Worth Every Mile

Well we haven't had a millennium car trip in a while so we figured one of the busiest weekends of the year was PERFECT! :)
We started out Thursday (Thanksgiving) morning at 5:30am and drove to Eldridge to see the Bowers/Syring family. It was a nice surprise since only Jennifer & Michelle knew we were coming. It was really great to see our nieces & nephew again since we are holed up in Kirksville for a while. We did get to play an AWESOME prank on Michelle. We had told her that Mara was going to wear a purple, velour jumpsuit as a joke. Michelle was very skeptical of the joke, but played along with it nicely! We called her ahead of time and she went an changed so her and Mara could "present" the joke together...couldn't have been funnier! Her exact words were, and I quote, "You're Dead". :)



We could only stay at Jennifer's house until about 2:30 since we had a long drive to Baldwin, WI to see Mara's sister Sally, and for her son, Sam's baptism on Sunday. The traffic wasn't too bad and we got to Sally's around 9:30 or so. Unfortunately Sally got a bout of cellulitis and had to get antibiotics at the hospital. Since it was somewhat of a sudden onset they wanted her to stay the next day/night in the hospital to make sure it wasn't more serious. It wasn't, and Sally got to go home Saturday morning. We had a lot of time at the hospital to chat, hang out with Sammers, and catch up with Sally.
We did get a chance to head outside and hit some holiday sales on Saturday. I think after being cooped up in a hospital the last few days made us all a little stir crazy. We got to introduce Sally to Indian food, which she seemed to like; we'll see if Sam likes it as much...
Sam couldn't have been a better kid at the baptism; and Mara and I's presence didn't make the holy water boil at all! :) We even got some good pictures of us with the little tot:



We did have to leave right after the baptism since we still had a 7+ hour drive back home, and it was already 12:30. Traffic was pretty good most of the way, but picked up around Des Moines. We got home around 8:45, and had some time to watch football, do some laundry, study, and stretch after a long ride! Our final trip totals were 1078 miles, ~18 hours, and 4 states!


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We had a GREAT time with both families, and now it's time for Mara to start her 2nd quarter of school! Physiology is the newly added course (on top of everything else!). She's looking forward to her Clinical Biochemistry course as well. Should be a fast month or so before x-mas break. Hope everyone had a great Turkey Day!

It's A Puppy Thanksgiving!

We decided to have a dinner for some friends that stuck around Kirksville on the Tuesday before Turkey Day. It turns out our friends Sasha & Josh were the only ones still around so we invited them and their dogs to come play.
Sasha and her dog Abby (Jack Russell / Weiner Dog) came with Josh and his dog Dixie (Some Sort Of Spaniel). The dogs all got along REALLY well, and Abby & Dixie were a riot to play with!



Dixie did find time to heed the call of nature...all caught on film...:)

10 Miles Of F-U-N

Apparently I am not a direct decedent of Magellan. Last weekend Mara, our friend Sasha, and I decided to get out and enjoy the fact that Mara and Sasha had a week off med school. It was awesome hiking weather (60°F & Sunny), and we had wanted to explore the 7 mile hiking trail at Thousand Hills State Park. Armed with a crappy map, lunch & trail mix, and our puppies Linus, Lucy, & Abby the wiener dog.
We set out around 10am and dropped our car at the end of the one-way hike at the Big Bear Conservation Area. Sasha then drove us to the start of the trail inside the state park. The dogs were in their element for sure. Lucy was chasing whatever she could find, Linus was freaking out at every leaf that blew in the wind, and Abby got some much needed exercise chasing our dogs around as well.
Lucy, of course, made us laugh for about 10 minutes while she was fetching a stick. Watching her little brain try and figure out what was holding her back. Pure Lucy...



We got a little side tracked when we mistook where the trail split. We thought we had just lost the trail and spent about 2 hours trying to find it. We were never "lost" since we knew we could always find where we left the trail, but our stubborn ways kept us searching for a trail that wasn't there. Apparently we hadn't gotten to the part of the trail where it split and left the trail early. This led us to hike an additional 3 miles of untrodden terrain which was fun, but left the dogs with quite a few burrs, not to mention the leaves:



All in all it was a lot of fun to be outside with the puppies, and the walking was a great stress relief for Mara & Sasha who start classes again on Monday. Here is a map of our super hike (detour included in red).

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It was a great way to tour Forest Lake!

2% Of Your Brain My @$$!

Mara's using WAY more than that!!!
Mara's been hitting the books REALLY hard the last 2 weeks in preparation for finals week this week. Monday she had Anatomy Lecture, Today she had a D.O. written exam and an Anatomy Lab Exam. Tomorrow she has her D.O. Practical, Thursday her Biochemistry Exam, and tops it off on Friday with an OTM Exam! She may have to celebrate a little bit for getting through so much!
She was so into her Anatomy that she decided to teach some to the puppies (since I was putting up quite a fight!)


Lucy tried to catch on, but thorasic MRI's proved to be her nemesis:


After pulling an all-nighter, the dogs just couldn't take it anymore, and crashed...


After Mara got done teaching the dogs about Anatomy I think they are up to using 0.0003% of their brains!

We did find some time to go out to dinner with a group of friends since tomorrow's D.O. Practical won't be so hard, but Mara still has to geek up for her Biochem Exam on Thursday.
It's still nice enough to golf here so I got a quick 9 in before we went to dinner...I love my golf membership! :)

Leafers!

I got so excited about comets I forgot to post our hike! :P
2 weekends ago we took the dogs for a nice 8 mile hike to check out the leaves, and get out of the house on a day it was almost 70. We took a new trail at Thousand Hills State Park that we had seen when we were kayaking this summer. It winds around the North and West side of Forest Lake towards the dam for the lake. It continues around, 14 miles to the other side of the lake, but we didn't have that much time that weekend; Mara has to study!
The trail was awesome, and the dogs (and us) REALLY enjoyed being outside. The leaves were just starting to turn that weekend, and peaked about 2 days after we were there, and everything was brown by the next weekend, so we don't have any great leaf pictures. Here are a couple of the dogs. Lucy, of course, is in the water, and Linus, of course, is just being a spaz...

We did find time to take a nice family photo along the lake. As usual...the dogs are looking for squirrels or bunnies and not paying attention...

It was a REALLY nice day to be out and enjoy the sun & fresh air. But for now...back to working & studying!

Fun With Comets!

Who knew astronomy could be fun!?!? In the last few weeks there have been some really cool astronomical events. OK, fun & cool in a nerdy way, but fun & cool none the less.
First comet Encke was hit by a solar flare from the sun. Solar flares are large "earthquakes" from the sun due to fluctuations in the magnetic field that usually keeps them in.





This is a good representation of a solar flare & it's prominence relative to the size of the Earth (remember a million Earths could fit inside the sun). This gives you an idea of the magnitude of these things. A solar flare pointed at earth in 1989 completely shut down Quebec with a sudden burst of electromagnetic radiation, and more recently (but less destructive) in 2003, Detroit & New York.
Smaller flares are what causes the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. But I digress.







The solar wind generated from these solar flares travel at an astounding 900,000 miles per hour! Normally we don't watch the wind, since it really isn't that exciting to watch solar particles travel in the open vacuum of space. About a month ago astrophysicists were doing some measurements on a little known comet called Comet Encke, when a blast of solar wind hits it and rips off it's tail! It quickly makes a new tail and returns to it's normal look. No one had even heard of this happening before, and to catch it on film it amazing! I posted the video below. The flare moves quick so you may have to play it a couple of times to catch it all.


The other comet related news was from the Comet Holmes. Also a little known comet, it all of the sudden brightened over a million times in a matter of 2 days! It is now about as bright and large as Jupiter in the sky! They think the comet is breaking up and the debris is causing the increased brightness. The comet has also changed color from gold to green, and also developed a blue ion tail. No one is quite sure what is going on with this comet, but it should be fun to watch it develop!
I won't say it's "easy" to pick out in the sky, but it can be done. Around 8-9pm, if you look straight East and find a cluster of stars called the Pleiades Cluster. It's a cluster of a few hundred stars in a very small area. From there you can look straight left and find the comet. Or from Orion (near the horizon), you can look North to find Mars, then left to find the comet. They give good directions to find it at this website also: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/10862521.html.
Here is one photo of the comet and it's relationship (in size, not location) to Jupiter...



You can click on the image to get a short animation of the comet growing brighter.



Happy Sky Watching!

Déjà Vu

Michelle had sent me an awesome e-mail with some satirical motivational posters the other day. But I saw one that looked very familiar, and I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I checked our blog to see if anyone had left any new comments and I saw my déjà vu...



I'm still not sure which one I am laughing at more...:P