0635 sleeping
0838 sleeping
1324 sleeping
1807 working on Accipiter
Food: burgers and tater tots for a late lunch, berries for dinner
Fact: Rhode Island was historically the major producer of costume jewlrey and similar trinkets. Even now, it produces 80% of the products manufatured in in the US. Apparenlty the oringinal costume jewlrey was created when people discovered how to gold plate things.
Woke up and spent most of the day working on Accipiter. I took Dumas as promised on a walk down and back twice, plus some yard exploration. We must have explored too hard though because he picked up a tick. Luckily the handy tick extractor thing is really easy to use so got it removed easily. I also took scubie for a walk all the way around the yard so she enjoyed sniffing, especially in the back yard where she rarely gets to explore. Facebook suggested the above shirt (not sure if it is better or worse than the cat one it suggested last night) and the parentals agree we should all wear them for the wedding. However, the highlight was skyping with Is, Andy, and the kids. The kids were very impressed with my dinosaur friend and so showed me their toys. We talked for a couple hours and agreed to do it more often. They are all doing well- bought a deep freeze and found a local meat producer and also a local dairy so when the next wave comes they won't be so reliant on the supply chain.
10 July 2020
0222 working on Accipiter
0935 sleeping
1744 working on Accipiter
2241 trivial pursuit
Food: beef stroganoff for late lunch, berries, fruit, and veggies for dinner
Fact: There are more tattoo parlors in NYC than Las Vegas or San Diego (at least at the time the cards were printed in 2016). What was impressive about this question is somehow Zac knew that vegas gets a little over 100,000 visitors daily while NYC gets 800,000 daily (a little over half of which are just in town for the day).
Woke up and had my zoom meeting with Jacob. Always good to catch up with him. He was saying one of the nice parts of this whole crazy ordeal is getting to talk to people we usually don't, which is totally the case with Jacob. I've always enjoyed talking to him, but have been bad about making it a priority. After all, he, me, and Jack have a pact not to shoot each other on purpose (made while eating breakfast really, really early while walking up to the top of the highest point in Nicaragua, right on the border with Honduras). We talked a bit about how to keep momentum moving in the common names extravaganza, and then a bit about our research projects. After that I had a second video call, this time with a random person for a study I was being paid to participate in. The other person's mic though was muted by the program and we couldn't get it to unmute even after an hour of trying different things. Eventually we gave up (although I wonder if they were actually doing it purposely to see how people reacted to that stress). Turns out we still got paid the 15 bucks so that was nifty. Then we ate lunch, mother attempted to remove all the mushrooms from my portion but missed 3 so i gave her a hard time. Worked until it was trivia time (I promised the puppies extra walking tomorrow since my foot was bothering me). We decided to play the 2016 edition since we were killing it with the genius II edition. We actually still ended up in the center first, but couldn't get 4/6 on our first 3 attempts, whereas the west coasters eventually got there and got 4/6 on their first try. I still don't get how they can be going down the totally wrong path (Pitbull, F-1 racing) and make a totally lateral transition to the right answer (Jimmy Buffet, Boston Marathon) (questions about a cameo with a margarita or an April race won by an American for the first time in decades). They also somehow pulled Fabio out of a hat when asked about a model who posted topless on a book titled Pirate. What a wacky world we live in. Also, i texted briefly with Dana- we have a lot of carrots and I mentioned liking her carrot cake so mother asked for the recipie. We got hers, and she asked for one of ours so i sent grandmas strawberry pie (along with the intro from the family cookbook mark wrote)
0146 working on Accipiter
0735 sleeping
1753 working on Accipiter
2218 working on Accipiter
Food: shrimp and potatoes for a late lunch, berries and banana for dinner
Fact: NYC uses steam to heat (and cool) many of the large buildings in the city. It has a steam tunnel system that is larger than the 9 next largest city systems combined (and double the size of Paris, the largest in Europe). 1 gallon of water produces 8 pounds of steam.
Woke up and spent almost the entire day working on Accipiter alignments. I did take a break to try and save my sunflower by performing surgery incase the roots were encased in the geranium stalk (which it looked like they were). I also took the puppies for a walk, however Dumas only got to go down and back once because the people directly below us had their dog running loose (not the normal loose dogs, seriously why does noone control their dogs here). I also only took Schubie part way down the hill. We did put on the Yankees/Diamondbacks game from Wednesday since we didn't listen to it yesterday and today is an off day. What was really fun was it was the trade deadline, and zack greinke was the starting pitcher for the dbacks. There was a short rain delay and he didn't come back out. Everyone was confused until they announced he was traded to the Astros, and YES showed him leaving the park (we watched the game on YES but listened to WFAN). That had to have been a weird deal getting traded during a rain delay.
8 July 2020
0822 sleeping
0920 sleeping
2101 trivia
2224 dessert
Food: cheese, crackers, and lunch meat for lunch, corned beef and potatoes for dinner
Fact: When Princess Margaret was born at Ottawa Civic Hospital in 1943, the government of Canada temporarily declared the maternity ward extralimital to Canada so that her citizenship would only be influenced by her mother, Princess (future queen) Juilana's Dutch citizenship. Every year the country still sends a bunch of tulips as a thank you.
Woke up and did a little bit of work before going outside and working on my plants. The sunflower was looking a little droopy so we repotted it in a larger pot. Since the plant can't support itslef it was a 2 person job- mother supported the stem while i got it repotted and then built a support system to hold it up. Hopefully it does well. Matilda is looking perkier also. Then I did some more work before lunch. Then I worked until we had dinner, then took the pups out for a walk. Dumas did down and back twice, but Schubie was having trouble walking this morning so only went half way down to the street with her today. Then it was trivia time. We had Zac on our team again, and we won again. However we learned an important lesson- there was a question about St. Nicholas and we decided not to listen to Father but to listen to Mother and Ron instead. Turns out we should have listened to the deacon lol. Father said he would eat ice cream but he wouldn't enjoy it due to our failure.
7 July 2020
0136 working on Accipiter
0156 working on Accipiter
1004 sleeping
1803 working on Accipiter
Food: tacos [hre]
Fact: In colonial New Mexico, two of the main ways to get blue pigment was from indigo and cobalt. The cobalt was a byprouct of silver mining. Both sources were shipped up from Mexico on the Camino Real. Oddly enough, some of this blue pigment was used to make pottery with designed inspred by blue and white Chinese porcelains from the Ming dynasty.
Woke up and spent most of the day working on Accipiter. The only real breaks were for the amazing tacos, and then to take the puppies for walks. Dumas and I went down to the road and back twice (since he was pulling all the way back up the first time I figured he had extra energy to burn) and Schubie and I went down once. We put on the Yankees/Diamondbacks game and watched that while I worked. Father went to bed before it was finished, but mother watched the whole thing. Then I put on some House Hunters International and kept on working.
6 july 2020
1559 eating lunch
1859 walking the dogs
1948 listening to the yankees game
2151 listening to the yankees game
Food: chicken with berries, aspargus and rice for a late lunch, cheese, potato, and cookies for dinner
Fact: Of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors identified by Department of Homeland Security, 14 rely on the GPS constellation. However, there is currently no backup constellation incase GPS goes down. Considering there are predicted to be 7 billion GPS receivers by 2022 it would be a pretty big deal... One possibility is to use a totally different technology as a backup such as Enhanced Long-Range Navigation (eLoran) which would cost the US about 200 million.
Woke up and spent the day working on Accipiter alignments. The highlight though was mother making cookies. She used a recipie that her grandma used to, but since she didn't have any walnut she used chocolate chips instead (which was fine by me). I also took the puppies for a walk. Once I got back i put on the yankees/twins game from Wednesday since we missed that one. The Yankees won which was nice. Then I watched some house hunters international and worked some more on the Accipiter alignments before doing some reading.
5 Jul 2020
0453 sleeping
0747 sleeping
1712 working on Accipiter
2103 listening to baseball
Food: oven pancake for breakfast, hot dogs for dinner with fruit and pie
Fact: In 1972, Cuba announced they were giving Cayo Blanco del Sur, a small, uninhabited island off the coast would be renamed Ernst Thälmann Island and given to East Germany. However, after the Berlin Wall fell and the territories were getting sorted out Cuba said it was just ceremonial and the island was still Cuban. But that didn't stop the micronation, the Republic of Molossia, from declaring war they are at war with that island since it is the last remaining part of East Germany.
Woke up and mother made me an oven pancake (they had had them earlier in the day). Then I did a little bit of work. I watered all my plants and then Father and i got the sunroom ready for churching. We've pretty much got the set up down to a science, although we decided to redo the lighting 3 times before we got it right. After churching we chatted for a while. Once we were finished we put everything away while we listened to the game and then mother made hotdogs. Father went to bed after while, and then mother and i video chatted with maria and kevin about alaska. Looks like backpacking is going go be a no go for all of us. Then mother went to bed and I played WoW for a while before calling it a night and going to bed.
0149 just finished trivia
1338 sleeping
1819 grilling
2053 mother dying my hair
Food: grilled cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, tomatoes, cherries, and grapes
Fact: Comma placement can lead to some unexpected problems in contracts- especially with oxford comma issues. This cost Oakhurst Dairy 5 million bucks in overtime pay since the lack of a comma between shipment and distribution was ruled to mean that those involved in distribution were eligible for overtime pay. A stray comma introduced in the 1872 revision on a law exempting tropical and semi-tropical fruit trees suddenly resulted in semi-tropical and tropical fruit to be able to be imported without taxes. This error resulted in 2 million in lost taxes (now about 40 million).
Woke up and hung around with the parentals for a bit before getting on my computer and chatting the fanbirding group. A little bit after 1500 I drove over to walmart and picked up our order. On the way back i talked to silvy. He's planning out all his meals for the next 3 weeks so he doesn't have to haul a bunch of uneaten canned food to florida. One i got home I unloaded the groceries and then planted Matilda, our new mint plant. Once she was planted i sent an announcement out to everyone about our new addition. I also moved the morning glory to the front yard to get more sun and tied up the tomato plant since it is starting to put too much stress on branches and they are splitting. I put the ballgame on and father and I grilled the burgers over a perfect, even fire. 2 minutes on one side, 1 min 45 seconds on the other. Then it was dinner time, followed by mother dying my hair blue. Then we had dessert (berry pie) and father and I got the fireworks set up. We had a good time with our 400 firecrackers, 4 fountains, 4 snakes (we did 1 by itself, and then stacked the others up into 3 stacks becasue they made really impressive long snakes), and 16 sparklers (mother and i got 6, father had 4). Then we hung around a little bit more before the parentals went to bed and I watched tv.
3 July 2020
0758 going back and forth with people on the bird name slack channel
1241 zoom with steph and tic
1451 driving with father to Annunciation
1455 driving with father to Annunciation
Food: lamb for lunch pizza for dinner
Fact: You sweat 1/2 a pint of liquid from your feet.
I didn't go to sleep until after 8 this morning because I was going back and forth with some people on the slack channel about why I didn't think it was appropriate to use indigenous common names for species (summary is human history is complicated, and pretending that indigenous groups also don't have complicated histories- fought with eachother, took over land belonging to another group etc. is just forcing indigenous groups to fit a sterotype and we are basically choosing a time history starts). It was interesting, the guy from Europe totally didn't get it- i suspect many non-American's don't realize how many groups we have (not to mention used to have). But eventually as American's started waking up they all were happy someone had voiced one of the misgivings they had but couldn't figure out what was causing it. So that all worked out. I slept for a couple of hours and then woke up for zooming. Step is up in Chicago. She and Tic and met up to play catch and frisbee and apparently it was pretty funny to watch according to tic. Then i talked to the parentals for a while about fathers deacon to deacon meeting. We decided I would drive with him to Auunciation, then go get gas, pick up fireworks, get father, and then we would pick up a pizza. But just before we got there we found out the other person was running late so father decided just to skype with him (which was what he wanted anyway). So we got gas and then i walked to the firework stand while father drove from the gas station (they were in the same lot but you couldn't easily get from one to the other by car). I got 400 firecrackers and 4 fountains. Since they had none of the tanks or laying chickens etc it was a quick transaction and by the time father got the car into the fire works area i was done. Then we went to get the pizza. Mother called shortly there after to ask if we had bought something from the pentacostals. So apparently they were running the fireworks place. seems like a missed opportunity for the catholics. Father said we should have told her we converted due to their more reasonable mask rules and that was our entrance fee. We picked up the pizza (they delivered it to our trunk) and we headed home. On our journey I discovered 2 cemeteries (father already knew bout them) that would be fun to explore sometime. Once we got home I did a little work and then we had pizza. Father skyped to the other deacon at 1900 and mother trimmed my hair. She did a much better job on me than I did on the cat, but we are hoping it at least makes black kittie feel less self conscious about his trim job.
The big news today was we won trivial pursuit. The fact above was not one of our questions luckily because there is no way we would have gotten that right. Most impressive was a question about someone who played Ronald McDonald and was also in the today show. The parentals only knew one today show person and it happened to be the right one. The other teams were all pretty close, but we prevailed. The west coasters had a string of saying the right answer and talking themselves out of it. We also learned at the bastile prisoners were provided 3 bottles of wine. It turned out to be crappy wine, but still. As Zac pointed out who storms a building that gives out free wine? Afterward we talked for a while about Eddie and Zac's misspent youth playing in storm drains with their group of friends.
0233 working on Accipiter
0524 sleeping
1720 talking to Maria
1903 walking the puppies
Food: chicken wings, fruit, and veggies
Fact: For around 100 years the NYC subway system had a set of trains that would go from station to station collecting fares and delivering the money to an undisclosed location (after 1951 the MTA headquarters) for processing. The last money train ran in January 2006. It stopped being an effective way to gather money as MTA card sales at vending machines increased since getting the money out of the machines took longer than the old system and having the money trains blocking the tracks for extended periods of time wasn't feasible. Now the fares are picked up by armored vehicle.
Woke up shortly before the zoom meeting about common names. There were about 10 people on this call and we covered a lot of ground including the fact that we were basically starting an active rebellion. There was some talk about if AOS could convict people for treason. After that we had a late lunch and talked to Maria. Then I gave black kittie the gabapentin and waited for that to kick in. Texted some with Jacob about increasing diversity in the names group, although part of the issue is we really need to come at this from 2 angles, one of which should be coming from systematistis and taxonomists which is a field with virtually no diversity in the US. But if we don't also go at the committee itself, even if the common names get changed the committee itself is still acting as a gatekeeper to what science gets accepted. Then took the pups for a walk and by the time that was all done the kittie was sufficiently out of it. Mother and i gave him a good trimming (he only fell off the table once) and brushing. Then fed the critters (black kittie took a couple of attempts to jump over the gate). Ate some of the chocolate chip cookies mother made earlier and watched some house hunters while working on alignments.
0541 sleeping
1320 sleeping
1553 working on Accipiter
1937 working on Accipiter
Food: pork loin for a late, lunch, some steak and fruit for dinner
Fact: The precedence effect is the phenomonon that when you hear a sound that is very quickly followed by a second sound you receive it as a single sound. Blind people (and sighted people with training) can suppress this and echolocate using either active (like clicking) or passive (environmental or background) sounds.
Woke up part way through the ANSP lunch so jumped in for the last 45 min or so. Pretty much business as usual for everyone. Got to see Dan's new puppy again. Afterwards I went back to sleep until a more reasonable hour. Then i spent the rest of the day working on Accipiter stuff. I did get an extension on the revisions so that helps a ton. I also read through Jacob's document on changing common names and made some edits. Took the pups for a walk just before trivia, but it turned into a run with Dumas since it started to rain. Then it was trivia time. Social Distancing Flycatchers won (with the help of Ron, Zac, and new member Bill since there were randomly a bunch of track questions). My favorite question was about how many animals could echolocate. I answered 4 clades- bats; whales/dolphins, and 2 clades of birds. We got it right, however there are actually also include 2 genera of shrew and also tenrecs. We ended up with a higher score after 5 rounds than the 2nd place team had after 6 rounds. We were pretty much unstopable. After trivia mother made a dessert of filo dough (father and I all it fritos), chocolate chips, and some strawberry jam. Super tasty. Then I watched some House Hunters and the parentals went to bed. Best thing though was there was the start of a Trump commercial (it was just the I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message) that got cut off for a febreeze commercial that started off talking about pet odors that need to be removed. I almost died laughing.
30 June 2020
0525 sleeping
0839 sleeping
1628 picking up meds for black kittie
2344 Yankees/Twins game
Food: clam chowder for lunch, enchiladas for dinner, fruit for a late night snack
Fact: John Edmonstone was a freed slave who is thought to have taught Darwin to prep birds. Since Darwin doesn't mention him by name so the identity of the freed slave, but Edmonstone was known to have been a preparator and listed taxidermist as his occupation. While a slave in Guyana he was taught to prep by Charles Waterton. When Darwin realized medicine wasn't for him but that he did like ornithology he employed Edmonstone to teach him how to prep birds which served him well on his travels. He considered Edmonstone his mentor and it is hypothesized that this experience, along with his families general abolitionist feelings contributed to his hatred of slavery.
Woke up and did a final read through of fathers's response. Then we had lunch, and i went to the vet's to pick up the meds for black kittie so we can drug him and do a massive hair cutting. Other than that I worked on Accipiter and also talked to Julie for a bit about what needs to be done for the revisions. Before dinner, we watched the 1st inning of last nights game so we could see the triple play, and then I put on the game for tonight. It was a rather frustrating game (that included both Britton and Chapman imploding) but we managed to win in extras so there's that at least.
29 June 2020
1255 sleeping
1831 eating
2011 working on Accipiter
2120 working on Accipiter
Food: lamb and potatoes for a late lunch, steak and chicken nuggets for a late dinner
Fact: William Dampier was a British pirate who kept an extensive diary (kept in wax sealed bamboo stalks). He would often eat whatever foods the natives were eating and highly recomended things like flamingo (which I have on good authority is very tasty), manatee, and sea turtles (if grassfed). He also described recipes for guacamole and mango chutney. He circumnavigated the globe 3 times, and wrote a book about his travels. Although it sold well and he made quite a bit of money as a pirate and then privateer he actually died about £2000 in debt (and was court marshaled after loosing the HMS Roebuck). As you might expect he was not very flattering of Aboriginal peoples in Australia and his writings were used to justify the British colonization of Australia without any regard for the people already there.
Woke up and spent basically the entire day working on Accipiter. Dumas was very prancy today to when I took him for his walk we actually walked down to Greenway, back to the house, and then back down to the dog people's house. Schubie was less excited about her walk, but when we turned the corner you could really smell fried chicken. She instantly perked up and basically ran the rest of the way down the hill. Sadly the fried chicken wasn't for her and we went back up the hill. I did give her extra treats to make up for the disappointment though. We put on the Yankee game (they played the Twins). We lost by 2, but at least we had the winning run at the plate in the 9th so all wasn't lost. The Twins turned a triple play in the 1st inning which was pretty amazing. Father asked us to help him write a response to a letter that one of the other deacons (who is an MD) wrote since the dude was like all the virus stuff is overhyped... everyone come back to church. Once that was done I did a little more Accipiter stuff and then went to bed. Only the be quickly woken up with a loud thud followed by a bunch of loud rolling around. Turned out black kittie found a softball, knocked it off a shelf, and was batting it around. What a wierd cat.
28 June 2020
0819 sleeping
1302 sleeping
1337 sleeping
2319 watching House Hunters International
Food: clam chowder for a late lunch fruit and veggies for an evening snack
Fact: Using software usually used to detect plagiarism Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter identifed "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" an unpublished work by George North as a source used by Shakespeare when writing a number of plays including King Lear.
This is based on the presence of shared (but rarely used) words and descriptions of various events.
Woke up and did a little bit of work on
Accipiter and harrassed the critters. Father put on the Count of Monte Cristo so I watched that. We decided churching would be at 1730 so we got the room set up, and since its novina time in Santa Fe we also set up another table in front of the lecturn that we put a statue of La Conquistadora on. Once we were ready we had the clam chowder that mother had made, which was really tasty. Then we churched. Grey kittie was so moved by fathers homily he tried to force his way into the room. Kevin sang the Magnificat and we did the prayer to La Conquistadora (in Spanish). Afterwards we all talked for a while and i showed them how well my original rescue plant was doing. I also noticed that the mystery plant that mother's app identifed as a sunflower is actually starting to flower and looks like it is a sunflower. Spent the rest of the day working on
Accipiter stuff and then watched a bunch of House Hunters.
27 June 2020
0103 finishing up trivia
0646 sleeping
1736 making corned beef
1943 working on Accipiter
Food: corned beef and potatoes for dinner, fruit and veggies for a snack
Fact: Dylan introduced The Beetles of pot on 28 August 1964 at the Delmonico Hotel in New York. Luckily the parentals knew that so we got the question right.
I didn't fall asleep until close to 6 since I decided at the last minute to bail on CT and move to ID for the fanbirding big day. So far I haven't gotten the crossbill but I'm hoping for a late list... Once I woke up I pretty much just spent the day working on Accipiter. I talked to Jack this evening, he just got back from a giant western US ant collecting trip. So jealous he got to do some field work. The also saw some great birds, but missed the quetzal. Afterward I watched a bunch of House Hunters International and kept working on Accipiter.
26 June 2020
0544 sleeping
0650 sleeping
0930 sleeping
1145 sleeping
Food: burgers for a late lunch fruit and veggies for an evening snack
Fact: Apparently there has been a long running urban legend that the statues of soilders on horseback tell you how the person died based on the number of hoofs on the ground. 2 hoofs in the air = died in battle, 1 hoof = injured in battle and possibly died of the wounds later, 0 hoofs on the ground = didn't die in battle. However, there isn't a lot of evidence that this is actually followed. At Gettysburg all but one statue follow this pattern but in DC only 10 of 30 statutes are correctly "hoofed"
Woke up and spent the day working on Accipiter. Mother seems to be feeling a lot better so that's good. I also took the puppies for a walk but otherwise since the weather wasn't great I just stayed inside. Trivial Pursuit this evening was amazing. To start with we won! The best quote though was after the west coasters spent 10 minutes trying to figure out the answer and failing Ania said "I guess a random walk doesn't always converge on the right answer". Dad said that it was spoken like a true mathematician. We all thought it was the funniest thing in the world. The other funny comment happened when the west coasters were trying to figure out how many blasts of a horn a train gives when starting forward. It started with eddie going choo choo, and then zac going chuga chuga chuga chuga choo choo. But somehow they managed to talk themselves out of 2 (the right answer). During all the choo chooing Zac also pointed out they were literally arguing over nursery rhymes. Honorable mention was them somehow almost coming up with the right answer to the number of peerage ranks in the UK (5) even though they basically had all the actual ranks wrong. After we won we decided each of the other teams would get a full card and whoever answered more questions right came in 2nd. West Coasters prevailed after answering 4 questions vs the Kansas 3.
0302 working on Accipiter
0925 sleeping
1124 sleeping
1128 sleeping
Food: steak, fruit, veggies, and a potato for dinner
Fact: A khipu is a knotted cord that was used by the Inca for record keeping. They were generally believed to represent censues or some other numerical data, but it wasn't until
Manny Medrano, an undergrad at Harvard, started working with a set of 6 that it was possible to decode them in more detail. By combining cenus records with the knotting patterns he realized each string represented a person (color coded by first name) and the knots had to do with which of two socioeconomic groups the person belonged to (Medrano and
Urton 2018).
Just before I went to sleep around 430 I checked ebird to see if there were any interesting early morning records. Someone reported LeConte's Sparrows multiple times and in an area where they might have also looked for Yellow Rail. So I decided to move my pin from the Bicknell's Thursh. Crazily enough though by the time I loaded the game it said I had 6 species reported and one was the thrush. Sure enough, someone did a 430 in the morning checklist. So not only did I decide to stay there, but I moved my budget pin from California over the Vermont to get the bird also. Mother woke me up to say they were leaving around 545. Then I went back to sleep but kept getting woken up by a constant stream of dings from my phone since I had the volume on for updates. What was amazing to me was I thought I had shut off everything that I was expecting to make noise. But I quickly got back to sleep after each ding (and muting that particular ding so I wouldn't be interrupted again). I got a text from father a little after 9 that said mother was out of surgery and then once I heard them get home a couple
hours later I was able to remute my phone and sleep solidly for another couple hours. Woke up and got the steaks vacuum sealed (with mother's supervision) and then she and father figured out how to best arrange them in the sous vide. They cooked for 3 hours while I worked on hawk stuff and then father and I grilled them 75 seconds on each side. They turned out perfectly. What was really funny though was Dom, Joost, Jason, and I all descended on Argentina to follow Dom's cousin tomorrow. Since I was already there (I followed his cousin today also, and told Dom to stop distracting him while he was birding) and they were all coming from Tanzania I said I would have steak and beer ready for them. Then I realized I actually was grilling steak this evening so sent them a pic of the final product. Mother wasn't feeling hungry so she rested while we ate. Then dad put on the first game of the yankees/tampa double header and I walked the puppies. He and I got the kitchen cleaned and mother slept on the couch. I discovered Dumas sleeping by her, just like Dex did when she was sick back in Texas. He's such a good puppy.
24 June 2020
0150 working on Accipiter
0220 working on Accipiter
1750 working on Accipiter
1956 walking the puppies
Food: ribs, fruit, and veggies for a late lunch, cheese for an evening snack
Fact: The animal with the most legs is the millipede Illacme plenipes. This species is restricted to a few square miles near San Francisco. Females have up to 750 legs (males have up to 562) although there is quite a bit of variation between individuals. The species was first described in 1926 and was not seen again until the 2005 when it was rediscovered by Paul Marek and his brother. The millipedes are also very small, with the largest specimen being about 4 cm.
Woke up for the zoom lunch which was amusing as usual. This time telekinetic Kevin joined in, but he didn't say how the telekinesis tests were going. No Dana, Nate, or Dan today, but pretty much everyone else who usually participates was there. I had an email from Shanta asking if we could talk sometime today about strategies for helping faculty members recognize the existence of systematic racism and their part in it so talked to her after taking a quick nap to make up for waking up so early. Then spent the rest of the day working on my
Accipiter alignments. After dinner I took the puppies out for a quick walk since it wasn't raining (we had a some big storms earlier in the day) and then it was time to trivia. Zac joined our team also since we had no hope at coming up with the names of the 4 Twilight books (when Zac knew them he said confronting that fact made him hate his life (same with Kevin who apparently knew them also)). Before Zac joined us we missed the main villan in Transformers and Jimmy was amused that I wrote my parents wouldn't let us watch it so I had no idea. Apparently Kevin thought Maria would know the answer so was waiting for her to type it, which make Maria question if he actually knew her at all. We ended up coming in 4th out of 6, but within like 5 points of 1st so not bad. Then I watched some house hunters and the parentals went to bed since they had to be up early to get mother to the day surgery place by 6am for the meniscus repair. Apparently black kittie was ashamed about something so was covering his eyes.
23 june 2020
0439 watching House Hunters Renovaton
1752 working on Accipiter
1900 eating
1938 taking the puppies for a walk
Food: rice, Italian sausage, cauliflower, and broccoli for dinner
Fact: Gunnison, Colorado took extreme measures to prevent the introduction of the 1918 flu pandemic. The first cases arrived in Colorado in mid September when 250 soldiers arrived from Montana bringing the disease with them. Shortly after that Gunnison banned all travel into the city unless the traveler quarantined (originally for 2 days, then for 5 day). They arrested and jailed anyone who tried to come into the town before their quarantine was complete. The plan was successful, and there were no cases during the first 2 waves (but they loosened the restrictions and had some cases but no deaths from the 3rd wave). Interestingly, one of the first things I remember about our current pandemic is that Gunnison, CO shut down (because it was someplace Maria and I had talked about going to on a random weekend adventure partially to go see Gunnison's Sage-grouse).
Woke up and had a zoom meeting with Jacob and Brian talking about changing bird common names. Last year a proposal was sent to the NACC to change the common name of McCown's Longspur since McCown was a pretty bad dude. It failed, but now there is a general movement to try it (and more) again. It was good talking to them since i hadn't talked to them since I was at FMNH back in March. We were all talking about how that felt like a whole different world. After that I just worked on Accipiter and sent a bunch of emails. I miss doing field work so much I decided to listen to Blood on the Tracks even though I really don't like most Bob Dylan. But since Mark, Jack, and Matt all loved that album I would put it on for them on occasion so now it reminds me of happier/simpler times when all we had to worry about was getting shot at or blown up by land mines.
22 june 2020
0512 trying to fall asleep
1139 sleeping
1248 sleeping
2214 listening to the Yankees/Rays game
Food: chicken nuggets and a baked potato for dinner
Fact:Tuberculosis was one of the leading causes of death before antibiotics were invented. In 1900 it was the 3rd leading cause of death in the US and in the early 1800's it was responsible for about 25% of the deaths in New York City. One of the leading treatments of tb was fresh air and sunlight, traits that worked their way into modern housing ascetics (flat roofs for lounging, large open rooms, lots of windows). Interestingly, Ulrich (1984) published a paper showing that when other factors were controlled patients recovered from surgery faster, with fewer complications, and requiring less pain medications if they had a pleasant outdoor view vs viewing a brick wall.
Woke up and spent almost the entire day working on Accipiter stuff. I did take a break to go to Costco since we needed milk, fruit, and meat. Since they actually require masks I'd rather go there than anyplace near by. I was able to get almost everything on my list, except for chlorox wipes, cherries, and graded mozzarella cheese and a bunch of things I didn't want anyway (mushrooms, avocados, frozen broccoli). Meat wise I got lamb, bison, a pork loin (it was even on sale), and steaks. Tons of traffic both on the way to Huntsville (accident and construction) and the way home (rush hour and construction). I also took the truck out for gas since it was almost out from all the mulch runs the parentals are taking. It was raining off and on, so no long walk today although I did take the puppies for walks just before it got dark. The fireflies were all over the place after the rains.
21 june 2020
0143 working on Accipiter
0147 working on Accipiter
1259 sleeping
1554 working on Accipiter
Food: Enchiladas for a late lunch with fruit
Fact: The GEBCO Seabed 2030 project aims to survey the entire ocean floor to modern standards (including depth at 100m resolution). We actually have a coarse idea of ocean depth using satellites to estimate depth based on gravity but this is only at a 1km resolution. To date 19% of the ocean meets the modern standards, primarily by utilizing surveys done by companies or collecting sonar data from ships in transit.
Woke up and did some work on Accipter. I talked to John for a while since they were having a bunch of bird drama at Brets cabin where they were trying to get some work done. He's also hoping to do the hike in mid July so need to see if that works out for the others. Then we set up for church and did the service. We changed it up a little and mother read the 1st reading while Maria did the prayers of the faithful. We've also moved on to the next step of recording by switching to speaker only view during the homily. Afterwards we talked and gave father his father's day present (a tea maker that makes both single servings and carafes). It's also programmable and turns off. Other than that it was a pretty low key day. Took the pups for a walk and then after dinner mother and I watched a bunch of House Hunters.
Woke up and checked on the various analyses I have running. The gang decided we were going to Saudi Arabia tomorrow and I was in charge of bringing non-pork sausages for our dinner (one of the other guys was bringing the non-alcoholic beer) Then we had lunch, and i went to the beer store to pick up the beer I ordered. The owner is going to start letting me know any time they have new beers that she things I might like. After that I put on the game and did worked on my computer. Father and I grilled steaks and bison burgers then we had dinner. We decided to have beer with dinner, and both had the Dragon's Milk reserve (with marshmallow and dark chocolate). We both really liked it- the chocolate took the edge off that you usually notice with the normal dragons milk. The game was pretty depressing and we lost pretty badly. We watched a House Hunteers in Queretaro and the parentals recognized a lot of places they filmed. Then they went to bed and I kept working on my projects while watching House Hunters (including one about an author who moved to Slovenia from the US). I did take a short break to play some World of Warcraft, need to start running some raids so I can get more gold. 
he puppies, and then drove out to the dam. We first tried by the bank but decided we didn't want to sit in the parking lot looking sketchy waiting for the sun to set and so figured wed drive out to the dam and then come back. But it turned out the dam wasn't very bright, and so we stayed out there instead since it was a perfect set up. It was pretty cloudy, but an hour or so after sunset it started clearing out. Father started just taking 30 second wide angle exposures in the general area, and after a few different spots actually got the comet in frame. Then i was able to find it with the binos and showed mother while father took a series of zoomed in shots and different exposures. The comet today was almost green, it was really cool looking. The clouds gave it some cool depth also, although you could tell when we looked at the computer that the clouds really dimmed the comet. The moon was also really pretty and i saw what father thinks was jupiter because it was super bright and had a visible moon. Then we headed home (got stopped by a train with a bunch of hopper cars) and had dessert. Looked at the pictures and then watched House Hunters while working on Catharus alignments. 
21 July 2020
