Foto Friday

Saturday July 2: Twins

Sunday July 3: Mike's Fowlamo

Monday July 4: The only fireworks this year

Tuesday July 5: Nothing But Blue Skies

Wednesday July 6: Nearly Home

Thursday July 7: Seriously, Don't

Friday July 8: Painterly Plum

Statistics in Seattle

As I mentioned, I spent the last half of June attending a total of 60 hours of lectures on statistical genetics.  I know, you're jealous.  Actually, it was a great workshop and I learned a ton about the underlying statistical models for the new types of data I'm dealing with in my postdoc.  Most of my modules were quite literally taught by the people who wrote the books on the subjects and I came away feeling inspired to work through a lot of the more challenging statistical papers I come across.  But enough about math, here's what I did on my weekends.

The weather was cool and gray the first weekend in Seattle (shocking, I know), but we headed to the Pike's Place Market on Sunday morning and made a brunch out of local fruit, coffee, pastries, fresh tuna poke, and piroshkies from Piroshky Piroshky.  Yum.

Less yummy?  The gum wall.  Yes, folks, each of those colorful dots on the wall and window ledge behind us is a chewed up piece of gum.  Gross, but oddly fascinating.

We took a ferry ride out to the island of Bainbridge where I had a serendipitous encounter at Churchmouse Yarns & Teas.  I fell in love with some wool yarn from Uruguay and decided to buy it as a memory of the trip.  As the woman was winding my hanks into balls, she mentioned that she still wasn't used to the cool summers since she had grown up in Lawrence, KS.  I told her that I went to KU and it turns out that her father is a retired biochemistry professor and close friends with one of the professors I worked for as an undergrad.  I had lost touch with him because he had moved away from Kansas after he retired, but she had spoken to him just the day before!  I gave her my contact info to pass on to him and now we are catching up via e-mail.  A small world, indeed - and full of Jayhawks!

The next weekend we had dinner downtown and headed up the Space Needle a bit before sunset.  It was a beautiful, clear day and we could see Mt. Rainier in the distance.

We stayed up at the top through sunset and it became quite cold and very, very windy.  

We drank coffee and chatted while night fell and were rewarded with a beautiful view of the city.

The next day, we went to the zoo!  I love zoos and I took a million pictures of all the different animals.  I'll spare you menagerie and give you just a picture of Denise and Laurel petting goats.

Also, us riding a dinosaur.  I'm not really sure why their was a dinosaur exhibit at the zoo, but I can tell you that having seen real animals all day, there were quite a few toddlers scared of the animatronic giants.

After the zoo, we had dinner with some friends and their very sweet cat in their gorgeous backyard that you can actually eat in, because it isn't 105 degrees and full of bugs (I'm not bitter about Texas summer, I swear).

Being nerdy anthropologists, we had to visit the Burke Museum of Natural History and Anthropology before we left town.  We were extremely impressed with their collections including

freaky giant bird fossils, 

amazing carved fish totems,

and fantastic dragon masks.

My last night in town, my friend MJ and I had dinner and then I got up the next morning for the long flight home.  It was a great trip, but I'm glad to be back.

Happy 7th of July!

So my Independence Day post is a bit late, I suppose I'm still in the relaxed spirit of my wonderful long weekend.  It started off with a trip to the farmer's market.

Twins.

Veronica and I showed up wearing the same dress.  I was going to change but we decided it would be more fun to see if the anyone said anything.  Polite Texas folks, nobody said a word.  On Monday, we decided to make the cookies on the cover of the most recent Martha Stewart Living.  Everybody got in on the act including Veronica's mom who was in town.

The cookies were surprisingly easy to make, just pipe on circles and drag a toothpick through them.  They came out gorgeous and made a delicious end to our grill-out (of which I meant to take pictures, but was distracted by Mike's delicious pork chops).

Foto Friday

Saturday June 25: Space Needle

Sunday June 26: Strutting His Stuff

Monday June 27: Home Away from Home

Tuesday June 28: Happy Birthday!

Wednesday June 29: Canid Skulls

Thursday June 30: Home!!!

Friday July 1: Favorite Trees out My Office Window

June Book Report: Blink

Over about three days in June, I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which was lent to me by Veronica.  I absolutely loved this book.  There was something new and fascinating on nearly every page, many of which I have already brought up in conversations. The premise of the book is that we make split-second, unconscious decisions which are frequently as accurate or more accurate than the more thought-out decisions we make with our conscious mind.  As someone with a tendency to over-analyze and not trust what feels right, it was a shock to me that people actually perform worse on tasks when they are asked to explicitly state their reasoning.

Although understanding and experience enhance our ability to make these quick decisions, Gladwell wisely notes that in our over-saturated information age, "we have come to confuse information with understanding."  He draws imaginative and insightful parallels between war, salesmanship, marriage, and improv and the way that our neural networks process information that really shaped how I think about the unconscious.  I can't wait to read some of his other books.