A Day In The Life

Yesterday was the best.  We went to this really depressing environmental consulting firm, which I’m just going to conveniently forget about, and then went KAYAKING and AIRBOATING. 

WE SAW ACTUAL ALLIGATORS IN THE WILD ZOMG

But really, it was the shit and life changing and sometimes all you need in the world is to sit next to a nice boy on an airboat going 60 miles an hour.

Today was good too, though - in our weekly soccer match, I scored TWO GOALS! TWO WHOLE GOALS! IN A ROW!  And then we came home and I made dinner and then Luke did the dishes without me even asking him to and it was close to domestic bliss. Moving on.

Science has also been done these past few days.  Mostly I’ve just been sorting through the sargassum samples that we took two weeks ago, which involves a lot of ethanol and a lot of forceps.  Happily, though, I’m done with that and Lindsey and I ran around the sea lab today to get my shit together for my experiment, hopefully starting next week!  I just have one more day of doing lab bitch work (still important, sometimes science IS bitch work) and then it’ll be the weekend, and then I’ll be in the field most days of next week.  

I love this place so much.  The ratio of work to vacation is approximately 15 to 85.  It’s been great.

Some of the pictures from this summer so far. None of them are science related. #sorrynotsorry

I don’t think I ever posted about the conference that we went to!  It was, on the whole, boring, actually.  It was fun being with my friends, though, and being ~those kids~ that were making snarky comments in the back.  

Some of it was neat, though.  We sat through a talk about bioaccumulation of oil toxins, which got Luke really interested, so he went to talk to the guy who made the presentation.  That inspired me to go talk to the director of the Sea Lab I work at because I had a question or two about his presentation.  It was a little nerve racking, since he’s the director of the entire lab, but it was good for me to make that leap.  I also got to talk to a guy who works at URI running their ROV program, and he told me that there are a bunch of internship opportunities to work on the Okeanus.  So, maybe I have an idea of what I want to do if I don’t end up in grad school?  At least for a year or so, I could live on this ship and operate the ROV, which records a feed from a bunch of different places at a bunch of different depths.  I was definitely nervous about going to talk to him, especially because he was in a room with a bunch of big wigs, but Luke encouraged me which was really nice.

After the conference, we had a little bit of time to dick around, so naturally we found two big rocket engines at Stennis and took pictures at them.  This is one of my favorites from that day, that’s Matt, me, Luke, and Josh. They’re who I’m closest to here, pretty much, especially Luke.  Despite his cargo shorts and his derpster status, he’s pretty much my best friend down here and spending nights with him is half the fun of living here.

I love what I’m doing here science-wise, but more fun is definitely hanging out with the boys.  

Last night we had a few and decided to go dinoflagellating, which is the greatest activity ever for a drunk beach going college kid.  You go down to the beach (conveniently five minutes away walking) and go in the water.  Once in the water, you move around a lot so that the plankton (the dinoflagellates) bioluminesce around your body.  It’s like you fucking glow in the dark and it was amazing and fun and just so stupid.

I love these people and I kind of never want this summer to end.  I’m just so happy here.

I promised this happened!

Also, today was practically the greatest day ever.  Luke’s suit jacket makes the best blanket and tiny penises make the best jokes and my other interns make the best of friends and I talked to actual scientists and networked and stuff and I’ll write an actual post about it at some point tomorrow.

The life of a scientist isn’t always glamorous and fun.  My personal project isn’t going to start running until next week, so until then, I’m helping the various people in my lab with their projects.  Lindsey, a girl who had my exact internship two years ago, is doing her master’s degree in fisheries management and is studying stable isotope concentrations of carbon and nitrogen in sargassum weed communities to see how badly they are affected by climate change.  So, part of the research is getting the samples, and that’s the fun part, but you also have to analyze the samples.  So we spent the better part of today working with a mortar and pestle to grind up different things (like fish, shrimp, crabs, sargassum, small inverts, etc) into a fine powder.  Once that’s done, we can send the samples to California where they have a machine to analyze them.  

It’s a weird task because half the time, you’re cleaning the mortar with ethanol, so it smells like a hospital, but the other half of the time, you’re crushing small sea creatures, which makes it smell like cat food.  

Good thing I love the science.

The weekend’s here, which means it’s a time to relax and take a break from science.  These are some of my new friends!  We’re a diverse group of people coming from all over, so it’s been a great time getting to know everyone.  We’ve been to the beach a ton this weekend, which has been so nice.  The water’s warm here, warmer than it ever gets at home, so it’s a nice change.

We’ve also gotten the chance to go up to Mobile a few times - we went shopping at Target, to a dive shop, and to a pizza place this weekend.  It’s a treat to get off our little island, even if it is an hour drive.

A lot of nights we just hang out at my house (the best house) and watch movies.  We cook together kind of a lot, too.  It’s just a really nice sense of community out here, and I kind of love it.

This is my favorite photo that I took on the boat on Monday.  We trawled some fish to look at, but while we were looking at them, they died (they were out of water), so it didn’t make sense to just throw them back into the ocean.  This flock of laughing gulls (and they deserve that name, they make THE WORST call) was following us around, and we figured we’d give them a free lunch.  We got really into it, making the birds dive for the fish/inverts, and odd as it sounds, it was a really fun time throwing dead fish at seagulls for them to eat.  To each her own, I guess?  Either way, this turned out particularly well.  The sky is just so blue here, more so than at home, and the contrast with the white birds just looks really nice.