Game of Thrones

Another recent joy in my life - HBO is making a mini-series out of the first book in my favorite series. The series is called "A Song of Ice and Fire" and the first book is "Game of Thrones", by George R.R. Martin. They recently announced the first official cast member, and it was for one of my favorite characters. I think they made a wonderful choice. This reminds me of the early days of the Lord of the Rings movies and how much fun it was to hear the various casting announcements and the excitement of seeing the first trailer. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this turns out well. And I highly recommend the books!

The Secret Path

Now that the weather is warm, I can consistently walk to and from work. It's only a mile each way. And sometimes I try to come home for lunch. The activity points that I earn walking almost pay for the candy that I eat out of the jar on the secretary's desk. Here's the path I usually take:

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My neighbor previously told me about a secret path through the woods with a "scary" bridge. I've seen people ducking in and out of the woods, but was holding off exploring until all of the winter ice and mud was gone. On Monday I decided to try the trail. What a treat! Instead of the sun-exposed sidewalk on the busy, noisy streets, the trail through the woods is quiet, shaded and green. And yes, the bridge is a bit scary - not only is it missing a few planks, but it also has a general tilt. So I only take this trail when I'm wearing sensible shoes. But it's still a nice change of pace. I don't think it's any shorter or quicker, but it's a delight.

Life is Grand

Life has been especially pleasant the past week. Nothing major has happened, but just lots of small joys.
Here are a few that are forefront in my mind
1) Spring has arrived in force here. The lilac bush in my front yard has provided fresh blooms to take to my office. They smell great. The flowers I planted in my yard are coming up - the gladiolus and sunflowers are doing especially well. Yesterday I planted more flowers - including foxglove, lily of the valley and violas.
2) The garden is making enormous progress. This week we planted so many things - greens, beets, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, green peppers, sweet potatoes tomatoes and basil. The potatoes we planted last week are coming up already. We still have squash, melons and hot peppers to plant, just waiting to finish digging and weeding the third bed. Hopefully I'll have some pictures soon.
3) I've made some great friends here in Ames. The book club, stained glass class, Ames Women's Meetup group, my neighborhood and workplace have all put my in contact with some wonderful people.
4) Work is going very well. Without the need to prepare for class lectures, I have been able to devote more time to setting up my lab and working on proposals. I have one project that a local company is interested in funding. And my collaborator and I will be submitting a proposal on another project next month. The students working in my lab this summer are wonderful - one of them managed to repair an old incubator this week. His work saved me the $1000 to TRY and repair the darn thing or the $2000 required to replace it. And there are two more students arriving in a few weeks. Both are participants in an REU (Research Experience for Undergrads) program, which means they are good students and I do not need to pay them! And my teaching evaluations came in from the spring semester - it was good to get overwhelmingly positive comments from my students.

Kansas City trip

I wanted to do something special to acknowledge the close of my first academic year. Originally my mentor and I were going to see a James Taylor concert in Des Moines. But the affordable seats sold out too quickly. And then I saw that through some crazy alignment of the stars there were two great opportunities in Kansas City this weekend - the orchestra was performing the "Lord of the Rings" symphony (music from the movie) and Fleetwood Mac's "Hits 2009" tour. Could I ask for a better opportunity to indulge two of my favorite long-running interests? [I should confess that I have indulged these interests before - I've seen symphony performances of Lord of the Rings twice (Hollywood Bowl, Tampa) and caught Fleetwood Mac on their 1997 "The Dance" tour in St. Louis.]
So I made the three-hour drive down to Kansas City on Thursday and got to the symphony just in time. It was a good performance. Unfortunately, I know every note of that music so well that it's jarring for me when the performers interpret it differently. But I was pleased that this performance perfectly matched the brass part on "Bridge of Kazad-Dum", one of my favorite passages. It's the musical selection on the link above. As with previous performances, they had a beautiful accompaniment by Alan Lee's artwork.
On Friday I wanted to explore some of what Kansas City had to offer. It was raining, so I headed to Union Station's Science Center. Blah. It probably was a good exhibit, but was overrun with school groups. The rain had stopped, so I headed to the zoo. Same situation there - lots of school groups. Overall it seemed like a nice place. It had a HUGE African section and a great chimp exhibit with a large group of chimps (about 15 according to the signage). The chimp exhibit was so large and lush that you couldn't see the back of it. Or the chimps, sadly. But it made me happy to see that they had such a great exhibit. Realizing that I was NOT having a good time at the zoo, I called it quits after the Africa section.
I still had most of the afternoon to kill, so I checked the map and found some cool museums between the zoo and my hotel. The Toy and Miniature Museum was amazing - way too much stuff to take in there on a single visit. The colletion mainly consisted of old dollhouses and miniatures, as well as the largest collection of marbles in the midwest. And it was nice and quiet....
Then I visited the "Money Museum" at the Kansas City Federal Reserve. It wasn't really a museum - just a chance to come in and see the money sorters at work. After passing through the security and background check. And they had this $5000 bill on display. Visitors all received a free bag of shredded money ($164). It was cool. And quiet and FREE.
I also popped in at the National World War I museum - about 30 minutes prior to closing. There was a ton of good material there and very interactive exhibits - the even had these cool sound booths where you could go in and listen to voice recordings from the time. I listened to part of a speech by Lenin. I can't say I had ever heard his voice before. There is also a memorial tower there that you can ride to the top for a good view of the city. This museum would be a great place to spend a hot summer afternoon, but I don't think it has much, if any, appeal for young children. Sadly I didn't get to do much except quickly walk through the exhibits.
Then it was on to dinner (Kansas City BBQ at Famous Dave's) and then the FABULOUS Fleetwood Mac concert. It was the most fun I had had in a long time. They sound so great together and they played so many of my favorite songs. My only disappointment is that they didn't play "Say You Will". But they DID play "Storms" - an extremely haunting and melancholy song that I never expected to hear. Steve Nicks actually said that they had never performed "Storms" live prior to the current tour. They did a great job of mixing their emo solo songs with fun ensemble pieces. For example, "Storms" was followed by "Say You Love Me".
I made friends with my neighbors before the concert started and we all agreed that "Silver Springs" was on our must-hear list. And as the concert went on, I started to get nervous that they weren't going to play it. The concert ended with "Go Your Own Way". Of course, there would be an encore. And they came back and played "World Turning" and "Don't Stop" and left again. My heart almost stopped - were they really NOT going to play "Silver Springs"? And then thankfully they came back for a second encore and Silver Springs was instantly recognizable from the first note. In the youtube video that the audience is all singing along - that's how it was at this show too. I never realized that I knew the lyrics to so many of their songs. What a wonderful end to a great evening. I'm seriously considering making a trek across country some weekend this summer to catch another performance of this tour. I'd hate to wait another 10 years to see them again. Anyone up for Atlantic City on June 13th?
But for now it's back to work on proposals and the garden project. Heidi and I may get some stuff planted this afternoon.
Happy Mother's Day everyone!

First School Year Down

Well, I survived my first academic year. It was rough at times, but I'm very optimistic about the coming years at ISU. My co-workers are great and so are the students. I had two great teaching experiences - a sophmore level core course in the fall semester (4o students) and then a graduate-level elective course in the spring. The graduate-level course was an elective and dealt with my speciality (Metabolic Engineering). There were 6 enrolled students and three auditors. The two classes were very different, but both were a great experience. Next fall I'll be teaching the same sophmore-level class and I'm eager to do a better job than I did last year now that I'm not so nervous. The teaching assignments haven't been made for next spring yet. I'm supposed to have one semester with no teaching somewhere in my first four years; but there are two other new hires with the same deal, so I'm not sure how we're going to co-ordinate the details on that.
My research program is getting off to a good start as well. I'm now supervising one masters student, two PhD students and one full-time lab technician. There were also 10 undergraduates working part-time on various research projects. This summer 4 of those students, plus 2 new ones, will be continuing to work. They are all very dedicated and it's rewarding to see them learn and get good results.
I've got three big proposals going out this summer, plus a few smaller ones. It will be nice to have more time to spend on research since I won't be preparing for class.
This year was great, hopefully things will only get better.