I'm Here: A Blog Post

West Coast, baby! It's fucking freezing. No, really. Today was nice, I put on shorts but that was seriously pushing it. I bought long underwear today. LONG UNDERWEAR. It's summer, wtf?

But it's really quite lovely. Last night the ladies and I went on a loong walk, across the bridge, down the bayfront where there are MANY orca murals, back across and 1.5 miles to the jetty and the beach to watch the moonrise. Pretty nice ladies all around. YOU might even like a couple of em. Can you believe it?

That's the bridge!

The research center (located on MARINE SCIENCE DRIVE yes I live on MARINE SCIENCE DRIVE)
across the bay from.. any other civilization (except for the rogue brewery..)

There is science EVERYWHERE here. No, really. This is actual science and it's scaring me. I can't bullshit my way out of this one. MARINE SCIENCE DRIVE.

I started my research training today. Woke up at five to meet my mentor (who is the best mentor of them all, although he doesn't have the best style of them all NOR a mustache) and we headed out to Yaquina Head, about 10 miles from the science center. We climbed to the top of the lighthouse, looked down, and saw around 80,000 birds sitting on 2 big rocks in the ocean. Common Murres. They look like penguins.


My job for the summer? To account for the productivity (eggs, hatchlings, deaths, fledglings, etc) of around 120 specific nests. They are not marked. I identify the birds by location relative to geologic features on the rocks. And then I take pictures of the birds with fish in their mouths in order to identify the fish. And then I cut open dead bodies that wash up on shore to check out stomach contents.

Standing up there today I was freezing and overwhelmed but I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. How in the hell did I pull this off?

I got a new bike today for a birthday! A road bike. I flew around town and it was heaven.