July 16th, 2019 – Goats and the Library

It’s 7:06 am. I’m writing the blog from home today because I have to take Alexandra and Harvey to check out a day care center around 10 am.

Yesterday I ended up spending like an hour on the blog to get all the pictures and video’s converted to a smaller size and stick them on the website with the text.  Wonder how I can reduce that time.

After that I ended up spending a couple hours putting together a list of faculty from the top 20 schools that started around the same time as me. This was requested to assist with my full professor package evaluation. It always feels a bit weird to be compared to others so explicitly, but the process of putting the list together gave me a better familiarity of what my peer group is working on.

At 11:15 I had to go pick up Alexandra, Harvey, and Ling Ling from Notasium, where Alexandra has her music lesson. Below are some pics of them playing that Ling Ling took. Alexandra was very happy to see me, it seemed she had a really good time at class. I was happy to pick them up. We went home for lunch where I wolfed down a huge salad and beans before driving back to work. The kids and Ling Ling had dumplings and some meat. Harvey just likes to eat meat mostly.

Back at work, I called Dana Nettles, who had previously worked on an osteochondral goat study at Duke back in 2008, but was now in Minnesota. I wanted to find out where they got the goats and what pasture they used, as well as the protocol. She directed me to contact Lori Setton, the PI on the study, who by email directed me to Steve Johnson, the vet who took care of the goats. He’s retired, so now I have to track him down.   Also learned why one of the goats died – somebody fed it prior to surgery and it choked to death after anesthesia!  So don’t eat before surgery!

I met with my graduate students about their projects in the afternoon. Feichen and Jiachen were making good progress on the cartilage gel study. Huayu had an update about the 3D printed tissue phantom study, and Mutya was making progress on the single-crystal copper study to find out why Cu microplates grow with Iodide.

After the meetings, I headed over to the gym to do my “push” weightlifting routine. While walking over to the gym, I chatted with Dushyanth at Sparta bio about meeting with a regulatory consultant next Monday, and what I had learned about goat studies at Duke. Headed home for dinner at 5pm, where Keira had prepared two steaks, rice, cauliflower, and cooked lettuce. After dinner, we went to the library. I went through this encyclopedia with pictures with Harvey. Alexandra kept picking books of the shelves. I found a book of myths that reminded me of Mom reading myths to me as a kid. I loved the Greek myths.

Kids woke up and I had to break for breakfast, 7:57 am now. I had my normal mix of oats, blueberries, bannanas, sunflower seeds, and cacao powder with almond/coconut milk.  Harvey ate 5 strawberries with cheese.  Alexandra had her bread with jam. Yingying ate some rice porridge with some pickles. Time to start the day!

July 15th, 2019 – The Museum, Blueberries, and the Multiverse

It’s 8:28 am.  I’m at work a bit early today because I will be picking up Alexandra, Harvey and Yingying from Notasium at 11:30 am.

 

Yesterday I ended up taking too much time to put together the blog, mostly on dealing with new software and converting files. I feel it took too much time away from playing with the kids in the early morning and afternoon. I will try to avoid that in the future.

 

After breakfast yesterday Keira, Alexandra, Harvey and I headed over to the museum. We played indoors for a little bit in this dark area where you can interact with projected images before heading outside.  We didn’t have the strollers, so I had to coax Harvey along.  We stopped by the sandbox where he got some sand in his sandals, which I helped him remove. Then we moved onto the woods area where he pointed at the big tree sculptures and tried to move them with a grunting sound. Heading over to the creek, Alexandra came up and hugged me from behind when I was crouching. She is so sweet.

Harvey stood in the creek a long time. At first he went in with his crocs and then he wanted them off. Alexandra was not so into the water, she went in for a little bit then headed somewhere else with Keira.  I sat on a rock and watched Harvey splash around in the water with his Thomas the train toy.  He watched the other kids run around in the water. This one kid kept jumping off a mini ledge and make a big splash right next to Harvey.  This annoyed me, but I figured what do you expect to happen? 

Finally Harvey got over the stream and we headed over to the toddler play zone in the woods, where Alexandra and Keira were in this fort structures. The kids liked to go around in circles in the fort. Harvey fell down off of a step and got dirt all over his face, which made him sad for a bit but he got over it.  They also went down the slide and up and down this hill a bunch.  Alexandra landed on her butt a couple times trying to go down the hill. 

Once the clock hit 11 am, we headed over to Harris Teeter to pick up some food for the week.  We ended up spending $160 on food.  I got my salad supplies (salad mix, tomatoes, cheese, olive oil, and vinegar). We got a bunch of different fruits and vegetables, as well as a couple salmon steaks, three beef steaks, a couple gallons of milk.  We got a bit more food than usual since Yingying is here.

Lunch was dumplings, which Yingying was preparing as we got home.  I worked on my blog after lunch while the kids played and watched tv before their nap.  Keira and I took a swim in the afternoon and I played Guns of Boom on my Ipad. Dinner was great, salmon, rice, seaweed, broccoli, Jicama, and a bone broth soup with some root in the soup, maybe Daikon. 

After dinner we headed over to the Blueberry farm to pick 5 pounds of blueberries.  The picking was more sparse than the last two times we were there, but we still got 5 pounds in 45 minutes.  Yingying watched the kids while they ate a bunch of blueberries from the bush. 

We got home around 8:30 and the kids went straight to bath with Keira while I scarfed down some blueberries and ice cream. The Kids watched a couple of Super Wings episodes before we took them upstairs and read them a few stories.  Keira read three stories to Alexandra while I looked at the big story book with Harvey, going over the story of animal motions, and Pete’s a pizza.

I ended up playing some more Guns of Boom after they went to bed, probably too much.  Then I did my stretching routine and went to read the “Fabric of Reality” by David Deutsch. I read a passage in the book that made me realize that, while things happen a certain way in our Universe, all possible histories and all possible futures are enacted in the multiverse. Every decision that we make creates a fork, and while we live in the universe in which we made the decision one way, there exists and alternative universe in which the decision was made another way. Or at least that is quantum theory applied to our decision making.  It makes me think of the Multiverse as this giant simulator, with our universe just one version of that simulation.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around the concept of time he presented, which seemed to indicate the possible futures already existed.  I’m planning to try to summarize the book in another series of posts. I tried to explain this Multiverse theory to Keira, but she thought it was fantasy.

It’s 8:46 am.

July 14th 2019 – Duke Garden

I missed a day blogging since yesterday was Saturday and I ended getting up bit later than usual. Keira was nice enough to make sausage and pancakes and get the kids up.

Yesterday morning we headed over to Duke garden. It was hot. We forgot to bring strollers, so the kids ended up walking around for most of the two hours we were there. First, we headed over to the discovery garden, which was looking pretty amazing.  They had this field of different color flowers that were taller than Alexandra with a short trail. We walked through that trail and took some nice pictures. Then we visited the chickens and took some pictures next to these huge sunflowers.

We then walked over through the woods and down the hill toward the red oriental bridge, following a stone path that we don’t usually use with the strollers. It was challenging to coax Harvey to do the walk, but Alexandra did great holding Keira’s hand. There was this little nook with wooden benches at the end of the lake that we rested at for awhile before going over the red bridge.  Both Alexandra and Harvey like walking over the red bridge. After that, I took Alexandra’s hand and we walked along the water towards the Duck area, stopping at a bench. Keira tried to get Harvey to follow by saying “bye bye”, but Harvey didn’t want to leave the bridge. So I went down there and tried to coax him away.  He told me “Doh-wah Doh-wah Doh-wah” while pointing at me. We’re not sure what this means, but we think it means go away? Then Keira yelled from the bench down the lake, “Harvey, do you want orange?!?” And I said, “Oh, orange! Let’s go eat orange!” Then he ran after me towards Keira doing his jumping run.

After eating the orange and resting for some minutes, we continued walking down the lake towards the Ducks, being very careful to cross the wooden bridges that don’t have railings. There was a lot of Ducks since all their babies had gotten pretty big. I wondered where all the Duck’s went since now the population was much greater than normal.

After a quick “Hi Ducks”, we headed up the hill. The ducks followed us for a ways.  At this point, Harvey decided enough was enough and he wouldn’t walk anymore, he just stood there making a kind of fake crying type noise. After a while I gave in and picked him up, carrying him up the hill back towards the parking lot. The parking lot was within sight when we decided to stop by a grove of very tall green bamboo. Alexandra loved to walk through the bamboo, and Harvey started piling the bamboo leaves into an empty tree trunk.  Keira said he looked like a cave man doing that. I think she meant he looked like he was preparing to have a fire in the tree trunk.  Keira showed Alexandra how to grab some leaves, scrunch them up, and drop them in a leaf shower. I thought maybe we can make a bamboo grove like this in front of our new house.

Finally, we headed back to the car and home to lunch (Speghetti and guacamole). Although it was hot, it was a fun trip to Duke garden. It was great to have the kids start walking around on their own more, and be free from the tyranny of pushing strollers over the gravel paths. We didn’t even get to see the grand staircase of plants in the garden that changes with the seasons, but we didn’t care that much. We got to explore some areas we hadn’t seen, and had hopefully tired the kids out enough so that they would sleep through the afternoon.