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.