Lots of days

5 i 2012
0526 sleeping
0732 sleeping
1814 on the way back to College Station from Sawdust Ranch
2208 drinking on northgate
Random fact- 40% of all lab acquired infections are bacteria caused.
Lunch- lamb kebabs 
Dinner- Freddy burger at the Chicken 

Met up with Shawn and we went out to his father-in-laws ranch near Carlos.  First I resighted in my rifle, (shooting off sticks is harder then the truck), and then headed to the blind.  Saw one doe for a few seconds (but no way to get a shot off), and had a really good view of a young buck, but its an antlerless permit so no go.  Seeing that buck though really helped my confidence level because that was defiantly a shot I could have made.  Met up with Maria and Courtney at Northgate, and found out Courtney's been getting emails for a friend of mine who has an almost identical e-mail address it's a small world. 

6 i 2012
0130 building my lego house
0814 sleeping
1937 eating dinner with Maria
2150 getting internet at Nagle
 
Random Fact- Hendra virus is transmitted by flying fox that is currently circulating in Australia.  It's killed about 20 horses this past year.

Lunch- leftover Hakiu
Dinner- sweet and sour shrimp 

Poor Maria was sick today, so we ended up not heading to Alabama so instead I went into Nagle and told Jim Cathey about the email confusion with Courtney.  Then I went and sat on the steps of Nagle to eat my lunch.  Talked to a bunch of physical plant guys as they walked by (offered them some California rolls when they asked if I had enough for them, they declined).  Its one of the big differences I notice between A&M and UIUC- there isn't nearly the "class" divide here at A&M between staff and students.  Overall it was a perfect day in Aggieland, with great weather and I even got some work done...

7 i 2012
1005- trying to get the energy to get out of bed
1148- at Target
1721- driving
1959- still driving

Random fact- There are 8 extant species of pangolin

Lunch- leftover sweet and sour shrimp

Spent the day driving from College Station to my parents place in Trinity, AL.  We also picked up my truck in Demopolis, AL which is truly a classy town.  While sitting at the gas station a woman flipped out screaming her boyfriend was going to kill her over the mess her dog made in his car while she was inside buying a coke.  What was the mess you may ask? A sudden litter of puppies...  Looks like I bought some bad diesel as there was a ton of water in my tanks, now that that's been filtered and the injectors cleaned Betsy runs better than ever.

8 i 2012
1208- eating breakfast
1421- at Costco
2005- waiting for my little brother to appear while finishing up dinner
2339- watching TV

Random fact- Piperton, TN is a huge speed trap, ask my poor brother...

Dinner- burgers

My sister and I arrived around 0300 and after getting the dogs settled in and a quick snack we went to bed.  The last 100 miles were really foggy and while there wasn't much traffic there was a bus on the road which was driving pretty erratically.  We spent the day mostly lounging around, although we did go to Costco and Mass in the afternoon.  Dumas and Schubert get along great, as do Dumas and Daphers, but Daphers and Schubert aren't exactly buddies, it made TV watching a bit of a challenge this evening, but it worked out.  Its always nice having all of us back together [HRE]

9 i 2012
0926- sleeping
1126- eating breakfast- apple crepes
1725- watching TV and waiting for my dad to get home
2206- watching the national championship game (Roll Tide)

Random fact- The game today was the first shut out in a BCS national championship game. The Alabama coach, Nick Saban, was also the first coach to win the BCS championship 3 times (2x with Bama and once with LSU).

Dinner- Steak and potato salad with a Shiner

Spent the day tweaking various analyses- my Deltocephalini clade isn't coming out monophyletic.  We also let the dogs run around most of the day, which mostly consisted of Daphers barking constantly, Shubert hiding on the couch, and Dumas running around the house.  The highlight of the day though was watching bama win the national championship over LSU.  We decided to recreate steak sales- my dad and brother (being both Knights, by brother even wearing his steak sale shirt) cooked up the steaks, which we finished eating just as the game started.  To celebrate the victory my sister and I went into Decatur to buy t-shirts at Martins (which seemed to be where half the town was), but they were already sold out of mediums. 

today's report

0104: Watching gangland. My sister and I love watching shows about gangs, preferably while eating Hagen Daus Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. It's become something of a tradition.

0259: I was writing up my random points from last night, and wishing I was asleep.

1757: Enjoying a ham sandwich with Dale and Kathy. Dale's been helping me train Dumas since he was a pup, and now he watches Dumas when I'm out of town. I like to go harrass them as often as possible.

2358: My sister and I had just gotten home from Heep. We had to pick up a bunch of reprints I had left in my office. Luckily my swipe card still works (after 3 years).

Lunch- I had a peperonni, sausage, extra cheese, and tomatoes (after its cooked) pizza at blue baker with a coke and a chocolate chip cookie. I went with Silvy so of course that was a good time. He's talking about writing a book about his adventures. I'd totally read that.

Dinner- a multi meal affair. First I had a ham sandwich that Kathy made for me, and a Bud light. Then a few hours later my sister and I picked up some Double Daves pepperonni rolls and ate them at my parents hotel room, after which we went to Yougert Land. They didnt have plain chocolate, so I had to have some wierd chocolate thing with my cookie dough and strawberrys.

Todays highlights were finding out Shawn can take me deer hunting and going to lunch with Silvy. Spent a while talking rifles and optics, can't wait to get my gun, and shipped off the AMNH loan, bringing my total to 2200 specimens returned this week. Today's low point was getting woken up at 645- why do professors wake up so early? Took Dumas to the vet and he got a clean bill of health, the vet commented on how different he is from my old pointer, Dexter and said the case study on Dexie was published recently.

Fun Fact: My sisters civil engineering professor developed the standards met by all glass in the US. He has also designed glass for use in tiger cages...

AZ and back in a weekend

After a mostly uneventful first real week of school (including taing my first lab it was off to AZ. We got a bit of a late start even though I skipped Oz's class friday afternoon. By the time we were loaded up in the truck it was after 1400. We stopped in Caldwell for a late lunch at McDonalds then jumped on the road. Most of the drive was pretty uneventful. Cammack made a CD for the trip which had enough music to get us there and back without listening to the same song more than a couple times, mostly a mix of country and rock, so we just listened to that and talked most of the way. The highlights of the drive was seeing something burn up in the atmosphere. It was the strangest thing id seen in a long time. Bright green, flying across the sky for a good 2 or 3 seconds before disappearing. The other really fun thing was driving down the highway with the headlights off in the dark. Cammack asked if I'd ever done that and I said no so we did it, it was really cool so i made him do it a few more times. We finally got to Harrys at around 5am and found our room. Paul was already in the room I normally claim so Cammack and I got the other bedroom by the computer room. We were pretty much instantly asleep only to be awaken a few hours later by Schebert, Harry's treeing fiest. The dog ran into the room and jumped on me before decideing that i was not very interesting and running over to the bed and jumping on Cammack. We got Schebert out and I got up briefly to say hi to Harry and Paul and ate breakfast before going back to sleep. The second time I woke up I stayed awake. People started comming by the house shortly afterward to see harry while we ate lunch. Then it was time to go hunting. There were quite a few people by now gathered at the house, probabily 20 or so. The plan had been to all go fly Harry's Aplo then go watch the peres fly. However there was a miscomunication somewhere along the line and we ended up getting dividied into two groups. Me and Cammack went with Harry, Beth, and a couple others to fly the Aplo. We went to a nearby field and turned the dogs and bird loose. The bird perched on the car top while Harry and Beth got on the horses and took off. Shortly there after we got our first quail point and flush. The bird chased it nicely, but no catch. The quail was reflushed and this time after a 100 yard flight or so the Aplo grabbed it in nice flight. The fiest was near by but was unneeded to recatch the quail as the Aplo had it all on her own. The pointer ran off and found a few more birds and held point nicely while the Aplo ate. After she was done Harry boxed her back up and went to get the pointer. Then Harry called Paul to figure out where the pere group was and we took off to meet them. The pere people were being led by Tim Rierden who found a pond to fly his falcon. We came up on them and parked the truck in a long line of cars and met up with the other group then headed down to the pond. We all hung back while the pere rung up. Tim flushed the ducks and the pere stooped. The birds went back to the pond and the pere remountd. On the third remount she connected with one. It was a nice flight she caught the duck after a bit of a chase right by us so we all got a great view of it. Tim let her eat a bit of the duck then hooded her up and it was back on the road. We found another pond to try the next bird on. The bird went up although not super high and stooped the ducks nicely although didnt catch any. The ducks all flushed and we were off to the third pond and peregrine. Again it was a nice flight but no catch. This final pond was a bit of a hike from the trucks and across a barb wire fence and by the time we got back to the trucks it was dark. We loaded up and headed back to Harrys to get ready for the banquet. The Desert Hawking Classic was being held in Harry's honor so as guests of the guest of honor we got great seats with Harry and Beth. I bought a meet shirt and 3 raffle tickets plus a telemetry tickety. I didn't win the telemetry, but I did win 2 gift certificates for quail. Harry bought a ton of ticekts, so we all got to put a bunch of them in then keep track of them. I got some additional books that way since he divided up his winnings between me and Paul. As part of the festivities a few people got up and gave speeches about Harry's affects on them. The best though was one detailing various quotes from Harry over the years, the best was one likinging something with being sinful with the the 18yr old neighbor girl. Everyone got a good laugh out of that one. The club gave Harry a large bottle of Scotch. After the banquet I talked to Tim for awhile about pulling peres, I really do want to give that a go sometime in the next few years. It was now time to head for home since it was getting a late. So we loaded up in Harry's firebird and took off for home. On the way he asked Paul if hed every shown him the acceleration in the firebird, and Paul said no, so Harry gave us a taste of the Firebird. Nice car. We went home and went to bed. This time Schebert didn't wake us up, and i woke up intime to grab breakfast before making the new anklets for boeri. Once they were made we got him and cast him. I put the new equipment on and then got him on the fist for a little bit. Then I boxed him up and finished packing up the last of our stuff before loading up in the truck and heading back east. Boeri screamed all the way to Las Cruces. By this point i was trying to figure out any way to make him stop, cause belive me a screming bird in the middle seat of a ranger is not conducive to a good road trip . I thought if i had a hood that might help a bit. I called Angel first since Boeris is about the size of a tiercel Aplo. I left him a message and he called me back after a few min. He was hunting quail, and didn't have a hood anyway but suggested Pete Jungerman might have one. I found Petes number and sure enough he had a hood that would work. So we stopped by his house and after struggling to get it on the normal way we cast him and stuck it on. That quiteed him instantly. Then me and Cammack took a tour of the breeding birds, Cammack liked the goshawks and the tiata falcons. then it was back in the truck agian. We finally got into College Station around 2 AM, dropped Cammack off at his place then went to mine and attempted to get Boeri to eat something. He screamed a lot and ate a tidbit but that was all for tonight. Long weekend, but I had a lot of fun, hopefully Cammack had some too.

Times they are a changin

so since my last post my world undergone some intense modification. It started when Cammack found out he wouldn't be staying at A&M for grad school. The concensus of the profs he works with was that for what he wants to do he has exhasted all resourses here so between that and funding its time for him to move on. Hes looking at Davis, some school in Turlock, CA, Virginia Tech, Michigan State, Clemson, and maybe a couple others i've forgotten. Clemson would be cool since its still in the dominica consortum and his major prof would be petter adler, a guy we met in dominica. Plus the collecting up there would be pretty sweet and its not too far from A&M relativly speaking. A&M without cammack is sort of hard to imagine since as you can probabily tell from how often he pops up in this blog is my partner in crime, comrade in arms, and the other 1/2 of woolley's robot/clone team. Seriously there arn't many people who will spend finals weekend looking for sailor suits for a stuffed Chihuahua instead of studying or that I can talk into wheeling me around Heep on the dolly. The 3 muskateers are already down to 2 and I guess in July itll be down to just me. I had been planning on that since he was orignially planning on leaving but then recently it looked like he would be staying in God's country. O well, well both be back here eventually. We decided a few years back we were going to live next door to eachother with a giant light sheet between the houses. Over time this has morphed into 3 different house/lightsheet set ups- 1 in east tx, 1 in the hill country, and 1 in west texas. All with minibars at the light sheets and air strips so we can fly to work (we both want to be profs at A&M) each day. yeah we are nerds but its so much fun.

Then later last week I realized that I was starting to forget my motto- Fly hard, Kill Swiftly, Make no Apologies. I don't have a bird right now so a lot of the new people this semester havn't been around for all the bird and hunting talk. It had been kinda easy to forget that I am who I am and that changing who I am isnt good. I love the chase as much if not more than the kill but when it comes down to it coming home with a bunny, squirrel, or whatever else at the end of the day is incredible. Nothing beats watching bird, dog, quarry, and human interact. Its sort of birdwatching on steroids., but at the same time I am not out flying my bird, I am hunting with a bird and thats that. No reason to justify it, it is what it is and I love what I do and I make no apologies for it. This holds true for the gun hunting that I do. I take pride in stalking game, I may not come home with tons, but its enough to feed me and my bird and have some fun in the process. When it starts getting to easy I change it up some- throwing knifes, rocks, etc, especially these days when I actually can put food on the table for myself and the dog and dont currently have a bird to feed. Now when food gets tight itll be a different story, a bunny is a bunny wheather it was shot, taloned, or knifed. Too many americans don't feel a connection to the land and I think part of it comes from never living off of it. I am proud to say that there has been more than a few weeks when all I ate was game be it deer I got from friends or stuff I had killed. At the time it was out of necessity but honestly deer steaks are pretty dang good.

Then on friday I found out dad may be moving to Huntsville, and not huntsville, tx like me, maria, and eddie all thought when were were first told. The funny thing about that is we were all told seperatly and all had the same reaction. He was offered a spot on another project and since the current project is almost done he might take it. They dont want to move eddie so mom would stay in allen until he graduated then move to alabama. Although I think eddie should move to Huntsville as it would drasticly improve his chances of going to ISEF, which as we all know is the most important part of a catanach's highschool carrer. At first I didnt think it would really matter if they moved or not, since I'm don't get home much these days anyway, but the more I think about it I realize how wierd it would be not to have my parents in Allen. At the same time though this new project would open up the possibility to moving back west, which I know they both want. And in the grand scheme of things i'll be heading north for my phd and so for 5 years will be far away even if they stay in tx. When I was a kid I though Huntsville, AL would be a really cool place. Our neighbors back in CA moved there when we were kids and since Mr. James, who worked with my dad, was really into space and galexys and so was I I figured we should move there too. Now though, im not so sure if Id like Alabama. Guess i should check out the hunting regs. Should be interesting to see what ends up happening.

Now that i've totally bored the few people that actually read this thing itll be back to the regularly scheduled programing- random slightly entertaining stories. Below is a picture of the muskateers in the sand dunes out in west Texas. I think thats my favorite picture of the 3 of us even though its totally washed out, its kinda a cool effect. Cammacks in the middle and Erics on the right (which means I'm on the left, shocking I know).

The last frontier and how not to hunt ptarmagan but at least we had some fun

Well back to more alaska stories. Tuesday went pretty well also, went to lunch with lisa at sea galley. The highlight of the day though was the ATS party at snowgoose. They had free food and beverages from 530-930. It was very exciting. We met up with silvy, bret, and dom who got there about the same time we did, so we had a good time. Once it started getting dark we took off and went to flat top to look down on the city. It was freezing cold and raining, but still pretty fun. Wensday was pretty uneventful also, went to lunch with jackie, lisa, and maria, then went back to the conference to watch ryans presentation. That pretty much wrapped up the conference. There was a fairwell banquet which wasnt too impressive, but o well. The house (and our hotel room, we basicly just relocated the house to alaska for the week) went to party with stevens point for a while then called it a night and went back to the hotel. Thursday we went ptarmagan hunting. We didnt really know where to look since all the people we taked to with fws and akfg dont hunt until later in the season. But we wandered around for a while then shot at rocks on the other side of this stream. I even got maria to shoot the .22, she had way to much fun with that. Afterwards we went up the road a bit further to where it was snowing. Stephen had never seen it snow so he was going crazy and the rest of us had fun laughing at him. Then back to the hotel to pack. Turned out the sul ross guys missed their flight so maria and I went to rumrunners and met up with ryan, eric, and ashely until lisa came and picked us up and took ryan and eric to the airport. Friday the rest of TAMU came up to girdwood and the 5 of us plus john and dom went to whitter and walked part of the portage pass trail. It was pretty cool looking down into whitter and the sound on one side and to the glaicer on the other. We took pepper with us and she was pretty tired by the time we were done. Saturday maria and I went back to the sound to go fishing with lisa and john. We limited out in about 2hrs, so definatly a successful trip. Back to girdwood, grabbed pizza from chair 5, packed up our gear and took down my malaise trap, then back to anchorage to catch our flight. Slept most of the way down and got to dfw without any major issues. Baggage claim was amusing since annalise called to see when we were leaving anchorage while I was looking for our bags in dfw. While on the phone with her, mom walked next to me and had no idea i was there. Now if i was my dog dex she would have picked him out right away, all us kids have come to the realization we rank below the dog in my moms opinon. Kinda sad when shes trying to send eddie back to college station with me and keep the dog. All in all a very productive trip to AK, had a good time seeing it a bit differently than normal, but itll be nice to be back up there in the summer. It was wierd seeing it dark up there, I think i saw dark when i was really young, since i went up at the end of august when i was 8 or so. The leaves were also changing, never seen fall for real anywhere.