Monday, July 13, 2009

more test

today was our second test of the term. it went well, maybe could have gotten a few more points on it but i don't think it will be a problem. i knew the material pretty well, so i'm not worried.

last friday our class gave presentations on aquatic invasive species. mine was the Asian carp, which i knew very little about until i did my research. apparently a big problem in a lot of places, and probably moving into the great lakes during the next decade. army corps of engineers spent about $10 million on an electric "fence" in the illinois river to keep them out, but it's far from guaranteed to work. if the carp make it into the lakes, we'll probably lose more than one species of fish.


outside of projects and tests, we've been spending a lot of time on aquatic chemistry, which is fine by me. i get along just fine with chemistry. carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and phosphorus and iron and sulfur... mostly we've been discussing it in lecture, but we've done some lab work as well. mostly titrating... adding tiny little drops of acid to a colored mixture until we just reach the point when the color turns clear, and then using the volume of acid added to calculate how much oxygen was originally in the water. it's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

and only ten days left until the term's over. in that time, we have a paper to write, some labs to finish, and a final and a lab final to take. probably going to be a little bit busy.



beyond class, work has been keeping me busy-- although my scheduling supervisor cut me some breaks at the end of this past week, and thank god for it. i was starting to feel overwhelmed for a while, working so much and having to get my presentation together... it was tough to find time to breath. but i ended up getting an hour or so off on thursday and only worked a half day on saturday, so i was able to relax a little bit and get some studying done. this-coming week i get to go in a little later then i'm used to, so that will be nice too.

in other news, we had a big storm come through over the weekend, which had the added effect of knocking out the internet for a few days. always a bummer.

haven't had any field trips lately, but i think we might have one coming up on friday. we'll probably find out more about that soon.

and, as always, the food here is amazing. some folks are critical and overly-picky, but it's their loss. i think it's great.


but mostly, i'm looking forward to going home and seeing my cat.

Friday, July 3, 2009

test(!)

yep, today was a test. kind of a hard one, at that, but we'll see how it went. certainly not terrible, but maybe not as well as i could have hoped.

two days ago was our boat trip out to sandusky bay and back. we dropped anchor at a few points along the way to give us a chance to toss some instruments in the water. we measured water clarity, oxygen content and temperature, and pulled up some water samples as well. one interesting part was to take about a soda can's worth of water and pull it through a small paper filter to strain out the algae. we also got a good view of cedar point from the water.

long day, though. we left a little before 8 and didn't get back until 3. it was actually pretty nice, but after lunch i had a hard time staying awake.


yesterday was a good day. for work i staffed the fish hatchery, which is sort of a small museum/science exhibit that the lab operates for the general public. at first i didn't really like it-- i had already watched some other lab folks talk to the visitors, and my first impression was that i was supposed to give the same general talk... the hatchery dates, how it operated, stuff like that. after a while though, i started to realize that i knew a lot more about the exhibits than i had given myself credit for. once i stopped trying to recite the talk the other staff had given and just chatted with the visitors about aquatic science, i really started to enjoy myself. it was not a bad way to spend the day.


now it's friday, and i'm done with class. i kind of want to row over to the big island (south bass, put-in-bay) and stop at the general store, but dinner's in an hour. probably i'll wait until after i eat, then row over after my food's settled. i don't really want to row back after dark, but i don't think it will come to that.

and tomorrow: fireworks!