JELLO!

I know it's been a while...a lot has transpired in the past few weeks...

I started the new job!  It's been great so far but quite busy!  I leave in a week to go to Gainesville, FL for training for a whole week!  It should be fun and very informative, since as of now all of the protocols and overall tasks are kind of a blurry mess in my head.  In the meantime we are just getting the lab slowly up and running...ordering supplies, readying the lab, familiarizing ourselves with protocols, gear, and the general day to day stuff to make NEON work - its a crazy system!  There are passwords for everything and I forget them ALL every weekend!!  We start sampling mid-April.  In the meantime we'll have a total of 4 permanent techs, and a handful of seasonal techs that will work with us from April to about October-ish.  This first year is a bit of a test run of sorts, we won't be sampling everything just yet (no streams this year - boo!!), but it should be good to get out the kinks!  We'll still sample plants, soil, ticks, mosquitos, small mammals, beetles, and a host of atmospheric data - woo!!  I need to remember to take photos of the lab so you all can see how we progress!!

Dan and I just got back Wed night from a Dauphin Island trip where we were the very responsible chaparones for 14 high schoolers ranging from 10th-12th graders.  There were a total of 5 chaparones which made the adult-to-student ratio quite manageable, but still, very very tiring.  We lucked out with good weather, and saw many a cool things (rays, dolphins, squid, shrimp, jellies, fish, birds, plankton, ack!)!!!  Dan got a fancy new SLR digital camera, so he has most of the cool photos, but here are a few of mine from my phone..soon I'll share his photos once we get a system going with the downloads...anybody else Apple's photo stream?  I am slowly learning the technologies of the now!!! ..sigh

Anyhow,

that's all for now..

xo

Hallo there folks...

Hi!!

Started work at the new job today!! Change!!  Adulthood!!  Hoorah!!  More soon...

Here are pictures from our weekend holiday!!  We took a break and went to Northwest Alabama because we've been curious about the Muscle Shoals Sound.  We had a blast!  Good food, good sights, birds, just good fun all around...It's still way too cold here in town...the University is closed tomorrow in anticipation of possible snow...ugh...

xo!

ct

SNOOOOOOOW DAYYYYYYY!!!!!

Hi all! We had a snow day!!!  

We got dismissed early from work/classes yesterday at around 11am.  Most of us just stuck around the lab though and watched the entire University lose it.  The lab has a nice vantage point of the parking lot and we saw plenty of near-accidents and cars crawling about.  Beyond our little bubble most of Alabama (and the South) was experiencing winter traffic hell, which unfortunately included our fearless leader and a grad student.. Jon and Oliver had gone out to scout out streams in NE Alabama at 7am.  By 2pm they had decided to turn around and head back home because the roads were getting icy.  What followed was a 1.5 hour drive home that took 10.5 HOURS.  yikes.

We even made BuzzFeed which I guess is noteworthy...the pictures in the post of highway I-280 in Birmingham are pretty insano.   We were very fortunate that we were able to walk home from work and spend the night in our cozy bed with the Hambone!  

The University ended up closing today as well (and we just got another message that tomorrow is also a snow day!!).  Dan and I walked into school this morning with Hannah...

The quad covered in snow:

Hannah had a blast running around in the snow and eating her fair share of it as well.  She always transforms into her puppy self when she sees snow.  So fun!

Oh yes!  I almost forgot!  This week has been quite exciting ASIDE from the snow!  On Monday I accepted a full time position at NEON, which stands for National Ecological Observatory Network!  The position is a field technician here at the Tuscaloosa office that has just opened up.  Over the next 30 years NEON will be collecting various data from the atmosphere, terrestrial, and aquatic realm.   

Here is a 6 minute video on YouTube if you want the NEON skinny!  It's a great position because it takes advantage of the general field and lab experience, but I'll also be exposed to new things as well - including plant identification and small mammal trapping!  The team (I think 4-5 of us) gets to go to Florida in the beginning of March for small mammal training!  Yeah!!  One of the other techs is actually Jon's wife so I already know someone (and like them!!) at the new job already!!

These are all the NEON sites all around the US:

And here is a closeup of the Domain 8 sites that I will be working at:

As you can see, they are fairly close to Tuscaloosa - ranging from about 30 minutes to 2 hours away.  I'm excited to work in them as they are new areas of Alabama I have yet to explore!  My start date is actually February 10th and I'm excited because it's a great position with a lot of room for growth and possible relocation (see the picture before of all the NEON sites, ha!!).  

In the meantime I'm almost finished with water chemistry samples at the lab, so there will be some closure with that.  I hope to still hang around in the lab here and there on the weekends because I enjoy it so!  My goal is to relocate all the equipment into different drawers so no one knows where anything is so they'll have to keep me around in some capacity...

Here are some pictures (many videos of Hannah)!

Also of note: Dan got home safe and sound Saturday evening from Iceland, albeit a little sick from cabin fever.  We also spent some of today finishing up the data entry from all his midge identifications he tackled over winter break!  What a productive snow day!!

xoxoxo

jello!

Hi all!!!

Dan and crew have returned to Reykjavik after a successful week in the field!  Here are pictures from the Fixation on Ice blog!  Now the crew spends the next few days getting lab work done and then they get to have fun until they leave Friday!  Dan comes back to BHM Saturday evening!  Woo!  

In the meantime...here's what Hannah and I were up to this past weekend:

2014!! Holy moly!!

It's almost mid-January!!!
SERIOUS!

Well, the blog has been a bit quiet..apologies, but to wrap up -

I had a nice Xmas with the Tran Fam back in the LBC (we ate a LOT of food), Dan stayed in T-Town and measured a LOT of midges.

We reunited before NYE where we proceeded to do nothing aside from barely stay awake until midnight, say "Happy New Year" to each other, and then fall into a deep slumber.

On the football front we were bummed to watch our boys totally flop the Sugar Bowl vs. Oklahoma University.   To make football even worse this year I lost the AL fantasy football championship game to the league leader, but managed 2nd place overall (I wanted that win oh so bad especially on our first go at it).  Yes, I am upset about losing a fake game with my fake team.  Dan eked out 5th place after a string of very tough match-ups...Our joint team that we played in with the Iowa crowd did quite poorly...I am shaking my head in disbelief with that one...sigh, all in all Fantasy was a lot of fun and I would be willing to do it again in the future!  However, it made football season especially nerve wracking on top of the AL games we would watch, so it's nice to have a break from constantly checking the scores on Sundays.

Dan just left this morning for Iceland!  He'll be gone for two weeks for field work with a collaborator's group from MN.  It should be a lot of fun for him to be a warm body on a project and not be too stressed out about collecting samples and getting into sites.  He certainly deserves a break from T-town and lab work!! Hopefully there will be some pictures on the Fixation on Ice blog soon!  The group will be out in a cabin in the Hengill Valley with no electricity or running water for a week.  Thankfully there's plenty of snow to melt for water and a propane stove and heater to keep them warm and fed!!  Sunrise hits Iceland around 11am these days, and then sets at around 3pm!  So not much daylight and snow everywhere will make for some interesting field conditions.  Thankfully Dan brought Bananagrams along so the team should be pretty set on entertainment!!

My days in the lab are numbered due to a dwindling of funds in the grant, but things are looking promising with a possible position for me here in town soon- more news when things are concrete, no jinxing it more than I have already!! Ha!!

PHOTOS!!

xo,ct

Merry Christmas!!!

HI folks! A quick post before I board my flight to LAX!  Here are a scant few photos from the past few weeks.  I can't believe it's xmas time already!

I'm gonna be home for 10 days whilst Dan and Hannah hold down the fort.  Woo!!  Dan will probably be identifying 1000s of midges (no lie) and entering that many lines of data (probably much more).

Merry Christmas!!

chau

Thanksgiving recap!

Hi there all!

Hope you had fantastic Thanksgivings this year!

Dan and I left Thanksgiving morning to go camping up at DeSoto State Park.  It's about 2.5 hours NE from us at the foothills of the Appalachian mountain range:

The geography there is much different than where we live - it's heavily forested with smatterings of pines, mountainous (well, for the east), exposed rocks, and all in all super pretty.  It doesn't look much like what I think of when I think Alabama, but I should!

We had a nice leisurely drive up to the area and I think we avoided most of the holiday traffic.  After taking in a few sights, we hiked into our Backcountry site with Hannah in tow (carrying her own food, blanket, food dish, and a few other things we couldn't find room for on our own packs!).  We got in around 2pm or so, with just a few hours of daylight to setup camp and collect from the plentiful downed wood available for an epic-long campfire.  It had rained a couple days earlier which made the wood fairly smoky to burn, but a slight breeze kept it out of our eyes for most of the night.  The campsite we were at was the only one in the area, so it was nice to not have any noise aside from the babbling brook and the occasional train in the distance (no matter where we go there are always trains!!!).  It got fairly chilly at night, but I still don't think it was as bad as our White Sands trip from 2011ish.

A panorama of our campsite:

We opted to leave our campsite a day early, as adorable as it was, neither of us slept all that well with our sleeping pads on the wood floor of the structure.  It probably kept us a bit warmer, but it certainly made for a stiff night's sleep!  We spared torturing Hannah another chilly night and packed out of camp to enjoy the park for the rest of the day.

Flapping through the water...

There is surprisingly a lot of to do in DeSoto State Park, as small as it is.  We went fishing at Little River, did the scenic drive along the Little River Canyon outside the park, and took many, many pictures.  We then drove into Gadsden for a quick bite to eat at the Blackstone Brew Pub before heading home.  It was so very nice to settle into our warm comfy bed for the night by Friday night and still have the weekend for relaxing at home!

Ugh, and then, Saturday happened...the Iron Bowl happened....and Auburn beat Alabama by a mind blowing last second touchdown....that is all we will say about that...RIP Alabama football 2013, you were fun.

Sunday we lazed about some, but then hit the Cahaba National Wildlife Preserve to try to get in some fishing.  Dan's jazzed about fly fishing so he's spearheading these trips to practice his newest hobby. Water all around us has been high and fast lately with the fall storms from last week, but we still got to get some casting in.  Most of the work in the beginning of fly fishing is just learning how to cast!  It can be super frustrating, especially when flies get snagged in trees, stream rocks, on your own line, etc.  Dan is also learning at quite possibly the WORST time of the year for fishing.  Winter means the water is cold and food is scarce so most of the fish available are hunkered down and not super active feeding-wise.  Plus in general the sunfish in Alabama get spooked super easy.  So give credit to Dan for not giving up despite the lack of even the slightest hint of fish in these waters right now!!!  He's getting the timing down, but golly it takes time!  We are determined to just find a small pond stocked with bass that is geared for kids just so we can finally get a bite!!!

Anywho, happy December (yikes!!)

A tour of our campsite (and Hannah being silly):

Here are some pics (apologies for 95% of them involving Hannah)
xo

p.s. the video I tried to embed for thanksgiving didn't work, so check out the link in the previous post for the most awesome video of your day (ha!).