I’d like to use this blog entry to clean up some loose ends, none of which seem to fit anywhere else.

First, in one previous blog entry I followed Dr. Horch’s advice when reporting results: “write what you observe.”  And at the time I had only ever observed men with snowblowers, but this morning I saw evidence to the contrary, so I’d like to amend my previous entry.  However, the women I saw did not display quite the same giddy excitement about it as the men.

On a related subject, last Thursday night we had our first really big storm of the season.  Local news stations correctly forecasted it for days, and this provided plenty of time for fear and anxiety to grow disproportionately to the actual size of the storm.  At Chris’ work they started canceling seminars scheduled for Thursday afternoon, even though it was sunny and snow was not predicted until early Friday morning!  Anyway, on Friday they had continuous live coverage of the storm for several hours, during which they had reporters all over the city, each providing some variation of: “Um…it’s still snowing”.  These in depth reports were interspersed with listings of all the essential services that were closed due to the storm, including Kochanski’s Beer Hall, which was reported at 9 o’clock in the morning!  Apparently they take beer seriously here.

Melissa recently bought a hat for Everett which has the tag shown above affixed to it, which we did not make up.  Maybe the hat is made for infants of some other species?

In one previous blog entry I asked if there are any teams with cows as mascots.  Well Melissa’s parents are both from Texas, and Amanda pointed out that the Texas Longhorns have a steer as a mascot.  Despite the fact that my paternal grandparents are lifelong farmers, and despite more years of education than I care to remember, I still do not know answers to basic agricultural questions such as: how many cobs grow on a single corn stalk?  I thought 5 or 6, but it turns out the answer is 1.  Or: what is a steer and how is this different from a cow or a bull?  Please don’t tell Gramsy and Grandpa that we did not know the answers to these questions.  Anyway, the Texas Longhorns’ mascot is a castrated bull.  I am not sure why they chose a steer over a bull, and I’m willing to bet they don’t mention castration very often in their team cheers, but I will say that Longhorns have a much more imposing presence than other cows I have seen.  Beyond that, a lot has been written about the almost mythical abilities of this species.  But I think we have to keep in mind that most of this was written by Texans, who as a group have been known to spin a jingoistic yarn about a few things.

Lastly, we have been told by many people to write things down when they happen with Everett or they will be forgotten.  In this spirit I’d like to record the following behavior which he has since moved on from.  When he was young (younger than 6 months anyway) and he was finished nursing he would abruptly push himself off Melissa’s breast, roll over onto his back and throw both arms up over his head, as if to say “Aaaaaaaaaaand…I’m out!”.  It was hilarious to watch and I wish we had a picture of it.