Midsummer reflections

Time flies when you're in warp drive.

At the end of May, I ran my first successful experiment.  I have not finished analyzing the data, but it appears that I have some significant results for some of the measurements. For me, this is great news.  Not only does it give me a dataset of my own to work with, analyze, interpret results, present at conferences, and maybe write up into a manuscript - all of which are very exciting and important, but this experiment finally got me over a major obstacle to my goals, which was fear of failure.  I didn't even really realize that I had that fear until I was initiating the experiment and some things weren't going as planned (as always).  I almost called it off before doing it because I was afraid it wouldn't turn out well.  But then I realized that just doing an experiment, start to finish, was worth the effort even if my results weren't exciting.

So, I ran the experiment, in spite of my concerns, and experienced a very consuming 2 weeks.  My friend, Melissa, likened the experience of running an experiment to that of a musical performance:  you may make a mistake, play a wrong note, lose your place, or whatever, but you have to do the best you can and make it to the end.  And that's what I did.

Polygonum hydropiperoides under treatment



Data collection with the CIRAS-II infrared gas analyzer

Immediately after the experiment's conclusion, Andrew and I went to the Hangout Festival in Gulf Shores.  It was an excellent festival, and we had a really great time.  We stayed in a condo on the lagoon-side of West Beach, which was perfect for taking advantage of the shuttles running to the festival, so no car was needed, and you didn't have to trek miles in the hot sun which was present in abundance. The festival had some great bands:  Paul Simon, Ween, Primus, STS9, and a ton more.  I met some of Andrew's old-school friends, one of whom was dating a manager from my Central Barbeque days (the Lyndsay Effect in effect).  We are hoping to attend next year and to spend more time either before or after the festival to do more Gulf Shores enjoyment.

Not your mama's Gulf Shores

Right after we returned from the Hangout, we were planning to go to Wakarusa with Carter, Rachel, and Noah.  Carter had gotten us free tickets, but we just felt too frazzled to do that on the heels of Hangout with our big family vacation in two weeks after that.  So we got to babysit Noah while Carter and Rachel went.  It was so much fun!  I am crazy about that little guy.  Carter and Rachel really missed him and came home from the festival 2 days early.  That was a little disappointing because I really wanted to spend more time with Noah, but I totally understood.  Andrew's birthday was right after he left and was a low key event but pretty fun all the same.

The sweetest face!

After Carter and his gang left, I turned my attention to setting up for another experiment.  I wanted to collect plants, get them potted, and give them time to establish while we went on vacation.  This plan worked out splendidly.

In Indiana, Madison was completing her last days as a middle-schooler at around this time.  She was inducted into the Junior National Honor Society, which is so awesome.  She also received the President's ward - Gold Level for outstanding academic excellence.  Next year, she will be a high school freshman.  It really blows my mind; that's all I can say about that.

About a week after Madison got out of school, she road the Greyhound to Elizabethtown, where she was picked up by Lizz Riggs, her mom and grandpa.  I met the four of them near Nashville, beginning the first leg of our vacation.  Maddie, Lizz, and I returned to Memphis that night, and we all set out for Florida the next day.

We drove straight from Memphis to St. Petersburg, Florida, a trip that took about 16 hours.  We showed up at dawn of the day we were spending in St. Pete.  We checked into our hotel, took a little nap, then set out for the Dali Museum.  The museum was fantastic, a dream-come-true.  Many of the paintings huge (like 13' x 10' for the Hallucinogenic Toreador).  The girls enjoyed it too.  That evening, we went to dinner at a restaurant our friend suggested from his time living in the area while attending culinary school, Walt'z Fish Shak.  It was a tiny place by the marina. They buy the catch of the day, serve it up on a limited menu, and close when the food run out.  Seafood can't be more fresh and delicious.  The restaurant was in a neat little tourist area called John's Pass Village, with a boardwalk and a well-preserved old school vibe that we all enjoyed exploring.  We didn't make it to Pass-a-Grille or into the ocean on this trip, but St. Pete was really great and would make a for a lovely vacation in itself.

The Salvador Dali Museum

Get it while they've got

Next, we left St. Pete bound for the Keys.  We stopped along Alligator Alley and saw alligators chilling out in the canal, just doing their alligator thing.  We made it to the house in the early afternoon.  We were surprised to learn when we got there that the house was divided into a quadraplex, with 2 units upstairs and 2 downstairs.  We were in one of the downstairs units.  The splendid location abutting a state park, thoughtful furnishings, and friendly neighbors meant that this wasn't a problem, just a surprise. 

Alligator Alley with alligator

 

View from the back porch at the house at Long Key State Park

Our week there flew by.  The house was fantastic, situated with a canal on one side and a mangrove forest lagoon along the back of the house.  There were plenty of things to observe from the porch:  pipefish, snapper, crabs, a tarpon, an osprey, a sea anemone, little spiny lobsters, leaping schools of mullet, a various types of lizards scurrying everywhere.  We spent one day in Key West visiting the Hemingway House, the cemetery, and Mallory Square.  We rode bikes all around and survived, even with Lizz and I on a tandem bike (!).  We spent a couple beach days at Bahia Honda State Park at the amazing beaches there.  On our first beach adventure, Andrew and I swam with about 8 wild manatees, which goes down in the books as being one of the coolest things I've ever done.  Another day we got a tour of the Keys Marine Laboratory from the lead marine biologist, which was like a fun park designed just for me.  They had a bunch of touch tanks filled with interesting creatures from their dives:  batfish, sea urchins, sea stars, giant spiny lobster, sea cucumbers, rock crabs, a flaming scallops, and, my new favorite gastropod, the milk conch.  I did about 3 times more kayaking in a few days than I had done in my whole life. I am totally addicted and want to get one, a pair, a few, whatever.  On the way back from the Keys, we stopped in at the Everglades National Park Visitor Center on the first day of driving.  On the second road day, we stopped at the Sloss Furnaces National Historic Site in Birmingham, Alabama. I was completely enamored of the place with its larger than life smokestacks and industrial components everywhere.   Then we were back to in Memphis and back to real life or something like it.

Many more vacation photos are on Facebook at this link:  Family Vacation 2011 photo album.

Nola

A couple days after returning to Memphis, we adopted a kitten, a sweet little girl we named Nola.  She is spunky and fun!  A couple days after that, I drove up to Kentucky with Madison and Elizabeth to take Elizabeth home.  The BFFs since birth still couldn't bear to be parted, even after almost 2 weeks, and Madison persuaded me to let her spend the night with Lizz and go to Anime Club at the Hodgenville Public Library the next day. 

I headed up Louisville to Emily's house to spend time with her, Eva, and baby Graeme.  Eva is amazingly precocious at 3 years old, not that I am surprised given Emily's mothering.  Graeme is adorable and good-natured.  Emily cooked dinner for me at her new place with Scott.  It was like the old days.  That night we went to Vernon Lanes, where Scott works, and hung out while Eva and her friend, Nina, bowled.  That maybe doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but it was a blast.  The bowling alley is the oldest in Louisville (since 1886) and was so totally retro without trying. I just loved it.  Also, Eva was the most enthusiastic bowler imaginable, jumping for joy after every ball rolled.  It did my heart so good to see Emily and, especially, to see her getting back on her feet.  She has worked hard and endured a lot and come out uncompromised, and I really love her for that.  

Old sign at Vernon Lanes

I also was fortunate to get to visit with an old high school friend, Lora  Lamb (forever Lora Setter to me).  She lives in Hodgenville, and we have kept up with each other on MySpace and Facebook, but I have no idea when I last saw her - like 10 years maybe.  Her mom met me and Lora and Jonas, Lora's 2 year old son, at the Sweet Shop of the Hodgenville Square-cum-circle.  I was lucky Lora ran a couple minutes late because I needed them to compose myself.  Being at the Sweet Shop really was making me miss Mom, as she was always a supporter and even sold her Lincoln Licences there.  Seeing Mrs. Setters was kind of startling too.  It turns out that she's always has MS, even when she was my high school Physics teacher, my teacher for Gifted and Talented, advisor of the Math and Science Club, and coach of the academic team.  I have always held her in great esteem.  She's the only person I've ever known that is a member of Mensa.  But the MS has gotten pretty bad in the last few years, and it hurt to see her struggle with the condition and know what that meant for Lora and her family. Lora and I had several classes together and were in the aforementioned clubs as well as several others.  After high school, I worked for her dad as a clerk at the pharmacy next door to the Hodgenville Clinic where Mom worked.  Also, I wound up in a course at UofL with Lora's older brother, Philip.  He was older and I never knew him very well, until we took Rural Sociology the same semester.  In all, that makes me connected to Lora's family on more levels than most, and I was thrilled to catch up with her, even if it was a little bittersweet. 

I stopped in to visit Mom at the ol' cemetery.  Her headstone was looking good.  Someone, Great probably, had stuck some silk flowers in the ground by the stone which matched the ones on Poppop's gravestone.  I left her a sea shell I had found in Florida.  As I was leaving, I saw a bird's nest that had been blown out of a tree near her gave, so I set that with her stone too.

When Madison got out of Anime Club, I picked her up and we went to Great's house to visit and eat dinner.  It always makes me so happy to her, still spry and always the same.  It's reassurance for my soul.  After a visit, some dinner, a walk around the garden (the daylilies were stupendous!), and collecting my last few items from Great's storage building, Madison and were bound back to Memphis.

Independence Day passed fairly quietly for us.  With hot temperatures and sporadic thunderstorms, we didn't make it to any fireworks.  We had a few friends over to enjoy Andrew's efforts with the smoker and the grill.  It was an interesting amalgamation of folks, none of whom knew one another, which made for a fun dynamic.

The second weekend in July was dominated by the Memphis Anime Blues Con.  Madison and her pals went all three days.  Initially, I was totally dismissive of the event when I first heard about it a few months ago because the whole thing made me uneasy ("It's at a hotel!" "There's a rave!").  But, after discovering that a trusted mom was going along for the ride, I felt a lot better about letting her go.  It seems to be good that we did because she acted like it was the coolest thing ever.  When she got into the car after the dance the first night, she flopped back in her seat and said with a contented sigh, "Thank you so much for letting me go to this."  She had the weekend of a lifetime, and, even though Andrew and I felt jealous of the time we weren't spending with her, her happiness with the experience is undeniable and made us feel better about sharing her.

Madison and I went to the National Civil Rights Museum one day recently. I've wanted to go ever since we moved to Memphis, but I just never seemed to make it. One other time, Maddie and I attempted to go, but I got a little lost downtown and kept driving around the same few blocks trying to find it.  With each pass, we'd see the same restaurant, the Happy Mexican, and now "There's the Happy Mexican!" is a family code for what I like to call orienteering (when you're kinda lost but close to your destination).   This time, I looked up directions and found it without incident; we did pass the Happy Mexican - "Look! There's the Happy Mexican!" 

The museum was quite an experience. It's highly emotionally charged, being housed at the Lorraine Motel, the site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination - one of the great stains on the collective conscience of Memphis. The museum is about the civil rights movement in general, but with a large focus on Dr. King's role.  One room had museum clippings from when Dr. King was coming to Memphis to help with the sanitation workers strike, others about the assassination, and more about the motel's transformation to a museum.  There were some period furnishings from the motel rooms and a couple of telephone directories that were particularly cool.  Then we watched a film about Dr. King's time in Memphis and the immediate aftermath of his death; it made me cry.  After, we walked through the informative exhibits where Maddie was less engaged, so we spent less time with those.  Next, you are sent to another part of the museum across the street.  Here's there is a replica of the boarding room that James Earl Ray stayed in while plotting the assassination.  This exhibit should have given me an idea of what was to come.  But, when I followed the path upstairs, I totally unprepared to find myself standing at the window that it's believed that Ray fired the single fatal shot.  I found it very emotionally unnerving to be in that space without having any mental preparation, and we didn't stay in that spot long. Next was an exhibit that laid out the FBI's case against Ray, who was at large for over 2 months.  A little further down, they also presented some information about the theory that Ray may not have been the assassin or was possibly the scapegoat for a larger conspiracy.  This information piqued my interest, and afterwards, I did a little reading about Ray's role as the shooter.  There are a lot of inconsistencies with the official story, very JFK style.  Also there were a lot of issues with how the security was handled on the day of the murder, pointing toward a larger plan.  It's worth reading into, if it's of interest to you.

At the National Civil Rights Museum

Yesterday was my 31st birthday.  I had a lot of fun kicking it off a day early, along with Vicki and Jose who also have birthdays in the next few days. We all went to dinner at Andrew Michael's Italian Kitchen which was really tasty. I tried pork cheeks:  amazing!  Then we went to Yo-Lo for dessert.  Afterwards, Andrew, Madison, and I went to the Happy Potter opening in 3D!  It was so great!  We loved it, and I thought it was a really great end to the era.  That was the day before yesterday, so that was a great start.  Yesterday, we went downtown in the evening. We were going to go the Arcade Restaurant, the oldest restaurant in Memphis, but we foolishly believed the website when it said they were open until 8pm.  When we got there at 5:30pm, they were closed.  Our salvation was across the street at Earnestine and Hazel's in the form of a Soul Burger.  As a bonus, after we ate, we got to go explore the upstairs area that had been used as a brothel for about a hundred years all the way up until the 1990's.  It was cool and felt a little risque.  Next, we hopped on the trolley and rode around.  I thought that was an entertaining activity in itself, so I suggested we ride past our stop and back for the full effect.  We got off at Beale Street and walked that historic and commercialized bit of Memphis.  I stopped in Dyer's to get a huge, blue Walk Me Down frozen concoction and milkshakes for Andrew and  (no burgers this time!) before we went to walk around Handy Park.  There was a band playing and folks were selling stuff in booths.  We made our way further down the street, and I was happy to see that there several buskers out plying their trade.  We stopped in Tater Red's because it is always fun to see the kooky tchotchkes and voodoo supplies.  We headed home after that.  After a bit, Maddie and I made a run to Gibson's Donuts, which was slammed at 11pm.  In all, it was a really fun-filled day.

Tater Red's Lucky Mojos and Voodoo Healings on Beale Street

I also spent a lot of time thinking about my goals for the year ahead.  I haven't achieved any of the goals that I set for myself for my thirtieth year.  But, upon reflection, I made improvements in all the areas I had set out to change.  So, even though I'm not where I want to be yet, I can honestly say that I am working toward getting there and am closer now than I was last year.  Will this be the year that I finally get it all together - all these things I need to fix and do better?  Maybe, maybe not.  But at least I know that if I continue to apply myself over time, I can look back in a year and see that I'm getting there, slowly but surely.