Teaching two large classes at UNT (100+ and 200+ students each), even with teaching assistant help, consumed more of my time this spring than I had anticipated. That is now behind me and I hope to document some of the past activities and embark on some new things this summer. Since I probably won't get to all of the posts immediately, here is a partial list of what has been keeping me busy. This will be a preview of things to come and a checklist of sorts for me as I try to get caught up with my posts.
I finished an online course I started last fall from Harvard (SPU27x Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science) and took another course this spring from MIT (12.340x Global Warming Science). Both were wonderful courses. I have begun using sous vide techniques in the kitchen, based on what I learned from the Science and Cooking course. I will elaborate on that more in a separate post.
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| Preparing to sous vide a steak (which is sealed in a vacuum sealed bag in the lower left). |
The MIT course, although billed as an upper level undergraduate course, was extremely challenging for me. I had to dredge up a fair amount of calculus I had either long forgotten or perhaps never knew in the first place. Fortunately I could use a variety of online sources for supplementary explanations and used Wolfram Alpha for help with some of the math. I really love taking the online courses, but they consume enormous amounts of time.
Although we did not take any major trips this spring, we did make a couple of interesting weekend excursions. We drove the Ennis Bluebonnet Trails in April, and visited the Scarborough Renaissance Festival in Waxahachie in early May. Both were a lot of fun and provided lots of
Speaking of birds, I need to show some of the pics from our ever increasing number of backyard feathery friends, including an adolescent cardinal and an adolescent red-bellied woodpecker.
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| Adolescent cardinal (through the den window glass and screen with my cell phone-hence the horrible pic). Note his dark colored beak, as opposed to an orange beak for mature cardinals. Of course, he also has the "open mouth, feed me" pose, even though he had been scratching around on the ground. |
I also need to post the pictures from our visit in January to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, including the really impressive Raptor Free Flight show.
My intentions are to work on these posts soon. Maybe we can also squeeze in some new but yet unidentified adventures, all "Coming Soon".
