Mobilization

 

Last night there was a brief reprieve from the (incessant) rain.  We broke a record this summer, actually; this was the wettest summer on record.  Anyways, it wasn't raining so I used the dry spell to remove the skirting from around Irv.  We want to see if someone else at the park can use it so we won't have to put it in a landfill.  When Steve got home last night the first thing he said when he came in was "You took off his pants!"  Hahahahaha - It does seem like Irv is naked now.

We are moving mid-November, a date is set!  We went over to the new apartment on Sunday so Steve could put in a new garbage disposal for the current tenant, and we talked details of the move with her too.  We have a pretty short window to get out of our current space, so we're going to move some of the outside things like the grill and kayaks, sooner. 

Also last night for dinner:

It's a recipe I made up - coconut curry quinoa and chickpeas with roasted broccoli, sweet potatoes, and kale.  It was really, really (really) good.  And because the coconut milk is so rich, we didn't even notice that it was meatless. 

Seca's first roomba

We didn't know how she would react to a free-roaming vacuum cleaner...turns out she's pretty unfazed by it.  It ran into her a couple of times and she'd just look at it, but not get up or avoid it at all.  If we lived in a place with more floor space and a lot of bare floors, I'd get one of these.  I wonder if they make a version that would squeegee up her drool?

Hi

We are house- and dog-sitting for the next week.  It's nice to spread out a bit, but the move always freaks Seca out.  She gets anxious, like we might leave her here *forever*.  Somehow, the fact that we've not done that yet in the past 14 years doesn't seep into her consciousness.  So, she's like a shadow on me...all day long.  I'm working from the house today so she can get used to it.  The dog who lives here is pretty chill with having a temporary sibling...His favorite place to sleep is a bean bag chair.  This is him wiggling into it:

He'll sleep like that, on his back, sandwiched into the bean bag, for hours.  Or until I try to get a picture of him.  But one of these times I'll sneak up on him and get a better picture.

Today I signed up for a twitter account.  I can't believe I did it.  I think it's kind of silly, but someone suggested it's a good way to keep up on current events with a few organizations I'm interested in, and also a good way to keep tabs on job openings at some of those same organizations.  We'll see, I am skeptical.  I have no intention of creating my own tweets, so don't follow me.

Since it's my birthday next week and we're house sitting, we can actually have more than two people over to celebrate. So we're hosting a small party tomorrow night! 

Beach seining

Tuesday and Wednesday this week I helped a fellow student with her field work. We met at 4:45 am (that's so early!), loaded up a small boat and drove to the sites.  It was cold out, but fortunately not raining either day.

Why are we paddling a boat with 2 perfectly good motors?  We were in 2 feet of water!

Each day we'd put the boat in and motor a short distance to the beach.  Then we'd pull the seine at least 3 times, putting things in separate buckets each time. While 2 people were seining, 2 people would be getting buckets full of water, anchoring the boat in a place where it wouldn't be high and dry if the tide went out too far while we were seining.  The beaches are shallow enough in pitch that it was constant work to keep the boat in the water as the tide rushed out, and sampling had to occur right around low tide. 

Emily's goal for her project was to get 25 each of starry flounder and staghorn sculpin to keep, then measure and count everything else and throw back alive.  But sometimes we couldn't get 25 starry flounder and sculpin in three tows, so we'd have to keep going and going and going, until either we got enough, or the tide started coming back in and made seining dangerous.  Both days were were back at the lab by noon, so not bad!

Emily, too short to reach into the boat with her feet on the ground, so she's balancing!

Day two sampling location.  So pretty!

It's like someone flipped a switch!

It seems like when September 1 rolled around, we flipped immediately to fall.  It's been cold and rainy, typical for fall, the wind has picked up too, which is rare except in fall (or in downtown, where it's windy a lot).  Last night it was 41 for a low!  That's only 9 degrees above freezing.  Too soon!  We forgot to turn the heat on overnight so it was a brisk 51 in Irv this morning.  I can't wait to move into the apartment...counting down the weeks.

Tomorrow and Wednesday I'm helping another student in the field with a beach seining project.  Tomorrow should be sunny and cool, so I'm looking forward to it.  It's supposed to rain again Weds, so that'll be less fun.  I'll try to take a few pictures.

Seca's superpower

Seca has a superpower.  She can reduce grown men into squealing, giggly little girls.  We had a break in the rain yesterday, so I loaded her up and we went to the glacier for a hike.  It was an unexpected madhouse there; 10 buses backed up into the road, hundreds of tourists waiting for said buses and walking the trails.  Several times on the walk to the waterfall, we were stopped (always by 50-60s age men) who upon seeing Seca would actually squeal something along the lines of "Oh my cute little puppy dog, are you enjoying your walk?"  Only, they said it in high pitched, giggly voices, while speaking in baby-talk.  It. Was. Hilarious.  Seca, naturally, ate it up. It's good to know she hasn't lost her touch in her old age.  :)