Comin' home!

Hi there all!

It's been a crazy week here in the household! Mostly because I haven't been in the household! I'm now just getting back from Gainesville, Florida. The town is inland about an hour and a half from Jacksonville. 

For the last week I've been at training with my fellow NEONates. We met new field techs from all of the other domains that are just now getting up and running like us in Tuscaloosa! We are considered Domain 8 and so all week there was a lot of meeting folks and asking what domain they are from.

"I'm from D8! Where are you from?"

In the very beginning of training it was fairly overwhelming. A lot of information on the first day which kinda felt like very ng hit on the forehead with a baseball bat (which I have actually experienced first hand so I'm drawing from experience). By Tuesday morning things were either clicking or my soul had just given up entirely (I think the former).

The days went basically like so: morning classroom lectures on protocols broken up by plant and animal people ( I was deemed a plant person). Then a boxed lunch ( I never thought I would get sick of club sandwiches, but it happened), then an afternoon of the field or lab implementing recently learned protocols. Then enjoy evenings chatting more work and such with other NEONates.

It was great because our trainers were technicians much like us who have gone through a field season or two and could provide us a lot of insight on how to sample and make our NEON machine flow smoothly.

We are now armed with a butt load of knowledge, and ton of new friends who are also amazing resources. It was kinda like a short summer camp though I've never actually attended a summer camp. Its refreshing because I've spent the last few years in Tuscaloosa secluded in the University lifestyle so it's been  to meet some new folks who do lotsa cool stuff.

The either domains coming on line this year or soon there after include Tennessee, Wisconsin, North Dakota, North Texas, Virginia, Utah, and Puerto Rico (and yes, everyone and their mother wants to work in Puerto Rico).  The domains that are already chugging along include Florida, Massachusetts, and Colorado. 

All in all there will be 20 domains in place by 2017. Yikes!! Heidi and I already know there will be another week of aquatics training for us in August, probably in Virginia! I'm hoping I also get to tag along on the tower training, which will be fun since our tower in Alabama will be 126 feet tall!!! Yikes!!

In a week Utah and Tennessee folks will be coming to Alabama to help us with plot establishment protocols.  They'll be with us for two weeks which will be fun and hopefully not as insane as this past week! At the very least I'm hoping for better weather than the rainy crud we had all week in Florida this past week!!

Well, I need to fix web links to our pictures, and we have to link up Dan's stellar photos from his new fancy phone hopefully this weekend amid relaxing at home I can get to those!!
Xoxo
Ct