The incomparable voice of a Common Loon on an Adirondacks lake

Lately

It is a rare afternoon alone in my apartment, and I have finally found my way back to the good old blog. I have missed this. Grad school does like to get between you and your hobbies, doesn't it? Things I like about grad school:

1. The ecologists at UCSB are a lovely bunch.
2. I get to be outside for "work."
3. I am "doing something with my life."
4. I am kept busy.
5. I am pushing myself to new academic heights.
6. I am working toward my goal of acquiring 70% of all knowledge.
7. Santa Barbara is beautiful. I love the natural beaches and above all the look of the mountains on a clear day. Or how they turn the best purples and blues at sunset.
8. I joined an intramural soccer team! And we get to play on real grass!

Things I am less keen on:

1. I miss (really, really, really miss) being able to get around without a car. These days it almost feels like I'm under house arrest. We should get a car, and we're slowly looking into it, but one doesn't have lots of extra funds to bandy about on a grad student's salary.
2. I am unbearably homesick for Berkeley. For knowing where everything is, for there being cool things in walking distance of my apartment. I miss being able to go to see music. I miss playing music at all, which I could do here, but I don't -- it almost feels like an activity attached somehow to my life in the bay. And above all, I miss my friends. I am making new friends here, which I am pleased about since I'm not generally good at that, but it's nothing like having old friends.
3. I don't seem to do art anymore. I feel like I've lost some of my favorite parts of me there. And most of my stress releases.
4. Lots of people have been dying lately. Suicides. Three so far this year. Two in one week this March. That brings me up to nine suicides and attempts of people I know or knew. That is a lot. And it doesn't become passé after the third or fourth time. Even if the routine of it becomes familiar -- the shock, the guilt, sense of closeness with the survivors -- the weight of each one seems to snowball. This time the suicides were people I had met and was looking forward to getting to know. I am finding that that has made it harder to grieve. The one guy in my department was supposed to take the Ecology Written Exam with us. He came to our first reading group meeting, and he seemed so cool and intelligent. I remember feeling excited that he'd be there to help us and that I'd get to know him better. His advisor had moved to Switzerland, and he was going to sit in with my lab and join our seminar. And then he was gone. I didn't go to the group session the set up with the counseling center since I felt awkward nosing in when everyone else had known him better. I'd gone with my office mate to help clean out his office earlier that day so we could donate the rest of his books to the department library (or something), and I offered to carry back his binders, but my office mate who is normally so cheery and upbeat couldn't bear to see his handwriting and decided we'd grabbed enough. I could tell he was experiencing this all in a much more personal way, and I felt as if I'd be co-opting their session to battle my old demons. I may still ring up the counseling folks for myself, but I feel a little embarrassed.
5. I know Hawaii is glamourous in theory, but I find myself dreading going there. When I'm up to my ears in shrubs or getting slapped by a tree branch, I'm pretty happy. I have a sense of purpose when I feel like I know what I'm doing, but I do not find it beautiful. I don't like needing to move or find a subletter every three months -- since apparently I'm spending two of the next four quarters there, and not consecutive ones. I don't like being separated from Matt for the three months before our wedding. I don't like that he moves back to Berkeley each time I go. Honestly, the logistics of it all make me question my commitment to ecology. Being there doesn't feel like being in a tropical paradise. It feels like being stranded on what I believe is the most isolated chain of islands in the world.
6. My grandmother is due in for a surgery. She's either 85 or 89. I believe it's open heart surgery. I felt like such a pansy with all my inner turmoil over having my wisdom teeth out last month when the worst thing that could have happened was losing my sense of taste. And her doctors aren't sure she'll survive the surgery. She is the last grandparent I've got left. Being so close to the end seems to have made her cheery, appreciating every moment. She went from thinking she wouldn't make it to the wedding to be close to her doctors and take it easy to being the first to book a hotel room. She's an hour away, and I rarely see her.

Dinosaur toes

The gooseneck barnacle is pretty much my new favorite animal. Though, I am disappointed that they are not commonly known as dinosaur toes. Wikipedia said it has something to do with geese maybe having evolved from these things. What? Maybe I read that wrong...

On giving the appearance of having computer know-how

xkcd has mapped my thought process exactly. You too can now be a computer wizard!

Things you should know

It's true, I have been terrible about getting the word about, but OMG I am engaged! It's kind of hard to wrap my mind around, especially when I'm living alone in this new place and everything about life is so new right now, but one of these days I'm going to have to get better about saying fiancé instead of boyfriend. Maybe when we get our engagement rings.

So, holy toledo! There is a lot of planning to do! I haven't really done much of anything, but my sisters are excitedly sending me links of pretty wedding dodads and invitation artwork or finding friends of theirs who want to make my wedding cake and only charge me for materials. I signed up for That right away. Hell yeah, man. She can make whatever she wants for that price.

Wedding gown browsing has been a little trickier. Of course anything I really love costs 3-4x what I want to spend. I'm ok with looking a little more casual than the norm dress-wise, especially if it means I have more $$$ to spend on accessories and what not I will actually wear again, but, my god, anything calling itself a wedding dress costs way more than it needs to you. Case in point: there was a dress on Etsy that came in a variety of colors (red, black, white, etc), and the white one cost Hundreds of Dollars More than the red or black one even though the material was the same! That's what I call highway robbery! I want it to be obvious in pictures that I'm the one getting married, but other than that I don't need to be super fancy. Here are some outfits I've liked so far...

Gauchos heyo

I'm just starting to get settled in here in Goleta, the town cuddling up to UCSB, where I start classes tomorrow.

Thank god for our inaugural EEMB (my department) retreat for first years and anyone else who feels like coming. It was so(ooo) nice to get to meet my girls (there is one guy out of the eight of us) before orientation day. Seeing familiar faces in our lab safety training on Monday really gave me the warm and fuzzies. So far I love everyone in my cohort and all the other grad students (at least the ones who come to socials with booze!). Even the faculty are great, especially my advisor. Santa Barbara is no Bay Area, but it feels like the right place to be.

Eg. I have been wanting to learn to knit so that I can make socks, but I don't want any more scarves, and I don't want to spend months making what turns into a lumpy sweater. And what do they have but a beginners knitting class specifically for socks and slippers! It is a sign. I think I might be the first one registered.

The apt. is still mostly empty with cardboard boxes strewn about, but I have a desk, a bed, internet, a couple of bookcases, and two posters up, so it works.

They told us at orientation that we have the highest voter registration rates of any school in the US. Berkeley is second and our rate is twice theirs! I was pleased about that.

California-bound

Suddenly it is my last night in Hawaii.

Hawaii. Where to start.

The first five weeks here, I helped out with the experiments my advisor and her post doc in Hawaii are working on. We're looking at grasses that invaded burned and unburned parts of the dry woodland in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. It looks like after 20 or so years, the grasses might finally be declining (because annual grasses don't hold as much nitrogen as the woody shrubs and trees they replaced), so part of our research involves trying to figure out the best strategy for restoring this part of the park. It probably isn't possible to get rid of the grasses, but we're hoping that as they decline, we might be able to reintroduce some of the native trees and shrubs.

For my birthday (on which I turned the big 3-0), everyone in the lab helped me start fieldwork on my own project, in which I am trying to figure out what sorts of plants some of our native and invasive nitrogen-fixing (meaning they can get nitrogen from the air, unlike most other plants which need to get it from the soil) trees promote and what sort of habitats they tend to inhabit. Sounds simple enough, but it involved a lot of twigs in my nose, woody wet willies, dirt in my eyes as I crawled under stands of four types of trees to see what-all was going on down there and cuts all over my hands and up my forearms as I thrashed through thorny invasive lantana (a plant more than happy to get all up in your grill).

I've been working seven days a week, up to ten hours a day, to get it all done before I head back, and, as of right now, all I have left to do is ship my samples to California before catching a plane back to the Bay myself.

It's still hard to believe I'm here as a part of my real life. Everything here is so different -- the landscape, my social circle, my diet, my weekend activities, everything.

This is a typical weekday: Wake up at 5:30am. Make lunch. Make/eat breakfast. Drive through a gorgeous forest full of ohia trees, ferns, and ginger to get to the lab in the national park by 7am. We load our packs for the day and drive about 10 miles out to our field site in the dry woodland. Park and hike 15-60 minutes to our starting spot. Draw a transect line or a 5x10m plot and count and measure everything growing along or in it. Hike back. Drive back to the lab by 3pm. Unload. If I've been working on my own project: set out the day's soils to airdry in paper bags, weigh yesterday's litter, grind litter and leaf samples and pack them into coin envelopes. Head home to shower around 5pm, eat dinner. Try to read a research paper or catch up on emails/find an apartment/sort out which classes to register for/&c. Fall asleep at 9:30pm.

This is a typical weekend: Saturday sleep in till 6! Eat breakfast, catch up on email. Drive (~30 miles) down to the Hilo Farmers Market to get lunch and produce for the week. Maybe swing by Richardson's beach park for a little snorkeling. Go to KTA for the rest of my groceries. Go home, eat dinner, watch So You Think You Can Dance, fall asleep. Sunday sleep in till 6 again! Drive/walk (depending where I'm living) to the Volcano Farmers Market for bananas, eggs, bread, other produce. Drive (~70 miles) to the Kahuku Unit of the park for a hike -OR- drive down Chain of Craters Road to see the petroglyphs -OR- go back to the lab to work. Shower. Eat. Sleep.

I think I am doing ok at this being a grad student thing, but I am still terrified of Even More Change. Eg. moving to an apartment I've never seen in Goleta, starting classes, moving away from everyone I know for an Indeterminate Amount of Time. At the very least Matt will be coming down in January. I take comfort in that. And people say you can't technically fail out of grad school before it starts. I am excited to live so close to the ocean -- just a short walk from a butterfly preserve and ocean bluffs. I am curious to meet what will be my new grad school friends. But I guess a little piece of me isn't totally convinced that what I'm about to do will necessarily be better than what I'd been doing (the unsustainability of my lifestyle notwithstanding). Life is pretty good in the Bay. I hope Santa Barbara and the Goleta scene will rise to the occasion.

Ok, this is what I am worried about: becoming boring, turning into a stress monster, disappointing my advisor (and making her regret taking a chance on me). But seriously, I don't want to turn one-dimensional just because I am becoming an expert in something. Also, I am sad that I don't know when Matt and I will live in the same place for an extended period of time again, but I know that at least will happen.

Fear of trains

I sent my twin apartment scouts on a little adventure this past Sunday, and we have emerged victorious! I'm no longer going to be homeless in Santa Barbara!

As of September 6th, I shall be the proud inhabitant of what I hope will be a darling 1 bedroom apartment in Goleta in a complex with a pool, jacuzzi, sauna, and LAUNDRY! The kitchen is miniscule, but it has a dishwasher -- by which I don't just mean a sink and two hands. The only troublesome thing is that train tracks are visible from the apartment, as in 50 feet away, but I think it will be just fine. Trains are better than freeway, drunk undergrads, and airport noise. I can't wait to plunk my stuff down in there and throw a party!

SO GLAD to have that settled.

Anniversary

Today marks 365 days of bliss with the best gentleman a gal could ask for. Every day for the past long while has made this the longest relationship I've ever been a part of, but today seems a particularly good landmark and vanguard of what I hope will be many more anniversaries. It feels so regal and adult of me to be able to celebrate the completion of a full trip around the sun in the presence of such a stellar human being, when before I could only measure my time with someone by counting orbits of the moon around our small earth on five fingers. It's as if the stars are aligned, and I can feel the hand of the universe warmly nudging me along. I have so much to be thankful for.

Hawaii-ho

More words later. For now, some pictures!

This is where I work!
It can also look like this.
Sometimes we can see the ocean.
Flowers of the native tree Ohi'a lehua Metrosideros polymorpha, one of the species we work with.
This is Kilauea crater, the volcano I live on. It's still active, and you can see it glow red at night.
Mauna Ulu, the growing mountain.
Looking into Mauna Ulu crater.
View from Whittington Beach Park.
Kilauea Iki.
Wet forest.