No comment...

...on how true this is. ;)

12 hours

Previously, our lab record for the most frogs in one night was 76. That was last year. Last night I got a text that said they got 65 frogs at one pond. That's rather a lot - a good night is usually 20ish pairs. So cool, we'll have plenty of frogs to test, and I can definitely make headway on my experiment. Then this morning I wake up to an email that says we have 101 pairs of frogs. That is a LOT of frogs.

I did indeed make good headway on the Lombard experiment. While I was there between 9am and 9:30 pm (seriously) we got 9 done (bringing this year's total to 10), and I left some undergrads there to keep testing into the night. I need 20 total for this summer, so I should be able to finish tomorrow. W00t!

However, 12+ hours in the lab makes for very long days. I have a short attention span...I don't think I've ever done anything for 12 hours consecutively (except sleep, but that doesn't count.) Right now I am trying to figure out if I'm hyper, from sitting for forever in lab, or exhausted. I'm leaning towards the latter, currently. Also, 12+ hour days require lots of food...

Only one more day of this, yay...

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!!

Positive slope

And the trend continues! DC voted today to recognize gay marriages that were performed elsewhere. W00t! As a friend said, "it's like a wave of gay rights is sweeping the nation." Let's hope it keeps sweeping, particularly in this direction.

Hey

First of all, this has been a pretty good week with much cause to celebrate. First Iowa okays gay marriage on Friday, April 3rd, and today Vermont did too. We're up to four now! (Connecticut and Massachusetts are the other two, for those of you not keeping track.) Now if Minnesota can just get up to speed, I'll really be happy.

In work related news...
1. I have permits! My State Park permit came the other week, adding five more parks to the total I can conduct research in, so I should be good for this summer. Now I have to plan my route and try to figure out when I'm leaving. It's been pretty cold out lately, especially at night, so it's hard to tell when the frogs will start coming out.
2. Despite the gray treefrogs not being out quite yet, the chorus frogs soon will be. I'm taking a grad seminar on bioacoustics this semester, and we're doing a project with them. Said project is yet undecided, but will involve recording and being in a pond. Time to dust off the chest waders and break out the head lamp!
3. Assuming I get accepted, I'm going to Denmark in August for an international PhD course on animal communication. Sweet. Must get passport.
4. This fall/winter's experiment never got finished due to the increased non-responsiveness of the frogs. I only needed one more... We'll start up again with that part in August after the breeding season ends, but I'll be able to get some data during the breeding season as well.
5. Due to #4, I have a lull in research right now. It's nice.

Today I get to learn plant quantification methods. Yay?

Conundrums

I'm currently working on a research permit application for one of the state National Wildlife Refuges. One of the boxes I'm supposed to fill out asks for a map of proposed study sites and/or plot locations. That's dandy, except that I'm asking for the permit so that I can go off-trail in the NWR's to find my frogs and therefore my study sites. I cannot attach a map of my study sites if that is the reason I am asking for the permit. What to do?

Maybe I can find little ponds on Google Earth and sent them screencaps? Woe...

Is that like Platform nine and three-quarters?

I applied to a grant at the end of January, and today just checked the announcement to see when they announce the winner.

It says, "February 29, 2009."

Umm...

Happy Darwin Day!!

It's Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, hurray!!  And this year marks the 150th publishing anniversary of his book The Origin of Species (and the 170th publishing anniversary of The Voyage of the Beagle). 

The Bell Museum at the U of MN is having some special events for Darwin Day, including the opening of a really interesting sounding photography exhibit.  And today my department celebrated by having short Darwin-esque themed presentations during seminar hour.  The seminar was both preceded and succeeded by "fossil cake", which turned out to be chocolate and banana layered cake with nut "fossils."  Apparently the sliced almonds went extinct and never made it to the banana layer...I did not notice this becuase I was far to busy going "CAKE!!!" and shoving it into my mouth to investigate the geology of the cake.  I'm such a horrible scientist...

To paraphrase a friend and fellow EEB student's Facebook status, I hope you all get lots of evolutionary presents under your Darwin Day (phylogenetic) trees. And don't forget to leave out seed for the finches that bring those presents!

Happy Obama day!

I'm not sure I'll get a chance to watch the inauguration tomorrow, despite coverage from 8:30am to 4pm. But between rebroadcasts, the internet, and blog posts, I'm sure I'll see and hear plenty about the festivities.

In other news, spring semester starts tomorrow. I would normally have evolution lab, but thanks to the first week of school, it is canceled. Hurray!

Brrrr

It's cold out. How cold, I cannot say. Vista/my desktop tells me it is -10 F. Google says it is -2 F. This website says it is 0.9 F but the windchill makes it 2 F (what??).

Either way, it's cold outside.