Farren and Job, mostly (with a political pun at the end)

I grew out a terrible beard for about a month. I paused during its shaving to check myself out with this sick stache. 

I finally got to come back to the South for a week, but I never stopped in Alabama. It was a business trip. I took off of work to go on a research cruise with an old advisor from my Maryland internship. We set sail from Tampa Bay and cruised south. We were sampling from a Red Tide bloom. Trying to save the lives of the fish and the health of the swing statees. Will I get political in this blog? we will find out together. 

(This ramble is about weather, a very boring topic, save yourself some time, skip to "So, I have been")In Portland this summer on warmer days people would point out that the south is humid. It happened so often I wondered if people just wanted to show off the fact that they do know a little about our climate, in addition to their fluent renditions of the stereotyping of southerners--not so far off base with either. Let me get to the point: Whoa! It is a lot more humid that I remember. Follow me: I was used to the scale of humidity in the Northwest which is a lot lower but varies from day to day, of course. The Floridian scale must start 30 bars higher. I swear my bodily barometer was reading, "uh, I don't know for sure, but it might be over 100%." It was really hot, too. I caught some rays though, I'd be damned if I was going to go back to Portland without a sunburn or tan. 

Sorry, could their be a more boring or irrelevant topic for a blog? Just wanted to simply state: Redneck leaves south for 3 months, comes back and thinks its humid...how banal. Truly sorry, maybe I should put a note to the reader before that ramble. 

So, I have been waiting in the Tampa aiport for two hours now...only two to go. "What happened was" they brought everyone from the ship that had afternoon flights to the airport at the same time--my flight is at 1830. 

The time allowed me to talk to Farren via webcam for a little while, which is always nice. Webcam is no less than 1,000 times better than talking on the phone. 

Farren came to visit Portland the week before I left to come on this cruise. It was so good to see her. She must be the most beautiful girl ever. It felt right to have her there and be together. It felt so unfair to have to say goodbye. She loved the Rose Garden--Portland is aptly nicknamed the "Rose City." Here are a couple of pictures from the Rose Garden. 

Sometimes I write like I am writing a newspaper article. 

Short paragraphs--its so that you can casually glance between facebook and my blog . It's all for you, stalker. 

Of course I'm only kidding, I want you to read "Work hard, play hard, sleep hard." I exist only to assist you in procrastination ~ once a month.

My job is going well. I'm not new anymore. Sometimes it is good. Sometimes I can't get any shit (if you a young, pious, or my mom replace the 's' word with tasks) accomplished despite my best efforts. Science is that way, I guess. You're at the mercy of your instruments. My work is fulfilling in that I know that each day is a small contribution to answering questions. At least that's the fairy tale. Right now we are busy trying to clean out the fridge. Due to 5 cruises, we are swamped with samples that we are trying to chug through, and hardly having time to see any data. Maybe somebody is, but it's not me! 

One day I'll have my own project(grad school and on), but right now I am a lab slave taking every opportunity to improve myself and prepare to enter the grad school of (hopefully) my choice with a clear purpose, good ideas, ability to improve the lab, and get to work.  There's no doubt in my mind that taking time away from the 'classroom' was the right thing to do for me. I wasn't burned out. I'm not burned out. It would have been easier to go straight to graduate school, but for what? To take a project out of my advisor's mind and mouth and slave on it for a few years just to get a degree...get outta here. That's not cool. 

I don't know who reads my blog-- if anyone. Nobody leaves comments. I don't know if it is more family, people from home or college, or friends I met through science. It's a mystery. 

Anyways, only an hour until my flight starts boarding, so I better go buy some more airport cuisine courtesy of the tax payer before John "The other one" McCain and Sarah "You just can't trust those scientists *wink*" Palin freeze my (and the world's leading scientific community's) funding--not to infer a likely victory for Team Maverick(drink), of course, it's only make-believe. 

Cheers,

David