Monday, Sucky Monday

Yesterday was just one of those days.
 
For the past couple nights I haven't been sleeping well. I have no idea why; it could be because of an excess of sweets over the past few days or stress, although I don't feel particularly stressed out.

I did feel stressed yesterday afternoon, however. From the outset, the day was just destined to be difficult. In the morning I was supposed to go in to work at 10am to try to fertilize some sea urchin eggs so that my students could watch development in real time. It was sort of an experiment to see if this would be a feasible activity to do in the future. Jordan, the student showing me how to do this, and I spent over an hour trying to obtain sperm and eggs from urchins to do all this. It turns out, every spiny sucker which we induced gamete release was a male. So no eggs, and no embryos. Which was a bummer, because it would have been really cool.

The second thing was that during lab I had to show my students a 1-hour video on animal development, a video so old it was on VHS. The VCR in my classroom was hooked up to the projector that is broken at the moment, so I had to use the one in the classroom next door. THAT projector turned out to not be so great either, and I had to watch this movie three times with the color being all screwed up, and the brightness constantly fluctuating. Talk about annoying and distracting!

The icing on the cake was one student in particular decided to give me a hard time about his scientific paper assignment. The assignment was to go to the zoo, pick an adaptation that a vertebrate animal has, and perform some kind of simple experiment relating to that adaption. This guy decided to pick an adaptation that "didn't exist" because hypotheses "don't have to be correct". The POINT of the assignment is to learn something, and this guy thought he was pretty clever for sticking it to me based upon what I "didn't say they couldn't do", which was basically make something up. His whole paper was based on a tautology, which is inherently not scientific. He then got defensive and weird when I questioned him. I then spent about five minutes (in an angry but calm manner) arguing that what he did was not the assignment, and I was offended that he would waste mine and everyone else's time. I told him it wasn't MY grade. His comeback was that it was my job, which I can only suppose meant that somehow his poor grade would reflect badly on me. Then I stopped being diplomatic, and flat out told him he was wrong. I also told him and the class that it just so happens that I like teaching, but that he is destroying that.

And at this point, I was pretty tired due to a crappy night's sleep. And so I continued with my lesson.

At the end of class he approached me an apologized, and said he would re-write his paper.

All of this, on top of people just not following directions and complaining about everything. I should make them read 50 term papers from totally uninterested unteachable students: they don't know the meaning of boring and/or difficult.

Next semester I am starting anew, and I am going to be brutally strict. I don't consider myself a door mat, but I try to at least make class enjoyable. If that can't happen, so be it. I don't need my students to like me, and if people don't listen and follow directions, they will fail my class.

Birthday Weekend Continued

So, a lot went on this weekend.

According to my previous post, I should be telling you now how cute and funny the alpaca were on Saturday afternoon. It turns out Matt and I couldn't go because there are degenerate jerks in this world. I will explain.

Mouse and Dave came down to Albuquerque to meet us for lunch before we headed out to the farms. It was decided that we would go in Matt's car since all of his seatbelts work and since Mouse and Dave had already driven a lot. We were walking towards the car and noticed a car in our lot had a smashed window. Then we walked over to the lot where Matt's car was parked, and several more cars had smashed windows. There was a particularly large pile of glass next to Matt's car.

During the night, around 3am, someone had broken into at least seven cars at my apartment complex, including Matt's. The poor guy parked next to Matt had two broken windows, front and back. So not only was this criminal (criminals?) evil, they were also too lazy to unlock the car once they had broken the glass to get to the back seat. Nothing was stolen from Matt's car, since there wasn't anything in there to steal. But they sure made a mess. My car didn't get broken into, and the only reason I can think as to why is because I have an alarm. So, what we should do is install a tiny blinking red light on the dashboard of Matt's car. Problem solved.

By the time we got back from lunch, and got all the mess sorted out (we sent Mouse and Dave on ahead to the farms) we missed out on the alpacas. Matt is getting his window fixed today, since nothing was open after noon on Saturday. Oddly enough, I think we handled the whole thing (psychologically) very well. Had it been my car, I don't know how I would have reacted.

Saturday evening proved to be much better: I had my wine and dessert party. This is the first time we've had company over, and it was really nice having a living room full of people playing games, eating food, and enjoying ourselves. The list of guests included: Mouse, Dave, Alyssa, Meghan, Claire, and Virginia. It was also great to get the living room, kitchen, and bathroom cleaned. That part of the apartment looks pretty good now.

Sunday had even more surprises in store for me. Matt had been saying for a few days not to plan anything around lunch time on Sunday. That's because he had reservations at a ranch to go horseback riding! I haven't been on a horse in two years, and I used to ride when I was a little girl. I had a really pretty horse, too, her name was Lady. Matt's horse was named Blue. In addition to the ride, they had us tack the horse. The trail ride went down to the Rio Grande, where we had our picture taken.

So all in all, it was a very lovely birthday weekend. It was nice to have company and get cards and well wishes from family and friends. Then Matt made it extra special.

Birthday Recap

Yesterday was my birthday, and I'm happy to say I've had two excellent birthdays in a row. Last year's toga party was fun, but this year I opted for something more relaxed. Yesterday evening Matt took me out to a really nice restaurant, the Artichoke Cafe. I got dressed up, and wore this sweater dress that I've had for a while and not had the opportunity to wear it. Matt got me this cool bracelet I was checking out last week in Old Town, which also matched my dress. I almost bought it then, but I'm glad he got it for me. It's so neat, it's made from tagua nuts, and has sort of the look and feel of ivory but it's from a plant! It's a chunky bracelet, and I don't usually wear anything around my wrists, but I've decided I'm going to try to accessorize more.

For dinner I had the pan roasted duck breast over edamame jasmine rice with snap peas and baby carrots with a soy apricot reduction. A side car as my celebratory drink. This place also does flights of different alcohols, so we shared a flight of three different styles of tequila. Matt got the squash ravioli in sage butter sauce, he let me have a taste and it was also really good. I almost got that, but whenever it's a special occasion, I seem to always get duck because I don't have the will to make it myself and I love it. For dessert we split a chocolate orange pot de creme, that had little slices of candied orange peel and a little cookie as a garnish. Itw as the best dinner I've had in a long time. Everything was so delicious, and so pretty.

Afterward we went to the Chama River Brewing Company to meet up with some of my classmates, and I had a beer, and Fred bought me more dessert! It was dulce de leche something-er-other ice cream with chocolate and caramel and pinon nuts in a chocolate bowl. I also got to meet her special friend, John, who was visiting from Oregon.

Today we are going out for a bit with Mouse and Dave to some alpaca farms that are having open houses, but I also need to find some time to clean the apartment a bit because I'm having a wine and dessert party tonight. I invited the girls from my incoming class over, and it should be a good time. I'll have a pretty full apartment, because my place isn't that big, but we'll make it work.

Time to go clean house!

Monday (Tuesday?) Night (Morning?)

Today wasn't bad, if you ignore the fact that I couldn't breathe through my nose pretty much all day. The lab I taught was on vertebrate adaptations, which was fun, especially for me (big shocker there). To make it even more awesome, I got to hold the cutest snake ever, a rosy boa who was super friendly. She was also super stubborn. For part of the exercise, I was supposed to insert her into a clear plastic tube so that everyone could watch how she moved via constertina movement (as opposed to typical serpentine movement). That worked beautifully; however, two out the three times I did this I had the hardest time getting her OUT of the tube. She just didn't want to come out and go back in her cage. I don't blame her, I think it was probably warmer in the plastic tube than her box, but it was frustrating none-the-less. The plus side, her little tongue tickled my arm when I was holding her. She was aborable.

Today's lab also consisted of endless skulls and skeletons and stuffed animals, which was also cool. One of my students was not so thrilled, especially since many of the specimens would fall within the "cute" animal category. They only care about the cute ones...

I had some time between my labs today, which meant I got a break. I was actually able to eat a relaxing lunch, and then go for tea and a snack later with Matt downtown. If only every week could be like that!

This evening we had French toast and Candian Bacon (there's a joke in there somewhere, but I can't find it at this hour). We ate dinner and watched some episodes of Community, which we have been renting recently.

And finally, I attempted to do some reading for class. It was a little late, but I more or less made it through a very lengthy paper on macroecology. Not bad for a marathon Monday.

Week Recap, A General Lack of Understanding, and Other Mishaps

This past week isn't much to write home about. Friday I got donuts with Fred for breakfast (and then I went again on Sunday with Matt, he loves Krispy Kreme). Then Saturday Matt had a bird survey about an hour and a half south of Albuquerque. When he returned we went to a Halloween party that a classmate of mine was throwing. They had a HUGE dog, but he acted more like an overgrown puppy than anything, so he was fun.

Yesterday I picked up the apartment a bit, and now at least my desk is clear enough for me to comfortably work at. Matt and I went for a drive, picked up some roasted and raw chilies, and then went to Old Town to wander around. It seems like when we go to Old Town it's always late on a Sunday, which is not the best time to go, everything is already closed or closing. There were some shops, however, that were handing out candy to kids in costumes because it was Halloween. So that was fun. Then we went home, and we made some pumpkin soup from the pumpkin I bought about a week ago. Delicious! This time it had a lot of cinnamon in it, probably more than my Mom would have liked, but we liked it.

I received a letter the other day from my auto insurance company. The NM MVD (motor vehicle department) told my insurance that my VIN number doesn't match anything they have on file. That's because I haven't been able to register my car, because I need a copy of the title from CT. I just filled out the online application... to have an application mailed to me. In this day and age, I feel like I should be able to just print the actual application myself, but no. So, hopefully it won't take too long for the application to get here, and hopefully it won't take all year for my title to arrive. The title became lost with all the moving that went on over the past few years. I'm sure I have it somewhere, and I'm going to continue looking for it in the mean time. I also need to call my insurance company and tell them what's going on. Hopefully this won't affect my coverage.

I've had a very frustrating couple of weeks with my students, particularly this past weekend. They were supposed to formulate a hypothesis to test at the local zoo/slash aquarium on a vertebrate adaptation. What they have been reporting to me are not hypotheses. Without going into too many boring details, I've been having a back and forth with them where they'll give me something wrong, and I'll correct them, and then they'll turn around and come back with something that is still just as wrong. They completely ignore my corrections, and just do whatever the hell they want. And I'm starting to lose my patience.

We've also reached that point in the semester where the end is somewhat near. That has been sending me slightly into freak out mode, where I feel like I need to get some more stuff done. However, I'm taking a lot of classes, and as a result that's pretty much all I have time for. My students are starting to get lazier, and getting them to do what they're supposed to do is like pulling teeth. I can remember how that was... back when I was in middle school. But these people are, theoretically, PAYING for their classes. I. Just. Don't. Get. It.

At any rate, it's Monday, and I have a long day of teaching ahead of me. I've been fighting a head cold/allergies ever since I got back from Pittsburgh, two weeks ago. I'm going to go ahead and assume it is allergies. I ran out of one of my perscriptions, and I need to get it filled. But that will have to wait until tomorrow. I don't have time today to stand around in a pharmacy, especially since there might be a complication with getting the perscription transfered from Penn State's pharmacy. I know there probably shouldn't be any reason for there to be a problem, but PSU's pharmacy has a way of making everything complicated.

Year 1 Week 9 Recap

Yes, it is Tuesday, but it's time for the recap of last week.

Actually, not all that much went on between now and my last post. I had some fun Saturday with the lab mates and Matt. We went to a corn maze in town, which was a lot of fun. It was a maize maze! My first stratiegy was to just go in random directions, but then Matt pulled out the map and we worked our way through it after my plan failed.Then we got a late lunch at the Calico Cafe. Best guacamole ever.

On Sunday, Matt and I headed down to Socorro to see Mouse and Dave. We brought along Settlers of Catan and played that for a bit. Then we headed down to the Bosque del Apache to see if the sandhill cranes were there. I'll do a post soon on just the cranes, but for now I'll just say we saw several hundreds of them hanging out down there, and it was really amazing. Mouse and Dave also showed us around town a bit, which mostly consisted of the NM Technical University. The property their house is on is also really cool. They have a pond in their back yard with coots! We finished up the evening completing our board game and Mouse made some awesome zucchini enchiladas.

Matt and I are heading out to get some breakfast, then I have to run off to class.

Let's Do Some Research!

I had a (very) brief meeting with my adviser yesterday, but I think I managed to figure out what I want my research topic to be for my dissertation. Now it's just a matter of fleshing it out, which means I'm going to spend lots of time in the near future sitting down and thinking about important questions and how to potentially answer them.

I picked a topic that can hopefully lead down several different research directions. My dissertation needs to be 4 chapters long: 3 should be really good, 1 can stand to be just "okay". There is no requirement that the chapters be related, but I think I would be happier with a piece of work that tells a larger story.

Those of you who have been following my research should know by now of my interest in Pleistocene non-analog faunas. By now it's been pretty well established that they have biological significance. Questions remain, however, as to why they existed. Another way of looking at it is, "Why was there so much more biodiversity then, and where did it go?" One hypothesis is that during the Pleistocene organisms were able to more finely partition ecological niches, which enabled more geographic overlap. This is a fine hypothesis that has not been tested; I intend to. How will I do that? I haven't figured that part out yet, but I'm working on it.