And zucchini steaks for all...

So Alicia and I are vegetable lovers. Love to eat them, prepare them, even the smell of steamed vegetables is good to me. So that being said even I have a finite limit to my love of all things green. So when our friends Kate and Jeff offered us a zucchini out of their garden we immediately said yes. Unbeknown to us was the sheer volume of said zucchini. It was so big that we didn't even know what to do with it- so to bread it went, with some other assortments being made before having to chuck some. Fine, dandy, life goes on. Then after the trek we got another one- cool I could go for some veggies. Problem was, three days later Kate offloaded another half a zucc on me. So what you might ask? Well see it's not the number it's the size!
Below is a single section of one of the zucc steaks that I had to cut so that we could do stuff with them.









Needless to say they're HUGE! Yeah that 1st picture, that's a US quarter next to it.
So we made some lasagna featuring zucc, and then w still had ~10 cups of zucc left so we shredded it. Who knows what we'll make with it next!
Oh and btw- we still have a whole zucc left to deal with.

~Chris

Below are some pics of Lish prepping the zucc.

Rockin' it up in the coffee shop

Just like a Friends episode gone awry, I find myself hanging out at the coffee shop listening to one of my friends play away on the impromptu stage.
Always a good way to pass the time on a Friday night. It works out for the better because then I can get to sleep for Saturday morning surf club! Ahh, the life of a bored couple that doesn't get much sleep anymore.

Plans...rethunk

So I always thought it might be fun to have twins one day. Then I taught 4 year olds. I could handle 12 at once, twins would be easy. Then I taught 2 year olds. Again, 2 at once, no problem. Then I went on the trek. No more twins. I just don't think I would make it through the teenage years. Heck, 1 at a time might be pushing it. Oh, and kudos to all those who have survived parenting teenagers (and mom and dad, you'll never know how easy you had it).

The sweetness of Barstow, CA

So its 11 pm and we just drove past the linwood exit. Hmm never has barstool looked so good as when they said 2.5 hours to San Diego

Lost? Wish I could lose a kid or two

So here we are finally headed home from our trek we have had a good time mixed with all sorts of craziness - some of which I would never believe had I not been there myself. So the plan right now is survive the 12 hour ride home and then over the next week we'll post up the whole thing along with some sweet pics

Congrats to Danny and Darcie!

So I'm a little slow, but I wanted to just say congratulations to my brother and his wife, who just had their second baby last Friday. Here is a picture of Darcie, Mary and Derrick.

Live Blogging a Lab Meeting- Take II

So this time I'm going to live blog one of the other researchers in the lab- a lady by the name of Rouhi.

8:30 - She balks at the absence of people so she says we will wait.
8:39 - She complains that there are not enough people but we start anyway.
8:40 - She has a diagram of a standard cell with a partial outline of the Cu transport pathway. She is attempting to explain the pathway.
8:42 - An all too familiar picture of ATP7B is shown - she is talking about the domains. Certain "key" residues are pointed out.
8:46 - Discussion of xenografts
8:47 - Now she's talking about her published papers - is this gonna be all her talking about what she's done? Hmm seems like she may be taking advantage of the fact that Steve's not around.
8:48 - ATPase activity is pH dependent. Hmm.
8:49 - Dr. X is questioning how she characterized certain aspects of the paper- she gives an unclear answer. He pursues and she kinda dances around it- he gives up and lets her go on.
8:50 - Km and Vmax is discussed (I for one don't buy it, but I'm too busy typing to interfere)
8:51 - She's talking about an ex-coworker that tried to do molecular weight shift assays. She is very fast to criticize all those she had working under her, and fast to mumble defense of her work.
8:55 - She shows some kinetics that suggest that maybe it moves DDP- seems very unclear and non-specific
8:57 - She refers to Brian and his clones. Says that they've just been following what he did.
8:58 - Talks about the pMal-ATP7B complxex and how she has helped him purify it.
8:58 - NMR (only need 5 mg of protein- is that all- only takes 5 L of media! Oh yeah, and like a month of non-stop work)
9:01 - She's now showing Mohammed's work and all the gels that he ran. I decide to ask about what appears to be a weight shift- I am told that even though it's higher it's not anything. Hmm...
9:03 - She is asked about cross-linking and non-specific by Dr. X. Again she says well that isn't a problem.
9:05 - She has the NMR data up and is fumbling through what she obviously doesn't know.
9:08 - She has a figure out of a new paper and is unsure what it is but is trying to say that it shows that the 7B is rigid with Cu and 7A is not. She says that she hasn't read the paper but this is what it tells s (don't ask how she knows that).
9:10- Cu and DDP bind similarly to 7B. She is telling us where she's headed next.

And that's it another shorty- man I love these (esp. since the last one was almost an hour and a half).

Live blogging a lab meeting

So I thought I'd give a few people an idea of what I do every Thursday. I decided to live blog a lab meeting.

8:35 - We arrive in room, there are a noticeable amount of seats missing
8:37 - Projector turns on, we wait
8:39 - Brian introduces the topic, DMT1
8:40 - Figure #2 comes up first, he explains that the order is to help us understand, not necessarily exactly how they were published
8:41 - DMT1 seems to control Cu (I) and Fe (II) transport
8:42 - Figure #3. Ascorbate controls the uptake of Cu AND Fe (III)
8:43 - The "more important" figures - figure #4 - As you treat with more Fe you actually decrease the amount of Fe being taken up over 60 mins, same thing with Cu
8:44 - "The money shot." Using Antisense to DMT1, to decrease DMT1 presence, you get a decrease in not only Fe, but also in Cu.
8:45 - Brian pines for a marker (oops, I forgot to grab those). He starts to explain that DMT1 may be another player in not only Cu but also in moving DDP (we know there are other transporters b/c CTR1 -/- still move DDP). Seems that DMT1 is expressed on the cell surface and also in the exosomes.
8:46 - There may be competition between CTR2 and DMT1 in the fight to accumulate DDP and Cu. First plan of attack is to run and SRB or two to get a baseline to see if there is increased accumulation. Then maybe do some uptake studies.
8:47 - That's it! Wow that was SHORT! Nice job, Brian.


**Note this happened on the 17th of June- I just finally got it posted.

Stuck on a bus - part 1

So, awhile back Lish and I decided to both start taking the UCSD free shuttle they offer from the Hillcrest hospital up to the main campus (La Jolla)(I alone used to ride the shuttle and Lish drove), and usually we have good luck with the occasional problem of a stupid driver. Problem is the new batch of drivers just started for the year... Survey says: they suck! We have more break downs and missed buses as a result of the change than I can even begin to describe. The major offender is evidenced in the title of this blog. Yup 7 am and I'm on the side of the 5 north waiting to be picked up. Ain't nothing better! In fact I'm not sure there exists a better way to start your day. It is the ultimate commuter wake up. So I guess the question is why do voluntarily we keep taking the shuttle? Well see its free, and that means all the more money for investing and less wear and tear on Blue Steel. But the trade off is that for every 50 good rides you get an average of 1 bad one. So that brings is back full circle to the title: stuck on the bus. Really I don't think I'd mind if the driver was cool about it-but he's not. In fact quite the opposite from the way he's going on you'd think it was OUR FAULT his bus broke down.
This brings me to the other point I ran to get on the bus this morning- no not because I was late but because he left 5 minutes early (verified by people I know that missed said bus). Worse: I ended up running, having to stand on the bus, and then in the end I still had to get picked up by the bus I could have been sitting on peacefully had I not been in such a hurry to get to work! WHY OH WHY do you leave early (not even consistently early where I can count on it)!?!
Anyway- moral of the story is this: I'm stuck on the bus AND to top it off in 2 weeks I'll be stuck again (only this time it's 30 hours not 30 minutes)!
Chris

A whole new blogging frontier

Why on earth would I want to do this? What on Earth is THIS!?! This my friends is one more effort to really try to be a better blogger, this is mobile blog. Yeah so I've known about this for over a year but have never used it- guess I'll try it. After all, I have about an hour an change every day on the bus - rather than just read I guess I could take the time to post up a few blogs. We'll see!

Neglect, Self-Respect, and a second thought on Wall-E

Yes we're neglectful- there's a reason we don't have kids- mostly I would probably be the dad that forgot to pick the kids up or drop the kids off, or some random combination thereof- heck if I can't keep up with a blog how can I keep up with other things that don't just live at a certain URL. That aside, I feel like I want to address Wall-E first. See I finally put my finger on it: They just kinda took half a movie and stretched it out to let us believe they had a whole story. Now I know there are a lot of people who are all up in arms about the fact that it seems to be making this large statement about enviromentalism/capitalism/Americanism- my thoughts- fine, whatever, I don't care if you have an agenda to push- by all means push it- just don't forget to entertain me while you're doing it. That's just it- the story took the super easy way out. They didn't bother filling in plot holes, they didn't explain many of the aspects that we see, heck they even contradict themsleves during the movie! That's the reason I feel cheated. Yeah, the funny part is that this movie was conceived years ago (same time Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and several others were discussed) so do I feel that they were setting out to make a social commentary? No. Am I bothered by the political issues presented? No. The opinion of one group is just that, the opinion of them. To be upset by it would be to contradict everything that I have been taught at home, and in the church. I'm sure many who read this blog agree with what they present, and I am not an anti-enviromentalist by any stretch of the imagination (sorry to break it you but I also don't think that pollution is gonna end the world- maybe spiritual pollution but that's a whole other ball of wax); no, I'm bothered because they just didn't bother to develop a complete story, instead they kinda take the easy way out, and then just end the movie. Ehhh. Not on the same scale as something as great as Toy Story or, for me especially, The Incredibles. I feel that maybe there's a reason this was the last of those movies discussed at that fateful luncheon to be developed- maybe they just didn't have the complete story, and knowing how good they are (were?) they figured, "Hey, we can still do this!" Maybe I'm wrong- I hope I'm not- because I would hate to see the end of the Pixar reign of nothing but quality come to a close. But see here's the thing: Alicia and I saw the first standees and teasers for this a year or two ago at Disneyland and even then I was apprehensive, as was she. Seems my spidey sense for movies hasn't completely left me after 9 years of being movie theater-free. I'm also optimistic because of the short at the beginning- in my honset opinion it was THE BEST short Pixar has ever done. It felt complete, like a whole story, and not just a single joke or a tech demo. So maybe that is a sign of good things still to come. I sure hope so.
Wow- that took a lot longer than it should have. So on a different front... we're hoping to have some pictures posted in the next few days of random San Diego, so that'll be nice I suppose.
I've been surfing a lot- I plan on doing a post on that in the near future about new additions/subtractions from the surf catalog. Until then...

Chris

Movie Madness

So we haven't been to the movie theater since the third Pirates movie came out. This week we went twice. And remembered why we don't go to the theater. A)Chris managed a theater and notices every flaw in both the theater and the movie. B)Movies are super expensive. C) The biggest reason of all- Movies generally are not that great.
This week we saw The Hulk, which wasn't a bad movie, but not worth $25 to see. It didn't help that it was out of focus the entire movie either. But it was fun because we went with some friends, but I can watch a movie with friends at home, and on Blu-Ray so its never out of focus unless it should be. Saturday we went and saw Wall-E, the new Pixar movie. How can you go wrong with a studio that has a pretty much flawless record? That's what we thought. But I was really disappointed. Not to say that the movie wasn't good, but it didn't live up to Pixar standards. The animation was awesome, don't get me wrong. But I feel like Pixar stopped short of what the movie could be. I loved the robot parts, they were funny and very entertaining. I would still recommend seeing it for sure, but don't get your hopes too high.

Weight loss...

So it's been a good week. A really good week. Since April my assignment at work was to change my classroom so that it would pass the state re-inspection. Unfortunately, changing my classroom did not involve much, only changing the attitudes and habits of my fellow teachers. Needless to say, it was somewhat stressful. And some of you may know that I don't necessarily do well with a lot of stress. Thank goodness that Chris is so patient. Anyway the state inspector came back for his re-inspection this last Tuesday. And the final verdict? We passed. Hooray! The best weight loss program ever. I haven't felt lighter in a long time. Anyway that's my big news. Now I get to apply and interview for the job that I've been doing for the last 3 months and get my classroom ready for re-accreditation. Sounds like fun.

alphaBETA

So I got an invite to a very exciting Beta to a game I am not officially allowed to mention but is of the same family as R6. I'm very excited as I always love being in betas, but more importantly I LOVE TC games. I'll be sure to post some generic notes about the game- we'll call it something entirely different... sorry I have to be semi-mysterious- I had to sign an NDA (yeah already, I know!). I'll, umm, communicate more as I get to start. I don't even get the game till the 15th, but still...guess I know what I'll be doing that week.
-Chris

And the mystery visitor of two weeks ago is...

Nick the Alfajor! Congrats to Nick on winning our lovely prize of a 10 days/11 nights trip to San Diego. Where he enjoyed sun, surf, sand, mexican food, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2007, lots of time doing nothing, and of course lovely Knotts Berry Farm (home of the world famous Boomerang and The Jaguar). For more details on the exciting trip stay tuned as we recap the highs and lows of Nick, the now graduated from High School, Waite's visit to see his favorite sister and brother-in-law.
-Chris

Why I hate the Nintendo DS

So the irony of this post is that I don't really hate the DS- per se. (I'm not even allowed to hate the DS b/c A) I play games on Alicia's sometimes and B) Oh yeah, I bought Alicia's for her for her birthday)What I hate is what it's doing to certain video games... allow me to explain: See I'm not the guy who thinks that if it's not "HardCore," it's crap. That's not me at all. In fact some of my favorite games are deffinetly not hardcore, but see this is where I have a problem. The following is a quote from Ubisoft UK managing director Rob Cooper:
"Sony needs to show us a bit more about what its plans are to convince the publisher to invest lots more money into it. Especially when you've got the DS selling at such a tremendous pace.

"I suppose it's almost too technical for the casual person, those that are buying the DS at the moment, who want a few buttons and not a lot more. It's so simple what [Nintendo] has done. That's where I think Sony has gone a little bit too complicated, they've over-specced it, the price is too high and they need to go back to the drawing board and start again," he added. (From Gameindustry.biz)

See my problem is this- I don't want less buttons. I don't care! I can handle the fact that my current controllers have...(let's see... 1,2,3,4,5...13 plus 3 joysticks)13 plus 3 directional pads of some sort. Heck, I play PC games they have...(let's see...1,2,3,4...100+) something like 104 or so keys- WHY do I need less!?! Furthermore, I love my PSP- part of the reason I own it is b/c it is technologically superior, heck I can use it to wacth a Movie, and TV show, play several games, and listen to music, all with out having to carry anything more than the PSP itself (yes I can do all of those off a single Memory stick that I load into the side of it, no movies, no game discs, nothing but the PSP alone). Most of the reason we bought our PS3 was b/c the Blu-Ray looks so nice on our TV, heck the Wii didn't even offer the ability to listen to a CD or DVD on it. So what this guy is saying is that the rest of the industry should do just like Nintendo did with both the DS and the Wii (like I said here's the irony, cause you guessed it- we own a Wii too) but what if we don't always want the kind of garbage that is put out on the Wii and DS (Case in point: Petz series from the fool who opined this to begin with- I'd like to add that I think it is a travesty that we are teaching an entire generation of kidz that it's OK to spell using Z as the letter to indicate plurality... oh yeah and that whole Dogz Fashion...ughhh shoot me now!). So where am I going with this? Easy.

While I don't mind the collection of games that inhabit the Wii and DS and I really like the idea that more people are "in to" games and all things that go along with video games, I really wish that certain publishers would stop saying that we are all the same and that the games that might appeal to my niece, Madison, or to my parents (proud Wii owners, I might add), should be the games that I want to own. Cause so help me if all I can buy 2 years from now is Petz and stinking Raving Rabbids I'm gonna sell all my video games and take up a new hobby like cross-stitching.

I have my own abilities and sometimes I like the complex and harder games, sometimes I like technology that is forward thinking not just two palm pilots merged together. Ah well what a world we live in when the white boy in SoCal has to cry out that he too is an individual and can think and act apart from everyone around him.

-Chriz

Famous, almost

This is just a realy funny side story. For those of you who may have hoped that I had grown up (read matured) and mellowed out after serving some time in the bishopric- lemme direct you to the following interaction I recently had with a friend of ours.

I am so funny

-Chris

Fired!

Yup I might as well be because I apparently have no time to blog (I'm thinking of a good reason why Lish can't- I'll let you know when it hits me). In the mean time you should know that I have started on 3 posts only to have the thought train either A) Leave the station without me or B) Derail mid-post. Kinda sucks. So a quick catch up on all the ongoings: In the last 2 weeks I have: WORKED, worked, worked oh yeah and had to go into work once or twice. Lots of church (as usual) and then there was the random visitor. I'll have to let you know more about him in a future post. But in the mean time... oh yeah, played some video games (not too much believe it or not), went to Knotts Berry Farm- flashback to 20 years ago, got beat up something fierce at KBF, stupid Boomerang, surfed a couple times, been informed of the dangers of crabs (don't ask you don't want to know), hung out with friends, BBQ'd, took care of some shopping, including the addition of 15 or so 12-packs of the new dew flavors, and even got in a baseball game. Most of said activities were directly or indirectly a result of the visitor.
Well I gotta run- I'll convince Lish to post later or something.
-Chris

Back in the Game

So aside from the lack of posts for awhile (funny thing is I have 3 incomplete posts just chillin') I decided to scratch down the happenings. I'm back in the game. What does that mean? Well see when I moved to SD I decided that I wanted to surf, no matter what. It happened, fairly quickly I might add. I bought a board within weeks and I was out within days and riding. Problem was I bought a damaged board. I know, I know, how bad? Well I thought I got it fixed with some Solar Resin- turns out there was more damage than I knew about. So I rode the pants off the board for about a year and change, then it happened- the bulge. See overtime you get seawater into the foam and it expands. So I had to bow out, sure I rode a couple more times, and it was all good, but in the end... yeah I had to stop riding. Then there was the whole getting boards to the beach, etc. that I just didn't have time to do, esp since I'd use the cherokee to transport, and it was a nightmare sometimes. So then we bought Blue Steel and found that we could get a Thule Roof rack through Chev for CHEAP. So we bought. And then I used some savings and a 20% off and got a surf rack- mind you this is the best rack I could envision: ease of use, secure, fast. It's sweet. So now the issue is no longer transport it's boards. So I took up my friend Natalie on her offer to buy her board. Now those of you who know me well know that I have a scar in between my eyes from a surfing accident- yeah well guess I bought the board that gave that too me. Figure it's part of me, and I it. So I ran it down to Joe Roper's and am having the nose fixed up on it some. Oh yeah, and we decided to utilize Costco's sweet softy sale. Got an 8' softy for next to nothing. So we now have 2 boards AND a way to get to the beach. So I guess it's not just me in the game, time to haul Lish out again. Plus, on the bonus side, Jeff has convinced me to go out some Sat mornings with them... we'll see how I do. Anywho, I'm back and ready to ride with all my free time, er something like that.

The Proof is in the Pudding, Pt. II

So you know I don't think I could have asked for more cooperation to drive home my whole UCSD vs. SDSU than the last week has provided me. First of all was the Taekwondo story (here) and now there is THIS! Now this thing is so big that I know people back East that heard about it. We're talkin' CNN AND Fox News big. You know drugs are really, really bad, but drugs mixed with weapons and lots of cash- yeah now you're just plain out of control. It's times like this that I want to make sure I distance myself from SDSU even more. Btw- as a corollary to what I started out talking about which was sports teams don't help you have a better school always... read THIS. That's right another reason that I wish people would just forget that SDSU is even part of San Diego. Now just in case there's any questions
A) I do NOT go to SDSU
B) I do NOT do crack
C) I do NOT involve myself in any way with ANY SDSU sports team.

The funniest part to all this is how I was decried by people I know when earlier this year Alicia and I posted about Foreign Frat Parties with Guns, turns out that we had it all wrong. Not only do frat boys have guns in the army but they apparently LEARN how to have such ragin' parties at home when they go to school at SDSU. Yup, so you have Local Frat Parties with Guns! Good thing that whole frat boy stereotype is so off-basis, huh!?!
-Chris