Wow, haven't posted since November.

Well we still haven't gotten into the new house yet. That makes it pretty tough. Also, Bartlesville isn't as big as I remember. While I hated many aspects of the city, I really miss the conveniences. Especially all the different food options. The fact that all my friends are now ~ 7 hours away makes things get pretty boring at times.

So I got a job finally. I'm a quail farmer. I work for an avian research center here that started a Japanese quail breeding facility about 25 years ago to feed their eagles. They raised an amazing amount of Bald Eagles for reintroduction. Since, they have stopped breeding Eagles, but still sell the quail to falconers, herp breeders, zoos, and anyone else that wants them. My job is to raise about 1200-1500 quail a week. At 10 weeks old, I have to kill them, freeze them and prep them for shipping. It's a pretty dirty, thankless job, but the money is good and I'll soon have full benefits from OU (including full access to the university's resources).

So we got a good layer of snow yesterday. Yes 2 weeks ago it was 85 degrees with tornados and now we are covered with snow and it is freaking cold. But in a few days it will probably be in the 70's again. Gotta love early Spring in this area.

Ride home

So we were only 45 minutes from home tonight when we had a little delay. I looked in my rear-view mirror to see those wonderful red and blues. I said, "shit" and pulled over. Then it dawned on me that I was slowing down to get ready to stop so I couldn't have been speeding. Well apparently my driver's side headlight was out. When he finished running my DL he came back and asked what I was doing tomorrow. I thought maybe he was asking me out, lol. I said, "well first off, I have to replace my headlights and side mirror (a few weeks ago a hay bale flew off a truck and broke my mirror). He asked if there was a tag agency close by. I said there was. He then told me that I might want to get my DL renewed. Apparently it expired on halloween. So not only was I driving with only 1 headlight, but I had an expired driver's license. He didn't even give me a warning and was one of the nicest officers I've had to meet. Either way, we made it home safe and hopefully will have a good weekend.

Fun at the fair

Well today at school Melissa got an e-mail from Lauren asking if we wanted to go to the fair with them. So we pack up our stuff and headed straight to the Sawyer's house. Well by 7:00, we found out exactly what we signed up for. Our group ended up being 16 people after we met up with the rest of the Sawyer clan. We had a blast. I ate more than I should have including a jumbo corn dog, a BBQ sandwich, a funnel cake, cotton candy, and 3 Dr Peppers. Most of the time we just hung out watching the herd of kids riding rides. It definitely was a good warm up for our day long trip to the Tulsa State Fair next month. Well, it's been a long day. I'm off to bed.

Weekend is here

Well I officially changed my thesis project. I through out one chapter that didn't work out (skeletochronology). However, I added a chapter that involves looking at sperm on the scanning electron microscope (yes, I gave in and am now a spermatologist too). I practiced (as Trauth called it) on the SEM all day Wed. I practiced so much that I took pictures of 45 sperm from one animal. I hope that at least 30 of them are good enough for my project.

Yesterday I started looking through all the slides I have been making. For those, I just need a regular light microscope. So far I have been finding what I had hoped to so that part of my project should work out pretty well.

Well yesterday I got roped into teaching, AGAIN!!! This is going to be my 7th semester teaching. Unless the schedule changes, I will be teaching 3 sections of Human Structure & Function I and 1 section of Microbiology for Nurses. It won't be too tough of a semester though since I don't have to take any classes. Today we (all the TAs) had to help clean and prep the labs. It was pretty easy and didn't take too long.

This afternoon we heard from Lauren that it was going to be a river weekend so we hurried to pack and are leaving for the river house in about 10 or 15 minutes. So we are off on another Spring River adventure.

First baby

Got up this morning and decided to check on the hatching Corn Snake eggs. Well 1 baby is completely out and going strong. It is really small so I hope it makes it. There is 1 other one with its head poking out, but hasn't got brave enough to leave its gooey home and face the unknown.

Yesterday I finished what could prove to be the last tissue I have to section at ASU. I have a few samples that another grad student prepped a few years ago, but I don't think I'm going to have to use them. Either way, I will be staining those slides today and then I will start looking at them on the scope and taking pictures. I will probably be starting on the electron microscope next week to start on the last chapter of my thesis project (yep, I'm working with sperm too). Then it will be nothing but analyzing data and lots of writing (fun fun).

Geckos

Yesterday I managed to make a few more slides. I'm getting so close to wrapping up another chapter of my research (except for the writing). I can almost see a faint light at the end of the tunnel.

Well last night was mostly typical. Melissa and I sitting around watching the Olympics and playing on the computer. Anyway, Jonathan decided to head out looking for geckos again last night so I went with him. Somehow we managed to catch every one we saw which can be pretty tricky when they are about 10-12 feet off the ground. I got home a little after 10pm and continued where I left off. I won about $300k play dollars playing poker while the US girls won gold and silver in the gymnastics individual all-around.

Bats

Well first off, I feel a hell of a lot better. Anyway, to the bat netting. We got to the site in SE Missouri and quickly helped set up 4 mist nets. After a bit of frustration over a large beetle tangling one of the nets, we got them up and ready. So we moved our vehicles to our "base camp" and waited. We checked the nets about every 15 minutes for about 4 hours. We successfully netted only 5 bats, but that's better than none. Two of the bats were targets for the researcher we were helping. Well at around 12:30am, we decided that 4 hours was long enough so we headed back to J-boro. After a very sleepy drive home, we pulled into the apartment at about 3:15am. We were out cold shortly after. Then, about 5 hours later, we had a knock. The maintenance man was here to replace our kitchen faucet. Great timing, but at least we have a fully functional kitchen sink again.