An Ode to Bucky

January and February

2008-02-20T21:26:00.001-05:00

I know that I had promised to keep this more updated, but apparently I’m not very good at managing my time. A lot of progress has been made on the school front. I presented my project for half an hour during the Ecology and Evolution Friday Philosophicals. I was lucky because the one professor who likes to interrupt and ask questions during the presentation, leading the way for all the other professors to do the same thing, was not there that day, so everyone saved their questions until the very end.

I also defended my proposal for my project during my proposal assessment. This was the most harrowing experience of my academic career thus far since it was almost like a thesis defence. I had three examiners ask me two rounds of questions for 15 minutes each. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but it was still rather unpleasant. Luckily for me, I passed with no revisions to be made to my proposal.

I am teaching the lab section of Animal Ecology with Crisia this semester. I have two classes, and I only actually taught them in four formal labs. Then they have to come up with their own independent project (which involves many emails and appointments with students on my part), and I have a week to grade a two-page proposal and a ten-page research paper. Right now I’m in the midst of grading their proposals, and I wonder how I’m going to be able to grade their papers in a week.

Visitors

Eliott and Kevin came to visit at the end of January. We timed it so that they could be in for Western’s Charity Ball. Crisia and Nikhil were also there. We got to look all fancy for one night and all proceeds went to the Big Sisters of London. We went to The Keg for some wine and nice steak dinners then spent the night dancing at the London Convention Centre.

The next day, Kevin, Eliott, and I drove out to the ski hill for some tubing. This ski hill made the Laurentian hills look big and happened to be right in the middle of these suburbs. They had people working there whose sole purpose was to fling or spin people in their tubes down the hill. It was a fun way to pass the afternoon. After that, we picked Crisia up for supper and went to this place called Garlic’s, where everything served there had, you guessed it, garlic. It was yummy.

Kingston

I had learned during the week that followed that my grandmother was in the hospital in Kingston with heart problems. After much deliberation on my part, I decided to brave a snowstorm and head out there on the bus. Eliott, being the wonderful boyfriend that he is, decided to meet me there. A five hour bus trip turned into a nine hour bus trip, and when I got there, Eliott and I found that there were no taxis to be had. We started walking and a nice couple offered to give us a lift. It turned out that it would have been a very long walk indeed.

We spent the entire next day in the hospital with my grandma, who wasn’t too badly off. While I was there, I got to see my grandpa, two of my aunts, three of my cousins, and several people related to these individuals even though only one of my cousins actually lives in Kingston. As I could see, my grandmother was well taken care of. She is now out of the hospital, and I am told that she is doing much better.

Niagara Falls

This past weekend, I got to experience Ontario’s newest holiday, Family Day. Crisia’s friend Megan was in town and had rented a car, which meant that they had to use this opportunity to take a road trip. The destination was Niagara Falls, and I was invited along. This is probably the main reason my marking isn’t done yet. We got there in time for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.

After that, we found our way to the Hershey’s store for fudge and then decided to experience one of the few haunted houses. This was hardly worth the $10 that they charged, but the only thing that made it mildly scary was the presence of these three small Spanish girls that would scream and clutch onto us. They forced Megan to go in front, while Crisia and I stayed in the back and laughed at poor Megan. There was a guy, who worked there, who would follow us around and grab us and make weird noises when it got too dark to see in front of us.

After that we spent a good amount of time at Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. The most amusing part about this was this video that told you that only 1 in 3 people can twist their tongue a certain way and then asks you to try it in a mirror that was there. Crisia had been there before and knew this was a trick and told me about it but didn’t get there in time to tell Megan. When we made it to the end of the museum, we waited for a full 15 minutes on the other side of that mirror to see if we could see other people making faces in the mirror. There was also a spinning tunnel with a bridge that ran across it. At the end of the tunnel was a crooked picture of a chicken. Megan told Crisia to watch the chicken. She really shouldn’t have.

We went to our hotel after that. We were staying at the Mariott that looked over the falls. It really was a beautiful view. We ended up taking a 2 hour nap and then deciding that we didn’t really want to go out anymore. We ordered in pizza and spent some time in the hot tub at the hotel. We then watched the movie 3:10 to Yuma in our comfy beds.

The next morning, we went out to brave the cold wind to look out over the falls. They really are very beautiful. It would have been nice to go in the summer and take the boat or go behind the falls when it wasn’t so cold. We then drove back in time to make it for the Stable Isotopes Lab Christmas Party. Yes, I know it’s February.

Fall semester

2008-01-12T18:24:00.000-05:00

Hello. It’s been a while. Isn’t odd that I’ve been a grad student at Western for over a semester now, and that I haven’t written a single thing about it? I’ve decided now to do things differently than I have been for the past few months. In this post, I will endeavour to list as many interesting things that I did this past semester as I can remember. This will be my last catch-up post (well before a plethora of interesting things happen to me all at once, leaving me little time in which to write them... since I am at school, this is probably unlikely to happen). After this post, any new post should contain information of current events or where I am in terms of my studies or my thoughts about anything that is relevant to me at the time. Since grad school life in London, Ontario is not nearly as interesting as field research in the mountains of Alberta, I felt that it would be more appropriate to proceed in this manner, and that I could probably summarize my adventures as a grad student in this past fall semester in one single post, albeit a very long one.

Although not very interesting, I thought that perhaps some of you might want to know what it is that I normally do here so that you may understand the context in which interesting things happen. As a grad student in her first semester who actually has a summer in the field under her belt, my time outside taking classes, doing assignments and studying for these classes, TAing, preparing for TAing, and correcting assignments for the labs I TA (that is, working as a teacher’s assistant for those who may not understand university-speak) is supposed to be devoted to the preparation and writing of a proposal for my research and the lab work associated with this research. The work associated with classes and TAing actually takes a lot of time, so many grad students feel frustrated that they may not be spending as much time as they would like working on their actual thesis. I occasionally felt these feelings of frustration, but looking back, I did manage to accomplish everything I needed to accomplish regarding my research for that first semester.

Now I must tell you a little bit about my research since it is unlikely that many of you understand. You probably won’t even after this. This summer I caught mice and held different groups of them at different temperatures. After about a month, I took liver and plasma samples that needed to be analyzed in the lab once I started school. The liver samples were to analyze for stable carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions, which tell us about what an animal is eating. My goal is to see whether these compositions are affected by metabolic rate, which affects the amount that an animal is eating. The plasma samples were to analyze for the presence of a stress hormone since differences in stress levels could be a potentially confounding factor. This last bit of lab work needed to be done at the University of Toronto-Scarborough.

As a Masters student in Biology, I only have to take 2 courses. I was originally signed up to learn about these mysterious stable isotopes I mentioned and to take a more advanced course in statistics. However, I ended up joining the Collaborative Program in Environment and Sustainability, which requires me to take and Environmental Sciences course (and which gave me an entrance scholarship!), so instead I only took the stable isotopes course and audited the stats course (To audit a course means to attend it but not be graded for it but it is still marked on your transcript as an Audit rather than as a Credit). I am glad that I didn’t actually have to complete the assignments for the stats course since the stable isotopes class was enough work as it is, with many assignments, a couple major papers, and a midterm and final exam.

I TAed a lab for the Introductory Biology course here at Western last semester. A full TA’s work is only supposed to take up 10 hours of work a week. Some weeks, it’s much more than this, and other weeks, it’s much less than this. For this course, it was often more than this. There is a reason this course is known as TA boot camp. I TAed 2 3 hour labs a week, which came out to 4 classes of around 40 students a week. You TA with one other person and take turns presenting the material and correcting the lab assignments. As a TA for this course, you guided students through introductory practical elements of Biology such as using a microscope and understanding photosynthesis and cellular respiration.

That is it for the boring stuff. If any of you are interested in hearing more details about certain aspects of my everyday life, let me know, and I may consider devoting a post to your question if I have little that is interesting going on at the moment. Some of you may be wondering what it is that I do with my free time around here. In the beginning, much of my time was devoted to getting myself settled down here and exploring. I had a few interesting adventures while doing this including a bike ride during Homecoming that resulted in a flat tire and a long detour.

Since I spent an entire summer with the other Masters students in my lab, I was guaranteed people to hang out with, assuming there was more than one of us in town on a given weekend. At first it was odd how rarely this happened since Nikhil’s family and friends live is Mississauga, which isn’t too far, and Crisia had to fly back to do monthly field work in Kananaskis. This makes it sound like I was the only one who was always left behind in London. Although the others did leave the city more than I did, there were a few times that I also managed to take off for a weekend. I even had people travel all the way out here to visit me for one weekend. I will list these here for you to peruse at your own convenience.

· Detroit: Crisia’s dad lives near Detroit, so one weekend she invited me to come with her to visit him and her two little half-sisters so that we could go to the Michigan Renaissance Festival. Some of you may be aware of how geeky I am and, therefore, how much I would enjoy something like a Renaissance Festival. You can see pictures here. I only regret that I didn’t have an outfit that suited the occasion.

· Visitors: Eliott and Kevin had previously arranged to come visit me during Thanksgiving weekend. They arrived really late on a Friday night with a special surprise in tow: JJ. On the Saturday, we went to the Pioneer Village and the Covent Garden Market. Eliott and I went to the Tegan and Sara concert after supper, while JJ and Kevin did the Lost Souls stroll, which is a ghostly tour of downtown London (yes, we have a downtown). The next day, we spent the day at Pinery beach on the shores of Lake Huron. You can see some of JJ’s pictures here and some of Eliott’s pictures here. A friend of Crisia’s also joined us for parts of this. You can read about his/her/its adventures here.

· Grandpa Smith’s 90^th Birthday: At the end of October, I took the train out to Kingston to meet Jackie, my dad, and my stepmom to drive out to Mountain Grove for my grandfather’s birthday party. The party was very nice, and I got to talk to several family members who probably only remember me as an 11 year old and were very interested to hear what I was doing. Here are some pictures from the party. Afterwards, I spent the night at a motel studying for a midterm that I had the day I got back to school.

· Toronto with Eliott and Jeremy: The weekend after, Jeremy flew in from Vancouver to stay at his parents house while he looked for a job for the summer. Eliott and I, therefore, made plans to meet him there for a weekend. During the week before we were supposed to go, my supervisor asked me if I would be able to go into Toronto on the Monday to be trained in the procedure that I needed to use to analyze my plasma. Although this cut my time with Eliott short for that day, it gave me use of one of our lab cars for the weekend. Crisia also needed to be in Toronto that weekend to meet Kurt to go to a wedding, so we drove in together on the Friday, and Kurt, Crisia, and I went for supper before I was due to meet Eliott at the bus station. Eliott and I then spent the weekend with Jeremy and had supper with Andrew on Sunday night. We spent that night in a hotel, and I left early the next morning for my training in at Uof T-SC, while Eliott caught a bus back.

· Toronto with my mom and Jackie: The next weekend, I took the bus to Toronto to spend the weekend with my mom who was visiting her relatives. It was also important for me to get in touch with my uncle since I would be staying with him when I went to Scarborough to do my lab work there. I spent the Friday night with Jeremy since he was still there, and then went to see my mom on the Saturday. We had lunch with my aunt and my grandpa, and we picked up Jackie, who was staying with Andrew, for supper and dropped her back at a subway station. The next morning, my mom and I went to visit my cousin and her family for lunch before I drove myself back to the bus station to catch my bus and where my mom was to pick up Jackie before going home. I took very few pictures during those two weekends in Toronto, but here they are.

· Lab work in Toronto: Once at the end of November, I drove down to Scarborough for one day to mix the solutions I would be needing for my assays. I did my practice run over two days in December just prior to leaving for Montreal. This worked out well because I drove the car into Toronto to do the lab work and left the car with Nikhil in Mississauga and just took a bus straight home to Montreal. After spending the holidays in Montreal, my mom drove me back to Toronto to run my actual samples, and I just picked up the car there and was able to use it to get me and Nikhil back to London afterwards. Despite initial fears, my lab work in Toronto actually worked out rather well and I already have my results.

· Home for the holidays: I stayed with Eliott for the most part when I came home to Montreal for the holidays. I also stayed with Jackie for a couple days. I did lots of shopping, got to spend time with Eliott and hang out with my friends, had holiday meals with my family, frolicked in the snow, and spent a ridiculous amount of time waiting for buses. Eliott, JJ, Steph, and I found time to get St-Viateur bagels and go skating at Mount Royal. Eliott, JJ, Kevin, Alex, and I spent three nights at a cabin in Morin Heights for New Years. We did lots of skiing and spent one day wandering the town of St-Sauveur. JJ took some pictures of our annual gift exchange, and here are some pictures I took during one of the many snowstorms and during our stay in Morin Heights. The same friend of Crisia’s who joined us in London also participated in some of the events of my stay in Montreal. If you didn’t check out the blog that I linked previously, you can check it out here.

Ottawa then London

2007-11-30T20:53:00.000-05:00

Wow, it’s been almost 3 months since I got here, and I’m still talking about events leading up to me getting here. This will be the last one of those.

Eliott took some time off work to spend some time with me and take me back to London. Before leaving Montreal, I made sure to pick up some bagels for Crisia, who discovered the awesomeness of Montreal bagels when Eliott brought some to Kananaskis, and some authentic Montreal smoked meat for Nikhil.

Eliott and I decided to leave a day early so that we could visit Sarah and Brandon in Ottawa. For those of you who may not know Brandon and Sarah, Brandon has been Eliott’s friend since elementary school, and Sarah met them at Dawson. Brandon and Sarah got engaged last summer on their trip to Europe and now live in Ottawa as Sarah works on her PhD at the University of Ottawa.

Since both Brandon and Sarah were busy during the day, Eliott and I spent the afternoon in Ottawa walking around the market. I think all I bought was some maple sugar for Crisia who had no idea what maple sugar was. I will have to organize a trip to the cabane à sucre for these poor deprived Ontarians.

We had a very nice supper with Brandon and Sarah, complete with homemade pasta and ice wine. Brandon was very proud of his pasta maker; I don’t think I could ever go to that much trouble for pasta, but it certainly was good. Ice wine is awesome; I wish it wasn’t so expensive.

Brandon and Sarah revealed that they would be getting married this coming summer in early June. Sarah showed me a picture of her dress, which is beautiful; I can’t wait to see it on her. Brandon also asked Eliott to be his best man. I’m sure that we will have a very exciting time planning in the weeks leading up to June. I’m very excited for this wedding since this is the first time I get to attend a wedding for people I am friends with rather than for older relatives as a kid.

We left early in the morning the next day since I wanted to get to London for orientation, which was occurring in the early afternoon. I managed to get there just a little bit late, to the amusement of Nikhil. After orientation, Nikhil and Crisia had to take off since they had stuff to take care of for their new apartment.

Eliott and I spent my first real couple days in London getting me set up with some groceries, getting my cell number changed and putting together my new IKEA microwave and TV stands. We made many trips to Walmart to buy random useful things for my apartment and then to return/exchange other things later. At some point we did find time to walk around downtown. Eliott and I went to the Covent Garden Market, where they refused to give us hot tea because they ran out of cups. Apparently they only wash them once a day. We also perused a couple used music stores and went for coffee at Starbuck’s.

On the Saturday evening, which was the second day, we picked up Crisia at her and Nikhil’s new apartment. Nikhil was in Mississauga, so he was unable to join us. It isn’t that far to drive there from my place, but it looked like it might be difficult to get there by bus. We went for Hungarian food for supper and then to an Irish pub for drinks after. It took the bar almost half an hour to check our Quebec ID’s, and I’m not even sure they figured it out in the end. I wondered whether this would foreshadow what things would be like whenever I wanted to go out.

The next day I said goodbye to Eliott and was left alone in my new apartment in my new life here in London, Ontario.

For those of you who didn't see it the last time I posted it, here is the album from the end of April when I moved in to the apartment. Now there are a few new additions like a TV and microwave stand and my boxes are unpacked and my books in shelves.

Return to Montreal

2007-11-12T21:41:00.000-05:00

I’m slowly starting to catch up with my blog posting here. This next entry will attempt to condense the two weeks I spent at home in Montreal prior to starting at Western.

My time spent in Montreal was very busy, so I’m having trouble remembering specific details. What was important was that I got a chance to spend time with a lot of people in a very short amount of time. I stayed mostly at Eliott’s house, but I spent a few days in Jackie and Anj’s apartment with Bucky. Maybe it will be easier if I broke this up into people I spent time with and/or events that occurred that allowed me to spend time with several people. I apologize if I leave anyone or anything out since it’s all such a blur

Eliott, when he was not working, was with me a lot of the time except when I was at my sister’s.
Jackie and I hung out quite a bit despite her work schedule. We didn’t normally see each other that often when we lived together. I slept in her bed with Bucky while she was sick. We went to work together and had lunch with my mom. We also had a fancy lunch at a French restaurant and went to see a movie at the International Film Festival. I also met her, Bryan, and Anj for drinks/tea in Mile End.
Kevin’s party that occurred the day after I got back allowed me to see a few people I hadn’t seen in a while, including several people I had never seen before from the Liberal Party of Quebec.
Jackie’s apartment also hosted on my first night staying there a going away party for Andrew. Andrew was moving to Toronto to study fashion design at Ryerson. So poor Andrew, like me, was abandoning Montreal for school. At least he wasn’t too far away from where I am staying. Eleanor, who also lives with Jackie, and I also met Andrew coffee early one morning.
Jackie and I worked at registration at Vanier for a day. I got to say hi to a lot of people I used to work with, while making a bit of money to make up for my flight and a couple weeks of pay in Kananaskis.
I saw my mom when my sister and I had lunch with her, and we did a little bit of shopping at Place Vertu, and on a separate occasion, my mom and I went to IKEA to pick up some bits of furniture for my apartment. I had Swedish meatballs for lunch, and we ran into Bryan who was working cash. Unfortunately, we met him too late to get a discount. Then my mom and I had coffee while we waited for Eliott’s dad to get home to let me into the house.
Bryan, Anj, and I met Edith, whom Bryan and I know from Concordia, but who was also staying with us in Kananaskis over the summer, for breakfast one morning. Edith was moving from Montreal to Calgary to study at the University of Calgary. She is now living with Tracy with their two cats and her many, many books.
Bryan, Anj, and I spent that afternoon wandering St-Denis and shopping around for nothing in particular. After Anj went to work. Bryan and I did more wandering as we tried to figure out what we should do. Then we met Jackie and did more wandering around until we decided to go our separate ways. Jackie and I then went out for vegan food.
I saw my dad and my stepmom a couple times. Jackie, Eliott, and I went over to their place one evening for a nice dinner.
Steph, Kevin, Eliott, and I went up to Steph’s cottage near Lachute for a couple days. It was nice. We all got to catch up a bit and do some kayaking.
I met Marleigh, a former co-worker, and her beautiful baby, Kaelyn one morning for coffee. We then took a stroll to a local park so that Kaelyn could play.
Eliott and I stopped by my stepsister’s birthday/going away barbecue. My stepmom was also there. Sheena was going back to Australia to continue her education. Her friends made her a cake shaped like a plane. Eliott, Jackie, and I also met Sheena for supper on a separate day.
JJ and Michael returned from their trip to France and Spain, so JJ and I coerced the boys into watching Becoming Jane about Jane Austen. I think Eliott enjoyed it despite himself. The next step is to get him to watch all 6 hours of the Pride and Prejudice miniseries.

I think that about sums up almost everything I did in Montreal. Next you will be hearing about Eliott’s and my trip to London, including our stopover in Ottawa to see Brandon and Sarah.

Leaving Kananaskis

2007-11-06T20:45:00.000-05:00

Even on my last day in Kananaskis, which was the second to last week in August, I couldn’t get away from doing a bit of work. We got up extra early to finish off Nikhil’s and Crisia’s grids, then we went to Fortress to wait for Jack’s class. We were taking them up to the long term grids to show them how we trap mice. They asked good questions, and we moved through my half of the grid fairly quickly and even met Nikhil on the other side. My group was lucky because we got a good variety of animals. I found that I rather enjoyed showing them what we do.

Upon return to the field station, I loaded all the stuff I spent all night packing (leaving some of it for the others to take back by car), got everyone together, and took off for Calgary. Those of you who are familiar with the way we work at the field station will know that this inevitably took a ridiculously long time. Crisia, Nikhil, Kurt, and Tracy were all along for the ride.

In Calgary, we had time for a nice lunch in Chinatown. Surprisingly that was my first time eating in Calgary’s Chinatown despite how often I found myself in Calgary. Afterwards we ran some errands and made it to the airport right on time. I said my goodbyes to my new friends, two of which I would be seeing in a couple weeks and two of which I might not be seeing for a while.

The flight was quick and uneventful, and I landed in Montreal to be greeted by Eliott and Steph and to the news that apparently Montreal was collapsing. It was so humid and gross in Montreal that night. It felt weird knowing that I was wearing a wool hat and gloves in the morning in Kananaskis. Eliott and I then met Bryan and Angelene for bubble tea downtown. It was nice to be surprised with a small group of friends after being away for four months even though it was rather late. Afterwards, we stopped by Jackie’s, and I gave a sleeping Jackie a good poke with my foot and got to see Bucky for the first time in a really long time.

Now that I’ve been away from Kananaskis for a while, I can now reflect on the things that I miss about it.

Things I miss

The mountains: everything from the way they appear out of nowhere on a cloudy day and the way they turn pink when the sun is setting to the way they cause a lot of pain in my knees after a long hike
The people
The relaxed atmosphere
Midday naps
Being outside
The wildlife
The feeling that despite having to wake up early and do work during the day, I was still on vacation
The ever-changing weather
The ability to quickly (okay sometimes not so quickly, but never more than 3 hours) get a group of people together on almost no notice for supper, a movie night, or just general hanging out
The mice

Things I will not miss

Mosquitoes
Waking up ridiculously early
Poor water pressure
Paying for laundry
Calgary

Carving pumpkins

2007-10-25T21:38:00.000-04:00

I'm just going to deviate momentarily from relaying my past adventures. I figured I should put this up now since its relevance will decline quickly after Halloween. This past Sunday, Crisia came over, and we took advantage of the nice weather to carve a couple pumpkins. Here are the pictures:

Plateau Mountain

2007-10-15T20:44:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I know. I've been neglecting this poor blog. It's been difficult finding the time to write. Anyway, I'm still catching up with my posts, and I will be for a while.

Kurt (the original) and Tracy had decided to join us on this last hike before I had to go. Crisia almost didn’t come because she had hurt one of her knees, but in the end she sucked it up and joined us. This morning started early because it would take us a long time to get there. As we got closer to our destination, we drove sandwiched between Jack’s rental car and the van up a fairly narrow gravel road with logging trucks appearing out of nowhere to charge at us with just enough time for all three of our vehicles to pull over. They didn’t even slow down as they careened down the mountainside.

The top of this mountain was an alpine meadow, so there were lots of interesting plants for the class to check out. My favourite was the wild chive, which I pulled up occasionally to munch on as we walked on. Our walk up ended at a place Jack called the polygons. Here, the rocks appeared to be scattered almost honeycomb-like. After lunch, we wandered over to the edge of the meadow where supposedly on a clear day you could see to Saskatchewan. It was not a clear day. In fact, it appeared to be storming in certain places close by, and indeed, it started to thunder as we walked back to the vehicles.

Then, Jack led us to a place nearby where we could climb up and have a look inside a cave. It was a very steep, and I was surprised that Crisia, who was regretting coming along the fairly easy hike along the meadow, actually endeavoured to make her way up. As we were climbing up, it started to hail on us. This hail was the size of small marbles, and I don’t think I have seen anything like it prior to this. As they landed, they resembled small Styrofoam balls. At certain points, it came down really hard, and it actually hurt; I felt like I was being bombarded with a machine pellet gun on all sides.

We finally made our way up, and there was indeed a cave. The entire place reeked of wood rat, a scent which, by this time, we were very familiar with. Our local trailer wood rat was the size of a large squirrel and had made its presence known to us in this last week by running from our bathroom to our kitchen, while Nikhil, Tracy, and I were watching TV, and by trying to get into our cereal box on top of our microwave. Wood rats smell almost skunk-like, except not as strongly.

Nikhil had a personal vendetta against this particular wood rat and walked around with a walking stick we liked to call his beating stick. Our lab has ,in the past, done research on wood rats, so we did have some traps lying around. It took almost a week from when I left Kananaskis for Nikhil to finally catch this thing, but not before it found its way into Crisia’s unoccupied room and peed on all her stuff and chewed up the insoles of her shoes. It turns out that the trap that was used initially was faulty. Nikhil really wanted to kill it, but Crisia convinced him to let it go near one of our grids. When it was let go, it jumped into the undercarriage of the Ark. They were convinced that it tried to stow its way back, but they didn’t find it at the trailer again.

The way down was much more treacherous than the way up since the hail was all over the ground and made it slippery. I fell maybe three times. Of course, Kurt bounded all the way down very quickly and with no problems. At some point, I believe, Tracy fell. Nikhil made some sarcastic comment directed at her and then fell as well. Then Crisia said “Well, that’s not ironic at all.” In the middle of that sentence, she also fell, which resulted in laughter all around.

We finally managed to get all the way down, and then we followed Jack and his class to Longview, where we bought lots and lots of beef jerky, while it rained harder than we had seen it all summer. The class and our group then went our separate ways. We stayed in Longview and had some coffee, and then took the scenic route back to our grids that we had to set. By the time we got back, we were all thoroughly exhausted and starving, and half of us looked like drowned rats, or rather, drowned mice. My day was far from over at this point since I ended up spending all night packing for my return home.

Rae Glacier

2007-09-16T20:48:00.000-04:00

I had missed the hike after the previous one to clean the traps that we took down from Sibbald. It was quite a relief to take this grid down. I think it was the prettiest one there with its carpet of moss littered with fallen logs and its really old pine trees that creak rather disconcertingly (like they’re talking to each other like Ents), with hair-like lichens hanging from the lower branches. It was, however, a real pain to climb up to get to and to run from trap to trap, since it is rather steep and there are fallen logs everywhere. During the 3 weeks when there were mosquitoes, there was just a ridiculous amount of them. If you stopped for a moment on the off-chance that there was something in a trap, the mosquitoes would cover you like a blanket. I think Crisia even waved a vole at them accidentally to keep them out of her face. Furthermore, we rarely caught anything there. More often than not, it would be nothing or simply a chipmunk, which didn’t really matter in our population studies. I think there was only one vole there that we caught more than once. We usually consider having low trap success in the mornings to be a good thing on the long term grids since we would be done sooner; however, it often made it seem pointless to even wake up at 6 in the morning when you weren’t likely to catch anything.

Anyway, to bring myself away from my rant about Sibbald and back to the point, Crisia and I went on the hike the next day with the Alpine Ecology students to Rae Glacier. We passed a pretty blue lake and a campground and had lunch by a small waterfall past the tree line. Crisia and I spent the majority of the time in the back conversing with Brent, the other professor of the course, which led to my observation that he is an all-around cool guy. We stopped every once and a while so the students could tell us about their chosen plants. We went so slowly that we were passed twice by this large group of old people with hiking poles, once on their way up and once on their way down.

Kurt, the student who became more and more similar to a crazy mountain goat, was already way ahead before Brent, Crisia, and I climbed up after him. The rest of the class stayed at the base, and as we got higher and higher up, we could only see specks of them sliding down the glacier. This was one of the scariest things that I have ever done. The rocks of the pass up to Pocaterra ridge were a walk in the park compared to this. This was steeper, and the rocks came in varying layers above a base of solid ice. Being much less sure on my feet than the others ahead of me, I mostly took it very slowly until I caused the rocks to slide down underneath my feet, in which case, I scrambled up as fast as I could as if my life depended on it. I don’t think my life was in danger at any point, but I could have been seriously hurt if I had wiped up and slid down.

When we met Kurt at the top (or sort of top... we didn’t go all the way up), I was very relieved and quite impressed with myself. My knees were still aching from the previous hike, and I have never and probably will not ever consider myself to be a hardcore hiker. Yes, what we did on our grids on a daily basis was certainly more than most people do on their walk to the bus stop, but it hardly compared to a half day hike up a mountain. Here we took a few pictures of ourselves using the timed functions on our cameras. We also got to taste and take away in our water bottles some glacier water. This was the best water I’ve ever tasted. This could have been because it was cold and straight off a glacier and because I had just come to the top of strenuous hike, but you’d have to try it to understand.

The way down was much quicker. I actually found riding the rock slides down quite enjoyable rather than frightening since they were travelling in the direction I needed to go, and I didn’t need to fight against them like I did on the way up. Crisia and I took off without the class again so that the day wouldn’t be a complete waste work-wise. By the end of it, both of our knees were shot, especially Crisia’s (I think she pushed herself harder than she should have even if she is a much more experienced hiker than I am), and we had another hike the next day to look forward too. This would sadly be my last full day in Kananaskis.

Pocaterra Ridge

2007-09-16T20:33:00.000-04:00

These next few posts will be about my last week in Kananaskis, which was obviously busy enough to keep me from writing to all (or perhaps just one or two) of you. There a few reasons this particular week was so busy: 1. It was my last week, and I needed to pack up four months of my life; 2. To be able to leave early, I had to take on some extra trap and trailer cleaning; and 3. Jack’s field course was taking place, and every day of the first week, he took them on a hike, and we were invited to come along. We were therefore allowed to drive to wherever they were going, so we took full advantage of the guilt-free hikes.

The first hike was to Pocaterra Ridge. We joined up with the class prior to this hike after taking care of our grids. As with probably most field courses, the hike was slow-going since we had many plants pointed out to us. One particular plant that caught my interest was alpine sorel. This plant, similar to its relatives in the east, wood sorel and yellow wood sorel (shamrock – nicknamed “yummies” in Plant Field), is edible and tastes kind of tangy, even lemony. Crisia and I kept picking these and eating them as we went.

We eventually came to a talus slope where, to my delight, we discovered pikas (These were taken at another time; I got one picture from this hike, but it's not as good. Also, for those who are interested in what a red-back vole looks like, here is a picture.). Pikas are little mouse-like rodents that are bigger than the mice we work with and make high-pitched squeaks as they run along the rocks, which they blend in very well with, often carrying grass in their mouths. I am pretty sure these are the animals upon which Pikachu of Pokémon, a Japanese children’s cartoon, videogame, and card game, is based.

When we came to the beginning of a pass, Jack let us run off to climb to the ridge on our own. Crisia and a student of the course, who also happens to be named Kurt, ran off and speedily clambered up all the rocks. Nikhil and I followed along more slowly behind them, nearly stepping on a few ptarmigans that were camouflaged against the rocks. Rocks are rather frightening things to climb since there is always the danger of them falling as you are climbing on them. One of the worst sounds you can hear on such a hike is the sound of a rock slide. You also don’t want to be directly behind the person who causes the rock slide.

At the top of the rocks, we met the ridge. If I thought climbing up the rocks was hard, climbing up the steep dirt slope of the ridge to get to the summit was even harder. I think Nikhil and I nearly gave up a few times and may have stopped if we didn’t know that Crisia was already up there and that there may be an easier way down. We did eventually get to the top; we were followed by a couple students from the course, one of whom was deathly afraid of heights and was “shaking and terrified” the entire time.

At the top, we couldn’t even see where Crisia and Kurt had gone. One of the students said that she saw Crisia head running down the other side of the ridge, so we decided to go that way. We bounded down as best we could without killing ourselves, but either way, it was really tough on the knees. We finally found Crisia and Kurt, along with Jack and some other students at the bottom of the ridge. It had turned out that Crisia had bounded down at almost full speed and had even flipped over. Since it was so steep, instead of wiping out, she landed on her feet.

At this point we decided that it would be best if we headed back more quickly without the class so that we could get some work done before going out to set our traps again. The way back seemed much harder than the way there even though it was mostly downhill. I guess going slowly makes the hike seem much easier. At one point, we found ourselves off the path, and Crisia ran right into a moose. It stood there long enough for her to take pictures before wandering off.

For those of you who didn’t notice the links to specific pictures, here is the album for the entire hike:

View Album

Get your own

Last Visit to Calgary

2007-09-13T11:24:00.000-04:00

Hello! I know it’s been a ridiculously long time since I’ve written here. This is not because I have had nothing to say; it has more to do with the fact that I’ve been so busy, there’s been no time to write anything. That said, expect a few catch-up entries. Since I last wrote here, I spent my last week in Kananaskis, spent a couple weeks with some of you in Montreal, visited my friends Brandon and Sarah in Ottawa for a night, officially moved into my apartment in London, and officially started my life as a grad student at the University of Western Ontario. Because it would be insanity to attempt to fit all this into one post, I will attempt to break it up into several smaller, but probably still long, entries. This first one will be about my last week in Kananaskis.

This particular week began on a Friday, when Nikhil, Crisia, and I had to drive in to help pick up the students for our supervisor Jack’s field course. Jack had flown in the previous morning. Nikhil was supposed to pick him up while Crisia and I entertained 13-14 year old Girl Guides with live and origami mice. However, Jack and Nikhil ended up waiting for each other at opposite ends of terminal, so Jack rented a car and drove himself back, while Nikhil waited for a long time until he called the field station to find out that Jack had called and said that he was renting a car and driving back. Jack was given a Cadillac as a rental car, so he was quite happy, especially since he had something with which to make fun of Nikhil.

The first thing we had to do that day was pick up Brent, who was the other professor of the field course. He is a young professor from New Zealand, is very sarcastic, and is an all-around cool guy. We waited where Jack told us we should wait, which was where Nikhil should have gone the day before. Jack went to find Brent inside to make sure he knew where to go. However, a guy from Air Canada, whose English was not very good, told us that since we were not waiting for an Air Canada Flight, we would have to go somewhere else, so we let Crisia out to find Jack to tell him the change of plan and went to the WestJet terminal, where Nikhil had actually waited the day before.

As soon as we got there, we noticed a guy matching Brent’s description, standing by himself with his luggage. It turns out that Brent didn’t understand Jack’s instructions either, and we weren’t sure what exactly had happened to Jack, who was supposed to find him. I don’t think I ever found out since Tracy and I were unceremoniously dumped off to wait at the airport because the car would have been crowded otherwise. After maybe 45 minutes, we were picked up again by Crisia. Jack had rented another car and had gone back to the field station to await the van in order to pick up the second batch of students, while Nikhil went in the van with Brent to direct him back to the field station after they picked up the first batch of students.

This was all done by late morning, so this left us girls to do whatever we wanted to do before having to go back to set that evening. Our first stop was a Best Buy, so that I could pick up a case for my laptop. We took a wrong turn getting there and happened to find a sign for a used book sale. Being the nerds that we are, we became very excited and immediately followed the signs until we found the book sale. It was much bigger than we thought it would be, and we ended up staying there for 2 hours. Those of you who know me well enough will be surprised to know that I only came out with 3 books. Yes, 3 is a lot considering that I already have a stack of books that I own that I haven’t read, and I would be taking a plane back to Montreal in a week with much less room for all my stuff than is needed. However, 3 is not a lot considering that Crisia walked away with more than 10, and Tracy came out with a box full of books.

We did eventually find our way to the Best Buy, and I really like my laptop sleeve. What was interesting was that we had been to this Best Buy before but had never walked into the giant shoe store right next to it. I think the reason for this is that we are always with Nikhil and, therefore, feel obligated to not be the girls that we undoubtedly are. Nikhil made fun of us quite a bit when we got back.

The three of us ended up buying very similar shoes. Tracy’s and mine are identical except for the size, pattern, and colour. The most amusing part about all of this was that Tracy, the least girly of the three of us, had been going on about why anyone would want to buy these flat ballet-like shoes that appear to be everywhere. Since I actually wear shoes like this on occasion when I’m not in the forest, I explained to her that these shoes are useful when one wants to wear somewhat nice shoes but does not want the heel. Some of you may have seen the shoes I bought, which are green.

After our little shopping spree, we went for Vietnamese soup and bubble tea, and then did our practical shopping by stocking up on groceries. All in all, I had a lot of fun on our girls day out, which actually had never happened before this point, and was happy with my last day in Calgary before I had to come back for my flight.

An Epic Quest

2007-08-11T18:10:00.000-04:00

Doug from Kurt’s lab and the American butterflyers had invited Kurt and Tracy to join them to visit some natural hot springs in BC 3 hours away from here. They were going to camp there Wednesday night, spend the day in the hot springs, then come back to the field station. However, there was no room in Doug’s car and Kurt and Tracy insisted that they come as a package deal with the mousers, and we could not leave on Wednesday because we had long term grids to check Thursday morning. It was decided that if we could get a vehicle than we would just go for the day on Thursday, as long as we don’t mind driving 3 hours both ways in the same day.

Kurt emailed his supervisor, who said that it wasn’t a problem if he wanted to take their truck, and he could just waive it off as a research trip. Sometime Wednesday night it was decided that rather than drive back the same day, we would just rent a tent and stay over the Thursday. Thus our epic journey took form.

Thursday morning, which dawned cold and wet, found all five of us checking traps to get it done quickly. We rushed back, packed our stuff, and were out of the field station by 10am (which is record timing if anyone has ever spent any significant time with all of us). Our journey began with the epic theme music from the movie Dragonheart, as we set off to Canmore to rent a tent and pick up supplies. The tent place was out of 5 person tents and had only a 3 person one. We ended up taking that one and deciding that we would also take the one that Doug and the others had. We bought more than enough groceries to last us a day and grabbed food and coffee at a Tim Horton’s/Wendy’s. We set off and quickly lost our first casualty: Kurt’s Sprite was rapidly lost to Kurt’s shoes as he was driving.

The time was passed in the car by a rousing attempt at the “headlight game.” I skipped this one out, as I felt that sleep was much more important. The next casualties were therefore only temporary and were several personal items belonging to Tracy and Crisia and only a few belonging to Kurt and Nikhil. These personal items were eventually returned to their owners as we entered the “best place on Earth” and found the home of Jesus.

We passed by all the famous developed hot springs in the area: Banff, Radium, and Fairmont. To get to these ones, the Lussier hot springs, we turned in a gravel road at Whiteswan Lake. The drive to the hot springs from there was on a narrow, climbing, windy gravel road surrounded by mountains. One side of the road ended in an abrupt cliff, the kind of which one only sees in cartoons; it seemed a little too easy to drive over the edge of this cliff, especially with trucks appearing out of nowhere coming towards you at full speed.

We finally found ourselves at the hot springs and spent the afternoon there with the other butterflyers. Unlike Banff and Radium, these hot springs were not developed. Rocks were placed in a strategic manner and a steep path with a railing lead to the hot springs, but that was the extent of it. The hot springs consisted of several shallow rock-surrounded pools of descending temperature and ended in a freezing fast-flowing river. Although this was a much more natural setting than the hot springs we had previously frequented, it wasn’t nearly as hidden as we would have liked, so there were many more tourists than we would have expected. The majority of them were from Quebec, which was very odd for me because I felt like I had come home.

Although I preferred the much more natural scene of these hot springs, I do think there is something to be valued in the chlorine and the cement of the developed ones rather than foot-tearing and slippery rocks of this non-developed one. The pools were also much shallower than I would have liked even though the hottest pool was much hotter than we had experienced before. The fact that it smelled like you were sitting in an egg salad sandwich, as Kurt put it, took some getting used to. I think I would have preferred it much more if it was cooler out and if there were fewer people around.

Since there was a fire ban, a lot of our food suddenly became useless. Instead, for supper, we teamed up with the butterflyers and put cans of food and sealed bags of hot dogs in the hot springs to warm them up. The heat did a little good for soups and beans, but we had to eat the all-beef and tofu hot dogs cold. It was a surprisingly satisfying meal after all our energy was sucked away by the hot springs.

Before the butterflyers left, there was an all out burr war. I’m pretty sure Kurt lost this one. This was mostly due to Crisia standing quietly behind him and chucking them at his back. Soon, we said goodbye to the butterflyers and hastened to a nearby campground to set up our tent. We decided that we would come back to the hot springs at night when most people would have left.

After setting up our tents and hanging around the dock near the lake at the campground, we headed back to the hot springs. There were fewer people there, and as it grew dark, it became almost pitch black. The only light we had to go by were the stars, which were absolutely breathtaking. This was what made the trip totally worthwhile. The water was much more pleasant, as the air was cool, and we had but to lean back, and we would see more stars than any of us had ever seen in our lives. Since there were no large cities anywhere nearby, even the Milky Way was discernible as a large cloud-like stream. Since the Perseids were also just beginning, we were able to make out several shooting stars. It was simply magical.

Leaving late into the night was a feat in itself, as the rocks seemed even slipperier, and we couldn’t see them properly. Nikhil probably fractured his toe. We managed to change right there and leave without leaving anything behind; a few of us did manage to take some of the burrs away with us that were still being found a day later after laundry had been done.

We came back to our tents, and all of us hung around in one tent for a bit until we decided that we were much too wiped to do anything but sleep. We all wished that we could have had campfire to converse by, but without its comforting light, we were just too tired to continue. Crisia and Kurt left for their own tent, and Tracy and Nikhil quickly fell asleep, as evidenced by the snores that the rest of us could hear before we ourselves fell asleep.

It was quite cold throughout the night, but I slept comfortably with the hood of my sweatshirt over my ears. I awoke periodically since sleeping on the ground is rather painful to someone as bony as me. I also awoke once to Tracy’s infamous sleep-talking. She yelled, “Kurt, where are you?” and then muttered something under her breath and then “Jackass.” I was actually surprised that Kurt didn’t answer back, and it took all my effort not to laugh out loud. Everyone’s sleep was then broken several times by a child in the next campsite over who threw a seemingly endless tantrum over at least three separate occasions. She would wail and scream for her mommy, and both her parents would try to shush her in vain. Apparently, Tracy, awake this time, muttered something about wanting to “cheese” their family.

Not too early in the morning, long after the family with the crying child left, we packed up our stuff and had muffins and bananas for breakfast. We had determined that even though we had spent the entire summer together, we still did not have a group picture. It was sad because we had realized that there were only two weeks more for us all to be together and less than a week until our supervisor came to teach a field course, and then, we would have a very limited amount of time in which to just simply enjoy ourselves as a group. We, therefore, made several attempts to time a group photo by the lake, and you can see our best attempt along with a few other pictures here.

We then started our trek back, and soon all of us, except poor Kurt who was driving, had fallen asleep. We stopped for ice cream in Radium and had a late but good lunch in Canmore after dropping off our tents and soon found ourselves back at the field station where it was still cold and raining.

So ends our epic quest.

Canmore Folk Fest

2007-08-07T15:21:00.001-04:00

On Sunday, Kurt, Tracy, Nikhil, Crisia, and I went into Canmore to catch the folk fest. Crisia and I were dropped off downtown, while the others went to pick up some groceries. We had already missed the day sessions I wanted to see (Harry Manx), and when we got there, we found out that the festival was sold out for that day. I was quite disappointed because I was looking forward to perusing the artisan booths and to seeing Chumbawumba Acoustic, which I thought would be very fun. I think Crisia was even more disappointed because she had been unable to make any of the Calgary shows. Crisia and I ended up wandering around downtown for almost 2 hours before we found the others. It would appear that Tracy doesn’t know how to check text messages. After searching for quite some time because Canmore was very crowded, we found dinner at a pub in an inn.

We decided to try the folk fest again on Monday. Kurt and Tracy went in at around 5pm to save us tickets, while we quickly went to set the long term grids. We got there at around 7pm and were worried that it would end early and that we would only have time for one show. The festival ended up going until 11pm, so we managed to get our folky fix. Crisia and I got to peruse the artisan booths, and we caught a few good shows. Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul, and Mary played some old favourites and some new songs. My favourites were Puff the Magic Dragon and Leaving on a Jet Plane. A woman called Laura Love played some fun blue-grass style songs, and a group called the Compadres ended the night by playing some songs that they described as being “Celtino” (The lead singer is of Irish descent, but his partner is Mexican).

All in all we rather enjoyed ourselves. Monday was much nicer than Sunday in terms of weather. On Sunday, there were intermittent thunderstorms, and we would have most likely gotten soaked at some point or another. Monday was a nice, sunny day, but at night it started getting cool to the point that those in flip-flops were regretting it. It appears that real summer weather here lasts only 3 weeks.

Updates and Transformers

2007-08-03T15:20:00.000-04:00

After many back and forth emails, I have finally booked a flight back to Montreal. My flight lands late the night of August 24^th, so I am free to spend time with anyone who wants to see me from August 25^th to September 6^th. Please let me know if you want to book any particular dates with me.

I have also uploaded the few pictures taken from when Jackie came to visit. There are pictures from our hike to Prairie View and from the Calgary Folk Fest.

Yesterday, Nikhil, Tracy, and I drove Yeen Ten back into Calgary, where she is staying for a day or so before flying back to London. She has been here for a little while now to run the long term grids in burnt parts Kootenay National Park, BC and to do some of her own work there. Most of her time and some of Nikhil’s and a lot of Crisia’s was spent in the Kootenay bunk house with Edith, so I and whoever else was staying behind, had a lot of extra work on our plates, which is apparently nothing compared to what they had to do in Kootenay.

We dropped Yeen Ten off at her car rental place, and then headed out for lunch and then to see the Transformers movie. If anyone hasn’t seen this movie but eventually intends to, I suggest going to see it in theatres. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if it wasn’t on the big screen. It wasn’t the greatest movie ever in terms of plot or screenplay, but it was certainly entertaining. Tracy and I finally got to figure out how Transformers procreate. We were very excited by this. Nikhil was a little upset that Bumblebee was a Camero rather than a Beetle, but not remembering any particular details about the cartoon from the 80’s, I didn’t really care so much. I did notice, however, the prevalence of GM vehicles and of Mountain Dew. Yay for product placement!

After running some errands of our own, we met Yeen Ten, Kurt, and Crisia for supper at a Korean place. We ate so much food that it made the car ride afterwards rather unpleasant. Kurt and Crisia had to leave early since they were coming in to go to some sort of concert in the evening. We said our goodbyes to Yeen Ten, whom Crisia, Nikhil, and I will be seeing soon in September. Nikhil was dropped off at his aunt and uncle’s for the weekend, and I drove Tracy and myself back to the field station after having lots of coffee to make up for waking up at 6am to catch heather voles for Nikhil. So ends another rather long day in Calgary.

Visit from Jackie

2007-08-01T22:42:00.000-04:00

Jackie took a Greyhound from Montreal to Vancouver to visit her friend Josh and then took the bus over the mountains to Calgary to visit me. She arrived here on Tuesday. I was busy finishing up my project here at the field station, so I had little time to spare for my poor sister during the day. During this time, she entertained herself by getting a sunburn at the beach, writing in her journal, reading, and working on a crazy puzzle with unicorns on it. At least she got a bit of a vacation. She came out to do the long term grids a few times. I don’t think she enjoyed it very much, mostly because it involved waking up at 6 am. There were a few interesting things that I managed to squeeze into this busy week.

On Wednesday, Jackie and I took a hike up to Prairie View, which gives you a nice view of Barrier Lake and the field station. I have pictures that I’ll put up eventually. It wasn’t as difficult as the one I did the week before with Kurt and Crisia, but it was still tough work. We needed to take plenty of breaks and Jackie’s heels were bleeding by the end of it.

Jackie and I made it down to the Calgary folk fest on Thursday and Friday night. The bands of interest on Thursday included The Sadies, City & Colour, and Rufus Wainwright. Jackie and I met a couple of her friends for a drink afterwards. On Friday, we were joined by Kurt, Tracy, and Nikhil in order to see Final Fantasy, Hawksley Workman, and Neko Case.

My favourite performance was by Final Fantasy although it was a very short one that we almost missed; it was on a smaller stage, so the slightly more intimate setting made it better than the other ones as well. My least favourite was Hawksley Workman mostly because I didn’t enjoy his voice. The surprise of the two days was the fact that I actually found myself rather enjoying Neko Case who is a country singer. I believe this is because Crisia plays her music over and over when she’s doing dissections in the lab, so I found myself singing along because I knew all the songs.

As for the folk fest overall, I think I would much rather see many of these artists in a smaller, more intimate venues; however, the likelihood that I would go see most of these artists performing on their own is slim, and the setting of many artists playing over the course of the day allows one to discover something new. I did enjoy the atmosphere of the festival, but many, many people lazing around on the grass and getting up, talking, and walking around made it rather difficult to enjoy any one concert.

On Saturday, the field station had its annual open house. I had stayed up until 3 am after coming back from the folk fest to finish off my poster. Eliott’s hand will be made famous by my poster. The researchers from our field station and another one that belongs to the University of Calgary had to sit around for most of the day answering questions about our research, and in the evening, we had a huge barbeque. Jackie spent most of this day at the beach and then joined us for the meal afterwards. After lots of food, many of the researchers hung around taking advantage of the excessive amount of beer remaining. We started out on someone’s porch, and then moved back to the loft in the lodge, where Chey, one of the cooks, brought out a couple of guitars, and Olga, a field assistant from the other field station, brought out her drum. Jackie took over one of the guitars and the three of them proceeded to jam for a bit.

On Sunday, Jackie’s friends from Calgary came by to hang out at the beach, while I was busy doing work. Afterwards, we set two of our regular grids here and another one in Kootenay, BC before Crisia, Nikhil, Kurt, Tracy, Jackie, and I went on a long car ride to the Radium Hot Springs for an hour. Like the Banff Hot Springs, this was still basically a hot pool, but it was at least bordered on one side by cliffs so that the setting looked a little more natural. It made a rather nice end to the weekend, even though most of us had to wake up at 6 am the next day after only four hours of sleep.

Nikhil and I took Jackie back into Calgary to catch her bus on Monday. We had to make a brief stop at a grocery store so that Jackie had some food for her two days on the bus, and we stopped for lunch at a vegetarian Chinese place. Luckily we decided to take our food to go because we were only able to get to the bus station 10 minutes before her bus was to depart. I saw Jackie off, and then Nikhil and I had to rush to get to a movie theatre before our movie started.

We got to the theatre just in time to miss the regular commercials. We had gone to see The Simpsons Movie. I actually really enjoyed it. It’s been a while since I sat down to watch The Simpsons, but this made me remember why I did.

It was really nice having Jackie around since she can make me laugh and frustrate me with one single sentence. I actually missed her weirdness, and I’ve been told that she brings some of my hidden weirdness out, which is apparently good. I will not, however, miss all her stuff strewn all over my floor. :P

Eliott - A dream involving Harry Potter, Jen, and Bucky

2007-07-30T13:02:00.000-04:00

I had the most messed up dream last night, and it involved both Jen and Harry Potter... and Bucky. Since this blog has temporarily taken on a slight Harry Potter theme, I thought I might share my dream.

I run to the casino (located in a St Laurent synagogue) in a frantic hurry. Something is wrong. when I get there, Jen is very distraught and frightened. I look at her slot machine, and see that there is a lot of money in the winnings tray, consisting entirely of tokens from a video game arcade. I also notice a few papers, that I know are of the utmost importance for some reason. In a hurry, I grab a money bag out of nowhere, and stuff all the tokens in there, hiding the papers in between the tokens.

Suddenly, 3 death eaters enter the casino, and see these papers (they magically rose to the top of the money bag) that they had been looking for. I don't remember exactly what happens next, but I think I apparate (or run away like a sissy) to my grandfather's old apartment. Worried, I call Jen, asking if she's ok. She sounds fine. I then notice Bucky, wandering around outside the apartment building. He's been shaved almost to the skin. In retrospect, it looked pretty hilarious, but in my dream, it was frightening.

I start talking to Bucky, who is running around meowing, but can't pick him up because I'm holding my cell phone. Jen hears me talking to Bucky, and tells me that there's no reason for me to be talking to Bucky, because he's not with her at the moment. I then explain to her that Bucky is right near me.

End of dream. And no, I wasn't doing crack.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-07-23T18:24:00.000-04:00

Before I begin with my thoughts on the final Harry Potter book, I thought some of you might want to hear about a nice wipe-out that I had yesterday. At one of our long-term grids, there is a creek that needs to be crossed. I did not cross at my usual place. I had managed to get all the way across with no difficulty, but on the last rock, which was wet, I slipped and fell on my knee. I tried to balance myself to pull myself up, and I managed to fall sideways into the creek. Half of me was soaking, while the other half was dry. The water wasn’t too cold and was actually rather refreshing after the exertion of setting a grid and a half of traps. I got up with my dripping bag of seeds and set the trap nearby. When I saw a bewildered Nikhil soon after, I started giggling hysterically. Afterwards I realized that I did in fact hurt myself; I scraped myself on the arm and the knee, pulling a small muscle in my forearm and bruising my knee. My biggest injury is the knee, which is swollen; I will be limping for a few days. Someone always seems to get injured when there are only two people to do all the work (Crisia is with Yeen Ten in Kootenay).

Now for some Harry Potter. I will indicate where you should stop in order not to read any spoilers about the book. Edith and I had pre-ordered our books at an independent bookstore in Canmore. Their release party began at 10:30pm on the 20^th. After searching for a while for some coffee (everything closes before 10pm in Canmore), as both of us had long days (Edith had driven in to Canmore earlier in the day, which is about an hour and a half from Kootenay, and had to go back to do some work before driving in again, and I had gone on a 3-4 hour hike up a mountain just prior to leaving for Canmore), we made our way to the bookstore, which was already packed. The small bookstore had over 200 pre-orders.

To keep people occupied, they had a quiz/scavenger hunt with questions for kids and adults. We answered both, and they were, for the most part, rather difficult. They also had free punch, chocolate frogs, and candy. Half the people there were dressed up in some kind of costume. My favourites were Draco Malfoy, a very little Harry Potter, and a Hagrid, complete with fur coat (It was hot, so I considered that person to be very dedicated). There was a good mixture of age groups, with 8 year olds and their parents, teenagers, people my age, and adults who were there for themselves.

We counted down to 12:01am, and then went to separate tables where books were given out alphabetically. I had my book (and Yeen Ten’s) in my hands by 12:05am. I was very excited and couldn’t wait to go back to the trailer to read. At the trailer, I stayed up reading until around 4:30am. I woke up again at 8am to continue. I was reading pretty much the entire day with small breaks to do a little bit of essential work. I was done the book by 5pm.

I’m a little sad that I didn’t get to savour it a bit, and after Tracy is done with my book, I think that’s what I’m going to do. I was too anxious to find out what happens before anything was spoiled for me. On that note, anything below this paragraph will contain SPOILERS for anyone who has read the books.

To begin, I was very satisfied with the ending of this series. It flowed very quickly even though it was complex, and it was not bogged down by the need to explain or learn anything basic, which was common but necessary in the previous books. I felt vindicated that my major predictions were indeed correct: Harry was a Horcrux, and Snape is good and was in love with Lily Potter.

A lot of people died in this book, the most poignant of which for me were Dobby, Tonks and Lupin, Fred, and Snape. I think the chapter in which everything is revealed about Snape was my favourite. If I was not so dazed from reading the entire day, I think I would have been weeping while reading the last 100 pages or so. The only times where I actually felt my self tearing up a slight little bit were when Harry was digging the grave for Dobby and at the very end, where you see all the major characters 19 years later. I guess it was the Happily Ever After factor that got to me and that I was finally coming to the realization, that, yes, it was finally over; there will never be another book to wait eagerly with anticipation for, in line with hundreds of people anxiously awaiting the same thing. This was it. This was the end.

I would give more thought here to some of the major ideas in the series that make it so great, but I would definitely need to reread this last book at a more leisurely pace and possibly the entire series again in order to do so adequately. For now I must simply say thank you to J.K. Rowling for creating this world and these characters and for finally giving us the conclusion that has been 10 years in the making.

Calgary Stampede

2007-07-22T14:18:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, Nikhil, Tracy, Kurt, and I went to the Calgary Stampede. When we finally got there (we left around 2 hours after when we had intended to leave), we started out the day with some lemonade and some giant corn dogs. I don’t think they sell anything there that is not deep fried. Since it was so hot and sunny, we stuck to the livestock exhibitions at the beginning, which were indoors. We perused some of the Western wear booths to see if I could find Eliott a decent and reasonably priced cowboy hat. We couldn’t. We saw the Native American tipis and walked though the carnival rides and games.

It cost between $5 and $6 to go on a ride, so we only did one: the log ride. As a regular frequenter of La Pitoune at La Ronde, which this ride was similar to, I am well aware that the goal of this ride was to get wet and that it wouldn’t be the ride that would do it; I have also become very adept at splashing. The minute we got on, I soaked my poor unsuspecting friends behind me. They retaliated of course, and we were all dripping at the end. It ended up being me and Kurt in the front against Tracy and Nikhil in the back. All of our socks were still damp by the time we got home, which was 10 hours later.

After grabbing some more unhealthy food for supper, we walked over to the Saddledome for The Tragically Hip concert. Our tickets for this show came with admission to the Stampede. I don’t really know The Hip that well, but I do know all the stuff that plays on the radio. Nikhil is a huge fan, so when he found out they were coming, we had to go. The concert was very good. The sound was great, and the lead singer had a lot of energy. I think I could really get into some of their music. I will be ripping Nikhil’s c.d.’s shortly.

After the concert, we were supposed to pick Crisia up at the Greyhound station, as she was returning from Saskatchewan. She texted me during the concert to tell me that her bus had broken down an hour and a half out of Calgary. We decided to hang around the Stampede a bit, so between the four of us we got mini-donuts, popcorn, candy apples, and snow-cones. I almost caved and spent $5 on a spray gun game, so that I could win Eliott a ukulele; I finally decided that $5 for one chance in 11 was too much. Maybe I’ll get him one for Hanukkah.

After a rather long time, Crisia called us and told us that the bus still hadn’t arrived, so maybe we should go home, and she’d sleep at the bus station. We couldn’t let her sleep there, so we told her we’d come to get her. However, on the way to the car on the LRT, we found out that the bus finally came, so we went to the station (after Tim Horton’s and a lot of driving around and determining that Calgary is in fact rather sketchy) to wait for her. We got home around 3 am. I still had to water my mice when I got back, All in all, it was a very fun but long day.

Pictures are available here.

P.S. I finished Harry Potter yesterday. I will post soon with my thoughts on finishing the book.

Eliott - Back home from Kananaskis

2007-07-20T17:12:00.000-04:00

Jen asked me to make a post as a contributing writer, so here I am. Forgive me for being so late to write this post. I won't make it too long, since Jen has already told you about much of our trip. I guess I'll focus on Kananskis.

After spending a couple of days in Calgary, including a night at the Roger Waters concert, I made my way to Kananaskis with Jen (who, as you know, had come to Calgary to surprise me the day before I meant to drive down). Kananaskis is absolutely beautiful. If you haven't looked at Jen's pictures, take a look.

The trailer that Jen is staying in is really more of a small home. It's got three bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a TV room. With only 3 people staying there most of the time, I would imagine that it rarely feels crowded, and everybody has their space. Outside of the trailer, Jen even has an office. How come she gets an office and I don't?!

Although Jen was a little busy with her mice while I was there, I had a lot of fun. It was great to see what Jen has been doing all summer. While I was there, Jen and I went out to the mountains a few times in the morning to check her traps for mice. I also helped her with some stuff in her lab.

The people that Jen is with in Kananaskis are very cool too. With all of them living together for 4 months straight, Jen really lucked out by being with some awesome people. We had lots of fun playing some games, going out to a pub, and driving down to Drumheller to see the Royal Tyrell (dinosaur) museum.

After a few days in Kananaskis, a day in Banff, and a day in Canmore, Jen and I said goodbye to her Kananaskis friends, and went back to Calgary to spend a couple more days with my aunt+uncle+cousin before heading out to Vancouver.

In Vancouver, we stayed at Jeremy's place. Vancouver is a really beautiful city, second only to Montreal in terms of nicest Canadian cities as far as I'm concerned. One thing I noticed though, is that there are lots and lots of crazy people in Vancouver; way more than in Montreal. After a few days in Vancouver we headed to Victoria for a couple of days, then came back to Vancouver for the end of our
vacation.

If you want to take a look at some more picture of our trip, look here.

Oh, and before I go, here are my Harry Potter predictions. They happen to be similar to Jen's:

Neville, not Harry, is the chosen one (or, if not, he plays a very important role in the battle against Voldemort)

Harry gets back together with Ginny, and they both survive

Snape is a good guy. He killed Dumbledore because he made an unbreakable vow to kill Dumbledore if Malfoy could not

Harry is definitely a Horcrux

Malfoy dies

Hagrid, Fred, George, and Hermione die

Percy stops being a git

McGonagall will be important (and Hogwarts will stay open)

Voldermort dies, but is quickly replaced by somebody else. Someone unlikely.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007-07-17T14:53:00.000-04:00

This Saturday, Edith came over from Kootenay, and she, Kurt, Tracy, and I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Imax. Luckily for us, I had bought our tickets earlier in the week online since they sold out quickly. Crisia had a weekend off and was in Saskatchewan. Nikhil is anti-Harry Potter and chose to stay home by himself and watch 24. In the end, he actually didn’t watch 24 and read Archie comics instead (I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a little bit more pathetic than going to see a Harry Potter movie).

If any of you haven’t already seen this but intend to see it at some point, I suggest that you go see it in 3-d at an Imax theatre. Twenty minutes of the movie at the climax of the story occurs in 3-d, and it is simply awesome. I really enjoyed how it made it appear as if I could reach out and touch things in the movie. It made me feel as if I was in the scene.

As for the movie itself, I found it quite enjoyable. I’m not entirely sure how it compares to the last two movies, and I think I would need to watch it again in order to determine this. As a movie, it was really good. I think it flowed better than the last one, but was definitely not as cinematically pleasing as Prisoner of Azkaban. It was a good portrayal of how dark the book was, but time constraints prevent it from even scratching the surface of everything that was in the books.

Jen’s predictions for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Since the seventh and final book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is being released Friday at midnight, I would like to end this post with a few of my own predictions. If you have not read up until the end of book six and intend to, I suggest you read no further. Furthermore, if you have read all the books but would not like my opinion to influence your own, you should probably also refrain from reading on. If you would like reasons for my specific predictions, I am open to questioning in the comments.

Harry is a Horcrux.
Harry lives (it took me a long time to come to this conclusion, especially given the above prediction, but I feel that somehow he must pull through).
Voldemort dies.
Snape is good and was in love with Lily Potter.
Harry does not return to Hogwarts as a student but will for other reasons.
We will see what's behind that veil in the Ministry and see Sirius Black again.
Dumbledore's portrait and the Pensieve will be important.
R. A. B is Regulus Black, and the locket is the one they found at Grimmauld Place and is either being held by Kreacher or was sold by Mundungus to Aberforth Dumbledore (who incidentally will also be important in this book).
Harry and Ginny will get back together.
Ron and Hermione will finally express their undying love for each other and will both live.
Good people who will die other than the above: Moody, Hagrid, Lupin, Arthur Weasley, Neville.
Bad people who will die other than the above: Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, Wormtail.
In between people who will die: Draco Malfoy, Snape, Percy Weasley.
And completely out there: Harry will travel back in time to Godric’s Hollow.

Vacation

2007-07-09T17:22:00.000-04:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. This is not because I have not had much to say, nor is it because I’ve gotten bored with this whole blogging business and am too lazy to write anything. The fact is that I have been busy and will, therefore, have a lot of difficulty relating to all of you what exactly it is that I have been doing without being tedious. I will therefore simply give you an overview of everything that has occurred. If you would like me to go into greater detail on anything, simply ask in the comments. If you don’t have the patience to read all of this at once, I would suggest reading it section by section.

Eliott in Kananaskis

Eliott, my better half as a former boss of ours called him, decided to spend his two weeks off with me. Because I only had one week off, he therefore spent the first half of this watching me (and helping me) work. Before Eliott came here, he spent the weekend in Calgary with his aunt and uncle. He was only going to drive in on the Monday morning.

To surprise him, I called his aunt while I knew he was out with his uncle and arranged to come over to their place with the help Kurt, Tracy, Denise, and Crisia, who had to drive in to Calgary to drop Denise at the airport and were spending the day there seeing the sights. Eliott actually did a double-take when he saw me, as if he didn’t recognize who I was. It turns out that he had planned to surprise me by showing up the Sunday night. We had brunch with his family and spent the afternoon walking around downtown and in the park. After ice cream, we met Kurt, Tracy, Denise, and Crisia, who were having supper, and drove in to Kananaskis together, saving Eliott the trouble of getting lost by himself.

His first day here, we went into Canmore, where we simply walked around and ate lunch. The second day, we spent the day in Banff, where we took the gondola up to Sulphur Mountain, walked around Moraine Lake, and went to the hot springs. Prior to this particular week, I had a lot of free time and could have spent a lot of time with Eliott gallivanting across as many mountains as we desired. However, my supervisor had come in to check on us the evening we were in Banff and was staying for a few days. This was great in that I could finally figure out exactly what I needed to do for my project but not-so-great in that I had a lot of work to do to get my project off the ground before I left for my vacation.

Hence, in addition to accompanying Crisia and me (Nikhil was on vacation in Toronto) on a couple of our long-term grids, Eliott also spent a couple afternoons helping me clean and move cages to set up my experiment. Some of you might find it interesting to know that one evening, Eliott and I cooked supper for ourselves, Crisia, and Jack, my supervisor on Eliott’s third day here. The next morning, Jack took us three grad students (Nikhil had come back) and Eliott for a long drive to find a new site for his field course, and that evening the staff at the field station held a barbeque for all the researchers. This came with free beer and wine, so it took us a while to get everyone up to come out to a brew pub in Canmore.

Jack left early the Friday morning, and after much prodding, a bunch of us took on the 3 hour drive to the Royal Tyrell museum in Drumheller. I believe this was the site of many dinosaur fossil discoveries, so they built a huge museum there. We had a great time there and went to an Irish pub for dinner, where we played Guess Who, Disney Guess Who, and Connect Four. Afterwards, Eliott and I went to his uncle’s house in Calgary to start my one week of vacation, and Crisia, Nikhil, Kurt, and Tracy returned to Kananaskis.

Weekend in Calgary

On Saturday, Eliott, and I took his thirteen-year-old cousin, Emma, to the zoo. We saw a few of the animals that Eliott failed to see in Kananaskis, as well as many more you would never find in Kananaskis. Calgary’s zoo is actually quite well done. After having dinner with the rest of his family, the three of us went to see Ratatouille, which is actually one of the better animated movies I have seen in a while, especially since it takes place in Paris.

The next day, which was Canada Day, all of us went to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which is a site where the natives used to chase the buffalo off a cliff. There is a very nice museum that goes along with it. We saw the musical ride of the RCMP in a small town close to that afterwards. We took the long way back to Calgary, which is more scenic and passes through a place called Longview, where my supervisor at Concordia told me I would find the world’s best beef jerky. Not being a connoisseur of beef jerky, I can’t tell you that it’s the best, but I can tell you that it is rather good.

The next morning, we were up at 4:30AM to catch our early flights to Vancouver.

Vancouver Part 1

We landed in Vancouver early enough to have an entire day ahead of us. We managed to find our way to Jeremy’s house without too much difficulty even though Jeremy neglected to name one of the stops we needed to get off at. Jeremy rents out a room in a house along with a few others. The owners supply them with food, cooking them their suppers. The owners also have a cat, which I was very happy to learn since I hadn’t seen a cat since I left Bucky at the end of April. We went out for breakfast with Jeremy, took a walk along the coast, and then into Stanley Park. The trees are so big in Stanley Park, and we got to see a couple young raccoons begging for food. After that, we walked around downtown and went back to Jeremy’s to take a nap before going out for a huge sushi dinner.

The next day, while Jeremy was at work, Eliott and I went to Granville Island, which has a very nice market. Not doing very much planning in advance, we ended up walking most of the way from there to the Vancouver Aquarium, which was an extremely long walk. The aquarium was very nice, and we got to see the famous you tube hand-holding sea otters. They weren’t holding hands when we saw them, but they were very cute. Afterwards, we meant to go watch Jeremy’s softball game, but the combination of long bus waits, very poor bus directions (Jeremy neglected to tell us to transfer buses), and an early ending game meant that we never got there, and Jeremy met us afterwards for supper. We played a couple games when we got back: one involving colourful eyeglasses with snake noses and the other involving penguins and fish.

Victoria

Because Jeremy would be working for most of the week, Eliott and I decided to spend a couple days in Victoria. The trip there, including taking the bus to the ferry, the ferry to Vancouver Island, and then the bus into Victoria, took 4.5 hours. We spent our entire time there walking around, going into little shops, and walking along the harbour. The second night we spent part of the evening at the hostel watching a live show. The girl, Felicia Harding, sang mostly folk rock tunes, some covers from Iron and Wine, to the Beatles, to Tom Petty, to Third Eye Blind, to Tegan and Sara, as well as some of her own stuff. Our room happened to be right above the lounge where this was going on, so this is also what we fell asleep to, which was better than the open mic stuff we fell asleep to the night before.

Vancouver Part 2

Upon our return to Vancouver, we were to meet Jeremy at his work to drop off our stuff, but through the combination of somewhat incomplete instructions, our misunderstanding of where exactly Jeremy worked, and Eliott’s possible poor listening skills, we ended up at the opposite end of the city to where we wanted to be. We managed to find our way back to his house to meet him there before going out for dinner on Commercial Drive, where you can find many cute and ethnic restaurants (This also happened to be where we had ended up when we meant to meet Jeremy at UBC, even though we didn’t know at the time that we were supposed to go to UBC).

We spent our last day in Vancouver on the UBC campus, where we saw where Jeremy worked, went to the Anthropology Museum, and walked along Wreck beach. This beach is a very beautiful but interesting beach. If you are unfamiliar with it, I suggest you look it up if you want an idea as to where we were actually wandering. In the evening, we went to the Richmond Night Market, which is like any ordinary flea market except that it’s Asian and operates at night. There they sell your usual cheap clothing, but they also sell popular Asian toys and pirated DVDs. The most interesting part of the market is the food section. It’s like going out for dim sum with you going to the food rather than the food coming to you. It was really rather delicious, but so many little things add up in the end.

Now I’m back in Kananaskis and back to work and will undoubtedly scrounge around to have more to tell you more regularly. I update this post when I have some of the pictures up.

Update

I have added pictures of a coyote and a moose and its baby to the Wildlife in Kananaskis album; these didn't turn out so well. I have added a new album called Hanging out at KFS. Pictures from Eliott's and my vacation, as described above, have been divided into 4 albums: Banff, Drumheller, Calgary, and Vancouver and Victoria. I will eventually get around to captioning some of this. As I get Eliott's pictures, I will also add some of those.

Chocolate-eating mice, Banff hot springs, and wading in Barrier Lake

2007-06-17T22:48:00.000-04:00

It’s getting harder and harder to come up with new material for all of you to read, but I will do my best. I have three brief things to mention this week.

Chocolate-eating mice: At the beginning of the week, we were visited by two girls from Europe who are working with mice as well at the other University of Calgary field station. One girl is from Switzerland and the other is from the Netherlands. We shared ideas from our own respective projects and gave them advice on theirs. To thank us for our help, they left us some delicious Swiss chocolate. Crisia and I ate most of it since Nikhil doesn’t like dark chocolate. One of the pieces of chocolate was left out on the desk in our trailer by accident. A couple days later, I found it and noticed that it had little teeth marks all around the edges. It would appear that in addition to eating dead bees (Nikhil killed a huge bee, and it disappeared before anyone could throw it out), the mice in our trailer also eat chocolate. I hope they didn’t get sick.

Banff hot springs: Nikhil’s girlfriend Ashlynn came to visit him this week, so for the most part he was off with her while Crisia and I spent a lot of time accomplishing nothing back at the field station when we weren’t trapping. I think I spent most of this time napping. Friday night, when Nikhil and Ashlynn were in Calgary, we decided to go to the Banff hot springs because we had a day pass into Banff for one of our cars that would expire at the end of June. Just as we were getting ready to leave, we couldn’t find the pass. We thought that maybe Nikhil took it with him in his rental car because he had gone there earlier in the week, so we spent most of the evening cursing him. We decided to go anyway because we were already ready, and Kurt and his friend Denise were waiting for us. Tracy couldn’t come because her parents were visiting.

It turns out that without the pass, it costs $17.80 to spend a day in Banff national park, which is absolutely ridiculous. Because I was forewarned, I knew what to expect at the hot springs. This doesn’t mean that I wasn’t disappointed when I got there. When I think of hot springs, I think of a very natural setting with cliffs surrounding a pond of sorts. What we got looked like a pool. Although the atmosphere itself was rather disappointing, the pool itself was very relaxing and kept at 39 degrees Celsius. If you could see through the steam without your glasses, you could see the mountains in the background. It started to rain while we were there, so that made it feel even nicer. We were lucky that it wasn’t crowded. Apparently sometimes there is standing room only. I guess it’s not high tourist season yet.

When Nikhil came back, we had determined that he didn’t have the pass into Banff either. The only thing we can think of that may have happened to it is that when Paul, Crisia’s friend, came to visit, he left it in his rental car when he returned it. Since Nikhil had to pay when he went, and we used it to go to the springs, and Crisia went to Banff with her friend Meghan yesterday, we have spent almost $60 to simply enter Banff between all of us. I will also be going in again when Eliott comes next week (yay for Eliott coming and boo for spending another $20 to go into Banff).

Wading in Barrier Lake: I woke up this morning to the sight of snow falling. At the field station, there were huge chunks of snow falling and just barely sticking. Five minutes away from the field station, Crisia had to kick around snow to locate her traps, while her car was buried in even more snow as plows went by. Crisia, Kurt, Denise, and I were bored during the day since none of us could do any work, so we decided that since it was so wet out and since there was only so much amusement to be had from rolling around in desk chairs, we would test out the thigh waders that are hanging in the lab. For those unfamiliar with what those are, they are rubber boots that go up to the thigh often used to wade in shallow water. The waders in the lab varied between size 10 and 11 for men, which made them very interesting to walk in. We also borrowed raincoats from the lab, so we all looked like complete dorks (well more than usual anyway). We spent a lot of time splashing around in puddles and swampy areas next to the road. Before we even got to the lake, Denise sunk into the sand past her knees. It took us maybe 45 minutes to get her out. We found places to go into the lake without sinking, which was fun. Kurt and Denise found rocks to skip, and Crisia found out that we could seesaw on newly exposed logs. All in all, it was a very amusing time. If I get the pictures from this, I will put them up.

Potluck, Orthodontist, and Pirates

2007-06-08T17:09:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, some of the other researchers hosted a potluck for all the researchers who were around. They are from the University of Calgary, so we don’t see them around very often since they have to option of going home occasionally. The food was excellent. Since we brought half of the party with us, we also brought half of the food. Crisia and I made some cupcakes from a box. Paul and Tracy helped with the icing. Nikhil made his signature curry chicken. Edith made her famous brownies, and Kari made a strawberry and spinach salad. Tracy made banana bread even though she promised us potatoes, and Kurt made his famous homemade bread.

Kim, Darryl, and Amallia were there. Amallia put on quite a show by singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the ABCs. She also Care-Bear-stared us for good measure. Our hosts were Hilary, who studies ungulates, Joanna, her sister and field assistant, Tyler, whom I think studies beetles, and his field assistant Josee. Although Hilary and Joanna are sisters, it is hard to tell because Hilary is tall with straight, dark hair, and Joanna is shorter with curly, red hair. Joanna’s music was playing in the background; it would appear that we have very similar musical tastes since a lot of what was playing was by The Arcade Fire and The Shins. I happen to be wearing my shirts from both those concerts right now. Josee was born in Quebec; she is also a huge Harry Potter fan. She, Edith, and I shared our theories on the new book that is to come out.

Just before we were about to leave, Pierre, who works for Parks Canada and who was invited to come by Tracy as he jogged by her cabin, showed up. He is a very worldly guy from Quebec City; he told us all about his backpacking trip to India. He is staying at the field station for the summer. Those of you read my previous post may remember that I mentioned another guy from Quebec City named Louis who was stuck here during the gas leak. Louis is Pierre’s friend, and that day he broke a window to get into Pierre’s trailer and took some beer and some Doritos. Pierre didn’t seem very angry about it; he was more amused than anything else since it makes for a good story.

On Thursday, I had to make a trip into Calgary to go see an orthodontist. I had forgotten my retainer in Montreal, and it turns out that my mom threw it out since she thought I left it because I didn’t need it. This was the craziest orthodontist office I had ever seen. I thought my orthodontist was rich. There were action figures everywhere. There was a greater than life size Superman bursting out of a phone booth, a life size Spiderman, and a Yoda telling you that not wearing your retainer was a sure path to the dark side. They had a PS2, a Gamecube, and an X-Box in the waiting room, as well as a touch-screen log in system. There were 5 chairs for patients, and each of them had their own computer and a Nintendo DS or DS Lite for patients who had to wait. They also had a fancy coffee machine that I got to take advantage of. I arrive half an hour early for my appointment; within 10 minutes, they had me seated at a chair and did the mold of my teeth, and 20 minutes after that, my retainer was ready.

I was hoping to meet up with Eliott’s aunt and uncle that day, but they both work, so Nikhil came with me instead. Nikhil and I went to see the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I had heard mixed reviews of it, so I went in with fairly low expectations. In the end, I rather enjoyed myself. The beginning was very confusing, and there was too much Orlando and not enough Johnny even though when Johnny Depp was there, there was often at least 5 more of him for no apparent reason. I liked Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow’s dad although it was only a very small part. I thought it was pretty cool that he played the guitar briefly. Keira Knightley wasn’t bad, but starring with Orlando Bloom makes me think less of her performance. Orlando was slightly less annoying in this movie than in the previous ones. I think I liked it better when he had cool hair and didn’t talk much rather than the ugly mustache and the self-righteousness. The movie was really long, but it didn’t drag on, as the action was pretty much non-stop and entertaining. Overall, the movie was better than the second one, but not as good as the first.

Work, Canmore, Calgary, Gas Leaks, and Hockey

2007-06-03T18:06:00.000-04:00

I have had a fairly busy week, so I will just give a brief rundown of everything that might be interesting that has happened.

Since Yeen Ten was here to give us each advice on our own respective projects, we took advantage of her help and were all very busy with work until she left. As for my own project, I’m to hold mice in rooms at different temperatures and then take tissue samples after they have been there long enough to test for the presence of stress hormones and to see if there are differences in their carbon and nitrogen stable isotope signatures. I’ve established a protocol, and my rooms are all set up with the appropriate temperatures and light regimes. I have 21 out of 30 mice, and I can get started as soon as I find out how much blood I need and when to take it from a professor in Toronto. All I can do now is sit back and wait for his email and catch more mice.

On Tuesday, we went in to Canmore for an oil change. We took advantage of this time to walk around and do some shopping. I pre-ordered the 7th Harry Potter book at a book store there and bought some fudge. We had a nice lunch at a coffee shop there. After some small groceries, we also went to Tim Horton’s for the first time since we left Ontario. Tim Horton’s is actually more expensive there even though taxes are less.

On Wednesday, Crisia, Yeen Ten, and I drove into Calgary to run some errands before taking Yeen Ten to the airport. This was surprisingly fun, as we got a lot done quickly and enjoyed ourselves doing it. While Yeen Ten did what she needed to do at the university, Crisia and I went shopping in the morning, as she needed to pick up a new hard drive for Kurt. We came away with supplies for an herb garden. After a brief trip to Canadian Tire to pick up fuses for the radio and heater that I broke in the Ark as well as a light timer, we spent a good amount of time perusing MEC. It’s really rather hard to shop there and not spend a ridiculous amount of money when so many things could be of use out in the field. Afterwards, we went for coffee to pass the time until Yeen Ten had to catch her flight. We were going to set some traps to catch mice for me when we got back and then meet the others at Woody’s to watch the game, but the traffic caused us to get back a little later than anticipated so we went straight there to watch a rather nerve-wracking game. All but Nikhil were cheering on the Senators. Damn Leafs fan.

The rest of the week was a rather lazy one for all of us. We planted our seeds for the herb garden. Crisia and I spent an afternoon on the beach by the lake. I actually got a little sunburned since I refused to go in my room to pick up my sunscreen because Nikhil was napping. I wasn’t sunburned nearly as much as Crisia though. Tracy and I had some Mariokart time, which Kari watched, refusing to play. Crisia’s friend Paul came late Friday night for a weeklong visit, while Nikhil took off to Calgary for the weekend to visit his relatives.

I spent much of Saturday alone since Nikhil was gone, Crisia was off with Paul, and everyone else was doing fieldwork during the day. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, I was watching TV on my laptop and chatting with Eliott online. I heard some heavy breathing and stomping over the sound of my show. Suddenly Darth Vader and his twin brother, Darth Vader 2, showed up at my door and told me to leave the building. These were actually firefighters in gas masks, and there was a gas leak in the lab building and the nearby lodge. They made a perimetre around the buildings, so I couldn’t even go back to my trailer unless I wanted to do an hour long hike in my flip-flops.

I spent sometime conversing with two of the cooks and Gary, our caretaker, getting eaten by bugs until we went inside a nearby dormitory. We were soon joined by Kim, a researcher, Darryl, Kim’s husband who looks like Matt Damon, their very cute 2 year old daughter, Amallia, and Erin, Kim’s field assistant. There was also Louis from Quebec City who works in the village and who got stuck looking for a friend who is staying in a trailer here.

Kurt and Tracy soon came back. Luckily for them, the route to their cabin was not blocked off. I helped them do some work for Kurt’s project, which involved gluing styrofoam balls to sticks and sticking them in the ground to dry. I made their walkway look like the entryway to a gingerbread house.

Soon enough, we were allowed back in the buildings, and Crisia, Paul, Kari, and Edith returned. We all went out together to watch the game at Woody’s. This game was far more exciting with a happier end result than the last one.

Today is Sunday, and once again, I am left alone while everyone else is gone. That is why I finally have time to put up a blog post.

Updates: I have added several new pictures to my Wildlife in Kananaskis album. There are some pictures of a friendly golden-mantled ground squirrel Crisia, Kurt, and Tracy met on a hike and a couple pictures of a kill site of an elk from one of my trapping sites.

The Killers at the Saddledome and Visitors

2007-05-28T18:28:00.000-04:00

As a bit of a change of pace, we booked tickets to go see The Killers this past Thursday. We were a bit worried that it would cut into trapping time, but we did it anyway. Over that week, it was especially stressful because we had to keep postponing our trapping due to the weather. There was still snow on the ground the night of the concert, so it all worked out anyway.

The three of us and Tracy headed out to Calgary in the afternoon. We found what looked to be a shifty Vietnamese place to eat for supper, but it actually turned out to be really good. I wanted to try one of their hot plate or hot pot meals, but we just didn’t have the time. After dinner, we found our way to a transit station where we could park our car for free and take the light-rail train a couple stops straight to the Saddledome.

The concert was opened, to our surprise, by Hot Hot Heat. I only knew a few songs off the radio and found those songs rather annoying, but they put on a great show. I think I’m going to rip the album from Nikhil, who really likes them and was very excited to be getting two awesome concerts for the price of one. They were a perfect sort of band to open for a band like The Killers since both bands have a lot of fun, high energy songs.

The Killers were in top form and played all the songs I wanted to hear. I was very excited to be seeing them since I wanted to go to the show in Montreal, but that was happening a few days after I had arrived here in Kananaskis. The Killers put on a great show, and I encourage all who like them even a bit to go and see them live. I really wished we had thought to book our tickets sooner, so that we could find ourselves closer to the action. The Saddledome feels much smaller than the Bell Centre, so we could still see very well. I would have loved to be on the floor. Although they are not my favourite band in the world, being on the floor would have allowed for a much greater atmosphere. I would have loved to be jumping up and down and dancing in the crowd. As it was, I only gave in and stood to dance during the encore despite the reluctance of my companions to do the same, but I would have preferred to be on my feet the entire time with everyone around me dancing.

Even though we went to Calgary on Thursday, we had to go again on Friday to get groceries and pick up Yeen Ten from the airport. Yeen Ten, for those of you who cannot keep track of all the people I talk about, is the post-doctoral student of our lab, and I have recently moved into her basement. Nikhil and I spent the majority of the day stuck in traffic, and I’m really starting to loathe trying to get anywhere in Calgary. I now understand why Crisia would so easily pass up a trip to Calgary.

When we came back, our trailer had doubled its number of occupants, as Yeen Ten would be joining us as well as two others from David Green’s lab at Concordia, Kari and Edith, both of whom I had met prior to leaving Concordia. Yeen Ten is only here until Wednesday; she is here to offer us advice and to check on us since Jack is too busy to do it himself (We also like to think it’s because he trusts us). She will be back at the end of July to do some of her own work. Kari is only here to show Edith around for about a week before they head off to Edmonton. Edith will be joining us again, I think, towards the end of June.

Updates: I had added pictures of the snow we’ve been getting this past week. It’s mostly gone now except for some areas in the mountains. If you want to see the pictures of the PG-13 snowman Tracy, Kurt, Nikhil, Crisia, and I made, please let me know. I have kept those pictures unlisted because they are not suitable for all viewers. There are also some pictures from the Killers concert. We took a video from Crisia’s camera that turned out quite well considering how far we were. We could actually see better from the camera than we could with our own eyes. The sound, however, is not all that great. I’ve got the video up with my pictures; it's not as good shrunk down. Since I couldn't figure out how to embed it in the blog, here’s the best video from youtube that I found from the concert.

Snow and Bears

2007-05-23T18:44:00.000-04:00

Monday morning at 6am, we woke up to a snowfall and snow covering the ground. We actually had to brush the car off before we left. It’s usually warmer by our trailer than it is at the field sites, so this didn’t exactly bode well for our morning. We didn’t see a lot of wildlife on the road, and we drove through several areas that were buried in snow and where it was snowing and others areas that had no snow at all and where it was raining.

We dropped Crisia off at the bridge to Fortress Mountain where the snow is coming down in huge flakes. Our long-term site is actually a 30 minute uphill walk from the bridge, but the bridge is barred supposedly due to construction on the bridge. We are in the process of trying to get access over the bridge. The government turned us down, but we ran into the president and GM of the mountain randomly one day. We gave him our research documentation and our contact information. He says he needs to clear it with the government before letting us through, but we think he's the reason they won't let us through. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with the bridge since he and his partner drive over it twice a day in a giant SUV. Supposedly the government has deemed the ski hill he’s trying to reopen unsafe and until he puts enough money into it to make it safe, they’re making it so that the public can have no access to the road leading to the mountain. So until we hear from him regarding our access, Crisia has volunteered to run it, while Nikhil and I do the nearby long-term site at Grizzly Creek.

The snow was coming down hard as Nikhil and I drove to Grizzly. Suddenly out of the snow, a baby black bear galloped across the highway – directly towards our field site. Where there are baby bears, you know there is a mother bear somewhere that would not be very happy to see anything she would see as a threat to her young. Nikhil parked the car, and we debated what we should do. In our little fire and safety seminar held by the staff at the field station, we were told that if we know there is a bear, especially a mother bear, in the vicinity of our field site, we should leave the area and come back later. However, we had animals in our traps that would die if we left them there for too long. We came to the conclusion that we would proceed cautiously on the opposite side of the creek and let our animals go without taking the time to collect all the information we usually do.

This took a long time since everything was covered in snow and looked so different. It was hard to see our flags and, when we found them, we had a hard time locating the traps since they were covered in snow. We proceeded slowly and talked loudly, hoping to inform any bears of our presence so that they would go away. We got to the end of one of six trap lines, and we saw the mother bear directly across the creek. It was huge. Neither Nikhil nor I had ever seen a bear this close before, so we decided we would finish the second line, go get Crisia and come back later.

We got back to the bridge around 7:30. We tried to estimate how long it would take for Crisia to get back to the car. If she took any longer than this, we would go after her because something might have happened. The time we decided upon, 8:40, came and went, so, reluctantly, we went out to walk up the hill with the snow coming down hard directly into our faces. We would either have to rescue her from a sprained ankle, or we would arrive there just as she was finishing up. Fortunately for her and somewhat unfortunately for us since we had gotten soaked in the cold for no reason, it was the latter. We heard her shout, and I answered. Since she was shouting for the benefit of any potential bears in the area, she didn’t expect to be replied to, so apparently I scared her quite a bit. She was wet and frozen from falling several times and losing her way in the snow but was otherwise alright. It took her so long because, in addition to falling and getting lost, 23 out of 31 traps had animals in them. We were told that 10% trap success was considered a good day. We’ve been getting much more than 10% trap success, closer to 40%, at Fortress and Grizzly. So this was even much more than usual.

As we headed back to the car, we told her our story of the bear and asked her what we should have done and what we should do now. Crisia told us that her instinct would have been to do what we did, but she got in trouble for letting animals go last year. We decided to go back and check the rest of the traps together and hope that we don’t run into the bears.

At that point, there was even more snow to contend with. It took a lot of digging and kicking snow around to find any of the traps. Our traps are made out of metal, so even handling the traps to lock them resulted in frozen fingers. It was difficult enough to handle any animals when you couldn’t move your fingers from digging through snow and handling the trap. Anytime one of us hit a branch underneath a tree, piles of snow would fall on our heads and down our backs. On the positive side, out of both grids, we only found one trap death, and we didn’t encounter the bear. We had expected to find more dead animals with it being so cold.

By the time we got back, it was almost 11am. Crisia’s fingers, after soaking through her gloves at Fortress and working without them at Grizzly, were burning for two hours afterwards, and I think I’m now coming down with a cold.

We postponed setting traps out that night to wait for the snow to disappear since we were told that we don’t often get a lot of animals in the snow and if it’s too cold, we could lose some animals. The snow was mostly gone by Tuesday night, so we set traps again and had no problems in the morning. However, right now it is snowing again. I’m reluctant to postpone another day of trapping since it means less time for me to catch my own animals, but I may not have a choice. Oh well, that’s life in the field with the mountains and their unpredictable weather.

Updates: More velociraptor (a.k.a. bighorn sheep) pictures and pictures from the bridge to Fortress (taken this morning when it wasn’t snowing, as Nikhil and I were waiting for Crisia).

In news unrelated to anything I’m doing right now, here is a trailer for His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass coming out December 7. If you haven’t read the books by Philip Pullman, I suggest you do so immediately. I’m making Eliott read them right now (Eliott, I hope you have started that book by now), and JJ has read them already.

Banff, Troll Falls, and Kananaskis Village

2007-05-22T18:04:00.000-04:00

Crisia’s friend Meghan from Regina came to visit us over the weekend, so we had plenty to keep us occupied for a couple days. We took Saturday night off from setting traps to make plans to go to Banff for an evening out. We were at liberty to make such plans since Meghan was coming with her own car and could, therefore, drive us around. I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but we do not have unlimited use of our vehicles and must record our kilometre usage and give in gas receipts. However, Meghan’s 4 hour drive turned into a 9 hour drive after receiving poor directions from a friend who neglected to tell her he couldn’t come until after she had been lost for 3 hours and later, her car suddenly stopped being able to go faster than 80. Since we had already made the plans, we took one of our cars into Banff anyway.

In Banff, we had dinner and drinks at the Rose and Crown pub. Nikhil, Crisia, Meghan, and I were joined by Kurt, another researcher at the field station, and his assistant Tracy. Dinner was very good. I was very excited to be having fish (maple salmon!) for the first time in a while. Our grocery budget would not allow for us to buy such expensive foods as sustenance.

We were soon joined by Crisia’s friend Justin from high school, who works in Banff and who was there with some friends, and some random guy from PEI who I think works on an oil rig. He just sat himself down between me and Tracy. He was incredibly high and spent a good amount of time talking to Tracy. Apparently he said some weird things about how he believed Germans were the greatest people ever and how she looked German because she was the only real blonde in the place. It was very loud in there, so I could only hear the people directly beside me only when they were yelling directly in my ear, so I didn’t hear everything he had to say.

This guy only addressed me once and that was to ask what animals I studied. I told him mice and voles. I think he thought I said wolves and asked me whether I sawed beavers in half to trap wolves. Crisia, Tracy, and I thought this was absolutely hilarious when we were discussing this a couple days later. Kurt ruined our fun a little by saying that he had a friend who studied wolves and they had a deal with beaver trappers. The beaver trappers would take the fur from the beavers and give the carcasses to the researchers who would saw them in half and stick them in freezers for use later to attract wolves. Maybe I should have studied wolves.

The pub had a live band that played some stuff that was very heavy on the bass. Music included Bob Marley, Sublime, and The Police. It was pretty good, but didn’t allow for a lot of conversation.

After the random guy disappeared, Kurt and Tracy went home and we waited until we were joined by someone Crisia and Meghan knew from a camp they both worked at in Kananaskis. He brought a few female coworkers from that camp who didn’t stick with us. After staying around for a bit, we went home. Since I’m not a big drinker, I offered to drive home. I had never driven this car before, which is a boat with little acceleration. This was a very interesting 45 minute drive on a highway with a speed limit of 110 km/h and no lights whatsoever in a car whose highbeams are as bright as a normal car’s headlights. That night was the latest we went to sleep in a really long time: 1am.

The next day, Crisia, Meghan, and I went for a short hike to Troll Falls. It’s about a half an hour there on a wide, fairly flat path. There is less of a path going to underneath the falls and above it. The path was rather muddy, and Meghan fell on the way down. She slid a bit and got her jeans and hands all muddy but was otherwise unscathed. Meghan risked taking her car out, and it would appear that the car only had problems going beyond 2^nd gear.

Afterwards, the three of us went for a lunch at a pub called Woody’s in Kananaskis Village. This is the closest pub to the field station, and we will apparently end up spending a lot of time there. Kananaskis Village is unfortunately not, as the name would have you believe, a village and is in fact a hotel complex. After lunch, we walked through some of the shops there. These shops are mainly souvenir shops.

There, we were hit on twice. Once by a group of pushy guys who upon being told that we were only browsing the shops suggested that we “browse together.” We didn’t take them up on that offer. The second time was by the clerk at one of the shops when I was buying some things. His method was a little less annoying and simply involved trying to keep us in conversation for as long as possible and suggesting many times that we come hang out at Woody’s over the course of the summer, where all the staff in Kananaskis go regularly, and he genuinely seemed to be a nice person and made it rather obvious that he was hitting on us by blushing at times.

We went back to the station after that and set traps in the evening before supper, after which we did end up going back to Woody’s for a round and some crab and spinach dip. Meghan left for home the next morning as we left to check the traps we had set the evening before (a morning which deserves a blog post in its own right) and emailed Crisia to say that she and the car got there in one piece later that day.

Updates: I have reorganized my photos a bit. Pictures of our trailer and other buildings at the field station were moved to Facilities at KFS. I’ve combined all my animal photos into the album Wildlife in Kananaskis and I have added some new ones including a couple of bighorn sheep and one of the behinds of some elk. We can’t seem to get a picture of them not running away. I have also updated my links to include Caitlin’s new blog Road to Zanzibar.

My Average Day

2007-05-19T17:52:00.000-04:00

Kevin wants me to write more blog since he is bored with Mein Kampf, so here I am, writing more blog. In an earlier post, I had expressed the wish that people write in my comments anything they would like me to post about, as eventually, I will run out of ideas of new things to write if nothing I feel is of interest is happening. However, anyone reading this, may have a different idea of what can be called interesting. Although this was not in my comments, Eliott has expressed the wish to hear what my average day is like. I was going to wait until my weeks became a little more routine, but it may be a while until that happens.

So here is my average weekday:

6:00-6:30am: Wake up, change into field clothing, eat breakfast, brush my teeth

6:30-7:00am: Get field bags from the lab and drive to field site. At least twice a week, if we are driving on a particular stretch of road, we are required to perform a wildlife survey where we mark down how many kilometres we have travelled from the field station, the number of each animal, the species, and whether there are any roadkills when we see an animal. This data may eventually be used for someone’s Honours Thesis project. Typical animals we see include mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, bighorn sheep, ravens, and robins.

7:00-~9:30am: Walk through the grids we have set up at a particular field site. If it is one of the long-term grids, we check all traps along the grid, which vary between 30 and 45 usually, and when there are animals, check tag numbers, tag the deer mice or red-backed voles that are missing tags, check their sex and reproductive condition, write down all the information, and let them go. If it is a grid that we’ve set up for ourselves to bring mice back to the lab, we check the traps that have something and take back the animals we need. We lock the traps open when we are done checking them.

~9:30am-5:30pm: This is where we are a liberty to pretty much do what we want. Usually we spend at least some of this time doing work. Right now, what has fallen under the category of work for me includes taking an online animal care course (which I have now passed and finished) and figuring out the protocol for my own experiment. In the future, I will be taking care of my animals in my experiment, and researching and working on the proposal I am supposed to submit sometime this year to my committee. Although this is only really due, I think, at the end of the school year, it will be good for me to get it over with now as I am doing the field work since during the school year, I will be busy with my courses, TAing, and doing the lab work for my own experiment. Occasionally, we devote some time to getting traps ready if we need to set up new ones anywhere. During this time, we also do normal things such as shower, eat a second breakfast as well as a late lunch. Often we combine our meal times with T.V. time. Right now, we are finishing up the first season of Lost. When I feel like procrastinating, I also watch the T.V. shows I’ve been missing over the Internet, take naps, or think up blog posts. Obviously I haven’t been doing an awesome job at the latter, so you can imagine what I’ve really been doing.

5:30-~7:00pm: Drive out and set and bait the traps for the next morning. We use sunflower seeds and oats as bait.

~7:00-8:30pm: Make supper and eat it while watching Lost (this will change once we are done the second season of Lost).

8:30-10:00pm: Free time. I usually use this time to call Eliott, read a bit, and then get ready for bed.

So what does all this mean in terms of my average week? We have three long-term grids that we have to take care of, and two of them need to be done twice a week, while the other one only needs to be done once a week. If this was all we had to do and we did the first two on the same day, our week could be done by Wednesday morning. However, we all have our own projects, so it will not work this way for the most part. For my own project, I need 30 male mice, so I have to keep going out until I catch that many. I think Crisia needs 10 male mice once a month, while Nikhil needs a number random species at varying times. This could mean working every day of the week at some times or only until Wednesday later on when Nikhil and I have all that we need and Crisia has done her monthly quota.

Friday in Calgary

2007-05-14T15:35:00.000-04:00

I had my first real weekend this past week. We had scheduled is so that Nikhil and I had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. Crisia has chosen to continue with her own personal project through the weekend. We had decided that since we needed groceries and had a few errands to run at the University of Calgary, we would head into Calgary to run our errands and then go see Spiderman 3 at the Imax. Nikhil and I would have to go by ourselves if Crisia was unable to finish up her work by 11am.

Luckily she was done before that since she didn’t catch any animals and we actually left here soon after 10am. Since we had some time to spare because we had only reserved parking at noon, we walked around a mall close to the university. We got ice cream and went to HMV. It seemed kind of pointless to look at and buy clothing we would be mostly unable to wear this summer since we spend 95% of our time in field clothes smelling like mouse poo.

Entering the city felt like we were coming out of the woods into civilization. We got to the university by noon and went to their Biostore, which it turns out is closed from 12-1pm. As soon as we got there, the guy locked the door and said, “We’re closed.” We went to get the mail for the field station but that room was locked as well. Unfortunately, our parking was only until 12:30, and the grocery store (we can only go to Superstores because they’re cheaper) and the Imax theatre were at least 20 minutes away. So much for saving on gas.

We decided to go for groceries anyway because there was no point in waiting around until 1 and our movie started at 2:30. Crisia needed to be back for 6pm, so we needed to be out of Calgary by 5pm. By the time we got through traffic and were done our groceries, it was 1:45. If we went back to the university and then came back, we would be late for the movie. We couldn’t miss the movie since we came all this way and Nikhil had been dying to see it since before it came out. Crisia decided to drop us off at the theatre and go back to the university herself since she was the one who needed syringes from the store and did not think she would die if she didn’t see this movie. She would hang out at the mall near the theatre to wait for us afterwards.

I was expecting the movie to be really crappy since I had spoken with Eliott about it earlier, as he had seen it the week before. He thought it was horrible. Since I went in with low expectations, I came out of the movie thinking it was not as bad as I had been lead to believe. Sure, the ending was cheesy, but I like my happy endings. It was definitely not as good as the first two, but I didn’t think it was terrible. I laughed until it hurt at emo-Spiderman, who danced when he walked. A lot of that was entirely unnecessary and not what I expected black-suit-Spiderman to be like given my knowledge from the cartoon. Nikhil, who had read reviews that had said it was good, came out of it very disappointed. Poor Nikhil.

Meanwhile, Crisia had gone back to the University of Calgary and paid for parking. She waited until her parking had expired, and no one came to open the Biostore. At least she was able to get the mail for the field station, but the mail she had been waiting for was not a part of it. Poor Crisia.

Afterwards, we abandoned Nikhil in the parking lot of the theatre so that he could meet with his relatives with whom he would be spending the weekend, while Crisia and I picked up some items to make our weekend more enjoyable and headed back into the woods. Hopefully our next foray into civilization will be longer and will result in more fun for us.

Emo-Spiderman!

Kananaskis Field Station

2007-05-10T17:37:00.000-04:00

Some of you may be wondering what kind of facilities we have here. Details are readily available on the University of Calgary website for the field station. There are in fact two stations; we are located at the Barrier Lake one. Here is a map for you to check out:

Our trailer is the first one in the bottom right corner. There are three bedrooms; two of them have bunk beds, and the other one has two twin beds. We have a reasonably sized washroom. Water is always hot when you need it unless someone is doing dishes. Water pressure is variably but usually on the low side. Sometimes two flushes are not enough. Our kitchen has everything we need, and our living room is spacious with a couch and an arm chair and a book shelf with enough books to keep us entertained all summer. Crisia brought a small T.V., and we have a DVD player and a CD player. I brought Eliott’s Gamecube. For pictures, see my photos in the Drive to Alberta album.

The laboratory is where we spend most of our time when not in the field. There we keep everything needed to trap animals in the field, while we also have everything we need to keep animals in the lab. We are the only researchers here to have our own office. The entire building has a wireless network, but we can also plug in using an Ethernet cable. There is a computer lab for anyone else who doesn’t have a laptop. We can also print using these computers. Mail sent to any of us goes to the University of Calgary, where it is driven out here maybe once a week and put into our box. There is also a box for us to put any of our outgoing mail. The offices of the permanent staff of the field station are also located in this building. We can also buy souvenirs of the field station from the main office such as hoodies, sweatshirts, t-shirts, and mugs. Crisia and I have already bought mugs so that we can carry our coffee around. See pictures here.

Speaking of coffee, we can get free coffee and tea at the main lodge. Other researchers and sometimes visiting students stay in dorms there and eat there. We are one of the few researchers who stay outside of the lodge. At the lodge they have cooks year round. Unfortunately we don’t really get to take advantage of this, but we are on good terms with the head cook who sometimes brings us leftovers. I am told that when the field station gets busier, we often have get-togethers in the lodge at night. There is a picture of the lodge, as well as the duplexes that can be rented out, in my Ground squirrels album.

I’ve also take a couple pictures of the deer that we see everywhere around here. There is also a picture of Crisia with the awesome matching deer antlers that she found.

Training in Kananaskis

2007-05-08T14:32:00.000-04:00

We three new grad students have had a pretty hectic several days learning how things are done here in Kananaskis. Jack, our supervisor, was here when we got here. He just left today and will be back in a few weeks to check on us. I will once again do this in lists since I find it easier to get my thoughts down this way, and it doesn’t leave any of my readers with too much to read.

Things we learned:

- How to operate, set, and lock live traps.

- Where to put them when trapping.

- How to identify, handle, weigh, sex, and ear tag deer mice and red-backed voles.

- How to tell if females are non-breeding, breeding, pregnant, and lactating.

- How to tell if males are scrotal or non-scrotal.

Things we REALLY learned:

- Males are often feistier than females and do not like it when you feel around for their testicles

- Red-backed voles are much less docile than deer mice. Expect to be bitten. Several times.

- Expect to be urinated and defecated upon. Continuously.

- Tagging is difficult to pick up. You have to get used to holding a squirming mouse in one hand and using a tag stapler in the other.

- Mice and voles do not like being given overlarge and unattractive earrings.

- Chipmunks do not like being stuck in traps.

- Weasels smell really bad.

Crisia has already done all of this before. So Nikhil and I have been lucky to have had someone here to tell us stories from previous summers and to show us what to do without us feeling stupid and inept. I think Nikhil and I are picking things up rather quickly. Today, we did tagging in the field rather than taking the animals back to the lab. We had a 43% trap success on the one long-term grid that we did; 10% is considered to be good. We also had no escapees, which is pretty much unheard of in the first couple weeks of doing this.

We are not constantly doing work here and have a lot of free time at least until we get our own projects set up, and we start thinking about our own research proposals.

Things we’ve been doing to keep ourselves occupied outside of being in the field:

- The Internet

- Reading

- Cooking

- Taking pictures of mountains and ground squirrels (see my pictures)

- Finding an excuse to drive out to Canmore (20 minutes away) or Banff (40 minutes away). Both of these are very touristy mountain towns with cute shops. We actually didn’t need an excuse for the last one since it was Jack’s idea. We will, however, need excuses in the future, so if you come to visit us here in Kananaskis (and we encourage guests since we have extra beds and like showing people what we do), please bring a car since we must log the kilometres on our vehicles and cannot constantly use them for our own pleasure.

Pictures uploaded

2007-05-06T16:42:00.000-04:00

I have uploaded some of the pictures Crisia has taken. I have added some to the Drive to Alberta Album. The others are of our first few days here learning the ropes in Kananaskis.

Hello I'm in Alberta

2007-05-05T22:41:00.000-04:00

Since the drive to Alberta was really long, I’ll summarize some things I found interesting in point form.

- Cruise control is awesome, but it is difficult to use it all the time if the acceleration on the car in front of you, in this case an ’89 Oldsmobile, isn’t very good.

- Nikhil is a Leafs fan (boo) and likes Radiohead and other bands that I like (yay). He is very sad to be missing the opening of Spiderman 3 in Imax. I told him we would go when we have an excuse to go into Calgary.

- Crisia is obsessed with the Pride and Prejudice BBC mini-series and really wants to see the Mists of Avalon miniseries after reading the book. She is also extremely happy that I brought the second season of Lost. I may also have someone who will go see plays with me in Stratford, as she hasn’t gone since she moved to London since she can’t find anyone to go with.

- It is bad to be sleepy when driving through a one-lane highway surrounded by construction with a passenger who is asleep.

- Nikhil and I, both city kids, saw our first tumbleweed and laughed really, really hard. Crisia saw us in her rear-view mirror. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture

- Some motels are nice enough to be hotels despite outward appearances. Some of them also have wireless Internet and continental breakfast. Unfortunately, my wireless card isn’t very good.

- Never drive through Illinois if you can help it. There is a toll on the highway every couple of miles, and they toll you to either get on or get off the highway, which can be a pain if you have to turn around. If you do drive through Illinois, carry lots of change on you.

- Bug goo comes off the windshield with great difficulty.

- Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat are a lot bigger than most of the cities in the States that we drove through with the exception of Chicago.

- It is such a relief to see a Tim Horton’s after driving most of two days in the U.S.

- You only ever really have to go to the bathroom when there is no gas station or even a house for miles and when it’s raining outside with no bushes along the side of the road.

- It was snowing in Calgary when we drove through it.

- Mountains can and do come out of nowhere, just like little rodents and birds on the highway.

I was going to give you a rundown of my last couple of days, but I think I will wait since this is already rather long. Let me know in the comments if there is anything specific you would like me to address in future posts. You can do this throughout the life of this blog, and I will do my best to do your inquiry justice.

Here is a video of a song that describes some of the feelings I have right now. It is of City & Colour's "Hello I'm in Delaware" from a concert in Calgary. I find it fitting.

So there goes my life
Passing by with every exit sign.
(...)
But I will see you again,
I will see you again,
A long time from now.

Drive to Kananaskis, Alberta

2007-05-03T23:14:00.000-04:00

I'm rather tired, and I have some phone calls to make, so I'll make this post rather short. I left London, Ontario to drive to Kananaskis, Alberta on Tuesday morning. There were three of us driving to Alberta in two cars. I will introduce them to you now since you will probably be hearing a lot more about them all summer. Crisia and Nikhil are the other Masters students who will be starting in September. Crisia has already been out to Kananaskis as a field assistant, so she will be showing Nikhil and I the ropes. I think the three of us will get along great. We survived three days on the road together, and we haven't killed each other yet, so I think that's a good sign.

For those of you who are skeptical, yes, I did do some of the driving. It wasn't as long as the other two, but I will eventually be able to work my way up to that. I did about 8 hours with a break for lunch on one day and 4 hours this morning. We drove through the U.S. and up into Saskatchewan. We stayed two night in motels that were nice enough to be hotels, one in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and the other in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. There isn't really much to say about the drive since there wasn't really much to see, but I did get to know my fellow Masters students a little more.

We arrived in Kananaskis around 6:30 today. We are living in a trailer. I know that sounds like we'll be living in very confined conditions, but the trailer is actually rather large. I have pictures of the drive starting from Western and ending at the trailer. I will eventually get around to commenting on some of them so that you know what they are. You will find them in Pictures linked on the right.

The facilities here appear to be rather nice. I will eventually get pictures of that. I have access to wireless internet and a computer lab in the lab building, and we will have our own office.

In Moose Jaw

2007-05-03T00:39:00.000-04:00

Just letting you all know that I've made it through the drive through the U.S. I am now in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and will be in Kananaskis, Alberta by tomorrow night.

Update

2007-05-01T08:43:00.001-04:00

Pictures from my move have been uploaded. To see them, see the link on the right.

Moving

2007-04-30T15:23:00.000-04:00

Short version: Everything I owned was packed into a truck and unloaded in London. I am now in London and will be leaving for Alberta tomorrow.

Long version: The movers arrived on Friday earlier than anticipated, while Eliott, Andrew, Jackie, and Jackie's friend Lea were finishing off our take-out Chinese food on the table that needed to be loaded into the truck. The loading went off without a hitch. My mom spent the majority of the time questioning the manager about his moving practices in order to ensure herself that he wasn't just going to run away with my stuff. The manager took this in stride and he, his driver, and his helper moved my stuff efficiently without complaint and were quite friendly. I got to see Andrew and Steph, whom I hadn't seen a lot of lately.

After we got all that out of the way. Eliott and I headed to Caitlin's for her end-of-semester/undergrad party. I saw Nida whom I hadn't seen in forever. I will unfortunately not be seeing Caitlin until at least next March when she returns from Zanzibar. She says she will be chronicling her adventures there in her own blog. When she does, I will be putting up a link to that on the right. Eliott and I were unable to stay very long since we decided that we needed to leave Montreal by 4 AM in order to get to London by 1 PM.

In fact, we left at 4 AM after I had my sad parting from Bucky and got to London by 11:30 AM. Yeen Ten, the owner of the house whose basement apartment I will be renting and the post-doc of the lab I will be joining was not there, so we went for lunch at a cute Lebanese place, reminiscent of Al Taib. At 1:30 PM, I called Yeen Ten to discover that she left a note for me with the location of the key. The manager of the moving company I hired told me that the earliest the truck would be there would be at 2 PM. So, Eliott and I sat on the floor of the apartment until about 5 PM when we pulled out a movie and watched it on my laptop.

So where was my truck? Sometime during Spiderman 2, I got in contact with the manager who told me that the truck got stuck behind some heavy traffic in Cornwall and was only reaching Toronto now. He told me that the truck driver wanted to come the next day early in the morning. I complained to him that if he didn't come tonight, I would be left with no bed to sleep in since everything I owned was on that truck. He told me that it might be possible for the truck to come later that night around 11 PM, and that he would call me back.

Eliott and I then went on a wacky adventure to find food. After following misheard directions to get to an Italian bakery, walking down a main road for a long time, walking back to the car, and driving to both Eastside Mario's and Montana's to be told that there would be a 25 minute wait, we got take-out at a Caribbean restaurant Yeen Ten recommended and ate on the floor in my hallway.

After we ate, I tried calling the manager again, and I couldn't reach him. Eventually I got a phone call from the driver of the truck. Apparently he did get stuck in traffic and was only in Toronto now. His helper's wife was in the process of delivering a baby, so he had lost his helper. If I wanted him to come tonight, he would be there after driving for 18 hours, moving other people's things, and by himself with no help in the dark. He said he would give me the $30-40 to stay in a motel if I would let him come on the Sunday at 8 AM. I agreed because I would rather that he did it with help and not in the dark. He would probably also be in a very bad mood. I had a sleeping bag and pillows, and we borrowed a second sleeping bag from Yeen Ten to sleep on the floor.

At 8 AM, he called me and told me he'd be there by 10 AM instead. I was fine with that since at least he called me. I wish someone had called me the day before, so that Eliott and I could have done something interesting with one of our last full day together before I leave for the summer rather than sit on the cold floor all day waiting for my stuff to arrive. Eliott and I took a drive around downtown London and Western to pass the time.

The truck was there by 9:45 AM. These were different people from those who loaded the truck. From the beginning, the driver wouldn't stop complaining. He wasn't told that I would be moving into a basement, so he kept moaning about how he doesn't move basements and he told me that I shouldn't move into a basement. He said he would come back to move me into a real apartment in one month's time. My stuff was big and too heavy. He insisted that he couldn't get my box spring, my couch, or my table into the basement. The couch, in the end, he had very little trouble with. The helper saw that the stand could be unscrewed from the table, and then that went in no problem. They tried twice briefly to get the box spring in to no avail. In the end, they drove away leaving my box spring in the driveway.

I was so angry. I was sure that if he tried other possibilities, it could get in. He wouldn't even give me my $40 for spending the night on the floor. He said he would give me a discount to move me from London to Toronto. Finally he agreed to give me $20 but told me to never call him again. Unfortunately I never got his name or the name of his company, as I believe he was hired by the company I had originally called to do it. I certainly would never call him again if I could help it. I think the helper felt really bad. He was actually quiet and nice when he did speak.

It took me 10 seconds to figure out a possible way to get the box spring in, and Eliott and I did it ourselves with minimal damage to the ceiling of the apartment. At least all my stuff arrived there safely. Eliott unfortunately had to stay a bit longer to help me with a few things before we very sadly parted ways and I was all alone in London, my new home, which I will be leaving tomorrow.

Brief first impressions: London seems to be a very nice place. It reminds me a lot of the suburbs of Toronto. Because everything is in English, I feel like I'm in an entirely different country like the U.S. Every second business has a horrible black sign with fluorescent yellow, pink, and orange letters advertising anything new. I think I'm going to miss the multiculturalism of Montreal. They have foreign restaurants here but they appear on the outside to be cheap American imitations with stereotypical names décor. Maybe I'll eat at several of these places and find out that the food is actually quite good. All the people I've met here are very nice, and I think I'll enjoy it here. It is also really nice to have a place of my own. Today, the other new grad students and I got everything prepared for us to drive the vehicles, and we packed up the cars. We and Yeen Ten went for all-you-can-eat sushi for lunch. It was good, but I've had better in Montreal. It was called Wonder Sushi.

Next: I am meeting the other students, Crisia and Nikhil, tomorrow to drive off to Alberta. We are cutting through the States. It should take about three days. You will probably hear from me next weekend. If I have time before I leave tomorrow, I will try to upload some pictures of the apartment. I don't promise anything since I have to do it from the school, and there is a very limited time window.

Saying Goodbye

2007-04-23T00:20:00.000-04:00

So it’s been a rather hectic week for me. Who would have thought that 2 weeks would be enough to get your entire life together, say goodbye to everyone and everything that you are familiar with, and make the biggest transition of your life? Well, I’m telling you now that it isn’t.

In between the time that I had last posted here and now: I have received my official acceptance to Western, which revealed that I would be a bit better off monetarily than I had originally thought; I have found a mover after a great deal of figurative nail-biting; I have done a significant amount of packing (although I still have a significant amount to go); and I have spent some time (but not enough time) with people I will not be seeing for a while. A mover will be picking my stuff up Friday evening and delivering it in London the next day in the afternoon, which means I will be leaving for London Saturday by 5 am. I will have a weekend in my new apartment before I head off for Alberta for the summer.

I spent time with many different people this week. At Vanier, where I worked for 6 years of my life, they had a nice little send-off for me. I spent an evening with Brandon and Sarah, whom I may only be able to see when our paths cross on our separate visits to Montreal. I spent an afternoon wandering in Centennial Park with Marleigh and Heidi and their beautiful baby, Kaelyn (see link to Marleigh’s pictures in my pictures on the right). I had my own little going away party with a Harry Potter food theme, complete with Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, Hogwarts, dragon eggs, and chocolate frogs (see the first pictures I took with the awesome camera my awesome friends got me of this event also in my pictures on the right). I spent an afternoon with my dad and had dinner with my stepmom and stepsister. My stepsister is going to Australia for good in September, so I hope that this wasn’t the last time that I see her.

Even though it may not be apparent to those around me, saying goodbye has been really difficult for me, and I have had a lump in my throat all week as I suppress my need to start weeping publicly. I have to keep telling myself that this isn’t really goodbye, and that I will be back regularly, and it’s not like I’ll never see these people again.

But in many ways this is goodbye. Although it may not be goodbye to the people around me, it is still goodbye to my life as I know it now. After I leave this house on Friday (I will most likely not be staying here for my last night, as I will no longer have a bed), I will never enter it (at least as my house) again. There will no longer be a cat to sleep at the end of my bed (I hope Bucky remembers me and doesn’t hate me when I come back to visit). Even visits to the people I will come back to see will have to follow a very set schedule, as there is only so much I can do in one weekend. Until I come back here after my degree, there will be no place on the island of Montreal I can call home.

This is not to say that I am not looking forward to the new changes in my life. I am very excited to spend some time out in the field in Alberta, and I am looking forward to living on my own and being a grad student. But it still saddens me that I have so little time in which to prepare for this huge transition and to say goodbye properly to everyone and to everything around me.

Edit: I've decided to embed this in my blog just because I want to share with you my excitement for this movie. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix arrives in theatres July 13.

Goodbye Concordia!

2007-04-13T16:21:00.000-04:00

I am now done all work required for the completion of my undergraduate degree. Yes, that is right: Goodbye Concordia! Some of you may be wondering what my plans are now that I will soon have my diploma for a Bachelor of Science in Biology in my exhausted little hands. Some of you already now what my plans are but are unaware of the specifics, while a select few know exactly what I have planned and can’t wait to get rid of me.

I have decided to pursue a Master’s degree at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. The degree will officially start in September, but I will be working as a field assistant in Kananaskis, Alberta starting in May.

I have started this blog to inform those of you whom I most unfortunately have to part from of what’s going on in my life. I have decided to call this blog “An Ode to Bucky” after the title was suggested by Orly, Eliott’s sister, as well as by Eliott’s mom. If anyone has any better suggestions, I am open to hearing them.

So what am I doing now and what comes between now and the moment I leave for Alberta to live in a trailer at the base of the mountains? Well, I’ve found a place to live in London. The post-doctoral student of the lab I am about to join has offered me the two-bedroom basement apartment of the house she owns. I’d have my own separate entrance, and we’d share a washer and dryer, a driveway, and a backyard. I stayed in her house when I went to London to meet the professor, so I know I like her, the house, and the area. I will of course be paying for all this with the money I’ve saved up, my Canada Graduate Scholarship from NSERC, and the money I will make as a field assistant in the summer and as a teacher’s assistant during the school year.

So right now, I’m busy preparing to pack for an entire season in the field and getting ready to move. I will be moving to London the weekend of April 28-29, going in to Western for orientation April 30, and leaving for Alberta May 1. Yes, it is all happening very fast.

If anyone happens to have that weekend free, I will be needing a few people to help me move. This would require waking up really early the Saturday morning, helping to load a truck in the West Island, travelling all the way to London (possibly driving a truck), unloading the truck, and spending the night sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag (sleeping bag not included) before driving home the next day. I am in desperate need of someone with a car. If I get enough people, they’re not all going to fit in the truck, and everyone would need a way home. I can pay for gas, but I doubt I could afford several train tickets from London to Montreal.

Those who come for the whole trip will get breakfast out of it and will have the pleasure of being one of the first to see where I will be spending the next two years of my life and of being one of the last to see me before I leave for the summer.

I will end this here since I believe I have already given you too much to read already. Hopefully, I will manage to find the time amidst packing up my life and everyone’s exam schedules to see as many of you as possible before I leave.