Shedding a Tear

*sniff* so the damn sea wolves won't be playing this season. that really blows sticky green snot. how can i hate them if they don't play, huh? it sucks more because, as it turns out, they could have played here in mobile. they could have found some sort of player housing here. the folks in charge of the mobile civic center and the current (but not for long) mayor of mobile were perfectly willing to rearrange schedules to accomodate the sea wolves and the current ECHL schedule. however, the sea wolves organization decided that they didn't have time to get their shit together for this season. dammit. i'm more pissed now that i know that mobile was ready and willing to take on this hockey team than when i thought they just wouldn't have a place to play for a while.

anyway, perhaps we can get louis back now? he seems to like the area... then i wouldn't want them to play the "louie louie" song when he got sent to the sin bin. they could play it when he scores instead. i can only hope. so, perhaps we'll get some of their players. i don't hate all of them, you know. we shall see.

No Freddy For Us

so, freddy managed to get himself signed with an AHL team. while i'm happy for him, i'm sad for pensacola. can todd ford carry the load for us? we shall see, i guess. the most interesting tidbit about this particular signing to me is that he signed with the AHL affiliate of the (damn) sea wolves. so, if mississippi manages to play somewhere this season, we could maybe possibly by some chance see freddy in goal for our hated rivals. damn. but they already have louis dumont, so it won't be the first time something like this has happened. anyway, perhaps freddy will spend the entire season with the bigger boys in the AHL. he deserves it.

in other latina-news, i recently heard from a close childhood friend i sort of lost touch with over the years. she just got married and is now living in australia. wow, huh? man, was it ever great to hear from her, though. i have the address to her online journal, so expect a link on my sidebar soon (heather's melo). i look forward to keeping tabs on her again.

today will be my first trip to dauphin island since the dreaded hurricane katrina made her mark on the gulf coast two weeks ago. they finally got their electricity restored over the weekend, and the sea lab is re-opening for business today. i just hope that the road out there is fixed. last year after hurricane ivan, there were parts of that causeway where you had to slow way down to drive over the parts that had been washed away and filled in with gravel. it didn't take too long to get it repaved, though, so maybe it's fixed now. things seem to be getting back to normal here (for the most part). gas prices are still way more expensive here than they are in the surrounding counties, which sucks big-time, but most stations actually have gas now, and there are no more hellacious lines (which i never had to wait in, anyway, since i haven't bought gas since the week before katrina hit). anyway, it's about time for me to start making my way out to the island for my seminar class. adios!

UPDATE: the road is so not fixed. there is much gravel. must drive at a snail's pace. much more of the causeway is washed out now than after ivan. yuck.

Awwww, Maaaaannnn

dude, this blows. USA has extended classes for an extra week this semester, meaning that i won't be finished for the semester until december 19 (i think - my last final might actually be on the 16th). and do you want to know the reason? their official announcement says it's because of the week we missed due to katrina. but the story the big boys are spreading to the professors is that we might have to miss more days this semester because we might get hit by another hurricane sometime before hurricane season ends on november 30. we are just now entering the peak of the season, after all... and already we have reached the O name. anyway, at least that means that if, by chance (and i hope and pray this doesn't happen), another tropical system makes its way to the northern gulf coast, USA will not extend the semester again. just the one week. but this area just can't handle another one... for, like, a decade or so. if another hurricane hits us this year, i, lover of the gulf coast, beaches, and warm tropcial weather, just might be forced to consider the possibility of maybe moving somewhere further inland - like philadelphia. maybe. but i would so freeze there... but i'd get to see the flyers, so freezing has its upside. but let's hope that the tropics don't target us again so i won't be forced to entertain such an atrocious possibility. i shiver just thinking about it.

Praise God, We Have a New Coach!

just checked the ol' email and discovered that the ice pilots have FINALLY announced the new coach, rick adduono. he's not todd gordon, and he's been pretty successful in this league in the past, so i'm a happy little camper. now perhaps they will make an announcement about all the new players they've signed... and the old ones, too (like nick lindberg). we might actually get to see a pretty good hockey team this season after all. dare we hope for a championship?

Screaming Imbeciles

what i'm about to write will probably make me look like a heartless bitch, so if you want to preserve your current image of me as a sweet, wonderful, humanitarian chica, you should stop reading immediately. yes, it has to do with the current katrina disaster. our local news here in mobile is still doing nearly-non-stop disaster coverage (they've been taking a little break for three hours during prime time since friday), and the local stories are much better than the chaos being shoved in our faces by the national news media. unlike the national media, which just want ratings, and let me tell you, people getting help and supplies don't get nearly the ratings of people who are stranded and starving, the local media are showing the people who are getting help. so many people seem to blame the president for this. how is this his fault? i may not be bush's biggest fan, but i disagree with all of the criticism he has faced over this disaster. it takes a long time to put together such a massive relief effort. everyone compares this to the tsunami or other hurricanes that have hit the U.S. but does no one recall that it is normal for relief supplies to take a couple of days to arrive in areas that need them? we didn't send supplies and relief teams to tsunami victims for about a week. it is normal for disaster relief to arrive in an area two to three days after a hurricane. you can't have them waiting in the disaster area itself, and it takes a bit of time to figure out which areas need the supplies the most and which places are safe to act as distribution sites. that's why they tell potential hurricane victims to collect essential supplies to last for at least three days after the storm. no one had to tell me these things. common sense allowed me to figure this out. so why is everyone bitching about the slow response? the scope of this disaster is so much larger than anything we've ever had to deal with in this country, how can we blame the people who organize relief for being a little slow? yes, it's bad and will cost lives to waste time, but it's not as if they aren't trying to get supplies to the hardest hit areas. and let's not forget how many local groups from all over the country are sending in supplies. let's also not forget that some of the assholes trapped in new orleans and the surrounding area hijacked supply trucks. so the people who are there are just making it harder to help them. when a small group of people steals and hordes all of the supplies, no wonder it's been nearly impossible to get food, water, and medicine to the people who really need and deserve it (no i don't think the assholes who are shooting at the people who are trying to help them deserve the help).

this brings me to a different point. the more i see people screaming on the national news about how no one is helping them, the more i see reporters eating it up like a big banana split, the more people talk about how high the death toll will rise, the more people scream about how their babies aren't being fed or changed, the more pissed off i get. does no one realize that these people are in their current situation through no one's fault but their own? every single person in the city of new orleans had the opportunity to leave it. they were ordered to leave it. buses were sent in and pick-up sites and times announced to take the poor, sick, and elderly to shelters outside the city. this simple fact makes it very hard for me to feel sorry for the irresponsible jerks who refused to leave and are now screaming about how no one is helping them. all of this could have been prevented. not one single person had to die because of hurricane katrina. now this has become a terrible tragedy. this hurricane was not like the tsunami. the major difference? people knew it was coming. they knew that new orleans would flood. yet still people refused to leave. at the very least, they could have gone to the superdome (where, contrary to some reports, they did have food and water for at least a few days). the people who are trapped there now with infants and toddlers piss me off the most. where is their sense of parental responsibility? where was the instinct to protect their children? it is one thing for an adult to decide to stay in the danger zone and risk his/her own life. it is quite another to risk the life of a child who had no way to make the decision to get out of harm's way. one story in particular involving parents pissed me off. this one couple had a baby just 9 days ago - prematurely. so, the infant was in intensive care in a children's hospital that was due to be evacuated. and what did this premie's parents do? they left. they evacuated and left their baby in the hospital, not knowing where he would end up. wtf? i'm sure that the hospital staff would have allowed the parents to stay with the child. how could they just go off and leave their baby, especially not knowing what city he would end up in?

tourists are locked in their hotels because they couldn't get out of new orleans. at least they tried to leave. however, they shouldn't have been in the hotels. they should have gone to the superdome, as many tourists who couldn't leave new orleans managed to do. if all of these people were in one place, it would be much easier to get everyone out of new orleans now.

i feel exactly the same way about all of the people who died in coastal mississippi. officially, reporters are not supposed to be given death tolls until there is a final body count. my alabama state trooper friend is one of many who have been assigned to the recovery effort in harrison and jackson counties in mississippi. chad talked to him last night and was informed that his unit alone has recovered 100 bodies from gulfport and 40 from ocean springs and pascagoula. now, they have been removed from the body search and assigned to police coastal mississippi due to the large number of rowdy looters. a group of people recently attacked one of the unit's police car. the situation is completely out of hand. my pal in law enforcement says he wishes martial law would be declared in mississippi as well, because they can't control the looters. he sounds very unhappy, and who could blame him?

so, yesterday i heard president bush say he's surprised that katrina didn't kill a million people. wtf??? how he could he be so stupid? and why do i seem to be the only one who realizes that no one had to die or that the people who did are dead through their own actions?

DISL Status

so, yesterday i got an email from some of the big boys at the dauphin island sea lab with an update on the status of the lab post-katrina. there was minimal damage compared to other parts of the island, and most of the boats were ok (even though i think they'll have to rebuild the dock again)... but they moved the two large boats (the ancient r.v. verrill from the woods hole oceanographic institute and the brand new conoco-phillips funded r.v. wilson) up the pascagoula river. as in mississippi. so, i'm just wondering why they didn't move them up the mobile river. they knew that the storm was going to hit to our west, so the mobile river couldn't have been any worse, right? anyway, all of the small boats at the lab are fine. the wilson is fine. but as of yesterday they could not find the verrill. that is a classic sea lab boat. hell, it was classic when it was at woods hole. the thing is nearly 40 years old, but it's a hell of a research vessel. i have many fond memories of the verrill. it was the first large boat i ever experienced. sure, it moves slower than a snail, but it would be a shame to lose it. so, dr. dindo said he was going out yesterday to look for the verrill, which sounds funny in itself. you know, having to go out and search for a pretty big boat when the smaller r.v. wilson stayed put.

anyway, dindo sent another update email this morning saying that they found the verrill, still attached to its tugboat, about 80 feet into a marsh near the pascagoula river. this is not a small boat by any means. it's nearly twice the size of our new and already beloved r.v. wilson. it amazes me that it got moved when it was up the river, supposedly far enough to be safe from katrina's surge. there is no word on how the verrill fared, and it might not be functional, but at least they found it.

Natural Selection in Action?

and the aftermath of hurricane katrina continues... let me tell you, folks, it does not make me feel special to be a part of the biggest natural disaster to ever hit the united states. the damage that hurricane katrina caused here in the mobile area is much worse than the damage caused by hurricane ivan last september. along the coastline and waterways, homes and buildings have been destroyed, including apartment buildings along dog river, tons of houses in bayou la batre (yes, the forrest gump city actually exists, for those who may not be familiar with this area), and approximately 80% of the houses on dauphin island, where i work. fortunately, dauphin island is not entirely a barrier island. the east end of the island, where the dauphin island sea lab is located, is an actual land mass with rocks and soil and forests and all, while the west end, where the majority of the beach houses were located, is just sand. the landscape of the west end has completely changed. most of the houses are just not there anymore. a barrier island is just about the dumbest place you could ever put a house, yet still i feel for the people who lost their homes. downtown mobile was completely flooded by katrina's massive storm surge, and the causeway that runs across mobile bay suffered massive damage, as did the one that runs out to the dauphin island bridge. i'm sure you've seen the pictures of the oil platform that slammed into the cochrane-africatown bridge across the mobile river. trees are down all over the place, including one that fell on the fence around our pool. there are tons of trees on power lines, of course, but chad and i were fortunate enough to have our electricity returned last night around 9:00 after three days and two nights dealing with the heat and humidity. at least our neighbor let us plug in our fridge, a fan, and a tv to his generator. things could have been much worse for us. practically every building in our apartment complex had the vents torn off the roof, so there are all these metal vents strewn everywhere. there are also many shingles missing, but no major damage so i feel very lucky.

outside, there is pandemonium. gasoline is in short supply, and many stations don't have electricity, so very few gas stations are open. this makes for gas lines that stretch for blocks with no guarantees that those in the back of the lines will arrive at the pumps before the gas runs out. the long lines are not limited to gas stations, either. the red cross distribution sites for ice, water, and MRE's (military food) are also drawing huge crowds and long lines. all of this is causing major traffic jams for the many people who have had to return to work (including chad - he had to go back to work this morning) and are just trying to get through, as if the many non-functional traffic lights at major intersections weren't causing enough back-ups. it now takes forever to go even the mile and a half to the centralite office where chad works. many people are losing money because they have not been able to work, so the rapidly rising price of gas is really hitting hard. this morning in mobile, gas is going for $3.25 a gallon. last week i paid $2.46 per gallon. and this is what the gas stations can charge despite the strict anti-price-gouging policies. i shudder to think what i'll be paying when i have to buy gas in a couple of weeks. i am refusing to drive anywhere unless it is absolutely unavoidable. my tiny car has a full tank of gas, and USA does not resume classes until next tuesday (due to the gas shortages, power outages, and curfews in place from dusk to dawn), so i should be able to stretch it for a long time. the university is about 4 miles from my apartment, and i will probably be having my seminar class there instead of dauphin island (which is 32 miles from my apartment), so i shouldn't have to buy gas until things settle down.

grocery stores are another source of madness here. the bruno's that chad and i went into yesterday wasn't actually that crazy, but many of its shelves were bare. another of our neighbors works security at wal-mart, and he told us that the number of shoplifters has increased dramatically. people are shooting their relatives over ice in mississippi, so i guess things really aren't as bad as they could be here. we have power again, so we can cook now. we have food and clean water, both of our gas tanks are full, so i feel pretty good about our situation personally. it's really bad for some people, though. especially in coastal mississippi (biloxi and gulfport) and new orleans.

i have mixed feelings about the human suffering that is being broadcast nationally (worldwide?) out of biloxi, gulfport, and new orleans. my initial reaction is absolute heartbreak at what these people are going through. i almost cried when i saw local reporter jennifer mayerle's interview with hardy jackson (which has been broadcast nationally on msnbc and fox news channel), the biloxi man who rode out the storm in his home, which split in two when it flooded, causing him to lose his wife. she told him to let her go so he could take care of their two grandchildren, who were with hardy when he was interviewed. i see this over and over, and then the reports of people who stayed in apartment buildings right on the beach. and they died. because they didn't heed evacuation orders. and it is very depressing to see. then logic kicks in, and i think that these people did this to themselves. there is absolutely no way that they did not know that this enormous and immensely powerful hurricane was headed their way. they were ordered to evacuate. here in mobile, buses were sent into the areas where mandatory evacuations were ordered to move the poor, sick, and elderly to shelters on safer ground. here, there was no excuse for staying in the danger zone. i just cannot make myself believe that the people who stayed and tried to ride out katrina in places like new orleans, biloxi, and gulfport didn't have the means to get to a safer place. in some cases, i truly believe that the flight instincts in these people, which would have saved their lives, were overpowered by a sense of complacence, a feeling that the government would take care of them rather than feeling that they could take care of themselves. i see this woman screaming on the news that if they die there in new orleans, it's because the state of lousiana let them die. but it just isn't true. they were ordered to leave the city, for crying out loud. looters abound, keeping what help is there from being effective as national guard members are diverted to stop looters. officials are trying valiantly to get everyone out of the drowning city of new orleans, and people don't seem to be helping the national guard help them by cooperating. i feel terrible for thinking this, but maybe they should just let these people go and get the people out that they can. let the looters have the city. it's mostly under water anyway. if they want to die for a bit of jewelry and electronics, let them. those businesses are mostly ruined already, as water continues to pour into new orleans. all of the people who are now dying in new orleans had the chance to save themselves. they could have gone to the superdome (which really wasn't a very effective shelter) or fled the city, but they sat back and claimed that they couldn't get there. i don't know if places other than mobile mobilized public transportation to get people out, but i still don't believe that the people who stayed and died in the areas destroyed by katrina just couldn't go anywhere else. could this be natural selection in action? getting rid of the people who are too lazy and dependent on the government to save themselves?

the people that i truly feel for are those who did evacuate and are now stuck in shelters because they've lost everything. i see all of this destruction in biloxi, where i have spent a fair amount of time in the past. the mississippi sea wolves, biloxi's local hockey team, have always been a great rival for the pensacola ice pilots, a team i've supported for many years, although this is my first season having a full season ticket package. now, i doubt that the sea wolves will play this season. their arena, the mississippi coast coliseum, is one of the few buildings still standing along the biloxi coast, but i just don't see how they're going to play. over the summer, deva and i went to biloxi for a showing of cats at the grand theater. the grand casino, which was basically attached to the grand theater, is no longer there. it was carried about a half mile from it's original location. the brand spankin' new hard rock hotel and casino, which was slated to become "our place" in biloxi this hockey season (you know, the place we went after hockey games), is totally smashed. only the guitar sign out front survived. there is a mcdonald's on the coast there where chad and i stopped almost every time we went to biloxi, and it is completely hollowed out - just a few posts holding up pieces of the roof. the landscape will never be the same. the city basically has to be completely rebuilt. biloxi is losing half a million dollars a day in revenue because none of the casinos are operational. this area is going to be very poor for a long time, i think, and it makes me very sad.

i also made a trip over to new orleans this summer, and that city will also never be the same. there is all this talk of pumping out the water and fixing the levees, but what's to stop something like this from happening again? the place is below sea level. the vast majority of the city is destroyed. why rebuild in a place like that? it marshland, for god's sake. these people already have to start over. why not do it in on more stable land? my heart goes out to these people. i don't know what i would do in their situation. sure my life has been disrupted by hurricane katrina, but no matter how much worse the damage in mobile is from katrina than from ivan, it is nowhere near as bad as that just to our west.

Safe and Sound

ok, for those who have seen the terrible katrina-aftermath footage from new orleans and biloxi, and perhaps the shots of the gas rig from mobile bay (so they claim) that slammed into the cochran bridge that goes over the mobile river, don't worry. i'm fine. most of mobile made it through the storm with far less damage than biloxi (boy, was it bad there - i can't believe how many people stayed there). we don't have power (of course), but the nice gent upstairs has a generator and is letting us run our fridge, a fan, and our smaller tv every few hours. it could be so much worse. we have a few shingles off and a bunch of tree limbs down, but overall everything seems ok.

Can't Sleep

so, hurricane katrina is just starting to make landfall in grand isle, louisiana, and i have been awake since about 4:30 this morning. the winds are very gusty, though not as bad now as they will be around lunchtime. the power is flickering off and on, and i hope that it lasts until daylight, as my dishwasher is running. i think it's about to go out, though. deva is staying with me and chad. she was awake with me earlier, but now she has fallen asleep on the couch again. we are safe and expect to be so for the duration of the storm, although i expect to see much worse wind this afternoon. at least we aren't getting the worst of this.

ok. deva is awake again to keep me company. i promise to post ASAP after the storm with an update.

Whoa

shit. this freakin' thing (hurricane katrina) is now bearing down on new orleans as a CATEGORY 5 hurricane (that's bad, folks, in case you didn't gather that). its winds are now at 160 mph. shit shit shit. mobile is not in the clear from this thing at all, and now i'm scared. even if it hits new orleans, this is a huge storm (area wise as well as strength wise), and mobile will feel some pretty strong effects. i can't believe they haven't even evacuated the south part of mobile county (i.e., dauphin island). the good news, if this can be considered good news, is that it sped up a little, meaning that it will get out of here a little faster moving at 12 mph than it would at its previous 7 mph. however, the pressure just keeps dropping... it's not losing any strength at all. in fact, it just keeps getting more powerful. if this thing wobbles to the east a bit and makes landfall in biloxi or pascagoula, mobile is toast, and i don't really want to be here right now. but i have a feeling that it's a little too late to leave. our local leaders just might regret not evacuating anyone this time, just like they regretted evacuating the whole county for hurricane dennis last month. shit.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

well, i got one happy surprise today and one that sucked big ass. the happy one was that i got my computer back about 4-5 days before i expected it, repaired and as good as new. the bad news, as i'm sure many of you know, is that hurricane katrina looks like it will be showing up in our area on monday. i cannot believe that we have to worry about something like this again. this morning when i left to go collecting with lindsey i wasn't worried about katrina. it looked like it would hit well to our east, and it didn't really concern me. this afternoon when i returned all muddy and bug-bitten, i was aghast to learn that the forecast track had shifted dramatically to the west. as of right now, pascagoula, mississippi looks to be the center point of the forecast cone. bad news for me. since the path has been steadily shifting westward, perhaps katrina will decide to bypass this area altogether and go bother some texans (sorry, texas residents). we can only hope, right?

now, the ugly part of this post comes from my day spent in the field with lindsey and joel. they are grad students in herpetology, so they really focus on tortoises, snakes, lizards, toads, salamanders, and critters of that nature. however, they do a lot of collecting in freshwater systems as well as terrestrial ones. for our freshwater ecology class, lindsey and i have to put together a collection of 80 different aquatic species. since she and joel go out collecting every monday and friday, she invited me to tag along so we could gather critters for our ecology class collections. the day was fine until we visited an ephemeral pond and were attacked by leeches. they didn't attach themselves to us or anything, but it was still pretty freaky. also, this huge unidentified bug decided that my forehead looked tasty and bit me, so i have this big, tender lump above my left eyebrow. despite the bad aspects of the day, i still had fun. catching things and watching them die in a vial of ethanol always gives me a little thrill.

Computer Challenged

yuck. i'm having a bad week already (even though i am so loving my freshwater ecology class). i just wanted to let everyone know that i will be computer challenged for the next week or so. something crazy happened to my computer, and all of my COM ports crapped out on me. so, no modem, no network connection, no wireless connection. no internet for me. hp is sending someone to pick up my comp today to fix it, and i have been assured that it will be returned to me good as new next week. but for now, i am reduced to library or lab computers. this blows big chunks because yesterday i volunteered to give the first presentation in ecotoxicology. the presentation is on september 6, giving me about two weeks to prepare. and for one of those weeks, i have no computer. i figure i'll have about four days to get this thing together. for now, i'm doing a little research in the library before my ecotox lab and trying to come up with a topic. something "current-eventsy" and controversial that involves spewing toxic substances into the environment. i want to do it on the whole LNG (liquified natural gas) terminal thing that is so debated right now in our area. i'm just not sure that the concerns about it are really toxicological. ok, off to do some reading and researching. wish me luck in my state of computer challenged-ness over the next week. posting will be sporadic at best.

Back to School and Big Kahuna's

so, today it's back to class for me. well, i just have one class today - my seminar class at the sea lab from 1 to 2 this afternoon. not too shabby for a monday schedule, eh? there is all kinds of work i'm supposed to be doing now, though. like getting some stats done to get to dr. v. before he leaves for finland on wednesday. and what am i doing? a big fat lot of nothing. well, i worked out and did some laundry. so that's not exactly nothing, right?

anyway, i got my pictures back from my birthday celebration at big kahuna's, so i thought i'd post a few for your viewing pleasure. most of them turned out really well. there were a couple of fuzzy blobs of nothing, but 25 out of the 27 exposures turned out fine. here are some of my favorites.

vanessa, deva, and yours truly hanging out in some pink inner tubes in the lazy river (the one that didn't suck).














and here's chad coming down one of the slides.














now, deva wouldn't do something like try to push me off the lily-pad thing on purpose would she? no, really... i think she was trying to steady it for me so i could try and stand up on it (that didn't work out so well).














oh, look. there's vanessa coming down a slide.














here's one of me and chad on one of those fun double tubes. can you tell it was bright and sunny out?














big kahuna says, "have fun." i think we accomplished that goal.





















obviously, we had a great time at the water park. i'll try and get the rest of the pictures up in a photo album soon.

Grrr

dammit. we really are being abandoned! everyone is leaving us. at least the team is still in pensacola, but tim kerr is no longer the owner. so, a new owner, no coach, no equipment manager, and only two players signed. so much for having a coach by the end of last week... should i dare to hope for one by tomorrow? i am quite concerned about our team, guys. *fingers crossed*

An Office Space Kind of Week

it would be kind of hard for me to personally experience and office space kind of week, as i work in a lab and as a grad student i'm in no danger of being down-sized or phased out, so of course i'm talking about chad. the other day he came in from work looking a little shell-shocked and proceeded to describe his day to me. it began with a one-on-two meeting with the big boys in his company (the ones he never sees or interacts with), whose first question was, "what would you say you do here? what's your job?" my first thought when he told me that was "i file tps reports." of course, they don't have tps reports, so chad told them what he does (which is pre-wire houses in progress for surround sound, phone, cable, lighting, security systems, program security systems, and install central vacuuming systems, although he wants to move into actually putting in the home theater systems and programming lighting, etc.). after a nice little chat about what he does, chad was then sequestered into a random office by himself. everyone else in the company (who were all freaking out as well, i'm sure) was also sequestered off somewhere alone. the big boys felt that their company was being run at less than top efficiency (which it definitely was) and that some re-organization and reshaping were desperately needed (which is true, from what chad has told me over the past year)... and they proceeded to fire ten people that day, including chad's boss, the guy who hired him and the only person in the company that chad felt any real loyalty to. happily, chad was not one of them. he does his job well and is not afraid to tell his dumb-ass of a "supervisor" when things have been planned badly.

i don't like chad's supervisor. he's a real idiot, and that condo job in orange beach last fall (the one where they "worked" very late every day, causing chad to leave for work at 5:30 every morning and not get home until 9-ish every night for months, the one where chad was miserable because the idiots he works with weren't really trying to get the job finished because they were digging the fat overtime pay - including his good buddy matt, i might add) was made worse by that dumb-ass because he liked the overtime, which he was getting even though he wasn't actually on the job site most of the time, and whose job chad was actually doing because otherwise nothing would have gotten done at all. yet, somehow, that guy didn't get canned. chad says it's because he neglected to reveal his role in the shoddy job planning that's been going on for the past year. oh, and during the orange beach condo thing, the idiot was reprimanded for sexual harassment but no formal charges were brought, so he didn't get fired. he took off his hard hat and swatted a girl's ass with it, a girl he'd been attempting to flirt with all week but who had rejected his advances. there were witnesses. i've met this guy, and he seems like a real sleaze ball... and chad and matt think he's on crack. seriously.

so anyway, chad actually likes the direction the company is going and thinks that they're phasing his idiot crackhead supervisor (who has been bumped down in the ranks) out. they're just keeping him in for now so they can get the new guy (who has been there all along in a sales position, but he's taking on new duties now) used to his new responsibilities. the idiot crackhead is afraid, very afraid. he knows that he should have been fired with that group the first day, and now he's trying to undermine the new guy and prove he can do things better (even though he really can't). he's just trying to save his job. chad's job is perfectly secure, though. he likes the new guy, i think. i've met him briefly as well, but he didn't really make much of an impression either way.

i hope that the new guy will get chad into what he really wants to do. he's sort of been stuck just doing what he's doing now because he's better at it than the other guys, so he always gets sent on those jobs. the new guy has promised chad that he will go on a programming job this week, though, while the idiot crackhead wanted someone else to do that one while chad went to do some wiring in another house. i hope the idiot crackhead gets fired (i think a company drug-testing policy would take care of that). he sort of makes chad's life less easy than it could be, which makes my life less easy than it could be.

all righty. gotta head for the lab. adios, amigos.

Abandoned...

*sniff* everyone is ditching us, guys. first dave, then jason serbus, now john krouse. there won't be a familiar non-player face anywhere near the bench in pensacola this season. hope they find a new coach soon...

Another Flyer in Pittsburgh

so the pens have picked up john leclair... first mark recchi, now leclair. recchi signed with the penguins way back in the summer of '04, before the lockout and all the ensuing drama. i knew that leclair's contract had been bought out in philly, but no one knew where he would end up. well, now we know. that should be a good rivalry this year, the flyers and the penguins. pittsburgh has put together a pretty good roster, and now i won't be able to assume they'll suck again. i think they're going to be really good this year. it should be interesting.

in other news that will only mean something to one of my faithful blog readers, i saw someone today that i haven't seen in quite some time - michael hrbacek. just in case this reader was wondering (she knows who she is), he is apparently still at USA, bought a '92 BMW for everyday driving, races the audi at some old airport in pensacola (legally, he assured me), and is still working for whatever USA department takes care of traffic-related stuff (not sure if he's still writing tickets or not - i know you're never excited about seeing him, but i kind of hope so since he never tickets me for parking in the faculty lot but sometimes leaves me a note to let me know he saw my car). i saw him when i went to pick up my new (and free this year) parking permit (he was working - helping the newbies fill out paperwork, etc), and we chatted for a bit. however, you were not mentioned in the conversation (hope you appreciate that - i thought about bringing you up and thought better of it). the last time i saw michael, it was at a pilots game. that was the only game i'd ever seen him at, and i didn't talk to him. i saw him buying a ticket outside, but i didn't see him inside anywhere and i don't think he saw me. there was no mention of a potential new girlfriend/stalkee in today's encounter.

in case anyone was wondering, deva, vanessa, chad, and i had a great time at big kahuna's on saturday (thanks again, guys). i took one of those waterproof disposable cameras with me, and hopefully i got some good shots. i dropped off the camera today, and i'll have pictures to post later this week.

for now, i'm catching up on last week's episodes of passions. thank the powers that be for tivo. ok, i'm off to see what's up with that note fancy found in noah's pocket while she was snooping. this whole disaster thing has been pretty interesting.

I Rubbed It In...

and it turned me on. i'm talking about this awesome new lotion from bath & body works, tahiti, sweetie. deva and i went shopping at the eastern shore center yesterday afternoon, and on this latest shopping adventure, we had a conversation about how deva's mom told her she should wear grapefruit scents because they're supposed to attract men. apparently, grapefruit turns them on. or maybe it's just a citrus thing. anyway, this grapefruit conversation was had while perusing the selection in bath & body works, sniffing everything in sight. so, while we were talking, i picked up this true blue spa island getaway lotion called tahiti, sweetie and gave it a sniff. it totally rocks. when deva took a whiff of the sweet, semi-citrusy, very islandy cream sent from heaven, she said something like, "well, this turns me on." and we had ourselves a little giggle. then i pointed out that it even smells a little grapefruity. so we helped ourselves and our hands to a little islandy moisturization and spent the rest of the afternoon browsing random shops and sniffing our hands. sometime after i pointed out that people probably thought we were on crack, the way we kept rubbing our noses and smelling our fingers, when there was a little lull in our constant babbling and giggling, i informed deva that the new lotion turned me on too. and of course, we had managed to talk each other into forking over the cash to buy a bottle each ("i'll buy it if you buy it"). so now we can enjoy a little island getaway (and get a little turned on) anytime we want.

after spending a little money, we went back to my place, made tacos, and watched a walk to remember. deva also talked me into trying a little cheap wine that tastes like a wine cooler (boone's farm blue hawaiian). finally, a wine i can drink! no bad aftertaste (which is why i don't like wine), and it's super-cheap. we also discussed plans for big kahuna's water park in destin tomorrow after chad got back from playing rugby... let the two-week celebration of latina continue! the park opens at 10 am, so we discussed meeting at vanessa's house at 9 and getting to the park when it opens (in deva's new car). sound ok, nessa (i'll probably call you later anyway)? oh, and food. you're not allowed to bring food into the park (and their food is expensive), but you get a hand stamp when you go in so you can leave and come back. last time i was there, we left a cooler with sandwich fixings and drinks in the car out in the parking lot and went out there when we got hungry. i'll be sure to bring a change of clothes so we can go to mcguire's afterwards. it should be a blast.

ohmygod

dave farrish is going to be the assistant coach in ANAHEIM??? wtf? i just checked my email and discovered this astonishing hockey factoid. my jaw is pretty much still hanging down on the floor. i can only hope and pray that this does not bring todd gordon back to town. so, now, not only do the ice pilots only have two players signed, but now they need a new coach. *exasperated sigh* i hope that whoever comes to town is a good, capable, non-idiotic, smart hockey coach (who doesn't totally screw us in the post-season). hmm... a thought. ryan vince is retired and in town, right? he can play hockey. anyone think he can coach? sorry. that was a stupid thing to suggest. how 'bout tim kerr? [sorry - another stupid suggestion]. i'm a tad freaked right now. so, i don't really know anything about available coaches on the market. i just hope we find a good one. in less than two months. man - dave couldn't have decided to leave us for bigger and better things a little earlier in the summer, could he?

so, my question now becomes: did anyone else know anything about this beforehand? am i just out of the loop again? i frequently find myself in a position in which i am painfully unaware of things that are no surprise to others. well, i for one am shocked at this turn of events.

A Belated Happy Birthday to Me

let the two-week celebration of latina begin! well, i guess it already began, since my b-day was actually yesterday and the birthday priveleges (such as picking what to eat, what movies to watch, not having to drive anywhere, etc - and all with no complaints from chad) took effect on friday. friday night was simple and spent vegging out at home: picklefish hawiian pizza (pricey but yummy), mike's hard berry (also yummy, btw), ice cream sandwiches, watching tivo...jay leno from thursday night w/ rob schneider and sidney crosby (who shot pucks at a dryer, which he apparently used to do as a bored kid in nova scotia), cheesy horror flicks from the '70's and '80's recorded off AMC and IFC (which i love for some reason; i'm a big fan of the cheesy horror film). yesterday was a little more festive. watched big fish in the morning, then headed out for a bit of shopping (which chad wasn't allowed to complain about, and if i bought something pricey, then so be it) at bel-air mall. we hit books-a-million so i could pick up the 6th book in stephen king's the dark tower series. i started to get the 7th and last book as well, but it is only available in hard back, and even i wasn't willing to fork over close to $40 for it. i'm sure i can find it cheaper elsewhere. i also picked up another dan brown (author of angels & demons and the da vinci code) title, deception point. we actually spent a fair amount of time browsing around the bookstore (which chad didn't hate), and i found at least 5 more books that i want but refrained from purchasing at the moment. chad found a couple of history-related books that he said he wouldn't mind reading, along with a couple he plans to get his dad. after that, we just sort of browsed around the mall doing tons of looking but not much buying. then, it was off to the movie theater, where chad was willing to see must love dogs (which he normally would be perfectly ok with renting off pay-per-view but not viewing in a theater), but we got there super-early and opted for a showing of fantasic four instead. after the movie (which we saw pretty early), we headed back home for a while where we watched big brother 6. for some reason, i'm really addicted to that show. yeah, not much else comes on in the summer, but it's just so easy to really dislike some of these people. i hate james, for example. he would have no problem whatsoever selling out his girlfriend (who is on the show with him) if it meant he could stay in the house another week. and the things he says about her... i would dump his ass so fast if i were her... but of course she doesn't know what he says about her behind her back. anyway, that was totally beside the point. after big brother, we headed for carrabba's where i had a yummy dinner of chicken bryan and garlic mashed potatoes and chad had chicken parmesan. both are quite tasty. chad was feeling generous and didn't have to be prompted into leaving the waitress a fat tip.

so, for today it's off to my mom's house for more birthday festivities. not sure what mom's planning to cook (she said something about baking a ham - yummy), but there will most definitely be cake. for the rest of the week, it's normal work stuff (actually, i might take tomorrow off), then next weekend more celebration with deva and vanessa. not sure what the plan is, but i'm sure it will be fun.

How 'Bout Some Forwards?

*happy dance* so, hopefully the ice pilots are on a roll with this whole signing players thing. i've just read that they signed rookie defenseman pat sutton. so, that's 2 D down, 4 to go for a complete defensive lineup. we'll probably tack on a couple more who will get assigned from toronto, too. now, how about signing a few forwards, just for my peace of mind? and what about freddie? any word on what our favorite goaltender is planning for the upcoming hockey season?

At Long Last...

the ice pilots have signed their first player this season. corey neilson has re-signed with the pilots. i'm happy about that. i like corey. he's a funny guy. oh, and a good defenseman too. he has good hockey skills. and he was a good sport when deva, vanessa, and i were collecting photos of flexing hockey players. check out our joint blog who will be the next ice pilot to flex? for the results of that venture. we will continue that quest this season.

so, we've got one guy. he plays D, but he can also score. however, he can't do it alone. and as much as i dig the little guy, i also don't think *jacquo* (chris st. jacques -the object of my pseudo-stalking and for whose jersey i forked over a fair amount of $$$, for those who might not know who i'm talking about) can score enough goals and push enough guys around to help corey out a whole lot. and he really doesn't have very good defensive skills, i'm sad to say. i'm pretty confident in my assumption that jacquo will be back in pensacola this season. probably a todd ford, too. beyond them, i don't know who we're going to get from the toronto marlies of the ahl. so, we've got corey. it's a start. now, how about a dwayne hay? a tyler beechey? a ryan o'keefe? a nick lindberg? an aaron gionet? anybody with hockey skills?

Heat Has Fried My Brain

so, my goal for the past few days has been to avoid the oven-on -wheels that is my car. yesterday actually wasn't bad. it rained on me three times, so the heat index was only around 100, instead of the 110 it was on monday. monday sucked. bright sun (which i usually like), the highest humidty possible without clouds, and zero rain all combined to create a sweltering heat that made my car unbearable until the AC had run full blast for about ten minutes. and i had to go out to the marsh in that crap (a trip i've already described in my last hockey player post).

compared to monday, yesterday was heaven. well, i spent most of the day working in anne's lab in the biology department, so of course i wasn't as hot. but it also rained three times, and there were plenty of trees to park under on campus. my car didn't feel at all like an oven yesterday. oh, and i got free ice cream. i have good timing. i picked a great day to go and work in anne's lab, and it just so happened that during my one free half hour (other than lunch) there was free ice cream in the conference room. the ice cream was part of a send-off for emily, a former bio dept grad student who now works at a college in virginia, who is returning to virginia this weekend after spending the summer with anne here in mobile. so, while i was enjoying a free frozen treat, i caught up with lindsey (my biometry buddy, for those who have been reading my blog long enough to remember her). that was the first time i'd seen her all summer, since we've both been busy with our respective field work. she's doing research on gopher toroises, romping in the woods, while (as you all know) i am working with seagrass and urchins in port st. joe. needless to say, our research doesn't really bring us together. anyway, that was fun. lindsey and i will once again be harassing mccreadie (our former biometry prof) in the fall during our freshwater ecology class, and we had to compare schedules to be sure we'd signed up for the same lab.

anyway, so it rained late yesterday afternoon, then the sun came out again, which made for something interesting while i was walking to my car from the bio dept yesterday. when i stepped out of the life sciences building, i felt like i'd walked into a sauna. you could literally see the steam rolling off the pavement and sidewalks. it was weird. and hot. and... well, steamy. like, from the ground up to about three or four feet, all you could see was steam. pretty crazy, eh?

today, my car was once again a killer. there really aren't many trees to park under at the sea lab, so i really had to prepare myself for the blast of hot air that pounded me whenever i opened my car door to get in. anyway, with all this murderous heat, my brain has been feeling a tad slow. so, when i was supposed to be coaching gretchen in the statistical tests we need to do on our data, my brain was not as speedy as usual. that is so not cool. i've been forgetting things all day, and i've been racking my brain trying to figure out what TA duties need to be fulfilled tomorrow...

all right, you have my apologies if this post isn't up to my usual witty standards. i blame it on the heat. the highs for the rest of the week are only in the low 90's. sweet!

Raise Your Hand if You're Bleeding

i actually had to use that phrase this morning due to the large number of injuries on this morning's field trip into the marsh while i passed out antiseptic wipes and band-aids from the first aid kit. it was quite sad. why can't those students just stop hurting themselves? *shakes head* it could've been worse. i just had to deal with scrapes. nancy had to deal with a stingray wound on friday... at the place i'm going this coming friday. yippee. in case you were wondering, a stingray hit means a visit to the nearest emergency room.

among the morning's injuries was a student i've been pondering since friday. the reason for this pondering was a snippet of conversation i overheard on the boat friday. i was reading harry potter and not really following the buzz of conversation around me when my attention was piqued by the following: "...when i played juniors. i hear there's a team in fairbanks." and this was spoken by a male student with an accent that is definitely not southern. i'm thinking really freakin' far north. canadian, perhaps? there was a bit of dwayne hay in that voice, for those who know what dwayne hay sounds like (and who dwayne hay is). anyway, i didn't butt in and say, "juniors? do you play hockey?" i just let it go and returned my attention to my book. but i was still wondering... anyway, this morning (prior to the injury) this toothpick of a guy was trying to help the possibly canadian out of the water and onto this concrete wall, and one of the girls in the class said something like, "yeah, let the skinniest guy out here help out the hockey player." anyway, then all these people started cutting themselves, and as the marsh is not the place you want to get injured (it's just teeming with crap), i had to see to the various cuts and scrapes. then the hockey player scraped his leg all up and was whining about it getting infected, so i had to get him some alcohol wipes. i think that the hockey player goes to auburn university... which doesn't have a hockey team. so i don't know if his hockey playing is current. perhaps i can corner him on friday when we go to panama city and ask him. i'm intrigued. oh, and in case you're interested, the hockey player's pretty cute and seems to have an aversion to wearing a shirt (not that i was checking him out or anything - that would be wrong on so many levels). oh, and he doesn't know his fish very well. sadly, i don't know the hockey player's name. i actually don't know very many of my students' names, so that's not really that odd. well, i know the name he goes by (which is not his first name, and i have been unable to determine his first and last names based on my class list)... so much for checking out his hockey status online.

now, all this pondering over the hockey player in my class has put me in the mood for some hockey action. the start of the season still seems so far away... and pensacola has yet to sign anyone. dammit. at least there are some interesting happenings in the NHL. like leclair and amonte getting bought out. so, they are two guys i won't see with the flyers this season. i'm not that surprised. neither of them really stood out the year before last, and leclair just had back surgery a couple months ago. that's not the kind of hockey action i want to see, but i guess it will do until there's some on-ice action to amuse me.

I Thought You Were a Yankee

apparently, folks, i articulate too well to be from the south. at least, that's what i was told by a student yesterday on the boat. for some reason, a discussion was started about florida not really being The South, and i disagreed. until you get to extreme south florida (where it becomes largely hispanic), the state is just as southern as its neighbors. i think that most people who grew up in almost any part of florida, as opposed to migrating there from another (northern) state, sound just as southern as people who grew up in alabama or georgia. really, i was a little surprised when i discovered this. but just listen to the people reporters interview after a hurricane in florida - the southern accents abound, folks. i had one person agree with me. she's from california but has lived pretty much all over the U.S., and she agrees that a large proportion of floridians have southern accents. and then someone asked where i'm from. so, i gave them the whole "born in tennesee, moved to pensacola before i could walk, went to high school in alabama" spiel. then came the "wow, i thought you were a yankee" comment from one of the guys in my class. i guess my raised eyebrows invited further explanation because the student felt the need to explain himself with, "you articulate too much, um, er... you just don't sound like you're from the south." this was after he'd made some comments about speaking "american," after which i just said, "american, huh?"

the whole yankee thing sort of caught me off guard. a couple of years ago when i went to a conference at georgia tech, i was checking in, and i was wearing a university of south alabama t-shirt, and the girl who gave me my meeting agenda, abstract book, name tag, etc. said, "you sound like you're from south alabama." at the time, that sort of caught me off guard, too. but i accepted the fact that, since i've lived in the south (really the extreme south - if i lived much further south, i'd be in the gulf of mexico) my entire life, i probably do have a southern accent. but anyway, some of you can't really make a judgement on that, since my accent (whatever it may be) can't really come through on a blog.

yesterday's full day out on the boat was really quite interesting. many fish were killed (which bothered some), much fishing (like, with a rod and reel) was done (and this one jack crevalle was pulling three boys around and around the boat, like, they were doing laps trying to reel the thing in, and they eventually had to cut it loose), and i was able to offer much assistance with the critter identification. many people were reading harry potter and the half-blood prince (including moi), and i was able to finish the book yesterday. oh my god, i just couldn't believe it. i knew that someone major would die, but i didn't think it would be... the person who kicked the bucket. in that respect, i totally agree with deva. but, unlike her, i think that everything can be and should be wrapped up in one final book. i refrained from making any assumptions at all while i was reading (that's not to say i didn't imagine several possibilities - i just didn't think that any of my ideas seemed any more likely than any of the others). how much does it suck that we'll have to wait two years to find out how it all ends?

Cats

so, deva and i went to biloxi last night for a much-needed taste of culture. we dressed up a bit and headed out to see cats at the grand theater. chad tagged along (actually, he drove), too, but not for the play. he of course went for the gambling. while deva and i were watching the show, chad wandered over to the isle of capri casino to play some slots, which turned out pretty well. he came out $100 ahead, so after subtracting the cost of my ticket, that trip to mississippi actually made us $75 richer. sweet.

the show was good and not something that i do very often. deva and i found it highly entertaining, especially mungojerrie, the curious cat. that guy was funny... and he had good moves. the only bad thing about the theater was the loud and incredibly annoying family in the row behind us. they had three small children (like, all under the age of 5), who of course couldn't sit still during the play, and their mother (well, i assumed she was their mother) kept talking to them very loudly in an asian languange i couldn't identify. she'd get up and take the kids to the end of the row, then take them back and sit down again, so not only were they talking incessantly and loudly, but they were also moving around - double the distractions. a woman sitting next to them got up to complain to an usher, and one came over and told them to be quiet... but they so didn't. i think that everyone in the general area asked them to be quiet, but they just kept talking. it wouldn't have been as bad if they'd make some small effort to whisper, but they were just so loud. when the music got louder, so did they. a woman in front of deva and me finally got up to find another usher. as soon as the loud family saw this, the woman took the three children and left. so when the usher arrived, the only member of the loud family left was one girl, who the usher also asked to leave. finally, we could watch the show in peace, and it was a good experience.

today, i am finally starting harry potter and the half-blood prince. my copy was delivered on saturday afternoon, but as i was already into dean koontz's dark rivers of the heart (which was really good, btw), i decided to finish it before starting on the new harry potter. i don't have a solid day to dedicate to reading the new book, so it will probably take me a little while to finish it... so no spoiling it for me, dudes (and dudettes).

Funkiness

all right. so i'm having sort of a bad day. well, it could be much worse, but i'm in sort of a funky mood. i'm at the lab right now, grinding seagrass samples (yes, on a sunday), and i'm pretty much the only person here. well, every now and again someone comes through for something. craig came in for a chat earlier when we were the only people in the building. but now i'm all by myself, listening to some tunes.

anyway, allow me to explain the source of my present funk. it stems from a couple of things. most recently, i managed to lock the keys to my lab's storage area in the storage area. and of course, our friendly neighborhood maintenance men aren't here to cut off the padlock so i can get in to retrieve the keys. this is only a problem because gretchen and i left some very stinky items in there when we returned from port st joe (PSJ) friday night (hey, it was late, like 11:20, and we didn't have the energy to scrub the algae-encoated pvc), and they're stinking up the whole storage building. i went in to get some gloves so i don't burn my hands with liquid nitrogen while i'm using it to grind seagrass in, and when i exited the storage area (aka the cage) i had my lab keys in my hand, so i assumed that i also had the keys to the cage and proceeded to secure the padlock. then, i realized that, no, i did not have the cage keys after all. i peeked through the wire fencing that separates our cage from the others in the storage building, hoping to spot the keys so that i might find something to fish them out, but alas, they were nowhere in sight. so, while i have the required gloves, i will be unable to return to the cage later this afternoon to remove and clean the smelly pvc. i guess it won't kill anyone to have a stinky storage building for one more day. i'll take care of the lock situation first thing in the morning.

ok, on to the second source of this major funk. this is really a couple of things wrapped up in one. i've mentioned that it was late when gretchen and i arrived at DISL from PSJ on friday, and it took us a while to unload everything and return the car and stuff, so it was after 12:30 a.m. when i finally got home. and that was after waking up at 6:30, driving the 40 minutes to st. joseph peninsula state park from our hotel, working in the field for over 8 hours, driving the 5 1/2 hours from PSJ to dauphin island, then making the 45 minute trip home from the island. so, when i finally went to bed around 1:30, i was really freakin' exhausted. now, just imagine my intense irritation when chad's cell phone rings at 6:30 saturday morning. i don't like being called that early in the morning when i'm not absolutely exhausted, and i was especially annoyed then. of course, by the time we woke up to answer, it stopped ringing so we went back to sleep. then our apartment phone rang a little before 9, and again, i didn't really wake up until right before the answering machine picked up, but no one left a message. anyway, i decided that sleeping in any later was not going to happen at that point in time, so i just got up. about an hour later, chad's cell phone rang again, and this time i was awake. it was his mother. she had been the person calling repeatedly early on a saturday morning when she knows that we will be sleeping - when she knew that i wouldn't be getting home until after midnight on friday night/saturday morning. yet she still felt the urgent need to call us at freakin' 6:30 on a saturday morning. i sort of felt bad for being so pissed when i found out why she called so many times instead of just leaving a message to call her back asap. but i was still pissed. anyway, she had just gotten their morning paper when she called at 6:30, and on the front page was an article proclaiming the tragic death of one of our high school classmates. so she felt the need to call and let us know as soon as she read it, which i really didn't think was necessary. and then i felt like the biggest bitch in the world for thinking that she so could have waited to tell us that. so chris winchester, a guy who was in my graduating class in high school (and i went to a very small school, so of course i knew him) was killed by a roadside bomb in iraq. i don't really know how i feel about it. of course, i feel bad about it. it's a very sad thing to have happen to someone you know. but we weren't close or anything. to tell the truth, i hardly ever talked to the guy. i never actively disliked him or anything, we just traveled in different social circles. so in a way, yeah, i feel sad. i feel for his family and the people who were close to him. but it feels wrong to feel any sort of really intense grief over it because we weren't friends. i didn't really know him that well. i don't want to be one of those people who acts like someone was his/her best friend after they've died when they really weren't close. people like that always piss me off. the last funeral i went to was when i was a sophomore in high school. my friend shari's mom had cancer, and when she passed away, shari asked if i would go to the funeral with her. of course i couldn't refuse, even though i really hate funerals. then, i really did feel sad. mostly i felt really bad for shari, losing her mother and all. but i'd hung out at her house before, and her mom had always been really sweet to me. i'd also been to visit her in the hospital with shari, so i also saw how hard the whole cancer situation was on their whole family. i never felt like i was intruding, though. i just felt like shari needed me, so when she asked me to go to the hospital with her, i went. we drifted apart in the couple of years after that, and that kind of makes me sad too.

anyway, hearing about chris also made me think about the war in general. chad and i have talked about it a lot, actually, and i know how i feel about it. i don't agree with the reasons that were given for going into iraq. i think that we were egregiously misinformed and that we were effectively lied to about the reasons for invading and for remaining there for so long. i don't think that it is our place as americans to interfere there. i think that we should have left after finding that there were no WMD, if that was the real reason we were there. i always hear arguments that they killed people on american soil and that's why we're over there, and i want to shake those people. we went into afghanistan because of 9/11. no one seemed opposed to that. i've seen no evidence that it was iraqis who were responsible, and i think that the 9/11 argument for the war in iraq is totally invalid. i don't have a problem with ridding the world of saddam hussein, but if that was the goal, we should have been told that. if we're there to "save" the iraqi people, we should be told that. personally, i don't think it's our place to "save" iraq, but that would be a more valid reason for americans to be there than "we were looking for WMD, and even though we didn't find them, we think iraq is bad, so we're going to set up a new government there." even though i don't think we should have been in iraq in the first place, i think that now that we are there, we have to finish what was started. it would be wrong of us to go in and throw their lives into disarray, disrupt their government, and walk away saying, "whoa, my bad. we'll leave you to clean this mess up now." i agree that terrorists need to be fought against, but i think that a lot of people have died needlessly in iraq because of bad information. i also think that this whole iraq thing has actually taken away from the war on terror. we've been concentrating on getting things settled in iraq rather than combating terrorists elsewhere. my final verdict: we should never have been in iraq and we should leave as soon as humanly possible.

all right, i'm still in a major funk, but i have work to do so i can go home. lay-tah.

Off to Port St. Joe

so, i'm finally making that trip to port st. joe tomorrow. i'm a little concerned about the state of the roads, though. i called the florida dept of transportation yesterday to ask about road conditions between pensacola and PSJ (that's a lot of roads, i know) and found out that i'm probably going to have issues with hwy 98. i called the park, though, and they say it's passable. nancy will be taking over my TA duties on friday when the class takes a trip over to perdido key.

i'm not looking forward to the drive back from PSJ on friday. this weekend is the dauphin island fishing rodeo, a huge fishing tournament that takes place every summer on the island. traffic is always hell that weekend, with the two-lane road heading onto the island and the huge number of boats being pulled in on trailers.

but anyway, gretchen and i will be heading out tomorrow afternoon and returning friday.

and now, a bit on the tropics (that's become a pretty regular topic of conversation for me). t.s. emily is out there, about to enter the caribbean and then the gulf of mexico. i have a good feeling about this one, though. my prediction is that it's going to hit texas and leave us here on the northern gulf coast alone. here's hoping i'm right.

Whew

so, we really dodged a bullet with hurricane dennis, guys. my power never even went out. when i returned home from houston today, my alarm clock still had the right time. thank heaven for fast-moving storms. it could have been so much worse. mobile has basically no damage (and neither does dauphin island) and only a few power outages. i know that pensacola and navarre beaches have some pretty bad damage, as does flomaton (i'm never riding out another storm there b/c of ivan) and the rest of escambia county, alabama. my mom and little sis stayed at my granny's house in bratt, fl (~40 miles north of pensacola, for those who are unfamiliar with the area), and there are trees down all over the place there. they don't have power or phones, and there are two big trees blocking the road (and laying on the power and phone lines), so they can't get out with the cars. thank heaven for cell phones or i'd have no idea what was going on with them.

anyway, while many of you were in the area riding out hurricane dennis without the luxury of air conditioning, chad and i were having a lovely time in houston. this was our first visit to texas, and i must say, it's pretty nice. for a big city, houston isn't that hard to get around in. it's much better (in my humble opinion) than atlanta. i'm not a fan of atlanta. it scares me. but houston doesn't. it was nice. while hurricane dennis was making landfall yesterday, chad and i were at the johnson space center taking a tour of NASA. it was really cool. we got to sit in the viewing area of the historic mission control center (which was used up until 1996) and listen to the tapes of such historic phrases as, "houston, we have a problem" from apollo 13 and "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" from the first moon landing. apparently, "houston" was the first word spoken on the moon. we also got to see the astronaut training facility and mock-ups (which are life-sized, sometimes even working versions) of the international space station, its components, and the space shuttles. along with the tour, we saw all that the johnson space center has to offer tourists, including samples of moon rocks and soil, various presentations, and exhibits. and we did it all for the price of one admission ($17.95), thanks to the coupon books offered at the texas welcome center, with which i was very impressed. they had free (very detailed) texas maps with all of the major tourist attractions marked, which came in handy for finding our way around town, along with coupons and information for most of the tourist attractions in nearly every city in texas. the houston coupon book also included a coupon for buy one, get one free tickets (and not just the nosebleeds) for the houston aeros for any game in the 2005-2006 season (hint, hint). chad and i picked up 4 coupon books, in case anyone wants to catch some ahl hockey action (and possibly see some former ice pilots?) this season. chad and i have already thought this out. houston is about an hour and a half from beaumont, tx, where the echl's texas wildcatters play. we figure we could really make a trip of it, and catch an ice pilots game in beaumont and an aeros game in houston. to get to houston, we had to drive through beaumont, and let me tell you, it's pretty big. we scoped out the ford arena, the wildcatters' home building, and it looks really awesome from the outside. it is conveniently located right on I-10 on the outskirts of the city, so there's no confusing traffic getting in. we should check out the schedules and make plans for this. chad and i are excited about it.

something i'm less than excited about is tropical depression #5 out in the atlantic. chad thinks i'm a crazy weather channel addict (and perhaps i am) and that i shouldn't worry about this, but i like to be informed. anyway, t.d. #5 is expected to become a tropical storm soon, to be named emily. then, it is expected to continue on a westward track into the northern caribbean, where it is expected to affect hispanola and cuba as a hurricane sometime this weekend or early next week. from there, no one knows, but there could be the danger of another hurricane heading for the U.S., according to the weather channel. if that happens, it has to hit texas, right? they're due for a hurricane. another tropical system can't head for the northern gulf coast in july, right? i hope not. i've been told not to worry, but you can bet your sweet asses i'll be keeping an eye on t.d. #5.

in other latina-news, my port st. joe (PSJ) trip has been rescheduled for this thursday. whether i will be going alone with gretchen or with the marine ecology class remains to be seen. dr. v. and i have been having an email discussion about this. we have a floating TA for summer school who can handle my duties if gretchen and i go alone (dr. v. will also make charlie help nancy [the floating TA] out). the results will depend on what i can find out from the officials at the park in PSJ and at st. andrew's park in panama city. either way, i'm going to PSJ on thursday.

all righty, folks. i've updated you on my life (i know you were just dying to know how my weekend went), and now i must go and live it some more so that i may regale you with tales of my many adventures.

Gettin' the Heck Outta Dodge

yeah, so i'm a big fat chicken. i think that hurricane dennis will probably hit east of mobile, but i've defintively decided to leave. chad and i will be headed for houston for the weekend, to return to mobile on monday. we're planning to leave in the middle of the night to (hopefully) avoid the worst of the traffic. this group of computer models predicting the path of dennis is pretty freakin' scary to me. none of the models predict that dennis will actually hit mobile, but all of them take it pretty freakin' close. the two that have it hitting mississippi scare me most, as the east side of the storm gets the worst of it.

DISL and USA are officially closed until tuesday, possibly even later in the week than that. when these two places close, i know things are bad. the only thing that's really bothering me about evacuating right now is the possibility that chad's mom will come with us. don't get me wrong, she's a sweet lady. she's just so smothering. chad was definitely babied until he moved in with me, and i just can't take it when she acts like he can't do anything for himself (and treats me the same way). but she may head north with their neighbors (which i think would be the most convenient thing for all involved), so i might not have to worry about it. chad's dad has to work (he's a correctional officer at holman prison, which is where they put the really bad criminals in alabama), and he doesn't want her to be alone, which i totally understand. it's just that being in close quarters with her for long periods of time kind of makes me crazy. my mother was very different with me than judy was with chad. i was raised to be a self-reliant individual (that's not to say that my mom wasn't there for me, she definitely was), and he definitely wasn't.

anyway, i've got a few last-minute preparations to do, like a load of laundry before we lose power, so i'm off. i'll have a post-dennis entry as soon as i can.

Hurricane Plans

yeah, i'm sure you are all sick to death of posts about hurricane dennis, but i just can't help it. i'm completely consumed with hurricane-related thoughts. i can't seem to change the channel and stop watching the weather. to ease everyone's minds, i will not be going to port st. joe this weekend. i don't give a damn what anyone else thinks. i am absolutely scared to death of the approaching hurricane (which is now expected to make landfall early sunday afternoon), and i refuse to go driving off 300 miles east (and still in the path of the storm). gretchen tried talking me into going this morning, but i held my ground. she's from maine. what the hell does she know about hurricanes? i'm not taking any chances. dr. crozier (the sea lab director) has ordered an evacuation of DISL, anyway. all the students in the dorms have to leave this weekend. there's still a small chance that the storm could miss us (*fingers crossed*), but as they're preparing to order an evacuation of mobile if necessary, i won't hold my breath. apparently, the shelters in mobile can't withstand a category 3 hurricane, and if it looks like dennis will hit us as a category 3, mobile will be evacuated, with shelters open along the evacuation route.

since dennis is now a category 3 (but a weak one, with winds of 115 mph), and it is very possible for it to reach category 4 strength despite still having to pass over cuba, it is looking more and more likely that chad and i will be getting the hell out of here on saturday. we still haven't made up our minds yet, though. some of the current projections seem to take the hurricane east of us (in the navarre/ft. walton beach area), so we might stick around mobile if it still looks that way tomorrow and into saturday morning. if we decide to leave, we're heading for tuscaloosa. at least we have a plan, even if i'm having a bit of a breakdown in nerves.

i guess for now, it's sort of business as usual - i taught a lab this afternoon (and it went fine), and i'll be teaching another one tomorrow afternoon. but first, i have to go out and collect 200 hermit crabs. that sounds like a lot, i know, but they're absolutely rampant on dauphin island, so it shouldn't take too long. then, it's decision-making time. i'll let everyone know if chad and i leave mobile.

Not About Dennis, I Swear

ok, here's a post that's not about the tropics. it's about hockey. i just read that the players and the league have reached a (tentative) agreement, to be approved by the players today. *yay* so there will be NHL hockey this season. i'm so happy about that! now the ahl and the echl can make decisions that don't end with "depending on what happens in the NHL." good stuff. on the downside, since ahl teams will inevitably be losing players to their NHL clubs, some of the (awesome) guys we had last year in pensacola probably won't be returning. *sniff* perhaps we will get cam keith back, though, for nessa's sake.

all righty. i've got things to do and people to teach.

Glued to the Weather Channel

yeah, more bitching about the tropics... but i've seen the same graphic several times today, and no one on the weather channel talks about dauphin island. they're like, "what the hell is dauphin island?" anyway, they keep showing the wind speeds for the areas affected by tropical storm cindy, and they include dauphin island on the graphic (68 mph winds last night/this morning, in case you were wondering), but they skip it and only talk about mobile, biloxi, cities people may have heard of. it's weird to me because all of the local stations focus on dauphin island, as it is a barrier island and sees the brunt of any storm before it makes its way to land. yet the weather channel seems to pretend the island where i spend so much of my precious time doesn't exist, even though they put it on my tv screen.

...and now they're comparing dennis and ivan. yeah, we remember ivan. it takes more than 10 months to forget something so many people are still recovering from. i don't think i'll ever forget ivan, unfortunately. yeah, dennis is pretty much taking the exact same path ivan did, so far (and probably when it makes landfall, too). one positive difference is that ivan was a category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds at the same location, whereas dennis is a category 1 with 80 mph winds. i'm not letting that fool me, though. dennis still has most of the caribbean and all of the gulf of mexico to strengthen. there is still a (faint) hope for me that it will decide it doesn't really want to hit me and will go after texas instead. i say it's a faint hope, though, because according to USA's meteorology dept (which had the most accurate hurricane models i'd seen for past hurricanes - it was better than the weather channel's model for ivan), dennis is headed for mobile, baby. mobile. dammit.

for the benefit of my reader(s) who may or may not be very familiar with tropical activity, this season is not normal. we don't usually have this many named storms by early july (it's only been hurricane season for a little more than a month, for crying out loud!), and they don't usually all enter the gulf of mexico, and three out of the first four named storms certainly don't usually make a beeline for the central northern gulf coast (i.e., my territory) all within a few weeks of each other. this is especially out of the ordinary since we took such a hard hit from ivan last season. i really didn't expect to get targeted this much this year. i thought maybe we'd see a tropical storm, but two tropical storms and a hurricane??? by early july??? hell no. ugh. at this rate, i'm not going to make it to the end of hurricane season at the end of november... that's so far away.

hmm. dennis is now expected to reach category 2-3 strength tomorrow. how much does that suck? its winds are now at 85 mph, if anyone was wondering, and it hasn't even hit jamaica yet. all right, i'm totally in hurricane mode now. i can't make myself stop watching the weather channel... and i have to teach tomorrow afternoon (*yay*). i'm not sure how effective i'll be, since i didn't get much sleep last night, or the night before (but that was not due to anything tropical). now, with all the worrying over hurricane dennis, i'm too nervous and wound up to sleep very much. i think we'll go to st. joe this weekend, but i don't want to get stuck in all the "getting the hell out of town" traffic that i'm sure to encounter sunday from every town between port st. joe and dauphin island. then i'll have my own "getting the hell out of town before this thing kicks my ass" driving to do. *sigh* if only i could just take off friday afternoon and beat the mad rush out of here. it took three hours to make the (usually) hour and fifteen minute drive from mobile to flomaton in september when i was running (unsuccessfully and not very far away) from ivan.

grr. ok. taking my dennis frustrations elsewhere now. good night, all.

Shit

my current feelings can be summed up by that one word. stupid tropics. i want to act like i'm three again and lay in the floor throwing the worst tantrum anyone's ever seen. tropical storm cindy was a little worse to us here in mobile than t.s. arlene was a couple of weeks ago... and dennis looks like it's coming straight for us - using the same damn path ivan did back in september. damn damn damn. damn (soon to be) hurricane! here, have a look at dennis's projected path for yourself. what's right in the middle of the path? mobile, of course, because the tropics hate me.

but this post isn't really about t.s. (for now) dennis. it's about t.s. cindy, which is technically not a tropical storm anymore. i was rudely awakened at 3:30 this morning by blinding flashes of light and a mega loud buzzing/whining sound to find that our power was out and cindy had arrived in mobile. the sound i'd heard was a nearby transformer trying to come back on and give us our precious AC back. but no dice - the power stayed off. after setting the alarm on my cell phone, i was wide awake and could only lie in the bed, listening to the storm and remembering ivan. needless to say, it was not a pleasant night. cindy was a much more tame storm than ivan, which was obvious from the lack of the freight train death sound of the wind in the eye wall of a major hurricane. during ivan, i sat huddled in a hallway surrounded by pillows listening to that awful sound for 6 hours (we never got a break - from the movement of the storm, the eye never passed over us - instead flomaton was in ivan's eye wall for 6 hours). and that was after having a tree fall on my in-laws' house, where chad and i were staying (for the record, i wanted to run away and get a hotel in louisiana but was talked into staying in flomaton instead - that won't happen again) and driving out in the middle of the freakin' hurricane to a nearby friend's house that was fully intact (stupid, i know - again, not my decision, and it won't happen again). we emerged from the house the next morning (with tropical storm force winds still whipping all around us) to find that nearly every tree (and there were lots of them - flomaton's pretty back-woods, folks) in the surrounding area was snapped. power and phones (including cell phones) were out for quite some time in that area, and trees were down everywhere, many of them on top of houses. back in mobile, however, things were fine. our power had only been out for about a day or so here, and my cell phone worked again. so, i guess most of my bad night last night was really just recalling everything that happened in september. regardless, i got very little sleep.

and now, here comes dennis to ruin my weekend and my research. maybe it will slow down and not be so close to land by sunday. i know that gives it time to strengthen, but i really need to get to port st. joe and collect samples this weekend. it's already been put off once because of the holiday. i really feel bad for gretchen. she's leaving august 5th to return to maine, and if we wait longer to collect samples, she won't have time to analyze all of them before her presentation. if it were just me, i would wait and get the hell out of town this weekend (and not just farther east on the florida coastline - i'd head inland). after ivan, i'm taking no more chances with hurricanes. chad and i already have a plan - we're going to stay with zach in camden (which isn't actually that far inland, but it's far enough for us not to have to worry about the worst of the storm). with the power being out this morning, i went to wal-mart and stocked up on batteries, touch lights, an oil lamp, and a portable fan, so we're totally prepared to be without power for a while (our stock of non-perishables is pretty good already). anyway, the power's back now, and i'm freaking out about the state of the upcoming weekend. i need a break from tropical activity, but it looks like dennis isn't going to cooperate and hit texas. damn.

Targeted by the Tropics

what do i get for failing to watch the news for three days while enjoying my holiday weekend? i get to wake up at the butt crack of dawn this morning to find that i will be feeling the effects of another tropical storm this afternoon. yuck. but t.s. cindy doesn't really bother me. it looks like it's going to pretty much make a direct hit on new orleans (maybe all the rain will wash some of the filth from the streets - wait, no. being below sea level, the filth will just float around in the flood). so, mobile is on the bad side of the storm, which means we'll get 6" of rain and a little wind, but pensacola will most likely be spared all but a little rain.

as i was making my way home from dauphin island around lunchtime (just a half day of work today), i passed vans from all three of the mobile news stations heading for the island to provide us with storm coverage. what's funny is that it wasn't even raining. it still isn't - just cloudy, which is holding the temp to the relatively mild mid-80's, but the humidity is killer.

anyway, like i said, i'm not worried about cindy. it's just going to rain a lot. what worries me is t.s. dennis. with my luck, and the target on my back that says, "hey, you! tropical system! nah-nah-nah, bet you can't get me!", dennis will probably become a major hurricane on its way into the gulf of mexico, head north, and hit one of two places - 1) the mobile/pensacola area or 2) port st. joe/apalachicola. why? because dennis hitting either of these places will totally screw up my weekend. gretchen and i are heading over to port st. joe (again) this weekend to do some sampling, and a big ass hurricane is just what we don't need. *sigh* i really thought that after ivan, the tropics would give us a break this season - and it's so early...

i'm going to say the same thing about dennis that i said about ivan - maybe it will go hit texas. sorry to wish that on the texans, but i'm certainly not going to wish dennis on florida for a couple of reasons - 1) if it hits the panhandle, it's probably going to affect me and 2) they had enough tropical activity last year to last them decades. and of course i don't want a huge hurricane hitting louisiana/mississippi/alabama because that would also put a big fat kink in my plans. but if dennis does head my way, i'm going to decide that it's time to go and see my nephew... in tennessee.

Carded for Cold Meds

ok, i know that no one really wants to hear about my sinus ailments, but that being said, i'm going to tell you a little about them anyway. for the past couple of days, my sinuses have been retaliating against me - the disgusting back of the throat draining thing, intense pressure making my eyes want to pop out of my head, and the worst freaking sinus headaches ever. when i awoke this morning to find that my sinuses were still on the offensive, i decided to fight back with a decongestant, which required a trip to walmart. so, i picked up some off-brand sinus/pain relief stuff and headed for the register to check out. i had heard about the new regulations on pseudoephedrine and such since idiots are out there buying them in massive quantities and using them to make illegal substances, but i was still a little peeved at being carded for buying cold medicine. but i was only upset because it reminded me of the time i was carded for an R-rated movie (i was 21 at the time). cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine can now only be purchased by folks over the age of 18. so, the little thing beeped when the cashier swiped the box, and a little screen popped up asking if the customer is over 18. and what does the cashier do? she demands to see some id (politely, of course). i don't mind getting carded for buying alcohol. i expect that. but to think that someone could think i'm under the tender age of 18 makes me very frustrated. oh well. the same thing would have happened if i'd bought cigarrettes, so i guess i shouldn't be upset. but i had a headache that was threatening to blow off the top of my skull, and i viewed the carding thing as a hinderance to relief of the pressure.

now, all that ranting aside, i think that the new decongestant regulations are totoally warranted, and i probably wouldn't have minded the carding quite so much if they'd been making some kind of record of how much cold medicine i buy to make sure i'm not a drug manufacturer. but no, i was just being carded to make sure i am of legal age to be treating my own ailments with over the counter medications.

MEPS Link

as promised, here's the link to the marine ecology progress series 'forthcoming publications' page, where you will find my paper listed. it is manuscript #5890 (M 5890)... steele, l. that's me! i recommend scrolling all the way down to the bottom and going up to find it. and, in case you're interested, i also know the folks on M 5896, M5783, and M 5582. matt johnson - he's the graduate student organization president, and heck jr. kl is ken. there are all sorts of articles coming out of DISL these days.