Here are some photos from Emma's birthday party / Halloween party this Saturday at Kane's mom's house.
October 2005 Archives
Have you ever heard of "bog bodies"? I had never heard of them until Ferenc told our wetlands class about them yesterday. They're bodies found in bogs that have been extremely well preserved because of three important features of bogs: anoxia, acidic water/peat, and cool temperatures. Here is a page about bog bodies in general, and here is the example Ferenc showed us, the Tollund Man. You should really look at the Tollund Man. It's amazing that he lived during the 4th or 5th century BC and is still that well preserved. You can even see the stubble on his face! And he still had food in digestive system so they know what his last meal was! I think that's amazing.
Koichi, one of my rabbits, died on Saturday. I went into the rabbits' room to check their food and water and she was just laying on her side, dead. I have no idea why this happened, she looked perfectly normal, no signs of bloating or anything like that. I haven't done anything different in the past week than what I usually do. I don't know, it's depressing. Here is sweet little Koichi-San when she was just a baby.
It's always hard to keep this updated during school. I'm feeling completely overwhelmed and worried this semester, more so than previous semesters, and I'm not sure why. Each semester I think, "Ahh, next semester should be a lot easier, " but it never turns out that way.
Some school stuff that I should be working on:
- My wetlands project. I need to finish collecting plants, start identifying and mounting them, take soil cores, fill out my delineation and ORAM (Ohio Rapid Assessment Method for Wetlands) forms, make a list of invertebrate and vertebrate taxa at my site, and write a report. Since I've changed my wetland site about 4 times now, I actually have plants from three sites, and not enough from the site I finally decided on. Have you looked at the plants outside? Yeah, they're dying. I need to collect and ID before they're all gone. I also need to draw a map of the dominant vegetation zones before all the leaves fall off the trees (which most of them have). When I'm out there it sounds like it's raining because there are so many leaves falling. All of this is due towards the end of the semester, I probably have 6 weeks to finish.
- My first wetlands lab practical. I have 60+ plants I need to identify by sight (family, genus, and species). And these are mounted plants, not nice living plants out in the field. Right now I only know about ten. I also have to go to some wetland I've never been to before and fill out an ORAM form for it. This practical is on November 2nd.
- My writing intensive paper. The outline is past due already and I haven't turned it in. The rough draft is due in about a week and even though I told Dr. Grafton my topic was sex change in fish, I'm thinking about changing it to physiological effects of fasting in penguins. By the end of tonight I need to decide on a topic, download and read as much primary literature as possible on it, and write up an outline to turn in tomorrow.
- Upcoming evolution test. I haven't looked over my notes at all. Dr. Hoeh has sent about 8 files for us to look at, as well as 3 phylogenetic trees to construct, and I haven't looked at any of them. I'm really behind in this class and I really need to start studying. Test is on October 28th.
- Japanese homework and quizzes. We have homework every night and at least one quiz a week. I actually enjoy this work, but it just takes up a lot of time.
Other school stuff:
- I've already started scheduling for next semester (supposedly my last semester). I'm taking Ornithology, Vertebrate Zoology, Biogeography, and Japanese ll. I also have a course called Senior Seminar that I need to take to graduate, and I'm having the hardest time ever signing up for it. There are only 6 spots left in it! It's really a huge mess and too complicated to explain.
- I need to go change my catalog year or else I won't be graduating at all.
- After 7 weeks of feeling very dumb and lost in my wetland class, I got an A on our first exam! There were only 3 people who got an A.
- I got a 100% on my first Japanese exam. I can't even remember the last time I got 100% on an exam. Especially one without extra credit.
- I wish I was an art history major.
- Here is a photo of one of the baby society finches. It's really hard to take photos of them. The parents are no longer taking care of the babies...the single Cordon Blue finch is! Can you believe that? The male Cordon Bleu is regurgitating and feeding the two baby society finches. Usually it's the other way around - Society finches are often used to foster other species. Strange.
- This house is absolutely freezing! We've already had to turn the heat on!
- Somebody posted one of my Saves The Day photos on this pretty terrible looking myspace page. I guess I don't really care, but it is funny that they said it was an At The Drive In photo.
- Here is some funny commentary about my claim that Lorain smells. (It does!)
- Since Kory's page isn't up anymore I'll tell this story. One of the girls in his printmaking class was wiping the excess ink of her plate, and the pattern the ink made on the paper towel looked just like the Virgin Mary! Ha! She should sell it on Ebay like the Virgin Mary sandwich.
- I have two big tests this week in Wetland and Japanese, so I better get studying.
Here are some photos Kory and I took with Wally and Winky this morning.
