30 May 2020

0001 trivial pursuit

0552 trying to sleep (and failing)
1215 sleeping

2358 working on NSF proposal

Food: leftover steak for lunch, steak and bacon for dinner with fruit and veggies

Fact: The New Forest was first declared a royal forest by William the Conqueror sometime around 1076.  It was first recorded in the Domesday book in 1086.  It was heavily damaged in the Great Storm of 1703, and extratropical cyclone (probably with the force of a category 2 hurricane) that hit England.  When the storm hit (it also destroyed a lot of chimneys in London and killed over 1000 sailors) the Church of England said it was proof God was unhappy with the country, possibly because they hadn't done too hot fighting those pesky Catholics during the War of Spanish Succession. 

I had a really hard time sleeping last night, so much stress/uncertainty/anxiety these days.  Finally fell asleep a little after 0700, and slept fitfully until about 1400.  Spent much of the day working on the comments on my NSF.  It's coming along nicely so I think we will meet our goal.  The plant I rescued from the squirrels is really growing up nicely.  Went for a walk with mother.  We talked quite a bit about the situation in MN and all the other cities. 

Its insane than 30 years after Rodney King police brutality against African Americans is still so common, and its heartbreaking to think about living in that type of fear and knowing that so many people won't listen to your word.  The times I've been profiled suck enough, and those are limited to not allowing me into stores with my backpack even though tons of other people are walking around with theirs.  That's embarrassing but not life threatening.  Once we got back I then took the puppies out.  Schubie went first and got to bark at Georgia, the annoying dog down the road who is just allowed to roam at will whenever she is outside.  Georgia actually turned tail and ran though when schubie barked who was then so proud of herself she trotted up the hill back home.  Mother was waiting with Dumas outside and we were amused that they greeted each other like it had been years, not minutes since their last interaction.  Dumanator enjoyed his walk and then I fed them.  We had dinner once father got home (tomorrow will be a "fun" conversation about reevaluating the current situation since cases are climbing dramatically here).  We listened to the Saturday Yankees/Astros game.  Suzyn was unhappy that the replay review didn't overturn a call, even though that call favored the Yankees.  She was sure there was enough video evidence that the ball had hit the grass before Hicks gloved it.  Luckily the replay guys didn't agree and eventually we won the game although it was back and forth to the end, including the Astros bringing up the go-ahead run in the 9th.  Finished up the evening with an email from ANSP letting everyone know the museum was safe but that they were bringing in extra security and anti-terrorism was keeping an eye on our building since there had been some vandalism in the area and a few blocks away some looting.  2020 is shaping up to be the most ridiculous year ever, I just hope it all results in positive changes.

29 May 2020

1235 zoom with Drew, Steph, and Julie

1412 zoom meting with Jason
1551 going to costco

2320 trivial pursuit

Food: ribs for lunch and dinner with the last of the tomatoes and some fruit we had frozen

Fact: Polar Bears and Kodiak Bears are the largest terrestrial mammal in North America.

Woke up for the lunch meeting, Steph started the call cause we didn't think things through, so when she had to leave for class the call got killed mid sentence.  So i started up a new one for the rest of us.  Not much going on with everyone talked a bit about a preprint that is out using HMM profile alignments for covid-19.  It seems like we should be able to tie our HBV alignment paper into this somehow.  Afterwards I had a few minute break and then it was time to talk to Jason about the NSF submission.  We are aiming to get it in on Monday so he sent me all his comments this afternoon.  Once that was over I took care of a few other loose ends with the grant and then I went to costco while mother waited in the parking lot.  It was a pretty straight forward experience, masks were required (and enforced) and social distancing was maintained.  There were limits on the amount of meat (a total of 3 packets of some combination of beef, pork and chicken) you could buy.  They were out of lamb, but I got some steaks, a chuck roast, and some ground bison.  They also had no cheddar cheese or cucumbers but I was able to get everything else, even the mixed nuts I hadn't been able to find during my previous trips.  Afterwards we went for a walk and then ate before it was trivia time.  Eddie and Ania had trouble with their internet so they ended up having to skype in on his phone.  Then there was spider drama that eventually resulted in they disassembling their couch so Eddie could catch the spider and take it outside.  As usual the west coast team won, although all of us were down to our last couple of pieces.  We played the Genius 2 edition from like 1985 so entertainment was rather challenging.  I did have an issue with one question- what is the largest terrestrial predator in North America.  I said polar bear and then mentioned that polar bears and brown bears are really the same thing anyway and depending upon what genes you do your phylogeny with may or may not be reciprocally monophyletic.  According to the card the answer is Kodiak Bear, which isn't even a species.  Besides, Kodiak and Polar bears are similar in size.  So we played the rest of the game under protest!

28 May 2020

0839 sleeping

1524 working on louse ID
1628 working on louse ID

2353 listening to the Yankees game

 

Food: clam chowder (with shrimp added) for lunch, burgers for dinner with fruit and lettuce

Fact: At the Queensland Police Museum there is a stuffed dog named Peter on display.  Peter's owner was suspected of committing a murder and the eyewitnesses all noted the dog when they saw him in the vicinity of the murder.  Peter happened to be infested with ticks, got sick, and the vet was unable to save him.  The investigators (who had staked out the house) exhumed the dog's body, took it to the Queensland Museum to be prepared and brought it in during the trial when asking witnesses to ID the suspect.  The suspect was convicted.

Woke up and found out my new shoes had arrived (much earlier than expected, since the ETA was the 2nd week in June).  They are nice and blue.  They will take a little bit of getting used to since they are a little stiffer than my normal shoes and also have a little more bounce to them, but I think they will be really good for hiking.  Spent most of the afternoon getting the trees ready for a South Texas louse project.  I also talked to Cammack for a few minutes since he got stuck having to empty out my office in the wildlife building.  I had told him I had 2 boxes of stuff, a print, and a bulletin board, but apparently he thought i was underestimating and brought more boxes.  He was rather surprised to discover I in fact really did just have 2 boxes of stuff.  Mother and I went for a quick walk since it was about to rain (and actually started sprinkling when we were walking back up the hill).  Shoes worked well, did a little under 2 miles with my pack.  Then we had some dinner while listening to the baseball game.  Mother had made mushrooms for her and father and they were super smelly, I had to sniff vanilla extract to get my appetite back.  Fungus is disgusting.  Tonight's game was the first of the Yankees/Astros series at Yankee stadium and Suzyn was talking about how the series the Astros had earlier had a series with the jays resulting 38 runs in 3 games.  Just wait until the London series with its 50 runs in 2 games.  Mother made a cinnamon roll coffee cake that was really good, but needed 3 times as much frosting.  When I told her this she was amused because the recipe actually had called for 3 times as much frosting but all the reviews said it was too much frosting so she scaled it way back.  She's so silly, has she ever met a recipe that I didn't think needed more frosting?  Then I talked to Jack for a while and finished up the evening with the rest of the Yankees game while working on my alignments.

27 May 2020

0207 working on sequences
0456 trying to go to sleep
0923 sleeping
0949 sleeping

Food: Clam chowder for lunch, hot dogs for dinner

Fact: The countries with the most airports are the US, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, and Canada.  The US is first, the order of the others depends on how exactly you count airports.

Woke up in time for the ANSP zoom.  Everyone was doing pretty well although one of Survi's friends has been missing since early Tuesday.  After that I did some work until mother asked me to go to the Dollar General to get cream of mushroom soup so she could make clam chowder.  I also got some root beer and hot dogs.  As expected I was the only person in the store wearing a mask.  More surprising though was the Baptists across the street saying on their billboard that church wouldn't start up until the 31st, much smarter than some other churches although probably still too early considering the fact cases are climbing here faster than the testing rate is.   Otherwise it was a pretty low key day since it was raining the whole time.  Dumas and I ran up the hill to burn some energy since he and I were both bouncing off the walls.  I discovered an 11 year old pointer ran in the National Field Trial this year, which isn't too surprising.  The parentals and I tried getting the treadmill running but that is going to require some replacement parts.  Father and I think the barn would make an awesome home gym.  After dinner we played trivia.  Even with Ron (who answered a ton of questions we came in last).  The only other fun thing was grey kittie has decided he likes sharing Dumas's mat which has created a ton of adorable pictures. Who said puppies and kitties can't be friends?

26 May 2020

0406 working on sequences
0639 sleeping
1246 sleeping
2315 working on sequences

Food: leftover steak for lunch and leftover pork chop for dinner with fruit and veggies

Fact: NYC spends and estimated 300 million a year fixing damage done to underground infrastructure, mainly caused by the fact there is no single map of what is where (not to mention the fact some stuff isn't known at all).  The first attempt to use GIS to make a NYC infrastructure map was done by combining the water and sewer maps (although this didn't even happen until the sewer people were forced to participate).  The resulting map was even useful for predicting West Nile Virus based on where water might pool.  Interestingly 9/11 was both a wake up call and a hindrance to trying to get all infrastructure on a map.  On one hand the map (which was in progress) was useful to determine how to proceed with rescues and also to identify the location of a large Freon tank at the world trade center site (which if it had been heated by the fires and exploded would have been catastrophic).  But on the flip side suddenly the various groups realized potential security risks from sharing data, for example Con Ed bailed on adding their infrastructure to the map. 

Woke up and spent most of the day either working on NSF grant stuff or sequence alignments.   It was raining basically all day so we weren't able to go on a long walk.  I did some jump roping however (36 was my maximum in a row) and took Dumas on a short walk down the hill.  Schubert looked at me like I was crazy when I tried to take her.  I also think she officially has twirling down so mother recorded it for the others to be impressed by.  Tonight's baseball game was yankees/rays and we won moving us further into 1st.  Suzyn and John kept talking about how much they will miss Maybin since there is no way he would clear wavers when he got sent down for Judge. Knowing how everything played out makes listening to the games rather amusing at times.

25 May 2020
0010 playing WoW
1210 sleeping
1847 lounging outside
2018 walking

Food: pizza rolls for lunch, chicken for dinnner

Fact: There are multiple carrier pigeons displayed in the US that lost legs during WWI but managed to save the troops they were deployed with but carrying messages alerting others where they were pinned down.  One is in Dayton and the other is at the Smithsonian, not sure if there are others.  The one at the Smithsonian even had a wooden leg made for it (both lived for quite a while after their adventures).

Woke up and talked to Kristen about getting the NSF resubmitted.  Then i filled out the form she needed to start the process.  Other than that it was a pretty low key day.  Since the weather was nice I did some computer work outside then lounged.  Eventually we went for a walk (I did 3.6 miles @45 pounds).  When we got home I we ate dinner and listened to baseball.  Since REI was having a sale I decided to go ahead and buy some trail running shoes to hike in since my real boots are in Texas and I didn't want to buy a new pair when I had already planned on my next new pair being custom made.


24 May 2020
0636 sleeping
1652 hanging out outside
1929 churching
2245 watching HP7b

Food: tacos for lunch

Fact: King Arthur flour was founded in 1790 as an importer of European flour.  Originally it was named for its owners, but in 1896 one of the owners attended a musical rendition of the knights of the round table and decided to call one of its new premium flour products King Arthur.

Woke up and played on my computer for a bit.  We decided since the weather was so nice out that we would eat our tacos outside as a late lunch.  We put on the baseball game and luckily the Yankees won.  I did a little bit of work and then mother and I lifted weights.  Then while I finished my sets the parentals got the sunless room set up for churching.  Mother wanted to record the whole thing so we used the screen capture to do so.  Afterwards we talked for a bit and then we cleaned up.  Mother made turnovers and we ate those while watching HP7b.

23 May 2020

0039 playing trivia
0748 sleeping
1612 picking up beer
2232 listening to baseball

Food: pizza for lunch, shrimp and rice for dinner with fruit and veggies

Fact: Hertz Rental car was founded in 1918 with a dozen rental cars (Model T's) in Chicago, IL.  I'm wondering who was renting cars back then?

Woke up and did a little bit of work on my computer (and checked all the aTRAM runs).  Since it's Saturday I also watched all the birds roll in for my fantasy birding big day.  The most amusing part though was I was pinned in Champaign for one of my spots so I got welcomed to a spot on Florida a mile or so from my house. 
Then we had lunch and I did a bit more work before picking up beer at Top Shelf while father churched.  Mother and I also took a short walk- since it was stormy out we just walked up and down the hill a couple times.  Once father got home we ate and put on the baseball game.  Always fun listening to the Yankees destroying a team, even if we did loose the first 2 to the White Sox. 

22 May 2020
0614 sleeping
0857 sleeping
1055 sleeping
1214 zoom with Tic, Fanny, and Drew

Food: waffle for lunch, Pork chops, left over potato, corn, and veggies for dinner

Fact: From 1900 until 1933 there was an Underground stop at The British Museum (not to be confused with The Natural History Museum).  However, it closed when Holborn Station opened (less than 100 yards away).  From 1933 until 1989 the surface building served as a military command post then was demolished.  At track level the station is used for storage.  The station is also apparently haunted by Amen-Ra's daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh who's tomb was moved to the British Museum. 

Woke up just before our noon zoom.  Julie wasn't able to join us but said she could next week.  Oddly enough I had a dream where when I tried adding her to a Skype call instead i got added to hers, with the president of Costa Rica discussing goats.  Rather odd.  After the call I had a chocolate chip waffle.  The best part though was i gave a little bit to the puppies and Schubie was sleeping.  So i dropped in infront of her nose and she sniffed it in her sleep, stuck her tongue out and slurped it up without opening a eye.  I'm sure she was a happy puppy.  Then I worked for a while, then we had dinner followed by a quick walk and ran into this froggie.  There was a bunch of lightening in all directions but no rain for us this evening (although it had poured this morning, hard enough to wake me up for a few minutes).  Then it was time for Trivial Persuit.  Eddie first answered on his phone after coming back from picking up food.  Then it froze when he hung up to switch over to his normal set up.  We all thought it looked like some crime stopper CCTV (which is closed circut, not closed captioned like we had guessed but I had immediately realized was wrong on our 2nd question of the game).  All the rolls were going right for the west coast group and they won so quickly we decided they had to answer 4 of 6 questions on a single card; which they did.  So then we played the Kansas group for 2nd.  We both got to the center on the same turn (although we got there first).  We only answered 2 questions on the card and they answered 3 so i guess technically they came in 2nd and we came in 3rd even though we got to the center and answered a question before they did.  Highlights included Eddie not realizing Philadelphia had an MLB team, and all of us suggesting he do math any time they weren't sure of the answer.  Also good was Zac and Ania answering a tiger correction incorrectly, Eddie getting it right (how many wild tigers are there: hundreds, thousands, 30 thousand) and Zac and Ania saying that since they watched Tiger King they must be right, but alas.  A little later Zac got a question that Eddie talked him out of so i guess it was fair. 

22 May 2020
0308 skyping with Dave
0839 sleeping
2159 eating ice cream
2221listening to the Yankees/White Sox

Food: grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, tacos for dinner with fruit and veggies

Fact: Even though most periodical cicadas emerge in 13 or 17 year intervals some small number emerge early, and right now in Alabama we have a cicadas emerging after 9 years so 4 years early.  If enough emerge early all at once it can be enough to overwhelm the predators and have some reproductive sucess.  Usually this is only temporary and within a few generations the off cycle ones have been phased out, but if you have some sort of major climatic event it can be enough to knock the whole region's cicadas off cycle and then you end up with a a new brood.

Woke up and listened to Ari's defense on blood parasites in chickadees.  He did really great.  One of the side projects he talked about was using the parasites to determine where birds on migration were coming from since they were carrying the parasites they picked up when wintering (or breeding).  Its something we've also talked about for ectoparasites.  What was really interesting is they let everyone stay on for the committee questioning also.  After that I worked on some stuff for my grant, moved some assemblies around for Renata, and also did some sequence editing.  Then father and I grilled burgers and we went on a walk.  Again I did about 3miles with 45 pounds in 75 minutes (including a short walk down the hill with Dumas).  During dinner we talked about high school fights, apparently some kid one challenged father but he didn't see the note on his messy desk and then when the kid announced he and father were fighting all the big fighters volunteered to fight for him.  The other kid decided it was no longer necessary.

21 May 2020
0250 working on sequences
1531 driving back from Kroger
1557 unloading groceries
2113 trivia

Food: lunch meat for lunch, salmon for dinner with fruit and veggies

Fact: Peafowl lay brown eggs.  I was actually a bit surprised they weren't blue, but i guess brown is useful for a ground nesting bird.


Woke up and had my zoom with the ANSP lunch group.  Highlight was meeting Bob's new puppy.  Then I did some work, ate a little lunch and went to pick up groceries from Kroger since father was almost out of water.  It seemed even more straight forward than walmart pickup for some reason.  I also got gas for 1.59 a gallon.  Mother made cookies while I replaced the light bulbs in 3 of the outside lights.  After I unloaded the groceries I did some more work and then did a milkjug workout.  I even got mother to do a round with me.  Then we had dinner and followed by trivia.  This time Ron joined the Social Distancing Flycatchers which helped quite a bit.  It was also amusing because father was saying the things Ron was saying was no different than what he would have said 40 years ago, its like nothing changed. We ended up in 3rd, even with the abysmal 90's movie villain round plus i got to write an irate comment about how the trivia game sometimes uses unapproved common names (chicken) but other times doesnt since we were expected to know that peacock was actually being used correctly and not in the common informal way (the question was what color are peacock eggs).  We beat Maria and Kevin so that's all that matters anyway.  When I took the puppies out i played my screech-owl call and got a reply!  Finally.  Mother said she had heard one the night before.  After that I skyped with Dave.  New Zealand is starting to open back up... there are some benefits to being on an island in the middle of nowhere.


20 May 2020

0133 working on sequences
0714 sleeping
0817 sleeping
1501 working on sequences

Food: burgers with fruit and veggies

Fact:There is Russian Orthodox church on King George Island in Antarctica.  It is staffed by 1-2 priests and can hold up to 30 people (although I expect that figure is pre social distancing).  Anyone who lives in the town has to have their appendix removed since it's so isolated. 

Woke up and mother redyed my hair to see if we could get it a bit more blue.  Then I spent most of the day working on sequences or looking over stuff for my Accipiter grant proposal.  Went to pick up a prescription for mother and then worked on sequences until it was time for our walk.  I decided to work in the living room and put the baseball game on.  We were playing the Mets in the first of a day/night double header.  During our walk Mother found a discarded program from the graduation ceremony which oddly enough incldued a bible verse on the front page and an invocation... I think there was more prayer at this public school graduation than there was at my graduation from Catholic high school.  Once we got back we had a snack and listened to the rest of the game and then put on the night game.  The highlight was John making a comment about how you can't predict baseball and if anyone tells you in March 2020 spring training what April will look like don't listen to them.

19 May 2020
1543 working on sequences
1648 dinner
1840 getting ready to go for a walk
2329 watching harry potter 7a

Food: left over roast for lunch, manicotti for dinner

Fact: The London Underground first ran electric engines underground in 1890 as part of the City and South London Railway.  Even before this though the Metropolitan Railway began running underground in 1863 and infact the idea of running trains underground in London originated in the 1830's.  Both of these routes are still in existence today, one day I'll be using my Oyster card again.

Woke up and had our ANSP Zoom discussion group on the first half of chapter 6 in the book.  It was mostly about mutations- looking at pairwise distances between samples and calculating things like Dn/Ds (and what it all means).  Then I had lunch and worked on sequences.  Father wanted to eat early so we had manicotti before our walk, luckily mother made mine without pasta but it was in a bowl with foil which made it confusing for me to eat.  Eventually I decided to eat it from the center out.  We ended up walking down Greenway and up the hill since graduation was going on at the school.  There were a ton of Cliff Swallows flying around and also a roadkilled chipmunk that I moved off the road and someone had killed a ratsnake and left it on the side of the road.  People piss me off, especially when they complain about rodents but kill all the snakes.  Then we came home wand watched Harry Potter 7a, probably my favorite of the Harry Potters since its so much darker.  I had to keep reminding mother it all turns out ok in the end. 

0742 sleeping
1304 sleeping
1555 getting things set up for churching
1629 eating just before churching

Food: prime rib with aspargus and baked potatoes for lunch, oven pankake for dinner

Fact:  Continuing on with the metro systems (and will probably do so for a while since I'm reading all about them currently) Beijing has the largest metro system both in terms of number of riders (just under 4 billion rides a year) and also by size (just under 430 miles).  Conversely, the smallest metro system by rider number is Hohhot, China (200,000 riders a year) and size is Yokohama, Japan (2.5 miles).  All figures are based on 2019 numbers

Woke up just after 1400 and then mother dyed my hair blue.  We let it sit about 20 minutes before rinsing it out.  Its just a blue shine when the light hits it right so we may add some more dye in the next few days to see if we can make it bluer.  Other than that it was a pretty low key day, we churched at 1630 and then talked with Maria, Kevin, and Eddie for a while after.  Kevin really should join the choir when this is all over.  Maria, Kevin, and I also beered.  Father and I think we should put some more LED reptile lights in the sunroom, repaint the walls so they are a bright white, and put some of those futuristic plant things we saw in the Keys in and that room would be really nice to hang out in.  After we got everything put away I worked on sequences for a bit, then did some milk jug lifting.  I didn't do any jumproping because my calf is bothering me a bit (it's oddly stiff) and I wanted to give it a rest with just some stretching.  We watched the Yankees-Indians game and finally the yankees won; we blew a 5 run lead midway through the game, then a 1 run game in the 9th thanks to a DiDi error, luckily we won it in 10.

16 May 2020

0201 trivia
0209 trivia
0422 watching house hunters reno
1945 drinking root beer with mother

Food: chicken for lunch scrambled eggs and sausage for dinner with fruit and veggies

Fact: About 123 years passed between Mout St. Helen's last ash eruption in 1857 and the large eruption in 1980.  The 1980 erruption was the most devastating and costly of any volcanic eruption in modern US history.  All of us also learned that Mother drove by it shortly before the eruption and saw it venting steam. No idea how we all missed that over these 30+ years. 

Woke up and was happy to see Dumas's foot didn't seem to be bothering him today.  We cooked up some chicken and it turned out really well.  Usually I'm not a huge chicken fan but this was pretty dang good.  Then I worked on some sequences for a while and kept up with the fanbirding chat group.  Mother also cut my hair so it is ready to be dyed tomorrow.  I took Dumas for a walk half way down the hill, then Schubie for a walk all the way down to the road.  After that I went for a walk down at the school.  All told it was just over 3 miles in about an hour carrying 45 pounds.  I also talked a bit to Lizzie about the backpacking trip.  The 14 day quarantine for all out of state travel to Alaska is renewed until early June so we will see what happens.  Father decided to deacon 2 Masses this evening and I was not happy and apparently neither was mother.  When he got home we had a talk about responsibility and why someone needs to take control of the situation rather than the free for all that is going on now.  Hopefully that works.  During dinner we had a froggie visitor which made us start talking about all our old frogs.  Father doesn't remember having the White's Treefrog, but he did remember nuc the Green Treefrog and of course Woody the Woodhouse's toad was a family favorite (who looked like Jabba the Hutt).  I also learned mother never lived in on campus housing which surprised me.  Finished up the evening listening to the yankees get destroyed by the indians.

15 May 2020
0042 sequence editing
0128 world of warcraft
0916 sleeping
2205 trivial pursuit


Food: ham with fruit for lunch and chicken and rice casserole for dinner with vegetables

Fact: The only two subways in Africa are in Cairo and Algiers.  The Cairo one opened in the 80s and Algiers opened in 2011 even though construction started in the 80s.  The annual ridership of the Cairo system is over 1 billion riders and Algiers is over 40 million.

Woke up for a zoom meeting with Drew, Steph, and Julie about atram.  Trying to figure out why some genes fail to assemble in abyss even when there are blast hits that read map.  After the meeting I tried a few of the things we talked about and sent the results to Julie.  Spent the rest of the day doing sequence editing.  Dumas's foot was really bothering him today so I only took Schubie on a walk.   Dumas seemed really sad so i gave him a rawhide to make up for it.  Then I walked around the high school.  Today I did 2.1 miles with 45 pounds.  Then it was trivia time.  The west coasters won although it took a while since we all kept rolling really small numbers and lots of missed questions.  There were a couple of really amusing ones, including eddie refusing to listen to Zac about Algeria's subway because he thought the answer was Libya based on the amount of corruption and resource extraction by their colonial governments.  After the game we had a long discussion about mustard greens, radishes, and beets.  My siblings are all strange people.  The other amusing thing was I learned today Matt has all of the user ids for our little group memorized since we are always causing problems and breaking things.  I like mine (77).

14 May 2020
0102 sequence editing
0729 sleeping
1352 sequence editing
1613 sequence editing

Food: pizza, fruit and vegetables

Fact: During the 1918 flu pandemic MLB games were played with all participants wearing masks.  They also moved the location from Fenway to the Brave's stadium since it was larger.  But between that, a lot of returning solders coming into Boston by ship, and a parade Boston became an epicenter of the epidemic.

Woke up and spent most of the day working on sequences.  At about 1630 I went to Decatur, dropped my office key in the mail so Cammack can clean it out for me, and then picked up a pizza at the Italian place.  I was supposed to be able to just have them bring it out to me but i kept calling and not getting ahold of anyone so I had to go inside.  Everyone was masked so that was encouraging.  I also took the puppies for a walk down to the bottom of the hill while carrying 45 pounds (so exactly 1 mile).  Listened to the Yankees get beaten by Toronto and educated the parentals over dessert on swifts and how they can stay airborne for months.  After this I talked to Jack for a while.  

13 May 2020

0053 working on sequences
1511 working on sequences
1656 working on sequences
1830 working on sequences


Food: pork roast for lunch and burgers for dinner both with fruit and veggies

Fact: The first time beer was sold in a can was 1935 by Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company of Newark, New Jersey.  Prior to prohibition a couple of the large breweries (Anheuser-Busch and Pabst) had done some experimental canning. 

Woke up for the ANSP lunch.  Met a new perspective STAR student.  Then I spent most of the rest of the day working on the thrush sequences.  At one point i listened to Lord of War while doing the editing.  I also did some jump roping and lifting.  Then father and I grilled burgers.  They turned out really good, and as usual we can't figure out why everyone doesn't use a circular grill and rotate the grate so it cooks more evenly.  Then it was time for trivia.  We had a pretty good first round (between father and I we managed to pull out St. Elmo's Fire for the lightening that is around a ships mast, since i knew it was St. something fire and he remembers a movie called St. Elmo's Fire).  We also got the decade (but not the exact year) for the beer canning fact above.  We still came in second to last sadly.  Spent the rest of the evening reading with Dumas and working on sequences.  I can't wait until these things are finished.

12 May 2020

0436 watching TV
1339 zoom meeting with Shanta
1705 working on the hawk sequenced list
1853 out for a walk

Food: hot dogs for lunch, beans, ground beef, and chile for dinner with fruit and vegetables

Fact: Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman and first Native American woman to hold a pilot's license, receiving it in 1921.  Since noone in the US would teach her she had to travel to France for lessons, with the backing of Robert Abbot, who published a newspaper in Chicago and was one of the first African American millionaires.

I woke up and had a Zoom meeting with Shanta to try and coordinate our hawk research.  It went pretty well so her and I will meet with Jason and Keith to hammer out the details.  But i think I will get to do some more sequencing!  Then I had to pick up groceries at Walmart.  It was wild- i think there were more people on the road than there were pre covid.  Interestingly all 3 restaurants between here and walmart will still takeout only, so it looks like places are trying to make responsible decisions.  Otherwise it was a pretty uneventful day.  On todays walk i carried 31 pounds for 2.4 miles so not bad.  The Yankees got destroyed by the Jays, I kind of blame Suzyn since she was talking a lot about how the Jays hadn't been hitting.  Hopefully the rest of the series goes better.  After the game I played with the puppies for a bit and read my book before spending the rest of the night working on thrush sequences.

11 May 2020
0818 sleeping
0825 sleeping
1247 having lunch
1532 working on alignments

Food: posole for lunch and chicken for dinner

Fact: Somalia is no longer the pirate capital of the world, instead it is now the Gulf of Guinea.  About 90% of kidnappings from vessels occured here.

Woke up and had my discussion group.  We read a couple papers on diversification estimation.  Speciation and extinction rates are really unknowable and that also means we can end up with the observed pattern in any sampled modern tree through an infinite number of ways so its pretty misleading to do this.  I spent most of the day though working on thrush sequences.  Finally starting to feel like I've made decent progress on this.  We went for a short walk after dinner and then watched the cubs/angels game since the Yankees had an off day.  Father was also going to be for the angels but kept forgetting and celebrating at the wrong time.  It was pretty amusing.

10 May 2020
0136 sequence editing
0220 reading back from the dead
1004 sleeping
1910 jump roping and milk jug strength training



Fact: Bill Walton went to the Philippines to be in a documentary about the Philippine Eagle back in the late 70s.  Apparently the show won an Emmy. 


Food: eggs, sausage, and hasbrowns for lunch, posole, chicken, and rice for dinner


Pretty lowkey day getting some work done and reading some papers.  Mother and father were watching some old home movies and it sounded like they were going to die they were laughing so hard.  I went in to check it out and it was the video of maria hitting father in the face with a whipped cream pie.  Highlights included: them for some reason deciding this wasn't going to be messy and so not putting anything down (silly parentals), Mao eating the whipped cream on the carpet, and father complaining about the quality of the whipped cream (it was Stater Bro. brand).  One of the other videos was us playing charades but mother not wanting to play so being a rock (we had a hard time guessing that).  We churched outside today since the weather was amazing and talked before and after with eddie/ania and maria/kevin.  Ania is ordering earth worm poop to make potting soil with.  We also gave mother her mothers day presents.  She had fun with the cooling arm sleeves pretending to be a dinosaur.  After that we cleaned up, and then I went and did some jump roping and milk jug workout.  I had multiple jumping of 25+ jumps and I was going back and forth between jumping and lifting and carried 21 pound jugs between activities.  Then we watced part of the Count of Monte Cristo had dinner, and then watched Harry Potter 6.  Overall i think mother had a good mothers day.


9 May 2020

0054 talking with parentals/maria/kevin/eddie/ania/zac
0819 sleeping
0955 sleeping
1041 sleeping

Food: bison burgers for lunch, fruit for dinner

Fact: In September of 1966 a group of 6 teens who had been marooned on the island of ‘Ata (part of Tonga) were found by a fishing boat.  They had been there about 16 months after running away from their school and went out only to end up getting swept away when their anchor line broke.  The island had been formerly inhabited (until half the residents were kidnapped by slavers in 1863 and the remainder moved to Tonga) and the abandoned village contained a feral chicken population and also various crops that the kids survived on.

Once I woke up I did some work on the sequences until it was time to eat lunch.  Since the weather was so nice we decided to eat on the porch, but to move the table down by the fire pit so we were in the sun.  We also went for a walk (i had 21 pounds in my backpack and it was an easy 2.5 miles).  When we got home father discovered the Linux computer wasn't booting up.  We tried some trouble shooting and eventually got it to come up in recovery mode.  I figured out some updates were installed 2 days ago, which fits with the timeline of when it last worked, so I expect one of those isnt compatible with the graphics card.  Then once father when to bed mother and I watched house hunters and I had some fruit for dinner.  I even facebooked stalked one of the people because she sounded really familiar and was in environmental consulting.  But it turned out she was from Cbad and went to NMSU quite a bit after I stopped going to western conclaves so I dont think I know her. 

8 May 2020
0834 sleeping
1702 sequence editing
1950 feeding the critters
2040 setting up for trivia

Food: posole and beans for lunch; chicken wings and calliflower for dinner

Fact: Louisiana is loosing about a football field worth of land every hour due to sea level rise and erosion.  Zac and Ania guessed this right away, Eddie tried really hard to convince them it was Florida by doing some really confusing math.

Woke up, had lunch, and talked with the group about where to spend World Big Day (i decided on Madre de Dios for the main game and outside Cordoba, Argentina for the other game since Intervales sounds like a no go between the parks being closed and a shoot out between illegal miners and government officials last week.  then work on sequence editing.  I am almost 1/4 of the way done.  Then i had to go to the game store and pick up some new trivial persuit cards.  There were a bunch of people there and I was the only one wearing a mask.  It was insane.  I got what I needed and left as quickly as I could.  Did a little bit more work and then we went for a walk.  This time I put a sleeping bag in my backpack so it only weighed about 8 pounds in total. Since it was a really easy 2.5 miles so tomorrow I'll probably go up to 20 tomorrow.  The highlight though was an encounter with the police.  On our last lap I saw him pull in, but then he left.  Turned out he had just moved to the other parking lot and was waiting for us.  He said he thought we were teenagers but i expect he actually thought we were hobos when he saw us (especially because my jeans are ripped to shreds).  We ended up talking to him for a while about mountain lions.  It turns out it was the same officer who watched the transit of Venus with the parentals and Eddie back in 2012.  Once we got home I fed the critters then we ate dinner and played trivia.  As usual there were some great moments of Eddie or Zac talking eachother out of the right answer, and this time around Maria and Kevin actually won.  The west coast team was also in the center but kept missing 1980's sports questions, while our team needed 1 more pie piece.  We got off to an abysmal start so I was impressed it ended up that close.  We also decided we were going to do a tv show about the dome father and I want to build to protect the plants over the winter and call it Under the Dome 2: Catanach edition.

7 May 2020
0118 sequence editing
0344 world of warcraft
0400 world of warcraft
2306 sequence editing


Food: Steak and rice for dinner


Fact: Before the Civil War the area around Malden, WV was the largest producer of salt in the US.  The salt is from the Iapetus Ocean, a former ocean in the Southern Hemisphere and is over 400 million years old.  The ocean itself was around between 600 and 500 MYA.  The ocean was first proposed due to differences in trilobite communities between Scotland and  England and also between eastern and western Newfoundland.  The palentologist, Charles Walcott, figured this was due to some sort of deep water body separating these areas. 

Woke up and had a Zoom meeting with Sami about how to handle her sequence data.  We came up with a pretty good plan that hopefully means we can combine 2019 and 2020 sequencing runs from the same sample.  First though I have to make alignments of all the overlapping genes in each sample and make sure they really are the same and we don't have some sort of contamination issue in the samples that worked poorly.  I also got some on the ground intel about Brazil for the world Big Day this Saturday.  Today was also Dumas's birthday so he and I hung out in the sun for a bit.  When it was time to feed them I added cheese and dog treats to both his and Schubie's dinner to celebrate (you can't eat your cake in front of your friends without sharing, that would just be mean).  The yankees/red soxs game was rained out so no baseball today sadly.  After dinner we watched Harry Potter 5 and I kept working on sequences.

6 May 2020
0240 sequence editing
1326 checking the sequence assemblies
1806 sequence editing
2009 eating dinner


Food: Pizza from a while back for lunch, leftover steak, beans, rice, and calliflower for dinner


Fact: The first living patients occurred in 1952.  We got the decade right in trivia, but we missed the exact year.  Apparently the early ones were not very successful and the first really successful one was in 1954.  This one was done between identical twins so there weren't the normal issues with tissue rejection


Woke up for the ornithology zoom lunch then had a quick meeting with Jason afterwards about the NSF grant.  Then I had some lunch and worked on the UCE spreadsheets.  I'm trying to figure out if there is any rhyme or reason to which things failed or didn't sequence as well.  It only is sort of related to quantification values.  Otherwise I was dealing with lots of little sequencing issues and making sure the assembles are moving forward while taking breaks to do sequence editing.  We went for a late afternoon walk and it felt like a fall day.  I wore my new backpack but didn't put any weight in it, I just wanted to get a feel for it today.  Then we had dinner and played trivia.  We came in second to last but I was impressed we managed to figure out all 4 teenage mutant ninja turtle names considering I think the only time i saw that series was the day after aubrey, mika, and frank's 301 class turned in collections, and the whole group got together at Mika's trailer and watched them + crash while mostly passed out on the floor.  Hard to believe that was almost 15 years ago.  Our other victory was remembering the title to the book The Jungle (although I've never read it), and correctly guessing an album was by Lady Gaga.  We had put Dumas up in his room since he was being prancy and we were having a hard time hearing the questions, but about half way through he decided he had had enough alone time and let himself in through the window.  So i guess he has offically learned that trick.  Schubie has also started to get twrill for a treat down.  We had the Yankee's game on in the background and they won just about the time we finished trivia.


5 May 2020
1049 sleeping
1737 jumping rope/lifting milk jugs
2157 yankees game/sequence editing
2228 yankees game/sequence editing

Food: lunch- hot dogs, dinner enchaladas and beans

Fact: There are 109 miles of tunnels under Chicago that are used to divert storm runoff into 3 giant reservoirs where water is then slowly released into water treatment plants for processing.  Otherwise the entire system gets overwhelmed and peoples basements start flooding with sewage. This is the opposite approach taken by Philadelphia which has been installing green space and permeable sidewalks to try and keep rainwater out of the sewage system. 

spent most of the day editing sequences.  Since the weather wasn't great (it was misty and chilly) we decided not go go for a walk.  Instead I worked on my jump roping (multiple 20+ jumps), and then i did a round of the milkjug weight workout I found online.  To cap it off I also carried a 21 pound kitty litter jug in each hand back and forth from the front to the backyard a few times.  Since it is cinco de mayo father and I had Horchata 10W-40 stouts from HighWire.  What was funny was we drank our beer out of freestate tulips, while mother, who was having a freestate stout drank hers from an unbranded tulip.  We talked to Eddie after dinner and then watched the rest of the Yankees game.  Tanaka didn't have his best stuff and then Fraizer made an awful error and we lost.  For dessert we at the last of the apple crisp, I always forget how much I love that stuff.

4 May 2020

0143 playing World of Warcraft
1459 sequence editing
2124 Yankees game
2345 sequence editing




Food: lunch meat, fruit, and cheese for lunch, shrimp and asparagus for dinner

Fact: Bill Walton's dad made all the kids play in a family band.  Bill played baritone.  Apparently one of his biggest regrets was not making his own kids play instruments. 

Had the lab discussion group and then Matt, Sami, Renata, Jason, and me talked about the Rapid Genomics UCE results.  It would be really nice to figure out why some things didn't work when others that were of lower quality material did.  Then I worked on the sequences for a bit before going to pick up the new weedwacker and some other random things at Home Depot.  I'm loving the whole pull up, call and they drop all the stuff in the bed of your truck and you drive off thing.  Next I went to the beer store and picked up some beverages.  Once I got home and got everything unloaded we went for a walk.  The neigbors were also walking but we stayed far apart and yelled at eachother to see how they were.  Such strange times.  Afterwards we put on the Yankees game (they are playing the Padres) and had dinner then lounged until the end of the game. 

3 May 2020
1228 sleeping
1504 working outside
1719 churching
2052 listening to the baseball game

Food:

Fact: Apparently sometimes people use a reference genome to fill in the gaps, kinda like Jurassic Park.  This seems like a bad idea to me since we really don't know if the reference genome is representative of the taxon as a whole since usually they are picked at random or because they are already on hand.  The author of the book we are reading for discussion group also thinks its a bad idea. 

Woke up and had a fairly lazy day.  Did a little bit of work on my sequences, but mostly hung around outside.  I had to move the plant the squirrels keep attacking again since they apparently found it on the back porch.  Yesterday I put it in a hanging basket, but today I decided it was getting too much sun there so had to move it closer to the house.  Then father said he didn't like where i put it because it was "over" the bench.  It wasn't.  But he made me move it one row over so now it feels like it is randomly hanging over the door or at best floating in space.  Mother agrees with me but father thinks she is just siding with me cause she always agrees with the kids.  Then we had our communion service with the rest of the family, talked a bit, and then we all went our separate ways.  We put on the yankees game and I spent the rest of the evening working on the sequences. 

2 May 2020


0759 sleeping
0848 sleeping
1647 sequences and virtual Kentucky Derby
1823 looking for birds/grilling

Food: lunch: hot dogs dinner: steak potatoes with cheese fruit/vegetables

Fact: The 1974 and 1975 Yankees played their home games at Shea Stadium while old Yankee Stadium was being renovated.  So there were some yankees who never played a game in Yankee Stadium.  Oddly enough prior to this Yankee Stadium was owned by Rice University for about 10 years before being bought by the city of New York via eminent domain.  I am also sad I didn't make it up for when they played the rays at Shea Stadium after Hurricane Irma in 2017.  Especially considering I flew to Florida to watch the Astros play the Rangers in Tampa Bay after Harvey.  Always fun to text a friend and be like what would you do if i showed up in town tomorrow night for the game and then flew out early the next morning?  Luckily she is also a baseball fan so totally got it.

The weather was amazing today.  First mother cut my hair with the new trimmer out on the front porch (she even used an old poncho as a barber's cape).  It turned out pretty well (pic above is before, pic to the left is after), she got fancy towards the end and did some blending and paired the clippers with a comb rather than just the guard.  Then i did a little bit of work and we all watched the virtual Kentucy Derby.  It was between all the triple crown winners, and the favorite (Secretariat) won.  The race did play out like father had expected- slow start for Secretariat, he got boxed in, but he actually was able to get through the crowd to win in the last straight away.  before the virtual race they replayed the 2015 race so that was also fun.  before spending the afternoon looking for birds in the yard, jumping rope, and grilling the steaks.  The birding highlight was 3 brown thrashers- a recent fledgling being fed by the parents in the bushes just behind the house.  I was able to get mother on it so she could see the thrashers also.  Such cool birds.  Father had the fire really hot- hes discovered that a combination of pecan shells, wax, and paper soaked in cooking oil make a really good fire starter for the charcoal.  It perfectly seared the steaks.  I put on the first game of the Yankees/Royals double header while we grilled so we listened to the rest of that while eating dinner then we put on the 2nd game afterwards.  I think i was actually in Kansas the week before these games were played helping tear down Maria's shed and the timing just didn't quite work for me to stick around for the games. 




1 may 2020
0640 sleeping
1321 preparing to grill
2015 eating dinner
2217 trivial persuit

Food: Lunch- bison burgers Dinner- pork loin

Fact: The first documented plane/bird collision occurred on 7 September 1905 when Wilbur Wright was flying his plane over Huffman Prairie and killed a bird.  A few years latter the birds got their revenge when Calbraith Perry Rodgers flew into a floc
k of gulls, crashed and was killed when the engine broke off and hit him, breaking his neck.  Rodgers was the first person to fly across the US (it took 70 stops/crashes to make it all the way).

Woke up just in time for the zoom lunch with Drew, Steph, and Tic.  Julie was supposed to join us but must have had something come up.  We also took a pic of all of us with different pictures of KJ in our zoom backgrounds.  The the meat cooking began.  First father and I did the bison burgers.  Since bison is pretty lean we needed 2.5 minutes per side instead of 1.5 like we do normal burgers since they didnt drip fat into the fire and increase the heat.  They turned out amazingly.  Then we took the coals and put them in the smoker.  I split some wood into chips and then we smoked a double brined pork loin, which also turned out great.  Since I didn't have to do much once the wood was split I birded.  Lot of birds moving around including some new ebirds for me (Worm-eating Warbler and Northern Waterthrush pushed my ebird life list over 1500).  We also listened to the 2019 opening day game since today's game was rained out.  I also learned that fathers only bucket list item is listening to New York New York in the stands at Yankee Stadium.  Not only have he and i done that, we've done it when they clinched a playoff berth.  After dinner it was game time.  Todays fact was actually based on a trivial pursuit question.  Highlights include eddie talking zac (who lives in portland, OR) out of a question comparing the latitude of Portland, OR to ME.  Second best was a question about Nashville that Ania correctly said was nash, and both Eddie and Zac were like no def not and then decided it was Chicago. They still won, but we had 2 chances ourselves (they selected entertainment for us and yeah that didn't go well).  Infact it took them 3 or so tries to get the 1983 edition sports question we kept picking for them.  Maria and Kevin only needed 1 more pie piece so it was a good game for everyone.



30 Apr 2020
0101 working on sequences
0146 working on sequences
1802 working on sequences
1924 out on our walk

Food: lunch and dinner pork roast, fruit, vegetables

Fact: you can identify where batches of chemical weapons come from by looking at impurities that are present.  The Joint Investigative Mechanism, a partnership between the United Nations Security Council and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, employs scientists to try and identify the perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks by figuring out where the chemicals originated and what other attacks that batch was used for. 

Spent the day either working on sequences or in back to back meetings.  I woke up just in time for the TWS quiz bowl meating at 1300.  Nothing very exciting- we are going to limit it to 16 teams but if more than 16 regester we will have some sort of play in round probabily using a written exam so the students can justify coming to the meeting.  Of course this is all dependent upon the meeting actually happening, which I'm not particularity convinced is likely.  Then it was the AOS collections committee meeting at 1400.  This one was on Zoom and i took it on the porch since the weather was great and the parentals were skyping.  I was amused when the AOS meeting actually involved talking about a lawyer who works for TWS.  It also hadn't crossed my mind that the average ornithologist didn't realize that mammal research isn't federally regulated unless you are working with T/E species or doing an import.  After the meeting I ate a couple of pieces of pork roast and then went to walmart to pick up our grocery order.  After I got back i spent the rest of the day working on sequences except for when we went for our walk.



29 Apr 2020
0310 working on sequences
1000 sleeping
1340 working on sequences
2101 trivia

Food: Prime Rib, fruit

Fact: Sudan has the highest camel population with 3.2 million followed by Mauritania (1.23 m), Ethiopia (1.07 m) and India (1.03 m).  We guessed none of these in trivia.  But at least we know what a cycle in baseball is!

Woke up for the ANSP lunch group zoom.  The highlight was finding out Emily passed her qualification exam.  Then I spent the rest of the day working on my sequences.  The prime rib turned out amazingly.  Right after dinner it was time for trivia.  This time around Social Distancing Flycatchers were winning for rounds 1-3.  Then we were tied with another team in round 4, and ended up coming in 2nd.  The highlight was the first round included the question: what element has the atomic symbol Pb.  Which was amazing because maria and kevin's team is often called "we know the symbol for lead" I texted them to make sure that was still their team name, maria was saying they thought about changing to to vindication. They came in 3rd so we were very happy to beat them.