Summer (and a bit of fall)

Contrary to what activity in this blog may suggest, I did survive the summer, relatively intact. I did lose a bit of blood to the several hundred mosquitoes I came into contact with, but other than that I made it. (And no, that number is not an exaggeration. At one point I had 107 bites on my arms and legs. Neck was not included in the total but I'm sure would have added a good 20 more to the count.)

Lab work at the beginning of the summer went well. I completed data collection for the Lombard experiment, began data collection on a second in-lab experiment (which turned out to be more time consuming than previously estimated), and then headed off into the field. Kind of. I was foiled by weather for a good two weeks, and spent the beginning of June sitting in lab hoping the temperature might breach 70 during the day and/or that it might rain. The rest of June and beginning of July was much more "frog friendly." I drove north, south, west, and kind of east, battled mosquitoes and ticks, was freaked out by the glowing eyes of (mostly) harmless deer, listened to raccoons amble by my tent at night, walked across and down part of the Mississippi river, and learned that I never want to live in a tiny rural town, ever. Oh, and I did research.

My goal was to find ponds where my frogs lived, and then collect data related to the frogs and vegetation in the pond, but due to the cool dry start to summer, I mostly only accomplished the pond finding mission, along with some trial runs for data collection. But, now I know where to go, and I have a pretty good idea of how to do things next year.

The rest of the summer (July and August) was spent in lab, staring at sound analysis programs, MS Excel, and various statistical programs. A combination of extreme monotony (sound analysis), confusion and frustration (statistical programs), punctuated by tiny moments of success (nice graphs and coding things correctly in stats programs).

Now school has started back up again and I am forced to drag myself out of bed at 7am three days a week so I can learn more statistics. Two statistics courses (eep), journal club, a couple seminars, proposal writing, plus the usual data analysis and writing of manuscripts occupy my time lately. And tomorrow I start up another experiment. Thus begins Year Two.

Oh hi

I need to be better about updating this thing. Sorry. I do still exist! Because it is late and I must be in lab early, we're going to do bullet points! (And by bullet points, I mean numbers.)

1. I have been quite successful with grants this year/semester, including one of these nifty things.
2. My waders did not survive the winter. I went out late April in 40 degree weather and discovered I had a leak in my left heal. Pond water is very cold that time of year.
3. I took a bioacoustics course this spring and we got some nice recordings of Western Chorus frogs (Pseudacris triseriata).
4. During one of these recording trips, I spent a rather long time bothering a large toad. Toads are hilarious. They just sit there and make this absurdly long call, over and over, and they don't move if you poke them. So I spent a good twenty minutes poking a toad, watching it try to mount the stick I was poking it with, and poking it's throat pouch to make its call change pitch.
5. I get a field assistant!! She gets here at the beginning of June.
6. Things are mostly set for my field work this summer. Now I just need cooperative frogs so I can finish off my Lombard experiment from last year and I can take off on my frog scouting missions.
7. We got a food processor, so now I can make homemade hummus. (Not frog related, but I'm excited about it.)
8. My fish died. :(
9. I got new waders, but have yet to try them out.
10. I have basically finished one year of grad school. The time went ridiculously fast...for the most part. Now only 4-5 more years to go!!