Episode LXXXVII: Christmastime with the Norrises

Went home for the Christmastime, as per usual, but I had to make this trip shorter, as I was leaving the country for Brazil on the 31^st. Nonetheless I managed to pack quite a bit of things into a brief week-and-a-half:

We had some good family time in which I got to see the entirety of the (local) Norris relatives, including the very well-protected and sporty Logan Sanchez.

I received my traditional biannual shear, thanks to my mother. Probably lost a pound or two, as seen below (also seen below, I turned from a friendly teddy-bear into a startled thug…)

We celebrated Christmas! Day One with the immediate family, which was lots of fun…

…And Day Two at Grandma Shearer’s, which was also lots of fun! Here was one exciting gift of the day (though by no means the most exciting): an afro pick for Kyle!

It was also Brian’s birthday, a mere two days after Christmas.

And finally, the family took a wintry trip up to Yosemite. On the way, we made a stop at Costco and I had my first ever $1.50 jumbo dog / soda deal, under an umbrella, indoors!

While there, we had our first cross-country skiing experience ever. It went pretty well until we made it to our destination, and then my ski binding failed, and I had to hike back the 1.5 miles with my skis and poles in tow.

It snowed quite a bit our second day in Yosemite. Here is the view from the parking lot, with Yosemite Falls in the background. Wishing you a Merry Christmas / Happy New Years from the Norrsises! And now I am off to Brazil!

Episode LXXXVI: Wrapping Up the Semester

It is the end of the year, the end of the semester. The end of my last fall in Kansas, in all likelihood. Here are some of the random things I have been up to.

Dining with Dinosaurs

My girl and I, being the mature adults we are, had an absolute blast going on a date to a dinosaur-themed restaurant the other day. We ate inside a giant clam-shell booth, underneath an even-gianter octopus and various jellyfish (my all-time favorite animal, should you not already know that).




Afterward we decided, being the mature adults we were, to forgo Chuck E. Cheese and instead play arcade games at Dave and Busters. (Meg won the Jumpin' Jackpot! A game you should definitely play, by the way.)


Eating Spongebob

I ate Spongebob Squarepants. In the form of a cookie.

9th and Vine

As a belated birthday present to Rafael, I took him to the historic 9th and Vine district of Kansas City, a really nice little area paying homage to the excellent jazz history that occurred in Kansas City in the 30s, 40s etc. For instance, Charlie "Bird" Parker, who just about invented bebop jazz, grew up and started his career in this very neighborhood. Here I am kindly cleaning out the earwax from his likeness.

They also pay homage to Negro League baseball at the very interesting and very well-produced Negro League Baseball Museum. Honestly I really knew nothing of the Negro Leagues before attending, though they were the home of some of the greatest players of the 20s and 30s, including Satchel Paige, who is posing with me below.


Fame and Fortune

The band of which I am a member, New Inhabitants, has been playing some good shows recently, after training our new drummer. It's been fun, we have improved, and- we made it into the Lawrence paper as a Best Bet for the evening!

Episode LXXXV: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2010 means my fifth annual Thanksgiving Road Trip. Seeing as how this should be my last such trip, I am reflecting on where Thanksgiving has taken me in the past: first it was Oklahoma, to see the world's largest praying hand sculpture, then Dallas, Texas the second year. Year three I adopted two co-pilots (Rafael & father) and went to Branson, Missouri for the most Christmas-y Thanksgiving ever. Year four was a trip down to Nahleans for some warmth, and this year we made up for that by going to bitterly-cold Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.

We left Wednesday for Omaha, where we encountered our first bison sculpture:


This turned out to be a theme of the trip, encountering homages to bison everywhere we went.



It was as if the bison was the official state animal of Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming (actually it is the state animal of Wyoming, which is the only state where we came across live bison- in the middle of a highway no less! [real bison not pictured])


(Below: yes it's bison! It is actually the bladder of a bison, used by natives as a drinking vessel. Turns out the ureter of a bladder makes an excellent drinking straw!)


We also came across some bighorn sheep, which were even more exciting to me (and yes, again, some of them were in the middle of the road...)


Thursday was Thanksgiving. That meant just about every tourist attraction was closed. But not Mount Rushmore! I got to spend Thanksgiving evening with some American Presidents.


Earlier in the day we had stopped at Rapid City, where there were statues of all of the former Presidents on various street corners throughout the city. Including my favorite President ever, Calvin Coolidge:


And the fellow who helped me achieve the "national radio spotlight," Old Tippecanoe himself:


Saturday we stopped at the only archaeological mammoth site in the nation in which the bones are left intact, where they were discovered, for tourists to see. It was quite a neat experience.


There are plenty of other places to mention: a couple of state capitols, a couple of beautiful National Parks, a couple of Native American sites, a fort, an indoor hot springs, etc. And there are plenty of other stories to be told. Perhaps they will be told another time. For now, give thanks folks, and I will leave you with a picture of the world's largest ball of stamps, around five feet in diameter and 600 pounds, in Boys Town, NE.

Episode LXXXIV: Various Small Stories

In this episode of the Ballade, three small stories that I have overlooked:

1) Slashing and Burning

Some time ago, Rafael and I went out to the country to help some folks from church, who live out in the woods on a large plot of land. Our task was to help cut down trees, chop the trunks into firewood...

...and burn off the branches and dead leaves.


Now it turns out that I was walking around pretty close to the fire, which was quite hot (occasionally disorientingly so,) and when I was done, the flannel shirt I was wearing (see below) had quite a few burn-holes in it.


2) 10-Day!

Recently we stumbled upon a very important day in history: October 10, 2010 (10-10-10, that is.) To celebrate, my girlfriend (more on that later, hopefully) and I decided to go to Arby's and order ten items off of the $1 value menu.

(Yes, we dressed in our Sunday-best attire: this was an important date!) The food was actually not half bad, it was a lovely time, and we got pretty stuffed on only ~$10.


3) How to Make a Jayhawk

KU was recently visited by Jorge Cham, who writes a popular academia-themed comic strip called PhD Comics. For instance, this one. Part of his presentation finally answered this age-old question: what kind of bird is a Jayhawk, anyway? The answer, apparently, is:


(That is: it is a cross between a Dodo Bird and Foghorn Leghorn)

Episode LXXXIII: Summers in Kansas

Summer in Kansas is winding down. If I am lucky, it will be my last summer in Kansas. I find Midwest autumns to be amazing and incredible, Midwest springs to be quite nice, Midwest winters to be exciting and generally tolerable, but Midwest summers? No thank you.

Nonetheless I did have some good times this summer. For instance:

Kyle came out for a couple weeks. Spent a couple days here in Lawrence, but most of it in Iowa. We went to Des Moines and played Frisbee at the capitol building:

And in the capitol building:

And in the fountain across from the capitol building:

And we got the true rural experience, using a giant excavator to dig up dirt and stuff.

I must say, that while Kansas is not the most exciting place in the world in terms of attractions and things, Iowa is twice as bad! And on top of that, I got really shoddy (almost non-existent) cell reception the whole weekend, up until we were finally on the interstate that led us back out of Iowa.

Speaking of driving, Trusty Rusty (my truck) hit a major milestone this summer: 100,000 miles! Yes, you heard right: a 24-year-old truck, with only 100,000 miles on it.

It just so happened that we hit 100k right in the middle of a thunderstorm, on the highway, on the way to play a show with my band. I nonetheless took the time to get off the highway so that I could get a picture of the odometer, as well as pose with Rusty (thanks to photographer/roommate Rafael.)

Coincidentally, I think, within the next week or two: (1) I cracked my front blinker light, (2) my brake light switch malfunctioned so that the brake lights were always on, (3) the blinkers stopped working altogether, and (4) as a consequence of a number of factors (long story) my parked truck, as my neighbor explained, “started rolling down the hill” (albeit very slowly) in my condo’s parking lot:

Not to worry, though, I have fixed nearly all those problems, without even spending a dime. Rusty- here’s to 100,000 miles more!

Episode LXXXII: Wisconsin

After traveling to California in June, I took a flight directly to Madison, Wisconsin for a C. elegans science conference, similar to ones I have written about in the past.

Once again, this meeting was half pleasure and half work. The pleasure part included the fact that summertime in Wisconsin is beautiful, and that the university which hosted the conference was built right on the lake, with vast outside space to sit, eat and enjoy the outdoors.

This time some of us decided to do something unique, renting out a sail boat and sailing around the lake. The good thing is that it was a beautiful day, and I had a lovely time reclining on the boat and feeling the sun and the water. The bad thing is that we were over the maximum capacity of the boat, we didn’t have anyone on the boat that actually knew how to sail, and we began our trip by going backwards and running directly in to the dock. However, we eventually made it out and then back in, safe and sound.

We also had enough free time scattered here and there to go to the art museum, which housed a couple of paintings from one of my favorite artists (as previously mentioned, Thomas Hart Benton) and to go to the geology museum, which included, among other things, this large and beautiful fossil of a bunch of sea jellies. Who would have thought that little flimsy pieces of jello could make such beautiful fossils?

And then of course there was the work. I learned a lot during this meeting, and I also presented my work as a short talk, just as I did last year at UCLA. This year my boss and my labmate Rafael also gave talks, so our lab was quite well represented.

Finally, it was possible to mix work and pleasure, such as this guy, who was supposed to be explaining his research displayed on the poster behind him. But instead he did card tricks all night. Perhaps the idea being, if he distracts everyone with magic tricks, no one will ask him any difficult questions about his research.

Episode LXXXI: California

I traveled home to California for a week and a half in June. Here were at least three good reasons to do so:

First and foremost, I came back to help the Lakers win another championship. They were on the ropes, down 2-3 to the rival Boston Celtics. I came to the rescue, flying in to Los Angeles hours before Game 6, in which they demolished the Celtics. And the rest is history, as they say. The 2010 Lakers went undefeated in the playoffs as long as I was in SoCal.

Second, my dad happened to be celebrating Father’s Day while I was out there. Here he is doing one of his favorite activities, shopping for sweets in the bakery section of the grocery store!

Third, there was this campout going on up in the Sierras (upon which I have formerly reported) which is a lot of fun. This year was no exception. Here are some of the unique aspects of this campout.

First of all, I forgot to bring a pillow. That, plus the fact that I was sleeping on the cold hard ground, and the fact that I played volleyball with the Norrises every day of the week, made for the sorest shoulder I have ever experienced. For a while it was hard to breathe even. But don’t worry: it’s all better!

Kyle and I played in the traditional Shaver Lake horseshoes tournament. Neither one of us expected to be particularly good, but due to a combination of good luck and budding talent, we won the tournament, upsetting the clear #1 seeds and former champions, The Filippis.

And of course there was the lake. I swam in it, I gazed out at it, and I rode upon it.

This trip had one major difference from years past, in that Alicia and Brian decided they had something “better” to do than go camping with us. Which meant I had room to bring my guitar (Yesss! Thanks Brian and Alicia!) We had a few good camp song sessions, including this one, where I learned some traditional Mexican tunes.

I also came home with the official Ironfoot award, for playing volleyball barefoot even though the court was surrounded by forest filled with pine needles, rocks and other various assorted hazards. I’m sure you will be grateful to learn that I will not be displaying a picture of my sap-riddled feet, but will instead close with a picture of the award.

Part II of my vacation will be my next post. Stay tuned.