It has been 11 weeks since I've updated my livejournal. It seems kind of unbelievable, but computer access has been limited and I wanted to sit down and write a real comprehensive update before updating about little events again. Now I have about 10 minutes before I need to get ready for class.

So Bird Camp went on since my last entry, a whole lot of veg was done, good times were had. It rained a lot, got caught out on plot in pouring rain and lightning storms a few times. One coworker actually got indirectly struck by lightning, but she was okay and now she's got a story to tell. I miss them bird camp folks - spending 3 months living, eating, recreating and working with the same 25 people will inevitably make you close or make you loathe each other. Fortunately for me I managed to get along well enough with everyone, and I made some good friends along the way. I certainly plan on going up to Canada to visit Sheila, and to the Dominican Republic to visit Kat, at the very least. So all in all Bird Camp was a great experience - I learned a lot about a lot of things and met a whole bunch of interesting people.

Well after work was over I felt that I needed an actual summer vacation. I went to Minnesota. Spent time with Dad, went shopping and out on his boat and such. Unfortunately he had to work a lot while I was there. Saw David, met Nikki and Aurora, what a cute kid! I would have liked to have spent more time with them, but I guess there's always next time. Spent a lot of time hanging out with Tiffany. Hung out with Angel some. We all went to the zoo together. I spent half a day at work with Tiff (Petsmart), and went to the Kitty Kat Klub in Minneapolis to hang out with Tiff, Angel, Sara, another friend whose name I can't remember. Good times were had, along with a Long Island and a Sex on the Beach. Delicious. We passed by the bridge, and that really made an impression on me. The concrete had just folded, cars were scattered everywhere. Something else.

Anyway, after Minnesota I had decided to spend some time in California birding with friends. As it happened David was the only one around, so I missed the other guys. The birding was just okay, but I did get two lifers and we entertained ourselves when the birding was slow. We got along very well, and now we're in a relationship. Who'd have thought? I guess they say the only constant is change, and I'm crazy about him. He's even come up to visit me in Flag since, which as some of you know is about as meaningful to me as any gesture could be. I could go on on this topic forever, but I'll cut it short here and if you want to know more you can always ask me.

What else? Work. The semester started off rockily to say the least but I'm back in the swing of things, we've got some things going on right now that are upsetting but there is hope, which is the best we can ask for at the moment. Sorry for the vagueness, not really something I should go into on a public forum. Anyway, I'm spending most of my time scoring microsatellites, which is just about as frustrating and boring a task as you can imagine.

Classes. I'm taking Evolutionary Biology, which isn't a whole lot of stimulating but it is interesting. Biochem, which has the potential to be interesting but I can't understand the way my prof teaches. I don't even know if I understand the material or not. Native Plants of Arizona, which starts in 9 minutes. I love it. We take 5 hour field trips twice a week and just learn a bunch of plants! Finally, Spanish Linguistics, which is awesome. The class itself isn't fun, oh how I miss Senor Joe, but the material is really interesting. I love looking at language from a scientific viewpoint. Left-brained Lauren.

I'm spending most of my time with Austin, not surprising. Hang out with Winn but it's usually in the context of doing laundry at his place. The rest of my socialization is pretty much with Wildlifers, primarily Josh, Donya and Mike. I'm hoping to get out more - hiking, bars, shows at Pine Mtn or the Orpheum, whatever. I want to meet new people but I'd especially like to spend more time with all my existing friends. Goal for the semester, we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, I should be getting to class. Hopefully it'll be less than 11 weeks until my next update!

So time has gone by, nests have been found. Nests have been eaten, nests have turned into fluttering little fledglings. More often the former, unfortunately, but the excitement and cuteness of the latter makes up for it. Not a lot has changed at bird camp, except that more nests have fledged and fewer are being built. Bird campers have gotten closer as we've spent more late nights together around the picnic table with three bottles of whiskey and a bottle of wine among us. Oh, and Catchphrase livens up the nights - even then, though, they only run until 2100ish at the latest. Waking up at 3:30 in the morning will force you into "early to bed, early to rise".

Veg has begun, the horror of the tedious, monotonous work that can take meticulous care. Actually I'm happy to be learning it, since it's very important. I don't mind doing it knowing that it's good data (kind of like filming nests). Then again, I've only done about a nest and a half.

Not that I'm getting bored of the Rim Job (ha, ha), but I'm starting to look forward to forward to next semester. I miss the Wildlifers especially, and next year will be amazing in Wildlife Society. Biochem should be interesting considering everyone I know will be in the same class, and I know that Spanish will be a blast! Because class with Dan is awesome 8) I have a feeling we'll be missing Senor Joe, though.

Ashley's wedding was on Saturday. It was nice, Ashley was beautiful, they looked really cute walking down the aisle together, and it was cool to be able to meet the people that Ash has always talked about. The drive back to camp took about 4 hours and sucked. The next day was hard, but it was definitely worth it.

The Family came up today. We watched Pan's Labyrinth and The Incredibles, ate dinner at Ruby Tuesday's (I ate a plate full of salad bar yummies, a huge portabella swiss burger and fries), and bought lots of goodies at Bookman's with a ridiculous amount of store credit. I got Jackson Browne (Running on Empty!!), Grateful Dead, and Lynyrd Skynyrd...also some good Abbey reading. Very good to spend time with the families.

Okay now it being more than an hour and a half past bedtime, I'm getting the hell out of here. Back to the woods tomorrow!

I'm in town on my first break. Getting home was more stressful than anything else, but after taking a shower and talking to people I settled down. At the moment I pretty much feel like I have too much to do in too short a time...so I'm trying to avoid productivity by doing things like checking my grades...yeah, I did a little dance when I discovered I got an A in CHM 238! Hopefully later I'll be going bowling with the field crew...for now I'm just hanging out at the library with Austin. I definitely feel way too obliged to get things done on my all-too-short break. I do have to talk to Russ. Mom is coming up tomorrow to pick up Jade for the summer.

Anyway, I wanted to share a day in my life out on the rim. We're only about 10 minutes from the Mogollon Rim, which is breathtaking - I didn't expect it to be quite that beautiful. It might actually be the most spectacular view I've ever seen...short perhaps of Rocky Mountain National Park or Volcan Pichincha. I wake up at 4 am, grab everything I need from my tent and head over to the cook tent, where I eat something bland for breakfast with quick but bad coffee. I refill my Camelbak and grab whatever I need for the field, usually nest cards, a mirror pole to check nests, and a tripod and camera or two for filming nests.

A van takes us out to plot. I have two plots. 14 is a fenced plot, which means elk and theoretically deer are kept out for the main "bread and butter" experiment of the project. It's my favorite plot that I've been to. It's really beautiful and I kind of like having the fence there. It's exciting to squeeze under and it keeps me from getting too lost. My other plot is 5/8, which is two plots sneakily melded into one, which means it's extra big. It's prettier than 14 but it can be a pain having to move between territories on such a large plot.

Anyway, first thing when I get on plot in the morning is to set up videos. One or two, rarely three. They're kind of a pain to do, but the data is really good. We video nests at critical periods during incubation and nestling phases to monitor the parents' activity. After that is going I spend most of the morning nest searching. This usually means following juncos, wandering warbler territories until I hear a chip then running like mad to keep the female in my sight, looking for color bands on all birds and following anything I see with nesting material. I'm pretty good at finding high nests, like Audubon's Warblers. Robins and Hermit Thrushes are fairly easy to find, although I've managed to find abnormally high nests of both. I've even found Bushtit and Western Tanager, neither of which are commonly found. I have yet to find a ground nest, however, which sucks because that's what we're supposed to focus on finding. I just seem to have trouble following juncos and warblers that aren't Audubon's. Well, I'm hoping to get better about it.

At around 9:30 I start nest monitoring, which means I go to about 2/3 of the known nests on my plots and see how they're doing. Some only take a minute but cavity nests can take 45 minutes or longer, which gets a bit dull. I like watching sapsuckers and House Wrens are okay but otherwise I'm hoping people stop coming on my plots and finding ##$&@( cavity nests.

With extra time left over I'm supposed to make a territory map of my plots for every species and play "walk this bearing this distance to find this dead tree!". I haven't started the latter yet. We'll see how it goes.

At noon the van picks me up and we head back to camp. Everyone eats lunch and works on nest cards, then we're free for the afternoon. I like to go out and help with afternoon field work like measuring nestlings, but most of the time I end up hanging out in the cook tent playing games or sitting in the sun reading (although it's been raining lately). I go to bed around 8.

So that's life right now. There's so much going on here it's kind of overwhelming, so ever since I got home I've pretty much just felt like I want to go back to work.

Finals are all finished. The ACS organic chemistry exam wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Other than chem I'm sure I got As...although I'm not so secretly hoping I get an A in chem too. :)

Now that all that is finished, I've been very busy finishing everything, especially the move, before I leave for the summer. Address is changed with everyone and we have phone, electric, and gas. Internets are not so cooperative. I got my oil changed yesterday, made Sialia shiny and put on a bunch of bumper stickers. Now my SUV is a hippie. Heh heh heh.

Tomorrow, I'm doing the birdathon with Noah and Mike. Then I'm taking off straight from Mormon Lake down to Clint's Well and the middle of the forest, where I'll be hiding out for the summer.

I'm working 12 off 2 on, so I'll be back occasionally. If you need me call my cell and leave a message...that's the best way to get in touch with me. Otherwise leave a message on Facebook or LJ or whatnot, I'll get it eventually.

Have fantastic summers all!!

Austin and I have found a new home!

Since the primary reason for our move is to be closer to campus, imagine our joy upon seeing a rental open on the very same street we use for parking when we drive to class. It turns out that the place is immediately adjacent to the parking lot we usually use.

Our real estate agent's description was basically "cute...and convenient", so we weren't expecting much. It's not the nicest place on the planet, but it's 2-bedroom and liveable. The kitchen is nice. Every room has at least one window.

It's about 2 blocks (Flagstaff, not city blocks) from NAU and close to downtown. Close enough to both to go to Macy's for coffee in the morning and go home between classes. Squee.

In one day, we called the real estate agent, went over and walked around the place, called and said we were interested and got the reply "it's yours". A pretty simple process, really!

It's this great big evil pointing monkey off my back to have a place to live. If only I had money to pay for it!

I thought I'd share with you kids what music is all about...as told by a god who takes himself very, very seriously.



Austin: Your god's a freak.

What, two updates in less than a week? What am I thinking??

Camping with Mike, Winn and Danny was good times. Banding was complete madness. 16 birds in one net at the same time! I do believe that's the most I've ever seen, even more than the flocks of Bushtits we got at the Lewis Center. Everyone got to band and good times were had. I managed to save a Lincoln's Sparrow I was sure would die. It was going limp in my hand before I got it out of the net...I'm sure I've seen birds more badly tangled, but this one had blood coming out of its beak. He recovered fairly quickly once I got him out, though, and seemed to be okay. Not too much blood.

I really love that group. I'd like to get to know Sam better. Josh, Mike and Winn are such good guys. I don't know why, but I love having close male friends who I can lean on and flirt harmlessly with.

On Sunday, Winn came with me to scout Mingus Mountain for my field trip on Saturday. We stopped in Jerome on the way back and touristed around, then enjoyed a fantastic lunch at the Haunted Hamburger. I highly recommend the BBQ Burger - veggie pattie no bacon, of course. ;) Winn loved Jerome and Mingus...it's hard not to!

Work really stressed me out today, and I don't know why. Maybe it's just because it's the end of the year and I'm needing a break. The thing is I don't feel overwhelmingly busy...I like having a lot to do, and homework hasn't been a heavy load this semester. I'm just tired. Well, this week, then reading week, finals week, and WORK!

Speaking of the end of the semester...last Friday I had a bit of an emotional breakdown when I pondered my complete lack of funds, lack of a place to live next month, lack of a way to pay for it, lack of a person to take over the lease. I'm trying to be optimistic. When I start working again my funding will increase dramatically and my spending will decrease dramatically. It'll be good. Aus and I were just looking for apartments again and found some more leads. One fell through, another probably won't work out. The Leroux House is probably serious about no pets. Usually "no pets" ads are ok with caged pets, but a bird in dorm-style living would probably be too much. It's the Leroux House though...a dorm-style dome home about a second away from the biology building. Austin and I have discussed sharing one of the large rooms for ridiculously cheap. In the paper for today we found 3 more possibilities close to campus, fairly cheap. One particularly promising ad was cheap, pets ok, and on Ellery, the street I park on and one of my favorite parts of town. About 2-3 seconds from the biology building.

My Nicaragua class was moved to spring, so I think I need to think of something else to take.

Tomorrow: Class
Wednesday: Survey with Noah, class, riding with Betsy
Thursday: Class, Katie's defense, bio seminar, meeting with college higher-ups
Friday: Work, class...surely not an afternoon off? Work, probably.
Saturday: Verde Valley Birding Festival, Wildlife Society end of year barbecue

Like I say, busy.

I got to thinking today about my livejournal, how I've had it for years and it's been there to record so much of my life. It's amazing to look back and see how much I've changed since middle school. I was thinking how sad it is that I never update anymore. I get to thinking that the "this is what I did today" updates get boring, and I usually feel too busy to write anything particularly philosophical or political or what have you when I'm on the computer.

So here's what I did today.

I got up in the morning and I drank a lot of coffee.

I drove to campus (because I'd be needing my car later) for my first class and brought Austin with me. As we were walking to campus we ran in to Kevin, who informed Aus that her physics class had been cancelled. An expression of "what now..." ran across her face, so I suggested coming to humanities with me. Unfortunately, Chris wasn't there, but we had a good class with some great discussion and it was fun to get a chance to show Austin what I've been talking about all semester.

Spanish was as fantastic as it always is. No, that's a lie. It was more fantastic, because it featured a really funny song that we barely got around to reviewing after Sr Joe made sure we all understood it. The usual joking and general merriment ensued. After Spanish, Dan and I were feeling lunchy. I was a college student today and didn't bring food to school, but I haven't had cash the past...week or so. Coffee will be my undoing. Anyway, I decided to skip ecology lab and went to lunch with Dan. I felt kind of bad, but I'm meeting Erin tomorrow to help out with the things I missed. Our group is ahead by a week anyway. Anywho, for lunch we headed to Macy's but ended up at Bellavida (I think that's right?) right next door, where I got a gigantic pancake topped with apples and syrup. Delicious! Eclectic conversation ensued.

Then off to Betsy's house for my first ride on Happy. She behaved well enough getting groomed and saddled (although Betsy did put the bridle on for me, and the girth was a pain). We went around the corral for a bit and got used to each other, then headed out. A few houses down the road we stopped to say hello to some neighbors. At this point Happy decided home was better, and she turned tail and started trotting home. It took me a minute, but I eventually got her stopped and convinced her that that nonsense wouldn't fly, so she turned back around and we went out. After that she behaved very well, going where I told her even when we weren't following Princess. Trotting is a lot of fun, although Betsy tells me that Happy's trot is unusually bouncy (thus uncomfortable for me), but I'll work on it. It was a beautiful day and I'm looking forward to seeing more of the forest. It's a lot of fun, and I really enjoy the company of both Happy and Betsy. Also Betsy gave me some more duck eggs, which are fantastic!

Tomorrow: birding with Noah, class, meeting Erin, tropical insect ecology meeting
Thursday: awards breakfast, class, skinning, biology seminar, more skinning, Wildlife Society
Friday: work, class, camping
Saturday: bird banding
Sunday: scouting Mingus Mtn for the Verde Valley Birding Festival - I'm leading a trip up there

And just because I'm not feeling particularly tired at the moment, a meme!

1. Take the first ten random songs off your MP3 player / playlist / etc.
2. Post one or two lines of lyrics. (No Googlewhacking!)
3. Have your readers guess what you're listening to!

( Are you ready? )

I am jealous of anyone who lives in a place where it's possible to find a 2 bedroom apartment for less than 900 a month.

Flag...so...expensive...

Great Mother, eb is updating her LJ.

Yesterday was fun. Chris is in town so we birded the M Lakes and both picked up some year birds. It's always fun to bird with Chris. :)

I went to class at some point. I'm pretty sure I slept through chemistry.

After class, work. After work, picked up Austin and we plotted together. We ended up going out with Winn for the evening. We went to the new sushi place on Woodlands Village, Sushi Fuji. It's a really nice place, although I wasn't really pleased when the waiter offered me "the chopsticks of shame". I played around with the damn things before our food came and I did just fine, thank you. The waiter was nice, though. It made me think of my students who needed edgie-wedgies but refused to use them! Anyway, I got an avocado roll and a tofu roll, both were delicious with a bit of wasabi in soy sauce. Winn was evil and told me I should try wasabi straight. I took a tiny bit and it felt like someone kicked me in the mouth. Anyway, my first sushi experience, and it was good. I started to get a bit nauseous with all the dead fish around...in fact, some of Winn's raw fish ended up on the plate with my veggie sushi and it was really gross to look at.

After fooding we went to see Wild Hogs. It's a really cute Disney movie about middle-aged guys who want to be bikers. It was really funny, a lot of fun, and John Travolta is still hot. He even dances, twice!

Thursday:
0900 - 1230: Class
1230 - 1630: Sat in coffee shop, studied chemistry
1630 - 1830: Chemistry recitation
1830 - 2030: Wildlife Society
2030 - 1300: Studied skins and skulls for mammalogy

Friday:
Work
Studied chem in coffee shop
Chem test
Mammalogy test
Work
Brainmelt

But I did get my new camera!! :D

This species coevolved with and is highly dependent upon pinyon pine seeds for overwinter survival and early reproduction.

or

This species coevolved with and is highly dependent on pinyon pine seeds for overwinter survival and early reproduction.

I've finally finished writing up a trip report and entering checklists for spring break. I spent a lot of time on it, so y'all should all check out birderlauren and read about my spring break adventures!

This is something most of you should be interested in. The National Park Service is looking for public input about how national parks are seen, what purpose they serve and what important projects the American public would like to see. There's a meeting in Flagstaff tomorrow and I'm sure there will be plenty around the country (there's a schedule on the website), but you can also submit your comments online here. This is a great opportunity to affect how some of our largest and most important parks are run.

I had a wonderful day today. I made Winn get up early to go birding with me...picked him up at 715 (15 minutes late due to my tire pressure being at 8 psi...not good) and we headed down to Wet Beaver Creek. We had a great morning birding and hiked to the gauging station. That's such a magical place. So many memories. And every time I go I get new ones :)

We made it back to Flag a bit overheated but feeling good. I pestered Austin and we went down to the Dairy Queen in Oak Creek Canyon for a bit of Andrew remembrance time (we were too busy during the week). It was great, we listened to Phantom on the way down and back up, sang our lungs out, and sat in the sun eating ice cream (a small Oreo Blizzard for me, of course X). Not yet feeling like the day was over, we discussed dinner options. When we realized we didn't know a place in Sedona that's reasonably cheap (except Red Planet where we refuse to eat), we went up to Flag, parked downtown and walked around. We inevitably wandered into Aspen, where we both bought olive green waterproof Marmot jackets, and I bought a pair of wool socks. I noticed my wallet was feeling a bit light, so we went to Pita Pit and Austin bought me falafel for carrying the jackets :) Heading back down San Fran, Austin noticed a strange light of pure happiness shining from across the street...

...The Life is Good Store. That's right, there's suddenly an entire store downtown dedicated to Life is Good products. Coffee mugs, t-shirts, hats, jewelry, stickers, pajamas, socks all with cute pictures, clever phrases and happiness! I was overwhelmed with excitement. I convinced myself not to buy anything by the following method: My birthday is July 2. I want everything in that store. Starting to think I'm difficult to buy for...it's on San Francisco! :D

Tomorrow: work, o-chem quiz

Some jokes I heard at work today while a bunch of bored ski instructors sat around waiting for students:

What do you call a snowboarder with no girlfriend?
Homeless.

How many snowboarders does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Twelve. One to do it and eleven to sit on their asses and watch.

How many ski instructors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Two. One to do it and one to say "nice turn".

Snowbowl is melting pretty rapidly with the incredibly warm temperatures we've been getting. As a result we're going to close temporarily tomorrow, and if we get a good snow before April 9 we'll be able to open again. I'll probably go up tomorrow, but today was an "aww, end of the season" kind of day. I won't be coming back next year, so I was tryin gto enjoy everything today.

We had zero children this morning so three of us (Paul, Tiffany and I) were left with no work to do. So we went up to Agassiz and watched the Grand Canyon Games racing going on, then made a few runs. Tiffany and I did Midway (all blues), then we ran it again with Paul then went up to the top of the mountain and did a few blacks up top. It makes me very proud that I can ski blacks at a real ski resort without killing myself (or even falling!). Paul is a much more advanced skier than Tiffany and I so he gave us some tips, so that was great.

In the afternoon we got a skier and a snowboarder in Skiwee, so we borrowed a snowboard instructor and Tiffany took the kid. Paul and I co-taught an adult lesson. It was a great group, 6 friends skiing for the first time. I think everyone had a blast :)

All in all a fantastic day until I got back to Skiwee and couldn't find my glasses. I looked everywhere I could think of. I even went back up to where we had our lesson and swept the snow, but I couldn't find them. Now I am rather blind. I have my sungalsses, of course, and I have an old pair with a different prescription...I prefer to have fuzzy vision than where a slightly different prescription. So if you noticed a lot of typos in this entry, that's why.

One night in December, I was camping at Red Hill Marina at the Salton Sea with some birding friends. I also made some new friends out of drinks of the fermented sort. My beloved camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5600, was also there and captured some of the magic moments while the five of us sat (and drank some more) in my car. We eventually retired to our sleeping bags and woke up pre-sun for the Christmas Bird Count. I discovered my camera the next morning laying in the sand outside my car...oops. It ceased to function. Enter the extended warranty. About a month and a half after I sent my camera in, I called to find out what was taking so damn long. Finally, yesterday, I received a check for the former value of the camera, $250. Now that camera is worth about $150. So I decided to wait a little while for a new camera so I could buy a new Coolpix model, the L12. It costs $200 plus another $60 for a new extended warranty (well worth it!). It was supposed to come out last month, so hopefully I won't be waiting long. I am excited, and I'm also really anxious to have a camera again!!

I have a big ol' reddish lump on my leg. It's from my habitual wearing of ski boots. It starts to go away after I give it a break, but comes back as soon as I spend another day at work. Once I even tried going to work the next day after the first time it really started hurting, and I couldn't bear to have the boots on, so I had to teach in shoes. Why are you here, O Lump? Why won't you go away? I have a lump already, it's on my hand and I like it better than you. Hand Lump doesn't hurt.

I had a good day. Have lots to do at work, which makes me a happy and productive employee. Lots of things going on this week, and really looking forward to Ren Faire this weekend. Chased a Ross's Goose unsuccessfully today, which made me feel blue. But oh well, another will come.