march madness

I love March Madness.  The Cyclone win last night was absolutely amazing and solidified my deep and abiding love for the NCAA basketball tournament.  However, I only love March Madness in reference to basketball.  These last few weeks of my life have been quite mad with chaos.  It's hard to believe that this month is past the half way point:: I don't know where the time has gone!  And according to my color coded calendar, my time in Lincoln is further limited from off-campus meetings and trips to Iowa.  I guess "time truly does fly when you are having fun"!


This past week the University of Nebraska hosted the National Meat Animal Eval contest.  I was a member of the ISU MAEC team and was pumped that I was able to help out with the contest this year.  Wednesday I spent a majority of my day at the Dunlap Salebarn taking pictures of livestock and students competing; probably qualifying as paparazzi.  After an amazing steak dinner prepared by the Harrison County Cattlemens, Michelle (a fellow grad student at UNL) and I headed up to Dennison for the evening.  After a few short hours of sleep we rolled out of the hotel and into the Tyson plant to transfer tag numbers to carcass id.  I have to admit, I do not miss being in the packing plant before the sun comes up AT ALL!  But we were able to get our job done within an hour and were back on the road by 6:30 am.  Needless to say yesterday was a looooooong day and my nap in the afternoon was greatly appreciated :)


With today being Friday, this afternoon I am headed back home, all the way to Cascade.  I have not been home since Christmas break, so needless to say I am very excited to head east!  Tomorrow afternoon I have my first of four bridal showers.  It should be a great day spent with family and friends.  I heard through the grape vine a few shower games are planned--I don't really know what to think about these games, but I guess I better get used to it!


Then early Sunday morning I head to Ames for the Midwest Academic Quadrathlon contest.  Before I explain exactly what this is, I need to make it clear the Academic Quadrathlon was probably the funnest competition I have ever done!!!  The contest invites teams from major Midwest universities and they compete against one another in four areas of Animal Science: lab practicum, written exam, oral presentation, and quiz bowl.  Because of this, the contest is extremely competitive, and probably that is the reason why I enjoyed the contest so much). I volunteered to run the meats station, a part of the lab practicum portion, and have been busy this week making the test and gathering materials.  


The AQ contest is held in conjunction with the Midwest ASAS meetings which are annually held in Des Moines. This year I have the opportunity to present a poster on part of my thesis project. I must admit my poster looks pretty sweet and I am excited to share with people the data we collected and how we analyzed the results.  Between designing this poster and writing a final report for the Nebraska Beef Council I have gained motivation to get this thesis wrote and done.  Something about sharing information to producers/consumers/industry personnel about changes in beef production to improve profitability/comprehension/yields thrills me.  Annnnnnnnd with that being said, this kid has got a literature review to write.  So until next time, go STATE!!!