Mixed Messages:

Sorry there have been no updates in a while.

So here goes:

SCHOOL: meh. Still really busy, of course. I'm having an off semester, it seems. I am not making my usual As.

NEW ROOMMATE: is working out unexpectedly well. We have fun and cook really good food and take care of each other. Whichis is good because. . .

FOOT: is definitely badly sprained; my EMT friend also thinks I have a hairline fracture. I've not been to the doc of course. No money and no insurance. A cast on a hairline fracture is questionable anyway.

BANDING SEASON: has come and gone (for JIBS, anyway). Although I did volunteer some this year, some things happened that were very frustrating.

And. . . that's all for now. Have a wonderful Halloween!

But banding season is here! And it was the first day today! Yay! Since I live in Savannah now, I'm not going to make it out there every day, but my fall break is next week. I'll probably get to band 6 out of the 14 days they are open.

( School Stuff -- Large Images Under Cut )

You know, as I get older, I'm afraid I'm exchanging a higher frequency of idiotic acts with ones that are exponentially more mortifying.

Has anyone else found this to be true?

Could you imagine training up one of these things?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26076163-12377,00.html

I want one. Badly.

This is another post using my iPhone, because I still do not have a working computer. Please forgive spelling, punctuation, and spacing errors, as typing anything of any length on this thing is a pain in the ass.

Since my last post, I have hadt he flu, which subsequently left me with a sinus infection, for which I took the last dose of antibiotics yesterday. Not very fun, especially with no friends, relatives, or significant other to take care of me, even minimally.

I mostly don't like my classes very much, which is unfortunate. I feel like they are unnecessary and not advantageous to what I want to do with my degree. I do like Zoology, however, and have had the opporu ity to go on a few collecting trips of juvenile fish for that professor's research. Going on those trips makes merealize that there *is* an endpoint to all of this learning that I don't particularly want to do.

I still have not received any financial aid. They made me give them a copy of my social security card, two weeks after the semester started. They said that would fix my finaid problems. more than a week after that, they asked for my 2008 W2s, federal tax returns, and two other forms that I had to fill out. Hopefully, these will satisfy them, if not, they say it could take another 4-6 weeks. I keep wondering if they're going to ask for a pint of blood next. I had to borrow money from a relative to pay my tuition and borrow money from a friend to pay rent. I am completely and totally broke. I thought about perhaps getting a job, but o
I've been so sick and with labs and stuf' it would be nearly impossible sceduling. My lovely mother has been giving me $60 a week so I don't starve, which, honestly, she's barely affording.

I'm trying to make thebest of it. After all, I did just have a two-week trip to AK, a birthday present froM Jason, so I can't complain much, right? Still, I feel as if i'm in limbo, unable to mAke decisions for the futrue, because I don't know how much money I will get whenthey finally decide to give me financial aid. It's incredibly frustrating.

Since I'm feeling better, I decided to get up early yesterday and go birding @ Skidaway Island State Park. I guess I did about five miles of their trails yesterday. The highlights were seeing a pair of Barred Owls (we stated @ each other for about three minutes) and a Pileated Woodpecker with three half-grown younguns. The third one and I scared the hell out of each other, as he came around the tree he was perched on at about eye-level to me when I was about 3 ft from the tree. I think we both yelled. :D

Apologies for the lacke of LJ cut.

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth. An, um, mishap on the plane from ANC to ATL has left me without a working computer and posting from th iPhone (as I'm doing now) is too much of a pain inthe ass to do more than write a few sentences.

The remainder of my visit to AK was good. We did end up catching two more saw-whets (and something else, but I'll write an entry on that layer).

Started a new semester. Taking Vertebrate Zoology, Mammalian Physiology, Cell Biology, and a history class.

It always takes me a couple of weeks to recover from a trip to Homer to visit Jason. It's the one place where I feel unconditionally at home.

Writing this between net runs again.  We'll be camping the next couple of nights, so no owls.

Remember the "rough characters"  I was telling you about?  Well, we bought more peanuts, so he wouldn't hate us.
( Large images behind cut, couldn't bear to make them smaller. )
Goodness, I'm tired.  I might go to bed now, J will wake me up if there's an owl in the nets.

Say hello to my little friend:( Eeeeee! Pics of the Boreal Owl!!!!!! )

WE GOT A BOREAL.  A BOREAL.

More details to come.  I just had to post right nownow

No owls last night, no owls yet tonight.  I didn't do too much today -- had lunch with a friend at a restaurant in town, had an allergic reaction to something, took benadryl, slept afternoon away, spent time with J's friends this evening, ordered pizza for dinner, now writing this between net runs.
( Fun with the malamutes (image heavy) )

I got bitten by an owl last night. I was utterly thrilled.

Because, to have been bitten by an owl, we had to have caught an owl.  And we did!  A small female (based on wing measurement) Saw-whet Owl.  A hatch year -- all of her wing feathers were the same age.

Banding owls that have hatched here is pretty significant.  It means, if they are caught in the lower 48, we can gather information on their migration.  IT IS SO FUCKING EXCITING.  It's the culmination of a lot of years and years of work to get here for J.  He was even more excited than I was about the owl last night, if that is possible.

Anyway, here's proof:



We're trying again tonight; I'm writing this between net runs.

Today was pretty uneventful.  I went to town to get some flagging for the guy lines for the net poles today, because the line is a dark green and, unfortunately across a trail on J's property.  I also spent quite a bit of time baking some challah -- it turned out beautifully.  I cooked some of hawklady 's mushroom soup that she posted yesterday, adding garlic to it, and using white mushrooms instead of portobellos (it is a small town in AK, you take what you can get).  It was so very yummy -- thanks for the recipe!

Time to make another net run!

Day One so far, that is

Yesterday I got into Anchorage @ about 6:30, Jason and I had dinner with a few friends in Anchorage, then we drove back to Homer. That drive never ceases to amaze me; the first time I drove it, my jaw was hanging open almost the entire time, and that feeling has stayed with me, even though I've been on it several times since then. We got in about 1:30 this morning, and went to bed at 2am.

I got up before Jason, and two rather rough-looking characters were on the railing to the upstairs porch, staring at me expectantly. A couple of young Stellar's Jays looking for peanuts -- but I couldn't find them. They actually followed me around the house through the windows as I looked for the peanuts. I'm sure if I'd have let them in they would have known exactly where the peanuts were.

We finally went to breakfast (blueberry flapjacks -- I don't know that they call them pancakes up here) and to the farmer's market, and to Radio Shack to get a lead acid battery to power the audio lure for saw whet/possibly boreal owl banding tonight. While J rigged the audio lure up, I played with the used microscope he'd bought a couple of months previously -- the liverworts were especially neat to look at, but I gathered a bunch of other plant stuff to look at, even though I just spent the entire summer looking at it!

We then went out to measure net lanes, trim and weed-whack them so that we'd be able to set up mist nets for the attempt tonight at owl banding. Not that we'll get many at all, but it's worth a try. J just got his banding permit (he'd had a Canadian one before that, since he'd banded @ Holiday Beach Migration Observatory in Ontario for many years).

Right now we're about to cook dinner -- the last of the Winter King he had. Then we'll go back and actually put the nets on the poles and make sure we measured the weed-whacking distance appropriately, secure the poles, and put up the nets until it is appropriately twighlight enough to start the audio lure. It would be so great if we got even one saw-whet tonight! We think we might try for boreals, as well. I might just die of euphoria if we got one of those, but it's only a rare chance we might get one.

Anyway, I just let the malamutes back in -- two 120 pound bundles of joy. They're really happy dogs, so mellow, and just really want to play with me. They'll get too hot in a couple of minutes, and they'll want to go back outside.

Honestly, does life get any better?

ETA:  Oh, and the Alaskan IPAs.  My favorite beer ever ever.  Life is good.

I made an A in Botany!

I still don't know what I made on the final, but my thought is th
at he must have curved it.

Anyway, I don't know if I really care at this point, I
worked my butt off and got an A.

If this entry turns out to be weirdly formatted, it's because I'm posting from my phone; my computer's having issues at the moment.

 I do not like them.

( cue a bit of necessary whining. . .  )
I guess professors can do that.  I just don't think I like it very much.

And I leave for Alaska on Friday!  Wooo!</div>

Though I'm not going to SE AK this time.  Homer is technically South Central AK.  But SE is where I belonged for so long that I still identify with it.</div>

I love a good parody.

I don't know where my place is in this conversation, or even if I have a place in it.  But as a former progressive Christian now religiously unlabled, I feel the need to participate in sharing ideas like these:

"Bill Moyers speaks with Cornel West, Serene Jones, and Gary Dorrien for a fresh take on what our core ethics and values as a society say about America's politics, policy, and the challenges of balancing capitalism and democracy."  (Clicky clicky -- it's 40 minutes long, but well worth it; this segment is about social justice, the economic crisis, and the progressive Christian perspective on it, thanks to giniliz  for posting on FB)


( Read more... )


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Ah, lulz.  If we couldn't laugh at ourselves, we'd cry our eyes out.

Dudes!

I got an A in my astronomy class!  Now to tackle doing the same in Botany!  It inspired me to spend the beautiful holiday morning. . . in the Botany Lab.  It's an insane amount of material for this level of a class.  And, while I did get the highest score in the the class on the first lab exam, on the lecture exam, I did not.  Far from it, but definitely not failing.  Second Lab/Lecture test coming up next week.

With all the crap that happened this week, I needed to hear I actually did something right.

Venting did help last night.  Well, that, and I talked to a couple of good friends from Sitka.  It was good to be reminded of fun times and that I am missed and loved.

( My First Experience With Hypothermia )