Dirty Daisy

dirty daisy
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

redflower
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

The weather has been gorgeous here and the weekend was memorably memorable. Plenty of eating, drinking, and believe it or not outdoorsy activities took place. I somehow set a world record for amount of cooking that went on by any roommate. I now have 2 weeks worth of leftovers. Unfortunately, I had to take Shellie back to Maquoketa again for her final 3 weeks of her rotation there, but a good time was had by all when she was here. I spent a couple hours today biking and taking pictures with and I uploaded a few to flickr. The flowers are still blooming and they look nice. Not much going on around here, but getting done with more of the research. I'm pretty sure we are going to have to cut out some because research is going to be presented in June at symposiums and other conventions. But who knows, I'll just keep on inputing/keep on keeping on.

Famous Daves

famous daves
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

ride home
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Famous Daves was a success, we wussed out and grabbed the 1/2 feast and only 7/8ths of it. But it was filling. The ride to and from Maquoketa was uneventful but the scenery was simple yet unrefined :) Overall it was a great time, and now it's time to celebrate memorably. The agenda calls for grilling, brats, burgers, and all beef hotdogs. Coko is calling for beef, pork, and chicken hotdogs for himself because I guess he's hoping for a cornucopia of meats stuffed in one little tube.

A Quick Pick Me Up

Famous Daves
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Well the big plan for the day is to go to Maquoketa and pick up Shellie. Oh and that's just the beginning because the big deal is the feast in Davenport on the way back. Believe it or not, but if everyday was Thanksgiving I would have something to be very thankful for. I am not joking when I say that I honestly believe we are going to order the All-American BBQ Feast®. Please take a look at the link. And yes, I do mean the first one. I have had the directions ready for days. I just hope I can keep up with all the food. Yesterday was Coko's birthday and we ended up bowling (note I am not what you call a good bowler), eating, and generally partying. With alcohol being served at all places, I just couldn't/didn't want to keep up with the big boys, and had to call it quits at about 11. The food though was amazing. We ended up eating at the Sheraton's restaurant, where one of the roommates is the general manager. It was unreal. So let the Thanksgiving/Memorial Day weekend begin.

Farmer's Market Salad

Farmer's Market Salad
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

I have a big Farmer's Market trip coming up. I can just taste the tomatoes (note I love food). I just finished some more research and ending up taking it back to CHA and also sent out several emails. I also ended up getting cards at Walgreens and on my trip back almost ran over a 2 and a half foot garter snake. I tried to run back and get a picture but scared it as I was walking. I also finally made a date to get my hair cut; tomorrow at 10:45. This hair cut isn't over going to be measured in inches, it's going to be in lbs.

Update

Farmer's Market Bounty
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Well I made it through all the errands and ended up at the Farmer's Market. Just wanted to show you the fruits of my effort. Mighty fine produce from the fields to my mouth.

Summer posting

Dinner
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Well how about a real update. Not much has been going on here. I finally was able to go and grab the updated research surveys. So that will keep me busy. I was going to bike there today, but I unfortunately had a flat tire. It wasn't something that was unexpected as I had a tear in the tire with the innertube flowing through all throughout spring semester so it was just a matter of time. On Monday I took a real bike ride around Iowa City and the bike trails which are pretty rugged. I probably did about 10 miles without taking any diggers in the forrest trails, but still rough riding, so I wasn't too surprised I lost the tire. I ended up going to World of Bikes in Iowa City and was pretty pleased with the price and service. Under $20, which wasn't too bad for a higher performance tire and tube.
I also went and saw Star Wars Ep. III on monday at noon. It was 2 of my roommates and myself, and believe it or not the place was still over 3/4 full on a monday matinee. I was impressed not so much with the acting but the computer generated graphics and story line coming to an end was overall pretty outstanding. In fact, I think this was the firts movie I've went to in 2005 so I'm pretty picky (or frugal) and was amazed with the graphics.
I also recently went to the University Surplus Store to see if I couldn't pick up a random piece of computer hardware for a dollar instead of paying 35 at a bestbuy for a piece of metal. Unfortunately, no dice, and I don't think the employee had talked to anyone in the real world in years. He seemed like he was pretty used to typing or chatting online, but i can't say that he didn't try. So, I don't think I'm going to get the part, or maybe weight until I can find it for at least under $5.
The past couple of days, have been full of simple recreation. Yesterday was sand volleyball out at the Hawkeye lots, and today was Homerun derby at City Park so I've been getting some sun. I know you are all thinking, but wait, shouldn't you be working! And to that I have to admit, somehow I have become a night owl. I'be been working on the research and the rest of this stuff late into the night.
Shellie came into town on Sunday as the family she is boarding with came into eat with their son who apparently lives just down the street. She was only here for about two hours, but I had been slaving over the stove the entire day. With the best part being the dessert and beverage. The menu was included
-Fresh Salad most of which came from the Farmers Market- Butter Lettuce, Baby Spinach and Baby Greens, Fresh tomatoes from the Amish lady, and no I have no idea how she gets fresh tomatoes in May, green onions, hard boiled eggs, and fresh bacon.
-Bacon wrapped asparagus
-Chicken breast with fresh rosemary, basil, salt, and pepper.
-New potatoes with garlic, green onions, milk, butter, salt, pepper, and rosemary.
-Ice cream sandwhiches coming from a quart of soft serve vanilla ice cream from Dairy Queen and the cookies soft bake chocolate chip from Chips Ahoy.
-Old Style light in frosty pint glasses.
I'm pretty sure you don't get any higher class than this meal.
Another new experience for me was a trip to the Super Walmart to go grocery shopping with Coko. Believe it or not it was much cheaper than HyVee with just a little less selection. I started a new kick, the hard boiled egg kick. I have been buying tons of eggs as snacks/breakfast. I bought a huge 2 and a 1/2 box of eggs there and hard boiled all. And now have over 40 in the fridge. Oh the protein goodness.
Well hope all are doing well and I plan to update again this week sometime.
w

Quick update

long night out
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Just a quick update. Most of the research has been completed, with most of the work now being catching up with surveys that were sent in late. Please note the picture on the side. Great story to go with all about how some people have fun and then some people have lots of fun noteably Brian in this picture. But my favorite part of this picture is Abby. For her to even be in this picture, she had kneel down on the ground at precisely the right time. And to that, I salute you Brother Lowndes.

Keeping up to date

Linux Screenshot
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Well, I finally found a distro that would run in a Pentium II 233 MHz, and it happened to be plain old Debian. I know you probably don't care, but it actually runs quite well. With a bit of work, I also happened to get another computer up and running. I used Ubuntu for the new one as seen in the screenshot. I'm still thinking about Mepis because of the interface, but we'll have to see.
I just got started on the syndesmosis research. I feel like this is also going to be a ton of work. Right now it's inputing 107 athletic trainer's reports and 107 team md reports, each of which is 4 pages. Of course it will get done, I just need to make sure I get around to the movies.
I ended up at the Farmer's Market after the research meeting, and believe it or not, there were still some decent tomatoes. I ended up picking up some butter lettuce, but the rest looked like it needs a few weeks.

Moustache Anyone?

Moustache anyone?
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

I'm also making sure to keep good on my word and growing out the ole 'stacheroo. I don't think I will be keeping it for the entire summer, but I haven't set a clear cut date yet.

Schools out for the Summer

German Clouds
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

It's been a long time since I updated, but I finally finished all the assessments, practicals, and journals that had to be done. Schools out for summer, but I start syndesmosis research tomorrow. Apparently, I just can't get away from acadamia. I had to drop off Shellie in Maquoketa for her first pharmacy rotation, which wasn't something I had been yearning to do.
Last night I went to North Liberty to watch the roommates play slow-pitch softball, but they didn't have enough players, so I ended up playing. It was a rough showing by me until, I realized the ball takes at least 5 seconds to get to the plate. Funny enough we ended up losing on a grandslam that would have taken us up by 1, because in the league you can only hit 3 homeruns per team. After the 3 homeruns each homerun is an out. So the winning grandslam turned out to be the worst possible hit.
I have also been trying to install Linux on an old computer, but have yet to find a distro that will work on this computer. It's just too old for the ones I wanted, but I imagine there something less graphically intensive out there that will work.

Mothers Days

Happy Mother's Day
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Well happy mother's day!! Pretty poor weather around these parts. Finals are in full swing, so I've had my head in journals lately. We had the Sports Medicine Banquet last night with Dr. Albright as the featured speaker. There was plenty of interesting information on the future of the Iowa Athletic Training program as news of endowments and plenty of donations coming to ensure financial support of future professors in the program if Dan ever steps down. Alumns of the program are offering financial support to make sure Iowa stays at the fore front of sports medicine as it is currently #2 in the nation. There is also news that we will become more integrated with the College of Medicine as we are only currently only integrated our 3rd year for academic courses and 2nd and 3rd year rotations. The progam was run very nicely and was overall clean and simple. Several featured alumni were present and it was finished with a send off to the 3rd year students. I ended up sharing the Kevin Negaard Award with Kari Johnson and received the Nancy J. Moses Scholarship making me the 3rd year class representative. Now I just need to make sure I get finished with the rest of these finals.

RSS and XML

News Anyone?
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

So I have been extremely busy with classes, articles, and tests. I have finished my last true presentation and finals week is coming upon me. So of course procrastination has set in. With all my might, I am trying to put off a journal review of achille's tendinopathies. I am trying to update this site as frequently as possible, but just not getting to it as often as I would like. I have updated the site to include rss and atom feeds for the site as well as the flickr site. (those are the xml icons). It makes creating content and adjusting it really easy, in fact the weather information on the bottom of this page is created using rss content. I just recently started using and RSS reader for news and the like to pretty much cut down on the ads and garbage. I try to read at least a couple newspapersnews sites a day and this just puts everything you need on one page. It seems pretty trivial but its so much easier to use rss for looking at new/updated content and searching through websites than it is to go there and search through the ads. It's pretty difficult to explain so here are some great references which explain it. (A, B, C.) I've used sage for firefox (the browser) as an extension but it seemed pretty slow. So now I use bloglines at school and sharpreader at home. I also added some a flickr sidebar to the page.

Weekend Update

Kinsale Beach
Originally uploaded by jfravel.

Well I spent all yesterday watching the Drake Relays on tv. I ended up hooking up my computer to my tv and watched the live feed. I certainly stayed warmer than the people who were there as I think the high was in the low 50's. There was plenty of interesting races and events. But the big news is Tony, finally got his cell phone. My little brother is now in the states after a stay in the vacation hotspot (who would do this) of the beautiful Afghanistan. I finally was able to talk to catch up and he's sounding good. I ended up laying low this weekend and not much happened on the home front. I will probably shore up the rest of a field hockey nutrition presentation and call it a day.