So when my dogs come to me and start licking my hands enthusiastically after dinner, are they:
Just one of many random thoughts that ran through my fever-addled brain today
TV-free for a whole month!
Have I missed it? Maybe a little bit. Definitely feeling a little out-of-touch with the world. Maybe I should start getting the newspaper again.
Do I want it back? At the moment, not really.
Am I ready to cancel Comcast? Thinking about it. It would free up $75/mo that would definitely be very handy.
On to month 2!
Bad: Came home to a poopy smelling house. It was Simba.
Good: There wasn't a lot of it
Bad: It was all over Nala's crate too.
Good: Simba must have cleaned up after himself
Bad: Simba must have cleaned up after himself
Good: Simba threw it back up
Bad: Simba really did clean up after himself
Good: He threw up outside on the back porch
I have my very own waterfall when it rains
This is what the storm looked like from my house
This is kind of a cool and novel project that slipped by me. The Free Beer concept takes a beer recipe and releases it under a Creative Commons license. Anybody can take the recipe, brew it, modify it and even sell it as long as credit is given and the modified recipe is published
The recipe and branding elements of FREE BEER is published under a Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5) license, which means that anyone can use the recipe to brew their own FREE BEER or create a derivative of the recipe. Anyone is free to earn money from FREE BEER, but they must publish the recipe under the same license and credit our work. All design and branding elements are available to beer brewers, and can be modified to suit, provided changes are published under the same license ("Attribution & Share Alike")
The most recent version is Free Beer v3.4, but it's in Portuguese so you'll need a translator
Here's an idea. How about some of our Lowcountry homebrewers give one of the recipes a try and show off the results at one of our meetups! Maybe they could even make up a Lowcountry version of Free Beer too! Some guys in Knoxville TN came up with v3.3. I'm sure brewers around here could whip up something too. I think that would be pretty awesome.
Got to see the preview of Dan's Brunch of the Living Dead short film at tonight's meetup (which was a lot of fun with lots of new and old faces BTW).
Very funny and excellently done. The shot of zombie-Joan eating brains and gristle was great. Everybody involved did a great job and I'm looking forward to seeing the final release.
The tea variety, not toilets.
Tomorrow is the First Flush festival at Charleston's very own tea plantation (and apparently the only one in the US too). Goes from 10-5 with music and other fun things to do.
This years' First Flush Festival--to celebrate the arrival of our 2008 tea crop--will be held on Saturday May 17, 2008. Mark your calendar and come to Charleston Tea Plantation on Wadmalaw Island for a whole day of fun, games, food, some great live music and an opportunity to purchase your own supply of Charleston Tea Plantation's 2008 First Flush Loose Tea. Last year's Festival was a great day for all who attended and for the Charleston Tea Plantation Team!
The tea plantation's been on my list of places to check out for a while now so I figured this would be a good opportunity to go see.
Feel free to join me if you're not busy tomorrow.
The scene in MUSC's horseshoe this morning for the graduation ceremony.
Congratulations to MUSC's Class of 2008!
Today's visit to the Charleston Tea Plantation for their First Flush festival turned out to be a lot of fun.
A field of tea bushes (Camellia sinensis) when you drive into the plantation
The factory tour is definitely very interesting and informative. One of the must-do's while you're there.
Plenty of people came to enjoy the great weather and live entertainment
According to the Tea Trolley tour guide, the original plantation up in Summerville was abandoned after the original owner died. All of the plants at the Charleston Tea Plantation were propagated (cloned) from plants recovered from the original plantation. If you're in Summerville, some of those unruly bushes on your property might just be tea bushes!
More pictures from the day over in the photo gallery.
Some of the tornado damage from last week's storm. This is some of what we saw as we were heading out to the Charleston Tea Plantation.
For the past oh, 18 years or so, I've been sustained largely by the epic tales of Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth) and Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time). Little did I know when I started them (WoT started in 1991, SoT in 1994) that they'd both grow into 11 and 12 volumes respectively and take up so much of my time.
Now that the Sword of Truth series has finally wrapped up and with the end of the Wheel of Time series near, I'm on the hunt for something new to read. During the wait between volumes, I'd go back and read the previous books, or re-read other books in my collection (namely Dune and freecycled the rest, including all of my undergrad textbooks (boy was that tough to do). Most of what I brought back were sci-fi genre and whetted my appetite for more.
I think it's time to reacquaint myself with the library. I wonder if my library card is still any good.
Feel free to offer any suggestions.
I think the wave of dog diarrhea that swept through is done with and everything seems to be back to normal now. Nala ended up getting some IV fluids at the vet last week as a preventive measure to make sure she didn't get dehydrated and a course of metronidazole just in case. She seems to be back to her regular self now.
They were all very happy to get out to the dog park yesterday afternoon for the first time in over a week. Much running and ball chasing went on. Even Mel got into the action playing chase games with some of the other dogs.
Back to life as usual now. *whew*
When you eat you Smarties do you eat the red ones last,
do you suck them very slowly or crunch'em very fast,
eat the candy coated chocolate, but tell me when i ask,
when you eat your smarties do you eat the red ones last?
I don't know why, but the song suddenly broke into my head while I was working and caused all kinds of havoc.
Then of course, I had to search YouTube for one of the old commercials.
NOAA's 2008 hurricane season forecast calls for another busy season this year, possibly influenced by a La Niña in the Pacific. 12-16 named storms, 6-9 hurricanes and 2-5 of them major hurricanes. "Busy season" is starting to seem pretty normal these days.
From the forecast:
The Climate Prediction Center's 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook calls a 90% probability of a near-normal or above-normal hurricane season. An above-normal season is most likely (65% chance), but there is also a 25% chance of a near-normal season, and a 10% chance of a below-normal season. See NOAA's definitions of above-, near-, and below-normal seasons.
The likely (60%-70% chance) ranges of activity for 2008 (each of which is seen in about two-thirds of similar seasons in the historical record): are 12-16 Named Storms, 6-9 Hurricanes, and 2-5 Major Hurricanes. Most of this activity is expected during August through October, the peak months of the Atlantic hurricane season.
The second key predictor for the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season is the possibility that the La Niña-related patterns of tropical convection and winds will persist, and therefore may be conducive to increased Atlantic hurricane activity. As discussed by Gray (1984), La Niña favors more Atlantic hurricanes and El Niño favors fewer hurricanes. The combination of La Niññn active hurricane era increases the probability of an above-normal season.
The journal club has been getting neglected recently. Trying to remedy that for this year.
From this month's JNM comes a paper on I-131 therapy and pregnancy, always a very hot issue. The paper is a follow-up to an earlier study from 1996 which said that I-131 exposure from thyroid therapy did not affect the outcome of subsequent pregnancies.
In the current paper, the number of patients with pregnancies within a year following 131I therapy was increased over the previous study (n=158 vs n=96) enabling better statistical analysis of the results.
One of the more interesting (I thought) results from the study was that the percentage of miscarriages following treatment for thyroid cancer (either surgical or radioiodine therapy) increased. However, the percentages were essentially the same whether the treatment was surgical or with radioiodine (20.7% vs 19%).
There are a lot of statistics and tables presented in the paper looking at a myriad of things. However, the bottom line is that the authors did not find any evidence to support a common precaution that female patients avoid becoming pregnant for one year following treatment for thyroid cancer.
Garsi J-P, Schlumberger M, Rubino C, et al. Therapeutic administration of 131I for differentiated thyroid cancer: radiation dose to ovaries and outcome of pregnancies. J Nucl Med. 2008;49:845-852
Abstract:
Radiation is known to be mutagenic. The present study updates a 10-y-old study regarding pregnancy outcome and the health of offspring of women previously exposed to radioiodine (131I) during thyroid carcinoma treatment, by doubling the number of pregnancies that occurred after exposure. Methods: Data on 2,673 pregnancies were obtained by interviewing female patients who were treated for thyroid carcinoma but had not received significant external radiation to the ovaries. Results: The incidence of miscarriages was 10% before any treatment for thyroid cancer; this percentage increased after surgery for thyroid cancer, both before (20%) and after (19%) 131I treatment, with no variation according to the cumulative dose. In contrast to previously reported data, miscarriages were not significantly more frequent in women treated with radioiodine during the year before conception, not even in women who had received more than 370 MBq during that year. The incidences of stillbirths, preterm births, low birth weight, congenital malformations, and death during the first year of life were not significantly different before and after 131I therapy. The incidences of thyroid and nonthyroid cancers were similar in children born either before or after the mother's exposure to radioiodine. Conclusion: There is no evidence that exposure to radioiodine affects the outcomes of subsequent pregnancies and offspring. The question as to whether the incidences of malformations and thyroid and nonthyroid cancers are related to gonadal irradiation remains to be established. The doubling dose is still being heatedly debated, and the value of 1 Gy as the doubling dose in humans should be reevaluated.
Kids in the Hall show tonight was totally awesome. They definitely haven't lost their irreverence and ability to offend (Buddy Cole's monologue would definitely offend lots of people here). But they're still funny as hell. A few recurring characters made appearances which brought much applause and shouting from the crowd, and lots of new stuff that I laughed very hard at. There was even some improv going on, like during the Two Salesmen skit when Bruce McCullough dropped the big jar of 'fat' and spilled it all over the stage.
My favourites were Gavin meets the Jehovah's Witnesses and the final skit of the night with Head-crusher guy Mr Tyzik and a video camera. It was a pretty hilarious skit and a good way to end the show. Dave Foley's time travel machine was pretty good too.
There were a lot more people at the show than I expected, filling about half of the North Charleston PAC. Didn't think there were that many people in Charleston who knew who Kids in the Hall were. One guy even held up a Canada shirt that showed up on the screen during the last skit.
It was kind of funny watching Scott Thompson try to figure out what to do with the bra that was thrown onto the stage (and eventually putting it on).
Fantastic show and I'm glad I got to go see it.
Much buzz abounds about Phoenix's successful landing on Mars. There are already plenty of pictures to check out too.
With that landing, the score is tied at 20-20 and Earth's scoring streak continues!
Although the mission is only scheduled to last 90 days, considering the success of Opportunity and Spirit, I have high hopes that Phoenix's mission will last longer.
Some Twitter-derived apps that I've run across (thanks to tweets from others) for the stats-obsessed
Tweetclouds (my tweetcloud)
Tweetwheel
Tweetstats (my stats)
Updated to MT 4.2rc1 and already there are a few templates that need modification so excuse any breakage you might encounter (drop me a line if you do find some breakage).
Still digesting all the new things (never really did get around to digesting all the template tag changes between 3.3x and 4.1) and I still need to get around to mucking around with my templates so things build a little faster. From the looks of things, there are a lot of new things. MT's templating system is has almost become a full-blown programming language in itself!
The first named Atlantic storm, Arthur, made an appearance this afternoon reincarnated from the remnants of the first named eastern Pacific storm, Alma.
Like Alma, it looks like Arthur will be fairly short-lived and be mostly a rain event for southern Mexico.
