Busy busy

Well, it's 7 30 and I should really go back to work, but I'm going to take a moment to tell you all what's going on:

- Mouse update: 2 mice down, hopefully no more to go. We've alerted the calvary (the maintanence guys at the station) and we're now optomistic that the problem is under control. I hope so, ***king mice!

- Weather update: Oh my god. Seriously. I...the weather is just astonishingly beautiful here.

- email update: So some of my emails are getting picked up by spam filters. If you emailed me something and haven't heard a reply (assuming it has been a few days) let me know and I'll try re-sending. I have no idea what's happening.

- I gave a talk Update: Yeah, I gave a talk at OU today about Food Quality and Toxicity. The talk went pretty well, except that some prof asked me a confusing question. I had put up a graph of how varying nitrogen:phosphorus ratios in media causes changes in the growth of duckweed, and he said (out of the blue incidentally): "But do you know what causes that change?"
"Sure, nutrient limitation."
"No, I mean, what causes it."
I still really don't know what he meant. One of the graduate students I know there thought he meant that since I only showed the N:P ratio, it could be that the nutrients were so high that we were seeing toxic effects, or so low. But if that's what he was implying, he certainly didn't say so. I was very confused, and, of course, it threw off my timing for awhile. I think I did really well overall however. I really wish I was a more natural public speaker. I feel comfortable speaking in front of groups, but I really need to know what I'm going to say or else I get completely discombobulated.
This time I had a really good idea of what I wanted to say.

- Update on the Newspaper article about me: What? You mean I didn't mention that a reporter for the OU Daily wanted to do a story on me? Really? Well, after my talk I was interviewed by a brave reporter from the OU daily who I'm not sure really understood the distinction between postdoc and graduate student (until I explained it). Hopefully I won't come off sounding like an idiot in the article. There should be an on-line version of the story that I'll link to when it comes out.
I also got to interview her about what it is like working for a daily college newspaper. As I'm sure everyone has heard ad naseum I used to be the editor of our campus paper. That paper was just a bi-weekly, but with our staff of six we ended up having a ridiculously hard time finding enough material to fill the pages. I figured that student-editors/reporters at a big college like OU were essentially full-time employees at the paper receiving credits for that work. Turns out not so much. This poor reporter was getting paid to write at least a story a week, but she was still taking a full-time class load and working a real job. Sounded pretty rough.

- High school students: Tomorrow morning I'm going to be one of two researchers from the station entertaining/educating a group of high-school students from a nearby town. There are 55 students coming! Wow! Fortunately the whole event is only going to last 2.5 hours, so even if it goes badly, at least it will go quickly. And the person helping me out has done this several times before.

- Waking up in the night screaming update: So apparently I have lost my mind. No, literally. Last night (according to my wife) I jumped out of bed and began screaming (at the top of my lungs) and doing that 'brushing off bugs' motion with my hands at 4 in the morning. As I said, this is what my wife says. I was completely asleep. When I woke up I was standing at the foot of the bed, my wife was hollering at me, and I was sweating profusely and my heart was racing.
I have no idea what the hell happened.
My wife claims she will hit me in the head if I do this again. I don't think she's kidding.

- My uncle is coming up from Thursday-Mon/Tues. That means my updates will be probably nonexistant those days. That also means that on Friday I'll be in OKC for the Suns-Hornets game. I can't wait! Two of the best point guards in the league! We've even got front row seats on the balcony! Yay!

I'm really not having a great day.

My day started off fantastic when I went to bed. That was at 5 30. Why 5 30? Because I'm an idiot, at least that's the short answer. The long answer is that the damned mouse made me so mad I couldn't get tired.

And for the record: Go with the old-classic.

My wife is driving to OKC today to meet a friend. So she left at 9 30 or so, and I couldn't fall back asleep.

I just bought a new guitar tuner, so I decided to tune my electric guitar (I'm terrible at tuning). First, I couldn't figure out how to make the tuner work, then it sounded terrible (so I figured it out wrong), and finally I topped all that off with breaking a string. Fantastic.

So now I decided to just play some video games for awhile, and after about five minutes I realize: A) the new controller I just got doesn't work that well, and B) my TV's audio is severely damaged, so that extremely loud pops and other sounds are now randomly blasting out.

Did I mention a MOUSE crawled out of my TOASTER last night?

On the plus side...um. On the plus side...yeah. Ok Ok. On the PLUS side: Today will be over in about 12 hours.

Build a better moustrap

Guess who needs one of these again?

Not actually that effective for catching mice.

I can't believe how angry mice in the house make me. I probably inherited this from my mother, who hates mice with an astounding fury. She's been known to stand on a couch screaming until someone convinces her that the mouse is, at least, no longer in her immediate vicinity. When I say "she's been known" I mean, I've seen this happen...multiple times.

Did I mention I saw this one crawl out of my toaster?

Still the classic.

I'm going with an array of mouse-capturing devices. I've got the classic depicted above, a
'sticky' trap, and a 'humane' mousetrap.

Do I really want to be humane?

I'm not sure why I included the 'humane' option at all. I considered just covering the kitchen floor with the classic traps and leaving it at that. I haven't really ruled that out. There's no reason to be human with rodents: They are our only real mammalian competition for rulers of the world. I know everyone talks about cockroaches, but I'm pretty sure mice would be right there.

If this mouse scourge continues, I'm going to push hard to re-introduce the greatest mousetrap of them all.

Hello mouse.

Whew!

- Ok, so I don’t like animals in my home. Ok, that’s not totally true. I would love to have my cat in the house, and I love things in aquariums. So this hatred extends to spiders, flies (especially flies), centipedes, mountain lions, elephants, rabbits, snakes, lady bugs, mosquitoes, aphids, those fucking mealy-bugs that seem to get into flour occasionally, roaches, and, most relevantly mice.

Oh yeah most relevantly. I don’t even have to explain do I? I heard a rustling in our trash can, I saw a mouse run out, it went into our kitchen.

At this point I remembered my childhood. There was this great book I read entitled I, Houdini: The Amazing Story of the Escape Artist Hamster. I loved this book. I probably read it eight times. I’m looking online right now and I kinda want to order it. My little child will need to read it. Apparently I liked everything by Lynne Reid Banks (Indian in the Cupboard anyone?).

Where was I? Oh yes.

So in the book they catch the hamster by putting out metal trashcans. Nothing to grip onto to scramble up the side, hence trapped hamster.

This little mouse was going to get the same treatment!

In less than a minute I had figured out the details. We had a tin of Christmas popcorn that we were unlikely to eat due to the trans-fat. Great! Simultaneous bait and trap! I dumped out most of the popcorn, set the can next to space around the washing machine where the little bastard had darted, and set up a cardboard ramp to the top of the tin. I figured when I woke up in the morning I’d have trapped mouse.

Well, the mouse didn’t wait around till morning. As soon as I left our kitchen alcove I heard a scrambling around, then a metallic plop, then a lot more scrabbling around.

Here’s were I made my mistake: I couldn’t find the lid. As it turns out the mouse could jump back out of the tin. Not easily, but given a little bit of terror and andrenaline, he made it.

Ok then. We’re upping the ante. I filled the tin 4 inches deep with water.

“I ought to be filling this with vodka.” I said to my wife. Did I mention that I don’t like animals in the house.

This time, I decide to watch what happens. Again, it takes like 2 minutes for the mouse to come back out. I watch him run around the floor a little and I contemplated going after him with my shoe (where is a rugby bat when I need one? Or a shotgun?). My wife was in the bedroom (completely disinterested) and shouted to me about not hurting it.

“I’m not going to hurt it. I’m going to kill it and put it’s head on a tiny little stake in the front yard as a warning to other mice. Oh, I guess I am going to have to hurt it.”

Eventually I watched the mouse climb up my little ramp and peer into the floating popcorn. He actually ran around the ledge of the tin several times trying (I imagine) to decide if it was worth going in for the food. I was standing there with a piece of cardboard ready to dart in and slam something over the top. And then with a little splash he jumped.

I can’t believe that worked.

Of course, my wife (there should be a tone here that I can’t express in text) immediately began to express an extreme concern for the little guy.

“Don’t let him drown!”

“Why not?”
“Don’t you love animals?”

“Yes. Just not in the house.”

“Just let him go.”
“Oh, I’ll let him go allright.”

“What does that mean?”
“It means he gonna learn to fly and then learn to swim.”

“What! You better not.”

What ended up happening? Well. I let the damn thing go on the far edge of the ‘lawn.’ My wife even insisted on going out and watching. Let me tell you, nothing looks more pathetic than a tiny wet mouse in a bunch of popcorn. The damn mouse must have been starving because despite the freezing temperatures it just went straight for the food.

This morning all the popcorn was gone, as was the mouse. My wife hopes that it didn’t freeze to death. I hope it did and then got eaten by a crow or something.

Now every time I heard a weird noise in the house my eyes dart to the floor.

I hate fucking mice.

- Have I told anyone how sick I am of ESPN? Is there anyone at that network who isn’t a jackass? ABC/Disney/ESPN sucks! Please, nobody get us anything Disney related for our offspring. We’re going to try and raise him/her in a positive atmosphere.

- A music note: So I had a ‘throwback night’ on Sunday for music. That’s where I listen to old stuff (I do that periodically). The thing was, I didn’t realize it was a throwback night. Take a look at this array of albums from 1997 or before: Weezer’s Blue Album and Pinkerton; Third Eye Blind’s debut; Matchbox 20’s debut (I know at least one person out there hates these guys, but you’re just wrong!!); practically the entire relevant musical catalogue of Presidents of the United States; Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy, Ten, and Vs.; Green Day’s Dookie; the first two Counting Crows albums; most of Less than Jake, Blink 182’s dude ranch, the first Goldfinger album, No Doubt when they were still playing ska, and obviously everything done by Nirvana. In fact, the whole grunge music phenomenon is now over 10 years old. For that matter, does anyone still skank anymore...I haven’t heard a main-stream ska song in years. I won’t say that this makes me feel old, but I’m kinda stunned that the formative years of my musical appreciation have now faded into ‘classic rock’. I mean, Art Alexakis is forty-freaking-five! (and did anyone realize he’s now broke and Everclear is essentially dead? Now I’m a little sad.)

I have a hard time getting too sad though. These music gaps are being filled by A) new material from these bands (Third Eye Blind’s unsupported release was good; Green Day’s obviously gotten better; Weezer still seems ok), B) new artists like the Decembrists, the Killers, Deathcab for Cutie, Modest Mouse (see below), the Drive-By Truckers, the Mountain Goats, Ok Go, Butch Walker, and KT Tunstall, and C) entirely different musical genres. I mean, what am I supposed to call bands like Eyeball Skeleton or The Go Team. What about Nerd Core?

I like music.

- I suppose everyone knows about Modest Mouse. I felt all cool and special back when I first heard trailer trash. I knew then, and still believe now, that these guys were the musical descendants of Nirvana. Just earth-shatteringly good, I just assumed they would immediately explode onto the ‘scene’ and soon every frat-boy on the planet would be screaming “Positively Negative” into the air after every beer.

Clearly I am a prophet (note the use of irony here).

Despite the fact that my expectations haven’t come to pass, or maybe because of that, the band is continuing to put out fantastically amazing stupendous music. I know “Float On” got overplayed, I’ll be happy if I never hear it again.

Without any further ado (hasn’t this been enough?) I present the latest effort from Modest Mouse entitled “Dashboard.” Before I heard this yesterday I didn’t realize my life was incomplete, but now I know it isn’t.