Rachel R.: "Everything I know about science could be summed up in haiku! [thinking silence] Okay!
rocks are old and don't... move
that tree is really pretty."
Me: "Rachel, that was not a haiku. Nor was it... accurate."

Rachel, Justin & i had a very Lizzy-McGuire-esque phone chat, in which Justin was of course Gordo, and since RR wanted be Miranda i guess i am Lizzy.

In real news, i had a bit of a catastrophe with my samples. Of the two samples i actually had done for mailing off today, one didn't have enough planktonics and the other didn't have enough benthics. (THIS SUCKS. THE ALL CAPS EMPHASIS IS FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T REALIZE I JUST SPENT A MONTH PICKING FORAMS AND MIGHT NOT GET ANY USEFUL DATES FROM THEM.) The irony of the one-without-enough-benthics is that it had absolute mounds of benthics in it... that mostly turned out to be agglutionated. Stupid recycling lazy benthics. i loathe thee. How dare you be huge, easily identified, and made of someone else's wrong-aged calcite??

i am also left to wonder just how almost 700 inflatas can weigh in at less than 0.3 milligrams.

All is not lost, however. i'll still have enough regular mass spec data for a poster... yay.

RR: "Why am I telling you this?"
Me: "To prove that art students have more fun than science students?"  ¶ 11:03 0 comments

  i am so over the Garden State.

Being from what is traditionally known as the Boringest State Ever Made ("You can't spell Wisconsin is Boring without 'Wisconsin'") one might expect more excitement abounding from hilltops and valleys just about anywhere else. i was thinking about all the boring days i've had in Wisconsin. Then i remembered, those were mostly the days when 1. the dam was being let out so one couldn't go cliff jumping or 2. the days i was pretending to be sick soas not to go to school/work or 3. the weeks when Rocky's forgot to pay us so all we could do was throw soda cans at Kmart. And even that is fun.

okay, i'll not bitch anymore.

i'm going to Boston next week!

i will EXPLODE with excitement!

andddddd! my samples really are almost done!

Not that coming here was a huge mistake, i just miss everyone back home. i'm a little bitter that i only get to be in school for four years, and so this is my only REU ever. Ever. After making a pest of myself at Madison for almost two years ("Please let me work in your lab, i'll weigh shit, i'll cart rocks around, i'll age date pollen, i'll calculate hydrolic pressure, whatever you need done i'll do cheap, free, whatever, please please please give me a lab job...") i guess i assumed people who are working in labs want to be working in labs. And i purposefully did not apply for the REU in Milwaukee so that i'd go somewhere not nearby.

i thought i said i wasn't going to bitch anymore. Opps.

Well, i have things to do. Sort of.  ¶ 10:53 0 comments

  Beware the self evident.  ¶ 10:16 0 comments

 
washing mud really is in my job description


the before shot


aaaaaaaand...! the after shot! the difference sure is obvious.


i'm not just posing, i really am picking forams in this picture (special thanks to Adam for taking pictures for me this very boring weekend)


"WOW! i am just SO SURPRISED that my samples are dry already! Wow o wow!"


there's my half finished tray o' forams, yay.


the ready to be picked samples  ¶ 19:18 1 comments

  "You know i love the soft sciences, but that is downright runny."  ¶ 14:12 0 comments

  i'm starting a new club: United Front for Sanity

Who's with me?  ¶ 22:46 1 comments

  My mom's credit card got stolen & went to White Castle! (Yes, the one in St. Paul. i really hope they remembered to blast some rap while parked on that street corner! and smash some windows!)

I just finished reading The Long Summer by Brian Fagan & The Autobiography of the Earth by Marcia Bjornerud. They are both really good, and i highly reccommend the latter to anyone who has thought "what do geologists do anyway?" which is a question i get a lot. i especially liked it because some of the outcrops she mentions are in Wisconsin & i am thus familiar with them (she's a prof at Lawrence). It's not technically challenging, so you have no excuse not to read it. Rachel Grace.

i am, apparently, going up to Wood's Hole (by Boston) in a few weeks. i am excited for this. i'm nearing done with my samples, maybe two more trays on this particular sample and then some odd-bits-cleaning of others & some corals. i'm running some cibs through the regular mass spec on the other campus here at Rutgers in a few weeks, which isn't exactly pertinent to my project but i get to 1. explore something other than this small abandoned campus and 2. learn how to use a mass spec. Apparently Physics 2 was useful for something, but they've yet to truly prove this to me.  ¶ 13:56 0 comments

  Today was both wildly exciting and yet a bit boring (perhaps i'm a bit jaded is all?). i went to Princeton, because it is one train stop away and that is where my advisor lives, to explore the campus & have dinner with them. Oceanographers are awesome people, by the way. Princeton campus has way too much money tossed about, it is minuature castle & arch-land. Though i didn't run into the ghosts of Einstein or Guyot, i did i eavesdrop on an Egyptologist and his protege, and i am aware i have misspelled some things recently. Blogs yay.  ¶ 19:04 0 comments

  Project: The discovery and analysis of Satanic messages obtained by playing the fossil record backwards.

i really, really want to go to the University of Ediacara

Pros: virtual so i won't ever be late, the best professors in several fields, references to oldest microfossils ever found & evolutionary theory always good, and a wide variety of possible thesis projects.

Cons: probably not accredited, if my electricity goes out i'll miss all lectures, ongoing geology puns that are my life, no TA scholarship type thingys available....

(i got really, really distracted from doing real-world-work)  ¶ 18:30 0 comments

  Operation: Not Sit Around Cook Campus All Summer: Success

This has been the weekend of meeting random internet friends. Friday Bekah's WoW Guild member Alex took me around College Ave. campus, which is quite a bit like the St. Paul campus except not made of ice or gopher-shaped. It was awesome, and i now know of a cute local college-y cafe at which to annoy people. After bonding over the perils and stereotypes of academic life, i helped him pick up his dry cleaning.

Saturday i ventured to Manhattan all by my lonesome, Southern Boy Adam needing a rest-up day (so many genome sequences, so little time!). My plan was to visit the Met, then Batman with Kevin. Instead i walked quite the wrong direction for many hours away from the Met, ended up in Soho, and bought some earrings (which are really nothing to write home about, especially considering RGE's & my extensive dangly-silver-earrings collection). i braved the subway, found Kevin & food & went to Batman Begins. Which is excellent. In the vein of Superhero stories that i somehow missed all of my childhood, i now really want to see more. All i remember of previous Batman movies is the repetitive surprise of Uma Thurman's face.

An hour and a stuttering/muttering taxi driver later, i was all safe at 'home.' Fed the guinea pigs. It's a really good thing i finally got around to venturing away from campus; all the NJ people left this weekend including the one usually without a car and my roommate Rachel went to Gettysburg with her family. Only two remained, and they were positively bursting with boredom by this morning. Adam & i sat around and talked about hydrothermal vents, copper deposits, The North vs. The South (again), chemosynthetic food chains and the like. Very exciting.

Commence: Operation Listen to The Beekeeper While Finishing Friday's Work  ¶ 11:21 2 comments

  Have i ever mentioned that my life is built of situational irony?

i didn't get much done today at "work," i was not feeling it at all. After crushing a few 110-micron bulloides (or inflatas?? i do not know! the baby ones all look the same!) i spent two hours going to three different banks, now i am cash-rich. Banks are ridiculous. i am done with them (i wish). i confused a few tellers with my "i'm from Wisconsin, all i need is this damn check cashed. No, i do NOT have a local billing address." i broke down & bought myself a cd player with my "emergencies only" credit card, i'm sure Mom will be quite pleased with me. The cds i ordered have not arrived yet. My one not-oceanography contact in central Bosnywash is moving to the southern end of Bosnywash today, but we're meeting/getting coffee first. In other Mom news, her tenets can't pay rent. This means less Acoustic & other wonderful things for me in the future, and apparently she's going back to school. The sidewalks around my dorm/apartment complex are under construction, which mostly entails smashing chairs at 6 a.m., and then the workers take long smoke breaks from 9-1. My question is why can't they let us sleep, and smash things while i'm at work? Or put the dumpster not by the ONLY occupied building for blocks. Bastards.

And that run-on paragraph, dear reader, lists just some reportable things.

Also, i'm thinking of breaking my "The only things i've seen in NYC are the Watchtower Printing press & the Statue of Liberty from a research vessle while gathering organic chemistry and stratification data" streak with a trip there tommorroww. Southern Boy Adam may be coming with me, but we have absolutely no plans. Wise are we.  ¶ 12:04 2 comments

  for example:

"Now this is what I call physical oceanography!" --while making the interns unload a truck full of sounding equipment--  ¶ 21:07 0 comments

  The only things worse than geology puns are oceanography puns.

And the only thing worse than being several days behind in my work is being too hungary to care.  ¶ 13:09 0 comments

  "baby, you can call me crazy/you know, i'm no stranger to myself"

What does two-thirds of a cibicidoides look like? i can identify one-sixth of a uvigerina... go team!

Where did the water go? [no really]

i've been picking the same sample all week, the 100-micron size now. It goes so slow, and i keep sending really nice benthics to foram heaven (the table, that is). i keep mushing bulloides, which is really sad. They all lived & died 11,000 years ago, somehow survived all that time below the CCD (i.e., should have disolved in slightly acidic waters) and even made it through several vigourous washings. Then i finally get them on the tray, to say "hey, innocent Bulloides! i need your calcite to figure out where the water was going when you died!" and they say "okay! Have at it!" and i MUSH THEM WITH A PAINTBRUSH. i am useless. i have several articles to read, and am now taking a library break to try & do so.

i can't spell anything right, i can't wake up on time. This place is weird. Most important, familiar words no longer angry at. O-chem side, can't eat in here. Argh.

Scale of vulnerability: the whole thing is (/has been) trading up. And you just can't blame them.

i realized recently that much of my personal philosophy is based on being a moody bitch. i don't like that. i was thinking about myself at different ages; how i treat people, how i respond. Perhaps it's too simplistic a model, but my parents are poster people for different methods of living (RGE, feel free to correct me if this is wrong). Daddy doesn't remember anything, the demons in his life not worth confronting. Happy-go-lucky, walks the dog, smokes cigars, generally pleasant and undemanding. Mommy remembers everything to an exhausting fault. The trick, i think, is to find a nice balance in order to not be either A. bitchy & bitter or B. forgetful & weird. i think inherently i'm more like my father, but this is a frusterating trait given that the scientific discipline requires good memory.

Another thing on my mynd is that everytime i think i thought of something unique, i google it/library research it & several books have already been written on the topic. Interesting, as usually the books/whatever are more thoroughly thought through; frusterating in that things i've been vaguely curious about for years have been published on, and had i had my wits about me i could have spent less time worrying about subjects that have already been exhausted. Get on to the next question, bitch.

Oh, awesome news for those of you who somehow haven't heard: Philip Cooney resigned.

Sunny out today, windy too. My lab is quiet. (except for the oldies radio station and the next-door banging of someone else cleaning sieves and that stupid pepsi machine round robin gossip gossip gossip)  ¶ 13:32 2 comments

  "Axolotls are the Micheal Jackson of the animal kingdom."--Southern Boy Adam--

It all [current court cases & evolutionary theory] comes together.  ¶ 14:31 0 comments

  it ain't no thang... ALASKA!

One time i was talking to my boss, Brooke, at the Geology museum, and i described my little sister Rachel as "just like me, except more intense. And also, she's in love with a woman while i love science." i realize this is true every time i read her blog. i might add that the other difference between us is that i am aware of how weird my sentences can be and strive to correct this, at least through use of commas, while she seems to revel in odd grammar.

Last year when Audrey died i wasn't there. So now missing Jim's funeral is almost natural. All this living-in-Madison & travelling-for-internships catches up with me, missing weddings (Nicole & Parker) funerals (see above) and not-JW things (birthdays: Nate's today, Nik's in a few weeks, MaRy's a week after that).

Today i slept in, read some more paleoclimate articles, sorted some forams, got bored of that, washed some samples up and waited for them to dry. i also cursed the library system here, which has finally realized i exist & thus should be allowed use o' their books, but won't let students (or interns) rent movies. BAH! BAH! BAH! is all i have to say. BAH!

Wait a second. RACHEL. Did you just say the pool is usable?

Last time i checked it was a distinct shade of 'really bad coffe... or tea... leaves... goo...' or at least that's what i recall thinking about it.

IMCS is awesome. We watched Volcanoes of the Deep, (that movie about hydrothermal vents that just came out) yesterday & as some of the scientists who are in it work here, had a nice lil' Q&A session. i like hydrothermal vents. If i haven't mentioned it before.

The movie i (and Rachel, my roommate) wanted to rent was one of Jacques-Yves Cousteau's, as we have talked about The Life Aquatic a lot. Now all i want to do is watch The Life Aquatic over and over. Or i heart huckabee's.

"We're not in infinity; we're in the suburbs."  ¶ 15:19 4 comments

  Who wants to do me a favour?

Rachel Grace, i bet you do! Next time you're in the basement, go in my closet and find my mix tapes. i bet they're in a bag with other things that lived in my car. Take two or three of my mix tapes and mail them to me. Preferably ones either i or RR or that one Bekah made. If you can't find my mix tapes, do me an extra special big favour and record an album or two onto a tape and mail it to me.

The radio here sucks, just like the radio in EC.

Therefore i am dying.  ¶ 14:44 3 comments

  chicken! egg!
younger-dryas event! cutting off of northern atlantic deep water formation!

it's classic, just not as catchy.  ¶ 19:49 0 comments

  Cleaning up after movies last year at the drive-in, many fun things were discovered. Mostly this involved nachos, nickels, and mattresses, but once Rachel found Buddha. She put him on a necklace that she quickly lost, and all the employees of Geminizzle-Drizzle became even more jaded than before. The Travel Channel even did a special on our Unique Midwestern Angst. i personally thought The Angst was also caused by caliope cars, grease fries, and consuming too many blue slushie/sprite syrup mixes without any carbonation. But then again no one asked me.

One night our manager, Bekah, had to go home early. She trusted Bryan & i to close, which might have been a very foolish thing to do but we did alright. We were pretty proud of ourselves until we realized we still had to clean up the yard. There weren't any cars left, but there was lots of trash. Bryan & i resigned ourselves to this distasteful task, and half an hour later the yard was as clean as it had ever been. It was almost 4 a.m., and we decided to sit around on the benches near the front of the "theatre" and watch the sun come up. Or something romantic like that, but you know, it was pretty late at night so i can't be expected to remember all the details. In any case we were wondering about the drive-in way after we could have gone home. Bryan started talking about the Russian Revolution (or maybe he continued talking about it having never stopped since it came up hours before) and about Oscar Wilde and seeing eye dogs and white bread and things like that. We were sitting there on that bench when i noticed there was some object on the lawn that we had neglected to pick up. It was small, shiny, and not made of stibnite, but that's all we knew about it. We therefore assumed it was a genie's lamp, and Bryan wished for the lithosphere to be gone.

He said,

"I wish, O Dear Genie, for the Lithosphere to be Gone!"

and i said, "Don't wish for that! For the lithosphere is very important, O Science Naive one!"

We fought about this point for awhile, and suddenly it was morning. Actually, it was 2 a.m. the next day, and we were at Heckel's. We sat around at Heckel's until the waitresses changed and we could leave without Bryan giving them a tip. Then it was 4 p.m. that afternoon, and though we were full of coffee and tuna melts from Heckel's, we didn't quite feel rested enough to work another shift at the Gemini.

Bryan said,

"I wish I had twenty hours right now to take a nap! And Sarah too, because she is so very very tired!"

And then it was 2 p.m. that afternoon, and i felt like i had slept an absurdly long time. We were at my dad's house, and kimmy! woke Bryan up to ask about car repairs. As neither of us knew anything about car repairs, we made her go away and sat around and smoked the last of my cigarettes. A few hours later CJ called Bryan on his cell phone in a nicotine-less panic, and since i was the only who was 18 that day, i went to buy us more cigs for the night. i didn't have any cash on me, so i went next door & pawned the not-made-of-stibnite-object for $5.32. i returned to the Gemini barely on time yet triumphant.

CJ said,

"Did anyone find the time machine I left on the lawn the other night?"

Which neither Bryan nor i would admit to, but i donated a pack of cigs to CJ and hoped the incident would rest. Bryan was pretty mad about it, but at least we still have a lithosphere.  ¶ 18:16 2 comments

  apparently blogger can't handle deltas. the four "?"s in the last post are actually deltas.  ¶ 19:19 2 comments

  well, bother

You might be wondering what i'm doing in NJ anyway. So, here's my superfun proposal. This isn't the final draft quite yet, as i need to add the references to this story. For some reason, though i love to write, this took me forever and i'm quite sick of it. Not sick of the project, i actually love this project, just more than sick of the proposal-writing. If anyone has any pure writing critiques for me, i'd love them. i forgot how to write paragraphs. Um, tephra=ash, ventilation & circulation are synonyms, AMS=Accelerated Mass Spectromety.

The Paleoventilation of the South Pacific

Introduction
My project this summer is to refine the circulation model of the South Pacific during and since the last ice age. Deep water currents in the modern ocean are formed in the North Atlantic, flow south and then to the east around the southern tip of Africa. This colder, denser and more saline water fills the water column below the thermocline as it flows through the Indian Ocean, and enters the Pacific, moving north in the region of New Zealand. In the Southern Ocean, this deep water flow outcrops and partially re-equilibrates with the atmosphere, before sinking again to continue its global deep water circulation route. The route of the global deep water circulation is dictated by the physical attributes of the water, as well as morphological features of the ocean floor. During the last glaciation ice coverage in the polar regions changed the formation of deep waters in the North Atlantic, slowing down and modifying the properties of those deep waters.

Ocean water can be dated using 14C as a tracer, with modern surface waters having ages of ~400 years and deeper waters having dates of ~700 to 1500 years. Modern surface waters do not date to zero years due to the time it takes for atmospheric CO2 to enter the ocean as well as due to mixing with deeper, older waters. The difference between these values in a given location is the reservoir age of the deep water in that location, as the water’s age varies throughout the oceans.
Since the amount of the greenhouse gas CO2 the oceans hold is much greater than the CO2 held in the atmosphere, ocean circulation and deep water residence time both have a strong effect on the climate. The past residence time of CO2 in the world’s oceans is uncertain, and a constraining the past ages of surface and deep waters will help quantify past changes in ocean circulation. As current ocean circulation has a strong effect on climate, acquiring and interpreting data from critical locations such as the South Pacific will improve reconstructions of past ocean circulation and climate fluctuations.

My final poster from this research will help in understanding the past ocean and climate system during the last glacial maximum, thus aiding in understanding and predicting current and future ocean and climate changes. This study is therefore pertinent to climatologists, geologists, and oceanographers alike, as well as the wider scientific and policy making community who need a good understanding of global climate cycles.

Objective
To produce several (between 2-4) more ventilation ages for deep waters around New Zealand where data from the original study is missing. For each core and depth I will get between 2-4 radiocarbon dates. Each ventilation age estimate requires both planktonic and benthic dates to get the difference between them. The addition of only a few more data points will greatly increase our understanding of the circulation of the area, and will create a more complete depth profile of glacial waters during the last glacial maximum.

Approach/Methods
The samples used for this study have been collected from the Bay of Plenty and south Chatham Rise, and will be correlated using tephras to get samples that are contemporaneous yet cover a range of depths in the water column. Benthic foraminfera, representing the deep water, and planktonic foraminfera, representing the surface water will be sampled for 14C dates.
In order to refine the circulation model of the South Pacific, cores have recently been collected from the Bay of Plenty and other areas to the north and east of New Zealand. Using samples from these cores, chosen for their location, depth in the water column and correlation with known terrestrial tephras, I will collect two planktonic species (l. Inflata and l. Bulloides) and several benthic species of foraminifera (especially Uvigernia sp.). These samples will be age dated in an Accelerated Mass Spectrometer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and their relative ages from each other will be used to estimate the reservoir ages of the ocean.

Sampling near these tephras limits the error that would be introduced by bioturbation. The tephras are being chemically fingerprinted in a related study and correlated with core depths. Their ages are calculated in terrestrial deposits, and correlated to the marine cores we have for this study. Correlating known terrestrial tephras with marine tephras, and sampling for foraminifera above and below these marks gives us temporal accuracy.

Though picking foraminifera is a time-consuming process, I hope to complete as many samples as possible before the samples need to be sent to the AMS lab in late June. A minimum of two samples should be completely ready by then. The mud sampled from the cores is sieved first in a 64 micron sieve, then a 250 and 150 micron sieve set. The foraminifera in the greater than 250 set are picked through by hand first, and if that sample does not contain enough foraminifera, the 150 micro set can also be picked through.

Another aspect of the project is that I will also run stable isotopes of ?18O and ?13C to confine the ventilation data on the South Pacific.

Schedule
May 26- June 28: Pick forams and send samples off for analysis
July 1-15: Analyze ?13C and ?18O supporting data
July 18- 28: Prepare poster for RIOS poster session


Evaluation
The success of this project will be determined by whether or not I am able to have sufficient samples ready to send of for age dating. The success of this project will also be evaluated by whether or not the age dates that are returned aid in the modeling of the ancient South Pacific.

(references here)  ¶ 19:09 0 comments

  last week on the water:
  ¶ 13:19 0 comments

  "One promising researcher gets her legs eaten by a shark, and the whole parade's called off! Bureaucracy!"  ¶ 21:19 0 comments

  these are a few of my favorite things

In the interest of not bringing seventeen carloads of crap anything to New Jersey, i scanned some pictures before i left Wisconsin. A lot of these have suffered quite a bit, both since they were taken/displayed/whatever also for some reason in the scanning process.

i will go Office Space on this computre now.

Excuse me.

Jessie & Sable, circa 2001:


a portrait of Thomas:


a portrait of Mollie, 2000:


i took a pretty picture of Sherman Creek! [that moose/dog-thing you might think you see does not exist, this is a picture of Sherman Creek]


Thomas again:


Rachel & me, circa 1991:




i don't think either of us should ever forgive mom for these dresses:

Us again, circa 2002 [this is the funniest picture that has ever been taken, both because i said, 'hey Rachel, think about Moulin Rouge!' and that's the face she made, and also because we're knee deep in Sherman creek, probably covered with slugs and other sludgey poisons.]


My highschool youth group: [we all look young/i'm wearing those same pants today...]


the "fam," circa 2003:


the "fam," one year later:


the "fam," five minutes later:


MaRy & Donna sent me this photo last year:


RGE, circa 1990:


i took a photography class freshman year; lots of good photos came of it, but the quality here sucks:

However.

The best photo i ever took:


this is Tony imitating a face i was making of him, which was me imitating a face he commonly made:


Megan at UWEC clock:


Justin (and some scanner scratches? what?)


Bekah:


Donna & Tony:


Donna & Elyse, downtown Milwaukee:


Kirk's hands (from a series of hand photos):


One time, i was at Racy's with the decidedly not-Racy's crew:


Blake, Gus, Tony, Barbie:

(p.s., look at the fork)

Some Highschool stuff [whoa]:
Nik: [note the Isle of Thomas in backround!]


Jenny at the first/last traditional 12th of the Month Dance Party:


Donna's Grad Party, 2004:


Bekah's 16th (??) Birthday Party thing o ma jig:
We are the X-MEN!


Tony & me, same place, four years later:


MaRy, Creek Shoots 2003:


Ravishing Rachel R. & Terrified Thomas Brokaw Eddy:

(no, this isn't a very good picture of Rachel, except for that fact that she is ALMOST doing TRIANGLE MOUTH!)

Elyse & Ester (her Xmas card this year):


More Thomas: (please don't shoot me)


The Isle Of:
  ¶ 22:12 2 comments