Silliness Abounds

So...I decided that I am going to start posting my favorite work pictures, which will hopefully keep me laughing at work rather than crying that I'm going to miss everyone.

Installment 1: the silly pictures...

Maia and I at Botany Bay...I'm pretty sure behind the camera Kim is whining about why we always take pictures together and leave her out :)













Princess Day 2008...In case you were unaware, there is an International Princess Day the first Friday of December. It's pretty much the best random holiday ever to celebrate at work being that you can wear tiaras and eat cupcakes (or tiny brownies as it were). And no I have no idea why I am making that face. Maia says it's because she just told me I wasn't allowed to eat the rest of the brownies myself.













Princess Day 2006...as you can see, we were a little more into it the first time around with tiaras and donuts for the 'princesses' and the 'commoners'. Awesome.















However, Princess Day is not the ONLY time you get to wear a tiara at DNR! You can also wear one on your 30th birthday :)



















The decoration of Julia's door when she went home for wedding dress shopping. Yes, we taped a copied Julia head on everyone of the dresses. We were OUT OF CONTROL for real. I mean, honestly, when is this acceptable to do to a person?



















This is what happens when you get a new installment of DNR hats at work. See Kim, we DO have pictures of you :)















We got to wear the cool DNR hats when we used to have the money and staff to do these cool open house things where the public could come out and see all the different programs we do and get to touch the animals and go on a boat ride...and eat hot dogs. Maia and I were in the food tent. And we made a LOT of hot dogs! Clearly too many that we were this excited about it.













Here we have the first ever ACE Basin sweatshop. Anna and I had to copy and bind 120 copies of these for an event we were putting on. In addition to the fact the speakers didn't get us stuff until too late to be able to do this on a weekday and hence we had to come in on a Saturday, there was also an issue going on with the copier so that every once and a while it just randomly didn't make a copy of one of the pages. You know, just for fun. So we had to count the pages on every single copy. And then to finish off the absurdity of it all the binding machine we were using was DEFINITELY made prior to my birth. Can you tell we are loving life?















Speaking of Anna...unfortunately sometimes once you leave you get uninvited to birthday lunches because place people want to eat is too far away to justify you driving to...hence the Lost Dog for my birthday experience. Tragically we decided it was a good idea to take a picture of Anna, cut her head off and put it over Lauton's head, and thus try to prove to her she did in fact eat at the Lost Dog. Likely it didn't work :)






























As I am about to write this I am realizing that apparently we do a lot of convincing. This is me convincing my cousin Tegan (who was shadowing me for a week) that she really did in fact like eels...it was in fact unsuccessful.
















As I went through pictures, it was also clear that we do a lot of eating. Although, anyone who knows me is not shocked by this since eating is my favorite thing to do :) We have snacks on the way back from days in the field...













lunches at the lovely St. Phillips Tea Room...















and, if there happens to be an abundance of cheese left over from a cheese plate that was ordered for an event, why not invite your co-workers wife and tiny baby to enjoy some fondue? I mean what ELSE do you do with an enormous amount of cheese?
















And then what would DNR be without the Chicken? Why do you think we had a random Anna head on file with which to make a picture of her at a meal she didn't go to? Because we had made the Life Aquatic picture and hence recognized the importance of having head cut outs of your coworkers, of course!















Mr. Chicken didn't just star in movies however, he also did important things like help with the fish tagging event...an no, I have no idea why I'm making that face, best I can tell I was eating something...which...again, not surprising













And, I couldn't decide if this picture was going to be funny to everyone else, but guess what? it's my blog, so I get to decide :) this is Maia and the chicken discussing the very sad fact that I am moving out of the admin building and my office is empty. She and the chicken will also have to comiserate over my exiting the Marshlands House...but the sadness is for another day. Today, please recognize the fact that Maia is sitting in an empty office talking to chicken hand puppet...come on people that has GOT to make it into the silly picture installment :)















stay tuned for future installments...they will likely not be as funny, but they will be enjoyable!

Pull Up, Pull Up!!!

I have 5 days left at DNR. It's somewhat freaking me out and every time I think about it I start to enter emotional panic mode. Hence I'm not thinking about it all too much. But, I did think it is appropriate to share some of the the best comments about life given by co-workers this week:

"You're leaving too! It's probably for the best. Look at those of us who have been here for 35 years - we've got anti-depressants in our drawers and liquor on our desks."

"Generally your e-mails are very organized, but as I was reading that one I was thinking, this is very stream of consciousness, something in her life is spirally totally out of control"

"Pull Up, Pull Up!"

Cue Random Cannon Fire

Day 18: a photo of your town

This is a picture of downtown Charleston as taken from just outside my office 5 minutes ago...yes I recognize I am totally spoiled. It is true, this is in fact where I go to work every day:

Within 6 months of taking a 2 year fellowship in Charleston I knew that I loved it and could easily stay here...that was 8 years ago...obviously I was right :)

Today is a particularly interesting day in Charleston, which makes it kind of funny that today's picture was a picture of your town. 150 years ago today the Civil War started...yes, I recognize that to most of the world April 12 is not a big deal...in Charleston, it's a VERY big deal, believe me. To commemorate it there has been random cannon fire all day yesterday and today from various places around the harbor which makes it funny talking to people about normal work stuff and randomly hearing a cannon shot :) This morning they had a big memorial thing since the first shot was fired from here at Ft. Johnson towards Ft. Sumter...this is literally a 2 minute walk from where I am sitting right now:

Maia and I chose to have breakfast at the Lost Dog Cafe in Folly and let the crowd of people and buses and cars clear out of work before we headed out here, but everyone who was gathered at the point saw this:
Charleston has this amazing quality of being a city, but not, being a historical mecca but also a college town, having a weird mix of hippies, and yuppies, and regular old blue collar workers...it is all around a wonderful place to live. I love the farmers market and the fact I can get to the beach in 10 minutes, that I can walk people visiting me through downtown and look out at the harbor while talking about sleeping porches and lounging under live oak trees, I love walking in the woods in April and breathing in the fall breeze in October, and as much as the summer humidity kicks your butt, it is beautiful in it's own right. Charleston is a good town to call your town :)

Some Days

Some days I look at what I’m doing and I think ‘why did my job require a degree which involved diving with sharks, running research on corals and identifying sponges?’ Today as I listened to a webinar on green building standards and codes, while setting up a survey to evaluate a 4 day workshop, I thought that.

A Good Way to Start a Morning

Today is my intern, Lauton's birthday. Not only is he a spectacular intern in that he's really good at his job, but he is a spectacular intern because he thinks of things like BRINGING ME CAKE ON HIS BIRTHDAY! You read that right, for HIS birthday, I got a piece of his crepe birthday cake. It's from the Charleston Crepe Company, which is one of my favorite reasons for going to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings. Except that instead of just one crepe, there are 30, and every layer has chocolate in between it. This day is off to a REALLY good start!

Today...backwards

11:00 Right now I am sitting on the bed listening to the dishwasher clean the dishes that I finally took the time to stack inside of it rather than cover my countertop. I would like to say goodnight to my mom.

10:00 I organized the pictures I've been meaning to organize so that I know which ones I need to buy from Snapfish by the end of the week before the deal for free prints runs out. What I need to buy starts after my mom's bone marrow transplant...it seems so long ago, but it's less than a year.

9:00 I looked through my scrapbook to figure out what pages need to be done and finished a few quick ones to close out a book. In that book was a page of Christmas in 2008, when my mom didn't have cancer anymore...

8:00 I got home from bible study and looked at my disaster house that I haven't had the energy to clean up since Brandy left, it's kinda hard to care when you know no one else is going to see it and you are exhausted.

7:00 I finished up a lesson on Psalm 126 - I'm still in the process of making my heart agree with my brain that it will all be ok and I will reap with songs of joy again one day.

6:00 I drank a cup of apple cider with Leslie and Jeannie before bible study started and listened to Hillsong sing on the TV. We played that DVD in my mom's hospital room when she was there for GVH. I can still explain every detail of that room.

5:00 I tried to keep myself from freaking out on a conference call that I was still on and wasn't going anywhere fast...and it was 5:00.

4:00 Same conference call, less freaking out of the brain since I hadn't been there as long yet.

3:00 I walked into my office from getting Starbucks Gingerbread latte with Maia - a good way to start a conference call.

2:00 Maia and I worked on the Christmas party invite for the DNR Christmas party that we can't call a Christmas party. One of my personal pet peeves. A spade is a spade people, whether it's PC to be a spade or not.

1:00 I gave up attempting to answer all the e-mails and started coloring them by priority so I knew which ones NEEDED to be done which day.

12:00 I was in the middle of a conference call I was running, which was actually being very productive and only lasted 30 minutes.

11:00 I realized I had 49 e-mails in my inbox even though at the beginning of the day I had looked there were 46 and I had been answering e-mails since then...how does that math work?!

10:00 I organized the notes that needed to be sent out yesterday but had been lost in my e-mail inbox and because I hadn't taken the time to organize it didn't realize they were in there.

9:00 I chatted with Lauton about the day and attempted to convince my brain to choose things to do today based on priority rather than random non-sequential and unlogical efforts that resulted in my feeling like yesterday was a waste of time.

8:00 I realized that I really need to get moving if I planned on actually being at work on time. When I got in the car at 8:15 I wanted to call my mom...like I do every single morning when I get in the car at 8:15.

7:00 I forced myself out of bed, much to the excitement of Kaylinn who was all about going for a walk.

6:00 My alarm went off to tell me that I really should get out of bed if I wanted to get anything done before Nikole called at 6:30 and I would be otherwise engaged in conversation until 7:00. I hit snooze and rolled over.

No real reason for any of that, I'm just back in the procrastination before bedtime because I want to cry myself to sleep mode. I figured I hadn't posted since the Panama blog and at the very least it was a more interesting way to see my day. Friday will be 3 months. The living life and then thinking about my mom and then having to go back to living life hasn't stopped yet. I find it interesting that there is no transition in or out of the thought - it's just a random thought in the middle of the day that seems harmless until reality hits. And reality isn't gentle when it hits, perhaps I should buy it some boxing gloves.

As an aside, if you haven't seen Memento, you should.

Thoughts throughout the day

1) If I had a salad bar in my house that was stocked by someone else, I would eat far more vegetables. (the salad bar at the place we are staying for our conference is awesome)

2) I think from here on out all my chocolate should have sea salt on it - I'm pretty sure I'm obsessed with the sea salt/chocolate combination.

3) Me and T-mobile are going to fight. Most of the people here are having issues getting cell coverage, but at least they get is SOMEWHERE! I'm having withdraw symptoms of talking to my Dad, Nikole and Brandy - there are not many days in the past few months we haven't talked.

4) My brain hurts...and it's only day 2 - this does not bode well for mental functioning by Thursday.

5) I'm part of government and they make me sick, no wonder everyone else hates them. Honestly, if I hear one more time how a new chunk of money has been given for such and such and the answer is what new office can be made I'm going to puke!

6) Certain moments are not going to be any easier in 5 more months. My friend Rachel lost her dad 7 months ago and her post from Sunday made me cry. Every once and a while I notice that it's getting better, but usually I notice that because I just got the wind knocked out of me. Take for instance on Saturday when Brandy, John and I were at the Molasses Festival watching these kids clog (I know, how great is that). When they were done the little girl looked over at her mom to see if she was watching, and I said to Brandy in passing, did you see her just look at her mom. And at that moment I wanted to start crying - just like that, no warning, a stab in the heart just from a random moment I witnessed. Or on Sunday when I drove into the National Conservation Training Center in WV. The last time we had our meeting here I flew home and my mom drove me down. I thought about it driving from the airport, but when I hit a certain portion of the road I saw the parking lot where she parked the car and remember walking with her down the path talking and I started crying. No warning, no build up - from a thought to crying in a second. People tend to insinuate that to help me feel better I just shouldn't listen to the music or look at the things that remind me of mom...but everything reminds me of her. What I've been doing for the past 8 weeks is learning how to deal with that. Now I have to learn how to deal with the little things that catch me unaware. Then I'm going to have to learn how to deal with the major things...the moments in life I know mom would have loved. But for tonight, my prayer is for Rachel, because it really doesn't matter how long it's been, it still stinks.

2 minutes

About 10 minutes ago as I was typing an e-mail, while looking up the answer to another e-mail, while printing the new NERRS directory, while burning a CD, while reading another e-mail I realized that I may FINALLY be back in the game. I haven’t done that much work in a given 2 minute time frame in a LONG TIME!

Lunch at Ft. Johnson

So, I was going through my posts for this year and labeling them...I know good bloggers do this from the beginning, but I never did and then once I realized that maybe I should have I forgot, and then when I realized maybe I should have reminded myself I had posted so many blogs I thought that maybe it wasn't worth it, and then yesterday I realized that people who don't really follow my blog but come on for one specific post may actually want to see posts about that topic...oh for instance like when I was posting all the stuff about the bone marrow transplant...right. So, I finally decided to bite the bullet and do it. Granted I only got through one year worth, but hey, it's one year that was not labeled before. Right now you can find the labels at the bottom, but eventually I'll have them on the sidebar. Still a work in progress...

All of that is to say that as I was going through my posts to label them I noticed that this was listed as draft. Apparently I loaded the pictures of Maia and my lunch one day but never actually wrote the text and posted them. It made me laugh, so I figured, hey, why not? So, here from 9/23/09 is Maia and my lunch, with my guess as to what in the world I was going to say...

I would have guessed this was my lunch because I've been known to do it before, but below is my actual lunch so I have no idea what this picture is

these are the makings for my lunch...I tend to have an issue with preparing lunch BEFORE I come to work so I bring in a random assortment of items and go with it

this is Maia's lunch pre-prepared

this is Maia's lunch mid-preparation...I know we thought it looked gross too, but it doesn't taste as bad as it looks

an this was the completed package...not bad eh?

Now you see why I had to make an 'only me' label...some of my posts really couldn't be captured by 'life in general' :)

You know your office is too cold when...

...you decide to sit outside and read the article you need to look through rather than doing it inside so that your feet will thaw in the 96 degree weather. 96 degree weather should not be something you CHOOSE to sit outside in!

Limulus Polyphemus

That is the scientific name for the horseshoe crab, which last night climbed my list of all time favorite animals into the top 10. While the sea cucumber is not all that beautiful to behold, it still wins being that he spits his guts out on predators - I just find that too funny - and you can squirt people with water with them...I know I'm a horrible marine biologist. So apparently I'm very fond of not cute animals because while the horseshoe crab is super crazy cool, he's not all that attractive (sorry horseshoe crabs, you know it's true).

Their coolness makes up for their looks however, and as with most things I now think they are cute because they are so ugly :) So, the reasons horseshoe crabs are now on my top 10 list of coolest animals on the planet:

Reason number 1. They spawn at night on specific beaches, which means to see them you have to plan. I of course am a fan of planning and so I appreciate their fortitude. They have little 'eyes' on the front of their shell that sense UV light. The biggest tides are on the new and full moons and so they can sense the light changes and come up to the beaches on those tides so that their eggs will be laid as far up the beach as they can get them. Here is out walk out, it was gorgeous weather last night:

Reason number 2. Horseshoe crab eggs are food for migrating birds - as you can see in the picture below there were a ton of them last night. One little guy we saw was the red knot, which migrates every year from the southern tip of Argentina to the tundra on the far north of Canada. If the fact that a tiny bird makes a circumpolar trip every year is not amazing enough, I found out last night that they leave Canada before the chicks are ready to leave, and thus the chicks make their trip to Argentina for the first time WITHOUT any bird that has done it before. This is an example of why I am in environmental education - I knew most of this stuff, but when you actually see the bird walking on the sand in front of you and think about how far they flew and are going to fly and that the horseshoe crab eggs are a major reason they can do it...well it's way more amazing than just reading it in a book.

Reason number 3. The females are about twice as big as the males. I just find it kinda funny, and really I appreciate all animals where being fat is a good thing (it's why I love manatees so much). I mean I guess you can't really say that female horseshoe crabs are fat, per se, but they are ginormo. Here are two 'in the act' as it were...it's external fertilization, so it's not really 'the act', but you get the gist.

This is Al showing us that you can tell the males by not only their size, but by the fact that their shell is concave so they can climb on the female. Nature, you are amazing.


Al looks kinda angry here and the one woman was a little out of control with her camera and kept stepping in front of me, but look at the size of this little horseshoe crab lady:

Reason number 4. Their blood is blue. Again, a fact I knew but it's oh so much cooler to see in person than to just know. Instead of Iron which human blood uses to bind oxygen, horseshoe crabs use Copper, so their blood turns blue instead of red when it touches oxygen. Check it out - it's almost as blue as the drill!

Why a drill you may ask - well you have to drill into the carapace to tag them, so you see the little bottle behind the drill? That is betadine. Al would drill into the betadine to clean the drill bit, then drill into the shell, then put the tag in. Pretty cool.

Reason number 5. Horseshoe crabs are more closely related to spiders than they are to crabs. One look inside their shell and you can tell. Personally I'm not a fan of spiders, so the fact that one of my top 10 animals is related to them says a lot about that animal. Horseshoe crabs are 250 million year old spiders so I guess I find that way cooler. You can also see in this picture their gills (at the top of the picture). They are called book gills because they look like pages in a book.


I could go on, but I think 5 reasons is enough to make my point. Our procedure for tagging them was a few people collected the crabs from the surf where they were trying to find themselves a beautiful horseshoe crab woman (we only tagged the males) and put them on the sand (I know they look very sad on their backs, but they were fine)

Then there were other people who would rinse off the crab we were about to tag (you don't need a whole bunch of sand on the shell when you are about to drill a hole in it), bring it to me. I would measure it and hold it for Al to drill it (only the vet gets the drilling job).

Then the girl who was recording the sizes and tag numbers would hand him a tag, he would pop it in the hole (flat white thing where Al's thumb is on the crab) and I'd hand him back to be taken back to the water. We were joking that he would then tell his horseshoe crab friends about this crazy night he had where aliens grabbed him up out of the water and shone lights on him. Poor little guys - thanks for your service to science.

So, all in all it was a beautiful evening. Before we walked back I got a picture with our last guy - he was number 104 (I know, that's a LOT of horseshoe crabs!). They liked to try to grab your fingers and make you let them go but they don't have pinchers that can hurt you like blue crabs do so really unless you are scared of them you just hold on and they push at your hands. It's sad and funny at the same time.
We turned out all our lights and checked out the beautiful sky with no lights around and then walked in the surf where you could see the phosphorecence (it looks like shooting sparks are coming out of your feet when you walk because the phytoplankton light up momentarily when they are disturbed). Then we headed back to Al's house and had some chili his wife Mary made for us and turned into bed around midnight. This, ladies and gents, is why I love my job.

Jet Engines

There is something about the sound of a jet engine that makes your heart skip a beat. If instead of defining the word power you needed to give it a sound, I would give it a jet engine flying over your office. Yes, that's right, I have the Blue Angels flying over my office. They are in town for two shows this weekend, and so today and tomorrow are practice days. And thus, the office on the harbor is a little louder than normal (rather difficult to hear the conference call I'm on right now), but being able to watch them while eating lunch on the porch was pretty spectacular!

Keurig

It's actually possibly a good thing that the Keurig lives at work because it's one reason on Monday mornings to actually get myself to the office...

My Skill Set

I read this quote today and determined it did in fact summarize my job:

In order to penetrate even farther into their subject, the host of specialists narrow their field and dig down deeper and deeper till they can't see each other. but the treasures their toil brings to light they place on the ground above. A different kind of specialist should be sitting there, the one still missing. He should not go down any hole, but would stay on top and piece all of the different facts together. - Thor Heverdahl, 1960

First of all let me say I love the fact that the guy's name is Thor. I mean honestly how many Thor's have you met in your life? That, however, is the not the point. The point is that I determined while sitting in a presentation today allowing my brain to piece together where that new information fit in the web of random information already in there what my actual skill set it. My skill set is taking mass quantities of information and distilling it down to the core conclusions. And thus the determination that in fact Thor's suggestion of what we need is in fact what I can do. And I can do it quite naturally really, I did not learn this skill, while I have honed it over the years apparently I was just born with it.

There is just one problem with this skill set. Taking mass quantities of information and pulling out the threads between them and important bits of take home messages is VERY time consuming. And while it is job insurance in some aspects that my skill set is needed more and more, it comes with a price. More of a very time consuming thing, leaves less time for other time consuming things. And so since the majority of what I do best is time consuming it seems as though I become less and less effective at it the more of it I'm asked to do.

So, I shall return to compiling the tiny tidbits from the mass of documents that I'm working on right now and then I'm heading home for some sushi, some ice cream, and a good night's sleep!

Public Speaking

In a national survey, people were asked 'What are you most afraid of?', and here are how the numbers fell out:
1. Fear of public speaking
2. Fear of death
3. Fear of spiders
4. Fear of darkness
5. Fear of heights

Yes, you are reading that right, fear of death is #2 BEHIND public speaking. Now, I'm sure if you asked them 'are you more afraid of public speaking or death?' they may say, death. But in the land of surveys there are reasons you ask open-ended questions, and one reason is to get at what people are really thinking about, not what they are thinking about in comparison to other things. Coming up with an answer off the top of your head indicates something about that answer, and I for one find those survey results very interesting.

The reason I bring this up is because yesterday I was at a meeting and I was picked to be the 'report out' person for our group's conversation. Actually I offered to be the 'report out' person after a torturous 3 minute conversation asking people. I've been that facilitator before, and I'm sorry but I had to have mercy on the poor girl. But, back to the point. As I was sitting there getting ready to report out I realized that I was nervous. Now, what in the world was I nervous about? I wasn't saying that I had the right answers, I was just saying this is what we talked about, and I knew 3/4 of the people in the room from previous meetings or work related events. And yet, I definitely had that pit of the stomach nervous feeling. Which got me thinking about that statistic, which then got me thinking, why is public speaking (of any kind) so nerve wracking for humans? To be quite honest if you asked me if I was afraid of public speaking I would say no. I do it all the time, in fact it's kinda become more or less a major part of my job to talk in front of groups, and yet I do not at all feel comfortable with it.

And so I've been pondering this and have determined the root of it is due to our need as humans to be accepted by our peers. Even though I knew there was nothing I was saying that wouldn't be accepted, deep down I wanted to be sure. If you look at it through the lens of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs it would fall on the 'self esteem' need section, right before you get to the point.
In theory as you fulfill the needs at the bottom of the pyramid you can focus on the needs further up. And so my question for you is - by passing the health care bill, have we made people more afraid of public speaking? Just kidding :) My question is this - is it all that surprising that people are more scared of public speaking than death? Most of us are trying to fulfill that little slice of our pyramid and so our minds are much more focused on that. So, when you ask an open ended question, our mind goes to that slice of our pyramid without us even thinking about it.

So, I'm done my random philosophical meandering for now. In reality all of this was to say, I hate that I hate public speaking no matter how much I want to not hate it.

Initial Thoughts of the Day

Some initial thoughts from my day so far...

as I was scraping ice off my windshield:
thought #1 - I thought I lived in the south
thought #2 - I remember when my dad used to do this for me
thought #3 - I need a house with a garage so I don't have to do this

as I was logging into my computer:
thought #1 - why does the battery on my wireless mouse die so quickly?
thought #2 - where can I find a AA battery at 8:15 on a Monday morning?

as I was walking down the hall after first meeting of the day:
thought #1 - I wish all meetings took 20 minutes
thought #2 - why is my office noticeably colder than Phil's?
thought #3 - where is my quilt?

Happy Monday!

My Two Favorite Appliances

I am using my two favorite new appliances at this moment...a big enormous room heater that Louie purchased yesterday for our office, and the Keurig machine John used to have in his classroom and has graciously given to me for my office. I'm assuming you know what a heater is. This heater, however, is presently saving me from needing to bundle up under 3 blankets after work today, so it makes it a much greater heater than any other heater I've found. The Keurig, you may not be familiar with. And if you are not, I suggest you become familiar with it. You push a button, it makes you a coffee. It's GLORIOUS!