Where to begin and when to end

So I will make this brief. I defended my dissertation and defended it successfully. So now I have a few hours of revisions and some little graphs to be made and I am done. Finished with this chapter of my life. Unfortunately it is never done. I now have the ever nagging expectation to publish, with my advisors suggesting publishers and journals and who to submit and when to submit, etc. And i want to, I feel obligued to, but at the same time......I don't. I have spent 6 years of my life doing what I am supposed to do in the academic world. Right now I want to live in that other world. The working world, where I go somewhere work for 8 hours, go home and participate in other activities such as cooking, reading, knitting, sewing, gardening, music listening, music playing, etc.

So I have been taking a few days to contemplate this all, only to realise that on Monday I have to put together a report on dinoflagellates from 3 sites in the GoM. Dinoflagellates are a large group of flagellate protist that thrive in marine environments (also found in freshwater). Dinoflagellates possess a unique nuclear structure at some stage of their life cycle - a dinokaryotic nucleus. The cell wall of many dinoflagellates is divided into plates of cellulose ("armor") known as a theca. These plates form a distinctive geometry known as tabulation, and is used for identification. These cysts of dinoflagellates are what make them so identifable. Also, they are highly sensitive to temperature, water pH, and water depth and their distributions are dependent on these factors.
So the project I am working on is a little assessment of dino populations in 3 sites in the GoM. At these sites I have been working on identifying the cysts present and then interpretting the environmental significance of their populations. In the next week I need to put together a cohesive story and report for this area. I just need to get it done so i can have some time to relax before i start my job in late April.

square foot solutions

I was talking on the phone with my mom when she mentioned to me that she and a friend are going to attempt to 'square foot garden'. I asked her what it was, and she explained that the general concept involves using a small rasied space to produce a high yield, easy to care for garden. Perfect!
Especially since I rent a house with a little backyard, but plenty of sun. My mother always has the best ideas in terms of gardening and I have always been so impressed with the garden she and my dad have had over the past few years. They have managed to get a good harvest every year from relatively poor, limited mountaintop soil. So I figured why not try this square garden experience with my mom.

Hopefully by the time April rolls around I will be able to start construction on the garden or covince matt to start construction of the frame. Maybe I will make 2 frames.
This is exciting to me and I think will be a great way to get the everyday basics that Matt and I use in cooking- tomatoes, squash, peppers, basil, beans, and maybe cantalope! (Matt can sometimes eat a whole cantolope and call it dinner--me i am slowly starting to enjoy melon.

Science in reality

Every since I was young I have loved the outdoors. Maybe I can attribute it to my upbringing. My parents never had large amounts of money so the majority of our vacaitions involved camping and roadtrips. And those happen to be two of my favorite things-- trips that involve a good ole fashion sightseeing roadtrip and a nice healthy hike up mountains, down valleys, in caves, along riverbanks, just about anywhere you can think of. So when I went off to college my first few years all I knew is that I wanted to do something that involved the outdoors- camping, hiking, climbing, star gazing, fire roasting, night swimming, all these great outdoor activities. To top that off I loved nature writers- Thoreau, Dillard, Carson, Abbey. My first English class in college focused on a ot of these nature writers and I was in love. During my time in Missouri I sat on bales of hay, star gazed, camped in every imaginable locality, and imagined a life of the outdoors. So naturally when I transferred to LSU I thought-- Geology, why not-- you study the earth and I love living in the earth.

Well that is where it ends. You spend 3 years working towards a degree where they tease you with the outdoors. You spend countless hours hiking in great localities, looking at rocks and every field trip involves a camp ground, a good fire, some beer, and the stars overheard-- rain or shine. It was great. Then you finish those years in the classroom with a 6 week experience in a small wooden cabin and tent in the mountains of colorado. What a dream science-- who could ask for more.

So of course I thought, graduate school! Why not! Then I discovered what I liked most in geology-- fossils, and not just any fossils but marine microfossils (forams). So I traveled to Wisconsin for graduate school and picked a thesis topic that involved no field work and no traveling except to conferences to present papers. Thus starts my life as a graduate student-- indoors, starring at computers and down a scope. You suddenly forget why you loved geology-- no field opportunities arise -- well I did get to go to the Guatalupe mountains for a few days, but that was the extent. And then you think I will do a PhD, sure why not, new opporutnities for the field, for camping, for hiking, for rocks in the field, for new earth experiences-- only to find yourself 6years down the road- having a field site in Louisiana and spending the majority of your time in the lab, looking through a scope, and then finally the culmination of your passion typing on a computer, processing, plotting, and interpretting data. Is this science? Now it is? All those geology history books about Steno and Smith, the adventures of Mary Anning and her search for icthyosaurs and mosasaurs in the Lyme Regis limestones, the notes of Lewis and Clark as they collected plants of the US, the expedition of John Wesley Powell as he charted the unknown path of the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon. All these adventures are but a stroke in history as geologist and paleontologist struggle to survive in a changing science where success involves cutting edge geochemical data, amazing computer generated GIS maps, and impressive graphics. Granted I love the scope, but I also love the observations made outdoors, the pure collection and describing done by a naturalist. So I am looking forward to leaving behind the glare of the computer, which surrounds me on my free time- work during work-- exploring during free time.
And yes-- free time. i can finally release the shackles of the computer typing and revive the hiking, observing, breathing of the outdoors.
I look forward to moving from this setting- a dingy computer in an unfurnished room.


to this setting- a lake full of possibilities, again.

Louisiana in January

It seems every year I get tired of the cold (and for me cold = temperatures less than 60 degrees F) I rejuvenate by simply getting on my bicycle and realizing the beauty of Louisiana in the 'winter' months. As most of you know, I try to bike to school everyday. It takes about 20 minutes and the majority of this bike ride is on a poorly maintained path around the LSU lakes. These lakes are man-made but quite beautiful. They support a wide array of birds, turtles, and plant life. Often times biking to and from campus I had some of the best 'eureka' moments concerning my dissertation. It helps that my study site (Catahoula Lake), the largest, natural freshwater lake in Louisiana, is about 2.5 hours north of Baton Rouge. So all in all the vegetation is not so different from the vegetation I see around the LSU lakes everyday. Now Catahoula Lake has this fluctuating hydrology that causes the lake to drawdown and expose the lakebed on a yearly cycle. The LSU lakes on the otherhand have relatively stable lake levels. There are areas, however, that over the duration of my time spent working on my dissertation, have periodically dried up due to short periods of drought. When this happens I am able to watch and observe the changes that occur with regards to the vegetation.



For example, in this area there is a stand of Taxodium distichium (bald cypress) trees. These trees grow in an area that periodically floods and has standing water. This standing water has decreased the presence of a permanent grassmat and has also encouraged Salix sp. (willows) and algae to grow on the saturated ground. As most people know, my research consists of reconstructing vegetation based on the presence of pollen assemblages. So when I look at this area I see visions of pollen grains floating in my head and often use this 'modern analog' as a way to interpret the pollen I see in my lake cores. I won't bore anyone with the details, but let's just say I love that when I look at these things everyday it causes the wheels to turn in my brain and makes me appreciate the surrounding environment and the subtle changes more than usual.

So in short, I just love this about my bike riding and about my research. So as I spend the last few weeks biking in Baton Rouge I may use this as an opportunity to document the things I see everyday. This will serve as a remembrance to me of my time spent surrounded by the beauty of Louisiana and also possibly inspire others to bike to work and notice the small changes that occur everyday and the things that stay the same.

Blog in the making

So I have been druelling over the various knitting and craft blogs that I see on a daily basis and i thought that as I come to the final days of my PhD program, anticipating my defense date, that I would start to put together a blog where I can document the adventures I am having in the world of knitting, cooking, gardening, traveling, and science. I am not sure what sort of things I will talk about and if anyone will read this, but I am realized that when I do finish this graduate school chapter in my life I would like to open a new chapter where I can continue to explore all the things i have placed on the back burner for the past 5 years.

One of the things I have a deep love for is Botany. I must have gotten this love from my father. He is a ornithologist and I used to go bird watching with him. I always had more of an attraction to the trees and plants that the birds were in and my father was always great at telling me about the vegetation surrounding me. He also has an amazing collection of orchids (~30-35) that are growing and blooming. I am not financially ready for the orchid investment, but this weekend I picked up a nice bromeliad, Tillandsia (aka Air Plant). It was only $2 and I just like the idea of having it already. I grows on the nutrients in the air and only requires misting or 2 hour submersal in water every 2 weeks. I may start a collection of these.


Right now, I may simply talk about how I feel as the day to my defense sneak up on me, but as I finish I would like to start traveling down another road. Speaking of roads-- here is a little robert frost

The Road Not Taken (1919)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I memorized this poem for 7th grade english class and have remembered it ever since.