Where has the time gone?

Hmmm...anyone still there? I can't believe it's been so long since I've last written, but there were many reasons for it. Since I last wrote, I went through one of the toughest rounds of finals I've had in my college career, suffered from depression caused by the stress (happily with medication and relaxing over summer I'm feeling much better!), went on a two day oceanographic cruise collecting sediment samples, spent half my weeks processing roughly 1200 samples and sorting through them to find individual foraminifera, had a wonderful 4th of July weekend with my parents, decided to finally really for-sure this time get married next summer and started planning that and in general have been vegging out on the couch watching Doctor Who. Whew! So I'm sorry it's been so long, but hopefully you can forgive me!


For right now, that's all I have to report. I'll be writing again more frequently though, I promise! Until then, I'll leave you with a couple pictures from the oceanographic cruise.



This is the box corer we used to collect the sample. This device is solid steel and weighs a ton. It is lowered to the seabed where it buries into the mud to collect a 50cm long core. The arm M. is standing on swings down to cover the bottom of the core as it comes up so you don't lose the sample. I'm in the red shirt stabilizing M. as she primes the device (which is a bunch of fun on the high seas!)
M. and I wait for the box corer to return from 150m depth to the surface where we will "tag" it with lines at the end of an 8-foot pole and use the lines to control the corer back to the deck and make sure it doesn't swing back and forth, damaging the sample and anything in it's way. It takes two of us on each side to control it. I'm in the grey shirt.