There’s a Mother Goose nursery rhyme that goes like this:

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig.
Home again, home again, jiggety jig.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog,
Home again, home again, jiggety jog.
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,
Home again, home again, market is done.

I didn’t buy a pig, but there was plenty of pork on the menu for the past week. That’s actually better because then I don’t have to do any of the killing or butchering. Many years ago while I was going to Purdue University, I did some part time work for a fellow’s Ph.D research. He was studying the phenomenon of “double muscle” in pigs. This genetic trait would cause the pig to have about twice the muscle mass as normal pigs on the same diet and was considered to be a trait worth developing. As part of his research, he needed tissue samples from a number of pigs. These samples would be frozen, sliced, and put on slides. I’d take a picture of the sample, blow it up, and then measure a sample of muscle cells and write down the information. I also entered it into the computer and built the program to do the analysis of the data. The process obviously included killing the pigs. I was lucky to not be required to do the killing. Since the fellow doing the research only needed a few tissue samples from each pig, he’d get them from the pigs that other researchers raised and killed for their studies. There was one day a month when all the pigs / piggies to be killed were slaughtered and I usually ended up helping. Since the whole pig wasn’t needed, generous portions of the meat were available and we got an occasional roast or chops from that process. The money and the meat were worth it. About ten years or so ago, researchers finally determined the gene responsible for double muscles and the protein expressed by that gene. A similar gene is in cattle and a similar protein does the work in that animal. When the protein is administered as a hormone during pregnancy, the odds of having a double muscled offspring increases dramatically. However, I think that this process isn’t generally available to pig farmers in the Philippines. I often saw small trucks carrying pigs to market while driving between the hotel and the plant. These pigs were always very clean — scrubbed actually. There are no dirty pigs in the markets in Manila!

I’m home, of course, The flight from Salt Lake City arrived about ten minutes early. Nina was waiting at the airport. I was home by 5 p.m. and in bed by 6. I woke up about 1:30 for a pit stop and went right back to sleep and was awakened by the alarm clock at 5 a.m. I had a 6:30 a.m. meeting in the office. By noon today my brain had turned to mush (or at least much mushier than normal). I came home and grabbed a couple of hours of sleep , which hopefully will not affect sleeping tonight, and spent the rest of the afternoon working from home. Tonight was Nina’s night to be at the prison, so Bradica (the dog) and I have been keeping each other company. She’s sleeping, I’m doing things on the computer….

On my way through Narita Airport in Tokyo, I stopped at the electronics duty-free shop to look at small digital cameras. I wanted something that was good quality and would easily fit into my shirt pocket. I ended up buying a Sony DSC-T9 digital camera. The price was better than I could get over the internet in the US and it’s a delightful little camera. I’ve done some playing with it and the first batch of pictures have been uploaded in the “pictures!” link on the right.