To the Ladies...

I warn you that this blog may not be suitable for guys.... :)

Isn't it amazing how much we change during the week of "partytime"?

Sidenote - For those of you not in the know, partytime refers to that time of the month, and it's a phrase that has been in usage since high school I believe and has now spread to many girls that I know and even their mothers and boyfriends! Partytime is the perfect word for it b/c a) it's nowhere NEAR being a party so it's just funny that we call it that and b) you can refer to things you might need during that time of the month as "party supplies" instead of calling them by their actual name, therefore when you are in public not letting the entire world know your personal business.

But back to what I was going to talk about - partytime. It's just amazing to me how much girls go through during that month. Amber and I were listing all of the symptoms that can/do occur and it's a lot that we have to deal with - cramps, bloating, mood swings including crying at anything, change in self esteem, stomach issues, tiredness, crankiness, and even clumsiness. I don't even know if I listed them all but yeah it's a lot. But the one that amazes me the most is just how much you can change in how you view yourself. One day you just wake up and think "oh my god, is that how my chin looks EVERY day?" and then after a few minutes of freaking out you realize that it's partytime and probably part of that reaction is just that you are hormonal and in a bad mood and bloated and yeah, it sucks!

I did some research on wikipedia this morning about pms and they say there are over TWO HUNDRED symptons related to pms. That's insane! Men have it so easy! I guess we have it easy too in this day and age compared to back in the old days when people thought pms was imagined. At least now people recognize it as something real. But still, women have it rough!

And as I wrote this and screamed at my computer twice for deleting the picture that I was trying to add, I just say "watch out!".

Scorpions and Mummies: What I learned from Indiana Jones

Amber and I embarked on watching the latest Indiana Jones movie last night, Legend of the Crystal Skull. Let me first start off by saying....whacko movie. I mean it was weird. But at least we did learn some things, or at least some things piqued our interest and prompted me to do some internet research this morning in between planning my summer camps! **Note, if you have not seen the movie and do not want to read some details that don't really give away anything about the movie, you may want to stop here - this is for you Jes, don't want to spoil your Indy movie!

Lesson # 1 - Smaller scorpions have stronger venom and therefore you should watch out for them more than big scorpions!

Research says - Very small scorpions such as the bark scorpion found in Southern Florida can sting and the sting is painful -- but, like a bee sting, goes away with little more than localized swelling. The issue with very small scorpions is they literally cannot inject enough venom to affect a large human. Think of dropping a single drop of red food dye into a big bucket. There's so much water you won't even see the color.
On the flip side, very big scorpions tend to rely on their pincers more than their venom to neutralize prey as pincers are not as costly as venom and don't require them to constantly replace them. Therefore, their venom is weaker and not nearly as potent.

So, sounds like there might be some truth to this but also that the smaller ones can't produce enough venom to really hurt a human so really not what the movie says.

Lesson # 2 - Mummifying someone can preserve them for thousands of years in the same state as the day they died. And then the moment you open the mummy and expose it to air, they disintegrate.

Research says - Still not quite clear on this one, but it looks like mummification does preserve them in their current state and exposed to the air, the body will disintegrate but just not to the magnitude shown in the movie.

Lesson # 3 - Big ants can eat you alive.

Research says - There are giant Peruvian ants (where the movie takes place) called Dinosaur Ants, but they are only 3 cm long, much smaller than in the movie. And while they do eat mammals including mice, and other animals such as birds, amphibians, and fish, I doubt there is truth in this part of the movie. Although it was gross and Amber and I had to turn away during that part.

Interestingly, Blondie has a song called "Attack of the Giant Ants" and the lyrics are kinda crazy. "They eat your face, never leave a trace."

At least I can say that we finally finished that movie. It's been sitting on our tv since November 14, 2008. Two months later, it's finally going back to Netflix!

5-minute shower

In an effort to continually increase my level of "greenness", my good friend Andrea got me something to try out. It's just a little hourglass similar to the one below that helps you be aware of the time that you are in the shower and how much water you are using. Not only will this help me save water but also will help cut down on our water bill too, which is always a good thing.

Since I did a lot of cleaning up yesterday, and trying to get organized, I finally got it in my shower and so this morning decided to try it out. And I made it in under 5 minutes! I got a little quicker at the end trying to get the conditioner out of my hair so that I wouldn't go over, but I think for the most part I usually do a good job of taking pretty quick showers. So try it out. You can get a shower timer at a ton of places, but here's a link that I found this morning for one that's only $4. Or you can just take your kitchen timer in the bathroom with you too. At least when those 5 minutes are up you get an alarm to jolt you awake in the morning!

I found a quote in The Green Book at work, saying that Jennifer Aniston takes only three minute showers. That's pretty amazing b/c I took up almost every second of that 5 minute timer this morning. But the quote she said was thought provoking "I found out that every 2 minutes in the shower uses as much water as a person in Africa uses for everything in their life for a whole day - drinking, bathing, cooking, and cleaning...everything!" That's pretty amazing. So yeah, try it out and see if you can cut your showers down to 5 minutes or less. It's a small thing, but still every little bit helps!

Black and White Party

The month of November feels like a big blur of teaching about oysters and traveling home from the meeting and then traveling to Wilson for Thanksgiving. It was nice to be home and spend Andrea's birthday with her. Came back and had Amber's birthday the next week and then it was time for the 3rd Annual Black and White Party.

It was a smaller crowd than the previous two years, but it was really fun. We had several people from out of town come to the party and then people from work came too. Here are a few shots from the party!

Sunday, after cleaning up a bit, we took Sarah, Ben, and Andrea down to Colonial Williamsburg to walk around even though it was SOOOOOOOO cold out. Thank goodness for a fire at one of the shops down there. We had fun dressing up a bit in colonial garb and checking out the stocks. :)

Annual Meeting

After the vacation in California, I stayed in Asilomar (near Monterey) for another week for the NERRS annual meeting. It's really fun that I am able to visit all kinds of fun locations for work (Alaska and California, oh yeah!). And I only get to see the people at these meetings once or twice a year, so it's always fun to catch up and see what other educators are doing at their reserve. We had a good time hanging out that week! The meeting was held at a conference grounds right off the beach so I could see the Pacific Ocean from my room and even hear it with the windows open. It was awesome that in between meetings, I could sneak outside and walk down to the beach although that didn't happen as often as I would have liked. Here's a view from the beach one day. We also got treated to a night visit to the Monterey Aquarium one night which was pretty awesome! The whole aquarium to ourselves.

On the second day of the meeting we traveled to the local reserve site for tours and sessions. I chose to get outside as much as possible, so I did a hike around the reserve where we saw lots of awesome stuff like wood rat nests (who knew?), seals and sea lions, otters, and tons of white pelicans and other birds. Pretty cool. The second session that I chose was a water quality session that also included a hike and then time in the lab which was pretty awesome. Gave me a lot of ideas for work. That night we got a special tour of MBARI - the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and I got to see the ROV (to the right) that has done more dives than any other ROV! We also saw their AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) and the room with the big tank where they test out their submersibles. :)

The rest of the week was spent in meetings at the conference grounds. Friday, Scott, Willy, and I drove up from Monterey to San Francisco to fly out and on the way saw some very exciting things. We were just driving along on the highway next to the coast and I spotted a bobcat walking through a field! So we pulled over and got the binoculars out. Then, about 15 minutes later, Willy spotted a whale swimming by so we of course pulled over to see that. My FIRST whale spotting in the wild other than on a whale watching boat, and this view was even better than the view from the tour I did. Very exciting. After a long day of traveling and many time zones later, we arrived in Newport News, tired and ready to go home!

California Trip

After MAMEA, I literally left two days later for vacation in California. It was kind of crazy, and sort of a whirlwind, but had a great time. Andrea drove down from Charlottesville and we flew out together, meeting the rest of the crowd in Atlanta before our final flight to San Francisco. It was me, Andrea, my mom, my aunt Carol, and Mary. This is the second time that we have taken advantage of the NERRS meetings in order to plan a vacation.

We stayed in San Francisco from Tuesday through Friday, visiting all of the touristy things on Wednesday. We did the Fisherman's Wharf, rode a cable car, drove up and down some crazy hills (this is the view from our hotel to the left), went to Ghiradelli Square, ate some sourdough, went to Chinatown, took a boat tour of the harbor and Golden Gate Bridge, went around Alcatraz, saw the famous Pier 39 sea lions, etc. It was a great day!

Thursday we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and went up to Napa Valley for some wine tastings. We visited the Robert Mondavi Winery, the Bealieau Vineyard (my mom and dad's favorite wine when they got married), and Frog's Leap (which is completely organic and is in a LEED certified building and very cool - found their wine here in VA yesterday but it was $25 and $45, so I didn't get any). We had lunch in Napa and then drove back towards San Fran. Stopped in for the last 15 minutes of Muir Woods being open. Would have loved to spend some more time there, but traffic was pretty bad and delayed our trip some.




Friday we left San Fran and drove down Route 1 to Monterey. It was rainy and cloudy but seriously one of the prettiest drives ever. It was right along the coastline and we got to see Santa Cruz, Natural Bridge park where the Monarch butterflies migrate to, tidepools, etc. In Monterey, did a lot of driving around the coastline and went on the 17 mile drive through some of the famous golf courses like Pebble Beach and to see the Lone Cypress tree. Very cool day of seeing the sights. I was really excited about the tidepools and the beach and the kelp and all of that! :) Collected some cool stuff along the way too. Friday night was also Halloween, so we dressed up like crayons and went out on the town! :)Saturday was the day I was looking forward to and also dreading b/c we were headed to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which I've ALWAYS wanted to go to, but also the rest of the group was leaving that afternoon which was sad. The Aquarium was awesome and being the dork that I am, what would you guess my favorite part would be? The penguins? nope. The adorable otters? nope. The amazing jellyfish tank? nope. Nope, it was the barnacles. I mean they were just so crazy big and amazing to look at, I couldn't get enough. I told everyone about those barnacles and that they had to go see them, but no one was quite as amazed as me. :) I also really enjoyed the touch tanks and the kelp tank.
After the Aquarium, everyone had to leave. :( They left me in Monterey to fend for myself at the NERRS meeting and they drove back up to San Francisco to fly home. It was a great, great week!!!! :)

Long time...lots of updates - MAMEA

So I realize it's been almost two months since my last post, and someone who is near and dear to me and loves her blog has been complaining about the lack of upkeep here, so I'm going to try and update you on all things Sarah in the past few weeks.

After the Discovery Lab in October (which the lab has yet to recover fully and become completely clean from that still), I joined Sarah and some of the other VIMS folks in Virginia Beach for the Mid-Atlantic Marine Educators Association Conference. It was my first time attending/presenting at this conference, but I had attended the SC one when I lived in Charleston so I knew sort of what to expect. It was perfect for Sarah and I b/c not only did we get to see all kinds of cool presentations and learn a lot, but we got to room together and catch up too! My presentation on the new estuaries curriculum that we have now went really well and people seemed excited about it which was good. We had a great time, especially at the auction where Chris was taken advantage of when the ladies tried to bid on his pants (see above)! His coworkers didn't make him take them off in the end but it was hilarious watching those ladies keep bidding on them. And we got to pose with this awesome submarine for a fun picture. That's me, Chris, fish, and Sarah!