Flippin' Out

so, i'm sorry to break big news here on my blog and then fall into silence for so long, but man have i ever been busy since then. kelly and i went over to port st. joe last weekend to collect samples, then we went to perdido key to do the same thing on wednesday, so it's been a long and tiring week or so, but i had three really good field days. i also got my seagrass culture system set up, although it still needs a little tweaking before i'll be satisfied with it (i know, me and my stupid high standards...). i ran into a few problems with the water system clogging up and stabilizing the salinity, but that seems good now, and hopefully the system won't require a lot of intense maintenance.

but enough about work. damien brought dylan down this weekend (his divorce has finally been finalized, though the custody arrangement for dylan leaves much to be desired and will have to be reworked in a few years when the little guy starts school), so i went over to my mom's house to see the little guy yesterday. he just turned two a couple of weeks ago, and let me tell you, they are not called the 'terrible twos' for nothing. dylan seems to have entered that phase where he likes to say 'no' to absolutely everything. even when he really means yes. and he absolutely hates to have anything done for him because, by god, he is convinced that he can do everything himself. he might eat his pizza upside down, dropping pepperoni and cheese into his lap, but that is his way and to him it is right. and besides, he is impossibly cute! how can you not want to hang out with him?

moving on, i have my first prenatal doctor visit tomorrow. i've been reading all this stuff on webmd, and it's freakin' me out, man! i am totally flippin' out over all the things that can go wrong early on in pregnancy (when i apparently have a 15-25% chance of having a miscarriage just because), even though there is absolutely no sign that i should be worried. the weight of everything just seemed to hit me today. i guess because i've been too busy to really worry before now (which is a good thing, or else i'd be a total basket case by now). so when i finally get to the doctor tomorrow, i'll be horribly nervous and will probably have convinced myself that my kid will be born with all sorts of terrible birth defects, even though there's no history of that sort of thing in either my or chad's family, and i'm perfectly healthy.

another pregnancy-related thing that has been a lot worse for me today than ever before is that whole nausea thing. i refuse to call it morning sickness (because it's actually been worse for me in the late afternoons/evenings than any other time). i have managed to avoid vomiting at all (so far, knock on wood), and the nausea bit has been pretty transient (thank heaven). i think i've been pretty lucky with all of that so far. but today i've pretty much been having the same conversation with myself all day. it goes like this:

weak me: "oh god, i'm gonna hurl!"
strong me: "no you're not! think about something else!"
weak me: "no, i'm really going to vomit. this sucks!"
strong me: "you just feel nauseous because you haven't eaten in a while. you're just hungry. have a snack."
weak me: "but if i eat anything, it'll just come right back up."
strong me: "oh, stop being such a baby. suck it up and eat something."
weak me: "fine, i'll try a little something."
strong me: "good. and you aren't going to puke."

so i haven't been eating much for the past week or so, but i also haven't vomited in about 3.5 years either, so i'm ok with that. i don't know if i should be concerned that i seem to being eating less instead of more now that i'm pregnant. but as chad accurately observed, i'm just afraid that if i eat too much i'll puke. part of this stems from the fact that when my mom was pregnant with me she puked off and on for the entire 9 months, including labor (and she gained so little weight that the docs thought i was gonna weigh something like 4 pounds, but i came out a healthy 6.5 lbs, don't you worry). i don't think i could possibly handle that kind of upchucking action.

oh, and something that people don't really mention about being pregnant is that you're always tired, no matter how much you sleep. i mean, i guess supporting another human being is tough on a body, but still. i have never napped so much in my life - and i'm still falling asleep by 10:30 every night. chad made fun of me when i went to bed at 10:30 on a saturday night, but i couldn't possibly have stayed awake any longer. sad, right?

i guess with all this normal pregnancy stuff that's going on with me, i shouldn't really be flipping out so much over tomorrow's prenatal exam, but somehow i can't stop myself from imagining the worst.

Spilling the Beans

well, maybe not, exactly, since most people have found out my amazing and life-altering news. and as a warning, i am about to tell you, so if you would still rather give me a ring and find out more personally, i'll give you one last chance (even though you may have guessed it). otherwise, here it goes....













i'm not kidding. if you don't want to find out something like this from my blog, you'd better stop reading immediately.














last chance...

















ok. i found out a few days ago that chad and i will soon have another use for our guest room. so i guess it won't really be a guest room anymore. around january 23rd (a date generated by webmd's due date predictor), our guest room will instead function as a nursery. we're going to be parents.

we're very excited about this news, and it's something that we've talked about before, but i'm still kind of nervous. i would be crazy not to be a little nervous, i guess. but overall, i feel good.

holy crap.

Big News

huge. ginormous. amazing. life-altering. but i don't really want to share it here just yet, so if you're just burning with the desire to find out what it is, call me and i'll give you the inside scoop. you know, before i spill the beans on here... and then probably on facebook, too.

Eleuthera

so, i successfully made it to eleuthera and back, guys. overall, the trip was amazing, with just one annoyance (which unfortunately persisted the entire week). i posted two albums on facebook with pictures, and since most of the people who read my blog are also my friends on facebook, that should suffice, though i may post a few select photos here.

i don't really have a ton of time on my hands right now, so i'll keep it short. we pretty much went snorkeling all day every day for 7 days. there was one day when we were only in the water for an hour or so because it started lightning (which unfortunately was the day we went to see the sea turtles), and after that it was raining like crazy. the weather vastly improved the next day, though.

there were a few structured lab activities that the students had to do while we were there, but being the TA, i basically just got to snorkel around and enjoy myself. which was great.

believe it or not, there was one student in the class who paid the $100 a day for room and board plus airfare to go on this trip, and she couldn't even snorkel. she says that she swims great (which i doubt, considering just how uncomfortable she was in the water - she spent the day we went to the fire coral reef hanging onto the life raft attached to the boat). overall, she was generally obnoxious, and i'm incredibly glad to be away from her for a little while. also, she couldn't ride a bike. we were supposed to ride bikes over to one of the reefs (it was only a couple of miles away - about a 15 minute bike ride), and we had to take a van because she refused to get on a bike. she said it's been something like 10 years since she's ridden a bike, but she wouldn't even make an attempt. and she didn't listen. we had to tell her to do something at least three times before she would do anything, and it was a constant battle to get her in the water. so she pretty much paid $1300 to be hot and get eaten alive by no see-ums. and she complained the entire time. everyone else was having a great time and seeing all sorts of amazing fish and corals (nassau groupers, spotted moray eels, barracudas, scrawled filefish, all sorts of damselfish, parrotfish, wrasses, four different species of sea urchin, etc, etc), but this girl sort of made it a point to make everyone else miserable. which sucked. eventually, dr. v. and i just started ignoring her. i feel really sorry for the two girls who had to work in a group with her on the lab projects because she was absolutely no help - not even when what they were doing required very little snorkeling and was only in about two feet of water.

oh, and when i was snorkeling with one of the girls in the class, we got completely surrounded by 6 barracudas. that was a bit unnerving. they weren't huge, but they were close, and they were everywhere.

we only saw one shark, and it was before everyone was in the water, so no one really got a good look at it. one of the guys in the class hopped in with his mask on and scared it away before we could see what kind of shark it was. we also saw two spotted eagle rays that day, which was cool.

so, yeah, it was a pretty amazing trip, and i came back kind of tan even though i used up an entire bottle of sunscreen while we were there (i actually had to borrow sunscreen for the last day).

ok, back to work. check out my photos on facebook, and if you aren't on facebook, leave a comment, and i'll post a few on here when i get a chance.

...And They Still Suck!

remember how i hate ups? and how when they FINALLY deigned to deliver my package i didn't stop thinking they suck? well, UPS STILL sucks. sometime last week i ordered some dive boots from diveusa.com for a truly excellent price (about half what i would have paid for the same thing in a local dive shop), and they were set to arrive today. i need these boots for the bahamas. where i am going a WEEK FROM TOMORROW. the UPS delivery around here is... unpredictable. some days, they come at noon, others 6 pm, others 4 pm, and today they came at 2 pm. of course, no one was home at 2 pm. so what did the UPS guy do? did he leave my package by the front door (my personal preference for packages that arrive when i'm not home)? leave a notice on the door? nope. the UPS guy decided it would be a good idea to DROP MY PACKAGE OVER THE FENCE onto the side porch. where my very curious dog can proceed to rip it to SHREDS. all over the yard. good idea, UPS man.

this is not the first time that the UPS man has made this rather unwise decision. but it is the first time that krull the warrior king noticed the package and chewed it to hell and back. see, around christmas time, i ordered something that was delivered via UPS, and the guy dropped the package over the fence onto the side porch. but that time he at least left a notice on the door so i knew to look on the side porch. and krull evidently didn't hear the guy coming that time. but did he ever hear him coming this time...

my dive boots are technically still usable. krull didn't do a lot of damage to the actual boots. there's just one little piece of neoprene ripped off the protective flap inside the zipper of one of them and some teeth marks on the side (but there aren't any actual holes. good thing i ordered thick boots). the package is another story. my back yard was absolutely littered with cardboard and plastic bubble wrap. krull has a thing for plastic things that could potentially suffocate him. we're lucky he didn't kill himself ripping apart the plastic bag and bubble wrap that my boots were packaged in. oh, and the invoice? i can read about 1/4 of it. i can't even find the rest of it.

when i discovered this gigantic mess in the yard, i was understandably pissed off. and while i was still seeing red i decided to call UPS and bitch them out (which i did the first time they left a package on the side porch, but apparently it didn't stick). last time i called, i had the benefit of a notice with a phone number on my door. this time, no such luck. so, when i called 1-800-PICK-UPS, i was greeted by an automated menu with absolutely no option to talk to an actual person. so i called the UPS store to see if they knew who i should call, and the (very helpful and sympathetic) girl told me to call the 800 number again and press 0 a bunch of times, which finally got me through to a person.

so i explained the situation to the lady who finally answered. she was also sympathetic and said that by filing a damage claim, there would be a note for my address telling them not to leave packages at the side door (which they have to drop packages over a 6 ft privacy fence to do in the first place. why would anyone think that's a good idea?). i'm not sure what exactly they plan to do about this. refund my money? that's what i would like. get diveusa to send me new boots? that's fine, too, but i need to use the ones i have because i know new ones won't arrive before i leave for 8 days. she said to keep the damaged materials (packing materials, invoice, and all - basically, just scraps of paper, cardboard, and plastic) for 5 business days in case they require an inspection of the damaged items. if i don't hear from them in 5 days, i can throw everything out.

what can i say? UPS has pissed me off so many times, it's ridiculous. why don't more businesses ship with FedEx? the FedEx guy has never done anything this stupid.

Busiest Weekend Since the Pilots' Season Ended

so this might seem kind of sad and finally reveal to the entire world that my life really is as boring as it seems, but this past weekend was the busiest weekend i've had since the ice pilots' season ended a few weeks ago. chad and i usually just bum around the house and watch movies or something (last weekend, the 'or something' was painting baseboards), but this past weekend two events collided and kept us busy. i know, we actually went out in mobile. where we live. our going out usually involves a drive over to pensacola, so this is really rare, folks.

remember how i told you about hamelin, the band that two of chad's coworkers are members of? well, they played at the blue gill (a restaurant on mobile bay, for those who don't know the area) saturday night, and chad wanted to go. so we went. and they were good. they played a bunch of '90s covers, which chad was excited about, and they interspersed some of their songs in the mix, too. there were also a couple of covers that weren't from the '90s (jet's "are you gonna be my girl" and coldplay's "yellow"), which was ok, since i like the songs they chose. and while i still dont' think their original music sounds at all like either coldplay or the black crowes, i can sort of see now why they said they were like those two bands. they played some coldplay and some black crowes, and sounded surprisingly like a reproduction of the originals. i don't know how, but they did. they also played sublime's "what i got", and when it came time for him to sing "i can play the guitar like a mf-ing riot" ross said "sorry guys, my mom's here" instead. which was funny. and at the end of the song, he looked over at his mom and said, "and my mom doesn't smoke pot." which wasn't as funny but was still amusing.

during one of their breaks, ross (who chad works with quite a bit and who is the lead singer of hamelin) came over and talked to chad for a while and introduced us to his girlfriend, kristen. chad and i had talked about how the band was doing '90s covers, and i wanted to know if they would take requests. specifically, i wanted to know if they could play "buddy holly." i don't know what my recent obsession with that song is all about, but i always want to hear it. so during a lull in the conversation (which i might have created) i asked ross if they knew buddy holly. after confirming that i meant the weezer song and not songs by the actual buddy holly, ross sadly (i imagine) informed me that no, they do not know "buddy holly." but he said he wished he did. those of you who know me shouldn't be surprised that my quick reply was, "well, you should learn it!" and if they learn it, it will of course be dedicated to yours truly (an idea that you might be surprised to learn i did NOT put in ross's head. that was all his. even though i'm sure he was just feeding my ego, which you should know is considerable). so they may or may not bother learning "buddy holly" to appease the wife of the boss of half the band.

i also met the drummer, jonathan. he didn't talk a heck of a lot, but he was pretty wrapped up with his little girl (she's so cute!) most of the night. so it was cool.

i didn't meet anymore band members because chad doesn't know the other two.

also, i tossed out the idea (to chad) that we should get hamelin to play at our high school reunion, seeing as how they do so many '90s covers (and we went to high school in the '90s). he then pointed out that their high school reunions will be going on at the same time, since we all graduated in 2000. oh well. it was an idea.

so that was saturday night. sunday night, we went to wings for katy's birthday (which was yesterday). we had originally planned to go back to katy's house afterward for cake, but then i realized that we still had a ton of laundry to do, so we just went home after wings. while at wings, we played their trivia game thingy, at which i sucked. particularly when the topic turned to sports. the only question i could answer without the clues was "which nhl goalie was suspended for 5 games during the 2007 stanley cup playoffs?" the answer to which is of course jamie mclennan. he had just entered the game to give miikka kiprusoff a break (since the game was lost anyway, no sense letting kiprusoff risk injury), and he took his stick and swung it like a baseball bat right into johan franzen's midsection. it was pretty vicious. so kiprusoff had to come right back in, defeating the purpose of giving mclennan some playing time.

so that's pretty much it. now imagine what my weekends are like without this kind of stimulation. boring, you think? maybe, but also kind of relaxing after spending so much time at the lab (USA or DISL).

Seagrass and Plain White T's

so, here i am, in the lab all day once again. man, i can't wait to get out in the field again. being in a lab 40+ hours a week, doing the same thing day in and day out is really starting to get to me. i need to be in the field, in the heat and the sun and the water. i am so ready for the bahamas. i've started preparing all of our gear and making arrangements for when we go - 2 weeks from tomorrow. i also found out that of the 10 students in the class, there are only 2 guys. hopefully, the dorms at CEI have more than one bathroom for all those girls.

i'm hoping that i can at least go over to perdido key and collect some seagrass before we leave. it will only be a day trip, but still. see, i have decided to attempt the impossible, a feat that no other seagrass biologist to date has been able to accomplish. i am going to try and culture turtlegrass - and maybe even shoalgrass. this is for my own convenience (there is really no other way for me to get truly ungrazed seagrass for my experiments), but if i'm successful, it will have boundless implications for seagrass restoration. that appeals to my ego. i would love to be the person who finally conquered the art of keeping turtlegrass alive in a lab for more than two or three weeks. i hear it's horribly difficult, but i'm talking to a guy i know in maryland who has successfully cultured eelgrass (a seagrass species we don't have here - it's too hot), and hopefully with his help i can make this work - and possibly make some money by growing seagrass and selling it to other labs who need it for experiments and/or using it for restoration purposes. so yeah, if that works i'll pretty much be a goddess in the world of seagrass biology. even though i'm sure dr. v. will claim partial credit, though it was actually an idea brought up by some of my committee members after he had left our meeting last week. he is my advisor, so i guess that is his right. not that i think he'll try to steal my glory. he's not like that. plus, if i'm successful, it makes him look good.

ok. when i started typing, i did not intend to go on and on about science. i wanted to share my thoughts on my new favorite band, plain white t's. i downloaded some of their songs the other day, as i usually do when i notice a new band that i think i might be interested in, and i pretty much love them. three songs you should check out (if you haven't heard them already): "my only one", "so damn clever", and "hate (i really don't like you)."

they have a song ("hey there delilah") that's currently played on mtv (they may have others, but i really don't watch mtv much), but it's not my favorite. it's not bad, but it's not their best. since i've given away the mtv connetion, i am forced to admit that plain white t's may be a little teenage-punk-pop for some people, but i dig it. am i too old for music like that?

i guess it doesn't matter either way, because i listen to it anyway.

Bermuda, Bahama, Come on Pretty Mama...

i don't know what's wrong with me lately, but i just haven't really felt much like posting. i've been stuck in the lab, mostly, slaving away over the HPLC. monday night i went out to dinner at banana docks with a faculty candidate, just (remember him? the spanish prof at DISL?), and another grad student. it was surprisingly enjoyable. we sat there for a long time, just talking. i don't think that guy is going to get the job, though. he was a major dork (not that that's always a bad thing), and the other candidate just had more pizazz. oh well. i got a free dinner (blackened grouper salad) out of it.

in other news, the coral reef ecology class that i'm the TA for starts in a couple of weeks. it sort of snuck up on me. it starts on may 7. and we leave for the bahamas on may 11... and we'll return may 19. for those who are paying attention, yes, that means i will be in the middle of NOWHERE with little or no phone or internet access on chad's and my three year anniversary. i haven't shared that little bit of news with him yet. i'm sure he's not going to like it. i don't really like it, either, but at least i'll be back so we can celebrate the weekend after. that makes it ok, right? ok maybe not, but there's nothing i can do about it now.

despite being there on my anniversary, about which i am bummed, i am really starting to get excited about this bahamas thing, i think. we will be visiting the cape eleuthera institute, which is apparently in the middle of nowhere, so if i get attacked by a shark, i'm screwed. according to their website, they are 40 minutes from the nearest clinic, and a reasonable estimate of the time it would take to get to a real hospital (in either nassau or florida) is something like 6 HOURS. oh my god, can you tell that freaks me out a little? well, it does. their staff is all medically trained, which is supposed to make us feel better, i guess, but they make us fill out medical releases like nobody's business, and they do that for a reason. oh, and let's not forget about the special insurance we have to by in case they have to "evacuate" anyone (meaning, if anyone is seriously injured enough to warrant an actual hospital. you know, one where they can actually perform surgery), the cost of which is something like $50,000.

before today, i didn't realize just how isolated we're going to be on our bahamas trip. it should be a good time, though. i'm keeping my fingers crossed.

In Limbo

that's kind of how i feel, anyway. like i'm waiting for something to happen without an inkling of what it could be or the slightest desire to get off my ass and make something happen.

no, that's not exactly true. there is one thing that i would kill to make happen right about now - i'd like to get someone over here to SHUT THE FREAKIN ICE MACHINE UP ALREADY. if i could figure out where it's plugged in, i'd do it myself (despite the fear that the stupid thing would explode in my face when i leaned over behind it), but i looked, and i'm not sure how it's hooked up.

see, i'm at the lab, and the ice machine is broken. that in itself causes me problems, but i brought some ice with me today, so that's really no biggie. only they moved the ice machine into the room i have to walk through to get to the prep room with the HPLC (where i practically live these days), and it is making the most god-awful noise. even with the door between the two rooms securely shut, this racket is making me crazy. i noticed the noise (which sounds like a chainsaw. a LOUD chainsaw. cutting through steel.) when i was leaving yesterday, so i stopped in anne's office and told her that not only was there no ice but the machine sounds like it's trying to murder the autoclave (a big huge machine sitting right next to the ice machine's new home) by hacking it to bits with a saw, only really slowly to make sure it suffers. she called the department secretary to get the maintenance guys back over here to fix it yesterday, but when i came in this morning, i was once again greeted by that god awful sound that refuses to be drowned out no matter how ear-shatteringly loud i play my ipod.

so i called and left anne a voice mail (i could have walked downstairs to see if she was in her office, but i'm wearing some cute wedge espadrilles that aren't the most stair-friendly shoes ever made, and there's a phone in the next room), but no one has been up to check on the ice machine yet. i wish i could just figure out how turn it off, but every time i go in there, it growls at me, and i start thinking that there is a very real possibility that something jagged and sharp will come flying out of the motor and straight into my jugular. but at least then that sound would stop.

We Should View Sharks as Cuddly Pandas...

within the last couple of days, a disturbing video clip has made its way through the grad student grape vine (click here to watch, but i warn you, it isn't pretty. i didn't finish it). this particular video shows heinous dolphin fishing practices in japan, and it is very hard to watch. there is an official petition to the japanese government to put a stop to inhumane fishing practices. it's been on my mind for a while, so i decided to share.

it is becoming more and more apparent that overfishing is a huge problem, as 2/3 of the world's fisheries are fully or overexploited. i just read an interesting article (reproduced below, but here's a link if you'd like to see the original) that looks at overfishing in light of regulations imposed for the endangered mammals (like pandas) that give us all the warm fuzzies. it will make you think about what you're eating.

Why is it still acceptable to eat the endangered large predators of the sea?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 3^rd April 2007.

To Ransom A. Myers, who died on March 27th.

If these animals lived on land there would be a global outcry. But the great beasts roaming the savannahs of the open seas summon no such support. Big sharks, giant tuna, marlin and swordfish should have the conservation status of the giant panda or the snow leopard. Yet still we believe it is acceptable for fishmongers to sell them and celebrity chefs to teach us how to cook them.

A study in this week’s edition of Science reveals the disastrous collapse of the ocean’s megafauna. The great sharks are now wobbling on the edge of extinction. Since 1972 the number of blacktip sharks has fallen by 93%, tiger sharks by 97% and bull sharks, dusky sharks and smooth hammerheads by 99%(1). Just about every population of major predators is now in freefall. Another paper, published in Nature four years ago, shows that over 90% of large predatory fishes throughout the global oceans have gone(2).

You respond with horror when you hear of Chinese feasts of bear paws and tiger meat. But these are no different, as far as conservation is concerned, from eating shark’s fin soup or swordfish or steaks from rare species of tuna. One practice is considered barbaric in Europe and North America. The other is promoted in restaurant reviews and recipes in the colour supplements of respectable newspapers.

In terms of its impact on both ecology and animal welfare, shark fishing could be the planet’s most brutal industry. While some sharks are taken whole, around 70 million are caught every year for their fins(3). In many cases the fins are cut off and the shark is dumped, alive, back into the sea. It can take several weeks to die. The longlines and gillnets used to catch them snare whales, dolphins, turtles and albatrosses. The new paper shows that shark catching also causes a cascade of disasters through the foodchain. Since the large sharks were removed from coastal waters in the western Atlantic, the rays they preyed on have multiplied tenfold and have wiped out all the main commercial species of shellfish(4).

Much of this trade originates in East Asia, where shark’s fin soup – which sells for up to £100 a bowl – is a sign of great wealth and rank, like caviar in Europe. The global demand for shark fins is rising by about 5% a year(5). But if you believe that this is yet another problem for which the Chinese can be blamed and the Europeans absolved, consider this: the world’s major importer (and presumably re-exporter) of sharks is Spain(6). Its catches have increased nine-fold since the 1990s(7) and it has resisted – in most cases successfully – every European and global effort to conserve its prey.

The Spanish defend their right to kill rare sharks as fiercely as the Japanese defend their right to kill rare whales. The fishing industry, traditionally dominated by Galician fascists, exerts an extraordinary degree of leverage over the socialist government. The Spanish government, in turn, usually gets its way in Europe. The EU, for example, claims to have banned the finning of sharks. But the ratio it sets for the weight of fins to the weight of bodies landed by fishermen is 5%. As edible fins make up only 2% of the shark’s bodyweight(8), this means that two and half finless sharks can be returned to the water for every one that comes ashore. Even this is not enough for the Spanish, whose MEPs have been demanding that the percentage is raised(9).

Northern European civilisation doesn’t come out of this very well either. In 2001 the British government promised to protect a critically endangered species called the angel shark, whose population in British waters was collapsing. It ducked and dithered until there was no longer a problem: the shark is now extinct in the North Sea(10).

Why do we find it so hard to stand up to fishermen? This tiny industrial lobby seems to have governments in the palm of its hand. Every year, the European Union sets catch limits for all species way above the levels its scientists recommend. Governments know that they are allowing the fishing industry to destroy itself and to destroy the ecosystem on which it depends. But nothing is sacred, as long as it is underwater. In November the United Nations failed even to produce a resolution urging a halt to trawling on the sea mounts at the bottom of the ocean. These ecosystems, which are only just beginning to be explored, harbour great forests of deepwater corals and sponges, in which thousands of unearthly species hide. But we can’t summon the will to stop the handful of boats that are ripping them to shreds.

The power of the fishermen’s lobby explains the lack of protection for marine predators. Though fish species far outnumber mammal species, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species protects 654 kinds of mammal and just 77 kinds of fish. Trade in only 9 of these is subject to a complete ban(11).

The rules that do get passed are ignored by both fishermen and governments. On Sunday I stood with a fisheries manager on the banks of a famous sea trout river in Wales. Perhaps I should say a famous former sea trout river in Wales. For the past four years, scarcely any fish – sea trout or salmon – have appeared. He was not sure why, but he told me that trawlers in the Irish Sea land boxes of what appear to be bass; hidden under the top layer are salmon and sea trout. No one seems to care enough to stop them: government monitoring appears to be non-existent. The pressure group Oceana walks into European ports whenever there’s a public holiday and finds hundreds of miles of illegal drift nets stowed on the boats(12,13,14). Where are the official inspectors?

Of course, governments plead poverty. Which makes you wonder why they decided last year to allocate €3.8 billion to the destruction of the marine environment. This is what you and I are now paying in subsidies to keep the ocean wreckers afloat. The money buys new engines, and boats for young fishermen hoping to expand their business(15). For the same cost you could put a permanent inspector on every large fishing vessel in European waters.

If we don’t act, we know what will happen. Another paper published in Science suggests that on current trends we’ll see the global collapse of all the species currently caught by commercial fishermen by 2048. Yet, if we catch the ecosystems in time – with temporary fishing bans and the creation of large marine reserves – they can recover with remarkable speed(16). I hope British ministers, now drafting a new marine bill, have read this study.

But beyond a certain point the collapse is likely to be permanent. Off the coast of Namibia, where the fishery has crashed as a result of over-harvesting, we have a glimpse of the future. A paper in Current Biology reports that the ecosystem is approaching a “trophic dead-end”(17). As the fish have been mopped up they have been replaced by jellyfish, which now outweigh them by three to one. The jellyfish eat the eggs and larvae of the fish, so the switch is probably irreversible. We have entered, the paper tells us, the “era of jellyfish ascendancy”.

It’s a good symbol. The jellyfish represents the collapse of the ecosystem and the spinelessness of the people charged with protecting it.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Ransom A. Myers et al, 30th March 2007. Cascading Effects of the Loss of Apex Predatory Sharks from a Coastal Ocean. Science Vol 315 no. 5820, pp. 1846 – 1850. DOI: 10.1126/science.1138657

2. Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm, 15th May 2003. Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities.

Nature 423, pp280-283, doi:10.1038/nature01610.

3. Shelley C. Clarke et al, October 2006. Global Estimates of Shark Catches using Trade Records from Commercial Markets. Ecology Letters Vol 9 no. 10, pp1115-26.

4. Ransom A. Myers et al, ibid.

5. Francesca Colombo, 12th March 2007. Dangerous Waters – Even for Sharks. Inter Press Service News Agency.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36885

6. Oceana, 24th September 2006. Conservationists rally MEPs to make, not break EU ban on shark finning. Press release.

7. Oceana, 5th December 2006. Oceana requests explanations from the spanish socialist and popular parties regarding their efforts to increase shark captures. Press release.

8. Oceana, 24th September 2006, ibid.

9. Oceana, 23rd August 2006. Sharks threatened by European Parliament finning report. Press release.

10. Peter Popham, 9th March 2007. Sharks hunted to extinction in the Mediterranean. The Independent.

I Had No Idea You Were Such a Big Deal

that's what i told dr. v. in an email this afternoon. his reply? "U DIDN'T KNOW I WAS A BIG DEAL? geesh!" i wrote back saying that i am now suitably awed by his greatness. the whole exchange was pretty funny.

so, it's been quite a while since i last wrote anything on this blog. in my defense, i was in atlanta from wednesday until today at the benthic ecology meeting. i have to say, my talk was a smashing success. i'm not sure if i've mentioned the god of marine chemical defenses, of whom i am very afraid, but i've spent the last week or so obsessing over what he would think of my work. and as it turns out, that son of a bitch didn't even show up to my talk. i was kind of pissed, particularly because dr. v. told him about me and insinuated that the god of marine chemical defenses should come to my talk. but the god of marine chemical defenses is a jerk, which is no surprise. i've heard that from many, many people. which is why i was so damn worried that he would completely rip me apart. he definitely would if he knew that i am planning to do an experiment that questions some of his methods and that i plan on publishing this work. but he doesn't know that. he DOES, however, know that i am terrified of him, thanks to my big shot advisor.

you see, i told dr. v. that i wanted to talk to the god of marine chemical defenses, but i was too scared to do it on my own, so i wanted him to introduce me. after that, i went off to listen to some talks, and when i saw dr. v. later on he informed me that he'd talked to the god of marine chemical defenses and that he'd told this guy that i wanted to talk to him but i was terrified. that's the word he used. terrified. geez.

anyway, i never actually talked to this guy (other than exchanging 'hi's when i passed him in the hall), but kelly did one night while she was drunk. she called him a god. i think he liked it. we both got a chance to tag team another pretty famous marine chemical defense guy, though. he did come to my talk. and he said it was amazing. well, he didn't actually use the word "amazing" but i could tell that's what he really thought ;) actually, he said my talk was really good and that it had crossed his mind to try some of the stuff i am but he hadn't had the time or whatever. he also said that i should contact him if i want to bounce ideas off him or have questions or anything, so that was very cool. i had an intelligent conversation with a guy i've cited more times than i can count, and i was really proud of myself.

i actually knew that dr. p. (the chemical defense guy that i did talk to) had come to my talk because i saw him and a few other famous people there. but instead of freaking me out, seeing all those big names listening to my talk kind of excited me. i was pretty awesome, if i do say so myself.

i saw some really great talks at the conference, and i was really surprised at how young a lot of the big names in marine ecology seem. i went in quite a few absolutely packed rooms to see some of these guys and gals talk about their work. i was also surprised at the number of people who showed up to dr. v.'s and ken's talks. i don't know why, but i never realized how big a deal those guys are until i noticed the sheer numbers of people clamoring to listen to their talks. it was amazing. i guess working so closely with these guys and hanging out (and drinking kind of a lot) with them i never really got the typical big shot jerk vibe, so i never think about the number of publications they have or how many times people have cited them. but now that i recognize how respected these guys are i feel sort of privileged to work with them.

i also met the new master's student who is coming into our lab in the fall. i was the first person to tell him he was accepted, and when i first talked to him he didn't seem so sure he was going to choose DISL for grad school. we hung out for a while, though, and some of my people went to the georgia aquarium (whale sharks, yay!) with him and some of his people from richmond, and then we all went out to dinner. by the end of the night, he was telling me that he hopes he can move down to the island this summer. so i like to tell myself that i had a hand in firming up his decision to join our lab. he's actually a really cool guy, and i had fun hanging out with him... even though we ran into a creepy drunken crazy guy getting on the subway.

see, the georgia aquarium is weird and you have to buy tickets for a certain entrance time, and they tend to sell out early. so nate (my future labmate), nate's friend colin, and i went ahead of everyone else to buy tickets while the rest of the group was listening to some other talks they really wanted to see. we were told that the aquarium was too far from georgia tech (where the conference was) to walk, so we took the subway. well, while we were buying tickets, this old drunk guy came up and started to talking to us. but we could only understand about 25% of what he said. it was creepy. nate kept him busy while colin and i were getting our subway passes, but then he came RIGHT UP BEHIND ME, like uncomfortably close, and squeezed through the subway thing without paying. it was creepy. nate said he was afraid the guy was going to try and follow me onto the train, but thankfully he didn't. when we were safely away from the creepy guy, i told nate and colin that i was really glad that i was with boys and not just alone with my friend molly. anyway, we got there and bought tickets successfully, and it turns out that it takes about 25 minutes just to walk there from GA tech, so the whole uncomfortable subway situation could have been avoided all together. geez.

overall, i think this was a very productive conference for me (even though the banquet i paid $55 for was LAME). some influential people have now seen what i can do, and they seemed suitably impressed. kind of like dr. v. and ken were the first time i gave a talk at this meeting (in 2004). but back then i had no idea that i should be so flattered by their approval. i now realize how fortunate i am to be working with these guys. it seems sort of like a draft to me. like the nhl draft, perhaps. the big name profs are like the teams that are taking the draft picks (students like me who go to conferences young and show off their mad skills). and because dr. v. and ken thought so highly of me in my 'draft year' i wound up in a perfect situation with limitless opportunities. like i'm a top 5 pick or something. yeah, thinking about things that way definitely makes me feel special and appreciate my place in the world of marine ecology.

A Whirlwind of Messed Up Activity

most of you can tell that my life has been both busy and very stressful for the last week and a half, thus the lack of updates on what's been going on. things have returned to a somewhat normal state for me today, so i have a little time to let the world know what's been going on.

you can tell from my last couple of posts (not 'fuck you, biron!') that i've been a little sad, a little guilty, and a lot stressed out. well, chad and i went to philadelphia (obviously), and i surprised myself by having an amazing time, despite the cloud that's been hanging over my head lately. i felt really bad when we left wednesday morning, but when we arrived in philly i was able to sort of put things out of my mind. of course, i talked to my mom every day we were there (a couple times one day), and i felt a little better when we were able to get an earlier flight home on saturday, so we got into pensacola at 4:00 instead of 6:00. my granny's wake was saturday night, so chad and i went straight there after we picked up my car. the funeral was sunday afternoon in atmore, so we went home saturday night (i had no appropriate clothes with me, just jeans and t-shirts, which mom assured me would be ok for the wake) then drove back to atmore sunday.

sunday turned out to be a huge fiasco. the funeral went off as well as a funeral can, i guess. my mom was really upset, of course, and i'm kind of worried about her because she still seems to be taking all of this very hard. harder than any of her four siblings, particularly her three brothers. after the funeral, we were all going back over to my granny's house (where my uncles are staying because it's the only place with enough room for everyone, and there are things that need to be taken care of) for dinner. people do that, i guess. you know, have a reception after a funeral. i expected to go over there, people would bring food (which they did), we would eat and be sad and remember granny. we were in her house, after all.

that is not what happened. my family is so freakin' screwed up, i can't even believe it. they (meaning my uncles, cousins, and a couple of family friends) acted like whole thing was a huge party. my mom and i (and the rest of my immediate family) were appalled. who does that? seriously. they made a freakin bonfire and bought cases upon cases of beer. my aunt had sent a couple of my teenage cousins out to by ice so we would have enough for everyone for dinner, and when they returned one of my uncles proceeded to pour the ice over the beer, which they'd decided to store in 5-gallon buckets. it was insane, guys, and completely inappropriate. we were absolutely shocked at what was going on, and chad and i took off right after we ate, because i couldn't stand to look at what was going on around me. my aunt jo (my mom's sister) didn't come over there because she wasn't feeling well. shortly after chad and i left, my mom and sister went over to see jo for a while and left the rest of them to their disgusting party. my brother left around the same time chad and i did.

my mom is very stressed right now, not to mention still grieving. my uncle roger is the executor of my granny's will, and he's acting like he's just going to take over the house and all of the land and move right in, which is completely unfair to everyone. my mom's and my aunt jo's names are on all of my granny's bank accounts, and no one but them can take the money out of her checking and savings accounts and her 4 CDs. my uncles keep trying to get them to take the money out right now and divide it up (which is fair), but my mom doesn't want to do that until she knows that the property will be dealt with fairly as well. really, the only fair thing to do is sell the place (for which they can get at least $450,000) and divide the money among the 5 of them. but my uncles are acting like they don't want to do that, and roger is already talking about just moving in and giving the trailer they live in now in central florida to his oldest son. so right now roger and his wife elaine are basically living in my granny's house and expecting my mom to pay all the bills out of granny's accounts. i told mom last night that she needs to call all the utility companies and have everything cut off immediately. then if roger wants to turn everything back on, it will be in his name. they need to do that anyway, no matter what the plans are.

i think mom and jo are going to talk to a lawyer because everything is so screwed up. they are the beneficiaries on granny's life insurance, and my uncles are saying that they have to split that up, too. i told mom not to give them a dime of it because life insurance is not part of the estate, and only the beneficiaries have a claim to it. i hope she does talk to a lawyer today, or she's going to get royally screwed over by her brothers in all of this, particularly if roger thinks he's just going to keep the house and all of the land (about 180 acres or so).

ok. time to stop ranting and do some lab work. i'll try to write a post about the philly trip soon.

Fuck You, Biron!

that's what some guy in our section shouted at the end of the flyers game last night. because the loss was all his fault. i've never seen this before, but he scored on himself. can you believe that? has anyone else ever seen a goalie score in his own net? i can now say that i have. and it was martin biron in philadelphia on march 8, 2007. and to make matters worse, that turned out to be the game winning goal for florida. wtf?

so, other than scoring on himself, biron and the rest of the flyers played a pretty good game. it was entertaining, though the loss was sad. some fans got in a fight in the stands (2nd time i've seen that at a flyers game, though the first time was in atlanta), and r.j. umberger prevented florida from scoring the game-winner on their own (the puck was on the goal line behind biron when umberger swooped in and pushed it back underneath the goalie). chad and i were amused at the intro before the game. when they were announcing florida's starting lineup, the fans shouted "sucks!" after every player's name. that was pretty funny. then at the end when joni pitkanen was skating the puck into the florida end with about 10 seconds left, we were amazed at hearing about 15,000 people all shouting "shoot, goddammit!" in unison. so the game wouldn't have been so bad if biron hadn't scored that goal for florida.

i took hundreds of pictures in philly, and i'll try to post some later. no time at the moment.

What's a Girl Supposed to Do?

phone calls in the middle of the night are never good, and last night when my phone rang at 11:30, i immediately expected bad news. but for some reason it still came as a shock. my granny died last night. she had a major heart attack, and she wasn't strong enough to survive it.

we thought she was getting better. there was talk of releasing her from the hospital soon, and they had moved her out of ICU. my mom returned home sunday night, and now she feels incredibly guilty and is taking this very hard. they're planning to move my granny back down here for the funeral. no word yet on when that will be.

my mom keeps telling me to go ahead and go to philadelphia and not to worry about everything, but i feel so damn guilty about it. i wish i knew something about when the funeral will be. i hate funerals. hate them. but this is one that i feel a strong sense of obligation to go to. my granny has been there my whole life, and she always seemed so strong. i can't really get my ahead around the fact that she's just not going to be there anymore.

fuck.

Updates from the Homestead

so, i should be practicing my talk for the conference tomorrow (i ran through it a couple of times yesterday, and i finally got it down to 12-13 minutes), but instead i find myself doing laundry, contemplating my taxes, and of course blogging. i really need to do my taxes today. here's hoping chad and i don't owe $700 like last year.

anyway, my mom ended up driving to south carolina thursday morning because my aunt and uncle up there told her they were moving my granny's surgery up to friday. but the open heart surgery didn't happen friday, and apparently it is not going to happen. because my granny wouldn't make it through the operation. also, they found out that not only are three arteries in her heart blocked, but both her carotid arteries are blocked as well. so instead of risking the bypass surgery, they just put stents in her heart, but they're leaving the carotids alone for at least another two weeks to give her time to recover and regain some strength after the surgery to put the stents in. so right now, because of the blockages in her carotids, she's at high risk for a stroke, but they don't want to put her under anesthesia too many times or for too long because they're afraid she won't come out of it. i talked to mom last night, and she said that the doctors are planning on releasing my granny from the hospital in the next couple of days, even though they have no plans to move her out of intensive care. that seems really weird to me.

but anyway, the doctors in SC said my granny can come home and have the other surgery done down here in a couple of weeks, she can stay and have it done up there, or she can come home and then go back up there and have the other surgery done so that the same doctors will be working on her. i don't know what her plans are yet. my mom said she wasn't really talking that well because of the drugs they've got her on. my uncle is being really insensitive about the whole thing. he keeps on saying things to my mom like, "you need to take her back down with you because i don't want her dying on me." you'd think he'd be concerned about what's best for his mother and not thinking what an inconvenience it would be for him if she died. my mom's kind of pissed about it.

i feel sort of guilty about going to philadelphia in the midst of all of this, and i have to admit that i've thought things over the past couple of days that i'm ashamed of (for example, "i hope granny doesn't die this week because that would screw up my trip to philly." i'm such an ass sometimes.). but at the same time, i'm really excited about going, which makes the guilt worse. and then i find myself thinking about the money (the non-refundable money) we've spent on this trip already, and then i feel even guiltier. ugh.

so, chad and i should be on time for the pilots game tonight (he's working the booth for his company at the home and garden show downtown today), but we'll definitely be late tomorrow. like, arriving in the 2nd period late. see, i have that conference on dauphin island tomorrow, and i can't leave until at least 4:00, which means i'll get home around 5, so we won't get to the game until around 6:15-6:30.

ok, that's all i care to say right about now, so i'm outta here.

Emotional Crisis Time Here at the Homestead

shit, guys. i am FREAKING OUT! not because i've procrastinated like hell and not started on that presentation for the american society of plant biologists meeting this weekend. because i did that on monday. it's on the long side right now and needs to be pared down ('cause i really don't think i can get through 19 slides in 12 minutes, even talking at my usual light speedish pace), but that, my friends, is pretty much done (i'm almost as surprised as you are). the root of my current inner turmoil is infinitely more personal than being nervous about a talk.

i was at the sea lab yesterday, staring at a flat flat line and trying to use the awesome power of my mind to make peaks appear on the GCMS readout, when i got an unexpected phone call in the late morning hours from my mother. over the weekend, my uncle from south carolina came down and took my granny back up to SC with him to see his son's new baby. well, monday they had to take my granny to the hospital up there for her heart. i don't think she actually had a heart attack, but i'm not positive that she didn't. anyway, they had to put a catheter in her heart yesterday, and she needs a triple bypass. like, now. and she's 600 miles from home. at least she's with family. they say if they can't do the surgery within the next week, she'll die. so they're trying to give her some time to recover from the heart cath surgery and are planning to do the triple bypass on monday. in south carolina. and she lives in florida. so she's not too terribly happy about being far away from home. but she's not really fighting to come home, so that's good. my mom is planning to drive up and spend time with her this weekend (unless my granny gets worse, in which case my mom will rush right up there) and stay until after the surgery.

so my granny having open heart surgery on monday when chad and i are leaving for philly on wednesday is kind of weighing on me. there's another issue contributing to my emotional state as well, but i'm not quite ready to spill the beans about that one just yet.

so, for now i'm trying to distract myself from that touchy-feely-girly-freaking-right-the-hell-out crap by washing every piece of bedding in the house, cleaning the hell out of the floors and the kitchen and the bathrooms, and working almost non-stop. because sitting around watching tv leads to thinking about things that i don't want to think about right now. so if you guys don't mind, i'm just gonna live in a little fantasy bubble for a little while and pretend that nothing bad has ever happened to anyone i know.

What's New Here at the Homestead

well, not a whole lot. no, actually, there's an entire room full of new stuff, and it's called the floor. chad and his 'rents spent the entire day saturday putting in our brand new spiffy laminate floors ('cause actual hard wood is EXPENSIVE!). they look pretty awesome. what was i doing while all this manual labor was being done, you ask? i was holed up in the guest room with my favorite purple blanket and lots of tissues and drugs and a book that i never actually read sleeping. because i was sick. and it sucked. i pretty much slept for two whole days. now i'm better (aside from the sniffles and some lingering aches), and my living room and hall floors look amazing. when i retrieve my camera from my mom's house this weekend, i'll post pictures. and by then the dining room should be done, too! no more beige berber carpet around here!

i was glad for my stuffy nose yesterday when kelly and i were photographing two week old seagrass with the stench of rotting death surrounding us all day. my fingers are still a little brown from handling it all day. we better get a freakin' publication out of this, dammit!

other than that, not much has been going on. i've been doing the same stuff - spending days and days at the lab, up to my elbows in corrosive chemicals and ground up seagrass samples, or at my computer processing mountains of data. dr. v. and i had a nice long talk yesterday and decided that i WILL be finished with my ph.d. NO LATER than august of 2008 (and i'm actually hoping for may). so that's all good. my comps have been pushed from spring to fall, and i'm not terribly sad about that. dr. v. has a lot of stuff going on this semester, and we're busy prepping for the bahamas in may.

so that's about it. adios, amigos!

Drunk LaTina is Amazing!

operation get deva sloshed happened saturday night, and it was a raging success (happy birthday, dollface!). but i actually got myself far more sloshed than i got deva. seriously. i was trying to remember what all i drank saturday night, and the list goes something like this:

• pimp juice shot
• kamikaze shot
• pineapple upside down drink
• big ass flaming hurricane (thanks to deva for reminding me to blow it out)
  

things get a little fuzzy here, so these may or may not be in order, and i may or may not have forgotten something.

• tequila shot
• mai tai (pretty sure i had two of these, i didn't intend to drink the 2nd one, but i did anyway)

i'm surprised i'm not dead. there were a few waters dispersed in there, too, though so that probably helped. after i ordered the second mai tai, our friendly neighborhood bartender brendan said, "it's water for you from now on, baby girl." and i felt it absolutely imperative to tell the ENTIRE WORLD. because i was, as kelly put it, amazingly wasted. so vanessa ushered my and deva's drunk asses out of seville and back to her place, where we proceeded to send drunken emails (that was deva) and myspace/facebook messages (that was me). for which i posted disclaimers on my facebook and myspace pages, saying that i can't be held responsible for anything typed between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00-ish saturday night/sunday morning.

this morning i went back and read all the crazy shit i wrote, and died a little inside. talk about mortifying. mostly, i told a bunch of guys they're pretty. that wouldn't be so bad if i didn't do that in multiple messages to most of them. i also left kelly a couple of drunken messages, which i'm sure she loves. she appreciates that sort of thing.

anyway, deva had fun. we drank, we danced, i was amusing to all. another bartender friend of deva and vanessa's wants to be my pool boy while i act as his british/valley girl stalker. good times. and vanessa chatted up a pretty brazilian boy while deva and i amused ourselves. brazilian boy's friend was kinda skeezy. we ditched him, but he came back. like a freakin' boomerang. geez.

photographic evidence:

deva and i are having an awesome time!















deva and i love to sing to each other!















vanessa's brazilian boy is PRETTY!















but his brazilian friend is SCARY! don't we look scared? and drunk?

But I'm From the South!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
The South
The Inland North
The Northeast
Philadelphia
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Bummin' Around

so, this week has really been anti-productive for me. i had the best intentions, i swear. but i finished up all that hella-intensive HPLC work last week, and i planned on doing more nerdy lab stuff this week, but i ran out of ground samples. which meant i had to grind up some more. which requires liquid nitrogen. but we're out. so i can't grind samples, which means i can't really do anything at all. so i'm a bum this week.

well, the liquid nitrogen was refilled today, but as kelly and i found out last time we got a refill, you have to wait a day to allow the tank to pressurize before you can get any liquid nitrogen out once it's been filled. so i can't do any real work until tomorrow. so i started a myspace page. i know, but i was bored.

i've pretty much spent the day playing the stalker on myspace. i'm not usually one to go around looking for hockey players on there like a weirdo (today is actually the only time i've ever even looked at a myspace profile), but i stumbled across a couple today unintentionally. you know, browsing through friends lists. and, oh my god, a couple of them just freakin' cracked me up. in particular, michael mole's and ben gray's. figures that the goalies would be the funny ones, right?

anyway, today seems to be the day of endless boredom around here, but at least the weather's nice.

ooh, and deva's bday is this weekend! it's gonna be fun. chick flicks, a little beach time, good food, then getting in touch with our inner slut bags when we go out drinking. my goal is getting deva so completely sloshed that she'll still be drunk on sunday. i haven't been that drunk since maine (the day that i was supposed to meet one of the profs from up there to make dry ice and after go shopping with kelly and a bunch of other people, only i stayed up drinking until about 2 am, or maybe later, i don't really remember, and i changed my mind about meeting up with kelly at 9 but forgot to tell her about it. so when she called me at 9:20 i was still asleep and we had a conversation that went a little something like this: k-"the tina, are you still asleep? it's late for you homegirl!" me-some sort of grunt, k-"the tina, are you hungover?", me-"no.", k-"the tina, are you still drunk?", me-"yeah, i think i am.").

anyway, i'm outta here. i need to clean or something to make myself feel better about the absolutely nothing i've done all day.

If There Were Ever a Game I Should Have Tivo-ed...

i should learn that if there is ever a flyers game that i can't watch and it is against altanta, i should ALWAYS tivo it. i did not tivo the game last night (the game i couldn't watch since i was in pcola watching the ice pilots pull out a win over charlotte - i'm as surprised as you are), and i am very disappointed that i didn't. it was a good one, it seems. and if there was ever a flyers game i should have gone to, it was that one. in atlanta. i saw them in atlanta last year, and it was good. this year i'm gonna see them in philadelphia. and it will probably be bad. they've won, what? three home games this season? at least i'll get to lick the liberty bell.

anyway, i would have been super amused at the flyers game. esche was pulled after the first 7 minutes (after allowing one goal), and niittymaki kicked ass the rest of the game. hasn't john steven learned by now? always start nitty against the thrashers! ok, ok. esche wasn't really pulled. he strained his neck, but still.

oh, and glen metropolit got an assist! which is ok since the flyers won. yay for metro! the picture i took with him and sean gauthier when i was 14 is on the wall in my office.

oh, and the flyers mananged a 3rd period comeback! for the first time all year! they were down 2-1 heading into the 3rd, and they won 5-2. kari lehtonen should be ashamed of himself.

Music Promo

yo! whaddup? (trying out a new greeting there. it doesn't really scream 'latina' does it? oh well). i know i've mentioned to a few of you the crazy awesome local band i've been listening to a lot lately, but i feel that i need to spread the word a little more widely (you know, like internationally!). so here i am.

chad works with these guys, and two of them are in this band (with two other guys that chad doesn't work with, but one of whom is from brewton, talk about a small world). and they DON'T SUCK! i know! chad's random co-workers are actually TALENTED! anyway, they've been telling chad bits about their band (i believe they called themselves a cross between coldplay and the black crowes, talk about two incompatible groups), and finally one of them gave him a cd. which of course i usurped, 'cause it's what i do. and you know, i'm far more into music these days than chad is. and you know, he mostly got the disc for me anyway, since i was all like, "hey, i'd really like to hear them. you should get a cd."

anyway, the band is hamelin, and i was pleasantly surprised at the quality of their music. you can listen to all of the tracks and order their cd at cdbaby. you can also listen to four of their songs through their myspace page. unfortunately, my favorite song on the album (small world, the last track) is not available on their myspace page. there's just something about one line in that song in particular that gets me:

my lullabyes, your alibis, your shining selfish pirate eyes, you messed up everything

oh, and this one, too (also from 'small world'):

i'm in love with a girl who was never born, just deceptions and perceptions spooned down my throat for years

personally, i think they sound nothing like either coldplay OR the black crowes. if you asked me, i would tell you that hamelin is what would come out if you took seether, staind, and lifehouse, threw them in a blender and added just a dash of 3 doors down. they might not give a very accurate description of their sound, but i guess that's ok, considering that they do have a good one.

now, run off and listen to hamelin. and if they sound familiar, that's because they got some radio play on tk101 in pensacola around springfest time last year. the song 'job' is the one they played on our local radio stations. they also get a lot of radio play in georgia. 'whispers' is the one that gets played over that way, i think. what are you waiting for? run off and enjoy la musica!

Gay Marriage Kills Babies!

or something. i have to have a nice rant about this or i'm going to explode. or implode. or something. i am sick to death of coming home to messages on my answering machine from a 'concerned mother of three' wanting to put a stop to gay marriage. and i'm sick of answering my phone and hearing this same recorded message OVER and OVER again. this barrage of calls was apparently sparked by the legalization of gay marriage in massachusetts, and somebody feels the overwhelming urge to repeatedly call THE WHOLE WORLD begging for someone to help fight gay marriage.

why the hell do i care if gay people get married? huh? can anyone think of one good reason? do gay people harm our children? i don't think so. and how does their getting married hurt me? IT DOESN'T! someone alert the masses! gay people aren't hurting anyone! let 'em get married if they want! 'cause guess what? it's none of our damn business! and you know what i've found? married people without kids pay more taxes than singles. it's true. so gay people getting married (provided that they don't adopt kids, which just for the record, i don't have a problem with) would actually create more tax revenue! well, income tax revenue anyway.

oh, and i'm pretty damn far away from massachusetts. i doubt that folks here in the bible belt will ever allow the legalization of gay marriage in this part of the world. i mean, people here wouldn't even vote 'yes' on removing racist language from the state constitution, but there was all kinds of support for an amendment banning gay marriage. jesus christ, people, what the hell is wrong with you?

perhaps you've noticed this, but the 30 or so calls i've recieved from these people over the last month are really STARTING TO ANNOY ME. now they're calling twice a day. at least. yesterday i was home for lunch (technically, but i spent half an hour on the phone ordering lab stuff), and the stupid anti-gay people called. of course, i've heard their speil a hundred times, so i hung up. then when i got home last night, there was ANOTHER message!

after about the tenth message on my machine, i decided i would actually call the number they left (you know, 'press 1 for more information or call 1-877-266-6277' - and that IS their actual phone number, btw, in case anyone feels that they MUST call and bitch at these morons on my behalf) and let them know how much i DO NOT CARE if gay people get married and how much their repeated calls were pissing me off. i also mentioned that i am registered with the national DO NOT CALL list, (so why the hell do they keep calling?), after which the nice fellow i chatted with (read: bitched at kind of a lot) said that he was adding me to THEIR do not call list. after which the annoying calls ceased for approximately three days. and now they are back IN FORCE, with their multiple calls per day. i seriously need to get caller ID on my land line. 'cause i am SERIOUSLY sick of losing precious minutes of my life (minutes i can never get back, mind you) listening to this crap. or deleting it from my answering machine.

chad has suggested that i call them up and try another tactic. i should tell them they're all going to hell for judging the poor gay people (not that i pity gay people either, they're just people like everyone else). the concerned mother seems to want to avoid hell at all costs (though judging and meddling don't seem to bother her or the multitudes she's roped into aiding her on the quest to end gay marriage once and for all (mwahahaha!)). you know, 'cause the message also includes some bit to the effect of god defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman (so sorry to all the polygamist mormons of yesteryear and all those ancient egyptians and their concubines, who certainly all went STRAIGHT TO HELL, regardless of whatever good natures they possessed and good deeds they performed and good lives they led, along with all the ancient greeks and romans and native americans and countless tribal people with their multiple gods. too bad, you're all screwed).

whew. it's nice to have that off my chest. so, one last point, just for the record - i really, truly, honestly, deeply believe that being gay does NOT make one a bad person. i know plenty of great, kind, wonderful people who are gay. people to whom i will one day occassionally entrust the care of my children (not that i'm going to have any of THOSE anytime soon, but one day i would like a kid. everybody loves babies). gay people don't kill babies (no more than straight people kill babies, anyway). they just want to be happy. what's wrong with that?

!

again, this will be the briefest of posts. i just felt an urgent need to share my excitement with the internet. i just got an email from dr. v. about a paper that is the process of being published... and they cited me! my one published journal article got cited! by people from spain! i went there! and their results, they validate the whole purpose of my dissertation! so i'm not stupid! and my entire ph.d. project is not useless! so that means that no one will come along in ten years and completely invalidate four years of my life! yay me!

Been A While, Eh?

so it's been a while since i last posted to this blog, but dudes, i have been so busy you wouldn't believe it. i don't even really have a ton to say right now, but i thought i should let the world know that i'm still a part of it. so, i'm here. i'm alive. and i'm cold. geez, do i ever miss those 75 degree days... oh wait. that was just monday. man, i hate highs in the 40's! from 76 to 46 in just one day. yuck.

anyway, i'm off.

2006: A Year of Extremes

i'm a little late with my musings on 2006, and i think now that perhaps this post won't be as long-winded as i originally thought. i find myself fully embracing 2007 and putting 2006 behind me. but first i feel like i need to reiterate the major happenings in my world in '06.

2006 was either the best year ever or the worst year ever. it definitely was not the average year for me. allow me to list the major events:

• ice pilots finish the 05-06 hockey season with a horrible record
• ice pilots go through the first half of the 06-07 hockey season with the worst record in the ECHL
  
• flyers get knocked out of the playoffs in the first round
• flyers end the first half of the 06-07 hockey season with the worst record in the NHL
• i went to spain... but halfway through the trip i got some horrible illness that sucked some of the fun out of it. i didn't fully get over it until i'd been home for two weeks. yes, i sounded like a lifelong smoker with emphysema for approximately two and a half weeks. and yes, that sucked.
• my mom almost died (obviously, this was the worst thing that happened in my life all year. actually, it's probably the worst thing that's ever happened in my world.)
• a good friend's mom passed away (she had cancer)
• another good friend's dad almost died (a hole in his esophagus caused his lungs to collapse. he had surgery, was in intensive care for about a month, but is now doing physical therapy.)
  

and now for the parts of 2006 that didn't suck.

• i went to maine. i froze my ass off, but it was a blast.
• i went to spain
• i ran with bulls in spain
• i made friends and contacts that will help me throughout my career in both places
  
• the gulf coast was hurricane free
  
• i successfully completed all four field experiments i had planned (this is major - for once no hurricanes came along to destroy them like in 2005)
• i got my prospectus approved
• chad and i bought a house
• my mom got better

these are not everyday occurrences around here. some of them sucked in a big way, and some were awesome beyond words. all in all, i don't think i can take another up and down year like that. every time something good happened, something bad came right on its heels to ruin it.

here's hoping that 2007 is on a more even keel than 2006... or that the good stuff happens without those pesky bad parts.

Coming Soon...

i promise to deliver what likely will be a long-winded post about the ups and downs of 2006... later. but soon. i've been meaning to write this for the last two weeks or so (even before my last post), but i haven't really been feeling it.

i guess my new year's post will come a tad late this year.

for now, adios.

'Tis the Season for Parties

so, i've been thinking about this a lot lately, and i really want to have my tapas party SOON (i've wanted to throw a tapas party ever since i got back from spain in septemeber). for new year's, perhaps? i don't know if that will work since all my peeps are out of town until next week, and i won't see them until next friday. and we haven't really discussed new year's plans. but anyway... i've already started planning the menu in my head. i'd like to try my hand at making a small paella (though i do not have the traditional paella pan), veggie paella i think. also, i really want to make russian salad (i ate SO MUCH russian salad in spain, and it was delicious). i bought a cookbook called 'the best 100 tapas' at the airport in madrid, and it has some great recipes in it. i also want to make croquetas (fried balls of spanish goodness!), which i tried out shortly after returning to the states, and they turned out pretty tasty. and churros! so yummy. oh, and i can't forget tortilla española. i’ll probably make some other stuff, too, but i’ll have to pore through my cookbook for more ideas.

some of the recipes in that book sound absolutely disgusting. like baby eel tartlets. gross! but most sound delicious.

since it’s a party, i’ll also need some drinks. sangria sounds perfect. and mojitos! jose luis made us paella and mojitos in spain. i was deathly sick at the time, and when he handed me a mojito, jose luis was like, “some vitamins for you. it will make you feel better.”

i’ll also have the bottle of wine that chad got to bring home from the ice pilots’ christmas party (we said we wouldn’t drink it without you, nessa).

on the topic of alcoholic beverages, i recently procured a delightful book of alcoholism-in-the-making, the complete bartender. it has recipes for sangria and mojitos, and any drink you could possibly dream of. including pensacolas and scooby snacks! and they both sound delicious! maybe i could also serve pensacolas at my tapas party. they aren’t spanish, but pensacola was the first north american city to be colonized by the spanish, so that counts for something, right? they sound delicious. here’s what’s in a pensacola:

1.5 oz rum
0.5 oz guava nectar
0.5 oz orange juice
0.5 oz lemon juice

you blend it up with ice.

and, just for fun, here’s the recipe for scooby snacks:

0.75 oz vodka
0.75 oz Midori melon liqueur
0.75 oz Malibu
1 oz pineapple juice
0.5 oz cream

you blend that one up with ice, too.

i think i’ll share more festively named drink recipes with you when i don’t really have anything else to charm you with. we’ll all be raging alcoholics yet.

Finally, a Chemist I Can Connect With

i just spent half an hour on the phone with a chemist, and it actually didn't make me want to poke my eyes out. i won't lie. i made A's in chemistry, even the dreaded organic chemistry. but i hated every minute of it. plain old chemistry with the numbers wasn't so bad. neither was quantitative analysis. but i despised organic chemistry. it made my head hurt every day, with the crazy reactions and the concept of chirality, which eludes me to this very day.

and i just talked to an organic chemist for a half hour. and i'm not experiencing suicidal urges. weird. i guess i had to figure that working with chemical defenses in plants i'd encounter one sometime. anyway, i've kind of hit a wall in identifying some of the comounds in my seagrass tissue, and i needed help. because i have NO IDEA what i'm doing. i want to do GCMS (gas chromatography / mass spectroscopy), but there's one small problem. i've never done it before, and i don't know how.

the chemist i just talked to was very helpful. he's kind of goofy and very nice. plus, he's very patient with my lack of knowledge of organic chemistry. even though he knows i took it. and that i made an A in it. it didn't stick. it's nice to find someone who doesn't assume that we lowly students permanently absorb every absurd fact professors throw at us.

anyway, he emailed me a protocol for the GCMS thing and talked me out of ordering a $300 standard whose usefulness i was having doubts about anyway. hooray for dr. f.

Flashbacks

oh god. deep breaths, latina. i'm having severe flashbacks from last hockey season... only this year might be worse because the flyers suck, too. and i actually thought pensacola had a chance to be a decent hockey team at the start of the season. but things seem to be falling apart at the seams. first, mole gets called up. no big deal, we've got ayers to cover things in goal. but no. ayers wants to go play in denmark (not that i blame him). ok, we signed matt carmichael, and he was good the couple of games he played for pcola last season. but no, he was released. so who are we left with? ben gray, who apparently wasn't good enough to make the team in the first place! and another emergency backup goaltender (who is not chuck thuss. i just think it would be fun if chuck thuss would be our emergency backup for once).

on top of this, freakin' greg schuh is coaching this weekend... along with dwayne hay. hello! he can't play if he's coaching. but i guess he'd be better than greg schuh. no wonder they lost last night. i hate to say it, but they'll probably lose tonight, too, even though they're playing columbia, whose roster is, like, us from last season. maybe they'll kick ass and prove me wrong...

we've made so many roster moves this year... it's like a totally different team than the one we started with. but like last year, all these changes haven't really improved anything. and now we're getting players from the SPHL. geez. but i guess we did get that one guy with the weird name from augusta... he was #5 for them. i remember because i always made fun of his name. and you know, i've seen them, like, 4 times already.

i'm starting to lose hope here, people. will this team ever be decent again?

Sidney Crosby Is Better Than Jarome Iginla?!?

wtf? what were you thinking, pierre mcguire? you had me on your side when you sided with us flyer fans and admitted that one interference call on todd fedoruk was totally bogus. i believe you called it a 'homer call'... and it resulted in a power play goal for pittsburgh, which made the situation worse. i was all like, "aww, i like you, pierre mcguire!"

but then you had to go and call sidney crosby the best player in the NHL right now. and then you revised that, saying that's he's not just the best right now. he's the best. blah. then i was all like, "i take it back!" one of the guys in the studio with pierre brought up jarome iginla (apparently, HE doesn't think sidney crosby is the best player in the league), and pierre mcguire insisted that sidney crosby is better. this may come as a shock to all sid the kid's fans out there, but i think he's overrated. i've said that before, although not in those exact words. he is a talented player, but he is not anywhere near the best player in the NHL. he certainly is not better than jarome iginla. i don't care what pierre mcguire says.

for one, jarome iginla does not whine anywhere near as often as sidney crosby... and he's putting up great numbers for calgary without getting to play a truly atrocious team 8 times. damn, i bet i could have 47 points by now, too if i was racking up 6 points a game when i played the flyers. geez. i love the flyers, but let's face it, they SUCK this season... and they play pittsburgh 8 times a year.

well, in the middle of my rant, i was rudely interrupted by the fire alarm, and now i'm afraid i've completely lost my train of thought. i'm at USA right now, analyzing some of my seagrass tissue for condensed tannins (a potential chemical defense). between assays, i decided to vent some of my feelings about pierre mcguire and last night's flyers/penguins game, and then the stupid fire alarm went off. if you're wondering, no, the building is not on fire. i did pack up my stuff (i.e., i shoved my computer into my bag and grabbed my notebook and data printouts. hey! that stuff is important! without that stuff, all those days i spent in port st. joe were for nothing!), before fleeing the life sciences building, even though i know you're just supposed to run out of the building, belongings be damned. i had a nice talk with a few profs and the marine sciences secretary while waiting for the police and fire dept to show up. then i hung out downstairs in the marine sciences office for a little while, upon determining that there is no fire. actually, i don't think the fire marshall ever did show, but we got police. last time the fire alarm went off when i was in here working (yes, this happens relatively often, and there has never been an actual fire), the fire marshall showed up and yelled at everyone for not waiting for him before re-entering the building. oh well.

anyway, back to the original point. i really did lose my train of thought, so i'll just start a list of players who are better than sidney crosby. feel free to add to this list... or tell me i'm off my rocker and that sidney crosby is the best player in the NHL.

Jarome Iginla (obviously)
Teemu Selanne
Chris Pronger
Peter Forsberg (when he's healthy)
Alexander Ovechkin (i say this because he embraces the physical part of the game AND makes great plays and scores amazing goals)
Daniel Briere (even though he pisses me off)

there are others. i know there are others. these are the 6 that jump to mind. i'm tempted to add a few more, but the other players who come to mind all have terrible +/- numbers, so i don't feel right about saying publicly that they're better than sidney crosby, who has a good +/- rating.

Fantasies

people say fantasies are harmless, but they can be dangerous. a lot of things have led up to these thoughts, some of which i'm not going to mention. two television programs in particular led me to write this. first, i was watching the lightning/thrashers game last night (tampa bay won 8-0!), and they did a segment during one of the intermissions on a children's book written by head coach john tortorella's wife. it's about the team and the lessons they've learned from the coach. during the segment, they showed footage of a bunch of kids that they brought into the lightning locker room to promote the book, and i started to think about what i would have felt when i was 12 if i were one of those kids. i realized that every single one of them walked into that locker room and immediately started to fantasize about something - being on the team, being friends with the players, something. i could see it in their faces. even though it was a long time ago, i clearly remember being 12, and i can imagine what i would have felt going into that situation.

the second show that led me here is last week's episode of the king of queens (oh, the magic of tivo). in it, carrie has to play the mom in a fake family that has been staged to help sell a model home. at first she hates the whole thing and can't imagine herself in the role of mommy, but as she pretends day after day, she completely loses herself in this fantasy family. and it makes her unhappy with her actual life.

and therein, my friends, lies the danger of the fantasy. if you let yourself get lost in the idea of the (non-existent) perfect life, you can become supremely disappointed with the life you're actually living. sure, a fantasy may drive you to make your own life better, but it could accomplish the exact opposite as well. indulging in a fantasy every now and then is fine, but it's a good idea not to let it go too far. take a step back, realize that a fantasy is not real and likely will never be real, and be happy with the life you've made for yourself instead.