will be a roof over my head, or how I will pay for health care
-> That my family, friends, and myself are generally healthy and happy
-> My great cat Isis :-)
-> More trivial things: being able to travel to so many interesting places, the huge block of chocolate that Katie and Travis helped me get that is SOOO good, sunny days, the sound a hockey puck makes as it is shot around the boards, the internet, pay-at-the pump gas stations, The Colbert Report, Woody's yummy food, Netflix, the peace and quiet of living in the country, $3.5o 1st run movies, ESPN, diet black cherry vanilla coke, sunsets, fireworks, mashed potatoes and stuffing, and so much more...

Torture Lindsey Day 2006

...is over! I managed to survive a dentist and doctors appointment on the same day! I sat in waiting rooms for about 3 hours total today, but at least I got everything out of the way.