Aluminum tubes

You can see some of the most beautiful sunsets from an airplane at 30 thousand feet:

New car.

My old Volvo (it really wasn't that old, 9 years and just under 99K miles, which is young for a volvo) was starting to cost more than it was worth. The window, the sun roof, the radio, and the door locks were broken and I was looking at a bout a 4k price tag to fix it all. I decide to sink my money into a new vehicle instead, a Subaru Outback. So far actually purchasing the vehicle was the only bad part. They tried to jack the price up by $2000 when I showed up at the dealer after I negotiated them down $1800 over the phone. I literally walked out of the dealer and they begged me to stay. It was awesome! I think my salesman was actually retarded. I am serious; I don't use that word lightly. Anyway, I love my new car:

I don't want to say this woman "makes" me happy, because I am quite happy in life in my own right, but she does make my life so much more fun!

San Fran

My college buddy Rob got married over the weekend in San Francisco. He invited me to be a groomsman and having never been to San Fran before (and of course wanting to be there to support my old good friend) I jumped at the chance to go. My Girlfriend and I went together and had a fantastic time; sight seeing, eating and a little bit of drinking too. We rented a car on Sunday and headed out of town. Here are some of the highlights:

The onion

This is hilarious, but it hits very close to home.

Maters

I love having a little garden in my backyard:

Life lessons

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
but if you try, sometimes, you just might find
you can achieve a satisfactory tradeoff between competing objectives.

Summer

Its been a busy summer. Spent a week in Raleigh in June, spent 10 days in NY in July and then spent 5 days in Florida for a conference. I've had a great time. Travel is exhausting though. Everywhere I went I got to see old friends and/or family. Its been so soothing.

To brag a bit, I have to say that I am actually pretty proud of myself. I took both girls on two planes to NY and then a third one back to Baltimore all by my self. It felt weird to say it but when people asked me how the trip was I actually told them that we had fun. I was so nervous about flying solo with both girls...I just kept envisioning disasters in security or in the public bathroom...but we had fun in the airports and on the planes. Eva asked me what the little seat recline button was for and I told her it was a button you could use to talk to the captain. The whole ride up she was giving him/her updates on Faye, or telling him/her to avoid the clouds, or ordering more juice. It was hilarious! "Ah excuse me Mr. Captain, sir, but why hasn't my juice gotten here yet. I am sooooo thirsty!"

Life settles down here for a little bit. No work travel planned until October.

Broken Social Scene

I am really digging me some Broken Social Scene lately...They have such an epic sound to me. They Kind of recreate everything I love about 90's indie rock but take it to a new level.

Father's day...

...Is not all fun and games honoring dad's and how great they are. Take for example my effort to get Eva into bed tonight. Resulted in a complete and total melt down, she is still at it up in her room now screaming "DAAAAAAAAADAAAAAAAY!" I gave her a 5 minute and a 2 minute warning, then I asked her to put her toys down and come brush her teeth. She said "just a minute," I waited 10 seconds, "Eva put the magic markers down and come brush you teeth," E:"But wait Daddy, I just want to finish this." Me: "Eva if you don't come to brush you teeth now I am not going to read you your bed time story tonight." E: "Ok Daddy, but I just need to do this one last thing, I am almost done." Me: "Alright Eva, no bed time stories and you still have to come brush you teeth NOW!" E: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" (x 25).

Happy father's day.

sigh

I am leaving in 20 minutes to go to my lawyer's office to sign my divorce settlement. I didn't think it was going to be hard to do this. I thought I would feel a huge sense of relief when this legal bickering was over. I envisioned my self gleefully skipping to the lawyer's office with an ear to ear grin. As the moment draws closer I think that scene is unlikely to occur.

The ex picked up the kids from my house this morning, told me that she approved the settlement and all we had to do was sign it, then she started to cry and asked me to hug her. She said that she was sad cause this meant the end of that chapter of our lives. What! The! Fuck? I was flooded with emotions of anger and sadness. It was she who started all of this in the first place, it was she who broke my heart and said all those terrible things about me.

So I am headed out now. Confused, and walking slowly to the lawyers office with some old Pavement songs stuck in my head trying not to reminisce about the time in college, sitting on the front step to her apartment in our shared dormitory, that I discovered my ex also loved Pavement and we then and there made plans to go and see the band perform in Raleigh three months later.

New Music

First Listen of Bon Iver's new album. Like the first album it is a beautiful set of songs. It has a different feel/sound than the first album, I am really digging it.

sunset

One of the most wonderful things about life, in my opinion, is that no matter where you go in the world, unless its too cloudy, you can always see a beautiful sunset. [Editors note: sunrises are also typically beautiful, but usually far too early to be enjoyed/observed]

Link

I find this to be hilarious.

May 26th

100

I am my own 100th visitor. Awesome! Congratulations to me! Turns out that I was also visitor 101, and I was responsible to 78 of the first 100 hits to the site. In appreciation of my own loyalty and continued interest in my own blog I will be sending my self a generous gift of a free Miniature Poodle Gang's greatest hits! Lucky me! A blank CD!...cause you know MPG never actually had a hit.

Maybe you dear reader will be lucky visitor # 200 and can score a free gift of your own.

The end

Well the apocalypse didn't happen yesterday. Either that or my life has been hell all along. Here is some news for you very few readers on this happy post apocalyptic day...I am getting divorced. My wife left me in October, just 6 months after we moved to Alabama, though now she says it was my fault despite my begging her to stay. The whole experience has been quite hellish. Its been over 10 years since I've dealt with the pain of heart break. Some times I feel like a teenage boy, all angsty, etc. I've reverted to listening to Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and old Radiohead like it was 1997.

So that's been kind of fun.

Delaware

Last Saturday, My graduate student and I piled our stuff in the Chevy HHR (a company car) and drove 14.5 hours from Alabama to Delaware. This is my 4th year out here on the Bay. This is part of a my major research project to develop models of population dynamics, estimate demographic parameters, and develop a smart decision making framework for managing Horseshoe crab harvests in the Bay in a way that doesn't harm migrating shorebird populations. There is a lot of technical stuff that goes along with that work. Coming up here is not about technical stuff, its about witnessing the spectacle.

This is truly a natural wonder of the world. Shorebirds that spend the winter dispersed across South America travel thousands of miles and converge on the mid-Atlantic coast enroute to the Canadian Arctic. In most years, concurrent with the shorebird arrival, horseshoe crabs crawl up on the beach by the hundreds of thousands or even millions to spawn. Walking along the beach on a calm windless moonlit night, I am often overcome with a sense of awe and eeriness. The water laps on the shore and you can hear the clicking and scraping of a thousand male crabs jostling and maneuvering for position over the hundred or so females digging their nests in the soft wet sand. The water is frothy with crab seamen, the air reeks of saltwater and the unique smell of sea life. The moon reflects off the glistening crab shells. Witnessing all this reminds me of how beautiful life is and just how lucky I am.

raa again

wonderful music:

What's mine is mine

You cannot take Carolina from me,
You cannot have Hawaii,
but you can have mother fucking Missouri;

I don't want China, but the Irish is mine
You can take the cake
I'll find more in time

Red mud abounds, the poison Ivy
doesn't seem to bother me
Even so, you cannot have Hawaii

DK

I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 Democratic Primary. Here he is on the daily show last week... It is nice to see a politician with a good sense of humor about him self. I would definitely vote for him again.

Amazing

...ly dorky of me but, I think this is seriously cool:

A Whimbrel's Epic Migration

Be sure to check out the maps.

Yo La

In February I got to see one of my all time favorite bands play live. It was my first Yo La Tengo show, and it was amazing! I've been a fan since the 1990's and on a few occasions over the years missed their shows in Chapel Hill or D.C. just because of scheduling conflicts. I almost missed this show in Atlanta too. I found out about it via a facebook add two days prior to the show; it was a Friday night show and I had parenting commitments. But Thursday night my plans were switched up and Friday morning I invited a friend to take the two hour drive up I-85 and go to a show for a band she'd never heard of. We bought tickets and left work a few minutes early, just to make sure we'd get there in time with the CST to EST time change.
What a great decision, after all these years Yo La did not let me down...in fact the live show far exceeded my expectation. First of all to my great surprise, Georgia can really slap the skins (and cymbals, etc.). Their fist set was an interesting rendition of "The Sounds of Science" which is the sound track to a documentary film that they usually play live to an airing of the movie. No movie, unfortunately, but the music still demonstrated the band's ability (perhaps unmatched in modern rock) to develop complex soundscapes without being all prog-rocky. The second set was a great collection of tunes spanning their career, highlights for me were "Flying Lesson," "Pass the Hatchet, I think I'm good kind," and "We're an American Band" in the encore. As they announce the title of "American Band" I leaned over to my friend and said "don't worry, they're not about to play Grand Funk Rail Road." yet after they finished their own EPIC song, they launched right into GFRR. AWESOMENESS!

Neato!

Radar ornithology has been around for a couple decades but with more recent improvements in radar technology (what are we up to now, Doppler 7 million or something ?) you can get cooler and more useful information. The premise is that birds, like you and me, are made up mostly of water, and as they most through the sky Doppler radar, which detects water movement in the air, picks up those moving globs of water with feathered membranes. You can use this information to identify key migration habitats and perhaps move toward conserving those sites. This video is pretty cool and shows early evening bird movements from radar imagery.

Yikes

Tornado watches and severe thunder storm warnings all over the place tonight. The wind and lightening were wild! My NOAA weather radio was far more exciting than the NCAA National Championship game.

Frère Jacques

Apparently, 40 years ago today my brother John, who died of brain cancer at the age of 5, was born. I only know this because my sister posted this on her facebook status. Lets put aside a discussion on appropriateness of using facebook for this kind of announcement (I don't think it is all that bad I guess) and think about whether I am a terrible person for having no idea of the significance of this date. Am I an insensitive son? Or am I just too busy? Or perhaps I am just so zen that I always live in the moment and I don't worry about things that happen 34 years ago. Would that make me insensitive? Is this post trapped in some sort of insensitivity loop?

>for (i in 1:infinity){
> if (moralcode[i] == IrishCatholic) Dr.TheBirdMan[i] >= insensitive
> elseif (moralcode[i] == ZenBuddhist) Dr.TheBirdMan[i] < insensitive
> else Dr.TheBirdMan[i] = 0
>}

Love this band:

Nu Blog

You gotta love this. Here I am with a history of the name "the Bird Man" trying to start a new blog, and some asshole's got a blog named "The Bird Man" and has posted all of one time and hasn't posted since 2002. 'The Bird Man' my ass, he is a damn pigeon man if you ask me.

Oh well...Dr. The Bird Man it is. Welcome.