Things I Should Be Doing

1. studying for friday's "closed book take home" physical oceanography exam
2. physical oceanography homework problems due on friday
3. cleaning my apartment
4. cleaning my aquarium (i think that i am slowing poisoning my fish, snail, and hermit crabs with steadily increasing amounts of nitrogenous compounds in the water)
5. finding something to send to my brother for his wife's baby shower
6. reading papers on induced resistance and its effects on herbivores
7. making sure i have something to say at next week's committee meeting

am i doing any of these things? obviously, no. will i do them? eventually. will i do them today? probably not. what am i doing instead? well, blogging for now, but in general perusing my music collection, listening to stuff i haven't listened to for a while, trying to decide what song to get from iTunes w/ the free song pepsi cap that charlie so kindly donated to me this morning...and choosing random songs for the mix cd i am making for vanessa. ok, that's enough for now. i'm outie.

Ice Pilots 1 Bates Battaglia 0

so we have survived our first encounter with bates battaglia. well, he had an assist, but we beat the damn sea wolves. it was an exciting game...scary moments. but jacquo had a big game...2 goals, including the game winner late in the 3rd...which was of course scored at the end where chad and i sit, so i had a great view. i didn't have such a great view of his 2nd period goal. oh well...he was 1st star. you go, jacquo. vanessa says she got some good pics of bates. if she brings prints to the game next saturday, we're going to stay after the game and get bates to sign them and take pictures with him. yeah, he's a damn sea wolf, but how often is a player like bates battaglia (famous in the hockey world at least) in pensacola? well, a few more times this year, at least. so we're going to take the opportunity to get a pic w/ him and get an autograph...not like when i didn't attack jeremy roenick when chad and i saw him in tampa. i'm still kicking myself for that. just b/c he was on the phone...

the alumni game before the mississippi game last night was so funny. bob solarski cracked everyone up. what's a news anchor man doing on the ice? especially when he can't skate. now, i can't skate either, but you didn't see me out there trying to play hockey. and i got to see *kelly* (my all-time favorite ice pilot) on the ice again. when they played the 5-min game against the jr. ice pilots, he was passing to the kids - what a cutie. christian and pierre were showing off, big time. and choo-choo was just being choo-choo. it was awesome seeing all those guys again. tim kerr, the pilots' owner, skated surprisingly well, but i guess when you play for that long, it just comes back.

chad thinks i should promote jacquo to being my all-time fave pilot, since i have his jersey. i do like that little guy...i wonder if i should stop calling him "little guy." i wonder if he takes offense to stuff like that. i wonder what he was thinking when he fought lane manson. so many questions...maybe he'll have another good night tonight. i just realized that the other times jacquo has played really well recently have been on days like sundays when there aren't that many people in the civic center. but last night, there were over 6,100 people there. good stuff. maybe i'll get a repeat performance tonight. maybe he'll hit lots of people and knock them down - i always get excited when he does that. i think we have something to prove to columbia tonight after friday night. we shouldn't have lost that game. oh well, the inferno should be pretty tired tonight, so maybe we'll kick ass.

Hooray for productivity!

i'm proud of myself. i've accomplished a lot in the 4 hours i've been awake. i finished my paper, did taxes, ate something that wasn't junk food (yesterday, my calorie intake had an all-junk theme...tiny powdered doughnuts, ice cream, ranch wheat thins, chocolate thunder from down under from outback...). yucky - chad and i owe the state of alabama $135. oh well, we figured we'd have to pay something anyway since we paid fewer taxes for the first 5 months of last year than we did after we got married.

we saw some ice pilots in outback last night...david turon & ryan o'keefe and jordan krestanovich. i didn't bug them, though...it's just not the same when chad's the only one with me. he's not so into the harassing hockey players thing. he laughs at me b/c i gawk. last time we went to outback we saw jordan, o'keefe, and ryan stokes. i didn't bug them then, either, although several people did. i've decided that i need a girl posse if i'm going to bother the guys in public.

ok, time for more productivity...i've got bills to pay, checks to write.

ughh. so, it doesn't look like this mid-term/paper thing is going to get done today. i need a break. my goal was to write the thing today and be done with it. but since i didn't start it until today, i don't think i'm going to finish it until later. that's ok...i think i'm going to just stop writing about beach erosion and sediment accretion for today and continue that some other time. i am in desperate need of a shower. that's next on my list of things to do today. i was going to shower earlier, but i was on a roll and didn't want to lose my train of thought. the plan for after my shower...read cosmo until time for the game. or do something that doesn't require my brain, anyway. it's good that i don't have class on fridays. gives me time to work on stuff. but, as it turns out, i'm getting lazy. what am i gonna do when i actually have to work a full day? no sitting around, watching fuse, dancing around my living room when no one's watching, reading cosmo or some dive magazine, surfing the net, blogging when i think of something random...but doing actual work. hmm...i think i'll be ok. it will be fun work...and my schedule will still be flexible. i'll get to get paid for going to the beach. that always rocks. unless it's january and windy...then the beach sucks...i freeze and can't feel my fingers...yeah, that winter collecting thing isn't cool. i'll make sure i don't have to do any of that for my PhD project.

speaking of my project, i finally managed to set that committee meeting thing in stone. it's friday, march 11 at 2 pm. so i'm actually making progress there. that makes me happy. and more importantly, it makes dr. v. happy, so he doesn't think i'm a total spaz. not that he thinks that anyway. he pretty much said that i shouldn't worry about things too much for my 1st year of grad school...just go to class and attend seminars, and he's happy. but i'm not really happy just doing that. i'd rather be doing something useful...i don't want to be one of those people who stay in grad school until they're 30. i want to have my PhD when i'm 25...or 26, if it takes that long. the point is, doing nothing toward my project for a year doesn't help that cause. so i'm getting a little antsy. i want to start something...like the title of that lost prophets cd.

i'm excited about the game tonight...it feels like it's been forever since i've been to one. chad says i can't wear my jersey tonight since it's a white out night, and my jersey is a blue one. :P i want to wear it anyway...matt might go with us tonight. i'm not matt's biggest fan, but he's chad friend, so what can i do? i can survive him for one night...chad doesn't make me hang out with him that much. anyway, it'll be another butt in a seat in the civic center. oh, and chad got out of working on sunday, so he'll be at the game with me then...and tomorrow, and tonight. i'm really excited about the alumni game...i get to see *kelly* play again. yay.

all right, enough chatter. shower time.

Committee Meeting

so, i have been valiantly trying to set up my first committee meeting. i don't want it to be a big, formal, scary thing - just me and 3 PhD's in a room talking about my project. no power point, no trying to convince anyone of anything. i just want to sit down and talk with these people. unfortunately, we seem to be experiencing schedule conflicts...or that's what i assume. three out of four people involved in this meeting are free friday march 11 at 2 pm...but anne hasn't responded to my last two emails. so i can't tell everyone to write this down just yet. i wish she would hurry up and say, "yes, that's fine" or, "no, let's try [insert day and time here]." maybe i'll stop by her office after biometry this morning.

yuck...lots of work to do today. i still haven't started on that paper/mid-term that's due on monday...and i have to go to daphne today and pay a visit to east bay kia for car maintenance. i think i was supposed to do something for biometry today, but whatever it was, i didn't do it. no biggie...i think it was just look over the notes so i could ask questions about ANOVAs before we move on to another topic. and i guess if i'm trying to make this committee meeting thing happen, i need to actually read some of the stuff i have on seagrasses and induced resistance.

so, chad informed me this morning that he has to work for a couple of hours sunday night. that sucks...we have a game...i guess i'll be asking deva if she's busy sunday, see if she wants to go to the game with me. i saw jamie off yesterday as the movers were loading up her stuff to take to raleigh. *sad face* maybe she'll come visit. or maybe i'll make a trip to raleigh sometime. what's in raleigh? if the NHL plays in the fall, maybe i'll go see the hurricanes play the flyers...hmm...now there's an idea. go see jamie, go to a game...good stuff.

alright, i gotta run...the shower beckons...

I <3 iTunes

iTunes rocks...i love free songs. i'm in the middle of downloading 4 free songs from iTunes...good stuff. they also have free songs every week or so, so i got one of those, too ("save me" by unwritten law). i like not having to buy an entire album for just one or two good songs...just pay 99 cents for the songs i want...good stuff. i don't download enough songs to make $15/month for napster worth my while, so iTunes is perfect for me. and i do still buy cd's, if it's a band i really like (i will never download a green day song - i'll just buy the cd). oh, wait...i did download a couple from international superhits (i already had most of the songs on other cd's so i just needed the two that weren't on old cd's). anyway, i'm once again putting off homework...it's due tomorrow...and i have an essay to write...it's due monday. i need to do it before the weekend, though. there are three ice pilots' games this weekend, so i'm not gonna want to do homework. there's a game tonight, too. sadly, i will have to settle for listening to this one. nuts. i shouldn't have told chad the game is against florida...we've seen them, like, 5 times this season, and he doesn't want to drive to p-cola on a week night when he has to work the next morning to see the pilots play a team we've seen a bunch of times already...especially considering that we're going to all three games this weekend...promising him that i would drive and he could sleep on the way home (even though it won't be that late) didn't work, either...i guess i could still go, but then i went and procrastinated away, and now i have to do physical oceanography homework that will require my emailing my prof, like, 6 times b/c i don't get it...and it's due tomorrow - no more time to put it off. it must be done. *sigh*

...back to the hockey talk for a bit, then off to do homework. damn mississippi for signing bates battaglia (but he does have a cool name)! just b/c his little bro plays there...i'm just a little miffed because i don't want the damn sea wolves to get better...we have to play them 6 more times (and i really don't like them, with the exception of louis dumont - it's not really his fault he's a damn sea wolf now...although he could have signed with another echl team). oh well, we can still take 'em. alaska has scott gomez (who i would fly to anchorage to see play if chad was for it - yes, i would go to alaska despite my aversion to cold just to see scott gomez) and we still have a lead on them in the league. true, we haven't actually played the aces...maybe we'll play them in the play-offs and i won't have to fly to alaska...that would be best for all involved. so, alaksa should win the national conference, and the pilots should win the american conference, so i don't have to fly to alaksa to see scott gomez. actually, if alaska wins the national conf., i might go see them wherever they play in our conference, even if we don't win it...i wonder how chad would feel about that...hmm...

Where is my motivation?

"where is my motivation? no time for the motivation..."
~Green Day "Longview"

i've been thinking of this line a lot lately. i really need a project...a research project, that is. one to base my dissertation on. so, i have the basic idea...now i actually have to get going on it...but i don't feel motivated in the slightest. maybe this lack of motivation stems from never seeing my advisor. when i was an undergrad, i saw my advisor nearly every day, since i worked in her lab and had classes in the same building, so i saw her a couple of times a day even when i wasn't working. the little things really kept me going...just talking to her about my plans for the week, what needed to be done, seemed to keep me motivated. tiny questions about what i had written so far kept me from putting it off too much, even if i did manage to procrastinate a little. but given the opportunity, i can put things off forever. living in mobile and not on dauphin island, only having one class at the sea lab this semester (where dr. v spends most of his time), i just never see him. so he can't make the little, "so, how's that idea coming?" comments nearly often enough. emails are not sufficiently threatening! i need that thing he does where he looks down at me over his glasses and asks what i've been doing...not that he's "looking down at me" like i'm a peon or anything. he's just very tall, and i'm on the short side (~5' 3") so to look at me, he naturally has to look down.

or maybe i can't blame my lack of motivation on never seeing dr. v. maybe i'm just being lazy. maybe i've started to enjoy not having every minute of every day scheduled a little too much. it's just so much easier for me to do the actual work than it is to do the writing and planning that comes before the good stuff (the going out in the field, getting muddy, spending hours in the lab processing samples). ahh, there's my dilemma. if i don't get on with doing the writing and planning and scheduling a committee meeting (and having something to say to the committee at said meeting), then i can't get to the fun stuff. ok, i think i just found my motivation. i need to email dr. v and set up a meeting with him and anne and tim (committee members - and anne's my undergrad advisor). i at least need to talk to all of them at once...run the basic idea by them, maybe it's crap and i don't know it. i'm sure that they know things that i don't. ok, i need to get up and do stuff...i do have a class today. and i did promise jamie that i'd go over and help her pack...ok. going to make coffee, take a shower, get ready to sit in my geological oceanography class for 3 hours. yikes, that sounds brutal. but it's the trade-off for only having class once a week. alright, i'm really going now.

Pilots and Cruises

beautiful...we were down by two...and now we're tied. there must be something about germain arena. we go down, but we always come back. i'm just sitting here at my mom's house listening to the pilots game. the 2nd period was bad to us, as many 2nd periods are...but the 3rd has been making up for that lately. i love a team that has a good 3rd period. or really, just a team that doesn't give up when they're down in the 3rd. and kudos to scott may with 2 goals this game. i like that guy. actually, i like a lot of our guys this year. i hope we get that 12th straight win.

anyway, it's been a pretty uneventful day...jamie came over...went shopping...made plans to go to her place monday to help her pack. *frown* i'm sad that she's moving to raleigh...maybe the NHL will have a season in the fall and she can go see the hurricanes. i hope the raleigh thing works out for her...i think she'll be happy with her sister there.

chad and i are thinking about taking a cruise to cozumel. we talked about it on the way back to flomaton...his parents want to go on the cruise. i don't know if i'm terribly excited about that. not the cruise, i'm all for that...but i don't know about being on a boat with his parents for a few days. not that i don't like the in-laws, they're great...so i guess i don't know why i'm not too thrilled at the thought of going to cozumel with them. anyway, they want to go the weekend of may 19th...which is four days after my and chad's anniversary. it's also going to be during prime play-off time for the ice pilots (if they don't lose their magic in the post-season). i don't want to miss that. i think the august cruise is a better idea...that's something good for my 23rd birthday. i think there's one the week after my b-day that will be before fall semester starts.

sounds like this one might be another OT game in germain arena. the one chad and i went to in december went into OT...we won. it was good stuff. maybe may will get that hat trick tonight. yes, indeed, we have OT...i hope this one ends in our favor...all right, i'm off to focus on the rest of the game.

Signs

it must be a sign...i actually logged on to web to do something useful this time. i intended to access the university library's website to look up a few papers i've been meaning to acquire to develop my research question a little more...i'm supposed to be summarizing what's been done in the field of induced resistance to herbivory in seagrasses and marsh plants and gathering all the info i can find on the effects of induced resistance on the herbivores. once i do that, i'll know where the major unknowns are, which will help me convince my advisor (and my committee) that my idea is a good one...which means that i will actually be able to start on my graduate work. i've felt sort of...naked without a project for the past few months, especially when i was involved in research non-stop for nearly 3 years. i know there are at least two papers on my particular seagrass species (i know the guys who did the work), so i just need to actually get them. but alas, USA's website (and thus USA library's website) is down. i'm taking this as a sign that i am meant to put off doing actual work for a while longer, at least. now, i could put on some shoes and a jacket and physically go to the library (it's only 10 minutes away, after all), but why would i do that when i can get the necessary info from right here on my couch tomorrow? nope, i'll just sit here and procrastinate. i started a book last week (KOKO by Peter Straub). maybe i'll read a bit. or maybe watch a rerun of Friends.

ahhhh! damn directv. ok, so the Friends rerun option is closed to me. i turned the satellite to the WB, and what do i get? the blue screen of death. with the stupid "sorry, we are experiencing technical difficulties" message. ok, FUSE it is...i like fuse...it's a much better music channel than MTV, MTV2, or VH1. i'm not into hip-hop or r&b, so BET doesn't do it for me. fuse had a green day special earlier...it made me happy...i did random stuff around my apartment while green day videos played for half an hour...green day rocks. i could listen to them all day...

anyway, to steal skeet's (TK101 dj) line - i'm outta here, bitches.

Plots kill babies!

perhaps lindsey and i have too much fun in biometry. one of us (or more often both of us) will stop paying attention and say something really random...which of course cracks us both up. i firmly believe that everything is funnier (1) when there's something in your mouth (have you ever noticed that, when you've just taken a big sip of something and haven't swallowed yet or you're brushing your teeth or chewing up a big bite, someone just has to look at you the wrong way and you totally crack up?) and (2) when you're somewhere where sudden spasms of laughter are totally inappropriate. because, of course, knowing that you shouldn't laugh makes it so much harder not to. well, they both happen to me quite often - i am horribly prone to uncontrollable giggling fits. for example, last semester in chemical ecology, one lecture dealt with the effects of several herbal remedies. well, one of the effects of a particular traditional herb is seeing little people...like leprechauns...so, of course lindsey and i thought that this was hilarious...really, it doesn't sound funny now...but in a semi-dark classroom listening to a lecture where sudden giggling is frowned upon, it was the funniest thing ever...especially when we tried to imitate an affected person's behavior and the reactions of emergency room staff...we must have laughed for at least five minutes straight. really, it's a good thing that the prof for that class was my undergraduate advisor, whose lab i worked in for 3 years...so she was pretty accustomed to my little quirks. maybe she thought it was funny, too.

anyway, today's randomness...mccreadie (biometry prof) was talking about...something - i don't think i was paying attention...but he kept saying the word "larvae" over and over...so many times that i had tuned out anything but "larvae" and realized what a funny word it is. it was one of those times when you hear a word so many times that it loses all meaning, and for me, this makes words funny. so, i told lindsey who wasn't paying attention, either, what a funny word "larvae" is, and she just randomly started whispering, "larvae!" which made me laugh, and my laughing made her laugh...ok, i guess you had to be there. then, as we were leaving class, we were discussing the procedures we'd used on our assignment, and suzanne had used plots to figure out whether she should use correlation or regression...when earlier in the semester mccreadie told us plots are bad - they are too subjective to be accurate...i wrote that in my notes, "plots are bad." so, lindsey and i were discussing the malicious qualities of statistical plots vs. analyzing the numbers, and she said, "plots are evil - plots kill babies!" ok, maybe this is another one of those 'you had to be there' things, but it was freakin' hilarious an hour ago.

anyway, in another fit of extreme procrastination, i have created a website, so feel free to visit...i have posted some photos, the quantity of which will be increasing over the next couple of weeks. there are also links to a couple of good sites to make you laugh when you need a little mood-lifter...the darwin awards one is guaranteed to make you feel better about yourself...you just know that you are smarter than these people.

www.geocities.com/latinamarie1

Lost Season

so they finally cancelled the NHL season officially. it's about time. i'm happy that the NHL isn't playing this year. this may confuse those who know what a huge Philadelphia Flyers fan i am. but i must say that i have been sustained by ECHL hockey this season...and i don't want to lose the awesome guys the Pilots have gotten from toronto (st. john's, really...and houston - AHL). an NHL season held the possibility of really screwing pensacola hockey...not to mention the fact that i just bought chris st. jacques's jersey...and he's an assigned player...who may have been called up if st. john's lost players to toronto. so...we ice pilots fans will have our guys for a few more months. and continue to enjoy our first place position. i'd like for our guys to get to move up in the hockey world, but for this season, i'm being selfish - i want to watch them play. and if continuing to see the best team that pensacola has ever had means that i don't have to pay the bill for NHL center ice from directv and can't see JR and the rest of the flyers until the fall, well then, so be it.

oh, the fog

fog at nearly 1:00 in the afternoon is so wrong. the weather in mobile (and here on dauphin island) is absolutely gorgeous...sunny and 74 degrees...a bit of a breeze. but driving over here on the causeway that runs between dauphin island and alabama port (teeny tiny little town between mobile and DI) i couldn't even see the bridge to the island...now, you may not realize how significant this is, but trust me, that's bad. usually, i can see the bridge at least a mile or two before i get to it...today, i couldn't see it until i was almost on it. but then, on the island BAM! beautiful. perfect visibility...no trouble at all seeing the construction and debris removal crews fixing stuff up around here (no, this little island is still not cleaned up after hurrican ivan back in september).

ahh...almost time to meet andy and bum a bootlegged copy of Minitab so i can complete my biometry assignment. yes, i actually did start on that yesterday...only to discover that my student version of minitab (the one that came with my intro stats book) doesn't have all of the functions we need to do the stupid biometry assignment. so i'm going to install andy's full version...god bless the graduate student organization (GSO) here at the sea lab...makes it easy to share expensive software (ok, i have no idea how much minitab costs, but the point is, i'm not paying for it).

i just love warm weather...puts me in a good mood. too bad it has to go and get cold again tomorrow...74 today, 59 tomorrow. that sucks.

i guess this fits

You Are the Investigator

5 You're independent - and a logical analytical thinker. You love learning and ideas... and know things no one else does. Bored by small talk, you refuse to participate in boring conversations. You are open minded. A visionary. You understand the world and may change it.

What number are you?

the investigator. i kind of like that. i do like to poke things when i'm not sure what they are...usually, i only poke things when i'm at the beach. maybe that's not such a great idea (some of the stuff i've poked could really hurt me), but if i didn't do this, i wouldn't know what a sea hare is...i poked one, it swam, squirted out some pinkish-purple ink, looked kinda pretty, i picked it up, and said, "hey, what's this?" my prof told me, and now i know...apparently dr. v liked my "inquisitive mind", as that incident took place on a field trip in an undergraduate marine ecology course 2 1/2 years ago, and now he's my PhD advisor.

so...i'm gonna change the world, eh? sounds like me. it's good that i went into science, then. marine biology is a good world for new ideas and "vision." oh, and logical thinking - i'm not so sure that part is all me...i usually have to screw a few things up before i figure them out, but if that's your idea of logical thinking ("ouch, electrocuting myself in a tank with a busted heater hurts - let's not do that anymore," for example), then, yeah, that's so me. wait, that whole electric shock in a tank of seawater with a busted heater thing didn't actually hurt...it just made my arm tingle a little...ok, so i'm not all that logical sometimes.

just a side note - obviously, i have nothing better to do today than sit and play on the net...well, that's not exactly true. actually, i'm cleverly avoiding my biometry (statistics for biologists, for those of you who aren't familiar with this particular term) assignment. it's not that it's hard or all that time-consuming. but i just wouldn't be the queen of procrastination if i did things when i should....and i'm feeling kinda gross today, so i don't want to leave my apartment to do things...well, i did actually go to my biometry class this morning...that was something...

anyway, i did say that i should be the president when faced with the candidates for the most recent election, so that independent thinking world-changing thing does kind of fit me. all the candidates sucked, for one reason or another. but then, if i were president, i would probably be an evil dictator who told people who tried to make stupid laws, "no, that's the most idiotic thing i've ever heard. you cannot do that. go away." but maybe that wouldn't be so bad. maybe we need someone to tell our leaders, "hey stupid, don't hand taxpayers' money over to lazy people who have kid after kid just so they can keep getting more money...how about we put a limit on how much free cash a single family can get from the government?" or how about, "hey, let's overhaul the tax system and make it simpler for everyone...no more confusing forms...just take, say 15% of everyone's money...that way, everyone is treated the same, and people who make more pay more, but the proportion of your income taken away by the government is the same...you shouldn't be punished for making more (or less) money than other people."

hmm...so this is what happens when i sit around and feel flu-y and try not to talk all day (it hurts my throat when i talk, so i just have to type). i get cynical and start ranting about the government...i'm not into politics! i swear, i'm not usually like this...most people actually think i'm quite funny...and i'm basically a happy girl, but i do have my moments.

Shy Guy

so, i know this photo is on vanessa's blog, but i really like it...bill kinkel, the ice pilots' tough guy. see vanessa's blog (vanessamae.blogspot.com) for the story. 

Love that Ben & Jerry's

"i like the way you dished out the ben & jerry's, baby...and by the way, i need some flatware!"
Bugzy "Pizza"

a bit of advice

some advice to all the men out there - don't tell your significant other that she (or he, if that's your thing) is your "favorite valentine." don't see the problem with this? well, i'll tell you what the issue is here. the phrase "favorite valentine" implies that you have others. so, if you're not a man-whore, just say "you're my valentine" and leave out the "favorite." or skip the valentine thing, and just say "i love you." simple, but good, and no wandering eyes, hands, thoughts, etc. implied. however, if you are something of a gigolo and do have several "valentines," then i guess telling a girl she's your favorite might make her feel good. and if a girl's self-esteem is so low that she thinks the only guy she can get is slut and takes comfort in being his favorite, well, that's just kind of sad. so where did this rant come from? last night i was at a pensacola ice pilots game, and one of the players sent the following message to his girlfriend (one of 'em, at least, if my multiple-valentines theory is correct) on the scoreboard: " To Laura, my favorite valentine. DDH #8." so, my friend vanessa and i took this to mean that laura is not his one and only...which would corroborate the story we concocted friday night when we saw him out with his harem of 4 women. hmm...