First Week of School

Made it through the first week and I'm ready to start another tomorrow! I worked out a few kinks in my schedule and now everything should be finalized.

Monday:
Geological Oceanography 10-11. I've had this teacher before and as long as you put EXACTLY what he says as an answer, you're golden.

Plant Physiology Lab 2-5. As above, I've had this teacher before and he is really great. You can tell he got into teaching because he loves to teach and is really excited about the subject matter.

Field Cruise 5-8. Continuation of last semester's and last summer's class. This semester we'll be writing the paper, submitting it to the 2010 Ocean Sciences Conference and preparing a poster and our presentation for the conference. We originally planned to submit our paper to the AGU conference, but since the deadline is in two days, we decided to be reasonable. I'm very nervous and excited about publishing a paper and presenting it at a national conference, but I'm looking forward to the networking opportunities. Also, I've heard that a lot of people come to this particular conference to look for undergrads to take on as Masters/Ph. D. students! Fingers crossed!

Tuesday:
Plant Physiology Lecture 10-11. Same teacher as the lab instructor. I'm looking forward to this class.

Work 12-5. So glad that they were able to keep me this year with all the budget cuts!

Wednesday: Same as Monday minus field cruise.

Thursday: Same as Tuesday.

Friday:
Geological Oceanography lecture 10-11.

Geological Oceanography Lab 2-5 at the Trinidad Marine Lab. Same instructor as the lecture. I'm really looking forward to this lab. Last Friday we spent our lab barefoot on the beach in the sun measuring the beach profile. There's just nothing better than that.

I'm also taking an online course called "Sound Mind-Sound Body." From the syllabus:

"This online course is designed to provide students with a broad introspective examination of health and wellness that incorporate the mind, body, and soul. The course is organized into the following three sections, which represent the Ancient Greek triad of Mind, Body, and Spirit, and embody the "Sound Mind in a Sound Body":

1. Mind - Cognitive Health, Hostility, Mood, Social Networks and Support, Stress and Health, Time Efficiency
2. Body - Alcohol, Caffeine, Nutrition, Physical Activity, Sleep
   
3. Soul - Existential Health, Humor, Music, Passionate Living, Spirituality"

I think the class will be very interesting!

I'm also very excited because today, for the first time since moving out of my parents' house, I am doing laundry in my own home!! My mom and dad came up yesterday with a washer, dryer, and small chest freezer and got them all installed and working for me. I'm still moving the freezer around trying to find a good spot for it (I think I may have to find an 'OK' spot for it...) and then I'll fill that sucker up with casseroles and frozen fruit and tofu and hopefully have lots of meals that I can just pull out and heat up during the week so I can keep from getting take out. Thanks Mom and Dad!!!!!

For now I'm off to pick up the house and get it ready for the new week, do some class reading (why can't they make textbooks read like 'smut' books? I'd have no problem reading them then!), and folding my freshly laundered clothes. Take care everybody!

Looking forward

School starts on Monday and I don't feel ready at all. I am looking forward to having a schedule, a fixed routine to follow, but aside from that I'd really rather have a couple more weeks of vacation. Normally I enjoy school (sometimes not when I'm in the midst of a round of tests), but with the state budget cuts increasing my tuition and decreasing my financial aid, quality of classes, and hours my department can pay me to work and the 2 days a month of staff furloughs that may or may not mean classes won't meet (not even the teachers know what is happening), this year is just looking like it will be a big mess. All that on top of general class stress. But I do think I'll enjoy my classes (geological oceanography, senior project, field cruise, plant physiology, photography, and sound mind-sound body), and I'll have almost all my friends in most of the classes.

I'm trying to get all my "domestic" things done now, or within the first few weeks of school and get them out of the way. I've been doing a lot of canning, and plan on doing tomato sauce, blueberry syrup/jelly/pie filling (haven't decided yet), apple sauce and apple butter in the next few weeks. I want to freeze a bunch of blueberries, muffins, bread, casseroles, brown rice, and other similar items to have for quick meals during busy weeks. I'd also like to do at least one more batch of dried apples as well, but we'll see how it goes. So far this year I have preserved:

-1 sandwich bag of dried apples
-1/2 sandwich bag dried cantaloupe (from two melons! Wow they shrunk up a lot!)
-1 sandwich bag of dried pineapple
-4 12-oz and 10 8-oz jars of strawberry jam
-9 pint jars of dill pickles - thrown out because they were so salty you couldn't eat them!
-9 pint jars of dill pickles from a different recipe - probably going to be thrown out... :(
-18 12-oz jars of white grape jelly with grapes from my parent's vine

One thing I am excited about starting school for is my new lap top lunchbox! I've wanted one for several years now, and I finally broke down and bought one with a carrying case and an extra set of inner containers. I'm trying to lose weight before the wedding and I think the compartments will help with portion control and will keep me from buying food at school.

Did I mention wedding? Why yes, I did! David and I have decided to get married (really for real this time!) next summer after over 7 years of being together! We are shooting for June 12th, which will give us about a month after graduation (we will both walk in May, although David will have classes to finish up in the fall semester) and about two months to enjoy married life before David starts classes in August for his last semester at HSU. After that we plan on moving out of California for greener pastures and to gain residency in another state before I begin my graduate and Ph. D. work. I'm very excited, but am trying to keep a level head and focus on my school work for now.

That's all for now. I'm off to make next week's meal plan and enjoy one of my final free afternoons in the sun.

1 year

In all the stress and craziness that has been my life over the last several weeks, I let my one year Veganniversary and the 1st year anniversary of this blog go right on by. It doesn't seem like it's been that long at all! So what's changed over the last year in terms of my health? I don't have exact numbers but:

Weight: I started out at 236lbs, increased to nearly 245, dropped to 219 over the summer (26 lbs!), and since the holidays and all the stress, I've been hovering between 225 and 230lbs. So over the whole year I've lost a total of about 6 lbs. Not great, but at least it's a drop!

Cholesterol: Starting out this year I had an overall cholesterol of 201, with LDL at 122 and HDL at 43, which is just over the high side of normal. I don't have the exact numbers to share, but my last blood test in January came back with "normal cholesterol levels", and the doctor didn't mention anything about it, so I'm going to assume that I have dropped my overall and LDL numbers and raised my HDL levels to within healthy limits.

Blood Sugar: It's still kind of in the air if I'm pre-diabetic or not. One doctor keeps saying yes, while two others have done blood tests and said 'no'. I've tested my fasting blood sugars a couple of times with David's monitor and have generally been between 75-85, which David tells me is good.

Triglycerides: I started with triglycerides at 181 (a good number is 150), and again don't have actual numbers, but the last blood test came back in the normal range and the doctor didn't say anything about me being high.

So it seems to me that switching to an entirely vegan diet has really been great for my health! In addition to the numbers, I haven't truly been sick since going vegan (besides from the sniffles for a day or two here and there). Before, if I came down with a cold I would be incapacitated for nearly a week; having to miss school and work and often ending up with the early stages of pneumonia and a deep rattling, hacking cough that would last for months. I've also found that generally my "cycles" have been less painful (sorry guys). Before going vegan and definitely before going on birth control, I would have to miss school because the cramps were so horrible. And let's not forget that my face has cleared up and I've had much more energy throughout the day!

And how was it, switching to a vegan diet? Looking back, not that hard! For the first couple of months, I craved cheese and cheese is still my biggest temptation. There was a day when I just craved a cheese burger so bad that I went to Carl's Jr. and got a Western Bacon Cheeseburger. I have to admit, I devoured that thing and it seemed like the best thing I'd ever tasted. But I paid for it for the next week or so with an upset stomach. There has been a couple of times when I have been tired of not finding anything at a restaurant and it has just been easier to eat something with cheese or milk in it. I'll admit it hasn't been a perfect vegan year. But after eating animal products, even in small amounts, I've found myself feeling icky, sluggish, and just in general not as great as I do when I'm eating vegan.

This blog has really helped me through the last year. Although it doesn't seem like I have a lot of readers (if you're out there and haven't said 'hi' yet, please do!), I have had people stop by from nearly every U.S. State and from other countries like Canada, Russia, Spain, Finland, and the UK. Wow! Hopefully y'all found something helpful or interesting on your way through.

Over the next year I want to continue to focus on eating more raw fruits and veggies, whole grains, and in general eat with "could I eat this straight out of a garden" in mind. Now that I have access to a dehydrator and some canning skills, I want to spend my summer preserving local fruits and veggies to enjoy all year round. I've also been toying with the idea of doing a juice feast, but I'm not sure about that yet. I'll just see how things go and try to listen to my body.

I hope everyone continues to stop by over the next year. And this wouldn't be a post about anniversaries and yearly milestones without saying:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNT JUDY AND AUNT TAMI!!!!!!!! I hope both of you have lovely days enjoying your friends and family!

At the grindstone

Just in case you thought I fell overboard on one of my research cruises, was suffocated by the ever growing mound of homework and scientific literature, or got lost in the library never to find my way out again, I'm here for just a moment to say "I'm OK". Very busy, but OK.

Here's some of the fun things I've been up to (all taken from my friend Amanda's camera):


From Left: Me, Jason, Lerin, Matt, Amanda, and Monica during a research outing on the R/V Coral Sea. We were using a CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth (really pressure)) sensor package to create a heat budget of Humboldt Bay.
My picture of the CTD from a previous cruise. Isn't she pretty?

Discovering I've completely forgotten how to roller skate at Paula's 30th birthday party. I'm the blurry feet at the top of the picture because I was desperately trying to just stay on my feet. From Top to the right: Me, Lerin, Amanda, and Jason.

Chillin' with the Oceanography Society. I haven't been able to make all the meetings this semester, but I try. Top row: Pono, Rich, Jason. Middle Row: Me, Jeremiah. Bottom Row: Erin, Monica, Amanda. There's a lot more of us, but that's all that could make it to the last meeting of last semester.

Cleaning up trash at the Bay Street Beach in Eureka. We spent at least a half hour trying to get all this rope cut off and untangled. From Left clockwise: Lerin, Justin, Me.

After two hours, we collected six bags of trash, the lining of a truck bed, and two large rusted pieces of metal from a car. This is a much better idea of how many people are in the club, although many people couldn't make it that morning.

Amanda, Monica, Jeremiah, Lerin and I all went out to dinner Thursday night to detox after a four and a half hour class. The food was decent, fairly cheap, and we stayed for two hours and had a great time. This year has really been the first that I've had classes with other oceanography majors, and I've been really surprised with myself at how fast I'm making friends. Normally it can take me years to become friends with someone, and most of the people in the photos (with the exception of Justin), I've only met last fall. But I guess when you have the same class schedule with the same group of people that you see every day, all day you make friends pretty fast.

But don't start thinking that it's been all fun and games. I'm at school/work twice a week from 8am to 8pm, and from 8am to 5pm the other three days. I'm also driving up to Trinidad once a week to take water samples, and have had tests and papers due almost every week (in fact, I have two big papers due in the next couple of weeks, and will get a physics test back on Monday). I've also been looking for an internship in my spare time (haha!), and trying to meet with a career counselor (who thinks I'm a lazy and non-serious student because I didn't start looking for an internship when I was 13 and am just partying all my time away and not paying attention in class because I have a 3.3 GPA) to work on my resume so I can finally contact the people that another contact mentioned might have a position for me. Oh, and of course taxes, FAFSA, and scholarship applications.

The good news is that I needed to go to the doctor a couple weeks ago, and even with all the stress in my life right now (read: horrible junk food eating that's been happening), I've only gained about 12 pounds since Thanksgiving, my cholesterol's in the healthy range, and my blood pressure is excellent. I also haven't been sick at all, although I have been battling off a small cold the last week or so. Although my weight is pretty much the same since I went vegan a year ago last month, there's been a huge difference in my blood work results, my blood pressure, the amount of energy I have to do everything, and I haven't been really sick since I went vegan, just the sniffles here and there. Let's see if I can't keep it up!

Alright, I must go now and continue to write at least 10 pages of a review paper of harmful algal blooms (HABs) on the California coast, and the link with various physical conditions. It's actually pretty interesting, and is a continuation of my last semester's biological oceanography project, and a stepping stone in my senior thesis project. Hopefully I'll learn something through this project that will help me link what I find in my weekly water samples to larger environmental conditions that may help predict when a HAB will occur here in Humboldt County. I'm so glad that I am studying oceanography. It truly is something that I've always been interested in, and the more I learn, the more excited I get to learn more. I couldn't be happier, even if the course load is insane.

Whoa, Nelly!

Well, it's been an eventful two weeks. It kind of seems like the world was just waiting for me to go back to classes to start up again.

Our dog, Boots, died on the 19th. He was old (not quite sure how old since he just showed up on our doorstep one day), blind, deaf, and was having trouble walking around. Several days before he died he pretty much stopped eating, and on Monday he went outside, laid in the sun, and passed away.

On the 20th, classes started again, and there was no "ease into it" period. We were pretty much thrown straight into the deep end. Yikes! I'm taking second semester physics, physical oceanography, library research and writing, field cruise, and working on my independent senior research project. After spring break I'll be taking Lost Arts of Living (basically canning, candle making, darning, that sort of thing) through CCAT. So basically, I have two hard "traditional" classes (midterm, final); a class with a 30-40 page paper due at the end; a class that will span two semesters and summer where the 12 of us design an experiment, write a proposal, reserve the R/V Coral Sea, conduct the experiment, analyze the samples, write a research paper, present the paper at a national conference, and potentially try to get our paper published in a scientific journal; a project that consists of taking water samples every week, analyzing them for the presence of harmful algae bloom species, writing a scientific paper and defending it in front of a panel of my professors; and a class just for fun to help me balance my science self with my domestic homemaker self. Whew. Yeah, I have my work cut out for me alright!

Then there's also tracking down scholarships and filing the FAFSA, taking the GWPE (must pass to graduate), and following up on a lead for a potential internship (thanks Aunt Tami!!!!). Which means I also need to put together a good resume and gather up some letters of recommendation. Not to mention the Ocean Club, which is in need of a treasurer and I am thinking of going for the position (I must hate myself). Oh, and then there's the PG&E Marine Sampling Project that's still going on!

I'll try to post more frequently, but really, I'm not sure I can even promise a post once a week. This weekend I have 7 scientific papers to read and report on, type and post the meeting minutes for Field Cruise (I stupidly volunteered myself to be secretary of the meetings), not to mention make and devour yummy Superbowl snacks (not sure if we'll actually go somewhere to watch the game since we don't have tv, or just stay home and eat food anyway). I'll also write up a post soon about what David and I did for my birthday soon.

Lemons!

My parents have a lemon bush (really it's like....5 or 6 trees that have grown together and are now trimmed into a hedge, but anyway), and most years the lemons are left to rot on the bush, because really, what can you do with that many lemons? Some years we zest and juice them, but often we end up with more than we use, bags of zest and juice get lost in the freezer, and there are many more lemons left rotting on the bush.

Before leaving to come back to McKinleyville, my dad gathered twenty pounds of lemons (a small fraction of what was out there) for me. So what am I going to do with all these lemons?

-Limoncello
-Preserved lemons
-Lemon cordial
-Lemon butter/curd (if I can find a good vegan recipe)
-Zest and juice for future use

Which means I should probably get started clearing off a work space and getting to it.

Back From the Holidays

The past two weeks have been very busy. The trip over 299 to my parents house was alright, we ran into some snow and ice, and lots of rain, but David and I both made it over and to Red Bluff just fine.

Christmas was pretty relaxed, and for a Christmas that we had agreed would be no presents, everybody got some really good gifts. I gave baskets of homemade/canned applesauce, blueberry syrup, and bread and butter pickles, as well as some loose leaf tea, candy cane sugar scrub, and a cookbook of my favorite recipes. I also put together a CD of some vegan podcasts for my grammy so that she could see (or hear) that I'm eating a healthy diet. My mom and I made vegan truffles, but they didn't end up in the baskets because I forgot to grab them from the fridge on Christmas day, so I had to eat them all myself. Darn.

For Christmas dinner, I ended up making everything I planned on. We also had stuffing, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, and there was turkey for the rest of the family. Everything turned out really good, and besides from a small incident, everyone got along real well and I for one thought the day was very nice.

We would have taken the next few days to relax, but my little sister has decided that it is time for her to move away from home, so we spent the next several days getting her packed up (and fighting, and bickering, and being upset and pissy....). On the 1st, we set out on a nine hour drive to San Luis Obispo. We unpacked her into her new home (that she's sharing with five other girls), took her to dinner, and then took off. Mom, Dad, and I left first thing yesterday morning for an eight hour drive home. I feel like we left under bad terms, but I think I'm the only one that feels that way, at least at this end of California.

My grades posted the day after Christmas. I earned two A's, two C's, and a credit for a PE class. I'm not exactly happy, but I passed Physics and Chemistry, so they are out of the way and I can focus on next semester, which will be even worse than this one was. I'm already looking forward to summer break.

I had blood drawn at the doctor's while I was home to finally get this diabetes thing put to rest. They did an A1C and a thyroid test, as well as a regular blood work-up. After a little confusion (they lost my blood work), I received a phone call yesterday with the results. I haven't gotten the exact numbers yet, but they said everything was perfect except my iron was a little on the low side of normal. I'm assuming that means that I lowered my cholesterol and lipid levels from what they were in February. The doctor said my iron level was nothing a supplement or two, or a week or so of some iron heavy foods wouldn't fix. So good news; I don't have diabetes or anything wrong with my thyroid. Bad news; there's still no reason I should be this overweight or gain weight so easily. Maybe that's just how my body is, but I'd still like to look for a medical reason before I resign my self to a lifetime of obesity.

Well, I think that brings everyone up to speed. I spent some time thinking about my words for 2009, but I'll do a separate post for that.

Weekly Meal Wrap-up

This week was finals week, so I didn't really make a menu at all. But it's all over with now and I'm free from classes until January 20th. Like everyone else, we're also a little short on cash (nothing major, just not a lot left over for extra things), so I've decided to try to use up my massive stock-pile of food in the pantry and only buy fresh fruit and veggies from the store. So far, so good. This week we ate:

Navy Bean Soup. It never got made last week, so I made it this week. I added some liquid smoke to the recipe, and ended up adding a lot of extra salt, but it was great!

Homemade Bread. This loaf didn't raise very well, but I think my yeast may be dead. We ate it with the navy bean soup.

Vegan egg-salad sandwiches. I need to experiment a little more, but it was pretty good between slices of homemade bread.

Sausage, potato, and cabbage soup. I had some leftover homemade vegan sausages, half a head of cabbage, and some potatoes left over from the last farmers' market. Not the best soup ever, but it was warm and filling and a great way to use up some odds and ends.

Eggplant Parmesan. This would have been absolutely wonderful, except for one thing. I forgot that I'm not a fan of eggplant. For some weird reason I was craving eggplant though, and since it was on sale at the co-op, I figured it was perfect to use up some odds and ends. I'll probably try the recipe again as lasagna or with zucchini and summer squash.

Tonight and tomorrow David is at work, so I'll probably just be using up more leftovers and cleaning out the fridge. We're traveling to our respective parents' houses on Monday or Tuesday to spend Christmas with our families. I haven't decided what I'm making for Christmas dinner, but for sure there will be at least a couple of cookies and spinach-artichoke dip.

Now that I've realized that Christmas is less than a week away, I need to go finish preparing gifts and pick up a couple of gifts still.

Looking Back

Before I started writing here exclusively, I kept a blog on livejournal. Last year, I wrote this post that I pretty much forgot about until yesterday:

Just like everyone else this time of year, I've started to reflect on how far I've come this year and where I want to go next year. I never really make resolutions, because it seems like they never really last past Jan. 15th anyway. But I got an interesting e-mail the other day from one of my vegan newsletters, and it's stuck with me. Basically the jist of it is this:

If you had to pick just one word to focus your life for an entire year, what word would you choose?

One word to summarize and reflect on for a whole year. There's thousands of words in the English language, and many of them are good ones to focus on. But eventually I narrowed it down from the e-mail's list of 65 words to three related words to focus my life on for an entire year:

Health

Self-Love

Release

Health is not just losing all this extra weight, but focus even more on healthy eating. Pay attention to serving sizes, make a real effort to eat a vegan diet for the majority of the time, exercise so I don't feel my heart pounding after climbing stairs or so I can lift equipment, drink at least 2 liters of water a day, use lotion on my hands, feet, and face, make a bigger effort to stop using chemicals on my body and in my house. These aren't all resolutions, but just things that I want to give a bigger focus on in my life and even if by next year I'm just a little bit healthier, it's better than nothing.

Self-Love is a big one that I need to focus on. I'm sure most of you know, I don't have a very good self image. Although part of me tells me that how I feel isn't true, a large part of me assures me that I am fat, ugly, stupid, lazy, worthless, selfish. And for as long as I can remember, I've always felt this way about myself. I want to focus on loving myself the way I am now, with the extra weight, hang nails, zits, dry skin, not working a "real" job, putting my schooling as a priority over supporting myself and I want to focus on and find more self-love as I lose weight and become healthier. Stop letting my baggage get in the way of what I want to do; surf, kayak, hike, swim in a bathing suit, mountain bike, rock climb because I'm too fat or not in shape enough to do these things.

Release closely follows Self-Love. I want to focus on releasing all the baggage that I've been carrying around for years, all the stuff that's made me resent people, allowed little things to hurt me because they just pile on top of other little things, made me sabotage relationships and friendships and opportunities because they can't really be what they seem to be. I also want to focus on releasing all the habits and emotional baggage that has contributed to my health being the way it is. And release all this weight :)

So I cheated a little by picking more than one word (although the e-mail said that it was OK to pick up to three if you just really couldn't narrow it down), but I think that they're all closely related and feed back into one another. By working on one, I should begin to work on the others, etc. And it's better than a resolution since I'm not setting myself up for failure by saying I have to lose X amount of weight, or work out so many times a week or whatever.

Looking back at that post, I can help but be a little awed that the focus words I chose truly were the main themes of my year. I was preliminarily diagnosed with metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetes), which set me on a course to figure out if I actually have it or not (it's still up in the air), become fully vegan, and I ended up losing about 25 pounds so far this year (mostly during my Alaska road trip, in which our stove broke and we were forced to live off trail mix, rice cakes, and peanut butter for several days until we could get it fixed). I can't say when it happened exactly, but I have found a great deal of peace with myself over this year. I still have my bad days when I beat myself up about things that aren't true or possible (trying to be superwoman/perfect), but overall I have become very happy with myself and my decisions that I've made in my life. I've also found that things don't bother me as much anymore. I can let things go more easily, and while things that are said may still hurt, and I might still be upset by them, I get over them faster and easier.

It's amazing how at peace I feel. Sure, I get incredibly stressed out by classes, midterms, projects, and now finals, but I've been getting better and better at accepting the stress (maybe crying for while), and then moving on and using that energy and stress to get things done. I've learned to accept that everything happens for a reason, and to release my desire to control everything in my life.

I will be doing this again for the new year. I haven't decided what my new word(s) will be; I will get done with finals and then spend time meditating on this to figure out where I need the most work, or to find a word that feels right at this time. I think this is much better than a new years resolution, and maybe I will get one of Beautythatmoves' mantra quilts to display my word over the year. I can't remember (or find) the e-mail where this idea came from, but if anyone does, please let me know and I will link to the original authors. If you would like to participate, here is the list of words to get you started:

Compassion

Delight

Generosity

Effortlessness

Wealth

Gratitude

Abundance

Creativity

Willingness

Change

Growth

Freedom

Mastery

Kindness

Health

Presence

Acceptance

Courage

Confidence

Self-Love

Action

Forgiveness

Forgive

Release

Trust

Knowing

Patience

Friendship

Fun

Grace

Laughter

Love

Expansion

Exploration

Adventure

Openness

Discipline

Awe

Awareness

Risk

Gentleness

Choice

Spirit

Prayerfulness

Power

Allow

Artfulness

Attention

Beauty

Joy

Focus

Ritual

Heal

Order

Clarity

Pioneer

Peace

Laziness

No

Yes

Deliberateness

Commitment

Savor

Integrity

Listen

Happy World Vegan Day

As soon as I finished typing the title, I glanced out my kitchen window and spotted a huge, perfect, vibrant, arching rainbow reaching across the sky. I tried taking some pictures but my camera decided to be difficult and not actually capture the beautiful colors on the dark grey backdrop. Then, as I watched, a second perfect, whole rainbow appeared around the first. They stood there for a few minutes like giant concentric half-rings, and then slowly faded away. I'm taking it as a sign that World Vegan Day is approved by nature and that everyone should celebrate by eating vegan for today (or tomorrow, or a randomly picked day of your choosing, y'know, whatever).

It also reminded me that I'm happy to be alive, and healthy, and able to experience such beauty like the rainbows and other little moments throughout every day. Sometimes when I begin to feel crushed under the midterms, term papers, presentations, thesis's, politics, collapsing economy, and the massive amount of housework that has built up while I am busy putting it off to take care of other things, it's hard for me to be grateful for what I have and just live in the moment. But usually right when I need it most, nature tosses a little bit of beauty my way and reminds me that life isn't always this stressful.

Now that I've been completely sidetracked from what I was originally going to post about, but have been rejuvenated, I'm going to make myself some dinner, study some physics, then come back and try again. I hope everyone got to experience a little moment of beauty today!

I need a new major

I spent four hours today hunched over a microscope searching for diatoms and dinoflagellates. My eyes are tired, my back and neck hurts. I have a presentation on Monday, a physics test on Tuesday, a bio ocean cruise later on Tuesday (and VOTING, everyone should be VOTING on Tuesday!!!!), a chemistry quiz and qualitative analysis of an unknown sample due on Wednesday, a bio ocean exam on Thursday, and then finally, on Friday I get to put together kabobs for the Oceanography Society's table at the football game on Saturday. Whew. Oh yeah, and another presentation the following Wednesday.

I'm still alive, and I promise a real update is coming soon, but for now, I'm going to rest. Happy Halloween everyone!

Lucky to Study

Although this week was less stressful than last week with all it's tests, we got our tests results back this week, which added some stress. I didn't do as well as I wanted to, but I consistently did much better than average, which is good when the grades are curved at the end of the semester. Overall, I'm happy.

In the next week or so I'll start taking plankton samples from the Trinidad Pier to analyze for community structure and to monitor for harmful algae blooms (HAB). This project will be my bio ocean final project, my senior thesis project (comparing community structure between Humboldt Bay, Trinidad Head, and Big Lagoon), and a part of a state wide program monitoring HABs. Yay for multitasking! As of right now I'll only be sampling once a week (Tuesdays) and analyzing on Thursdays. I may start sampling on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I need to see how much of a time commitment this is going to be. But the good news is, I love looking at all the little critters under the microscope! So hopefully the hours of peering through the eyepiece and getting headaches will be worth it.

A perfect sampling day.

Speaking of headaches, I've had a massive one all day today that started last night. Aspirin has been keeping the headache to a dull squeeze instead of ice picks drilling through my skull, but it's still been pretty painful and annoying. The weather has been changing the last couple of days, which usually seems to trigger my headaches. Hopefully it will be gone tomorrow.

In the mean time, I'll leave you with some pictures from Trinidad Marine Lab, where I'm lucky enough to study oceanography twice a week.

A Jr. Gull on Trinidad Pier.

I get to grab a quick snack of native blackberries on the walk back to class from the pier.

Looking north from the cliffs across the street from the marine lab.

Before lecture starts, a classmate catches some waves.

Fall is in the Air

I love fall. There is no better season than fall. Crisp days, orange leaves, apples, squash, beans, hot apple cider, geese, storms, Halloween, the big Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Yep, fall is definitely my favorite time of year.

The last two weeks have been test after test after lab report after speech after test. I don't generally like waiting until the night before a big assignment/test to start preparing, but this time I was continuously staying up after midnight starting to study for a test the next morning. But the good news is, I think I did fairly well on everything. I already received my grade on the Chem II exam; 70/100. The average was a 56 and he said if he were to curve each test, a 56 would be a C-, so it's like getting a B. Not too shabby considering I haven't been successful in chemistry since high school (Mr. Null just explained everything so it made sense!). Talking to classmates it seems like I did about the same as everyone else on my physics midterm; I think I pretty much aced bio ocean, and my speech...well, I didn't black out this time, but I wish I had. It wasn't pretty. I'm not sure why I'm having so much trouble in this class, I did fine in Speech, but for some reason I get out of control nervous whenever I'm giving a speech in this class and everything goes right out the window. Oh well....

Tuesday before class I hiked out to the cliffs across from the marine lab and sat in the sun and worked on homework. The ocean was perfectly flat and there were barely any clouds out. Thursday, after the Bio Ocean exam, I had some extra time so I went for a hike up Trinidad Head. We had a storm moving in, so the waves were fairly big and beautiful. I planned on heading back out there yesterday when the waves were supposed to reach 17 foot swells, but the storm didn't move in as planned and the waves weren't nearly as high as predicted, so I decided to wait.

The storm not coming in though meant yesterday morning was a beautiful day for Pastels on the Plaza and the farmers market. Since it's fall, and fall is my favorite season, we bought five squashes (3 pumpkins, an acorn, and a butternut), lots of honeycrisp apples, some broccoli, local dried beans, local mushrooms, and beets. Afterwards we went to the Big Blue Cafe on the plaza and got pancakes.

This morning I baked the pumpkins, then froze the puree (about 1 1/2 pounds) to use later and roasted the seeds. I'll probably get a couple more pumpkins next week and do the same thing. I might also try to cube some squash for freezing, but the ones I bought this week are already spoken for.

I love fall....

Weekend Days

Yesterday was spent down at the beach with the Oceanography Society picking up trash for International Coastal Clean-up Day. We first stopped at a beach that already had five crews working on it, so we cleaned up in the dunes for a little bit (lots of bits of rope tangled in the grasses), then headed to a popular bonfire/party beach and spent two hours digging nails and broken glass out of old fire pits. We also found a large iron pipe of some sort and a wheel.

After I got back, David and I headed down to the North Country Fair on the Arcata Plaza, a two day festival started in 1973 to celebrate the diversity in our area and the beginning of fall. There are tons of art/craft, food, and information booths, and there's always live music playing somewhere in the plaza. We're planning on heading back down there today to maybe pick up a couple of things we saw yesterday for Christmas gifts and to enjoy some more music.

But since yesterday was spent away from the house, there's also the weekly cleaning, homework, laundry, menu planning, grocery shopping, and making pickles to take care of. I like trying to get most of the chores and homework done on Saturday so Sunday is left free to do cooking, canning, knitting, reading-for-fun (there's other books besides textbooks?), and spending the one day a week together that David and I both have off.

Busy and Relaxing Day

Last night I went to bed around 10, and didn't wake up this morning until 9. I was hoping to be up earlier, but I figure my body must have needed the sleep, and I didn't have any pressing plans for today, so it really didn't matter.

I got up and got dressed, and spent an hour knitting (well, most of it was spent taking out a couple of rows so that I could do them over again correctly) while reading blogs. Then I emptied the dish washer, ate leftover almond tofu for breakfast, loaded up the dishes that didn't get done last night, and ran the dishwasher.

After I got the kitchen all cleaned up, I dumped everything needed for a loaf of whole wheat bread in the bread machine and got that started, cut up and salted cucumbers and onions to make bread and butter pickles, and made a batch of watermelon raspberry lemonade to freeze for later. David and I sat down and made a grocery list, then he left for the store, and I've just now finished up the pickles and am waiting for them to finish processing in the water bath. I made three pints and a quart out of about 10 or 11 medium cucumbers. They taste so yummy though, so I might need to pick up more cucumbers next week at the farmer's market and make another batch.

Once David gets home, I'll start making pineapple zucchini bread and blueberry muffins. We're having pancakes and eggs (tofu scramble for me) for dinner tonight, so I plan on making up a bunch of extra pancakes and freezing them for quick breakfasts later this semester. My poor little freezer is packed to the rim, so after getting all the bread, muffins, lemonade, and pancakes in there I'll probably be done squirreling away food until we use some stuff up.

I have to admit, it's a little weird now opening my cupboards up and seeing things I've made myself and ingredients to make things, but nothing to eat right now (except fruit). I'll need to remedy that soon, and at least stock up on a few things that I can make a quick lunch or snack out of when I'm busy with school, but I like knowing that most of what I'm eating now is homemade and/or local.

School Life

Last week was a stress filled and busy one, and while I'm hoping that the semester gets better from here, I'm having my doubts. What's worse is that Monday was labor day, so my week wasn't even as long as it could have been.

The week started out OK on Tuesday, with Physics and Biological Oceanography (bio ocean) and bio ocean lab. Nothing too bad here, just three hours at a microscope cataloging and drawing different diatom and dinoflagellate species (such as these guys; aren't they cute?).

Both of these pictures belong to the Center for Integrated Marine Technologies since I didn't get any good pictures through my microscope.

Wednesday, however, found me a basket case as I went through work and chemistry lecture a nervous wreck due to a chemistry quiz and oceanography speech on the plastic in the North Pacific Gyre. I won't know how I did on the quiz until tomorrow, but I don't have high hopes. And I'd love to say that I needlessly worried about the speech and pulled it off wonderfully, but I really can't say that since I BLACKED OUT and have no recollection of the speech at all. I remember the guy going before me sit down, and the guy going after me standing at the front of the room starting his speech, but between that is just a vague memory of staring at my cue cards wondering what the heck language they were written in. Talking with a classmate later, I seemed to have done OK, since he said my speech was the most coherent and informative of all the other speeches. I'll take his word for it, at least until I go over the speech with my professor (and chair of the department and former boss) and get my grade sometime this coming week. David was fantastic and just held me while I cried and slowly calmed down after getting home.

Thursday was a little better, with mostly a repeat of Tuesday. My bio ocean professor (and faculty advisor) has offered me a job monitoring harmful algae blooms off our coasts as part of a statewide study. I would love to take it, but am going to wait until I know a little more about what the job requires. She is also going to help me turn the job into my senior research project that I must complete before I graduate, so that's a big bonus. And it's much closer to my field of interest than the PG&E sampling is, so unless the hours are crazy I'll probably end up taking the job. After class I headed over to the Oceanography department mixer, which was fun, but I don't do too well with lots of people. I'm glad I went though, since I'm now signed up with the Oceanography club and talked to many people about the PG&E marine sampling project and hopefully some of them will apply.

Friday I muddled through physics lab and a chemistry lecture and headed home. I don't think I've ever been more glad for a weekend. I didn't get much of anything done (like housework or canning pickles), but I've spent a lot of time relaxing and detoxing from my week, and I have my homework done, a weekly menu planned for next week, I started knitting a washcloth (and have restarted it 4 times already), and have started reading Diet for a New America, which is turning out to be very good in a kind of depressing way....

I'm off now to do some more knitting and am hoping next week will be better.

Ups and Downs

The stress from school and work is already getting to me. I woke up this morning feeling cranky and just generally depressed. Poor David was tip-toeing around all morning before he went to work trying not to set me off. Hopefully this is just a short term thing, and in a day or two I'll be back to normal.



We went to the farmers market today and picked up lots of goodies. Flowers, cantaloupe, blackberries, raspberries, apples, peaches, cucumbers (for pickling), grapes, plums, and asian pears followed us home today. I'm going to make some bread and butter pickles and possibly try to make some apple-plum butter, and once the peaches ripen completely I'll peel them and freeze them for smoothies or pie.


Now that I have my computer back, I can also show you some pictures of what's been going on over here:

Freshly canned tomato sauce.

Picking blueberries at the local pick-your-own

Getting roses from David

Student Life

Yep, I know I must be back to school now. It's 11:30 pm, and I have to get up tomorrow at 4 am to go out sampling marine algae. I'm still up because I have a bio oceanography, physics, and chemistry lab that I need to do write-ups for, a speech to prepare, 6 chapters to read, tons of homework problems to do, and sampling equipment and paperwork to gather up and prepare. And it's only the first week.



Oh boy.

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!

Back At Last

Sorry I've been gone for such a long time! I got back from Alaska July 19th or so, and then only had a couple of weeks to pack, clean, and move out of our old apartment and into our new one. Then we were unpacking, had company over twice, and have just generally been busy. I haven't been on the computer much the last month or so (I know, I'm shocked too). Also, my laptop has a virus, and hasn't been repaired yet, so getting on the computer has been a little trickier than normal.

But life has been very very good. I've spent the last two weekends canning 15lbs. of tomatoes and 10 lbs. of apples from the farmers markets, and tomorrow plan on picking fresh organic blueberries from a local farm and freezing some and making blueberry syrup with the rest to can. I wish I would have asked Cousin Diane a long time ago to teach me how to do all this canning. It's a lot of work, much more than I really thought it would be, but it's a lot of fun and makes me feel good knowing I'm doing something that hundreds of women have done before me and many others are doing the same thing this time of year. In the next few days I'm picking up some knitting needles and yarn from a fellow freecycler and will start teaching myself to knit.

With school starting on the 25th, I'm starting to feel a change in pace though. I won't have much time to do all the things my "domestic homemaker" self would like to (knit, canning, try making soap, baking bread), and am starting to gear up for the stressful, high-paced "student/working woman" self that is going to have to deal with my tough course load. I'll be taking physics, chemistry, biological oceanography, and oceanography seminar for a total of 15 units and about 20 hours of lab every week, not to mention day-long trips on the R/V Coral Sea every other weekend or so. Whew. I can feel my stress level rising just thinking about it! I'm also still the project director of the PG&E Marine Sampling program, and will have all that to deal with and take care of, plus my part time job at HSU School of Business. Most days I will leave the house at 7 am and not get back until 5:30-6:00 pm.

I sometimes feel bad about having to rely on my parents for financial support, but when I think about it, it really is like they're paying me to "work" at school. I'll spend about 35 hours a week between classes and homework (not counting weekend trips), and if I made $8.00/hour (less than what I'm making now at either job), it works out to over a thousand dollars a month that I'm not able to earn because I'm going to school. Looking at it that way, I feel a lot better about it, and it makes me want to do my absolute best, just like I do at a "real" job.

I'm off now to make a grocery list for tomorrow and to see what sort of school supplies I will need.