Adventures of a Birdgirl

Nene!

2012-01-31T23:33:00.001-05:00

So here is your first of what will probably be many lessons on hawaii. Nene, or the Hawaiian Goose, is the state bird of Hawaii. It looks a lot like a Canada Goose, which many of you are familiar with, but it is only found in Hawaii and is really cool looking.

Today I got to see them for the first time, despite several attempts when I was here in November. Three of the guys I'm working with and I went on a bike ride, down through Hilo and out to the beach. It was a great ride, and along the way we stopped and saw these guys :)

I am a bit sunburnt, but it was a very fun relaxing day and I don't feel jet lagged much at all, though the time still feels off, it's only 630 but I'm already tired.

Tomorrow we're talking about going down to the green sand beach down by south point, but we're not entirely sure what we'll do. The last member of our crew arrives tonight and tomorrow is our last free day before work starts Thursday.

Nene!

Little kid checking out the nene

2012-01-31T15:40:00.001-05:00

View out my window

made it to hawaii!

2012-01-31T15:07:00.000-05:00

I made it to hawaii, seem to have caught up form the jet lag, more or less. I no longer feel like the walking dead anyway. Hoping to head down to the beach today, see what hilo has to offer. I'll get pictures and more updates up later!

Just a few more days...

2012-01-24T14:49:00.001-05:00

I leave for Hawaii on MONDAY! :D

and I am extremely excited, if not also a bit nervous. I've been packing the past two days and I think I've finally decided to bite the bullet and check two bags, that way I can have more then one weeks worth of clothes, and my backpacking gear :)

The past couple weeks have been busy, spending time with friends and family (and future family, visiting Jon's family in Michigan). plus wedding planning.

My mom and I have successfully accomplished the following

we have booked
the church
the hall
the caterer
the DJ
the florist

we have picked out
my wedding dress
the maid of honor's dress

we went to the caterer's preview dinner and tried yummy food :)

and have put together a guest list that continues to grow..and grow...and grow....

All together, not to shabby for just over a month's worth of work. The goal is that I won't have to do much work on wedding stuff while I'm in Hawaii, since the time difference and the fact that I'll be 4500 miles from home will make most of it difficult.

It has been a very interesting process, more complicated then I think it should have to be, but the more I look into these things the more I realize that it could be much much more complicated, but who needs that kind of stress :) ?

It's really strange packing up all of my winter clothes at the end of January and pulling out shorts, t-shirts and my swim suit but based on last time I was in Hawaii (last November) I know that if I pack to many warm clothes I am going to overheat much of the time.

But at the same time, I'm going to be working at a rather high elevation, and in some very sharp terrain, so long pants are a must, thus why packing is not going to be as minimalist as I hoped, but hopefully I am only taking what I need and will use, hopefully.

Thought of the day - with an awesome owl!!

2012-01-09T17:44:00.002-05:00

Graduate School Applications - IN!

2012-01-09T12:09:00.000-05:00

I mailed in my applications to graduate school today. I'm applying to the University of Arkansas and University of Idaho at the moment, both of which I'd be really excited to be accepted to and study at.

They might seem like strange choices to most people but both have faculty members who are working with secrative marshbirds, which is what I want to work with in graduate school.

U of Arkansas is in Fayetteville, AK which is in NW Arkansas.

View Larger Map

University of Idaho is in Moxcow, ID, which is in NW Idaho.

View Larger Map

Somehow I seem to have this draw towards places in the NW part of states. I grew up in NW Ohio, got my B.S. in NW Michigan and now am looking at two schools in the NW section of their states....strange.

Now to head back to the computer. I'm working on a manuscript this week based on my Virginia Rail work I presented in November at the TWS conference, wish me luck!

Christmas Teardown

2012-01-04T22:31:00.001-05:00

Helped my mom take down the christmas tree/decorations over the past two days, always a rather sad occasion, the end of the christmas season and the return to normal. Whatever normal is.

It was even more strange this year as I picked out 'my ornaments' and set them aside, starting a small collection to take with me to graduate school next year, since next christmas, I'll be married and starting 'a life of my own' whatever that means.

Christmas has always brought about mixed emotions for me, sure presents can make anyone get excited, and the fun of seeing family and friends is always wonderful but midnight mass has always been what really made it seem like 'christmas' to me, especially the past few years when I would come home from college just a few days before christmas, having ignored most of the hoopla at school between classes and homework.

The outdoor lights still need to come down, probably all of our least favorite part since it involves some time on a ladder out in the weather, but luckily those can stay up till warmer weather comes around, thankfully since it's been pretty chilly here of late. The snow on the ground, however minimal it might be, is making me pretty happy though :) I would really like to get enough to go sledding before I head to Hawaii here in a few weeks, people think I'm crazy but I love winter, and 'escaping to Hawaii' in January isn't my master plan to get away from it. I'm going to be so disoriented when I return, having totally missed spring migration (yes my calendar is based on bird movement....this should not surprise any of you).

I hope that you all had a wonderful christmas, and that the christmas spirit of family and fellowship can stay with us throughout the year, regardless of bird migration or what stage it might be in :D

2011....

2012-01-01T18:00:00.000-05:00

was quite a roller coaster ride.

Notable things that happened this year

I graduated from college, magna cum laude :)
got engaged
went to Isle Royale for the first time
went to california for 10 days with Green Creek Wildlife Society
got to present my research at the national wildlife society conference in hawaii
spent a good chunk of the summer in Houghton
bought my first car, which didn't go super well, but it's something
worked at least 25 hours/week for all but 8 weeks of the year!
got my job in Hawaii
made a lot of new friends and renewed many old friendships
moved to a new house, which was totally better then the old one
went to Whitefish Point Bird Observatory for the first time
received my ranger and silver venturing awards
applied for a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

it's been quite the year

This is also the year I lost my Uncle David, wasn't always successful in balancing school/work and life and had a rather large reality check regarding a few friends whom I don't really talk to anymore.

Overall it has been a fantastic year, great new experiences. I got to travel quite a bit which I greatly enjoy, learned a lot about balancing personal life versus work and professional aspects. I have Jon to thank for that one, he is really good at helping me put things in perspective and realize that sometimes it's ok to not do everything.

I also learned a lot this year about priorities, and how they differ between people. Often this isn't a bad thing, but I spent a lot of time this year trying to better understand peoples priorities so that i can beter understand their actions and intentions. There are still several people I know who's priorities baffle my mind, but for most once I try to put myself into their shoes I am much better able to work with them. the following quote has been my constant companion this year

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle

Trying to remember this every time I get frustrated when people don't understand me or things don't go as planned has been very humbling and refreshing. I know I struggle with many things all the time and it's not fair to assume that everyone else is having a perfect day, we all make mistakes, misspeak and fall on our faces....or at least I do all the time :)

This next year is largely unknown, more so then usual since a lot of my life tends to be rather spur of the moment to a degree. I'll be working in Hawaii January 30 - June 5th incase you haven't heard yet. Then I'm getting married, Jon and I set August 11th as the date :) (yes August 11, 2012). Other then that, nothing is for sure.

Probably graduate school in the fall, not sure where yet (I'm procrastinating applications while writing this post actually), not sure what Jon will be up to but I know it will end up being something fantastic :)

The unknown is scary, but having at least the next few months worked out keeps me from being to nervous, I've got faith that the doors that need to open will, and if they don't, I'll find a window and beat it in :)

Christmas Bird Count 2011

2012-01-01T13:39:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I spent most of the day out with other local birders counting many many birds as part of the Fremont Christmas Bird Count, an annual bird count run on a international scale by the National Audubon Society.

The basic premis is there is a large circle of land with the center in Fremont, a group of people gets together around Christmas each year to try and count as many birds in that circle as they can in one day. This is done each year for the same area so that we can see how the area is being used by birds across time and what is here during the winter months.

I've been helping out with the Fremont CBC for many years....probably since I was....12 or so. Anyway it's a lot of fun and I always go along with Tom Kashmer to survey the area around Green Creek. This year Kim and Kenn Kaufman and Randy Kreager also joined our group as we tackled our 'piece of the CBC pie'

we had a lot of fun, it was quite chilly but the wind was minimal so we bundled up and out we went. Our part of the CBC pie goes out into the bay, so we got to count ducks, lots and lots of ducks (ended up with over 24,000 for the day!). We also counted other birds, including Yellow-rumped Warblers, Blue Jays, robins, Bald Eagles and many more. Best of all I got to spend the day with some of my favorite people in the NW ohio birding community, which was quite refreshing since I haven't seen much of them lately.

I was SO happy to not be in the car, since graduation I've put almost 3000 miles on my car, that's 3000 miles in about 20 days and I was quite sick of it. Or really just sick of the fact that I hadn't been able to do other things, like actually use my legs. Well we hiked over 7 miles yesterday and my legs were quite happy :)

Plus at the end of the day we broke the previous record for number of species for our count, which is super exciting!!

You can't really see it in my crappy cell phone camera picture, but there are LOTS of ducks out on the bay

Kim and Randy checking out the ducks through a scope on a homemade 'tripod' (Kim's invention)

Kim and Tom walking down the dike counting birds, these two have had a HUGE impact on my life, especially as it relates to birds, spending the day with them was AWESOME

Graduation

2011-12-21T22:31:00.003-05:00

So this has been a bit delayed in coming, but I figured I'd finally write up a few words about graduation.

December 10th was a very fun and exciting day. Started with a fun brunch reception via the 'School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science' aka the forestry department. It was a lot of fun to be able to introduce a lot of my professors and friends to my family and see some of them for the last time (for awhile anyway.....) Below is a picture of all us SFRESers who were graduating. I'm in the back, next to Will, the super tall guy in the white shirt.

Then we went up to the SDC (the universities's rec center) and got our gowns on. I got the honor of being interviewed by the local newspaper and tv station.

Here's the article in the local paper if you are curious - http://www.mininggazette.com/page/content.detail/id/523280/Tech-graduates-400-at-midyear-commencement.html

TV Interview

Afterwards there were lots of pictures and some goodbyes to some fantastic people. I'm glad who goofy I was was commemorated for all eternity

Everyone else looked great at least :)

(Above are Hank, Mike, Me (in the goofy hat), Mom and Aunt Kathy)

The rest of the day included some great exploring out at Breakers

Smiley Rock, Hank, Mike, Me and Aunt Kathy

^The smiley rock made this photo AWESOME!

The ice wasn't as impressive as it gets, but it was a lot of fun to see it all :)

The rest of the day was spent playing cards and hanging out with some friends and their family. I think we all greatly enjoyed getting to know some new people :)

The actual graduation ceremony was rather strange for me, but perhaps that's because I'd never been through one before. I didn't' walk for high school graduation (being home schooled it just seemed...pointless) and I knew what all it entailed but it didn't cause horrible high school flashbacks like it did for some of my friends.

One of the best moments was when the called out the 'School of Forest Resources and Environmental Sciences' we were the smallest group who got to stand up by themselves and it was just...an amazing moment. I was so proud to be there with these friends that I've been through so much with and to celebrate with them was a blast.

It was a bittersweet day, but one I'm glad I was able to have, I considered not walking for graduation but it really helped make all of it seem...real, and a bit scary, but overall amazing.

Special Thanks to my awesome family who drove 12 hours through the snow to be there with me :) You guys are brave and I love you all.

Deep thanks also to the many friends and family that couldn't be there, you're support over the years has been fantastic and is the reason I am where I am today. I love you all and hope I get to see you over the holidays. or you could come visit me in Hawaii :)

Many exciting and cool things...

2011-12-16T14:42:00.001-05:00

So, just a few random facts about the past week.

I graduated, and three days after that I finished up my final exams. Found out today that I successfully passed them all (not that I was worried).

I found out from admission that while working for them the past four semesters I made 4097 phone calls.

Oh - and one other little note.

Jon and I are engaged :)

No, we don't know any more details then that at the moment. But I figured I would throw it out there :)

1 more final....

2011-12-12T22:21:00.002-05:00

Just one more final and I am done!

Crazyness I know.

Thought I'd share a picture from graduation, hoping to have sometime to write up a proper post about it after my final tomorrow AM.

Lighthouse Pictures

2011-12-11T20:04:00.001-05:00

Hi All,

Incase you haven't heard I successfully made it through graduation yesterday. More on that later. I just wanted to throw up a few pictures from my explorations with the family today and then dive into studying for my exam tomorrow morning.

So here's some pictures from Eagle Harbor. more to come later!

One more class?

2011-12-08T20:58:00.001-05:00

How do I only have one more class left....how is that possible?

How can my family already be arriving TOMORROW for graduation?

It's just crazy.

Though things today went really well. Made it to school ontime despite the CRAZY wind. Gave an amazing presentation in my creativity class and then rocked my final lab practical of the week. Plus got to just hang out for the evening and watching TV and not do anything for a few hours.

Tomorrow, one class, Zoology, graduation practice and a few other odd bits, but otherwise....pretty chill day.

Then the family arrives!

Today I cannot solve your problems....

2011-12-07T21:58:00.001-05:00

For today, I am an OWL!

This is kind of how I felt about today, and probably will about most of tomorrow.

I am coming down with something that drains my energy and makes my nose run, and graduate in two and half days.

Sorry.

I am an owl.

Last Field Techniques Lab

2011-12-07T15:45:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was my last day as a TA (Teaching Assistant) for Field Techniques. I still have papers to grade this weekend, but it was sad (to me at least) to say goodbye to all of them yesterday knowing that I probably won't see most of them again, unlike last year's class where I have kept up with several of them.

Just a...weird experience.

I've greatly enjoyed being a TA, learning how to grade was challenging, but I think I've got the gist of it down finally and it's really helped me to realize that I should be considering a career as a college professor. I love research, I love college, I'm a workaholic already and I love to teach too. We'll see how it pans out, but I could defiantly see myself working at a university someday, hopefully one as cool as Michigan Tech :)

The above pictures is from where we had the field techniques point sampling quiz retake last Saturday. Beautiful spot up on the tech trails, covered in a fresh layer of fluffy white snow.

Last Wildlife Wednesday

2011-12-07T15:37:00.001-05:00

The Wildlife Society @ Michigan Tech does a weekly bake sale called 'Wildlife Wednesdays'.

We sell cookies, brownies, cake, banana bread etc as well as coffee and make some money so the club can go on cool trips. This semester we made the club $300, which is sweet!

I've been baking probably about 1/2 the weeks this semester and working the both most Wednesdays 9-10. It's been kind of fun actually, getting to chat with everyone as they pick out their goodies...I am going to miss it, and having awesome breakfast choices every wednesday morning.

Yes, brownies can be breakfast :) But more often it was banana bread.

Research...it continues

2011-12-07T15:31:00.001-05:00

One encouraging thing this week, not the only one but one that occurred to me today is that my connection to Michigan Tech isn't just going to end next Thursday when I leave. I'm still working on two different research projects, both with Virginia Rails with one of my professors and those will be continuing, one in the 'writing up the publication' stage and another in the 'getting the samples run' stage. So I'm going to maintain this connection and to some extent involvement with tech.

Not that I planned on dropping off the face of the earth or anything, I love Tech way to much for that. But today, when I'm super tired and pretty stressed it's nice to know that these friendships and connections I've made aren't just going to disappear....but man I am going to miss this place....

and for those who care, look at this cool graph. I spent way to much time today creating it because excel continues to baffle me some days.

It shows the distribution of feathers I have for stable isotope analysis versus the day that they were collected.

I know....not as exciting as you hoped.

What comes next....

2011-12-05T21:23:00.001-05:00

So I got a bazillion questions about graduate school and 'future' plans over break, and I anticipate a truck load or two more over Christmas break. Which is fine, I am more then happy to talk about it. One of the things that keeps coming up is

'I'm planning on grad school in the fall, not totally sure where yet. I've applied for funding and don't know anything yet.'

I know, it's not very exciting, and most of you don't know what to ask next, but I just figured I'd explain what I do know.

I have applied for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, it's a competitive fellowship program that could fund me through graduate school. (If you are bored and want to read my application essays...here you go personal statement, previous research). But it's really competitive so there are no promises, but I feel like I have a good fighting chance. Those two essays were some of the hardest I've written, partially because since my first year of college I've largely just don't scientific writing and also because it's hard to sum up your heart, soul and total life story and motivation in just two pages. I still feel like I left a lot out, but the awesome people who helped me with it here at Tech were happy with it, so I guess I am too :) I'll be find out sometime next spring if I got it or not. In the meantime I'm talking to several faculty members at a few schools and might be pursuing other funding options as well.

Grad school for me will probably start with a masters of science degree, hopefully in wildlife ecology and management or a related field (such as wildlife biology, or natural resources management). I am also looking at getting a PhD, but as of this moment I'd like to do each degree at a different institution, so lets not get ahead of ourselves, one degree at a time :)

A Masters in wildlife typically takes 2-3 years, depending on the research time needed. One challenge of wildlife ecology research versus say physics or engineering is that often data collection can only take place at a certain time of year. For instance if I want to study a certain birds' migration I have to study them while they are migrating, which is probably only 2-3 months out of the year, this can make things more challenging, but should also be a lot of fun :).

I'd love to work on a project with Virginia Rails or Soras, or really any secretive marsh bird, looking at some sort of migrational timing, habitat or behavioral aspect of their biology. Though I'm really open to working with just about anything.

So there you go, perhaps that helps a few of you with your questions since I know my field of work is foreign to many. Just ask me about what birds I've seen lately...because I'm sure I can come up with some great stories!

Monotremata - the 'wanna-be-mammals'

2011-12-05T21:19:00.001-05:00

I'm giving a presentation on mammals tomorrow, weird mammals, the monotremata. The order of mammals that contains the platypus and the echidna. They are like bird, reptile mammal hybrids. It's awesome!

^ The video is my presentation, if you want pictures or the gory details.

Totally made my morning!

2011-12-04T11:17:00.001-05:00

So I woke up this morning to a fresh six inches of fluffy white powder, it is so pretty!

Amazingly life is going on with minimal fuss in Houghton, as usual. It took me about five minutes to dig out my car in the driveway, thanks to this awesome tool called a 'yooper scooper'

and this awesome brush I have that cleared off my car in about a minute and a half

and once I got off my street and onto the main road, it was clear sailing. Slightly wet totally clear pavement. I've lived here...almost three and a half years now and this amazing snow removal continues to amaze me. I am also super excited now because if this stuff sticks around my family and I can go cross country skiing next weekend!!

Firsts (Snowy Owl)

2011-12-03T14:56:00.001-05:00

I think I wrote earlier this week about my friend Felicia who in response to me begin mopey about it being my 'last two weeks' and my 'last this and last that' that I should go do things for the first time.

Well, I think I've accomplished at least one first. Today I saw my first SNOWY OWL!

(not my picture, sadly I did not have my camera with me - photo credit - snowy Angel.jpg)

Anyway, I was just finishing up helping the students in field techniques get done retaking their quizzes and I got a call from Erin, who was all pumped because they had found a snowy owl at the tech trails, which was conveniently, where I was working. So I finished up work quick and ran over to see it.

It was gorgeous, chilling on a street light right above Sharon Avenue, just sitting there, getting screamed at by a crow, it was so cool!

So there, a very happy and awesome 'first' here during my last week and a half at tech.

I'm off to grade lab reports!

Two distinct lasts

2011-12-02T21:58:00.001-05:00

Last night was my last honors institute Executive Board/Office Board Meeting. I've been on E/O Board for three semesters now and super involved with The Honors Institute since my first semester on campus. It's the group that I always look forward to it's meetings and really feel like I've been able to contribute to making it a better organization. The people I have gotten to work with have also been fantastic. Tech has many amazing students, and having a chance to work with some of it's brightest and most motivated has been an extremely rewarding experience, one that I will greatly miss. I know that they will continue to do great things though to help both HI and the university. I look forward to visiting in a few years and seeing what other mischief they have gotten into.

Tonight was also my last hockey game, which we sadly lost. But it was also a lot of fun. It had me thinking about my first hockey game, before I was even a Michigan Tech student, and how the energy and experience of a tech hockey game is one of the things that really cemented Michigan Tech in my mind. I love the pep band, our goofy cheers and traditions and just watching hockey is really fun to me.

How can you not LOVE a sport with a penalty for 'face-washing'?

Today I also sat down with my good friend Erin who is taking over a lot of the programming for The Birdbums and helped her plan out the next semester of activities for The Birdbums, it was exciting and encouraging to see what they will get to do this next semester. But also bitter sweet since it's the first semester that I won't' be there....my little baby club has grown up and is moving on and I honestly could not be more thrilled to live it in Erin, Jeff, Kristin and Kevin's capable hands. Yet another group that I know will continue to flourish and I look forward to visiting again in the future.

New features of the blog....

2011-12-02T17:32:00.001-05:00

Just a few notes on the new blog features, (I keep typing feathers instead of features....erg).

You can now subscribe to my blog through email! Which means every time I post something, it will be emailed to you. This may be enticing to some people, annoying to others, thus why it is optional.

You can sign up on the right side there ----> where it says 'Follow by email'

If you use RSS you can also find the appropriate link to take advantage of that on the right as well.

there is also a search bar, so if you are interested in trying to find posts about a particularly topic, for instance, the birdbums, you can type that in and Google will do it's best to find all of them for you.

There is also a drop down menu of posts from the past, so if you just want to read posts from say, summer of 2009, you can do that!

Anyway, just thought I'd point that out, incase any of you were wondering what all changes were made other then the colors changing.

Want to be there!

2011-12-02T17:28:00.001-05:00

So one of the awesome people I worked with in 2010 in Wisconsin is currently backpacking around New Zealand and Australia for a few weeks. The above picture was posted to her Facebook recently and now I want to see a kiwi live and in the wild more then EVER!

Food for thought

2011-12-02T08:31:00.001-05:00

Being a student on a college campus exposes you to a lot of things, many of them good.

For instance:

new kinds of food
different cultures
different languages
having to live on your own
how to do your own laundry
etc.

Sometimes it also exposes you to things that can make you really uncomfortable, or people who make you uncomfortable because of how you see an issue or what you believe.

Homosexuality has always been one of those issues for me, I have nothing against people who are gay, several are my friends, they are wonderful people. But as a Catholic people tend to think that you hate gays and want them all to burn in hell.

This, atleast in the case of this catholic, is not the case and typically I remain pretty quiet on the issue since I never had a good way of articulating how I believed.

Then yesterday I read this article, kindly passed on to me through facebook by Teresea Grodi.

http://youngandcatholic.net/2011/07/catholic-and-gay/

I think that it is a valuable read, and a unique perspective on an issue that is very much in the face of people, and not just college students today.

Just some food for thought, perhaps something for you to think about this weekend, and yet another reminder to be kind to all since you never know what kind of fight each is fighting in their own world.

Weird realizations (last two weeks as an undergrad)

2011-12-01T17:47:00.001-05:00

So I did a little redesign on my blog last night, hope you all like it. I think it looks less dark and depressing. Plus I have a thing for constantly rearranging things, including furniture (just as my mom how often I rearranged my room as a kid....it was like ever 3 weeks give or take).

Anyway, as I was redesigning last night I realize, that bio, which is now to the right ----> is going to need to be updated here soon.

Soon it will read something along the lines of

'Hi I'm Auriel, and I recently graduated from michigan tech with a bachelors degree in Wildlife Ecology.....'

that just seems so weird. Even if I do start graduate school in the fall (which I am still planning on) I am not going to be a student for 8 months, probably closer to 8 and 1/2. For the first time in my memory (I don't remember much at all before kindergarden......to be honest). That is so weird! Exciting, but weird.

Plus it's only 8 days till graduation, which is even more weird.....next week is going to be crazy, but a good, super fun crazy that I know I'll greatly enjoy. Plus the next two weeks will bring a lot of work as a TA, which is great, gotta stock up on the money while I can :)

These two weeks are also weeks of lasts...Sunday started it off, last trip up to school, Monday was my last night working for admissions. Tonight is my last Honors E-board and Officer Board meetings. These are all sad things to me. I won't miss exams, or quizzes, or stupid papers. But I do miss these things that I've involved with, and I'll mis the traveling, the landmarks, the crazy stories that come from going to school 700 miles away from home.

One of my fellow Honors E-board members challenged me to have some firsts in the next two weeks as well, and since I'm a pretty involved student on campus this is a challenge, but I always have liked challenges, so I'm trying to see what I can come up with, I'll keep you posted.

And since blog posts are better with pictures here is a picture my friend Kristin took of me at Taquamenon Falls a few weeks back when we were visiting Whitefish Point. Granted I am the subject of this picture, but I think it's a pretty awesome one :)

Places I want to go

2011-11-29T10:18:00.001-05:00

So the more I read, the more I go to class and see all the cool animals, the more I talk to our graduate students, especially the international ones, the more I want to travel.

So I had a few minutes before class at 11 and I put together this map, which is a rough 'list' of where I'd love to visit.

View Places I want to visit in a larger map

Just a few places :)

The rest of the list is more things I want to see, like animals.

I want to see a platypus, an echidna, a kiwi. I want to see lions, tigers (might be to late on this one by the time I get there...), cheetahs, zebras, rhinos, and a TON of africa, asian and australian birds.

I want to see migrating humpback whales

I want to see wildebeest migration in Africa on the serenghetti.

I want to see the great barrier reef

I want to see the ghyr of plastic in the middle of the pacific

I want to see where tsunamis have hit.

I want to visit the netherlands and visit family i've never met.

I have little interest in doing the cities of europe tour. If I"m going to spend all that money, I'm not going city hopping :)

The more I talk to people the more I'm developing an interest in going to China, and other places which are super different then here, including some places that are currently probably not safe to travel, and yes I do take that into account, the list is the list, and if I can't go somewhere because of safety I'll choose somewhere else...nifty thing about the world :)

I would also love to go to space. I was reading an article a few days ago about how 'my kids' (not that I am having any anytime soon) will probably be able to go to space, and not just the wealthy. I think that that...is amazing. And if given the chance I would to totally go.

I also want to learn how to scuba dive, I want to climb a mountain, one that doesn't have a trail to the top.

Anyway, I came to the realization yesterday that I don't actually have that much standing between me and graduation. One paper, two fairly easy presentations, and two finals (found out one was optional, and since my grade is good, I'm going to opt out so I only have two!) and one lab practical. Super easy two and a half weeks.....so I started day dreaming yesterday, dangerous...I know.

Plus that map doesn't include even half of the places I want to go in the U.S. I would love to visit every national park, and plan on trying to visit as many state parks as I can in whatever states I end up living.

This past year I've been upgrading my backpacking equipment carefully and should soon have everything I need to spend most of my free time on the trail :) or on a train, or on a plane, or something else that rhymes and involves traveling.

If you want to come along, let me know, current travel plans:

Southern Indiana (to visit my bestest friend Tara) December 2011

Hawaii (for work, mostly) Jan30-June5

A road trip of some variety Summer 2012

Isle Royale National Park Summer 2012

2011-11-24T15:12:00.001-05:00

I am constantly inspired by many people in my life and all of those people fit within this quote, they count their blessings, but they also act them out, they are out there living the dream, giving back to everyone else.

I challenge all us to do the same. As I tell everyone about my traveling they go 'wow I wish I could travel or I wish I could do something cool'.

Last time I checked there wasn't some strange restrictions on 'coolness' in life, you don't have to have a lot of money to learn something new, or do something different with your life. Sure you might not be a world traveler, but you can still be using our blessings to help others and get more out of our lives - so there you go, you're full of turkey, now start doing!

Hawaii Part 4 - Exploration Day 2

2011-11-23T13:51:00.001-05:00

So Thursday was our last day in Hawaii, we were flying out in the late evening (10pm red eye flight) and the conferences as over, so we had a day to play!

We left the hotel early and drove over saddle road to Hilo, meet up with Kip and checked out some BEAUTIFUL waterfalls.

and sweet critters like this Chameleon!

One of the coolest things that we weren't really expecting was this sweet tree, be amazed. (that's me in the 'raspberry' coat (aka pink...but I hate pink, I ordered a red coat, anyway long story)

Photo Credit : Kevin King

This was just a show talk from the cool waterfall above and kept us entertained for quite sometime, it's one tree, even the one in the back it's all connected and super cool and really strong and just crazy fun to climb on, best natural jungle gym EVER!

Then we hit up the farmers market in Hilo (which I didn't photograph, sorry) where I was super excited to see how affordable it was going to be to eat awesome fruit :) Also picked up some sweet gifts for a few people for Christmas.

Then we headed to Volcanoes National Park where, you guessed it, we saw Volcanoes!

^ that is an active volcano, that plume of VOG (Volcanic Gas Fog) is coming from MOLTEN LAVA!! Which we sadly didn't get to see :( but it's right there, and that is just SO COOL!

We got to meet a Michigan Tech Alum who works at the park and talk to him, which was cool and we explored the park a bit more, but most of my pictures didn't turn out :( My camera didn't like the weird lighting conditions.

Then we headed back to Kona, because it was time to get through security and start on our way home.

Weird fact about Hawaii, your bags get scanned twice when you leave, once like normal, and then once to make sure you aren't sneaking any pineapple home (I am totally serious).

This is where the 'adventure' part of my travels really began. I got out of Kona fine, slept most of the way to LA and other then my ears refusing to pop for 20 minutes after landing all was well, we were even early! So I got to the next gate, all is well onetime etc, get on the plane.

Plane pulls away form the gate, is rolling along then we stop, in the middle of the runway, weird. Then we find out that there is the plane equivalent of a 'check engine light' on and we have to wait for maintenance, ok, no biggie. I have a 3 hour layover in Detroit, there's no way I'll be late...right?

Wrong. 3 and a half hours later I'm still sitting in my seat while they fix whatever was wrong with the plane, then we take off.

Needless to say I missed my flight out of Detroit to Marquette.

Here is where it gets awesome, the flight later that night was full, the two flights Saturday were full too (yes Marquette only gets 2 flights/day). So I couldn't get back to Houghton till...Sunday.

I am so grateful that I got stuck in Detroit, because my mom conveniently was only an hour and a half away, so I went home for the weekend, one very jet lagged and disgruntled airline customer.

But, that being said, I am grateful that they found the issue and fixed it and that I was safe, I wish they had been better about rerouting me (I asked to be rerouted to Green Bay, only 3 hours form Houghton so I could get back sooner and they refused) but I was safe, tired, but otherwise unharmed.

Plus I got to go Christmas Shopping with my mom and her friend Brenda, which is a blast!

And I made it safely back to the U.P. Sunday, only a bit behind in homework and tired.

And that was my trip to Hawaii, in a nutshell. It was awesome, and crazy, and very tiring, and the week afterwards was crazy (3 exams, a graduate fellowship app, a presentation, two papers and a big quiz) but I survived and am now greatly enjoying Thanksgiving Break.

Hawaii Part 3 - Conference!

2011-11-23T13:35:00.001-05:00

So after a day of hanging out on the island, seeing the sights and having a general good time we turned to the 'real' reason we were there, the conference.

The conference we were attending was the annual national meeting of The Wildlife Society (TWS) which is the national professional organization for professionals in wildlife ecology and management and related fields. Undergrads, Grad Students, Professors, Federal, State, other government employees, NGO employees and many other people were there. it's a great opportunity to network, learn about the 'latest and greatest stuff' in the wildlife field and gain a greater understanding for how the field works.

Those who have been reading my blog for awhile may remember that I attended the 2010 conference in Snowbird, Utah last year. Last year was also a great experience, but this year was dramatically better. For a number of reasons.

This year I was presenting a poster of my own research, I knew a lot more people, and I had a better idea of how the conference worked and how to set up my schedule to best fit what I wanted to accomplish. Last year I focused almost exclusively on going to talks and quickly got burnt out on powerpoint, so I went and visited posters session dn the trade show and realized what I was missing out on by just going to talks. So this year I structured my schedule each day so I was still going to talks, but also going to poster sessions, going through the trade show, attending the career fair and all the student events (of which there were many). Plus I also left myself time to eat lunch and take short breaks throughout the day, which made the whole conference much more enjoyable.

Something else different I did this year was volunteer, when I was trying to scrape together the money to come to Hawaii I applied for a TON of student travel grants, and was fortunate enough to get a few so that I could cover my airfare but in that process I also learned about the volunteer program which sounds all altruistic and wonderful, and while it is wonderful, it's also paid, making it slightly less altruistic, and even more wonderful. So four days of the conference I helped out by sitting in on sessions and holding up time cards for speakers os they didn't' run over, checking in photos for the photo contest and other odd jobs. It was a blast! I got to meet so many people, professionals and other students, I got to talk them about what they did and interact in ways that would not have been possible otherwise, plus I got paid, enough to cover my food while I was there (and food in Hawaii is ridiculous...let me tell you.)

I know that I got a lot more out of the conference this year, I was able to meet many potential graduate advisors, including the one professor that is at the top of my list. I got to present my poster and talk to over a dozen different professionals about it and get great feedback on the next steps. I got to meet students from across the country, compare programs and such and I got involved with two working groups.

Working Groups are small groups with a common interest within TWS that work together on some sort of theme. I'm involved with the student professional development working group and the spatial ecology and telemetry working group. The first has a focus on helping students, the second has a focus on remote sensing and GIS, two things I am very interested in. (for the record there is no 'crazy bird lover' working group, or I would be in that too). Undergrads don't often attend these meetings so I was able to talk to professionals in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise and also hopefully made some connections and got some information for some sweet marten and fisher jobs for Jon! (who sadly wasn't able to come, so I did some looking for him...)

There were some really neat talks at the conference on Hawaii, the endangered birds, invasive species and the culture of the islands. I tried to get to as many of these as possible since I am going to be working with endangered species when I'm there in February and I wanted to try to better understand the culture, since I"ll be living here for four months. Hawaii is so different then anywhere else, it's really fascinating. They are the most isolated chain of islands in the world, and pretty much everything there is 'non-native' if you have a super strict definition, ti's crazy. Plus, there is a baby island still growing to the SE of The Big Island, and that just fascinates me. I love volcanoes (possibly spawned form making vinegar/baking soda ones as a kid?). One of my goals when I'm back in February is to see molten lava!

The conference was also a great chance to reconnect with people I had met last year and at the other two conferences I'd attended in the last year, a lot of these people came to see my poster which was really fun and they had great feedback for me on different types of statistical analysis to try out and different ways to look at the problem, it was exactly what I needed to take the project to the next level.

Sunday-Wednesday flew by, and by Wednesday evening I was burnt out and quite tired, I was hoping to hit the hay early since we were leaving early for another day of Adventuring Thursday, but the rest of the michigan tech crew decided we should hang out at the pool till late, and in hind site it was a blast, but getting up Thursday morning was very challenging......

Hawaii Part 2 - Exploring Day 1

2011-11-21T22:07:00.001-05:00

So for everyone's reference I was on the 'big island' aka Hawaii for my trip, this is also where I'll be working in February.

For the conference I was at a resort north of Kona (on the west side of the island, on this map called Kalua-Kona). In February I'll be living in Hilo (on the set side of the island).

Alright, now that we've been over that bit of orientation a few other bits. There are two 'main' volcanoes on the island, one to the north (Mauna Kea) and the sour (Mauna Lea) they are dominant features everywhere on the island and dictate how you get from point A to point B.

So our first day we...

Wait, I should probably define who we is.

We are all the picture in this ^ picture.

Back row : Kip, Jen

Middle Row: David, Ellen, Me, Kevin

Bottom: Natasha, Sunshine

Kip is a recent grad of Michigan Tech

David is one of the advisors for the our TWS student chapter,

Everyone else is a current undergrad at Michigan Tech, all but Natasha are seniors and we're all Wildlife Ecology Majors.

Anyway, that is our group, a few other Techies were there, but they didn't join us for adventures, so their not talked about here.

Anyway, back to traveling. We were up bright and early Saturday to meet up with David and head out to see the island. David lived in Hilo for ~6 months this past year as part of sabbatical and setting up a research project so he knows the island well, and having a bird guide is always helpful :)

So we started to work our way up saddle road, which is the road between the two big volcanoes. We saw tons of cool birds

including this Peuo, the native Hawaiian Owl.

We also saw some rare honey creepers, the native Hawk (Io) and other non-native birds that were also very pretty.

Also in this adventure we got to check out the Kipukas!

This is where I'll be working starting in February, so i was very excited to get to see it and find out what it was really like...

Here is the lava fields I'll get to walk through every day on my way to work :)

Here is us standing outside the Kipuka, we're up high enough on the lava that we're at canopy level, great for birding!

So, a lot of you are probably still unclear as to what a Kipuka actually is. A kipuka is a patch of forest, created by lava. Basically when this lava flowed through here in the late 1800's it didn't plow over these forests and turned them into little forests, and the birds that live in them are really cool.

So we got to check that out, which was awesome!

Then David told us that if we wanted to we could check out a lava tube.

*laughs* 'if' we wanted to, of course we wanted to!

It was cool, reminded me of caving down in Kentucky with the venture crew, but the tube is mostly flat and smooth on the bottom, very uncave like. And yes, it did feel like walking into a green hairy monster....

We also ate lunch here and then headed to Mauna Kea

Here's the view from the visitor's center

Now to explain the 'invisible cows sign'. There are free-range cows in Hawaii, and most are darkly colored, if not completely black. Hawaii is a very dark place at night because of limited human light pollution and it's often foggy. This turns black cows into 'invisible cows' and makes it hazardous to drive fast a night, thus, the sign.

Anyway. Mauna Kea is a big volcano and is the home to the Mauna Kea Observatory, arguably one of the best astronomical observatories in the world. We just went to the visitor's center because to go any higher (we were at 9000 feet already) would have required 4-wheel drive, which we did not have...sadly. But we did get to watch the sunset from there!

Which was an amazing end to a great day of exploring.

The next day the conference started, and that is a whole nother layer of exciting that will have to wait for another post....

Hawaii Part 1 - Traveling

2011-11-21T21:57:00.001-05:00

So,

Hawaii is a pretty amazing place, and as a person who has a thing for cold places, snow and places in which there are few people it takes a lot for me to be able to say that. But I really enjoyed my week in the aloha state and thought I would recap a few details of it for all of you.

First of all, getting to Hawaii is intense, which should also mean a lot since I don't really think of the 12 hours drive home from school as anything to get your panties in a bunch about. let me recap my travels to Hawaii (all times are Eastern Daylight Savings Time)

115 am Friday - my alarm goes off - hit snooze - mutter mean things at the clock, and the airline, and morning in general
125 am Friday - my alarm goes off again - mumble angry things get out of bed
230 am Friday - finally have gotten myself, Jon and the dog all properly up, let out to go to the bathroom (well just Luna on that one), back inside and in her crate (Luna again) and packed into the car (Jon and myself)
245~am Friday - pulled over my a bored cop in Houghton who thought I was driving drunk. Luckily he was an intelligent guy and quickly realized that i was not drunk and let me go on my way.
430 am Friday - Arrive in at Marquette Airport
530 am Friday - Security finally opens, go through security (note to self, small airports = don't get there 2 hours early for the first flight out... *sigh*)
630 am Friday - leave Marquette for Detroit
7:50am - Arrive in Detroit RUN from Terminal C to Terminal A
815 am - Board Flight to LA
841 am - Take off for LA
150 pm - Arrive in LA proceed to sit around airport annoyed that there isn't any free internet
5pm - Leave LA Bound for Kona!
1030 pm - Arrive in Kona - sit around and wait for the rest of my group who flew a different airline,
11pm - They arrive
1130 - Trying to get rental car, luckily I have my credit card since no one else's has a high enough credit limit to get the rental car
1200 am Saturday - Arrive at Hotel, check in. (keep in mind this is only 6pm Hawaii time, so it's still light out....so weird)

Yes, that's right, almost 24 hours of TRAVEL

and most of it sitting in tiny seats

This travel experience broke me of my love of flying, but oh well.

So yes travel to hawaii is intense, a long process which is disorienting just because my body said 'it's midnight and my eyes went 'but the sun is just starting to set' and then my brain exploded.

Luckily, east to west jet lag is easier to recover from, and after a solid nights sleep I was up and ready to conquer the big island!

Photo Dump #...who knows at this point

2011-11-16T16:31:00.001-05:00

So, I have ideas for three sweet blog posts, things that are more interesting then

hey, I'm busy, here are pictures of what I did last weekend.

But, I don't have time to write them now, because this week I have to get the following done

3 exams, in my three hardest classes (ok I only have four classes, but still)

I am submitting my Graduate Research Fellowship Proposal (aka the document that might fund the next 2-3 years of my life)

I have a paper due

I have a rather intense quiz tomorrow

I am speaking to a class tomorrow about my major

and I have to pack, like majorly, to move most of my physical possessions back to OHio.

So, here it goes again, click the link below for pictures from hawaii.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150349163430423.345526.506290422&type=1&l=714c43e5d3

and I promise that over break I will write up those blog posts.

Also, FYI, I will be in Ohio starting Sunday evening, probably till Saturday afternoon at least, if not the following Sunday morning. If you want to see me, let me know.

- Auriel

2011-11-05T13:30:00.001-04:00

Good morning from Hawaii!

Pumpkins!

2011-11-02T21:49:00.004-04:00

Now I want you to look at these carefully, guess who's is who's (me vs Jon that is).... then scroll down

Mine is on the left (this surprises most people) Jon is so much more patient with these kinds of things, mine took like....5 minutes, his probably a half hour.

The calm before the storm....

2011-11-02T21:47:00.001-04:00

So I'm packed, my room is relatively clean (I'm starting to pack to move home so things are going into boxes and into the garage....), I am caught up on homework, not reading, but that is going to get done on the plane. Now I am left to wait, wait for tomorrow to tick by slowly, wait for HAWAII!

That's right, my first trip to Hawaii will be Friday AM, I'll be leaving Houghton at 2am to get to Marquette at 4am and get on the plane by 630 am, sounds like a blast huh? Guess I should just be glad that Jon is my willing accomplice in all of this.

So yes, from this Friday till the next I will be in Kona Hawaii attending The Wildlife Society's 2011 National Conference. I'm presenting a poster,

and will hopefully be meeting with some people to talk about graduate school, plus also exploring the island a bit. one of my professors has a research project there (the one I'm working on starting in February) and he knows the island well so we're going adventuring on Saturday :D I heard rumors of COOL BIRDS and lava tubes!)

So here I sit....waiting...waiting...waiting, wondering if I should perhaps more thoroughly deep clean my room......not sure that I'm awake enough for that :)

Sunday Craziness

2011-10-23T20:48:00.002-04:00

So today I ...went kayaking, drove down to Jon's families cabin to make sure the water was off so the pipes don't freeze, carved pumpkins, roasted pumpkin seeds and made a stir fry, then went to church. Crazy day, totally a blast

here are a few pictures

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150333928345423.341981.506290422&type=1&l=450f9ac95c

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150334332635423.342103.506290422&type=1&l=dcaf95d1b7

Someday, I'll have more time to write...

In the meantime - a cute salamander that one of the students in Field Techniques found last week

Ball In The House Concert

2011-10-21T23:19:00.001-04:00

Awesome Concert tonight by Ball In the House (ballinthehouse.com) an amazing accapella group from Boston. They did great contemporary and their own original songs, really awesome concert :)

Tomorrow, pumpkin carving and heading out to see The Big Year with The Birdbums!

More pictures from Mammalogy

2011-10-17T08:12:00.001-04:00

Sorry I'm just giving you guys links, but things are crazy right now, hopefully I'll write some more later in the week!

Here's an album of all the mammalogy lab pics so far, there are some new ones at the end

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150290408405423.333405.506290422&type=1&l=c20dfcbf37

Webelos Day Pictures

2011-10-17T08:10:00.002-04:00

Pictures from two saturday's ago when Michelle and I hung out down at Alberta and worked with some local scouts.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150317167460423.338838.506290422&type=1&l=93c1fc6caa

Weekend in Paradise

2011-10-17T08:08:00.003-04:00

So this past weekend The Birdbums went to Paradise, MI to check out what was happening at Whitefish point, it was a blast!

Pictures : http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150325999950423.340473.506290422&type=1&l=f8a943c6b6

Video of the crazy wave action

All in all a great, if not rather blustery weekend!

Now back to my regularly scheduled week of reports, exams and other fun thing like that....

Last Sunday's Adventures

2011-10-07T22:34:00.000-04:00

I'm getting bad at keeping this updated again (my apologies) here's a recap of the adventures Jon/I/Luna went on last sunday.

First off, color tour on Mont Ripley. We road the ski lift up and down the hill enjoying the AWESOME weather and beautiful colors

The view from the top was fantastic!

Our friend Kristin was along and after the ride up and down Ripley we headed back up to Seven Mile Point to do some more soaking in of the lovely fall weather.

Kristin then took us to a new spot, the mouth of the Gratiot River, which as awesome!

After we got back to Houghton we met up with my good friend Jon Materni to go shooting, Materni is in Army ROTC and he and Jon enjoy shooting so off to the old cheese factory we went...

Jon brought one of our potatoes that had gone bad, and was proud of his results

Materni (yes I know, it's confusing, they are both named Jon and spell it the same way) was also happy with his results

I was more interested in trying to get cool pictures of flowers, I think that the dutch photo bug has finally bit me.....I take way to many pictures

Chipmunks

2011-10-07T22:27:00.001-04:00

Spent an hour and a half Thursday afternoon confusing many a student out enjoying the AWESOME weather that is currently hovering over Houghton. I wandered around campus, following chipmunks.

Why you might ask?

For a class of course! Erin and I teamed up to tackle our latest Mammalogy Lab of recording and hour and a half of chipmunk behavior, sounds simple, but man do those guys move fast and they do a whole lot more then you would expect in an hour and a half!

We started out sitting in front of DHH watching this little guy

But then he disappeared (yes like literally poof!)

So we moved over to the library, which has a sweet outdoor porch area that the chipmunks like to loiter on waiting for bits of food from the library cafe, they were also busy running up the maple trees, stuffing their faces with maple seeds and then running down the trees and depositing them in the hosta plants along side the library. It was a really fun assignment, though by the end both our hands hurt form writing so furiously!

Also observed during this exercise, some creative artwork made out of post-it notes on the 3rd story library window

I thought it was sweet anyway :)

Hockey Hockey Hockey Hockey

2011-10-07T22:24:00.000-04:00

Was up at the SDC this evening cheering on the Michigan Tech Huskies Hockey team, and man was it an awesome game. We were down 3-0 but came back to win it with our winning goal coming in with 59 seconds left to go! Man it was a blast, plus got to see the wonderful Erin Lehnert, always a treat :)

Looking forward to another game soon!

2011-10-02T11:26:00.001-04:00

View from the top of Ripley!

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Exciting News

2011-09-29T22:38:00.001-04:00

So, I have some exciting news :)

As I've written about before I'm going to Hawaii on the Big Island for The Wildlife Society's national conference in November. I'm really excited for the chance to present my research and participate in this awesome event.

But that is old news, exciting but old.

Newer, more exciting news is, I GOT A JOB! Like, a real job, a post-graduation, use my degree job :)

And, it's also, in Hawaii!

Hilo, Hawaii in fact.

View Larger Map

I'll be working for one of the post-docs here at Michigan Tech who is looking at bird diversity in Kipukas in Hawaii.

Kipukas are isolated patches of forest that are created by lava flows, yes, I said LAVA FLOWS :D (no, I am not working with hot lava, this is not dangerous, everyone breathe....) but it's still lava, which is just SO COOL!

So I'll be a bird bander, hauling gear, banding birds and being awesome in Hawaii. I've been giving it a lot of thought over the past two days and a lot of people were amazed that I had to think about it, but while I know that Hawaii is awesome, it's not a place I've always wanted to go (unlike say...Alaska, that is something I would not think about in the least). that being said, I am still really excited, just the cool birds I"ll get to see, much less work with, are fantastic, plus I really like Jessie, the post doc, and it sounds like the crew should be great.

So from ~February 1st to May 31st 2012 I'll be in Hawaii. Visitors are more then welcome :) You can come see the research, visit me, and see the beautiful island!

Caledonia Mine

2011-09-29T22:25:00.002-04:00

Today for Mammalogy we went to the Caledonia Mine just outside Mass City, MI (about 50 minutes outside Houghton) to checkout the mine, and more importantly, the bats inside the mine.

Despite the crazy weather (we had 60+ mph gusts today) it was a blast, makes me want to go caving really really badly again, there is something addictive about being underground and experience such stillness and darkness. It's like the opposite of regular life, there is no buzzing or beeping of technology, everything just....is, it's really cool.

So here's a few pictures, enjoy!

Getting our Gear on

Beautiful Foggy Day in the UP

White Bat

Checking out the bats

Mine Entrance

Bat Friendly Entrance!

Canary in the coal mine?

Lights in the darkness

Sunshine and Mary checking out the drill holes for bats

Bat in a drill hole

Cuddle for warmth!

Erin and I were excited!

Entrance to the Mine

Quite the Sunday!

2011-09-25T18:30:00.000-04:00

Beautiful Sunrise getting ready to open the nets

David showing off the Hermit Thursh

David showing how to band/measure birds

Jessie showing us how to determine birds fats

Checking out the Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle through the scope

Erin holding her first bird!

Jon got a turn too!

Cold bee hanging out on the flowers

A spider in the flowers

Dead bat :(

Watching the group through the spotting scope

Horned Lark

Later that day at Canyon Falls.......

Michelle enjoying the beautiful weather

Michelle, pointing out the waterfall incase you missed it

sick & rainy = productivity!

2011-09-24T21:38:00.001-04:00

So I caught the freshman bug (aka the flu that is going through the dorms right now) probably from the freshmen I TA, and have been sneezing and weeping the past two days....but, it has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, I suppose anyway.

I got so much homework/grad school prep/job applications done today! it was fantastic :) Plus I got to hang out with Jon and Luna, and get to be friends with the house cat Tiger for awhile.

Put in job applications today for Colombia (the country, not the towns in South Dakota or South Carolina), Ecuador, Panama, Idaho, Colorado, Two in Hawaii, one in florida.

and many more in the works!

Tomorrow, bird banding workshop!

BATS!

2011-09-24T21:30:00.002-04:00

Thursday night we went out to see bats as part of Mammalogy Lab, saw a few other cool things along the way.

Deer Vertebrate, but some people think it looks like a pitcher plant

Cool how they hook together eh?

Hanging out on the grate on top of the mine shaft waiting for the bats. The weird cage thing sticking up is a bat friendly closer to the mine, to keep people out but it allows bats to come and go (very cool!)

Looking down into the mine

I tried to get pictures of the bats...and failed

Puns!

2011-09-24T21:27:00.001-04:00

Thought you all might enjoy some fun birdy puns.

The ones I posted are copied from some quotes from the very punny Kenn Kaufman :)

Hessell International Scout Rally

2011-09-18T19:48:00.002-04:00

Spent the past weekend at Hessell International Scout Rally just outside of Hessell Michigan

View Larger Map

This was the 25th year that the I.S.R has gone on and it is an amazing event. It brings together, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Scouts Canada and Girl Guides, that's youth ages 8-21 from Canada and the U.S. for a weekend of making friends, sharpening skills and having a blast.

I was there as part of Crew 356, drove over with four other scouters, two members of my crew, and two other tech student's who's units were in attendance. The Theme was 'Surf's Up at the Beach' and everyone really got into it despite the chilly weather.

The view over the lake all 909 scouters camped on

The plant ID station that Michelle and I kicked butt on!

Michelle getting into the beach mood

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Save the whales hoop tossing game

Michelle and I were 'tied' together and had to get lose without untying the rope on our wrists, took a little guy to teach us how to do it!

Pig Roast!

Avery getting some practice at stealing expensive art by dodging some ropes in the obstacle course!

It was a bit chilly, so I broke out my favorite winter hat

Michelle, my friend from tech I've known the longest (we met during our college visit in 2007) was also excited to be along

Fire Building! (we got ours going with ONE match)

Some groups dressed up and performed for prizes, these girls are wearing surfboards

even the littlest scouters get to have a blast at Hessel

Jessica dominating a COPE challenge

Trying to get across the BURNING LAVA on the bridge, I was mute, and at this point Avery was 'blind' but we made it!

Michelle modeling my burnt venturing uniform shirt over her many layers

We all had an awesome time, all of our dinners were pudgie pies of some variety or another, pizza, ham and cheese, breakfast sausages and cheese, actual pudgie pies with pie filling, it was awesome :)

Our crew was honored by begin given the Canadian flag that was flown over the rally, pretty cool.

Our team also came within 6 points of 13th place, might not sound so impressive, but since we didn't try to do super well we were happy.

the driving home today was, interesting, the colors are JUST starting to change, some pretty purple and orange ones are starting to peek through, cannot wait for fall colors to overtake the Keweenaw, thinking that this next weekend might be a good one to visit Bear Bluffs again (where I went camping with the family in early August) and check out the colors from above :)

High of 49 - PERFECTION

2011-09-14T18:54:00.001-04:00

Today, was the PERFECT weather, it was so beautiful and just lovely to walk through and breathe in and out, it made my cheeks tingle with anticipation and my feet want to get back on skis. THe high today was 49, and I could not be more excited!

Now we just need the leaves to change and snow to fall and I'll be set for months!

In other news today, I had 7 meetings (this is an unusually large number) and I made it to all of them, only late to one, and not detrimentally so. I feel that this is an accomplishment, now to go shower, relax a bit and then dive into working on some statistical package code with an old co-worked from PSR who I haven't talked to in forever (I love Facebook, and how it helps me find people that know things I need to know!)

I hope you are all enjoying the fall weather - THINK SNOW!

Weekend of Awesome

2011-09-13T22:41:00.000-04:00

So this past weekend was Jon and I's third anniversary :) So we spent the weekend exploring a few new places on the Keweenaw and also went out to eat, a rare treat.

Saturday we went to the North Woods Conservancys (northwoodsconservancy.org) Seven Mile Point Property, which is a big sand beach about a 1/2 hour north of Houghton. It was AWESOME, we had it totally to ourselves at first, and it was so beautiful, plus Luna loved playing in the waves, I'm so glad she got over her fear of water.

I once again, got camera happy. I've always been a bit of a shuttebug, but lately I've really been enjoying it :)

Sunday was of course, September 11th. The two ROTC programs here at Tech (Army and Air Force) put on a great ceremony, in which my good friend Jon Materni had the honor of presenting the wreath to our university President.

After was a surprise outdoor mass at St Al's (a surprise to us, not to St Al's) hanging out with my friend Erin at her place in Chassell and then having dinner with Mr. Merritt (my boss when I worked at Pioneer). A great weekend, to be sure, and now that the weather has cooled off it looks like it should be a solid week as well!

2011-09-13T18:48:00.001-04:00

I love my job :-) such a beautiful day to be out teaching in the woods

2011-09-12T07:17:00.001-04:00

This is why i love walking to campus at 730 am

MTU Facts of the year

2011-09-10T09:33:00.000-04:00

http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2011/september/story46853.html

In summary of the above article, enrollment is at it's second highest in almost 20 years.

and, more importantly in the eyes of many, female enrollment is at an ALL TIME HIGH at 26.1 %! That means that ~1 in 4 students at Michigan Tech are female! :)

In other news, K-Day, a long standing Michigan Tech Tradition of giving students half a day off school to go celebrate fall and go to a HUGE student org fair at McLain State Park right on Lake Superior was yesterday, had a blast talking to students and trying to recruit them to be part of MUB Board and The Wildlife Society.

Then Jon and I went out to eat, yesterday was our third anniversary, which is technically just an arbitrary day that we picked, since neither of us is sure exactly what day we started dating, but it's a good excuse to go out to eat and set aside some time to not be crazy busy.

Today we're hoping to go explore some of the North Woods Conservancy (http://www.facebook.com/pages/North-Woods-Conservancy/406942450716)'s properties north of Calumet (about 20 minutes north up the Keweenaw) and let Luna burn of some of that crazy energy swimming in Lake Superior. I'm looking forward to a third weekend in a row of adventuring outdoors and hope to keep the momentum going this fall with exploring new places. Pictures to come later today/tomorrow.

Hope you are all enjoying the last days of summer, it was quite warm here yesterday (85) though hopefully it gets cooler again, I really like hoodie weather...

Be Prepared

2011-09-06T22:22:00.000-04:00

Being part of the Boy Scouts means being prepared, for everything. But if I've learned anything in all the training I've gone through and experiences I've had, it also means evaluating every situation, and figuring out when to stick it out, and when it's best to just go home.

This weekend was a time to just go home.

Jon and I went backpacking with a group of 19 students from St Al's, the student parish here at Michigan Tech. When I first signed up for this adventure I didn't know that it was going to be such a huge group, but we gave it a shot. We also took Luna, and our housemate Drew's dog Chien since he was out of town. So all together we had ALOT of gear, food, sleeping bags, lots of warm clothes, and two not so backpacking friendly tents, plus dog food, leashes, lines, and more.

So we got out there, had great first day, dogs were loving it, tents set up and after dinner the thunderstorm we all knew were coming rolled in. To avoid sleeping with a wet dog Chien and I turned in early.

The next morning, it was still raining.

This was not expected, at all. It was also ~50 degrees. Yuck.

But, we are optimistic. and go for a hike, a long, cold hike.

By the time lunch hits I'm cold, Jon's cold, the dogs are very cold and we can see that nothing is going to be clearing up anytime soon. So Jon and I decide that we're heading back Sunday, a day early. The dogs are going to be miserable wet and trying to sleep as it gets colder and so we head back to camp and pack up.

Then we head out, the trail in this area isn't super great, so it takes almost 3 hours for us to go 3.5 miles but we make it out, and just as we get to the cars the sun comes out, like a sign or something that we're finally going to stop being cold.

Not the way I expected the weekend to go, but by the time we were home I was glad we had gotten out early, I was cold and very sore and the next day was hurting pretty bad.

Sure, a lot of the crew we were hiking with decided to tough it out because 'they've seen worse' but I wasn't out there to see the worst, I was out to have a fun weekend backpacking, and it stopped being fun.

But a lazy Monday at home catching up on reading and just realixing was quite nice, and the dogs were EXHAUSTED so they slept the whole day so it was very quiet :)

Sadly I didn't take any pictures, despite how very pretty it was, next time I guess.

2011-09-02T22:23:00.001-04:00

All ready to go backpacking tommorrow!

First Day Recap

2011-08-29T17:16:00.000-04:00

Well I am almost through my first day of classes, and so far, so good. At least big picture wise. My lunch of this weird rice/bean mixture, leaked all over my backpack, so it is now all gross and smells....really strange. But other then that, found out that I do know people in all of my classes (hooray for study buddies!) so far my teachers are receptive to moving exams so I can take them before I go to Hawaii and the classes seem pretty interesting.

Yoga was awesome, in a very...painful and stress releasing way. I am excited to see how that class works out, and glad that they have extra yoga mats since I forgot to grab the one I had access to at home. Jon wasn't as impressed, but I think it will grow on him :)

First day of being a TA for UN1010 was this afternoon, the class only has 8 students in it, but they are all chatty and seem pretty excited about the coming semester, I am optimistic that this excitement will continue!

Tomorrow, more classes (kind of a second first day, since it's the first day of my Tuesday/Thursday classes) Field Techniques TA and Zoology Lab!

And an awesome video I found today of a sweet book/domino set up taht some students made in the Library last spring

Are you good at climbing trees?

2011-08-28T22:24:00.000-04:00

Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish on it's ability to climb a tree, it will live it's whole life believing it's stupid - Albert Einstein

I think that there is a lot of truth to this quote, and many other by Albert Einstein, but especially as the school year starts I have been thinking about this quote a lot. Everyone is good at something, many somethings, but not everything, no one is good at everything. If you think someone is, they are just good at not having to do the things they are bad at.

So if you are going through a rough patch, or the next time you do, just remember, this might not be the thing your good at, it might be your ability to climb trees, the thing that you shouldn’t be judged on. So get through it, learn what you can, and then go out there and find your thing, because everyone is a genius, everyone has a purpose, otherwise God wouldn’t have put you there, and well, he is good at everything, so I’m sure he made you good at a few things as well :)

Luna Went Camping!

2011-08-28T14:47:00.000-04:00

Last night Jon, Luna and I went camping with my friend Felicia and her boyfriend Jackson. We went up to Gay beach, which is a beach, just outside Gay Michigan, as weird as it may sound.

We had a blast, it’s a giant stamp sand beach, so the substrate is a bit strange, but it’s really cool looking and getting to spend some time looking at the stars and soaking in the sun away from town was great.

Had some interesting others on the beach, a few bonfires popped up in the late evening, which Luna wasn’t totally cool with but she quickly learned that barking doesn’t change anything and then was much more relaxed. She slept the whole night in the tent, I think we are more then ready for a weekend of backpacking next week!

Also spent yesterday at Gratiot Lake helping to remove the Loon nesting platform, which was fun, got to get in the water, spend some time with some great birders and also saw a loon poop, this may not sound totally awesome, but it was weird, this white cloud just…exploded out the back of this loon, went a good….25 feet underwater, weird, but totally cool :)

Tomorrow is the start of classes!

Fall 2011

2011-08-26T16:30:00.000-04:00

So next week it begins, my final semester of college! I cannot believe that I'll be graduating in less then four months, it's just insane. But, per usual, here's a rundown of what I'll be up to this semester.

Classes

MWF I have Zoology, Population Ecology and Design adn Analysis of Experiments (Stats in the above graphic). I also have Yoga M&W.

Zoology is a basic biology course that I'm just finally getting around to taking, has an evening lab, which I'm not totally crazy about, but should be interesting, probably a lot of memorization.

Population Ecology is probably one of the hardest classes in my major, it's a lot of math, applied to animals, which gets....interesting. i'm really looking forward to it though, I don't mind hard classes, or atleast I don't mind the right kind of hard class, and this is it, challenging, not bang head against the wall hard.

Design and Analysis of Experiments is a senior level stats class, and will be a huge adventure, I'm just hoping I can tackle it.

Yoga, is well, Yoga, and is a PE class, my last one, only runs 1/2 the semester, should be fun.

T/R I have Mammology in the morning, should be a great class, looking forward to having an outdoor lab again and I've always enjoyed Joe's classes.

I am also taking a Special Topics in Communications Class with the subject of communication, culture and creativity. Its with the same teacher I had for perspectives so I know it'll be great, and hopefully I can get my writing sheered up a bit.

Work

Teaching Assistant for UN1010 & Field Techniques

Those who have been reading this awhile know that I TAed both those classes last fall, both are a lot of fun, but for very different reasons. Only real change from last year is that this year I am the TA for the Visual and Performing Arts Learning Community for UN1010, not treehouse, and I am really excited about it.

'Work for Mike'
Is time set aside to do remote sensing/GIS work for Mike Falkowski, right now I'm working on creating NDVI Images of sage grouse habitat out west, but that job tends to always have something new on the horizon, I'll keep you posted.

Telecounseling - fourth semester working for Admissions calling awesome new students and talking to them about Michigan Tech, it's made me much less afraid of the phone and I love the people I work with!

Otherwise, MUB Board meetings every Wednesday as usual, other clubs meet less frequently, I'm hoping to be able to attend fireside chat at St Al's this semester when I'm not out of town...and yah, should be an awesome semester :)

We had the Honors Institute First-Year Orientation today, and it went REALLY well, had 86 students in attendance and they all seemed pretty excited, at least as excited as you can be at the end of a week long orientation. Got to chat with a girl who I talked to at Preview Day in march who wants to be a member of The Birdbums, I am super excited :)

Otherwise, just trying to get as much done before school hits as possible. goign camping overnight Saturday night with my friend Felicia and our boyfriends, should be a lot of fun. Also probably tagging along to take down the loon nesting platform at Gratiot Lake on Saturday, looking forward to getting some more time outside!

Goals and To-Do Lists

2011-08-25T15:04:00.000-04:00

I'm a goal setter, to-do list maker, every other kind of list maker. I thrive on words on the page, that help me get where I need to go, be they my words, or others words (I have notebooks, posters and plaques full of quotes and have recently started adding pretty postcards to that collection).

So, here i sit, about ready to embark on my senior year of college, which is actually just a semester, a abbreviated, fast paced, crazy senior year. My last senior year was quite....unique, and here's hoping that this one is more adventurous, more fun and the best semester ever.

and so, to bring all that about, I will of course, make a list.

Here it goes

Goals for Fall Semester 2011

4.0 GPA for the semester (I say this every semester, only made it once, but hey, always trying!)
Do things because I want to do them, not because I feel like I have to
this includes club trips, activity planning, research projects, service work, etc
Go camping
Go kayaking
Make this semesters Webelos Day the best one ever
Get the paper work filled out for my Pope Pius Xii award (boy scout religious award)
Get more involved at St Al's
Submit 2 papers to peer reviewed journals
Submit an NSF Graduate Fellowship Application
Figure out where I'm going to Graduate school
Apply to 1 bazillion jobs for the time between January and August (yes, exactly 1 bazillion)
Go for a walk with Luna and Jon every evening (perhaps I should say day, morning walks are good too)
Spend time with people I enjoy being with, not those that enjoy destroying me
Go to Whitefish Point Bird Observatory
Go Hiking at Bear Bluffs when the colors change
Go to the cardboat boat race during Homecoming (sadly haven't watched it since my college visit in 2007)
Go to a Hockey Game
Go to a Soccer Game
Go to a Football Game
Go see Garrison Keillor

2011-08-23T15:52:00.001-04:00

Luna is thinking speedy thoughts as we head back to houghton!

Silver Court of Honor

2011-08-20T20:21:00.000-04:00

Today was a little overwhelming, in a good way. I received my Silver and Ranger awards today in a court of honor that could only be described as spontaneously perfect :)

This adventure started yesterday, I got home about 4 or so, opened the trunk and saw something…alarming. My venturing uniform (the amazing green uniform shirt I’ve had since I joined in 2005) was burnt. BURNT

How does a shirt just ‘become’ burnt you might ask? By a broken muffler, that’s how. My muffler has a hole, which is aimed at the bottom of my trunk, sending super heated exhaust up against the bottom of my trunk, this then super heats my trunk, and burns things in contact with it, like my uniform shirt.

Then started a rather….interesting turn of events, where I tried to find a different uniform shirt, was unable to get reasonable access to one that wasn’t way to big for me, and just moved my patches to my brown uniform. So that’s why I’m not in my awesome green uniform shirt in these pictures - incase you were wondering, which you probably weren’t, but just saying.

So today was, great. My Uncle Denny, Adam Kohman and Schlak were all able to attend and be a part of my court of honor. Each of them has had a distinct and lasting impact on me and especially my scouting career and I was so glad they could be a part of it.

For more info on the awards I direct you here :

Ranger Award : http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Venturing/Awards/ranger.aspx
Silver Award : http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Venturing/Awards/silver.aspx

The whole scouting family

my mom pinning on my award

Adam & I

Schlak & I

Travel Bug!

2011-08-16T21:52:00.000-04:00

This summer has been amazing, and has bit me with a BAD travel bug…..I am getting more excited about graduating in less then four months because the more jobs I keep looking up at are in cool places, like Antarctica :) The more I travel the more it makes me appreciate being home, and having time with family, but also the more it makes me want to travel and see even more of this amazing world, especially the places that humans haven’t totally changed, yet anyway.

I’m thinking about recontacting some of the people I talked to last year about working in the netherlands, maybe go do some work there after graduation, though i’d also really like to work in Alaska, or out west, or Hawaii, or Canada, or Africa….or anywhere that would scare me a little, make me do something I’ve never done before, push me to better understand people, how we’re the same, how we’re different, and how it all fits together.

I’m just excited for the opportunities that are available and the chance that I might be able to take them!

Family Vacation

2011-08-14T21:30:00.000-04:00

My family just arrived back in Ohio after a 5 day whirlwind adventure in the U.P.

I was able to get a lot of things scratched off my Summer To-Do list and also the ‘Cool things to show the family’ To-Do List.

They arrived Wednesday Evening, and checked out the property, we were staying at Jon’s Cabin near Bruce Crossing and the fall wildflowers are out in their glory.

Thursday we headed North to Houghton, hit Agate Falls on the way

And then picked up the kayaks in Houghton and headed down to Chassell to kayak across Pike Bay and up the Sturgeon River.

Then we headed out to breakers so that everyone could try out the chilly waters of Lake Superior

Then we grabbed dinner and headed out for more Kayaking along the Portage Canal between Houghton/Hancock

Friday we headed farther North up into the Keweenaw, first we went to Bear Bluff, a place I’d never been before.

Then we got lunch in Copper harbor and hit up Brockway Mountain. After returning to Houghton just in the nick of time to return the Kayaks we headed down to prince’s point to spend some more time on the water and wear out Luna.

Then we headed back to the cabin, watched some movies and ate some pasties for dinner

Saturday was Porkies Day! Porkies as in the amazing Porcupine Mountains!

But first, we hit up Bond Falls, my favorite u.p. waterfall.

Then we went to the porkies, stopped by the visitors center, and visited Lake of the Clouds.

Then it was down to the Presque Isle River for some more awesome waterfalls. Mike did a bit of flyfishing as well. Plus more time on the lake!

Then we headed back to the cabin, Jon made his awesome sloppy joes and we finished off a great vacation with many a harry laugh :) Success!

picture test

2011-08-14T21:26:00.001-04:00

Hi All,

instead of writing my blog posts through my internet browser I’m working on setting it up so that I can write the posts in MacJournal, the journalling software that I use, and upload them from there, this is a test to see if the picture uploads are working, since it can be finicky….so hopefully you can see the below picture

2011-08-12T17:02:00.000-04:00

Playing with luna at princes point :-)

2011-08-12T14:26:00.001-04:00

Bear bluffs

2011-08-10T17:41:00.001-04:00

At the cabin waiting for the family to arrive!

2011-08-08T22:53:00.002-04:00

Luna doesnt want to get out of the tent i count that a success!

Ranger Award check

2011-08-08T21:46:00.000-04:00

In honor of finally getting everything signed off so that I am done with my Ranger Award, the capstone outdoor skills award in Venturing, here's the video of the photo book i made for my silver/ranger court of honor coming up here in a few weeks, want to see the hard copy, come to the court of honor, or ask my mom, she is the current care taker of it.

Updated Header

2011-08-08T20:05:00.001-04:00

So the I put together a new blog header ^ (that’s the image at the top that gives you the name/cool quote of the blog).

I thought it was time, to get some of the more recent pictures up and around, and I have this cool new collage software that makes it really easy, so in the future perhaps I’ll be updating it more often :)

An afternoon in the sun

2011-08-08T19:32:00.001-04:00

So right now most of my work is inside, it’s unfortunate, but it’s true. So this afternoon I was SUPER excited to get outside and help get tech’s campus looking back to it’s ‘normal’ self. For the past month or so there has been a very large, and rather unusual looking art project up all over campus. It’s a bit art, a bit local history, and a bit interesting. It’s a bunch of white pieces of cloth hung up in rows, (lots of rows) each one tells the story of a different person who lived in the western or central UP. A lot of it is old mining history or the history of the great depression, and a lot of cool pictures.

Today we were taking it down, piece by piece, each ‘towel’ was strung on clothes line, and they were held on with two black binder clips. So we had to take down all the clips, on each row there were five rows, between like 30 or so trees, there were over 3000 of these ‘towels’. Yah, it took awhile, but it was really easy work and the it was SO NICE OUT, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. Here’s a few pictures

And, I found out that THE Garrison Keillor is coming to Michigan Tech in October. I don’t typically attend events in the Rosza (MTU’s theatre) because they are expensive, and during the week, but I am TOTALLY arranging my schedule around this, I love Garrison Keillor!

Conference Recap

2011-08-06T22:04:00.000-04:00

So I got back from the conference Thursday evening and man, that conference was AMAZING. I met a lot of great people, talked about great ideas, what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is interested in, what we as biologists need to do, and it was just fantastic.

I presented my poster, but despite my promise of a picture of me looking all professional by my poster, I forgot to take one, so you’ll just have to believe me that for two and a half days I wore ironed clothes, polos, de dog haired my pants and actually looked human. Got an awesome idea for a graduate project that is the ‘appropriate size’ for a masters degree and is very applied and something that would really help aid management and monitoring of Virginia Rails, the species that I really want to work with in graduate school.

So needless to say, I have had an awesome week, now I need to get working on more writing and stats and prepping for the start of fall semester, which starts three weeks from Monday!

Alumni Weekend

2011-08-06T22:01:00.000-04:00

So this weekend is Alumni weekend here at Michigan Tech and I’ve been helping out with all the stuff with the forestry department. I love taking to Alumni, hearing all the stories and where life took them after graduation. Tonight we had a big cook out and it was a lot of fun seeing so many different people who have done a variety of things from their lives but at some point in the past ~75 years they were in my shoes, a semester away from graduating in the same department, it’s just so cool.

But, in more exciting news, Wednesday my family is coming to visit! :) and I am extremely excited to get to show them the summer U.P. a part of this amazing place that they haven’t ever really gotten to explore.

2011-08-02T08:46:00.001-04:00

Beautiful morning on lake michigan getting ready for the conference

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Olive Garden Gnocchi Soup

2011-07-30T18:49:00.000-04:00

Jon and I both have an amazing love of Olive Garden, but since there isn’t one anywhere close to Houghton (the closet one is in Green Bay Wisconsin, just over 200 miles away) but we found this awesome recipe for Olive Garden’s Potato Gnocchi Soup :)

http://www.copykat.com/2010/02/28/olive-garden-chicken-and-gnocchi-soup/

I highly recommend it, super yummy and easy to make, though because I’m bad at getting everything I need at the grocery store ours had no onions or spinach. But otherwise, amazing!

Other highlights of the day, awesome thunderstorm rolled through while I was cooking, mowed the lawn today and then hung out laundry to dry, now my clothes smelled like freshly mowed grass :) (the only good thing about mowing grass is the smell). Getting everything together to head down to Zion IL monday for the Midwest Bird Monitoring and Conservation Conference, SUPER EXCITED! And now that I found my polos (in a yet to be unpacked box in the garage) so I am ready to be all professional looking. (I’ll get a poster of me all cleaned up by my poster, don’t worry).

Hope you are all having a great weekend :)

Unexpected Happenings

2011-07-29T19:04:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, people surprise you and a situation where you feel uncomfortable transforms itself into something enjoyable and surprising, that describes the past 2 hours for me. I distributed communion at St Al’s today for the 530 mass (I’m the fill in for week day masses when I’m in town this summer). I attend St Al’s but I’ve never really liked it much, I just always felt disconnected, never cared for the music and just always wanted to be back at Millersville St Marys but today after mass I was talking to Father Al (yes, St Als, father Al,weird…I know). He was telling me about the pipe organ were getting (better music in our future?) and how they are redoing the front of the church, opening it up to allow in more light. Father Al just started at Michigan Tech….ok maybe it was like 2 years ago, anyway, I’ve never really talked to him before and he gave me a totally different, feel then the previous priest did and I really enjoyed talking to him.

I found out that the church is doing a backpacking trip over Labor Day weekend and he invited Jon and I to go along, and we’re gonna go. I’m really excited actually, I have labor day plans, and will hopefully finally be feeling comfortable at St Al’s.

It was just, totally unexpected, I don’t typically spend 20 minutes talking to the priest after church, but it just, was an awesome surprise, and has totally made my day.

In other news, got my poster from the printer today for the conference next week, today was payday, always exciting, and yah….things are going really well this week :)

perfect 20 minute walk loop

2011-07-26T09:33:00.000-04:00

So while I'm at work Luna is stuck holed up at home, poor pup, since my two other housemates are out of town. So when Jon & I get home we take her out for a walk, and we have found the perfect 20 minute walk loop, it's really pretty, little traffic and no steep hills (which in Houghton is amazing).

Look how happy she is to be outside!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150247159420423.321840.506290422&l=be987c5ad0&type=1

^ a few pictures from the walk.

The weather here has turned around it's been in the 60s and 70s durign the day, cooler at night. It's awesome :) Makes walking to 20 minutes to campus a lot more tolerable.

In other news, got kayaks reserved for my family coming to visit in two weeks :D Made awesome homemade dog treats for Luna and taught her three new commands, she's a really quick learner and is getting so much better behaved, it's awesome :)

Poster is DONE!

2011-07-26T09:24:00.000-04:00

I finished my poster for the conference next week :) two days early!

Pretty huge relief to have that off my shoulders, now to get the rest of thsi work done so I can enjoy the conference.

The conference is in Zion, IL (just North of Chicago) and it's the Midwest Bird Monitoring and Conservation Conference, pretty small, but it's specialized into my field, so I'm super excited.

Here's the poster if you want to check it out, it'll be a bit bigger at the conference (3x4 feet) but I think you can still get the idea.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B10FnU0Q3sazNmUyMjk1MjEtMmU2MC00N2Q5LTg2ZjktODI0MTVmMjhkOWZk&hl=en_US

Just saying.....

2011-07-21T10:21:00.002-04:00

HOT HOT HOT

2011-07-20T20:52:00.000-04:00

I'm guessing most of you are in places that are hotter then Houghton, you have my sympathy because it's rediculous here, and it's not normally this hot here, so many places don't have A/C, it's pretty interesting in the hot of the afternoon, but we're surviving, swimming a lot, eating a lot of ice, using fan systems.

In other news Sunday, on one of the hottest days of week Jeff and I went up to Gratiot Lake (about an hour up the Keweenaw Peninsula) to monitor the loon platform. Sadly, it hasn't been used this year, but we did get to canoe around one of the biggest lakes on the peninsula for a few hours, which wasn't as hot as expected, which was a nice surprise.

Working on a poster for a conference in two weeks, learning statistics, learning new software packages, going swimming a lot, it's been good so far :)

Back in Houghton

2011-07-15T15:15:00.000-04:00

I'm back in Houghton for awhile, and it's nice to not be living out of a bag and know that I'm staying in the same place for awhile. As much as I love traveling my research was suffering pretty badly and being in one steady place for awhile should get that ball rolling again.

I got back into Houghton Monday evening late after visiting the Field Museum in Chicago in the morning. Tuesday Jon & I drove to Munising to meet up with his mom and step-dad and go waterfall 'hunting' at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. It was a lot of fun, I'd never explored that part of the UP before and we had a great time. In the evening we did the boat tour of the pictured rocks and wow, they are amazing.

Wednesday they came to Houghton and we hung out with Luna, walked at the tech trails and played with her in the portage. Then we went to The Rockhouse (http://www.mineshaftfun.com/eats.php), which is probably my new favorite restaurant in Houghton, everything was so tasty and yah, if you come to Houghton, I'm taking you there if we go out to eat. The Rockhouse is also attached to a bowling alley/arcade/go cart track and they have putt-putt. So we played putt putt, par was...44 I think and I got a 70, yah I know, I'm pretty awesome at putt putt :D

The past two days have been a mad dash of research, I got the speciments from the Smithsonian measured and have been writing application after application for money to go to the National Wildlife Society conference in Hawii in November.

Other tasks of the summer:

~Sunday I'm going to Gratiot Lake and doing my turn monitoring the loon platform there

~The next weekend Jon and I are heading down to Manistique to Indian Lake State Park and working with Piping Plovers

~I'm redoing the Honors Institute Website right now

~I'm working on my poster for the Midwest Avian Monitoring and Conservation Conference in Zion IL in early August

~Trying to get a book of pictures done for my Silver Court of Honor in August

~Working, to pay those pesky bills, and also because it's pretty fun

~Hanging out with Jon, Luna and the rest of the Houghton Gang

Note - I am graduating in December, so if anyone wants to come visit me you have less then 6 months to do so, or you'll be visiting me not in Houghton. You have been warned.

Jon's Mom Mary and Step-Dad Tom

GIANT CHAIRS at Tom & Mary's Hotel

2011-07-11T21:51:00.001-04:00

Its good to be back in the UP :-)

2011-07-11T09:53:00.001-04:00

Made it through the downpour to the Field museum!

Craziness

2011-07-08T21:17:00.000-04:00

It's been a rough week here in the Van Der Laar household, last Friday my uncle David Van Der Laar passed away and while that was hard enough it brought back waves of memories of losing my Dad three years ago, but overall we are doing well, thanks to all for the great support as always :)

I visited the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History this week, got over 150 birds measured between them and by the time I visit the Field Museum next monday should be well over 200! Which is fantastic!

Got a poster accepted to the 2011 Midwest Avian Monitoring and Conservation Conference in Illinois in August, which is exciting.

Finally got myself back on Eastern time again after being out west.

Got to visit my old stomping grounds at Pioneer Scout Reservation on Tuesday, was great to see everyone and remember the awesome times I've had there.

I'm heading back up to Houghton Monday via Chicago and the Field Museum and will be there for the better part of 6 weeks, I'm looking forward to staying in one place for awhile and being able to dive into my research full time and also spend a few weekends camping :)

I hope to get a more detailed report of my green creek wildlife society california adventure up soon, way to swamped with research to-dos at the moment though, hope you are all having a great summer

2011-07-06T21:28:00.001-04:00

What do you know! There are even pretty sunsets in ohio!

2011-07-04T13:47:00.001-04:00

Waiting for the verandah Concert at the Hayes center to begin

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Back from SoCal!

2011-07-02T18:08:00.000-04:00

Hello All,

I have returned from my western adventure exhilerated, a bit jet lagged and amazed at the beauty of the natural world.

I was amazed by sequoias, giant granite cliffs, huge waterfalls of clear mountain water, and saddened by water guzzling cities, dirty air and sticky streets.

The more I travel the more I dislike cities and really any place that man has tried to build build build. We tend to screw things up pretty effectively (just pick up the news paper, or breath the air in any metropolitan area, or drink the water for that matter). But look at a sequoia, the biggest tree on earth, TOTALLY unaided by man, no genetic engineering, no miracle grow, just one giant, old, breath taking tree, just the way God designed it.

I had a wonderful time, saw amazing sites, met some great people who I got to know pretty well (camping for 11 days does that I guess) and started daydreaming about those 8 months between graduation and grad school.....man I could have an awesome road trip.

Current ideas for things to do between graduation and August 2012 (grad school, in theory)

Work in Hawaii with honey creepers
Get a job in Africa
Road trip around the U.S. for 1 - 2 months visiting national parks and wilderness areas.
going to the netherlands
working on a nature tour cruise ship in Antarctica as a naturalist
back packing the grand canyon
visiting my friend Ruth in Honduras (I worked with her on the golden-winged warbler project last summer, she's now doing her peace corp work down there)
go scuba diving
get my family out west

and who knows what else, traveling makes me day dream a lot, and I can day dream a lot of awesome trips, looking forward to see how it all works out.

I tried to text in some pictures along the way from the trip, sorry for the advertisements, that is annoying. To see some better, ad free pictures, check out this link.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150228435540423.315902.506290422&l=3446cba257

2011-06-30T11:03:00.001-04:00

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2011-06-30T11:02:00.001-04:00

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2011-06-30T11:01:00.001-04:00

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2011-06-29T16:56:00.001-04:00

A gorgeous day at the hot springs

2011-06-29T14:08:00.001-04:00

Its snowing in the Tioga pass!

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Rained a bit last night,

2011-06-29T10:52:00.001-04:00

Rained a bit last night, Yosemite Was amazing just WOW! Thank goodness for the likes of John muir

2011-06-26T16:33:00.001-04:00

Sitting outside in and out burger looking like hobos On our way to Yosemite

Adventures of a Birdgirl

Nene!

made it to hawaii!

Just a few more days...

Thought of the day - with an awesome owl!!

Graduate School Applications - IN!

Christmas Teardown

2011....

Christmas Bird Count 2011

Graduation

Many exciting and cool things...

1 more final....

Lighthouse Pictures

One more class?

Today I cannot solve your problems....

Last Field Techniques Lab

Last Wildlife Wednesday

Research...it continues

What comes next....

Monotremata - the 'wanna-be-mammals'

Totally made my morning!

Firsts (Snowy Owl)

Two distinct lasts

New features of the blog....

Want to be there!

Food for thought

Weird realizations (last two weeks as an undergrad)

Places I want to go

Hawaii Part 4 - Exploration Day 2

Hawaii Part 3 - Conference!

Hawaii Part 2 - Exploring Day 1

Hawaii Part 1 - Traveling

Photo Dump #...who knows at this point

Pumpkins!

The calm before the storm....

Sunday Craziness

Ball In The House Concert

More pictures from Mammalogy

Webelos Day Pictures

Weekend in Paradise

Last Sunday's Adventures

Chipmunks

Hockey Hockey Hockey Hockey

Exciting News

Caledonia Mine

Quite the Sunday!

sick & rainy = productivity!

BATS!

Puns!

Hessell International Scout Rally

High of 49 - PERFECTION

Weekend of Awesome

MTU Facts of the year

Be Prepared

First Day Recap

Are you good at climbing trees?

Luna Went Camping!

Fall 2011

Goals and To-Do Lists

Silver Court of Honor

Travel Bug!

Family Vacation

picture test

Ranger Award *check*

Updated Header

An afternoon in the sun

Conference Recap

Alumni Weekend

Olive Garden Gnocchi Soup

Unexpected Happenings

perfect 20 minute walk loop

Poster is DONE!

Just saying.....

HOT HOT HOT

Back in Houghton

Craziness

Back from SoCal!

Rained a bit last night,

Ranger Award check