Hojas

In the rain forest, you have to rake leaves all year. It’s 8:27 in the jungle and I’ve realized a severe lack of coffee in my diet has led to a brutal tiredness (results in a lack-luster post). Got my fill at breakfast, but did field lunches so no coffee there. Opted out of it at dinner due to tray space restrictions. Mad sleepzies.

Definitely getting into the swing of things, getting real busy too. First full field day since last Thursday when Amanda & I rocked out 57 trees. Solid day in the forest, cloudy, but no rain. Around 11:30am, we started to have ugly battery issues, real long story. Ended up trading Amanda four rechargables for four Energizer AA’s since they’re essentially the only battery that will fit the rangefinder. Isn’t battery size standardized for a reason?

Looked forward to my field lunch, yum. After lunch kept rubbing those positive and negative ends together to suck out all the juice and meet our goal. We’d be nowhere without goals. At 1:00pm the batteries croaked, but not after doing around 50 trees. Biked back to the lab and caught up with Debra and Amanda on the porch.

Swapped boots for slides, conditioner-ized my hair, now it’s quite soft and bouncy – just how I like it. Worked on various things through my afternoon. Finally got a vacancy in the washer to do a load of laundry. Mmm…soft, bouncy hair and soft, bouncy clothes. Forget all that tomorrow morning in the field.

Had a 4:00pm snack in the form of a ham sandwich. The yawnzies set in around now, couldn’t bear to look at spreadsheets anymore. Off to the porch. Did more conversing than reading. Dr. Chazdon got in this afternoon and swung by the lab shortly before dinner. Gave her the skinny on what’s up.

Meatloaf burger. Spent most of the day looking forward to watching game one of the NBA Finals and assumed it would be patched through on our ESPNs since it’s kind of a big deal. Hopped over to the lounge after 7:00pm and found that and MLS game and a Mexican baseball game were taking precedent. Super bummer.

One of those, well, I guess I’ll go back to work moments. And I did, unenthusiastically. Bed is calling. Couple more field days, easy-going Sunday, then right back at it. Four weeks down tomorrow, wow. Good deal.

BP