best news ever!

School tends to be really lonely when no one else is around. Only one of my friends has returned to school yet and she is an RA and so it chained to the staff room from 9am to 9pm. The shortage of human life is unfortunately forcing me to work on the grant application I should turn in tomorrow. Grr. My flight back was pretty uneventful, with the exception that there were exactly three people on the second leg so we got to fly in a private plane. It was pretty awesome.
After a good morning sleeping in, a 4 mile run, a long trip grocery shopping on my best friend's bike (it is way better than mine so sometimes she lets me borrow it. Plus it has a rack on the back so I can carry more stuff), a couple hours making bread for dinner, and a futile attempt to buy textbooks I was finally brave enough to check my mailbox. I knew that my grades for the quarter would be there, and that meant knowing what I got in organic chemistry. I was hoping for an A- but that was a pretty high hope. I was pretty sure I would get a B+, but a B was still a strong possibility. There is a long and painful history in my family surrounding organic chemistry. My mom was planning on becoming a veterinarian until she did not get an A in organic chemistry and her adviser told her she would not be admitted to veterinary school with anything less than a 4.0 in the sciences. She majored in psychology to be able to graduate on time and now is a professor in the communication department of a college. I survived the first semester of organic quite painlessly with an A but the second semester was the most frustrating class I have ever taken. The main problem stemmed from the fact that I really liked the class and all the material we were covering (which left me no excuse to complain about it). It was just super difficult. Regardless of how well I thought I knew the material I would not perform well on exams. I guess it was a good experience because I have never had to deal with that before where I literally can't do any better. Anyway, top that off with taking an extra class as well as weekly piano lessons and working 40 hours each week (not including commuting time) and I had a pretty stressful quarter. All kinds of justifications were streaming through my head as I opened the letter from the school. I just kind of stared at it for a while in disbelief. There was no B anywhere to be found. Across from "Organic Chemistry II" read A. Not even an A-! I still don't really believe it.

I love HMSC!

I drove out to the coast today to see my mentor Pete from my internship last summer. Tim, the veterinarian who I will be working with this summer was on vacation, as was my good friend Dennis, but somewhere between the pine tree shadows through the coastal range and the sun reflecting off the ocean's waves I realized how much I miss being out there. They are currently rennovating the hospital and quarantine rooms and putting in space for me to research (!) I am pretty excited, and they are painting the bottom half of the walls blue, my favorite color, which should make up for the fact that I will be spending my summer once again under fluorescent lighting. I spent a couple of hours talking with Pete. He is the funniest person I think I will ever meet, and constantly makes fun of me. I am very sad, though, because he is probably moving to Jamaica to work with an emerging dolphin program in a month and I will never see him again. Well, I should get back to writing my grant so hopefully I can get paid to work there again in a few months

a quest for wildflowers

So, mom mentioned to me briefly on the phone during final exams week that there was an unprecedented wildflower bloom in Death Valley this year and it would be peaking during Spring Break and that it might be fun to take a road trip down there. I think she was joking. I took it pretty seriously. She also thought that Death Valley was in Northern Califonia. It is actually between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, approximately 1100 miles south of McMinnville. When she picked me up from an incredibly long train ride across the country she foolishly asked me what to do. "Go to see the wildflowers", I replied. Never mind that I had just sat on a train for 55 hours, road trips are always fun. The next morning, at 6:00am (a compromise between my idea of early -- 4:00 and hers -- 6:00) we were off. Here are the results:
We've explored Northern Oregon, but after passing Eugene we were both in foreign territory. it was either too dark or too rainy to see much but by the time we entered California, we realized why we don't want them overtaking Oregon. First, they have some serious problems naming town. The first town we encountered was affectionately called Weed (and boasted a clever sign, "Weed like to welcome you" that warrented a picture but the rain had other ideas). Besides Weed, the upper half of California is rather uncreative at naming roads. For several hours we passed exits like the one below:

Soon, however, we reached towns with far more interesting names. Mainly Los Baños, Liberal Avenue in Corning, and Boron (my favorite):


We ended up spending the night a few hours outside of the national park because we had already driven 17 hours and were both pretty tired. The next morning, right before we entered the park we decided to fill up with gas. It was the most expensive gas ever purchased in the US:

The first pass we went over, Jubilee Pass, we saw a couple of flowers and I was amazed so we stopped and started taking pictures. Cars kept driving past us -- it wasn't unitl about an hour later that we realized why. There were far more flowers a few minutes down the road:


Here are some of the flowers we saw: (for a more complete look, check out mom's blog for an upcoming photo album)

A lonely desert gold sunflower, an unnowkn flower, and a desert chicory


Gravel ghost and mom's amazing photo of pebble pincushion

My personal favorite plant that we saw was a parasitic plant called toothed dodder. It inserts suckers into the tissue of its host plant and lives entirely off of it. Here is has engulfed a young Creosote bush:


Alas, there is more to Death Valley than flowers. We took some hikes and a wade in a very salty lake:

Mom keeping a lookout for enemy approaches from nearby Edwards air force base


Salt encrusted rocks at the unusual lake on the valley floor


Death valley from the golden canyon


Me, wading in some very salty water

After listening to a talk by a botonist/ranger where we painlessly learned how to actually identify all the flowers we had been photographing (thanks to his excellent sense of humor), we decided to head back home. Mom was a little tense at times:

but we made it back okay. Road trips rock!

*sigh*

Well, I know it has been quite a while since my last post, but things have been crazy at school lately. Last night I got my thrid organic exam back and I got the best score I've gotten so far in the second semester of organic, which was exciting. Granted, this score was the same as the lowest score I ever received on an exam in the first semester of orgo. It was still a cause for celebration (which of course manifests itself at the end of a quarter as a good night's sleep). I turned in my final paper in ethology this week, a review of the literature on upstream migration in salmon. As a result of my biology term papers this year, I have become an expert on orchidae in Peru and the mechanisms of upstream migration in salmon. I am confident that some day this new-found knowledge will become crucial to my survival :). Perhaps I will be lost in the Ecuadorian amazon and find a lost salmon whose nose led him astray and have to use the local orchid diversity to help him find his way out to the ocean and to the correct stream so his tired semelparous body can spawn before it perishes. Hey, it's one step closer to happening since I found out yesterday I was accepted to the study abroad program in Ecuador.
Now, every sophomore at K received letters announcing their accpetance to or rejection from the study abroad program they spent months applying for (or at least several hours on February 11th). Everyone that is, except the poor soul at box 343. Study abroad is the main hallmark of a K education so pretty much everything anyone talks about winter quarter of their sophomore year revolves around study abroad. So imagine the thoughts in this poor girl's head when all of her friends were celebrating their fat stuffed envelopes and she didn't get anything. Not even a thin one. Thanks to the wonderful staff of the mail hut, her acceptance to study abroad in Rome was placed in box 243 instead. Of course, because of the extended hours kept by our wonderful mailroom, she will have to wait until Monday evening to find the envelope finally stuffed into her box. I feel pretty bad for her.
Alright, back to orgo and ethology studying. Perhaps I should practice the piano for that final as well. Grrr. In less than 5 days I will be on a train endlessly annoying my fellow passengers, but headed for home. Granted, it will take me seven days before I actually arrive home, but who's counting :)

Good to know...

So in a futile attempt to avoid homework, I tried mom's random object quiz. And, as you can see by the result below, the results were less than wonderful on my self-esteem. Yep, I am toilet paper, used by all, apparently:

You are Toilet Paper. You are used and taken advantage of by a lot of people, including your friends. They make you be the one to clean up their messes in their life. But the only reason that this happens is because of your kindness and commitment. These are the qualities most members of the opposite sex look for, which makes you hot. Yes, toilet paper is hot. But be careful that your lover doesn't use you to their advantage, and be sure that they are not seeking too much control. Remember: Toilet paper is used by many, but is most often considered valuable when it is not there in time of need. Most compatible with: sock.

So, now that I know what random object I am (did I mention I think this quiz is pretty stupid), I should probably write my last organic lab report (!) I am really excited.

A little later...
I wrote a question for my SI session yesterday evening that I am still really impressed with. Yes, I did spend several hours of my Sunday afternoon researching small bats that inhabit Wind Cave :) Test your ecology skills and see if you can answer it if you're in need of a distraction:

Maybe I can put off veterinary school forever....

Since I was in 5th grade, I have known that I would eventually be a veterinarian. Although I have always assumed that would lead me to a clinical position, recently I have been thinking about teaching and attempting a dual DVM and PhD program through veterinary school. I also really like ecology so I have been thinking about getting a master's degree before veterinary school and I really want to join the peace corps at some point before I get too tied down with debt, a family, etc. By my count that would put me at no less than 31 before actually graduating with a veterinary degree. But today, we had a guest speaker in my ethology class talking about the kakapo bird in New Zealand. An enourmous effort has been mounted to save this bird and we were talking about ways to use observations about its behavior to help in conservation efforts. It was a really interesting talk in and of itself but at the end of the show he talked about opportunities in through the New Zealand embassy to do biological/conservation research for the Ministry of Conservation for a year after college. Basically, from how he described it you live at a biological station and do research (mainly consisting of hiking around the New Zealand backcountry and watching animals or counting plants). It sounds like a blast to me. So now I will be 32 :) Anyway, as a result of my summer research last year I discovered I am really interested in aquatic medicine because it is still in the experimental stages. My mom likes to tease me about this interest, tellimg me that she will take her future goldfish in to me to have catract surgery, but low and behold a few weeks ago there was a segment on NPR about aquatic veterinarians. I think it is kind of funny, but it is short and cool, too. Well, in the spirit of things aquatic, I am going to go see Life Aquatic with my good friend Reid in a few minutes. Happy Birthday, Becca!

bowling with drunk professors

Ahh, the joys of Tuesdays. Before 11:00am this morning I had written a chemistry lab report, drafted a pre-lab, driving a biology class to and from the arboretum, and attended my two hour spanish class. After a successful organic chemistry lab (we actually finished on time and my IR showed a pure product) it was 4:00 and time to do more homework. I worked a little on my research for this summer, carefully avoiding all organic chemistry studying, and soon it was time for some bowling. ACS sponsored a bowling night tonight but it was really a drinking with your professors night that just happened to be at a bowling alley. I really suck at bowling, but after a few pointers I almost broke 100 ;)
It's pretty amusing to be the designated driver for the person who is going to teach your chemistry class in a few hours.