Happy 2005!

Well another uneventful New Years Eve gone by. I seem to have very strange New Years Eve Karma because nothing ever goes quite the way I think it might, and it usually just sucks! This year was particularly interesting. Besides the fact that I was romantically alone (this is not unusual) however, I had at least gotten used to having someone to think about and call on the phone on New Years. So beyond the normal melancholy of entering a New Year with no one on your arm, this year started off pretty badly for a friend of mine as well when she totaled her truck on the 31st. She spent New Years Eve with her family at her apartment with enough bumps and bruises to make her walk like her grandma (that is a direct quote from her). I wish I could have made her feel better. So instead of partying it up in downtown Wilmington, NC I spent New Years with a couple friends I hadn't seen in about 2 years at Carolina Beach (Redneck Heaven). It was so nice to see them and I am very glad that I had the chance to catch up with them. Carolina Beach was fun, as long as you stayed away from the dirty old men that looked at you in a way that was just way too creepy. I would also like to note that it's not a good idea to approach men that have matching hats and shirts that say west coast choppers on them, enough said. We sat outside and watched the fireworks over the ocean and sipped free champagne. The setting was beautiful. So things work out in the end.

I spent New Years night at my grandmas in a twin bed, and now I'm in D.C. for the night on my way back up to NY. I'll be leaving for California on Monday. I've been dreading my return for the 2 weeks I've been away. I'm about to pack up my half of the apartment and move it to my new bachelorette pad in little Mexico, I mean Reseda, CA. Wish me luck!! I am excited to see my kitties, I've missed them. I only hope my little monster, Sam, hasn't peed all over the place by the time I get back! He seems to be having trouble finding the litter box lately.

I hope who ever reads this had an awesome New Years Eve too!

Sunset over Big Fisherman Cove, Catalina my last night there in December before coming back to LA and coming home to NY. It's beautiful isn't it? Look how the sky is reflected in the ocean. 

My christmas tree at home in NY! :) 

Fall Semester 2004

So it has been a while since I wrote about the happenings in my life, for one, because I haven’t had time to sit down and write since the semester started, and two, because my life was falling apart. So in brief, this is what went on since August.

I traveled to Baja Mexico, Bahia de Los Angeles, with the fish class. I got to learn about all the different kinds of fish in the area and how to kill them, for research of course. The diving was beautiful; I even saw some black coral, a giant ray, some cool scorpion fish, etc. The drive was long, but it was interesting to see all the different towns we drove through on the way there. I even learned what to do when you get a sting ray spine in your foot, eek!

Since Mexico, it has been work. I taught two classes, spent all my free time on Catalina Island, and took an invertebrate zoology class. If you know anything about what I’m working on for my thesis, you know that I’ve been struggling diving in 6 feet of water, in very rough conditions, counting anemones and removing algae for about 5 or 6 months now. I’ve gathered a good amount of data, but something seems to be missing. And it was this missing component that started to become a problem back in October. One advisor felt that my methods weren’t working and I was faced with the knowledge that the last 5 months of work, of hammering, nailing, counting, for hours and hours underwater might be all a waste. I was devastated, obviously, but not ready to give up. In the back of my mind I was also cursing the fact that I had spent weeks, months at Catalina working on research that was falling apart and not being there for Jonathan and his own research problems for most of the summer, and little of the school year.

November rolled around. I talked to my other advisor and decided to compromise on adjusting some of my techniques in order to try to save some of the work I had been doing for so long. So, no it wasn’t all a waste, as of yet. I’m waiting to see what I can come up with in January. November also brought the Western Society of Naturalists meeting in northern California, wine country. I met some interesting contacts, my presented poster went over well and I was starting to feel excited about my work again. It’s always nice to hear that other people actually find what you’re doing exciting too. However, it was also pretty obvious that the stress and the time spent on my work had taken its toll on me and my relationship.

The next couple weeks brought the death of my grandmother, time in NY over thanksgiving for the funeral and finally, the end of my relationship. It seems I should have seen it coming for a long time. Stress, distance, assumptions and misunderstandings make a mess of anyone’s life, and that’s just what happened to mine.

So I am home for the holidays. It’s a different holiday this year. I’m facing a New Year with little to go on. This year will bring many new things and that should be exciting, but intimidating because I don’t know what any of those new things will be. I feel much unprepared. So, my New Years resolution is to do a little soul searching, to find myself again, and to find my direction. What do we all want to really get out of life anyway? It’s probably the first year that I have ever felt the true need to have a resolution, and it’s a big one. Let me know what yours are this year. Lets hope 2005 brings with it as many happy memories and turning points as 2004 did.

Take care everyone. Have a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Kylla in action at Bird Rock :) 

Now those are some hot marine biologists! From the left, that's Kylla, Annaliese, Me, and Becca  

A Day in the Life of a Marine Biologist...

This morning we (me, Kylla, and Annaliese) woke up on Catalina Island at 7am. The wind was damp and the sky's were still clouded with early morning darkness. Bustling through a quick breakfast we threw on our fleece and hiked it down the hill to the waterfront. Two tanks each, buckets of equipment, hammers, nails, pencils, slates, calipers, zip-ties and flagging tape were all thrown together. Our wetsuits were still damp and cold from the previous days excursions, but we laboriously pulled them on, stopping to dunk booties and hoods in hotwater to ease the pain of the cold.

As we looked out over the water, each thinking to ourselves of what needed to be accomplished this day, an eerie white fog rolled in from far out at sea. The fog enveloped the island, quietly and quickly, as we set out to Bird Rock for out first dive of the day around 9:30. The tide was coming in and the waves were crashing violently when we arrived at the rock. We all looked at each other, knowing that this was going to be an interesting dive. We dropped anchor at about 40 feet and each of us dropped into the frigid waters (59 F) one by one. We clung to the algae and made ourselves as flat as possible against the substratum in order to keep from being caught up in the surge. After 85 minutes I was frozen, shaking from head to toe and I called the dive. Kylla was already back at the boat trying to warm up and considering the fog that had now totally enveloped us.

We took a breather hoping the fog would dissipate. It felt almost as if we had entered a new dimension. We set out in the direction of our next site, skirting along the Catalina coast. We slowly made our way, passing by a ghost ship or two. Everyone seemed a little wary to wave hello. Finally, we reached Howlands Landing and through anchor. But, in the distance there was something floating, what was it? We pulled anchor and pulled up on the ominous object. We found it to be a large piece, and 3x6 feet off the side of a boat. It begged for you to think up a heroic story of hardship and ship wrecks at sea. We tied it off to our skiff and called harbor patrol on our radio. Our radio was dead. Annaliese and Kylla jumped in and finished a second dive while I took a surface interval basking on our new found surfboard. After they surfaced we tied the giant piece of wood and plexiglas to a mooring buoy named Charcoal in Howlands, and left it for pick-up.

We headed to our third and final site, Big Geiger. Here Annaliese and I jumped in. I collected 50 Tegula snails for her and then helped clean up her site. Still waiting for her to finish I kicked a few laps back and forth trying to keep warm. Finally, we made it back to the boat and headed for home. The fog had lifted and the sun was shining. Huge flocks of Cormorants were floating. We were in site of the lab, just about 100 yards to go. We ran out of gas, just like that we stop. I grab the paddle and start paddling. We see a friend swimming laps near shore and we yell to him to get us a tow! But instead he swims to us! No, swim back we say, we need a tow. But, he's decided that he will be the tow. He pulls us, I push us, and Annaliese paddles us to shore. We're all exhausted. It's 3:30 and we've each had one powerbar and one orange, and half a box of wheat thins to share for the whole day.

What a long day.... but it was an adventure. We complain about our work all the time. We hurt ourselves and we ache, but we're not sitting in an office chair all day. We're out in nature, battling to understand it and falling in love with it at the same time. It's fantastic!

Now aren't we glad we were the ones that actually decided to become marine biologists, not just talk about it when were 9? :)

Back to School

Well, I'm back to sitting indoors all day long. I like grad school more than undergrad because I actually have a pseudo-office with a desk where I can keep all those horribly heavy books, and my computer, on which I can fritter away a good amount of time on sites such as this! It's great! haha. Anyway, this semester though, I'm ironically taking an undergrad invertebrate biology class from 8 AM to noon tuesdays and thursdays. I spent 3 hours today drawing sand dollars and sea stars (which was kinda fun actually). I think it's going to turn into my replacement art class, except for all that studying stuff, blah! Other than that I'm taking one of those grad seminars that runs for 3 hours once a week right through dinner where you're expected to discuss literature intelligently while running on the chips and soda you had around lunch time. I'm also teaching, yes, me, changing lives, sculpting the scientists of tomorrow, haha, well it's not quite that glamorous. I'm teaching those intro BIO labs that everyone just wants to get through as fast as possible in order to graduate with a lab credit. These kids don't even know how to use the metric side of a ruler, let alone make a wetmount slide and focus it under a compound scope. It's pretty interesting sometimes... Well that's me, there's a few more meetings here and there that take up more time, and whatever time is left, is spent contemplating the significance of my thesis and how to correct the mistakes I undoubtedly already made. Hope you had a good summer and good luck moving into the fall :)

This is Jackie and Kylla standing on the road I run on, that runs from the lab to town, the wrigley marine science center is behind them in the distance. The apartments we live in are in the far upper right hand corner. The ocean is down to the left, sorry you can't see it. 

This is Spike, he has lived outside my apartment at Catalina for the last week and a half and he's now caught 3 nasty flies. He's my personal bug catcher. :) 

One day left....

So I think this is the longest amount of time I've spent straight living on Catalina Island. I've actually started to appreciate it's beauty and serenity. I went for a few runs along the dirt road that runs from the lab to town, it over looks the Pacific and on very very clear days you can almost see the port of LA 32 miles away. I forgot how wonderful it is to run with no one else around; no cars, no homeless people, no stares, no SMOG! Now if I can only keep my 23 year old knees from falling apart I'll keep doing it. There are a few strange draw backs to spending all your time on this island and underwater:

-You have fairly permanent sunglass lines
-You name the spiders (see pic)
-Your nails grow really fast
-Your skin peels off and itches
-You always think you smell neoprene and pee
-You wear your t-shirts 2 or 3 times (3 or 4 times) and that's perfectly normal

I'm sure I'll come up with more later, but, I'm leaving tomorrow after I give a stupid presentation that I'm not looking forward to. blah! However, I do get to bore a group of 14 year old girls that have to come and watch, hahaha. I mean, hopefully I'll be able to sculpt them into little marine biologists too :)

I just thought this was a beautiful view of the shallow Catalina island kelp forest, the larger algae is Macrocystis kelp and the bright green is sea grass, the rest is macroalage that I could I.D. for you, but I'm sure you don't really care.

Isn't this an adorable juvenile? It's a baby Garibaldi. It reminds me of being in the tropics because of it's bright colors. I'm not sure how it survives, other than it seems to like to hang out among sea urchin spines. By the way, it took me soo long to get this picture, so you better like it.

This is the adult version of the previous fish pictured, it is also the California state fish, the Garibaldi. When he grows up he's not so cute because he's such a territorial bastard! I was surrounded by about 7 of them today because I started taking samples from their precious algae. weirdos!

I am cross-eyed

ugh... I looked under a dissecting scope for 4 hours today and now I feel ill. This is a little morbid. I fed my little strawberry anemones some sea monkeys and then I cut them open to see if I could see the monkeys inside, weird huh? I felt a little bad....