Graduación

Threw myself a small graduation party for completing the so-called “Phase One” of my project, well not really, but the joy was there. All that practice I’ve been mumbling on about is coming to a close and we’ll see how tomorrow goes. Measured about thirty trees this morning in the forest, had top-notch accuracy numbers.

So a pretty normal routine for that. Had some time before lunch to goof around, clean stuff, clean me, put stuff away. Got a little distracted after lunch and tried to make my blog more presentable. Soon after, set up camp at a PC and worked with my data in Access. Got all my calculations of canopy closure index done for both of my secondary plots in both years. Felt really proud of myself, especially because I followed the methods that I developed back in April and everything went swimmingly.

Working with data has made me a cross-platform expert at copying and pasting shortcuts.

Onto more obscure and exciting things…I opened up my laptop to find a small mini-ant “infestation,” you might call it. Put on my game face and killed the entire colony which amounted to about twenty little buggers. I thought I was keeping a close eye on my laptop to prevent its theft, but now I must also try to stop my iBook from becoming a part of the rain forest.

One of my biggest regrets of leaving the country for the summer was the lack of Dunkin Donuts, and more importantly large regular iced coffees. As it turns out, La Selva has conveniently positioned the ice machine right next to the coffee machine. I’m going to try to start my morning with a makeshift iced coffee and see how it goes.

On that note, I’ve sort of already begun thinking about what I’ll bring back home as far as souvenirs. From talking to people a good plan seems to be organic coffee and machetes. Gotta see how that one pans out.

Got back from the Jimmy Buffett lecture a few minutes ago. Good talk about stress response/physiology in tropical and temperate frogs. Showed some cool data about why animals, including humans, have lower basal metabolic rates in tropical zones. Really profound hypotheses, but it lacked sample sizes. Had one of those people who raises their hand to ask a question, but really wants to have an explanatory conversation with the presenter…I hate those people.

Definitely must have an early morning tomorrow to get some trees measured with Amanda assisting me. General plan is to hit the trail after breakfast, get some measurements done, and be back for lunch. Some time to work in the lab after that, and then maybe some netting for bats at night. Shaping up to be a full day.

I’ve pretty much gotten over my initial fascination with wildlife, so no great new pictures today except for a cool and colorful mushroom colony in the arboretum. Lots to do tomorrow, maybe an early post, maybe a late one.

BP