FGSC BLOG ARCHIVE

11/21/06

I moved into a new house last April. It was built in 1966 and we are the 4th occupants. One of the things that makes it unique is that the yard includes stone paths and walls from when there was a formal garden there in the 1900s. Unfortunately, one curving path cuts the side yard in half but dead-ends in a fence. I got an 18 lb, 5 ft 'wrecking bar' and have begun to systematically demolish the path. I have a couple of reasons to do it this way.

1. I can salvage the pavers from the top layer to patch other paths on the property
2. I am in no particular hurry
3. It is strangely satisfying to demolish concrete by hand
4. It is quieter than a electric or pneumatic jack hammer
   AND
5. I get a pretty good workout.

One area in the yard seems to have been mostly filled with construction rubble. So far we have found one little medicine dropper bottle from the 1920s and lots of broken terracotta as well as stones and broken concrete. We have a lot of trees including a Sweet Gum, a Sycamore, a Basswood, a Holly, a Dogwood,  a Honey Locust, three Junipers, and four Bradford pears. This makes for a lot of raking this time of year.

Sunday I went for a run with my old neighbor. Instead of running on the trails of Johnson County, or the KC Trolley trail, we headed to downtown where we ran past the Federal Building, the county jail, the new Sprint Center Arena and adjacent entertainment district into the old freight house district, through the Union Station and up around the Pershing Memorial. Really quite a Kansas City tour. Fortunately it was Sunday afternoon and the streets were all very quiet.

11/17/06

I have just finished teaching all the mycology that med students need to know at KU Med. The curriculum stipulates that this is four 50 minute lectures. Since they have a pathology exam today, most of them chose to skip my lectures and study from the power-points and the podcasts. They do not want to hear about most of the research that goes on but rather how to recognize infection and how to treat it.

The list of sponsors for the Fungal Genetics Conference continues to grow. If you would like to see your company or organization name here, please contact the FGSC.

It is with tremendous regret that I am looking for someone who would like to purchase this classic 1986 Toyota FJ60 Landcruiser. I would love to keep it and spend money on it, but it needs more work that I am willing to pay for. Plus, it gets about 10 miles per gallon. It needs to have the seals on the front end all replaced and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. It also wants paint, an new fuel system, stereo, suspension, and more. I inquired at Cool Cruisers and they said it would easily cost $20,000 to restore the old beast. This is one of 4,475 cruisers sold in the US in 1986 so it is a real collectors item.

11/6/06

The FGSC advisory board met here in Kansas City over the weekend. Our agenda included things such as a report on 2006 activities, implementing e-commerce, fees, how to deal with pathogens, and research at the FGSC.

Other topics we discussed included the over 2 million hits at the FGSC web-site, the new targeted search features at the FGSC web-site, a new FGSC endowment fund at the Genetics Society of America, as well as future directions for the FGSC.

Traffic at the FGSC web-site totals over 2 million hits between January and mid-October 2006

Tomorrow is election day here in the US. I have my concerns.....

The opinions and ideas expressed here are my personal opinions and do not represent the position of the FGSC or the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Any resemblance to persons, alive or previously alive, is purely coincidental, except when I mention living or previously living people explicitly and especially when I include photos of living or previously living people.