OMG it's April!

Nearly a month since the last blog entry.  Clearly we have misplaced our priorities.

Spring is bouncing around here in Alabama - giving us some sunny 80 degree days bookended by soggy rain-filled blah days like today!  Yesterday downtown Tuscaloosa hosted the (free!) Druid City Art Festival which has come a loooonnnngg way from the first year where there was a main stage with a few musicians and 5 artists (one of them being our old neighbor).  This year the number of artists increased maybe about 50 artists.  It was a beautiful sunny day so it was nice to walk about around a bunch of , though the artists weren't totally our cup of tea (mostly houndstooth items, jewelry, soaps, and a lot of pottery).  So still a ways to go, but all in all good fun for the family.

Last week we drove to Birmingham for the day to take a soggy walk at Red Mountain Park with Hannah.  We did a bit of shopping (including walking into a West Elm for the first time ever (BAD idea, we want everything in the store), and then had a meal at El Barrio.

We're headed to Portland in May for the Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting!  Dan will present some data from his dissertation and Chau will tag along for fun and mostly tool around Portland and soak up liberal city life.  Dan found a place from airbnb which is a short walk from the convention center so we're pretty excited for the trip!

Speaking of Dan-o, Friday he received his award for the the Chernock prize, so he is now a proud owner of a nice pen and pencil set and an award he can setup in his office.  Yeah!!

My work has been going well - things seem to go in cycles.  Right now we're entering another quiet week with some office work and field work, but then next week our 5 seasonal technicians come and it will be fairly hectic!  We will train them for 2 weeks then we will finally start field work!!  Yikes!

Here are a few photos...

From today's mail:

Hopefully you can read it, the gist of it, Dan has received the Ralph L. Chernock Prize for 2014 which is awarded to the most outstanding graduate student in systematics and ecology.  How great!!  So proud of him!!  He's been working his behind off throughout his time here in Alabama and especially this year!!

Woo hoo!! Many congrats love!

xo

Another photo link!!

Here are some photos from Dan's fancy new SLR!  He even did most of the photo captions!
Yeah!

xo
ct

A working picture link...hopefully

So here is an updated link that I hope works - these photos are from Dauphin Island and a few pics from training this past week in Florida!  Next up I'm going to work on the photos Dan has taken with his fancy camera (he's quite the photographer!!).

Let me know if these don't work!!

xoxo

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

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