I couldn't "kelp" myself!

A conversation between me and Hubby

Hubby:  algae? http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/04/25/botanical-wednesday-an-alien-forest/

 Sent at 6:34 PM on Wednesday

 me:  you just couldn't kelp yourself, could you

 Hubby:  ?

explain thyself, woman

 Sent at 6:39 PM on Wednesday

 me:  did  you not even look at what you sent me?

I can only kelp those who kelp themselves

 Hubby:  is kelp or is kelp not algae? I asked and was accused of not being able to help myself.

 me:  I was just playing with the word kelp

yes, kelp is algae

 Hubby:  Thank you. Goddamnit that was difficult.

 me:  I am difficult...have you learned nothing over the last 14 years?

This is going on the blog, btw

 Hubby:  I have learned that you study the gross, slimy version of algae. I have also learned that there is large, pretty (sometimes tasty) algae that you do not study.

 me:  traitor....I don't even know you anymore!

 Hubby:  you know me. You know I have always liked them big. (them being algaes? he wonders to himself, fully aware he has improperly pluralized a plural form word)

me:  algae is the plural. learn some Greek, damnit!

Hubby:  I just said that... "improperly pluralized a plural form word". see? "plural form word". I said algae is a plural form word. Like sheep.

algae, logically, is sheep

 me:  ewe are sheep...

 

Yes, my life is nothing but algae 24/7...even if sometimes it deteriorates into marine, macro algae...

Pushing Through May

Alright, one conference and poster down, one to go!!

After spending all last week banging out a poster, it's good to be back in the lab today, back to lab work.  I walked by the hood this morning and noticed my digestion tubes full of diatoms in nitric acid and I thought, "Aw shit, I gotta take care of those today!" Hopefully those diatoms aren't ruined since they've been siting in acid for 2 weeks....gulp!

But the next 3 weeks are going to be super busy!  I need to make a BETTER poster for the next meeting (now with 42.78% more data!!), work on the revisions for the manuscript with MS Advisor that I promised I'd do, and finish up all this end of semester stuff that always comes up.

End of the semester stuff promises to really get in the way of research activities.  The university's teaching lab space is getting renovated over the summer, which means that all the TA's have been conscripted into moving all of the stuff associated with our various labs out of the rooms to be constructed. Crates of test tubes and Petri dishes, cabinets of microscopes, computers, incubators, buckets of animals...it's ALL got to be moved and it's all going to get moved by the TA's.  Not to mention all of the random, expired, chemicals that will have to be taken care of. Though really it's better that we do it since we'll be able to keep all of the materials for each lab separated, rather than some ginormous pile that university employees would make.

Anyhoo, that's the update from grad-student-land.  The conference was good (no lobster though!! how can you have a conference in Maine with no lobster?!), and now it's time to get back to work!

Right after another cup of coffee....

Not feeling the love

So, if you've been following me on Twitter, then you know that this weekend is the NEAS conference. It's a small regional conference where the majority of participants are macro marine phycologists (I.e. seaweed). I've eaten so much Dulse and kelp I'm all good on iodine for the next 5 years.

Because it's a marine based conference, and because I spent all of 2 days on my poster, I'm not at all surprised that I didn't win any awards...how delusional would that be.  But, of the 5 student from the lab who came 3 of us presented, and 2 of those people won awards.  Not that I'm not happy for them, they totally deserve to be recognized for their hard work. It just sucks to be the only presenter from your lab who doesn't get any recognition.

This is on top of yet another funding rejection from the other society I'm an active member in. This was the 3rd application I've submitted to them, and the rejection is starting to feel personal.

I'm just down in the dumps, because after 8 months of really hard work, I've got questionable results for a study (that's now in question whether or not it'll continue) that no one wants to fund. Not that I didn't see any of this coming from a mile away, but that it all slammed together at once is disheartening.

So, just to keep me in the relevant search results, #climatebitch.

--

I realize that the above is a bit "woe is me" and I don't mean to kvetch. I don't know where I was going with that apology, but I'm sorry for whining.

Stuff on the Internet

So, I found a lot of things on the internet last night that I posted on my Twitter feed (btw, follow me!) and I thought I'd post it here too.

Pregnant Ecologists It's not all of the conversation, but a little digging on Ecolog should turn the rest of it up.  I'm sort of torn, and maybe this makes me a bad woman, because I understand that if you're pregnant/with a new baby you probably shouldn't schedule yourself for 4 months of Alaska field work.  But I also understand that shit happens and you don't always plan to have a baby.  And the mentality of "you're a woman who's thinking about having kids, so you should not embark on a big ecological study that requires physical activity" just doesn't sit well with me, especially as a woman in a physically demanding field of ecology.

Tennessee "Monkey Law" This is just a straight up fail. Shame on this governor for not vetoing it.  It's all well and good to foster a culture of debate in science since that's how we learn, but there are some things that are just not up for debate! Like Evolution...you don't debate facts, just because you don't agree with them.

Current Drought Map I don't normally link to read USA Today since they removed the Science section from their mobile app, but I thought this was a nice succinct map that was worthy of a #climatebitch if I ever saw one.

So enjoy these internet offerings

News from the Grad Student Sphere

This isn't happening at my university, but it DID happen and I wanted to share it with you all

MSU graduate students vote to unionize

This would never happen at my university ('cause they're all religious and stuff), but I'm glad that it is still happening at other universities.

When I was an undergrad, I had a friend who was a grad student and was active in our grad student union.  She was glad it was there, since without the union the university wouldn't have provided them with health care or protected grad students from being just research drones for faculty.

Something like this could be very helpful at our school.  We definitely have unequal working conditions between departments when it comes to how much a grad student is paid, how long they're paid for, what they're expected to do for that pay, and how intense your thesis/dissertation is.  However, our university is generally good to us about things like health care...sure it's basic emergency coverage with no birth control option (damn Catholics), but it's better than the nothing I had before.

I understand Montana State's opinion that because they're students they shouldn't be able to form a union, but fundamentally, we are employees.  We don't take nearly the course load an undergrad would.  Yes, we're learning through our research process, but it's the same process that we'd be going through for research if we were faculty or a post-doc. All academics learn something from their research endeavors, so are they really students too?  Plus, we're being paid...we're paid to teach classes and turn out research that makes us, the department, and then university look good, in exchange for taking a few classes and ultimately a degree.  Sure if they decided to not pay us, it's not directly firing us...but indirectly it is. I don't know many graduate students who have the financial wherewithal to bankroll their own degree.  Losing funding = termination of degree.

So good on you, Grad Student's of Montana State University! I wish you much success with your new union and I hope your lives are all improved because of it!

New experience!

So, a 1st year grad student and I are sitting in a hotel room in upstate New York.  We are watching "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding" (this show is redic, btw).

We are also processing the algae we collected today.  This is also redic, btw.

Last year, I would make daily trips up here; 3 hours of driving up, hit 5 streams, drive 3 hours home.  Last night we made the 3 hour trip up.  And today we hit 9 streams!  And how we are processing the samples.  There is a lot of fine sediment, so they're taking a little longer than usual, but we should finish tonight (hopefully)

Here are some pictures of our crazy hotel room set up. My advisor promised to come bail us out if we get arrested for having a meth lab :-).

#Climatebitch

Wow, life's been crazy!  It's been like 3 weeks since I last posted anything!!  So even though I'm super crazy busy (field sampling starts TOMORROW y'all!) I wanted to get a post up here, lest you forget about me.

I have decided that I want to get a hashtag trending on Twitter.  #Climatebitch

Since we are now getting reamed by Mother Nature because we fucked it up, please use #climatebitch whenever you want to complain about the weather doing something unseasonable. 

For example, last week it snowed after a week of 70+ temps. #Climatebitch

Or how we had the highest EVER pollen count for the month of March? #Climatebitch

Any examples you'd like to share? Leave 'em in the comments or share on teh Twitterz!

Just remember: #Climatebitch