Nothing Better Than Your Puzzlepiece

Took a trip up to Charlottesville this past weekend to visit Andrea and to see her new house. It's so cute! Mostly I came to spend some time with my puzzlepiece and help her to do some stuff around the new house since she still had a lot of unpacking to do. Between all of the unpacking we still managed to go see a movie, go out to lunch and dinner, cook and have a dinner party for some of Andrea's friends, do some food and wine shopping, go to the farmer's market, and just catch up. Andrea even found some high school memorabilia during the move which was pretty hilarious to look through!

We also got a chance to do some carpentry work....which did not end up working well in the end. Andrea had a table from college that she had decorated with pictures of her friends, and the legs had been taken apart. So we tried to put it together, and we thought it was going well, until we stood it up....and the screws fell out and it basically collapsed. So, it ended up in the dumpster. :(

While I was there, Andrea got a very exciting delivery, and it was exciting for me to see too! She got a brand-new front loading washing machine and dryer. Front-loading machines are really energy efficient, and therefore very "green". They use less water and energy since their tumbling action is better at circulating water and cleaning than that of the top loading variety. And, because they don't have a big post in the middle, they also hold more clothes.* Yay Andrea for doing something green for her new house. And they're pretty too!

*Info from "The Environment Equation" by Alex Shimo-Barry that Andrea gave me for my birthday!!

Wordle

This is the coolest thing! I just saw it on Rob's website and had to try it out. So I made one that is made from the beach blog entry.



Then, I made one with my favorite things from my Myspace page.



I love it!!! Try it out and share what you make.

Jes had the baby!!!!

Ellie Sage is here! She was born early on Tuesday morning, July 15th. After all that waiting and excitement, I didn't even hear the phone beep with the message!!! Andrea and Amber had to come and wake me up to tell me. It's been a long 9 months but I also feel like it just flew by and now Ellie is here. I was on vacation when she was born, but we stopped by on the way back from the beach to see her and she is soooo cute! Here's my first picture with her and some others. :)

Beach Vacation

I just returned from a whole week's vacation in Hatteras at the beach. This is the third year that I've gone to this beach house right on the sound. It's amazing. The house isn't all that big, but it has a hammock and kayaks to use, crab pots, basically anything you would need for a beach vacation plus it's decorated really cute. There were a bunch of people that came for the week or for part of the week including Amber, Andrea, Erin, Meredith, Sarah, Ben, Dave, Elizabeth, Jimmy, and my mom! It was also my birthday over the vacation so it was nice to be able to spend my birthday doing things that I love. We went to the beach in the morning, then came back to the house to kayak and snorkel where we found some awesome hermit crabs and scallops. THEN, Amber and Andrea cooked me a Mexican fiesta dinner and the most amazing birthday cake in the world. They even had a pinata for me. Thanks everyone for all the cards, gifts, and fun times!!

It was nice to be able to spend time with my family and friends, and even see some friends from Charleston that happened to be vacationing in the Outer Banks at the same time. We enjoyed a lovely view of the sunset every day over the sound, and then one morning I got up and we went to the beach to watch the sunrise which was equally amazing. We visited the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, went to the beach, kayaked, hammocked, learned how to cast net, did some shopping, set crab pots, had seafood fests, and played lots of games. Very relaxing. I can't wait to go back next year and am not quite ready for reality to hit tomorrow.

Fun Times at 1408

Lots to update tonight! Last night, Amber and I had fun evening of cooking a new recipe and playing a new game that I ordered for work, Oceanopoly. It's like Monopoly except you get to buy fish and marine animals instead of properties, and instead of houses and hotels, you buy blocks of water and big fish to put on your properties. Instead of the utilities and water company, you can buy electric eel and a tsunami. Instead of railroads - oceans. :) And on the back of the cards for each property (i.e. fish) there are fun facts to learn about. I bought it for work, but we decided we needed to try it out first at home. Amber took the first game, so I forced her into a rematch so that I could redeem myself.

We also tried out a new recipe last night that Sarah and I had tried out when I visited her - and I cooked most of it which is NOT the norm for our house. We had quinoa mixed with tomatoes, cheese, and cucumber, chilled. That was the topping that went on a baked warm portabello mushroom cap. And it was all sprinkled with some Parmesan. It was MY chance to impress Chef Knowles, and I think I did!

SAV Teacher Workshop

Monday I came back to work, and instead of going to my office, I spent the day with the VA Sea Grant office at their SAV Teacher Workshop. Every year they have a species of concern workshop and this year's focus was SAV: Submerged Aquatic Vegetation - mainly dealing with eelgrass which is the most common species around here. We got a lecture from one of the big SAV profs at VIMS, then went over an activity using data on SAV and water quality, and then we went in the field. It was great! I brought my snorkel and got to snorkel around the grassbeds. We saw a skate, lots of blue crabs, and some fish. Also, lots of amphipods and isopods which are little bugs that live in the grass. Our job was to do a few simple sampling jobs - 1. Take a Virnstein sample (the clear plastic contraption in the picture) which takes a small sample of SAV at one of the sampling sites to take back to the lab. 2. Pull a dip net down our transect for animals. 3. Pull up a piece of grass to test for chlorophyll. 4. Take a benthic core to see the root system of the grasses.

After taking all of our samples, we brought them back to the lab and had to scrape the epiphytes (other things that grow on the blades of grass and block the sunlight) off the grass in order to run our samples. We put the grass through a machine that calculated the surface area of the blades, we ran chlorophyll samples, and we observed the live amphipods and isopods under a high-powered microscope in order to identify all of the different species. It was a great experience and my first time snorkeling at Goodwin Island!

Rotary Chesapeake Bay Conference

I spent last week with 23 high school students (and Hannah) from all over Virginia for the 18th Annual Chesapeake Bay Conference. The kids are supposed to have an interest in marine science and want to explore more of the topic, which this year it was a Chesapeake Bay theme instead of a particular species. Even though the kids at some points complained and drove Hannah and myself crazy, we did get to do some fun things.

Monday was the first day of camp, so we did intros and showed the kids how to canoe and seine. We had an intro lecture by Teta Kain, the Dragon Lady, who was going to take us down the Dragon Run, a waterway that flows into the Piankatank River and is one of the most pristine areas in the United States. They aren't sure why it's called the "Dragon" - but some of the myths are because of all the dragonflies, or because of the cypress knees might have looked like dragons sticking out of the water, or they might have called it that to scare the slaves so they wouldn't escape. Tuesday we canoed the Dragon and it was such a beautiful day! Even though the kids complained about the distance paddling, we saw some great stuff. Check out the pickerel weed - it was everywhere.

Wednesday was our day at VIMS - we went seining (and it was the most amazing seining EVER - caught a puffer, a lizardfish, a seahorse, and a giant crab which I'm holding in the picture), toured the SAV greenhouse, toured the oyster hatchery, saw the cownose rays, saw the cobia that were tagged and about to be released, and then worked with the fisheries grad students to id fish that we had caught over the past two days. I think the kids were pretty tired after all that, so we just chilled and went chicken necking on the pier while watching the sunset and then watched a movie.

Thursday we paddled to Rigby Island, in Mathews, VA. Found lots of interesting things on the island - terrapin shells, horseshoe crabs, even a stranded dolphin that had definitely been there a while. Friday we had a sunrise paddle which was amazing and totally worth getting up at 4:30am for. Finished up at camp with t-shirts and then we headed out of there. It was a long week, and I came home and lounged most of the weekend. :)