Day 84: Joining the circus

This is CNSC.

With the birdfish logo up and the cranes cleared from the front
of the building, I think it is finally, just about, open!

The Grand Opening is tomorrow. The preparation for it can be described in one word: Circus

The science staff finished putting up the two tents  where
the speech for the opening ceremony will occur and where
people can stand for the ribbon cutting at the front doors
(see picture above! ^). But let me describe the wind here,
on the tundra, in Churchill. It is very windy. The tents came
with these tiny little pegs, like what is used for normal camping
tents, to hold down these massive things that take 6 people
to lift, and could probably have two cars parked underneath.
The winds here can gust up to 70 km/hr! And the way the poles
were whistling (remember the whistling tower down goose creek?)
it was definitely windy. LeeAnn and Cliff, the all around
maintenance guy, fixed up a ratcheting system to thick metal
rods to keep the tent down. The ratcheting webbing vibrates in
the wind like a truck is driving by. I feel like we should have
a camera fixed on these tents at all times to capture the
moment that they flip! 

Secondary proof of circus, the balloons! Lots of balloons!
All in the CNSC blue and white. Caleigh got so light headed
that she almost passed out after blowing up 50 balloons.
There were a few other incidents as well as the balloon prep
team got more and more light headed, but we have yet to pop
any, so I call it a success! Now... what to do with all these
balloons...?

 The third reason it will be a circus:

This is the Polar Bear Sighting board. The bear activity has
definitely increased in the last couple of days as fall approaches
and bear season comes closer. With so many people out here
in the next couple of days, I really, really hope that we won't
have any bears close to the centre! That would be a circus
nightmare as the animals are released.

Past bear records starting at the beginning of June, when
I first got up here. I have only seen a very small fraction of
all the bears out there!

More bears!

More bears!

 I also wanted to show the results of our intense cleaning for the past few days before the hundreds of feet dirty the place up!

This is the atrium! With the Weston Family Welcome Centre
near the windows in the back with the comfy chairs. The
Weston family really got this whole project, of getting a new
building started. They donated a bunch of money, I don't
really know how much but think at least 6 zeros before the
decimal point, but said that the money would only be given
if the centre could match it through other donations. It
really got the centre motivated to begin the process of finding
money to build a brand new amazing building.

Gift shop! Lots of Tees! The plant on the counter is named
Bogart. It is Caleigh's plant from Thompson (I think, it
arrived after she came back from York Factory through
Thompson).

I've spent a good bit of time here after a summer with only
three pairs of pants. It took me a while to remember to add
soap. Thank you Christina for the reminders! (And the
friendly mocking!)

The Aurora Dome, at least the bottom of it. The stairs lead
to the actual dome where you can watch the stairs and the
aurora borealis and polar bears from a warm, bug free safety.
Yes, that is a polar bear pelt, a mother bear that had to be
put down after being aggressive at the old open landfill.

The Seminar Room: I've spent a lot of mornings in this room
during the Walmart 5, the morning staff meeting.

The A/V lounge: Many evenings spent watching Ghost Busters,
Harry Potter, Sound of Music, Star Wars, Wedding Crashers,
etc., etc. If you look behind the poster above the TV, there is
a bit of a surprise!

The Cafeteria! Three times a day, I spend in this room. This is
the place responsible for the bit of extra weight I've managed to
put on this summer! You would think that field work would negate
the food, but the buffet is just too overpowering!

And the ones responsible for the food I eat! Rob and Sara (Rosalind
wasn't in the kitchen at the time, but she is also a culprit!).
Thank  you for the delicious dinners and especially the deserts!
And for putting up with my vegetarianism!

Ahaa, the classic mugs that bring character
to the new kitchen. Where the choice of
beverage is complimented with the character
choice of a mug that matches your mood for
the day. Personally, I like the big, multi-coloured
striped one. But I have dabbled with many a mug!

I thought it was only fair to follow up yesterday's post with a photo, so here it is, my dear mop!

I will miss you greatly! Even if you do
get around with the other staff and
volunteers!

Day 47

Experiment 2 underway after the rain delay. Thanks for

all the help from Jessica, Ema, LeeAnn and, the one

taking the picture, Caleigh "The Cobra."

The sampling went smoothly. I don't even
have to watch!

This is adding the lake water back to the containers with
the sediment at the bottom. Ema was amazing! She came
up with a great idea to get the water in without disturbing
the sediment based on a watering can model - Making
Rain! It should be marketed! 

The concept: lots of little holes to let the water distribute
evenly over the sediment and come down slowly. So I pour
water onto this lid that has been poked with holes and then
pull up on the push pin to create a little air hole that lets
the water fall as rain! The sediment is barely disturbed! It's
amazing!

Ema had to go to a polar bear safety
meeting so I had to do this process alone.
I used a siphoning tube to add water to the
top of the lid while pulling up the pin to
make it rain. I don't know if I could stress
how fantastic this process was!

Next was setting up the pool. And while we were water brigading,
I discovered a hole in the bottom of the pool. Just a small
one where it got scrapped up a bit, so I was able to duct tape
it up. I think all is good. I have a spare pool just in case,
but this seems to work!

With the polar bears around now, we decided to set the
pool up on the roof of the old building. It meant climbing a
lot of stairs with a lot of buckets of water, but I think it will be a
lot safer. 

Plus, I get to be on the roof! On the wall next to the

little hatch that opens to the roof, there is a scribbled message:

 "No one is allowed on roof under any circumstances,

that means you!" Hehe, except me!

 

It is set up and ready. It will now incubate for two nights to let the
algae re-establish itself in the containers and I will spike them
 on Tuesday! What a long day Tuesday will be.

As promised, bowling pics!

From left to right starting at the back: "Spare me," "Hand me
the ballz," "Knock 'em down," "Snake byte," "Puddle" and
"Gutter Ball"

Day 45: Music

The Sound of Music to be precise. That's right, I'm finally watching the movie that my Dad has rejected my entire life, up here in Churchill, the sing-along version that has the words on the screen during the songs. So songs have become the theme of the night.

First song, singing in the rain.

Thursday is the normal sampling day, so I did my seven lake samples and filtering yesterday. This morning, I went out to get seven additional samples during the rain event. Yep, it's raining again. It rained all day in buckets and breaks. Today was supposed to be the day that I started the second experiment, gathering the sediment and lake water to add the nutrient spike to on Monday. However, because it was raining, and raining so hard, the sediment was extremely disturbed and the water chemistry would have been completely different from the normal days. Which is why I've been sampling the lakes during rain events. So though I couldn't start my experiment today, and plan on starting it on Sunday, I did the during rain water sampling.

I tried to take a picture of the
mosquitos, but I failed. You
can barely see them, though
I know they were there!

So while there was one break in the storm this morning, I ran out with Carley to get the during samples. It didn't rain, but the mosquitos were maybe the second worse they have been since I've been here. The worst so far was on the ATV day when I went out to hunt fox dens with Ryan. I still have some bites from that day that have yet to disappear. Today was bad though, making taking pictures of the lakes a shaky experience every time I raised the camera - slapping at my hands against my thighs every other second. I think it's the humidity that makes them come out.



I'm sampling in the rain,
just sampling in the rain.
What an irritating feeling,
And I'm bitten again...



But that was the morning. I went again right before dinner with LeeAnn. This time there was at least a breeze to keep the mosquitos away. Then I got rained on while sampling the last lake. My good karma didn't last quite long enough to keep us dry.

A moment to break out the nerd in me. There was surface flow! There was surface flow into Puddle and into Strange from the inflow areas that we've been sampling. This was the first time that I've had surface flow since my initial walk around when there was still snowmelt during my first week here!

Song number two: Un Canadien Errant.

I had 156 centrifuge tubes to label for my experiment, 156 scintillation vials, and notebooks, containers, lids and various other assorted items that had to be labeled. I got most of it done while watching Eat, Pray, Love and listening to some podcasts yesterday. Today, I labeled the 156 centrifuge tubes while watching One Week with everyone. Un Canadien Errant was one of the songs in the movie. It was a really good movie and makes me want to travel Canada coast to coast.

Maybe I have travelled to a foreign country by coming up to Churchill. And though I do miss my home, family, and friends, the sad words of the song do not fit my mood today.

I barely knew anyone up here before I arrived, only having met LeeAnn and passed by a few of the other researchers last year and at the CNSC Winnipeg conference. Now, I eat and laugh with, watch movies with and work in the field with, make dioramas and t-shirts with new friends.

I have dove headfirst into the salty, icy waters of Hudson Bay, having never swam in salt water before. I have seen snow and ice in June. I have seen polar bears and caribous, fox and hares, dunlin and godwit chicks. I have seen the season change from winter to summer, from barren brown to a purple carpet, to a white carpet, to a green carpet with touches of pink, white and purple scattered in the green peat.

Day 44: Delegation

I find it difficult to tell other people what to do. I know what has to be done and I have my lists of tasks to get done, but I find it really difficult to tell other people to do them. It's not that I don't trust that they won't do the job right, but I'm afraid that I might tell them to do something that they know is wrong, but they won't say anything because I'm supposed to be in charge. I also don't know how much they can take, so I don't know how much or how little to assign. I suppose that learning how to delegate is important if I'm ever going to be a leader or just run anything. I don't know why I find it so difficult. What am I supposed to do? How do I get better at it without offending anyone? I don't think I have that kind of confidence.

Ema and Jessica arrived yesterday. They will be helping me with my project in exchange for me bear guarding for them and helping them with their projects. So I've been telling them what to do, and will be continuing this when I take get my cores and lake water tomorrow to start the second part of my experiment, and they ask my advice on how to take a lake core or where to sample. I wish I knew more so I could truly help.

Day 40: The unexpected truth

Here's a thought: maybe nothing went wrong with my experiment at all. If something doesn't go as expected, the first instinct was to think something went wrong: so I tested the spike solution, I tested the containers, we tested the machine it was analyzed on, I tested the DI... All of the tests baffled us more because they kept eliminating the problems and saying that we did it right. What if there isn't a problem, what if what was observed are the true results?

So we got back the total phosphorus concentrations in the water. Total phosphorus measures a lot more than the soluble reactive phosphorus, the orthophosphate that  are directly taken up by plant cells. Total phosphorus is a measure of the dissolved and the particulate phosphorus. When we got the total phosphorus back, it was there! We really did everything right! The phosphorus just got converted into other forms faster than we thought possible. Definitely really interesting! It means that this pond may regulate the phosphorus geochemically before there is even a chance for the algae to really take it up.

Sometimes it is so hard to believe what is actually happening if it is different from expectations.

Day 11: First blood

I've officially been inducted into the science staff at CNSC. Before today, I was science staff in name only, now I have joined them in spirit. It turns out that there was only one thing that I had to do in order to be inducted. I'll give you a hint. The induction ceremony consisted of a lot of ice and bandages... I'll save you from the ghastly pictures. I have to back up to tell you how it happened, because there were many different ways that first blood could have been drawn today, there were several close calls.

Scenario number 1: The Fen

The fen is a flat peat swampland with a lot of standing water. Where we were
working, and where we had to carry heavy boards and an awkwardly large box,
was about 750 meters into the fen. By the end of it, I think I understood how
not to get sucked into the mucky bottom! At the beginning, I nearly fell every
couple of feet!

This morning I helped Krista and Jolene set up a giant box to hold 8 huge, heavy car batteries. I didn't realize how heavy until I had to move it from one wooden pallet to another and dropped it into the fen. So close call number one, almost onto my foot, but I missed! We then had to stack pallets to make a stable platform to but the battery box on top of. Pallets are heavy but manageable. So the problems almost happened when we had to screw the pallets and the 4x2 pieces of wood together. I wasn't the one drilling, I was stabilizing. Do you know the saying that it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye? The teasing of pushing the driller, Jo, into the water made her do some twitching movements, one of which involved a screw getting awfully close to my eye! The drill wasn't on though, and it missed. So still fun and games? You bet!

Side story: I saw a wood frog today! Yesterday? Two days ago? I've lost track of days... I heard the wood frogs calling along with the boreal chorus frogs, but I didn't have time to search for them. Today, I had a bit of down time as Krista, Jo and Kat were fiddling with the battery box. The frogs had us surrounded on the fen, calling on all sides, so I picked out one call out of the hundred or so that was close to me and tried to search the water from 15 meters or so away. I watched carefully and began to notice that when I heard the call, there was a tiny flash of light. That's it! I slowly snuck up and at 3 meters I distinctly saw the little wood frog. With each call, the vocal pouch expands, and the light reflects off of the skin, allowing me to locate them! This little guy (it was a guy because only the males croak to attack the females and warn other males out of their territory) finally stopped croaking when I was a few feet away, then it swam under the water towards me, stopped about a foot away and sat still at the bottom of the water. I touched the water right above him and he still didn't move. I reached deeper into the freezing water and it still didn't move. I could have easily picked the little guy up! When I told my supervisor up here, she told me that this is a defense mechanism so that the larger birds and fox can't find them if they are not moving. I wonder if this strategy really works though, why swim towards me?

Scenario number 2: Black box
The black box is this giant black box, hence the name, that we carry to the two sites that we are monitoring the plants for ITEX (remember ITEX? I talked about it before so I won't explain it here). The black box has all the equipment to measure CO2 consumption so we can figure out how much photosynthesis is occurring in our study plots. To power this, we have a relatively heavy 12V battery, not as heavy as the fen batteries. The battery is attached by extension cord to the black box and has to be carried separately. The cord was the hazard because I kept almost tripping on it. But that's not where I got hurt.

Scenario number 3: Coring
In preparation for my experiment I have to practice the coring methodology. So while I was doing black box with Kat, I decided to practice at the same time. My study lake isn't near the ITEX site, but there was one that has similar sediment which gives me a chance to practice. I broke out the coring tube and the bung which provides the suction to pull up the sediment and I took several cores to get the hang of the technique. I'm still experimenting with it, and I think that I need to build something that will let me slice off exactly the top 3 cm of the sediment (because I'm putting the cores into a container and then adding water on top, I need to be really precise with the amount of sediment and water because I need to add a specific volume of nutrient spike to the water which changes depending on the volume of the water which is dependent on the depth of the sediment). By the real day, I think I will have everything ready.

This is my practice lake! It was another beautiful day!
20C, light breeze, not a cloud in the sky and no bugs.
The last is the nicest because this may be the final bug-free day!

Side story number 2: The lake I was practice coring on also had a good population of wood and boreal chorus frogs. But what really surprised me was that I found an egg mass! I didn't think they would lay so soon since the first call heard was around May 28th. I don't know which frog it belongs to and my supervisor says they look very similar, but I suspect it was wood frog - though I have no science to base this on! I can't wait until there are tadpoles! I may be able to tell the difference between the wood and boreal chorus in tadpole form. I also can't wait to see a boreal chorus frog which is a tiny frog that could sit on a single finger! The small size and great camouflage is also one of the reasons I can't easily find it. I will let you know when I do.

The black circles are the eggs of a frog. A single female would have
laid all of these eggs and probably has another couple batches in other
ponds as well, a strategy adapted to life in the north. Southern frogs will
lay all the eggs together in a single, much larger mass!

Coring continued:
So back in the lab, I was showing LeeAnn the coring technique and my idea for a 3 cm extruder. She pushed the bung pretty far into the plastic core tube to see if there would be enough suction. After talking it through, I had to get the bung out using a wooden pole. Here it comes. It was really stuck in there so I pushed the wooden pole really hard against this spongy orange bung until out it pops and in goes my hand. The end of the core tube has a sharp wedged edge which helps to push it into the sediment... and into my skin. The edge caught the nail on my thumb, pulling it halfway back and the skin below the knuckles on my thumb and forefinger. First blood!

The culprits! On the right is the orange bung that goes into the long
plastic coring tube. The wooden pole with the green rubber top is what
I used to push the bung out. On the left is a container filled with sediment
 and water as a prototype for my experiment! Tomorrow, I will see if I can
actually get a cookie cut out of the top layer which is full of benthic
algae to see if that part of my experiment will really work.

I turned a bit white and sweaty, but I'm proud of myself for not letting out a scream. I had to take pain killer after dinner because it was really throbbing and any pressure shot tremors through my hand, but I don't think it was obvious on the surface. But now I'm part of the team! I guess that's worth the pain, right? Right?!

I also got some feedback about my knot post. The photos on that post are actual climbing ropes, not the tiny string that I'm using. So to be authentic, below are my knots on the tiny string. Only someone familiar with the knots and has good eyesight will be able to make it out! I made them loose to help you out a bit. (Is that better, Matt?)

Bowline

Half hitch

Double half hitch

Day 7: Run! (but not from a polar bear!)

On June 15th and 16th, I’m going to be flying! In a chopper! I’ve never flown in a chopper before! Unfortunately, this opportunity has become available to me because the grad student can’t come up for this field trip. Sorry, Nicole! I’ll dedicate my first ride in a helicopter to you!

As cool as this is, the problem with the scenario is that my experiment is planned to run during these days! That means I have to have everything in place for the experiment before I go up, especially since that will be a hectic couple of days with the massive amount of filtering that accompanies Lauren and Nicole’s Wapusk samples. I was up here last year as a field assistant, which mostly meant filtering and carrying cartons of lake water for them. (Wapusk in a national park along the coast east of CNSC.)

So I spent today getting everything in place for my experiment so it can run smoothly in parallel with the chopper! I wrote out the protocols so I have all the steps worked out before I go out to get the samples and come back with nowhere to put them. It will also allow the research staff to do some of the filtering for me when I can’t do it myself. One of the problems I came across was finding a way to keep my lake water filled containers from falling over in the kiddy pool that they will be incubating in. After trying to make a purely string grid and discovering that I had nothing to attach it to, and then thinking about making a frame I could place into the pool (thanks Krista and Jolene for bouncing ideas around with me) and finally coming up with this…!

Three dowel rods across the pool with the containers tied to the dowels with twine!
I "borrowed two broom stick handles for tow of the dowels and need to find just one
more to make this work! I will prototype soon (see, I paid attention in INTEG 121!),
but I'm pretty sure this will work!

The evening also consisted of my first run in a couple months and it was 8km! It was a whole new experience to run with someone else, and more so to run with an annoying bear monitor with a shotgun on his back! Well, I’m not sure if the shotgun was for bear monitoring or for motivation to run faster. Steve did make it feel like boot camp and I wanted to knock him off of his bike a couple of times!

Only in Churchill do you see a bunch of runners going out with a biker
with a shotgun slung over his shoulder!

It was about 2C and windy. But at least I got out!
The buildings in the background are CNSC.

I also discovered an online course sponsored by the World Federation in Science Journalism that teaches how to be a good science journalist. I read through the first lesson and did the assignments. I think this will really help me develop a better understanding of how to report science. It seems a bit more tailored to freelance journalists, but the basic concepts of article construction and interviewing will certainly relate to what I propose to do with my work. Podcasting to start soon!

Here comes the sun!

"Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it's all right." - The Beatles

This is my last night in the south and I feel like this a beginning, or better, a continuation, as I interpret the song. "It seems like years since it's been here." I was in Churchill last summer for two weeks, where I fell in love with northern research, the tundra, small towns, and good people. I'm going back! And when I go back this time, it is less of the excitement of going to a new place, but returning to a place I have just begun to know. I'm thrilled for all the new experiences that I know are around the corner, all the new research I'll be exposed to and all the new people I will meet. I'm also excited to be away from home for so long, trying out what it's like to be independent.

But I'm also a bit nervous and scared. I've never been away from home for so long, and I'm pretty sure I will get homesick if I don't keep busy. I'll miss my family and friends - you know who you are :) - and my Star - she's a cockatiel who has taught me to whistle in her language. If you find me whistling a repeated high pitched note, do not be alarmed, I am merely attempting to call to my flock-mate - whom I will miss!

And I'm a bit afraid that I will get bored. I brought a bunch of stuff to do (novels to read, an ebook reader which can keep me busy for years, textbooks to brush up on ecology and statistics, jump ropes, a yoga mat, running shoes, a sketch book, a notebook, a camera) and I hope that I don't get through all of them, that I will be busy enough with my own research, helping with other people's research, the podcast, and rifle practice so I won't have time to get bored.

Nevertheless, the unknown always scares me a little bit, but "I say it's all right!" Because I also know it will be so much fun!

Let the adventure begin, "Here it comes..."

Getting ready for field!

A task often overlooked, but quite necessary is obtaining the field haircut. Too long and you will be stuck with fighting tangled hair everyday. Too short and you can never tie the hair back out of eyes... so this was my solution!

Before

After!

Shipping Out

3 coolers filled with the precise instruments of science are waiting on the UW shipping bay to be transported some 5,000 miles and to greet me on my arrival on June 1st.

As for the precise instruments of science: I've got a couple kiddy pools, a bunch of empty sampling containers to be filled, and a couple bottles of chemicals that are hazardous to your health in various dreadful ways.

Planning is done for now, and I can only hope I've planned enough to have what I need up there when I get there.

Preparing the Experiment

The measure I use for how significant an event or person is in my life is it's appearance in my sleep. For example, when winter begins to approach, I suddenly develop these dreams of speeding down a mountain, carving and flying through the snow. Floating on top of white with the tips of my skis. Those are nice dreams.

Last night, I dreamed that I had hundreds of these clear plastic containers. Everywhere I looked, there were these ominous... plastic... containers. And I had to sort them so that each container had the right contents - the right lake water and sediment and the correct volume of nutrient, phosphorus or nitrogen, added. A herculean task which exhausted me in the dream as much as it had during the actual day of planning for this experiment. Not the most pleasant of dreams.

It looks so innocent, but don't be tricked.
This little cup has become the current
bane of my existence.

The trouble with field work is the uncertainty of every decision. This exact set up has never been done before so there is no procedure sheet in a lab manual that I can just follow and be happy with. That, and I really don't know what I'm doing. I can try to plan for the things that I need, but I am in so far over my head (ha, water joke when I'm doing limnology - study of lakes... haha. K, not so funny) in this field. Especially the chemistry. It's been a while since I took chem, and I've never had to actually apply any of it so it never really stuck. And that is where this experiment is coming up against a wall. The pressure to get this planned fast is pushing from behind and I know on the other side of the wall, there is the lake and the tundra, but the chemistry has firmly built itself, cinder block by cinder block, in front of me.

So there's that hurdle. Then there's the whole bit about having to make sure that I have everything I need for the next 3 months.

Oddly enough, this is following pretty closely to the to do list of my first post. That's good, right?

Standard First Aid and CPR/AED Level C - Check

After completing this course I think there are 3 things that everyone should know:

1. Take a First Aid course! Become familiar with basic signs and symptoms of someone hurt and become familiar with basic ways to help, especially breathing and bleeding problems. It is so easy to save someone's life if you take one course. Who knows? You could save the life of the prof in whose course you are failing - instant extra credit! A course can also help you recognize life-threatening situations so you know when to...
2. Call 911! The sooner, the better. You can always call back and cancel or upgrade the priority. Paramedics prefer to come to a false call than to a call that has been delayed and the person's life is now severely threatened. So when you call, tell them 4 things:
1. Location: They can find out where you are on a land-line, but not on a cell. If the EMS can't find you, they can't help you! Tell them where you are. If you are in a building, be specific and send someone outside to guide the firefighters and EMS in when they arrive.
2. What happened?: The EMS can prepare for what's to come with potential injuries that you can't see yet.
3. Number of people injured: This may seem obvious, but if you don't tell them and you have 3 people injured and only one ambulance shows up...
4. How bad?: Are the people conscious or unconscious? Bleeding? Breathing? Is it something like a heart attack or stroke? This will help EMS rate the call from a 1 (not severe - "Ouch! I got a paper cut!") to a 4 (extremely severe - "You cut my leg off, you *-insert sequence of personally preferred profanities here-*!!!!).
3. Don't run away! It seems to be that the human instinct is to crawl off into a corner and die - at least it is with choking. We are all guilty of it. You are sitting in a meeting and get something stuck in your throat and you start coughing and tearing up, so you make a v-line to the door and lock yourself in the bathroom where you can privately hack your lungs up. Now that grape you were eating gets completely stuck... you can't breathe... you're banging on the door... but no one's around... the next bathroom seeker finds you laying on the dirty bathroom floor, your deathbed. Don't run away! Call 911 and go towards people - run outside where someone can find you! I feel like this applies to all injuries in addition to choking. And if you see someone running away, follow them or get them to stay and not panic.

Of course there is much more to learn, so take the course, learn the acronym FAST for stroke and learn how to do CPR, how to use an AED, and carry gloves, a face shield, and a cell with you at all times.  You can save a life.

Getting Excited!

Me at the mouth of the Churchill River last year. I can't wait to go back!

With my last exam finished and the last assignment handed in, I'm starting to get really excited for the summer! I'm starting out in Waterloo, ON, then will be in Churchill, Manitoba for 2.5 months!

So for the next month, I will be planning out my experiment that I will be conducting up north and getting ready to spend the summer there.

So much to do:

• Take a First Aid Course
• Get my PAL - Rifle license
• Plan out the experiment
• Research everything related to the topic
• Narrow down the research question
• Figure out the methods
• Find out that the methods don't work according to the literature
• Research some more
• Figure out new methods
• Order materials
• Run a trial experiment to see how it all works
• Find out it doesn't work
• Go back to beginning and try to apply what I learned the first time through
• Frantically come up with something to bring with me to Churchill
• Continue adjusting until it seems to be working
• Make it work
• Go to Churchill and run the experiment
• Cross fingers!
• PALS (Paleolimnology Conference) to present Churchill work from last summer
• Add new data
• Re-analyze data
• Discover that the data is saying something completely different than I thought it had been saying
• Slave over powerpoint
• Travel to Montreal
• Present (woohoo!)
• Cross fingers that no one will ask a hard question!
• Prepare the podcast! I'm in Knowledge Integration at UW, which means I get to do a really cool thesis! I've decided to make a podcast about everything I'm doing in Churchill!
• Find a supervisor
• Find money/grant to buy or rent a good mic and recorder
• Figure out how to interview people
• Figure out how to make a podcast
• Get a friend to record some cool music
• And in a simplified version... Be ready to pump out podcasts every week as soon as I get to Churchill! (Yea, I'm optimistic! Or naive!)
• Prepare to go to Churchill
• What to pack?!? Is it winter or summer or...?
• Forget the most essential thing to bring, which is... which is... I can't remember...
• Throw a Polar Bear themed good-bye party