Tuesday, May 6, 2008

one more thing to do

I finished my paper last night at 3:15 am. Whew! What a relief to get that done. I slept in this morning and went in late. Herb had the paper back to me with comments by 4 pm! He said he thinks it is in pretty good shape to go to a small journal like Taxonomically Specific Journal or that I could work on further developing the big picture and broader issues for it to go somewhere else.

Today I did my students' grades, so I only have one more assignment to complete- my web page. I got it online but it's not quite complete. I feel so free with all of this school stuff behind me! Now all I really have to worry about is my trip to Africa. Piece of cake. I'm leaving in 5 days. I started getting things together tonight. My goal is to carry no more than 40 pounds. We'll see if this happens. Tomorrow I'm running errands to pick up some things I need.

I'm so excited to not be going to school tomorrow! I realized that with the exception of the week after my appendicitis, I've been at school every single weekday this semester and worked several weekends. Not tomorrow!

In the midst of all the stress recently I almost forgot to mention that I got Grant D! I'm on a roll! However, because of my permit issues Herb is concerned that perhaps I should contact the granting agency and explain my situation (i.e. that I won't be collecting data on that part of the project this year) and see what they say. He said I should talk to Leo about it because it's more his field. I've got quite a few things to sort out about grants and accessing funds in the next few days. Today was the last time I'll see Herb for several weeks.

Oh, bummer news today. Jon's camera is broken, or at least the display screen is. This is especially a bummer because I was planning to take it to Africa. Jon lent it to a friend over the weekend, but this friend said he took care of it so what can we do? Even if he had broken it, this friend is barely scraping by with rent and food so there's no way he could afford to replace it. I also imagine that it isn't cost effective for us to repair it unfortunately. Looks like I'm in the market now for a new digital camera- and quick.

5 comments:

Anne-Marie said...

One recommendation on the camera: get one that runs on AAs, not a lithium that has to be recharged. When I have done field work people with special camera batteries inevitably miss out on shots because they forgot to charge a spare battery, or didn't have access to a place to plug it in, etc, while AAs are ubiquitous.

Congrats on the grant and on getting the paper done!

Paulina said...

have a lovely time on your trip. When are you coming back?
you can always just use it the old fashion way but with more takes. I would lend you mine but I might be going on an adventure of my own pretty soon.... stay tuned for that....

EcoGeoFemme said...

I'm so impressed that you got another draft finished! nd that it's in good shape. I'm jealous that Herb read it so quickly too. My advisors take for EVER to read my stuff.

Good luck preparing for your trip!

Karina said...

I *had* to get another draft finished because it was my final paper for Herb's class. It was originally due last Thursday but he extended the deadline to Monday for most of us so I had to push hard to get a copy in his inbox by Tuesday morning. I'm glad I had to work on it within the course deadline timeframe because it forced me to get it done.

Karina said...

I'm coming back mid-June. Regarding cameras and batteries, I think I prefer having a lithium rechargables because cameras really eat up AAs (especially the cheap kind I'm likely to find on my travels). If I did get a camera that used AAs I'd use rechargables which would leave me in the same situation.

I will admit, though, that one time while traveling last year Jon and I had a long stretch of living in the car without a chance to recharge the camera battery. We ended up going into a bar, plugging in the recharger under the table, and sat there for as long as we possibly could nursing our beers for all they were worth. We didn't get the battery fully charged, but it was enough to get us to the next stop.