# 1350

If you have not yet discerned, I passed my defense yesterday afternoon. It took 3.5 hours of challenges and questions to and about my research. But in the end, after 4 minutes of closed door "deliberations" my advisor shook my and said "Congratulation Dr. The Bird Man, you did an excellent job." Whew! I am sorry to the Celtics for using too much of their Mojo, But I needed it. Especially when after 3 hours and 15 minutes one committee member asked to to head to the black board to draw and discuss a logistic growth curve. I have decided to take all of Josh Howard's post season Mojo and send it to Boston in an attempt to rectify my mojo debt. He's not using it anyway.

D-Fence

I defend my dissertation starting in approximately 1 hour. As part of my final preparations I am eating a Banana. High in potassium, bananas should help prevent muscle spasm during what is sure to be a tense discussion about how awesome my dissertation is. Here is what I anticipate will happen:

Committee member # 1: The Bird Man, I think this dissertation is really awesome because...

Committee member # 2: (interrupting) No no no, I take exception to that...this dissertation is totally awesome...

Committee member # 3: (interrupting) You're both wrong this dissertation is only just pretty awesome...

My Advisor: Settle down everyone, lets just stick with regular awesome. The awesomeness of this dissertation requires no modifiers, it is just plain and simply awesome.

Me: (meekly)Ahhm...(clears throat) could you guys just sign this so we can all go get a beer?

End Scene

Sigh...I wish. Somehow I am feeling nervous today and thus the potassium filled banana.

Baracky

#1347

The content of this blog has suffered lately. I am sorry. I have many excuses but it all boils down to being quite busy. You see I am writing this thing called a dissertation...its like a book...a non-fiction book...The kind of book where you can't just make shit up like I typically do on this blog. I had to do all this research and data collection and then data analysis and interpretation. It is a lot of work let me tell you. I also have to pack up the house and the family and sell the house and find a place to live in Maryland, and move to Maryland a start a new job. I start that job on May 19th. What's that you say? "Holy shit that is coming up soon!?" You are correct. Very soon. We are making progress on all fronts I am happy to report. I am sure I'll be back with funny, witty and inciteful stuff soon. In the mean time, enjoy this picture of three Whooping cranes that I saw in Nebraska two weeks ago. I took this picture with my point and shoot camera through my binoculars. The Whooping crane is one of the rarest birds in the world. This species is like California Condor rare with only about 500 individuals in existence and only about 350 in the wild. Here are three of them, a mama, a papa, and last years baby -- a teen ager of sorts.

picture of the sun setting behind some fragmites reeds on the the platte river in central nebraska

ugh

Acetometaphin (sp?) may be one of the awesomest things ever discovered/invented.

Knee-Brass-Kuh

I went to Nebraska over the week. It seems like a silly idea given all the stuff I have to accomplish within the next 5 weeks, but I went nonetheless. I went to witness the massive sandhill crane migration that takes place in the central Platte River. About 400,000 cranes pass through central Nebraska on their way north to Canada for the spring and summer. They roost at night in the river because it minimizes predation risk and it is quite a sight to see ~70,000 3.5 foot tall birds packing into the river bed. I took a few video clips of the event cause it was really hard to capture the grandeur with simple still photos (though the picture above does a pretty good job). The first three segments were taken in the morning as the sun rose, and the last one was in the evening as the flocks returned from a long day of foraging in the corn fields. I spent a lot more time watching in awe that evening and neglected to take many photos or videos.

road tripping

Box Elder - Stephen Malkmus Live Acoustic