16 June 2020

1103 sleeping
1209 sleeping
2032 walking Dumas
2225 watching House Hunters with mother

Food: ham, berries, and cottage cheese for lunch, smoked pork and mashed potatoes for dinner

Fact: Grazing animals are more likely to consume poisonous plants when forage quantity is low or they are hungrier than usual.  To keep livestock safe you should not rotate them onto a new pasture until there is sufficient non poisonous plants to easily support the herd.  This is especially a big deal when moving to higher elevation pastures in the spring and summer since poisonous plants are often among the first to green up and be really appealing to eat because they are succulent and palatable.  It also can be a problem when introducing new livestock to an existing herd since they rely on social cues on where to graze.  livestock occurring in areas with certain poisonous plants can develop some tolerance to the toxins, and when a new animal is introduced they might lack that tolerance and be sickened.  Conversely, some plants like locoweed are avoided by animals that haven't eaten it before, but once an animal tries it they keep coming back for more until they are poisoned.  Look for more future facts from the Poisonous Plants of New Mexico Rangelands publication by NMSU.

Woke up and had a Collections Committee meeting about the OC situation.  Hopefully we have a game plan now.  Immediately after that I had a meeting with Shanta about the hawk paper.  She is going to handle the biogeography and diversification once I get the tree together.  Luckily she is pretty busy the next few weeks so I can try and wrap up the sharpie and Catharus papers first.  Next I got mother set up checking the spelling of the names on the louse tree and I worked on the mitochondrial genomes for the sharpies.  Eventually it was time for dinner.  The topic of conversation was the instillation of the bishop next week.  Apparenlty the first part is the new bishop knocking on the cathedral door and the rector letting him in.  I wonder what would happen if the rector just decided to ignore the knocking.  Or better yet opened the door to discover a pair of Mormons asking if they wanted to learn more about their Lord and Savior.  We also then were looking up the number of Catholics served by various diocese.  Apparenlty the Diocese of Los Angeles is the largest in the US.  This all started because a bishop in Bangladesh is in serious condition with covid-19 and we were surprised to learn that a country which only has about 800 thousand Catholics has 8 dioceses.  Next I took Dumas for a walk.  Since i could hear the dogs barking down below we just went up and down our hill a couple of times.  I also messaged with Andy a bit about the Whiskered Auklet trek I'm planning on doing.  Side note, now I really want to try for the chicadee also, but not this year since its off the highway system.  Then it was time for dessert, hearing about fathers first brush with poison ivy, and mother and I watched some House Hunters.  I moved Suhubies pillow into the sitting room so she could hang lounge on it, but instead she lay on the blanket.  However, when grey kittie came in and tried sitting on her pillow she got unhappy.  Once mother went to bed black kitty tried eating not one but two rubber bands.  I thwarted him and so he then restarted the computer I was streaming House Hunters International on.  Silly kitty.

15 June 2020

1829 working on the mitochondrial genomes
1902 eating dinner
2139 watching house hunters
2254 watching house hunters

Food: cookie dough for lunch and burgers for dinner with veggies

Fact: when you are getting fit tested for a respirator one of the standard practices is to recite the Rainbow Passage.  This short poem is also used to determine how well someone can speak because it includes a wide range of sounds that require different facial expressions and tongue placement.  When doing a fit test this ensures that your mask will continue to function properly, even when you speaking.  Since I am considering trying to find some N-95s for the plane ride I was asking Maria if it is possible to do a fit test as a normal person. So being her she sent me a paper published in Healthcare Infection looking at the efficacy of homemade fit testing (take home message, it works ok for qualitative fit testing but not quantitative). 

We didn't have discussion group today so it was nice being able to sleep to a normal time instead of having to wake up early especially since I was up so late.  Infact I had just fallen asleep when the fan started making some wierd noises which woke me up.  Then a couple minute later Schubie started barking like crazy to the point I was worried that she had turned into Lassie and was trying to let me know father had fallen down a well.  Luckily she was just annoyed father was taking a long time to get her fed.  I spent the day working on the south Texas louse figures and also my bird genomes.  It was a pretty laid back day, the highlight was watering all my plants.  They are all growing quite nicely, and the tomato plant really perked up are growing nicely.  I also put some tickets on hold for late August-mid September for my ferry trip.  Mother and I went for a walk after dinner but father stayed home since he was doing some recording.  When we were walking back up the hill the neighbor dogs were running around so that was annoying.  Mother went to fix the sprinklers and I went straight inside.  After a little bit father came out and asked where mother was, I told him I abandoned her to the dogs since I could run faster (although I had my backpack with me).  Father didn't seem to worried and it took about 3 minutes before he was like well I guess I go look for her lol.  Silly parents.  After father went to bed mother and I had dessert and watched House Hunters.  Before I went to bed I was able to finish getting all the labels updated on the south Texas louse trees, now all we need to make sure all the names are spelled correctly then its finally done. 

14 June 2020

1715 churching
1807 talking to maria/kevin/eddie/ania
1812 talking to maria/kevin/eddie/ania
2137 dessert

Food: scallops and shrimp for dinner with asparagus and the rest of the salad from yesterday

Fact: The earliest harpoons were found in the DRC and were probably used to spear catfish (because they were found in association with catfish bones).  These harpoons were made about 90,000 years ago.  These early harpoons were made of bone and some included barbs on the sides while others did not.  The same site also yielded a daggerlike object which lacked a point or sharp edge suggesting it wasn't used for cutting or piercing but its actual use is unknown. 

Woke up and did some work but mostly screwed around.  Then father and I got the sunless room ready for churching.  We've pretty much mastered the video set up (which might be handy if we end up having to live stream maria's wedding since one possible option is immediate family only).  We told father he had to be finished with the homily before the candles burnt out (2 were low on wax).  One of them burnt out before he was done but the other lasted the whole service so I guess he did ok.  Not much else to report, mother and I watched some House Hunters and I played World of Warcraft for a while.  I also talked to Jason for a bit at like 2300 to give him the full story on the Alaska entrance requirements since at this point I have them pretty well down.