I'm a little slow lately.

Now, finally, a week later, I'm putting these Intertidal Zone pictures up.

If you want to know where this was, it's Fort Stark in Newcastle, NH. Very nice place. Here are some "Look how pretty it is" shots.



The rocks had cool layers to them, like ribbons.


And now, the lab. We lay out two of these little plots and counted all the organisms in them-- the seaweed, snails, barnacles, and mussels. Look at all the barnacles! That was annoying to count-- there were over 400.


There were three kinds of snails. The one on the far left is a carnivorous snail, not native to the region. It eats by latching on to other shellfish and scraping a hole through the prey's shell. The next one is also not indigenous-- we know of it as the common periwinkle. The third one, the tiny one, is the native aquatic snail in this region, also a periwinkle.



Also, I found an empty sea-urchin shell.


It's a great area, lots of tidal pools and fun to explore.

And there weren't even any bears!

So about yesterday.

We went to College Woods for lab to identify and count trees. First he told us all about the different kinds of trees you could find in the area, most of which we didn't actually find ourselves. Then he had us each measure out two four meter-by-four meter squares in the middle of the woods, measure the diameter of each tree in them, and identify it. This wouldn't have been that bad except that your average 4m x 4m plot of woodland has about 30 trees, some of which are quite large in diameter and required multiple people to measure (our biggest was 79 cm in diameter) and all of which like to poke you. Some were hard to identify-- we had to look at my camera pictures and get some help to figure out the red oak-- but about 95% of them were eastern hemlock. I got really sick of hemlocks.

Here are the trees we found:


Also, some pretty shots of the woods:






I need to go there for walks more often. It's not that far from campus.

Bog Blog

So yesterday I went on a field trip in Ecology to Lee Bog. Which is a bog. In Lee, NH. More specifically, a sphagnum bog, protected by the town of Lee.

We got there and first he took us to this little place:


Which I was very proud of myself for knowing that it was a vernal pool, before he even said it. Vernal pools are puddles that always show up in the same spot. I thought the dip at the end of my driveway was a vernal pool, but it turns out it's just a drainage problem.

Then we started our walk. Thankfully it was not a hike. Along the way he pointed out a bazillion white oaks, which are some of the few plants we actually will have to identify for this class. This is a white oak and white oak leaves up close.












I can't remember the name of this next plant, but you can eat the little purply-blue berries. They're very bitter and usually only birds eat them.


This is eastern hemlock. Unlike the hemlock that killed Socrates, this is not poisonous, and is in fact edible. The leaves are, anyway.


This is Lee Bog. It's kind of pretty. The little scraggly evergreen trees are black spruce, which only grows in bogs, at the timberline, and in the tundra. They need it to be rather cold and harsh. Bogs are cold because the water in them is blocked by the vegetation, so it can't circulate.




Notice the other pine trees are kind of scraggly. That's because bog soil doesn't have a lot of nutrients.

This is the sphagnum moss, which is what creates the bog. Rotting sphagnum makes the bog soil jiggle when you poke it with a stick, like jello pudding. Muddy, stinky, freezing cold jello pudding.


The nearby trees are all yellowed because of chlorosis, which means they aren't getting enough nutrients.


Bogs are usually surrounded by plants that do well in tundra environments too. This is reindeer moss, so called because reindeer like to eat it.


We walked through the woods, too, and he pointed out the canopy effect-- plants can't grow because the caonpy takes up all the light.


This is the American Chestnut.


It's almost extinct because humans accidentally introduced a chestnut fungus to the New World that the European and Asian chestnuts were resistant to, but the American one was not. They are incredibly rare; apparently there are only about three or four trees that are known to be breeding and that's only because their root systems are all but immortal, so when the tree dies off from the fungus the roots send up new trees. Which then get attacked by the fungus. Sucks to be an American chestnut.

And this is the pretty foliage on one of the trees by Parsons Hall.

So that was my Tuesday field trip.

Short because I have homework

I actually did pretty well in lab today-- finished quickly and didn't break anything, not even a tiny disposable capillary tube. Of course we were just boiling, melting and calculating density but I was still proud of myself.

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It has been ridiculously hot all day. I've been melting. It's September, dammit, I want fall.

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Continuing with the whole "make a new opinion blog" idea-- if I do this, I'm thinking of calling it "Naïveté," because I fully acknowledge up front that I am naive but I have my points as well.

I still don't know if it's a good idea or not...

I was upset about lab, but Ryter made me feel better about it.

Today is the first day of the Mercatus, four days of markets and fairs.

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This morning I got the Gardasil vaccine and then donated blood, as they were running a drive in the MUB. I almost got denied because of my anemia but I ultimately passed, if barely. I think the nurse damaged my vein pulling the needle out, it's a bit bruised, but I'm okay. The guy in the cot next to me nearly passed out. He then said, "I think I lasted longer this time, last time I passed out after five minutes and the time before that I only got to the needle going in."

Then. Why. Are. You. Still. Trying.

Moron...

Well intentioned. But still kind of a moron.

As for the Red Cross themselves, it's kind of funny. I never give them money. Blood, yes, because I know what they do with the blood. But they only spend about 10% of what they get in donations on charity, the other 90% is for "administrative purposes."

Like after Katrina, apparently they turned down a free place for their volunteers to stay in a boarding-school dormitory in favor of a really expensive, fancy hotel that was farther away, because they didn't want to take non-monetary donations. That money could have helped victims; instead, it went to putting minibars in the volunteers' rooms.

But the blood, at least, goes to the people who need it. Not that I don't think for one minute that if it were legal to buy and sell blood they would always be in "critical need" of monetary donations to buy it, while actually harvesting it from third-world illegal immigrants who have been raised since infancy on nothing but antibiotics, liver and spinach so as to have high quality blood while living in cages and peeing in bedpans.

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I had my first "real" Organic lab today. It was disastrous. I already owe the school about $7 in broken glassware, I don't really understand the concepts and I think my TA got rather annoyed with me by the end of it...

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Did you hear about the 900 lb man with Prader-Willi Syndrome (which makes you perpetually hungry) who had to have firemen lift him out of bed to go to the hospital?

I think Prader-Willi is fascinating, and heartbreaking. Basically these are people who constantly feel like they're starving.

If, god forbid, I ever had a kid with this, I would let them eat-- but healthy, low-calorie food, and only if they were athletic. And I mean Olympics athletic. Go to school, come home, work out and eat at the same time. Make it fun-- soccer, races, whatever-- but still burn massive amounts of calories. Basically give them exercise anorexia to go with their Prader-Willi. And if they get too tired to continue, let them eat celery non-stop. You can eat celery constantly and won't gain weight from it. I would buy massive amounts of celery and say, "When you need to eat and you aren't at meals, eat this."

Of course I would also give them GH, which helps with other symptoms like short stature and muscle mass, and push them academically to help them overcome the learning disabilities, but the main problem is the food preoccupation, it's the most dangerous for their health. Apparently you have to keep their food under lock and key. I think the hardest part would be explaining that despite their severe hunger, they didn't need food. A parent would probably have to measure out their own amount of calories as well, until the kid would be surprised at people who ate without counting calories-- treat food as something you just do to take care of yourself, not something enjoyable. Like taking vitamins. Being a bad cook might help.

Still, it's very sad, and I think that the brother of this man, who allowed him to get that heavy despite being his caretaker and who let him have a credit card and allowed food to be delivered, should be tried for negligent domestic abuse, and, should the poor guy die of obesity-related issues, manslaughter. As should anyone who is such an enabler for a person who is morbidly obese.

"He has the grace of a hippopotamus and a penguin's love child."

Still the Ludi Romani. I figured I should explain what the Ludi Romani is, exactly. They were games, with races (games in the Circus Maximus) for last four days, and they had dramatic performances (a rarity in Rome-- they, like Americans, preferred comedies and satires). It would start with a solemn procession, then chariot races and footraces. And no one really had to work. Well, the rich people didn't. THere should me more 15-day-long holidays in modern culture, don't you think?

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I made a bazillion phone calls this afternoon, but my bills are paid and the credit cards are canceled, at least. And I have an appointment at Health Services. I'm going to get the Gardasil HPV vaccine thingy. Mummy's been pestering me about it.

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Also, I had my first Orgo lab today-- not a real lab, just an intro. Because most of our equipment is crazy expensive, they've given us keys to "our drawer," where we have a full set of everything and no one else uses it. Thus, they can catch us if we break something. And make us pay through the nose for it.

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The other night I was talking to Ryter about future careers and he mentioned that his psychiatrist told him the money's in child psychiatry. This devolved into a mini-debate, because I find most modern child psychiatry to be akin to plastic surgery.

Both are sometimes needed, badly. There are children (by which I mean under 10) who are actually mentally ill, for whom early intervention is a godsend. Also, some children have post-traumatic stress disorders or autism or some other issue that is beyond normal pediatrician and parental care. At the same time, accident victims are often badly disfigured and require reconstruction, or children are born with deformities that require correction.

And yet, just as most people who go to plastic surgery actually need self-esteem, a supportive social network, diet, exercise and maybe counseling, most children who are sent to psychiatrists these days need parents.

ADHD, "depression," lack of motivation, imaginary friends-- parents assume that if their kid isn't the same as every other kid or different in a brilliant/precocious/cute way, he needs therapy. ADHD? Most kids diagnosed with ADHD are just hyperactive with short attention spans. Maybe they need a little Ritalin, if it's a problem in class. Don't get me started on depression. Kids are impressionable. Usually depressive tendencies can be countered by loving, attentive parents who still know how to give their kid space, and maybe a change of schools. Usually they just need to make some friends. And if my children DON'T have imaginary friends I'm gonna worry that they're being creatively stunted somehow.

Ryter argues that sometimes kids just need to talk. You know who I talked to when I was a kid and upset or hurt? My mom. She was my confidante and adviser and counselor. Yes, teenagers are rebellious and don't talk to their parents. Nothing I say here applies to teenagers. Teenager-hood is 5-8 years of PMS, essentially. If that's not enough to send you into therapy I don't know what is.

BUT. The truth is, if your kid needs therapy because they "need to talk," you aren't being a good parent. A good parent makes sure their child knows that they aren't judgmental, they will listen and be there, etc. No kid should be afraid to talk to their parents for any reason. Note I said "kid," because no one expects a conversation that starts out with "Mom, I think I should go on the pill" to end well.

Kids have problems that seem huge to them, but small to us. They're problems a parent can handle (some exceptions, naturally-- "Mommy, the priest touched me in the private place" won't end well either).

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be child psychiatrists, clearly. I'm saying that I could never be one (for reasons besides the obvious "couldn't be any kind of psychiatrist"). Because while I could treat the truly ill children, if I got some moron parent in there looking for an ADHD diagnosis to explain why their kid doesn't listen to them, I would tell them that I won't treat their kid until they take a parenting class, got some counseling, and took some time off work to play with the child. I doubt that would go over well...

I haven't forgotten, but I don't dwell.

The Ludi Romani continues.

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I was talking to Cellamica at dinner today, and the topic strayed over towards previous roommates, and she shared a very interesting story with me...

Imagine you're sleeping in a dorm room, and you wake up and the bunk is shaking. You look around sleepily, then, you happen to glance into the unfortunately-positioned mirror to see two sets of feet hanging out of the bunk over you, and a squirming set of bodies under a blanket.

Her roommate was having sex. In the top bunk of a bunk bed. While she was sleeping underneath.

I can't imagine what I would do in that situation. She said she just turned over and tried to not think about it, I mean, it's not like she could leave without it being awkward, and it was apparently really early in the morning...

I'm just amazed she didn't immediately request a roommate switch, I would have. But instead she stuck it out, and a while later she was working on her computer and her roommate had sex with a guy on the top bunk while she was in the room, and clearly awake. All that was covering them was a sheet.

God. That is just... man. Wow.

Best part? This girl is a girl that Ryter once mentioned to me before, in the context of "I once was attracted to her," so I got to inform him with a bit more glee than was probably fair that he was once attracted to an incredibly inconsiderate slut (to be fair, he stopped liking her when he started picking up on how obnoxious she was). Whee!

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My Ecology lab was outside today. It was raining. As in, downpour. It was depressing not only because I got soaked despite Cellamica loaning me her umbrella, but also because it was a really interesting lecture-- at least the parts I could hear while the rain drummed down on my umbrella and those of the people around me, and on the brook we were looking at. He was talking about invasive species, the species of plant that humans introduced to the area that have been damaging local environments, and he was throwing in survival tips as he went, like "This is poison ivy, note the shape of the leaves;" "Crush up the berries of this kind of sumac and you can make a kind of lemonade;" "The juice of this native kind of impatiens is an antidote to poison ivy," and "Do not eat any part of this plant or you will die immediately," which I kind of wish I could have heard the name for, in retrospect, especially after that lovely story about that gardener who mistook a root of it for a ground potato, ate it, and died.

Not that I normally go about eating random tubers I dig up. But knowing that the antidote to poison ivy grows all over College Ravine is useful. I just wish I could have listened to that lecture without mud in my shoes.

"You are a Person of Culture, Cultivate It"

It's the festival of Hecate At the Crossroads, today. You may have heard of Hecate, but if you have, it's probably as the witch-goddess because that's how disaffected Hellenistic Neopagan teenagers like to see her, so they can call her their patron goddess and dress all in black and pretend to communicate with the dead. Or maybe you've just read Shakespeare's Macbeth. But in reality, while she was goddess of witchcraft and necromancy, that wasn't the most important aspect of her.

As goddess of crossroads, Hecate was depicted as having three faces- a young woman's, a middle-aged woman's, and an old woman's. Three masks would be placed on a pole at the crossroad (a Y-intersection) so each faced a different direction. This festival honored that aspect of the goddess-- as a deity of the wilderness and untamed areas. Travelers left her food as offerings to ensure safe passage through dangerous areas-- especially women who were traveling alone.

If you go onto Hellenismos discussion boards talking about who people feel is their patron god or goddess, a lot of people claim Hecate. This amuses me because half of them haven't a clue what she's about except that the witchcraft connection will annoy their parents.

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Last night at lab I switched partners, but I swear it wasn't because the girls kicked me out. My new lab partner just joined the class and she knew me from Classical Mythology last semester. I'll mention her enough to name her, I guess... Her name will be Maritima ("Of the sea," because she's studying marine biology). Anyway, the lab thing worked out anyway, for last week-- turns out the group section of the lab wasn't that big a deal.

In other lab news, turns out I don't have to worry about lab reports for Biology. You have no idea how happy I was when I learned this. I was dancing. On the inside, because I was in Chem lab.

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Today's Bio lab took forever. I was so proud that I left yoga early enough to get there on time, with enough time to make sure I looked reasonably presentable and didn't smell (which meant five minutes early). But then I was looking at bacteria and protists for hours and I had to squeeze the wood-digesting bacteria out of a termite's butt, and the first time I didn't do it right and the second time I squeezed too hard, killed it, and still didn't do it right, so the professor had to do it for me on account of my lab partner being adverse to the squeezing of termites. The professor didn't even try to be humane, like I had been- he just disemboweled the little bug and tossed him aside, without even crushing his head so he'd die fast. And the professor didn't even do it quickly enough! Termite butt bacteria-- which, in case you're curious, are the things that make it possible for termites to digest wood-- can't survive long exposed to oxygen, and he waited too long before he put the cover slip on so the bacteria was dead anyway. I mean, we saw them, but not for very long.

Plus Maritima, who is also in Bio, was asking for a partner for this project we're doing on phyla, and I thought to myself, "I'd love to, as long as we aren't expected to work with our regular lab partners" but it came out as "Well, uhm, okay, but I have to, uhm, ch-check with my lab partner, but if she doesn't, like-- if she doesn't want to work with me, then I-- I mean, I guess..."

At that, she said, "Oh, okay, it's cool," and then another guy came up behind us and said, "Maritima, I don't have a partner for the project" (except he used her real name). So she partnered with him, on account of his actually being able to talk correctly, and then I learned that my lab partner already had a project partner and I would up having to wait around until everyone else partnered off. Luckily the girl who wound up without a partner was my lab partner last semester, so it's not a total stranger. Or a guy.

I really do talk like that, by the way. And Maritima's a girl, so it's not just guys that make me stammer. If I don't know someone, or I only know them a little, or I feel uncomfortable around them for any reason, it comes out peppered with "uhms" and half-finished sentences trailing off into new phrases. I basically have to have my words prepared ahead of time, in my head at least.

I wasn't exactly expecting Maritima to ask me to work with her right after she asked Incredibly Hot Guy (who's best friend, Flirts With TAs, is in the class so he had a partner already). I mean, like, hell of a comedown. Thus, I was hopelessly unprepared.

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Anyway, lab had plenty of awkwardness, for me, and it let out at 4:45, giving me fifteen minutes to run back to my dorm, get my personal statement for the Healthcare seminar thing, and run back to Dimond Library for the 5:00 meeting. Then I read my stupid personal statement on "Why I want to be a doctor--" you know, I had the worst trouble writing that, because I honestly haven't a clue why I want to be a doctor. But that's an issue for another day. I spouted off something about fascination with human physiology that made me sound cold and a great deal like Dr. House, and then ran back here at 5:30 to quickly change my shirt and go to dinner with Loquatia before swing class.

I was tired and under dressed-- I was still wearing workout pants and I'd just thrown on a T-shirt in my rush, and everyone else looked like they were going to class-- when I got to Swing, and emotionally, I was completely frazzled. Add in the fact that this week, the numbers of attractive guys without pre-determined dance partners (I don't know if they were single-- but they didn't have dance partners) was double last week's number and that we were learning new steps very quickly, and you have me stammering and stumbling around for an hour, watching the clock and wishing my hands weren't sweating so much.

Great.

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What is it about Wednesdays? They sucked last semester, too.

My Social Anxiety Level: 68%

"You have high social anxiety. You have a pretty serious social phobia, and it effects your life more than you may realize. It's possible that you've made yourself comfortable by avoiding situations you dread. But don't be fooled - you still probably need professional help." Yeah, well, tell me something I don't know...

Are You Socially Anxious?