Ciclismo

A few decently entertaining items for today, despite a very sedentary 12 hours around the lab. To start, the blog has reached 10,000 words, near the end of yesterday’s post actually. This being the 20th post (yay!), I’ll hopefully achieve 40, maybe 50,000 words, pretty sweet. In my elder years (like 30) it might take a while to reflect upon. Sorry again for the lack of picture, nothing especially caught my eye today.

Not to leave you without entertainment, I will provide two links today and today only to interesting things I found on the internet. First this, A Kit?!?. I ask how does one stop global warming with stencils, a book, and stickers? And secondly for you to read up on, Shaq. It’s not funny because it’s about fat kids, it’s funny because it’s Shaq, just to clarify.

After that change of pace here at the blog, we’ll return to the fragile and delicate (Re: South Park Season 3, Episode 1) rain forest. Got up surprisingly early again after being up to watch the game and blog it up. No matter where I am, waking up an entire hour before I have to is quite a blessing. Being able to open and shut the eyes as soon as the clock comes into focus is just one of those simple pleasures in life.

Speaking of simple pleasures, I continued to read Walk in the Woods today when Bryson put something forward that really resonated with me. He was discussing maps of the AT and how a particular map was really comprehensive. Of being completely cognizant of his surroundings he states, “at last I could take my bearings, perceive my future, feel as if I was somehow in touch with a changing and knowable landscape.” Countless times I have been standing somewhere in the woods with a map and have felt the same way. Cool.

And back to my morning…stream-of-consciousness writing, people have gotten famous by doing that intentionally. Had the intention of showering but never did. Set a new goal today; to read at least one study (as in scholarly paper about a study) every day for the rest of my stay and take notes pertinent to my project. Today I read two and felt quite accomplished.

Among other things input all of yesterday’s data and it looked pretty darn good in comparison with past data. Organized data tables, and color-coded some records, because we all know an MS Excel spreadsheet looks way better as a rainbow. I haven’t shaved in over 10 days; now that’s a non sequitur.

After a few days of seemingly eating nothing but peccary (again, not really peccary, just various other animals) we had chicken for lunch. It goes very well with the brown sauce. We have two sauces and I affectionately refer to them as brown and orange. As in most Mexican restaurants, you’re faced with the daunting choice of red or green, it kills me.

Took a short siesta and watched the aforementioned South Park episode. Nothing makes me giggle more than the Costa Rican president going “¿Qué?” to the choir teacher voiced by Jennifer Aniston. Had some data troubles to work out and think about along with reading those two papers. At around 4:30 I freed my mind of that and logged about 70 minutes of porch time. Really good porch time today.

Grad student Susan got here this afternoon, she’s coordinating the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program here this summer. The same program I was denied acceptance too, but it all seems to be for the best because the REU kids have to sit through a week of orientation and lectures; not cool. After the porch, went to dinner. Best attempt at something I consider “American” in a while. Beef brisket with that French onion sauce and potatoes. For dessert, a delicious crepe with a strawberry drizzly something. Yum.

Then not too much happened between then and now. We were supposed to go batting tonight, but at 4:00pm when we would have had to leave the thunder was quite frightful and lightning was abound. Nevertheless, it never rained and probably would have been a fine night for batting. This is getting to be a long post.

Since I made the good ole list of things to mention in the blog today, I am not at a loss for words as I was yesterday. I’ll save a couple of cabina-related items for tomorrow, with a picture (be excited). For now I’ll leave you with the following quote from a recent email (5:05pm) from Dr. Chazdon. Recall that my project entails about 8km of cycling every day.

“I talked with Tinny [the assistant who will help me on my project] today. She is very excited about the summer. This week she has two big tasks. 1) learn to ride a bicycle…”

BP