Getting It All Planned Out

A quick rundown today as I am without pictures and taking in the final innings of tonight’s subway series game in the lounge after waiting two hours for some folks to watch “Grey’s Anatomy.”  Kung Fu Panda was pretty awesome, mainly all the scenes involved pandas being lazy and climbing stairs.  

Thursday involved some hard core sleeping in.  After staying up late for the movie and an episode of South Park I slept until past 8:30 a.m. and missing breakfast, I stayed in bed another hour before showering and processing the previous day’s wood samples.  Missing breakfast meant I was really hungry the rest of the day.

Taylor came down with a mean fever/sickness later in the day.  Gilbert, Fei and I coffee breaked and played cards for a good while leading up until dinner.  Started watching a movie but soon retreated to bed to avoid the sleeping in debacle.

This morning, Taylor stayed in from the field and Fei and I went out to core a dozen or so trees and finished all the coring in the LEP secondary plot.  On Monday we should start and finish coring the primary forest plot, but it is bound to be a long day in the field.  This afternoon I took care of some business and arranged a car to take us to the plantation and back late next week.

Got in a good 90 minutes of reading “1776.”  Still awesome.  Tomorrow is for processing samples to put in the oven and taking some out of the oven.  Later on, who knows, but there’s no shortage of tasks to accomplish.  Planned out the rest of the project, putting a finish date as July 16 with the option to do an extracurricular project in a couple more field days.  Time after that may be spent traveling, helping out Amanda and Vanessa and studying for that MCAT thingy.

Have a great weekend everybody!

BP

Wet Season and Some Fine Eating

The rest of Tuesday was quite rainy and I spent a bunch of time at the computer polishing up some data, reading some papers and not doing my laundry.  The Yankees game was simply a disaster, but followed by “Weeds” and three episodes of “Entourage.”  Went to bed around 11:00 p.m. and had by far the best sleep of the last three weeks.  I think is was a cooler than average temperature and some accumulated tired.

Got up late-ish today and had a wonderful breakfast of pancakes and over easy eggs.  Lingered ar breakfast chit-chatting until 7:45 p.m.  Sluggishly got ready for the field knowing we’d be heading out to do work two weeks ahead/off of schedule since we had yet to garner permission to core more trees.  Then it dumped and decided not to go out to the field.  Instead we make a heck ton of bags for wood and played with the data thus far.

Around 10:30 a.m. we got approval to take cores, so lined up an afternoon field day.  Lunch was also really good, a garlic fish filet with broccoli.  We geared up and hit the trail for LEPS at 1:00 p.m.  Started coring at 1:40 and got 16 trees done and back to the lab at 4:00.  Some emailing and a coffee break which ran into dinner (barbecue!) and soon enough we’ll be heading to the lounge for the La Selva premiere of Kung Fu Panda.  

ESPN.com has stopped working at La Selva.  This tragedy has put a serious cut into my procrastinating time. 

Joba Chamberlain is boss!

BP

The Pictures You Haven't Seen

Monkeys!

Ectophylla alba, the pure white bats mentioned earlier

So Sunday's first picture was the udder of this Red-Eyed Tree Frog Cow.  Taryn in the foreground, Case behind the cow.

Yea, a Cow about to Chomp on Some Ram

Wet Concrete is Super Tempting

Now thar's a beach

Caribbean Living

Sloth!

The House from Up the Trail

Mmmm...Patacones

Doing up some Patacones

Could Make it into a Coffee Table Book

Taylor, Fei and I Beaching It

Our Accommodations in Manzanillo

Pictures courtesy of Gilbert, Taylor and Stefanie.

A Soccer Game, Some Frisbee and a Little Crime - Part II

Today’s factoid is that my 21st birthday is two tumultuous months from now.  And now to pick up from where I left off...

I had made all these “contingency” and “last resort” plans which I left for Taylor in her email box.  But with no confirmation I decided to join the girls at dinner which lasted until 7ish and we grabbed a couple taxis up to Tibas for the game.  The traffic was crazy, there were folks clad in uniforms and flag everywhere, every restaurant and bar packed...very much like UConn in February 2006.  Best sporting event I’ve ever been to is still Villanova at Connecticut 2/28/06.

Met Taylor, Fei and Monica (another student from Wellesley) at the McDonalds in Tibas (they had only been waiting for an hour) and after fighting about email and stealing some fries we reconciled and headed towards the stadium.  Here’s where my stupidity gets the best of me.  Last year I was super cognizant about like watching my wallet and other large rowdy crowd tenets.

Sort of might of rushed into the crowd a little excited and then into a wall to wall, fire code-failing bar and didn’t come back out with Mr. wallet.  So, yea, got pick-pocketed and I’m very much without money these days, but luckily I don’t need any on station.  Being distraught about the wallet, the game wasn’t as enjoyable as expected, but it was still super exciting and we ended up with midfield third row seats.  The action was in your face like whoa.  Check the video from the game.  Costa Rica scored two goals quick in the first half and Granada struggled to send the ball in the direction of the net.  Another garbage goal in waning minutes and Costa Rica went on to a 3-0 victory an into a winners round robin pool for a ticket to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.  

After the game (~10:00 p.m.) we huddled up at the Mickey D’s to make sure we had everyone.  The four Wellesley girls and I took a bus into the city and a taxi to the apartment.  Everyone was pretty tired and after watching a little Pirates of the Caribbean and The Mummy we all retired to bed.  The others ended up going out to meet a fellow researcher in San Jose.

Taylor, Fei and I were up at 8:00 a.m. to grab some grub and take a taxi to the bus station for our trip back to La Selva.  The bus ride was quick and we were back for lunch at the station.  Didn’t do much of anything Sunday until playing another great game of ultimate before dinner.  Passed up on movie night and hit the sack hard.

Yesterday was a field day with Taylor, Fei and Enrique.  We visited two plots to identify and tag trees.  Stupid me forgot to bring the diameter tape, which wasn’t a huge setback, but didn’t help productivity much.  Also the wettest day in the field ever.  Once we got to the first plot it started dumping and didn’t lay off until late afternoon.  At some point I probably had a liter of water in each boot.  Nonetheless, we got a lot of work done and tagged past tree 150 out of 400 (as that’s all the tags I bought).  

Today will be a hodgepodge of activity ranging from making bags for wood tomorrow to maybe doing some laundry and reading some things.  New York at Pittsburgh is on TV, so that will consume my evening followed by “Weeds.”  Thanks for reading everybody!

BP

A Soccer Game, Some Frisbee and a Little Crime - Part I

And on to the weekend we go.  Friday morning I began my day at the REU mentor symposium, but forced my self to retire to the lab to work on my “Request for LSAC Approval.”  A document which is being completed much in retrospect, as I’ve already cored 68 trees.  Got through a bunch of tough questions and did some running around getting things for permits and stuff.

After all that is was time for a coffee break.  Drank and read for a half hour or so before making it down to the field for a game of ultimate.  My team kind of got it handed to us.  On the upswing, we played again this afternoon in what is becoming a 5:00 p.m. tradition.  We lacked this so much last summer and I’m glad to see us all get out there and sweat our asses off.

I spent Saturday morning coordinating people for our trip.  Got the great news that Taylor secured nine tickets in a row.  Nine tickets that we would later find to be center field and in the third row...for ten bucks.  We decided to take the 11:00 a.m. bus to the city.  Case and Steph went into town earlier to buy bus tickets and .  As Taryn, Megan and I waited at the bus stop, Case and Steph’s bus whizzed by as they wave with utter confusion on their faces.  Apparently we didn’t jump the gun quick enough to adequately wave the bus down and they just kept on keeping on.

Fearing that we would be camped out at the bus stop for the next ninety minutes, we were relieved to see another bus to San Jose pull up 10 minutes later and made sure to flag that puppy down.  Got some good reading done on the bus through the park and had some good ripe plantain chips.

From the bus stop the three of us (Taryn, Megan and yours truly) grabbed a van taxi (reminded me of the one dad had in those first few years of life) to Hotel Aranjuez, a place I’ve stayed twice and where the four girls were splitting a room.  My accommodations were provided by the wonderful people at Wellesley College in the form of a couch on the west side of town.  At this point I was also getting a little worried that I hadn’t hear from Taylor or Fei.  Checked email but got nothing.  Sent a good deal of emails to Taylor working out contingencies and last resort plans.  

(L to R) Stephanie, Taryn, Megan, Case

From the hotel the five of us went to the super-touristy market, which was interesting for about a half hour.  The next hour sort of dragged as the girls ran up and down the aisle deciding which earrings, scarves, bags or t-shirts to buy.  The only thing I would’ve bought would be like a salsa bowl or a hammock, but that’s all business that can be done on my way out of the country.  

We had a beer and a bite to eat at a little restaurant were the tables were approximately 60% too small to fit two place settings across from each other.  Odd, but on the plus side I had a good burger and women’s billiards was on ESPN across from my seat.  Still no email from Taylor or Fei, so rather than forgo dinner and catch a bus to the suburb of Tibas, I joined the ladies for dinner at Cafe Mundo.  Chicken and spinach pizza with great toppings and crust...sauce and cheese left something to be desired.  

Once I track down some pictures of the rest of the evening I’ll finish this guy up in Part II.  Maybe tonight, but likely tomorrow afternoon.  Thanks for the read!

BP

Sunny Days and Starry Nights

That's what the commute to work looks like every morning.

Things have been quite routine lately.  We were in the field yesterday setting up plots until noon-ish in both LEPS and LEPP.  After the hike and bike back to the station I showered up and had lunch.  In the afternoon I dealt with some tree coring permit/approval issues, which should be resolve early next week.  

Around 4:00 p.m. I took a good traditional coffee break with Taylor and Diane.  Read a little more of “1776,” which is easily one of the most intriguing books I’ve ever read.  At five, we played ultimate with some guys on a course from Humboldt State in California.  Got super sweaty and dirty, but my team won making it worthwhile. 

Changed and had dinner.  Began to coordinate the soccer game with some folks at dinner.  Things are pretty straightforward with the exception of ticket availability, which we will resolve tomorrow afternoon.  I missed lunch yesterday due to being in the field.  They had patacones at the comedor and it was a consensus that mine were better.  Yay!  Watched “Knocked Up” in the researcher’s lounge last night with Gil, Taylor and Fei.  Quickly becoming weird TV people.

I spent this morning reworking the Outing Club website.  You can check out what I’ve done so far by clicking the link to your right.  I also did laundry and started working on a sheet I need to do for project approval.  In an hour or so I’m going to mass all of those beautiful wood samples, but first I feel it’s time for some war and coffee.

La Selva has been super busy over the last couple days with the arrival of the 12 REUs and mentors as well as more and more courses coming in and out.  Tomorrow is the REU mentor symposium where each mentor (Profs, post-docs, and grad students) gives a talk about their research.  On Saturday the REUs present their proposals.  I might catch some of that before zipping off to the big city.  We’ve also had really clear skies lately evidenced by the title and picture.

More updates tomorrow.  Also rode the bike into the field for the first time yesterday and it felt like half the ride it used to be.

BP

Sometimes I Walk In Zig-Zags

Gosh, I’ve had so many of those “gotta blog this” moments over the last couple days, but almost too many as I’ve delayed this post long enough.  I’ll start off with a quote,

“i made friends with about 30 guys and chicks straight from Islam, and they all speak really heavy Hebrew.” - Steve Lavoie

Note the part about the beautiful country of Islam.  Well, on with the post.  Got up Monday morning ready for a full day in the field.  It was also the last day I had to ride one of the relatively uncomforatble and ineffiecient project bikes.  I went to the field with both Taylor and Fei, which will be the modus operandi on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for the next 4-5 weeks.  We got to the plot shortly after 8:00 a.m. and proceeded to set up the field lab.

The goal was to core all 58 tagged trees, which I’m glad to say was met.  Taylor and Fei took turns being either the wood cutter/bagger or runner of cores as I did most of the coring.  Around tree 45 i started feeling it in the shoulders and they were like jell-o for the rest of the day.  This project is also bound to callus up my hands pretty good.

On Saturday, Taylor and Fei found Ectophylla alba in the plot.  They’re little pure white insectivore bats with yellow noses and feet.  Unfortunately they broke camp and I didn’t get to see them.  To make up for it, we saw a cool lizard/iguana type thing of whi

ch the genus escapes me and a super furry spider that may or may not have been a tarantula. 

I took a break there to go watch Weeds (it was great, btw), so now I’m super tired and I’ll sum up pretty quickly.  So right after getting back from the field, I proceeded to take a shower and eat lunch.  I was on my way to grab a taxi and go to town, when I remembered about the US Open playoff round as I passed the lounge.  Sat and watched Tiger for as long as I could--as he forced the sudden death--and took off to town.  

It took a half hour or so to settle the bike purchase and the whole time it was thundering in the distance and I was no in the mood to ride the 4 km back to La Selva amidst a storm.  Luckily we dodged rain all day yesterday.  Riding the bike back yesterday felt a lot like the day I got my car.  Going from big, slow vans and trucks to the zippy Vibe and likewise from clunky project bikes to a new smooth ride.

Made it back before dinner and had to delay blog posting due to a mass excursion to the bar.  I believe, at its peak every researcher with a couple exceptions was at La Machaca where Mom bartends and her 10 year old son bar backs.  Definitely the busiest bar in town on that Monday night.

Today was all about lab processing and I won’t go into the details, but it took six and a half hours to process all 174 samples and get them into the oven.  Here’s a picture showing all the visual variability found in rainforest tree wood.  If I could, I would also include some of the great smells.  Watched the Yankees play a gem of a game this evening and topped it off with the aforementioned Weeds showing.  Turning out to be the great week as I expected.

When I finished massing and volume-ing samples I helped Taylor and Fei out with data entry for Amanda.  When I came back in from watching the game, Taylor was just finishing up entering all my data.  Way to go Tay!

In the field tomorrow setting up plots.  No coring until at least next Wednesday.  Hopefully soccer game this Saturday in San Jose.  Later all.

BP

La Selva: Weekend Edition

Not too too much has happened since the last post, but since my two companion bloggers have admirably put up posts this evening, I shall follow suit.

La Selva’s atmosphere changes dramatically on the weekend. The local project assistants are absent and all of us researchers tend to be satisfied with a lesser amount of work. Half field days, heavy afternoon porch time. I stayed up the latest I have yet last night mostly chit-chatting on the porch and eating sugar-coated almonds.

A fine week is shaping up with some all-out coring tomorrow, aiming for 58 trees, or the remainder of what has been tagged. Tuesday morning will be devoted to processing above samples. In the afternoon I’ll do something involving reading and/or writing. Wednesday is for plot setup at the LEP secondary and LEP primary forest plots. On Friday, Taylor and Fei go to San Jose for a seminar and I’m working on organizing a trip to the World Cup qualifying match against Grenada Saturday Night.

I’ve really dug into “1776” and it’s been amazing. A great quote came out of correspondence by a British soldier in 1775 Boston. “If given the option to “get out under the smoke” they would choose “the fresh beef side of the question.” The author’s description of Henry Knox’s acquisition and overland transport of the mortars and cannon from Fort Ticonderoga was especially inspiring.

I almost hope The Finals end tonight so I no longer have to dread not being able to watch the games.

Today I made drying trays for wood samples and made some headway on developing an additional project on wood specific gravity at the tree plantation here on station. Looks quite promising. I watched a little bit of Sunday Night Baseball and decided that summers in Costa Rica is hurting my baseball knowledge.

My Yankees are on ESPN for the first time in two weeks Tuesday night at San Diego. Also, “Weeds” returns tomorrow and I’ve found a couple fellow fans to watch it with. Tomorrow after the field the plan is to go into town to get the new bike and some sustenance as well as a newspaper to check up on soccer ticket news.

Well, I hope you agree that that’s enough talk without a picture, so I’ll leave it at that. ¡Hasta mañana!

BP

Caribbean Vacation

In a word, the beach was excellent.  We all got up super early on Wednesday morning to catch the bus going to San Jose to get off at El Cruce and then onto a bus headed to Limón and finally a bus from there to Manzanillo, which is off the beaten path.  A bumpy bus ride ensued.  Six hours later we ended up at Congo Bongo, a vacation house rental operation 500 meters west of town.

The house, as you can see, was awesome.  We had full kitchens complete with blenders and coffee machines.  Also plenty of sitting areas and a hammock.  After getting settled in, we all headed down the beach and to town via the beach.  Just as last year, the beach was amazing, full of Caribbean flavor and that “LOST” feeling.  

Town was a one road deal with a mini super, a bar/restaurant, a water sports rental operation, and a few cabina/bungalow places.  We spent some time in the grocery store picking up beer, snacks and wonderful things to cook up.  Went for a quick dip and stopped at the bar before heading home to get dinner started.  After slaving over a hot stove for an hour or so, I dealt out eleven delicious taco salads.

Of course, everyone enjoyed it.  After dinner we sat around for a little while, I took a hammock nap and most people hit the sack early.  Some folks got up early to go birding or diving, I personally took advantage of the vacation and slept in until 10 or so.  Spent the rest of the morning reading “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis, which I finished later on in the afternoon.  Next up is “1776” by David McCullough.

That afternoon I made patacones for lunch, again a rave hit.  Someone has a picture of those bad boys that I’ll get up here in the near future.  A long afternoon of reading and beaching.  The walk to the beach was really cool as all the crabs standing guard outside their holes retreated in a cascade.  There were also plenty of howlers, toucans and sloths; a full jungle meets ocean experience.  

Dinner we had out at Arte Cafe, where we were the first customers.  An interesting time including the same song playing on repeat and a sampling of some mediterranean dishes.  Wasn’t the most filling or tastiest of dinners, but we all had fun.  Late night, I made some more patacones and hit the hay some time around eleven o’clock.  

Friday morning, I cooked egg and cheese sandwiches for everyone and delivered them to the beach.  Got packed up and cooked the rest of the eggs for lunch.  We grabbed the bus on the street around one and made it back the La Selva shortly before eight last night, where they’d saved dinner (cannelloni) for us.  

And that sums up the vacation.  Once we get around to sharing pictures, I’ll have some more good’uns for you.  Check out two more enticing blogs in the links from Mike and Steven.  

Back to work this afternoon with some reading/writing and making drying trays.  Monday and Wednesday will be field days and hopefully a World Cup qualifying match in San Jose on Saturday.  Well, I think this has gotten substantially long, so I’ll save further exciting anecdotes for later.

BP

New Whip, Almost

Apparently I just don’t have the endurance of daily blogging that I developed last summer, so I plan to continue the tradition of every 2-3 days, unless lots of super exciting stuff starts happening.  The big news today is that before accomplishing anything profound, I’m taking off to the beach tomorrow morning.

A whole bunch of us are renting a couple of beach houses in Manzanillo, the next town to the East of Puerto Viejo where I spent three nights last summer.  This is also probably the first trip to anywhere in maybe 3 or 4 years I haven’t planned, led, etc., so that’s new and easy.  I volunteered to cook our first dinner tomorrow night.  It’s going to be a super awesome taco salad.  Tonight, I’m precooking and chopping up some ingredients.

Haven’t been to the field since the last post since Chops is orienting Taylor and Fei to their project for while she’s on the plant systematics course.  We’ll be in Manzanillo until Friday afternoon and will be in the field coring/setting up more plot-age Saturday and Monday.  

Went bike shopping today.  Rural Costa Rica bike shops are more or less like suburban American car dealerships.  Test drove this super nice Cannondale with disc brakes, but it was out of the price range (~ $800).  A fun ride nonetheless.  They ordered a Trek with a bigger frame than they had to be sent over from another shop.  It should get there Thursday, and I’ll pick up my new whip either Saturday or Monday.  Sweet deal.

Also got Eskimo Churchill #2, excellent as usual, but the price has skyrocketed since last summer to 750 colones, which is more like $1.70 with the weak dollar.  Also got all the groceries  for the taco salad.  Made all the bags for the next batch of cores.  Also massed the samples that were in the oven and got the first wood density values of the summer.  

I’ll be back to blogging Friday night, with lots of exciting pictures from the Caribbean!

BP

Setting Things In Motion

The last two mornings were spent out in the field.  On Friday, Enrique the new-to-Bosques, but not to OTS assistant joined me to help out in the identification of my 15 target species.  In all we found 68 trees representing 12 species, which was less than I had hoped, so I plan to extend the plot in a couple of directions.  Surprisingly all the tagging only took 2 hours and I was back to the station for some lunch and hair care.

The rest of Friday was more or less uneventful.  I saw my first green and black poison dart frog on the trail one of these days, looks totally radioactive.  Also saw a mot mot (fancy bird) fly above the trail on the way back today.  In peccary news, there were some recent births in the lab clearing and a few pigs were definitely chewing on the “leftovers,” and we had peccary for dinner last night.

This morning Dr. Chazdon and I decided to hit the trail to LEP and begin the coring (which isn’t anything like coring an apple).  I set out bags for ten trees and we completed them within ninety minutes.  I can anticipate coring near 50 trees on a full day of work with two assistants.  This also presented a wonderful photo op, so here’s some pictures of what my field lab and coring look like.

We were back for lunch, which was my favorite lunch, arroz con pollo, papas fritas, and platanos maduros.  Met a bunch of new folks today between lunch and dinner.  At 1:30 p.m., Amanda, Dr. Chazdon, Taylor, Fei and myself had a meeting to discuss the plans for the next six or so weeks.  I successfully got the meeting moved to the comedor as to enjoy my first legitimate coffee break of the summer.  We established a pretty decent schedule for while Amanda is away for five weeks on an OTS plant systematics course beginning Wednesday.  Here’s Amanda, Hoi Fei, and Taylor at our afternoon meeting/coffee break.

Prepared everything for sample processing including balances and water displacement equipment.  Completely botched the volume measurement and had to redo them all after dinner.  I won’t go into the details, but it definitely didn’t show off my genius.  

And hey...how ‘bout them Yankees?

So I hit a breaking point and signed up for mlb.tv, but the internet at La Selva seems to have just under the right amount of bandwidth to broadcast a game smoothly.  Rumor on the street suggests that the bioinformatics course has “equipment” plugged in that uses “90% of the bandwidth.”  So I guess I’ll wait it out for now, at least the audio portion works well.

Recently got the first batch of samples in the oven, which will be ready to mass again on Monday or Tuesday depending on the time it takes to dry to constant mass.  Tomorrow, I’ll be doing laundry, getting sample bags ready and probably won’t go out to the field.  Monday will be a trip into town for various supplies including, but not limited to a new bike, eskimo churchill and a load of platanos maduros fritos.  

I think that’ll do it for now.  Beginning to set in motion a little vaca to Panama in mid-July.  More on that later.  Thanks for reading!

BP

Quick Update

The ice machine is back!  It was a tough couple of days, but somehow I made it.  I gave Amanda a shopping list for when she went to town today, which included new coffee cups, so hopefully full throttle coffee-breaking will be in action soon.  

Also, I’ve resorted to listening to The Finals on ESPN Radio side-by-side with GameCast.  Works pretty well, but still not ideal.  Take my advice and never leave the world where watching championship sports on any TV is assumed and available.  

Today was the first field day of Summer 2008.  Dr. Chazdon, Taylor, and Hoi-Fei all joined me to the LEP secondary forest plot.  We started out by marking the buffer zone around the plot itself, which will be used for coring trees.  That brought us through lunch and until 1:00 p.m.  Afterwards, we attempted to learn some tree identification, but proved to be somewhat of a waste of time lacking a local naturalist.

Tomorrow is up in the air.  Enrique or Bernal may come out to LEP with me to go through the buffer zone and identify and tag trees belonging to the target species.  Feeling pretty good about the project in general, besides the business of obtaining an export permit for wood samples.  Might begin coring trees on Monday.

BP

The Triumphant Return

Well, I’m still catching up on the tired built up over the last 15 week semester and two week course in Maine.  And unfortunately, as you may have noticed, I have not taken any pictures yet.

13 hours: Door to door.  And that included a 90 minute delay, while already on the plane in Miami.  Apparently a hydraulic valve needed to be replaced on our plane, but this wasn’t revealed to anyone until 200 so

mething passengers were all comfortably sandwiched onboard.  The crew got us sandwiches to make up for the extra time spent on the plane.  I don’t know about you, but a sandwich will make up for most wrongdoings in any situation.  And, this thing was a beast; thick cut roast beef, ham and turkey topped with onions and mustard.  Weighed in at over a pound.

Should you feel bad for using English in Miami?

It might have even been more impressive driving through Braulio Carillo National Park this year than it was doing it the first time in 2007.  The shock of it was enhanced by coming from the more or less desolate coast of Maine to being surrounded by dense forest and thousands of species.

The rain forest has a healthy smell.

The second time around has also been met with a few more conveniences of knowing most people and the way things work.  Amanda arrived a week ago and the Wellesley interns got in Sunday.  A flip from being the first one here last May.  With that comes the pressure to hit the ground running, and I’m ready for it.  There’s a straight shot from here to thesis writing to manuscript submission to graduation and the real world.

Amanda secured us an office roughly four times the size of last year’s closet, plus it has a window!  Amanda also dominated just about every shelf in the place, so my belongings currently are arranged neatly using the pile method.  I’ll take a picture of what I look at when I write blog posts, so you can refer to it later on.  

Could be a Mac ad right there.

Today was spaghetti lunch; it was awesome.

I haven’t done much so far today.  Thought through all of my procedures and planned out the next couple of field days.  Tomorrow I’ll head out to LEPS to set up my plots and start identifying and tagging trees.  On Friday, Bernal will join me to help hunt down the harder-to-identify species out there.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to learn the 15 species I’ll be coring by the end of the week.

The goal is to core about 400 trees, which will hopefully be about 25 per species.  With lab work and plot set up I’d like to average 15 trees a day, but feel that I might be able to get that up to 20-25.  The project may need expanding if I have a few weeks left over.  Good thing I have no shortage of ideas.

The ice machine at La Selva is gone.  This is a dramatic update.  In its place is a gatorade cooler full of not just ice, but hunks of ice that have no business fitting inside of regular-sized glasses.

Water cooler:office (or Snow 437)::ice machine:La Selva.  

Baseball is on TV tonight.  A bunch of regulars from last year are back doing research, mostly Ph.D.-ers.  Our new interns are Taylor and Hoi-Fei.  Dr. Chazdon is here till Sunday and back in July.  NSF gave me $200 to buy a bike, so that’s on the weekend’s agenda.  Ta ta for now.

BP