Last Week of Freedom

Only two more days and then my days of freedom are over. It's so sad! And I still have so much to do! Things kept coming up, so I never ended up picking blueberries, but if the weather is decent tomorrow I'll go out and see what I can get. I'll also need to pick up some more canning jars, since I'm almost out of the pints and the quarts won't fit in the pot I'm using for a canner. Never to fear though, some of the quarts will be used to make jack-o-lanterns in October and others will probably be used for soup/cookie/brownie mixes.

Monday and Tuesday I spent several hours meeting with my faculty adviser for the PG&E project, and have gotten all the paperwork caught up for that. I wish the Feds would figure out how to make a decent spreadsheet, explain what exactly they want, and eliminate at least half of the paperwork! I guess it gives me experience in filling all these stupid forms out, and how to keep good scientific records and notes, but really, for what we're doing I shouldn't have to be keeping track of all this. If I would have known I'd be doing all this I don't think I would have taken this position, or at least I would have tried to get a better hourly wage. If I can get a group together, we'll go out next weekend at 6:00 AM to collect samples for the third quarter. Not what I want to do with my first weekend of the school year, I can tell you that.

I also got my hair cut on Monday. It was almost to my waist, and I wanted to keep growing it out, but it was really damaged, so I chopped it all off up to a few inches past my shoulders. I didn't like it at first, but my head is much lighter now, and I don't feel that I need to keep my hair pulled up all the time. With so many hours in labs, though, I'll probably have it up most of the time anyway.

Yesterday I was called out on a sea lion rescue (which is why the berries didn't get picked yesterday). We ended up not going out until 5:30 in the evening, and drove all around Big Lagoon looking for a place to get down the cliffs somewhere close to where the sea lion had been reported. Eventually we had to use a rope to climb down the cliff where it was about 10-12 feet tall and then walked along the beach for a good half mile at least. We never ended up finding the animal, and the tide had already come in and was starting to go back out, so whatever tracks that might have been left were gone. Hopefully the sea lion's out there somewhere swimming around happily, but realistically he's probably not. So back we trekked and used the rope to climb back up the cliff. I'm feeling a little sore today, but mostly it's from where I was carrying the heavy net on my shoulders.

Well, I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I want to pick up the house, pick berries, start the syrup cooking, and take care of a bunch of other little things so that David and I can enjoy our last free Sunday together before going back to the grind. I probably won't end up getting everything done, because I'm lazy like that, but even if I get most of it done I'll be happy.

P.S. Oh, I forgot to mention this before. Before leaving for the Alaska Adventure, I weighed at my parents house and was 243 lbs. When we got back I was 225 lbs., and now I'm hovering between 219 and 222 lbs. (I've been weighing every day, but have started only weighing once a week now). I guess only eating trail mix and hummus for two weeks was a good thing!