Calling it a day

Well, I just looked back at my "shorter more frequent" post and was appalled at all the typos. I am just the kind of guy that needs to spew it down, hammer it clean and then polish, maybe, but I will try again.

Jenny F. Scientist just wrote a post about what she likes about being scientist. If I interpret her intention correctly, this is in part due to the fact that she has been a little negative recently. And, those of you who know me, know that this is my typical paradigm-pessimism is my old comfy pair of shoes.

But, I have got to get to the bottom of the impending decision-to stay or go. Will I continue this academic career or head back to industry? I agree with Jenny F. that the independence is the big attractant. You are not tied to what will make money for the company, you are tied to what is fundable instead. Within that limitation you do have a lot of freedom. But, that limitation, I fear, is becoming tighter. As budgets tighten and the NIH grant process requires more and more of a neat little package with so much preliminary data and a perfect 3-5 year time scale, I see more and more of an academic's job being knowing how to work the system. If you always have to fit your projects into this package, is this really independence? How much energy and creativity do I have for making an interesting amoeboid project look like it fits in the box?

I do like figuring things out, but what I like even better is getting things to work. This is somehow encoded in those of us who are engineers first and scientists second. Further, having a dollar sign as part of the big picture, as with a product in industry, is, for me an intriguing challenge of its own. Even most engineering professor's effort is largely scientific and secondarily engineering oriented and I am not sure this is what I want.

Today, I had the kind of day I wish I had more often, other than discovering that most of the common cell culture crap was gone just as I was beginning a big parallel virus amplification. What I liked is, I did a lot of different stuff: virus amplification in the morning and at the end of the day, data analysis, microscope rebuild, discussed data with two grad students, discussed optical trapping with another guy and spent some time walking around checking on things the machinests are supposed to be building for me. Yesterday, on the other hand, I spent the whole day in a my little micrscope room with walls painted black and when experiments didn't work it felt like a loss of the whole day. Maybe this would be better if I can push through to a facutly job where teaching, grant writing, meeting with students, and serving on committees would all be a part of everyday. Or, maybe I would feel like I could never concentrate on anything long enough to really get anything done.

I think the thing a lot of graduate students don't appreciate when they are starting, and I know I didn't, is that there are risks in academics that no one tells you about. Sure, very few folks with PhDs in science or engineering starve, but, you can never really count on an academic career. The number who make it to faculty compared to the number who enter grad school is pretty low and then there is always the chance that tenure won't come your way. This leaves you at about 40 looking for a new career, over qualified by your Ph.D. for many. For others who don't go the faculty route, it is often a harder to find a job than it would have been with the Master's and as many in Ann Arbor will tell you, even giants like Pfizer lay off PhDs.

For me, with work going better, now is the time to consider this. I try my best not to look at it when things are too narrowly focused or worse yet too narrowly focused on one project. I feel grateful for the chance to live abroad, work with the crazy people I work with, and be able to have Rachel home with Ellis. This is a good job. When I can remember this is the time to consider what I want to do next.

It is going to get a whole lot crazier

Rachel says I need to try to write more, shorter posts. Apparently she is distributing this advice all over the internet. The news I am picking up coming in from the states is getting stranger it seems.

The man who should have become president in 2000, won an Oscar. What the hell?

I am following the world's longest presidential election from over here and it is making me what to puncture my ear drums. I can't believe Guiliani still calls himself a Republican or that more people are fretting over his drag queen romp with Trump, than his cronyism, extramarital affairs and failure to prepare New York City better following the first attack on the World Trade Center. Between this guy and Hillary, a documentarian from Tennessee sounds okay.

Can someone explain to me why it was so shocking for Al Sharpton to learn that Strom Thurmond's ancestors owned some of his ancestors? It seems that Sharpton new his ancestors were slaves and Thurmond's family was known to own slaves, yet Sharpton sounded as though this revelation left him, well, not quite speechless. Big surprise. I am not diminishing the horror of slavery, but why is this such a profoundly shocking realization? Even if there is a biological connection, many decendants of slaves are related to their ancestors owners.

the goods are odd indeed

Hurrying to meet a writing deadline this weekend, I ended up enlisting Trey's help with a few essays on mechanics. Today I was reflecting on how nice of him it was to help me and and how it was fortunate that, because he was also an engineer, he was able to do so. This got me thinking about how the vast, vast majority of women engineers I know are married to other engineers or scientists. I wondered why this was and it prompted the following conversation with my own engineer husband.

Rachel : Hey do you know any women engineers who have spouses who aren't engineers or scientsts?
Trey: Only a very few (he gives me one example then can't think of any more).
Rachel: Why do you think that is? Non-technical men don't want to marry women that are better in math and science than they are? That sounds like men.
Trey: No, it's just who you meet in school and at work.
Rachel: I doubt that. I know lots of women from undergrad and grad school in other majors who married outside of their programs.
Trey: Yeah, but they all wanted to marry engineers. Some of them just weren't that lucky (smirks).

Sweet, Tasty Belgium

I think we all know that Rachel went to Belgium to eat chocolate and I went to drink beer. We both went to eat fish, but that is in her post. I may be writing this for a small audience (Joe and Matt) or maybe a few more will stop by a specialty store and see if you can hunt one of these up. I think you will have an easier time finding them in America than we can here in Germany.

On our second full day in Bruges, I found a particularly nice beer store operated by a woman who spoke fluent English and knew quite a lot about how the beers were made. Rachel enjoyed joking that she was my new girlfriend. We tried a total of 16 beers which included abbey ales, Trappist ales, doubles, triples, gueze, kriek lambic and sour barrel aged ales. Some are available in America but I tried them again simply because I knew I liked them and the price was so low in Belgium compared to at home, often half. We also visited Bruges' single remaining brewery in the old city where we had a little tour of their developing museum.
We tried several trappist beers, these being the beers that are still brewed in one of 6 monastaries and are always bottle conditioned.

Orval- This is a beer I have had many times in the US. If anything it seemed a bit fresher over here. The Orval website is a bit confusing in its description of the process, but it appears that this beer is fermented twice and bottle conditioned but I can't tell if a different yeast is pitched on the second fermentation. They definitely add hops to the maturation (second fermentation) which explains the extra aroma of the final beer. This was good but not my favorite.

Achel-This is the newest brewery in the tradition with the monks having converted from farming. You can read the charming story here. I believe that we had a beer that wasn't in existence when the aformentioned article was written, probably a triple. I found this beer to be uninspired and a little boring compared to the excellent stuff to come.

Rochefort 8 and 10-This was the last of the Trappists we had time for and the first we tried and by far the best. 8 and 10 refer to the to the strength (9.2 and 11.3 ABV respecitvely), but there were several other differences between these two dark beers. The 10 was sweeter and had flavors I would call "stouty" in addition to a little bit of vanilla and had an aroma that I can only call "fig newton". The 8 was more straightforward. In the 10, you could really taste the alcohol if you let it come to the temperature of your mouth before swallowing. For the two of you who care (Joe and Matt) I would say these are two to run right out and get if you haven't had them.

From there we switched to Tripels that were for the most part Abbey Ales, meaning they are brewed in the monastic style but are commercial beers. Double, Triple and Quadrupel refer to four strengths which correspond to the amount of malt. Doubles are brownish usually and Triplels are lighter but stronger, often having pure sugar added to increase the strength without complicating the malt flavor too much. This gives the yeast room to really express itself in the beer. Quadrupels are stronger still. (Some call the Rochefort 10 a quadrupel.) In my order of preference:

Grimbergen-This beer, among other flavors, seemed a bit dirty to me with strange hint of freshly tilled ground in it. I didn't like it. That will teach me to buy by the pretty label. Others in the group didn't detect this earthiness, but it still wasn't a favorite. Perhaps we got a bad bottle.

Hoegaarden Grand Cru-This is listed as a blanche tripel. It is as hazy and yeasty as the regular Hoegaarden but there is no wheat in the malt bill and it is brewed to tripel strength. I thought it was good and I would certainly recommend trying it as it was was much fruitier than the other tripels.

Leffe Tripel-This was a pretty popular beer in town with signs in several pubs. I found it to be pretty good and cheap, but then I had it on a different night from the rest of the triples with the best ones still to come. I was surprised to walk into a fairly large German style drink store and see it next to the cans of Juliper.

Triple Karmeliet-Another abbey beer recommended highly by the owner of Bacchus Cornelius. Everyone agreed that the aroma of this beer was strongly reminiscent of pineapples and I found it to have a strong black pepper taste in the finish. Opinions were mixed in the group but this was my favorite of the triples and ranked with the Rochefort 10.

We tried three lambics, a plain one (gueuze, pronounced "geershe", or something like that in Flemish) and too fruity examples. These are some of the craziest beers in the world, relying on open fermentation which inherently leads to yeast and bacteria polyculture performing at least a portion of the fermentation. Check out the linked wiki entry, it is very interesting.

Tinnermans Caveau-This one was the gueze which is a mixture of young and old lambic refermented in the bottle to create the carbonation. It was quite sour with strong acetic (think vinegar) flavors that lead Bridget to compare it to salad dressing. These beers are often described as "tasting as though they were brewed through or near a horse". They just have a bit of horse sweatiness to them that comes in with the open fermentation. This one had less of that than any I have ever had. I am not a huge Gueuze fan and didn't really expect this to be a hit with any one, but when in Belgium....surprisingly, to me anyway, Orrin really liked it.

Liefmanns Kriek-This one is widely available in America and I always like it. A little sweeter than the final one below, much sweeter than the gueuze and with some real cherry flavor as well as aroma. I think Rachel and Bridget would have gone for the 1.5 liter bottle of this if I had been willing to restrict us to one beer.

Belle-Vue Kriek-This brewery's products are artificially sweetened and this bottle was cheaper than the Liefmanns. Despite the sweetener, I found this one drier with the cherry character fully in the aroma. It was very refreshing, going down like soda, with no horsiness at all.

Sour ales are a unique style that combines some acidic character with a more typical beeriness than the lambics. Typically they are aged in oak and there is a lactobacillus component, traditionally residing in the barrels, that adds to the character considerably. Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter brews in several Belgian traditions and barrel ages.

Duchesse De Bourgogne - This beer was dark and sherry like. The finish was acidic but not vinegarry at all. We bought the big bottle and I wish I had bought two. To an American it hardly tastes like beer but unlike the gueuze, it doesn't thrash your tongue. For that reason I would recommend this one as a unique beer worth bringing to a party where you know everyone else is bringing wine.

Pannepot-Similar to the Duchesse, but just not as good or deep.

Echt, sour beer with cherries-This was a bit of a hybrid from the same brewery that makes the Duchesse which is apparently the base beer for this cherry beer. The bit of sweetness from the fruit is nice with the sour.

Finally, we went to the De Halve Maan brewery, which is the new brewery residing in the old Straffe Hendrik buildings. The beers here were a light golden ale and a brown dubbel. They were just okay compared to many of the others we had and I was surprised to read that Michaeal Jackson (the one who is beer-crazy, not the one who is generally crazy) liked these so much. The brewery only does the primary fermentation following the brewing of the wort in this building before sending it in trucks for maturation and bottling at another facility. They use the space made available at the brewery to house a museum, restaurant and meeting rooms. I can't really do justice to the brewery museum. The building is 5 or so stories and includes much of the old equipment like a giant pan chiller that you walk through on your way to see the view from the roof. Formerly, the beer was pumped all over the crazy building during brewing. The tour guide was witty and informed, but her standard speech left me wanting more information. Perhaps one of the most interesting tidbits from the tour was that this brewery used to employ more than 50 including horse drawn delivery wagons. The current staff of the beer production part of the process now is only three. I got the feeling that the museum is a work in progress as there was some old equipment sitting around from other closed breweries that the owner of De Halve Maan is adding to the museum to preserve knowledge of how it used to be done. The album at Picassa contains pictures but the brewery website has some too.

If I were to summarize, I would say that the Liefmann's, Tripel Karmaliet, Rochefort 10 and Duchesse were the best of their categories. I think each person on the trip would agree that these were excellent, but we would all probably pick a different "best in show". I could leave the lambic but would be hard preseed to pick a favorite of the other three.

As far as the brewery tour, I would definitely recommend it to a future visitor even though I wasn't thrilled with the beer. The 5 Euro price of admission gets you one beer along with the tour so you can decide for yourself and then go across the street to a little pub and have a Karmaliet or Rochefort.

Today, we noticed a really nice drink store in a neighboring village and went in to see what they might have. I asked for Belgian beer and they pointed Groelsch and said "only Holland beer". I asked if they could order the Karmaliet. The guy had never heard of it and said I would have to take delivery of a whole pallet-40 cases,~1000 beers-at a likely cost of over 1000 Euro.

I would like to go back with a real focus on seeing breweries the next time. The Trappists tend to be pretty stingy with tourists only allowing other brewers to see the operation. But, most of the abbey ale and lambic breweries do allow tours. I would also like to hit a few more pubs rather than tasting at home, but that may have to wait until Ellis is old enough to have his own beer rather than share mine. Maybe if we bring our own sippy cup, we could do this next year.

there's more than yummy food in Belgium, but I wouldn't know about it

Day One: On the Train
Trey and I elected to take the train which was about a 5 hour trip all told. We had to transfer trains in Cologne (among other places). We walked off our train straight into a giant Fasching celebration. Fasching is Carnaval/Mardi Gras in Germany, but also incorporates an older pagan tradition of "chasing away winter spirits" by dressing up. Shrove Tuesday ends up looking like Halloween, with almost everyone dressed up, but in certain cities, it's more like a week long party. An unbelieveable number of drunk people of all ages in some very elaborate costumes circulated through the station. We saw people getting on and off trains with cases of beer and other liquor, while we merely grabbed a sandwhich and boarded our train for Brussles.

We finally arrive in Brugge around 7 to find the Markt still decorated for Christmas. Seeing the stepped gable buildings outlined in lights was lovely. Later, it was revealed that the decorations were still up because a movie was being filmed there. Thanks to Trey's excellent navigating, we quickly found our rental house and settled in.

Day Two: The Lorenzes Arrive and We Shop and Learn about Chocolate
Trey and I made a trip to the fish market (the Vismarkt), where we discovered that this year had been a disaapointing one for mussles. They'd been small and expensive and so the season had ended early. I considered this a tragedy, but Trey rallied and purchased the supplies needed for our dinner that night. We made a quick pommes frites stop and then returned to the apartment and finished up some grocery shopping (after all, Bridget was on her way- we could hardly have anything less than a well stocked kitchen).

In the early afternoon Bridget, Orrin, and Silas arrived. We decided to put the art museum on hold and set out instead for the Chocolate Museum. Honestly, how can Van Eyck's chiaroscuro compare to free praline samples? We saw a demonstration and learned all about the history of chocolate and its introduction and, presumably, perfection in Belgium. One of the more interesting stories was about a bishop in South America who got tired of all the noise of servants bringing drinking chocolate to ladies during mass. After banning this practice, he was killed- someone poisoned his chocolate. We also learned all about how chocolate does not cause cavities, acne, or obesity. Hooray! Obviously starving for chocolate by the time the tour concluded, we next visited one of the few shops that still handmakes it own chocolates, Dumon. Bridget and I opted the 500 gram "mix and match your own" box. It turns out 500 grams is a lot of chocolate, so if you want to take than less than 10 minutes choosing, you should really get 2-3 of anything that sounds good and not just 1. I'm sure it was lots of fun for the woman working behind the counter.

Then- more pommes; the fries were good, but much improved by the various dipping sauces. I am even (gasp!) coming around to the mayonnaise on fries. Finally, I was persuaded to walk to the edge of town to see some windmills. We saw lots of interesting architecture along the way, but nothing impressive enough to stop my whining. Finally we returned home to a delicious seafood dinner (including shrimp scampi, eel, and perch) with a chocolate buffet dessert. The chocolates were delicious were a variety of smooth creamy fillings.

Day Three: 226 Step Brewery Tour
Bridget accompanied Trey on his return to the fish market in the morning, leaving Orrin and me to feed and dress the babies. Among other things, they returned with a sack of bugs that Trey called "brine shrimp." I replied "No, we cannot eat sea monkey." But it turned out he was saying "brined shrimp" and Bridget described them as ham crossed with shrimp. They turned out to be very good, but maybe not worth the effort of deheading/peeling.

We headed to the Minnewater area of Brugge, first passing through a Saturday market, filled with cheese and bread vendors, plus giant rotisseries filled with ribs or chicken. Unfortunately, we arrived too late for the brewery tour we'd planned on so we grabbed some waffles (delicious) and walked around the inner park of the Beguinage. Though it's now home to Benedictine nuns, the convent was originally founded by women (typically widowed or unmarried) who wanted to retreat from society, but not become nuns- it's an interesting tradition. Finally, it was onto our brewery tour at De Halve Mann Brewery. Trey is writing a beer-hole post covering all this. But I will say that the steep, narrow staircases (you had to turn backward to descend many of them) were not 100% compatible with babywearing. The tour turned around on the roof of the brewery allowing for some lovely views of Brugge.

Now fairly worn out, we headed back to the apartment, stopping off for some more beer and chocolates to make it through the night. To speed things along, Bridget and I accompanied Trey into the beer store and the proprieter gave us a sample of another Belgian, product: chocolade jenever. It is chocolate flavored gin- sounds revolting, but tastes excellent. She told us that hers was homemade and better than what you could buy elsewhere. Finally, Trey and Orrin made us a declicious dinner of pear-blue cheese salad and fishy pasta. The pasta included some excellent scallops, which we heard the fish monger was eating raw because they were so fresh and sweet.

Day Four: Onto Brussels
After a quick breakfast and clean up of the apartment, we headed to the train station, bound for Brussels. The trip was uneventful, except for Silas sneezing a mouthful of chocolate all over my hair, face, and shirt. I had to dig out a new top and change in the train WC, and worse- that chocolate was wasted!

Brussels seemed large and overwhelming after Brugge. Our first stop was the Grand Place, which contains houses built by the town's guilds. They are beautiful and full of interesting symbols. Bridget read to us from the guide book about some of them, but even then we were stumped by a few-statues depicting the 6 elements essesential to bread baking? See if you can figure it out here and here. Then down the street to the Mannekin Pis, who was, alas, not in one of his signature costumes during out visit. It is a little suprising that it is such a famous statue- being kind of in the middle of nowhere and with a stature shorter than Ellis's. It was surrounded by waffle shops and Japanese tourists. We partook of the former. I only wish I had also known about this counterpoint before I left- stupid guidebooks.

Last stop in Brussels was the Horta Museum, the former home of Victor Horta, master of Art Noveau. Unbeknownst to me, Brussels was a major center for Art Noveau. The museum was very unique in that it was a house meticulously designed in keeping with the style. It had been filled with Art Noveau furniture, but the floor inlays, staircase, and other elements of the house were far more beautiful. You can check out a virtual tour here, though Trey's favorite feature (a bedside pop-out urinal -- eech!) seems to have been omitted.

Finally we headed toward the train station, where we grabbed a quick dinner and one more waffle before we hopped on our train bound back to Germany. We had a great trip in Brugge with delicious food, beautiful scenery, a comfortable atmosphere, and excellent traveling companions.

For those not easily bored: More pictures from our trip

back from Belgium

We got home late last night, tired but safe and sound. We had a great time in Belgium with lots of yummy food and the kind of excitement that can only come from a toddler sneezing on you with a mouth full of said food. Full story of our trip will be posted soon.

Today I have on crabby, still somewhat sleep deprived baby to deal with. Ordinally, I would take him for a walk to calm him down (also I need groceries), but while we were gone, we missed an attempted delivery of the V-day package from my mom. If you read any of my sisters' blogs you will know that my mom makes awesome holiday packages and I am ALWAYS the last to get mine. So, I dare not leave the house before noon lest I miss my second chance at it. Deutsche Post will probably do something crazy like try to send in back to America.

I guess she is okay

Today, as we leave for Belgium we are really feeling the luxury of being able to walk out our door and hop on the trains. We can do this because I didn't have to take Scout to the kennel which takes almost the whole morning. I was feeling a bit guilty about all of this and a little like a bad dog owner, and then, I got this photo of Scout with her Valentine peanut butter bone from our friends taking care of her for us. Clearly, she is living pretty high on the hog. Notice that the bone is personalized.The email that accompanied the photo included this quote from Scout's caretaker: "Seriously, I never considered myself this kind of dog person, but when I stood in the “three dog bakery” today ordering this peanut butter bone for Scout, I had to come to terms with my pathetic self…."

Thanks to the two of you watching her. I avoided using your names, to protect the innocent and the guilty.

Don't call it a trend

In keeping with recent posts, a few more optimistic notes. The new guy at lab, with whom I will be working closely, is very good. It seems like we will get along pretty well and it is good to have someone with similar background and interests to discuss matters. The force instrument project is sounding like a lot more fun now that I have someone else to work on it with me.

While this week was pretty frustrating and tiring (I pretty much worked 40 hours in three days...Rachel was thrilled.), I did get to the bottom of at least a couple of mysteries and managed to draw a new circle around the scope of this project with my boss.

And tomorrow it is off to Brugge for a long weekend. I hope to visit here. Our trip there will involve 4 train changes with a baby and luggage, one with a transfer allowance of only 6 minutes. I will try to contain my "nervous traveller" which is a close friend of my "inner child" who fears being stranded or abandoned in a strange place. Anyway, we will enjoy some waffles (for the inner child), beer (for me) and just getting there (for nervous traveller). Man, how does Rachel put up with me?

2 milestones in one

This represents our 200th post on this blog- woo hoo!

Now, some more evidence for the "maybe he'll just skip crawling" theory: Ellis pulled himself up to standing for the first time today. I think perhaps he is trying to demonstrate that he's mature enough for some authentic Belgian waffles this weekend. Just not sure how much refined sugar an 8 month old should eat...

good news/ bad news

Good
-We went to IKEA this Saturday and did some shopping so we can fix up the back room once it's wallpapered.
-We're going to Belgium this weekend with Bridget, Orrin and Silas!
-Ellis seems to have learned his first sign!
-Blog improvement phase 1 (header, link to photo albums) is complete.

Bad
-Trey was sick yesterday, so we didn't wallpaper.
-Ellis slept terribly last night and I had to get out of bed and rock him 3 times (+ one time for Trey). Arg. I think he was having tummy problems.
- Ellis's first sign is not one I taught him: he raises both fists in the air and screams. Apparently, it means "up."
-Blog improvement phase 2 (top secret) may not happen.

I rare moment of optimism is to be shared

I had a pretty good week at work datawise, so I thought I would share this brief bit of optimism. I also have a manuscript from coauthors for my final graduate work paper to look over which means this might finally get published somewhere. As far as my new data, I found some very interesting things today about how my motor proteins are interacting or not interacting with one another. On the other hand, this may damage a story being built on similar topics with other techniques by a coworker. This means it could be politically messy as well as scientifically messy to sort it all out, but we have the tools to do it and it should be pretty interesting.

Politics around the lab are heating up as two students approach graduation and our technician is out of town and cells are dying and their are orphans running around everywhere hungry...well not really. And, the cells die a lot even when he is in town. But, the situation with the cells is bugging me especially now because I need the cells too. I am going to dig into it and see if I can straighten this out, but it will be a little bit dicey again politically since folks get a little up-tight if you suggest they are doing something incorrectly.

Ellis bit me three times tonight. Twice after biting off huge hunks of mango or carrot which I was trying to get out of his mouth and a third time on the chest while I was rocking him to sleep. The third was the worst as he got exactly a nanometer of skin between his sharp little teeth and crushed several nerve endings. I jumped so high he started to bawl. Also of great importance: Ellis had his first taste of pie (pumpkin) today...meaning the change times are upon us as the milk-hole transforms into the pie-hole. Next to puberty, this is the biggest change in a boy's life.

I have begun wearing long underwear to bed. We sleep in an attic room with little heat. I mention this to point out to Lindy Bindy Banana Fana Fana Fo Findy the proper circumstance to put on spankies as she likes to call them. It isn't the last week of August in the middle of the day. I prefer their snug fit because I don't ever find them riding up my legs or hog-tying me in the middle of the night as happens with regular jammies. I think the proper word for this circumstance is a "pajangle". So, concisely, spankies are a good way to stay warm and avoid a pajangle when sleeping in an attic in February without heat.

8 month post, late as usual

It's hard to believe but true- Ellis is 8 months old already. He now weighs 22.6 lbs and is 26" tall- barely squeezing into the rear facing car seat anymore. And, looking a little sausagey in some of his jammies.
This month, he's gotten so much more active and interested. He seems to always be peering at things: into the pots on the stove to see what's simmering, over the edge of his diaper changing pad to watch the toilet flush (a personal favorite), and around the laptop screen to see what his Dad is seeing that's so fascinating. He also seems interested in how things work: he would rather watch the gears of the aquarium music box than the little fishes and background they are spinning around for his enjoyment. Here we see him explaining the nature of a sphere to his mother.

While he's not crawling, he's definitely on the go, though he prefers more of a "run and tumble" style locomotion. This includes an extensive floor routine of rolling, scooting, sitting, and getting up on his toes and hands before lifting one leg in a death defying- 3 point stance. He also really loves standing up and when he sits on my lap will grab my shirt and try to pull himself up.

His top front teeth are coming in as you can see in the photo being silly with mama. He still loves being naked and if you pull his shirt up over his head, a lot of times he will get it the rest of the way off on his own. Sometimes it gets stuck like here.


His interest in solid food has greatly increased and he squaks and reaches for whatever we are eating, though often ends up disappointed. He gets along very well feeding himself zwei-back or toast and pieces of fruit. We spoon feed him occasionally, particularly yogurt, of which he can't seem to get enough. We are beginning to teach him sign language and I suspect that the first one he learns will be "more" and he will use it in conjunction with yoghurt.

He's gotten even more vocal, adding tongue clicks and growls to his vocabulary. He's also gotten more ticklish and figured out peek-a-boo so it's more fun to really play with him. Unfortunatly, he thinks this is fun too so demands more play time with one or, preferably both parents. Here at the right he has recently revealed himself to his mother after having his head covered by a clean diaper.

This month also marked his first real vomit which was induced by sticking a long piece of mango to far into his piehole. He has also learned to put his arms up in the air when he wants to be picked up. And, tonight, for the first time ever he let Papa put him to sleep and even down in the bed without needing mama to seal the deal with a milk snack.

For the 41st year in a row, no one cares

So today two great American teams will play for the football championship in a spectacle called the Super Bowl. And, I live in a country where almost no one cares. In fact, where we live, the word football denotes an entirely different game. It makes the whole important thing seem, well, incredibly unimportant. No one knows who Peyton Manning is or that he is trying to escape the moniker "choker" or that Rex Grossman is as unpredictable as a game of spin the bottle. Nor do they care that for the first time two black generals will lead their men into this mightiest of all simulated battles, nor that this somehow is supposed to say something about the moral improvement of our nation.

In fact, this week the Germans and the French were rapt with the World Cup of Team Handball, a game that most Americans know as a late night Olympic coverage novelty or an uncomfortable week in gym class where the teacher was legally obliged to expand their horizons, but without allowing any of the heavy body contact characteristic of the game. The best way I can describe it is an even cross of basketball and lacrosse. There are more players than basketball on a crowded court and the passing is fast and furious like lacrosse with a similar amount of unpadded body contact. Scoring is about like lacrosse with games ending 15-40 points per team. The big story this week was the double overtime elimination of the French by the Germans on a blown call (according to the French) at the end of the second overtime. The French player leapt and fired a goal that was disallowed because his foot touched the ground in the goal keepers area before he released the ball. For the French it was a moral victory as they were heavy underdogs. Folks at work were nearly shouting over the slow motion replay of the disputed call. I saw it on the internet and I think the French had a pretty strong case.

I am trying to remember, as I feel sorrow for missing the game despite my misgivings about what professional sports have become, that this is why I moved over here: to live among another people and remember that what we think is important in America can occur and merit no notice in most other places. Culture is as relative as anything else. New Yorkers have told me they live in The City because it is the center of the universe and I think to myself, "Only New Yorkers think that (you overly self-important, coastal snob)." New Yorkers think all the important stuff happens in NYC and Americans think it is going on in America, and to some extent the supposedly worldly Europeans use their worldliness to argue that it is really all happening here. They should know, they are worldly. I would like to believe that anyone who chooses where they live by some such false criteria are crazy and doomed to unhappiness and that happy New Yorkers are so because they can take the train to see their mom in Queens or have the close circle of folks they see at the coffee stand.

Super Bowl Sunday is one of our few national rituals, a common moment for better or worse. Some folks will watch it in a church basement and pray before and after, others will have brats and cuss a blue streak from the beginning of the game until next fall, some will have barbecues and others vegetarian organic parties. Tomorrow everyone will know who won and why and be happy to chat about it a little. And all this will add to that feeling of being at home, among your own people, with a shared contextual understanding of what happened yesterday. We should all go ahead and enjoy it, but we should remember that it is important to us for these reasons and we shouldn't delude ourselves that it matters to anyone else or that it should.

please excuse our mess

Making some changes on the blog over the next couple days. Apologies for any whackiness you might observe.

Dad and Ellis: Week in Review

This was a successful week and a frustrating one for me. It began with some upsettedness at work over failure to maintain common chemical stocks. I wrote a very wise-ass sort of post about this, but then didn't put it up because the players were too recognizable. Any of you looking for a job that might put you in an academic lab are welcome to see it via email, if you feel a deterrent is in order. Generally, this is part of a larger problem at work (which is not unique to my lab) which is that the communal good gets a lot of lip service, but people's actions reflect a different, selfish standard. But what should be expected when we are so competitive in our research? Making ATP for the lab will not have any effect on a career while getting another day of data definitely will. In my personal work, I avoid any conflict, and quality worries, by having personal stocks, but this takes a lot time too.

I will also begin using a very crabby cell line called SF9 cells. While it is true that these cells are difficult to keep alive, our lab has an additional problem with yeast and bacteria growing in the culture that other labs do not have. Unfortunately, when this happens the whole culture goes in the trash. Obviously, there is another community standards issue in my lab, since we culture with antibiotics and anitfungals and get infected while other labs go without any of that and are fine for years. I should point out that the cells themselves shouldn't be any more infection prone than any others, they are crabby because they are very environmentally sensitive. Again, since the cultures are communal, the time anyone is willing to spend on them is minimal and this results in sloppy practices that bring yeast and bacteria into the culture. So, I was in early, along with the other post-doc, and we discussed it. I found out he runs his own private culture all the time and the only infection he has ever had was traced to a piece of improperly washed glassware. So, next week I will be retrained in his practices and then will start a practice culture to make sure I am doing it right. This is a sticky issue because many in my lab are more experienced in this area than I am, so by doing this, I am straight away demonstrating that I do not trust their instructions or manner of handling things. But I have enough experience to know that something is wrong.

Finally, the success was in purifying the all important protein of interest and demonstrating that its tetramerization state is correct. During this I also crossed the boundary of being critical of someone else with more experience for sloppy practice that could make it easy to get the result one wanted for a given assay of protein purity. I ended up discussing this with my boss and he agreed that the person in question (who will be a co-author on the manuscript) is going to have to spend the spring doing the things that should have been done earlier to convince us her protein was clean and correctly formed. This felt like a small victory, as much as getting the protein right, since my background doesn't include a lot of purification work and I sometimes question my intuition about what is correct.

Ellis is still just about to crawl and has been trying a lot of new foods. His favorites appear to be mango, pear, toast and quinoa while rice and papaya go in the "not so much" pile. Ellis also spent some time thinking about careers this week, mainly exploring the culinary arts.

When I saw this picture, I thought maybe he would be the proprietor of "Sloppy E's", a barbecue joint and brew pub (Head Brewer: Dad, Chief Welder and Fabricator: Grandpa Mike, Graphic Designer and Menu Consultant: Grandma Lise, Financial Manager and Menu Consultant: Mom). The good cheer seen in this picture I thought would be the perfect promotional logo for the good cheer that comes from barbecue and beer.

And then I saw this picture, and my hopes were dashed as I realized he probably would end up a high end pastry chef with an entourage of harried underlings who never do anything right.

you look like monkey and you smell like one too!*

Happy Birthday to Trey!!

*Just kidding, he doesn't look like a monkey.