| namesake |
[Jul. 11th, 2006|07:03 pm]
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Today I was talking to Kira and some of the redstart girls about Raleigh (our supervisor), and how awesome his name is: Raleigh J. Robertson, I'm pretty sure the J. stands for John. The whole "RJR" thing really gets me - makes me want to give my kid symmetrical initials. His stamp says RJR, and whenever anyone cites him in a paper they just put "RJR". Pretty cool. (...not like I'm gonna go by "SAC". sigh.) Anyway, today we were all waiting on a grandkid, and his daughter-in-law had opted not to know the sex of the baby. Raleigh has two children, each of whom has one daughter - so you can imagine how pleased he was - we all were - to hear this: 7 pounds, 6 ounces, Raleigh J. Robertson, Jr.
The legacy continues.
Small sidenote, how likely is it that I meet a guy who lets me give my name to our potential future kids? I speak as the granddaughter of a man who I respect more than anyone in the world; daughter of his only son. |
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| birdsex-eriffic |
[May. 7th, 2006|12:05 pm]
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Today during nest checks I opened a bluebird nest box to find eggs hatching. Four of them were fully hatched, shells already taken away by the mother, one egg had little cracks in it, and the other was a nestling sitting in half his egg, wearing the other half of the egg as a little hat ... I love my job.
Yesterday during our (5:30-8:30) copulation watch, it poured rain the entire time, and Kira and I were pretty much huge bitches to each other for the entire 3 hours, followed by a massive hilarity breakdown of the "holy fucking fuck, I can't believe we just sat in the FREEZING COLD RAIN for THREE HOURS watching STUPID BIRDS HAVE SEX! AHAHAHA!"
Surprisingly, the birds I was watching didn't seem too phased by the rain. Although poor little G7 dude kept getting rejected by his woman, but he just kept trying for it.
The norweigans are awesome, and the fact that they are taking sperm samples just leaves so many windows open I don't even know where to start .... I know the norweigan word for bird ('fugel' or something, they kept fighting over whose dialect to teach us words in), and every once in a while they'll be speaking to each other and all I catch is "norweigannorweigan--masturbatethebird, terje!--norweigan" They're all, "we'll take sperm first, then he'll be quite relaxed for us to take his blood, yes? smile. shall we light him a little cigarette?" |
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| bridget's grid |
[Apr. 28th, 2006|07:06 pm]
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Tree swallows are so beautiful. After having one as my desktop picture for so long, today felt as though I was meeting someone famous. I have to read about a million papers before our days get hectic (3:30 am to ... 5:30 pm??). Funny conversation today with Raleigh - - he had trouble convincing the receptionist at the bio dept. at Queen's to just fill in our pay sheets as 35 hours per week. She was all "But why can't they just do it? I'll have them email me their hours every two weeks, would that be easier?" In Raleigh's words: "I feel better having her lie about your hours than having you lie about your hours." My response: "Jeez Raleigh, what's everyone got against slave labour?" ... a little too sarcastic for 1st day on the job? Mayhaps. Oh well, we wouldn't do it if we didn't love it. Plus the no days off totally evens out, they pay me for 2 weeks after I'm done working, woot! And really, isn't living at QUBS really one big summer long day off in itself?
I drove that huge green van pretty well, so pleased! Also, I think my mean boyfriend days are over : ) Too bad mean boyfriend had a super nice family : ( Oh well. Tonight - peppercorn chicken, basmati rice and peas for dinner, pabst on the side. Tomorrow - copulation watches at 8, nest checks for the rest of the day. This morning I opened what I thought was an empty box, and barged in on an incubating eastern bluebird - - so cute! |
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| “Birds, not rooted to the earth, are among the most eloquent expressions of life.” |
[Apr. 24th, 2006|11:40 pm]
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~ Roger Tory Peterson
Last exam today, QUBS in 3 days. Oh man. Team TRES, beer bobbing, 5 am mornings (...2:30 am mornings? Crazy Norweigans.), ridiculous drunken parties despite 5 am mornings ... the shaker ... this summer is going to be awesome. I decided. AND there's a TV in the white house, so I still get to watch the playoffs! Plus I have a brand-spanking-new "Canon S2 IS", so not a moment will be missed (nor a bird, since the zoom is 12X!).
I've been realizing lately that I really want to get good at taxidermy - of the bird and non-bird variety. The downside to realizing this now instead of last summer is that Javier and Kevin won't be at the station this year, so if there's no one else who knows how to stuff things, I guess I'll just have to pick up where I left off. I'm fine with little warblers, I think, but I've never tried anything bigger. Good thing there's a freezer full of dead birds! (some of them kind of mangled, so I won't feel too bad if I do a crappy job)
On a slightly girlier note, in celebration of being done third year, I have decided to go get a pedicure. Definitely have never done this before, hopefully it doesn't take too long and isn't too expensive. I also tried the leg-shaving thing again, and I'll admit I found it to be rather satisfying (yes dan-que, I have been 'shimmering' for about the last 3 years now - - I guess out of laziness. Also really - come on, shaving your legs? Who invented that one?). And, the other day I actually stepped foot in the body shop. Folks, she's a real live girl. Maybe I'm just trying to fit it all in before my summer of being gross all the time and not caring.
5:00, Jock Harty Arena (clergy doors); PSYC 272, row 14, seat 9: "The examination is now over. Please stop writing. Remain seated until your row is called. And now, for your listening pleasure, Frank Sinatra."
Oh Queen's, I love when your quirky goodness shines through.
(It wasn't really frank sinatra, but he did have a rich baritone voice and a good hat.) |
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| Stoic except where it really counts. |
[Apr. 11th, 2006|05:17 am]
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Anticipation is so much better than actually having anything. I love where I am right now, so pleasantly unsatiated, optimistic.
I can, and often do, imagine a million little scenarios for how these next 3 months will play out. And they're all fantastic. Just a little bit more time alone with my thoughts (and these piles of work I seem to hide quite well behind) and I'll have to play this out in real time, the part I'm scared of. No beatles soundtrack. A little more fatigue. Politics. Sometimes it amuses me how easily I'm swayed.
Two free weeks. Started on the TRES papers tonight. Shit man. A lot of research has been done on tree swallows ... most of it by my supervisor. I guess that's good. Same names over and over; Stutchbury, Lombardo, I feel like I know them. I sort of hope they all left something for me to find; a little gift just the right size for an honours thesis. Maybe it'll take the shape of mate choice-copying. Or maybe Raleigh is full of it and it's stupid to study mcc without an aviary ... and a whole lot of control. That I won't have. How am I going to deal with these birds if I can't even tell who's who? (TRES don't get colour bands; their legs aren't visible enough for there to be any point in doing it)
( at least he's gorgeousCollapse ) |
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| surprisingly painless |
[Apr. 3rd, 2006|07:03 pm]
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| [ | mood |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | final fantasy - the CN tower belongs to the dead | ] |
G2 = owned.
sweet.
Only one driving test until I become a real person (not for a year ... not even going to think about it)
...am i seeing things, or is that little triangle man saying (or at least holding above his head) "P H D"? Yes, I would feel quite accomplished if I had just finished a PhD. This time, it's just a drivers license. But I'm not complaining. |
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| until we canned our love |
[Apr. 1st, 2006|12:27 am]
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| [ | music |
| | beautiful, beautiful music | ] |
ahhhh, can't wait for final fantasy show!!! Whatever powers made it so that I found this wonderful music, and shortly thereafter realized said wonderful music would be coming to *my* grad club in 11 days, I love you. Swoon. |
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| days like these call for chinese buffet |
[Mar. 30th, 2006|04:20 pm]
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Well, I failed my driving test in the worst way possible: "FAIL TO ATTEND" is what it says on my receipt. Apparently my test was scheduled for march 20th. Except that the print-out I cleverly left at home says march 30th. So I paid the bastards $25 to re-book, and mentally added that to the 10 dollars I had to pay them when they sent my replacement license to the wrong address, and I had to pay for a third one. Sorry, 35 dollar ticket to the biology banquet, I guess I won't be buying you this year.
(Hate. MTO. So. Fucking much.)
Also being poor sucks. Maybe I should get a job. OH WAIT. i HAVE a job. That I need a drivers license for! Beautiful!!
When I was in Ottawa, I used to keep track of how much money phone booths owed me - - sometimes they would steal my money, but on the odd occasion, I would find a quarter in the change slot. Funnily enough, by the time I moved to Kingston, it had evened out. Me and phone booths, we're cool now.
Come to think of it, I did find ten bucks on the ground last week. Maybe, to soothe my soul, I'll pretend it was the mto's half-assed attempt at reconciliation. Sorry, ministry of transport. You are totally still in the doghouse. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 29th, 2006|02:31 am]
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ok, about how I have until now been an incompetant public speaker, and that has been my biggest foreseeable roadblock on the road to becoming a successful ornothologist / entomologist / whatever ... In a span of a couple of months I will have given: that birding talk to the kingston field naturalists (a freakin hundred of them), tropical bird breeding strategies (field course), sea turtle navigation, insect sex pheromones (seminar classes), SCB thing (presenting lesson plan),"how to plant a native / butterfly / bird-friendly garden" (GreenUp environmental fair), and taught a 2 hour lesson (read: fun games) to a bunch of grade 5 kids on food webs and ecosystems. Powerpoint and stage fright: you have officially been pwned.
Thursday is that day - - I hope it works out. We've practised the whole lesson plan down to the wording, and I've (hopefully) whipped those education committee kids into shape as to what the message has to be, and how to be clear with 10/11 kids. I still remember people coming into my class when i was in grade 4 or so, and telling us about ways we could conserve water and energy around the house. "Taking a shower uses a lot less water than taking a bath - - but, leave the plug in once to see if you're wasting too much water taking too long a shower" I remember being told to put a brick in my toilet ... come to think of it, most of the environment-friendly education I received in school had to do with saving water, which is probably an artifact of living in the semi-arid part of the prairies. I never really thought about it. My school did have a wicked recycling program, and all these eco-friendly ideas, and you were never allowed to use a fresh piece of paper unless you had a good reason to. And we had all these banners up, like "we are now an emerald level school in recycling". You wouldn't really expect that from southern alberta.
So. I think the original point of that paragraph was, I've taken a "get them while they're young" attitude to conservation biology. Kids suck up so much, it's unbelievable. I hope all teachers realize, and are stunned by the power they hold. I hope the right people usually become teachers.
all for now.
( yellow-breasted chatCollapse ) |
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