The CGD Café

I was looking at the old website today and found a post where I recommended the webstie Dr. Fungus. This is a great resource and it got me floating around the web reading about all manner of fungus related things, and of course I had to share.

We all know, or should know, the annual holiday warning about having a live Christmas tree -- you know, how the drying out of the pines and the water has the potential to grow fungus. In any case, I ran across an interesting webpage called fungi that are necessary for a merry christmas. Mostly this is about how fungi are used to make things we use or eat at Christmas. For example, did you know that almost all the citric acid produced for soft drinks is created by large-scale vat fermentation of our old nemesis aspergillus niger? Wacky.

Okay, here's another story from the archives...

It was the fifth grade and I was taking a few weeks off to relax at the local hospital and recuperate after catching both pneumonia and mono which I thought was a terribly efficient way of going through diseases but which my little brother seemed to think was just showing off.

Believe it or not, back then hospital stays were still pretty cool in their own way. Where else could a kid lay around all day reading books and watching TV? Oh, and the magic button. Whenever you wanted you could press this little button an pretty nurses would bring you food or pop whenever you wanted. Those, of course, where the days before research hospital visits when you could ask for a pop and not hear "You know where it is. Get it yourself." (sigh) But I digress. I was writing to warn you about the monsters.

I thought this would be a good post to transfer from the old system for my CGD blog. Here are the first three things my local doctor told me I couldn't do after being diagnosed with CGD:

1. No Spelunking (cave exploring)
2. No SCUBA diving (coral reefs, fungus, et. al.)
3. No smoking marijuana.

You can just imagine how much this cramped the lifestyle of a non-smoking teenager living in Nebraska!

Hi all! This is my first blog entry here at the café. We just got back from our honeymoon in Rome a few days ago and I've been very busy trying to get back on a reasonable sleeping schedule and trying to get this site up and running. Anyway, back to Rome.

I put up a few photos here at our personal website if anyone is interested. We were there just over a week and did a lot of walking. I must also admit to going down into the musty bowels of some ancient churches to see ruins. Is that safe? Not really, but it's very hard not to do in that situation. You can be sure I was taking my itra though!