wendy’s posterous

My cousin recently complained to me that I haven't been blogging regularly enough for her to bother checking my blog for new posts. Hopefully this flurry of posts will be enough to satiate her for the next couple weeks while I am out of the country. I didn't take a photo of her during her recent visit, but I did subject her lunch to a prolonged photo shoot. Who knew that a soft-shell crab sandwich would really come as a soft-shell crab on a bun? I can't decide if a sandwich with legs looks scary or if a crab wearing a large bread beret looks cute.

   

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crab_with_a_hat.zip (4858 KB)

One of my research projects involves doing lab work in the complete absence of oxygen. While it would be fun to suit up with an oxygen tank on my back and work in an oxygen-free room, it is much more practical to use a glove box. Glove boxes can come in many forms; for our lab it is a large sealed vinyl chamber on an aluminum frame with two sets of gloves for us to manipulate things we have placed inside the chamber via an airlock, which can get vacuumed out and re-filled with oxygen-free gas. It is a huge pain to work in the glove box because your movements are restricted and the gloves don't quite fit (i.e., too large for the women and too small for the men). My advisor is a little worried about us getting scooped on this work, which has been in progress for almost two years. Honestly though, who else is crazy enough to deal with performing complicated experiments in a glove box? I would rather be frolicking in the rain forest or even the cow pasture.

       

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working_in_the_absence_of_oxyg.zip (10477 KB)

This past January Glen announced that he was growing a beard as part of a pact with the other male residents in his program. During college, impressed by Glen's amazing ability to grow facial hair despite his Asian heritage, I had only managed to coerce him into skipping the razor for a few weeks. I thought it would be interesting to see if he could actually grow a decent beard. Apparently peer pressure was the way to make this experiment happen.

           

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the_evolution_of_a_beard.zip (13285 KB)

Doesn't hiking through the rain forest sound so much better than sitting in a cow pasture wondering if the soil is moist from rain or cow urine? Here are some of my favorite photos from when I accompanied my labmates to their research plots within the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico. Last year my labmates discovered the presence of a particular kind of fungi in Puerto Rico for the first time--almost as exciting as discovering a new species. Almost.

           

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the_ideal_research_site.zip (21943 KB)

Last week I had the opportunity to help my labmate and a scientist from the US Geological Survey dig a 23.5 foot deep hole in a Puerto Rican rain forest. They are studying iron transformations from the soil surface down to the bedrock, meaning the deep down layer of rock that the soil originated from. I was particularly excited to see what the soil looked like deep below the surface because of its interesting mineralogy. There were purple and black bits of soil colored by manganese, orange aggregates of iron-coated soil, glittery specks of mica, and white layers of kaolinite clay.

I did not expect the process of digging the hole with an auger to be so enlightening. While turning the handles to twist the auger head into the soil was not physically difficult in itself, having to repeat the action many, many times was tiring. I calculated that about 12 to 20 twists allowed us to dig about 6 inches into the soil. That amount of soil would fill the auger head so that we would have to pull it up out of the ground and empty it out. We had five foot sections of extension bars to add between the handles and the auger head as we dug deeper and deeper. We couldn't have more than 20 feet of attached bars pulled out of the ground at once because they would have snapped under their own weight. Thus, we had to tediously disassemble the top 15 feet of bars and hang them in a tree while we dealt with the bottom section of bars, being careful not to drop it into the hole to be lost forever.

The US Geological Survey scientist was well experienced in digging holes in this forest, so she knew that the dirt would change from an overall orange-brown color to white once we reached the bedrock. From past experience, she also thought that we would hit bedrock at around sixteen feet. But we kept digging and digging, hoping that we wouldn't have to repeat her experience of digging 52 feet over three days without ever hitting the bottom (in a nearby forest). After three hours, we finally pulled up our first hint of white dirt. Soon after, the rain came pouring down so hard and for so long that we had to abandon our remaining work for the day.

               

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digging_a_deep_hole.zip (22949 KB)

One of the major tourist attractions in San Francisco is a section of Lombard Street that is extremely windy (as in curvy not blustery).

             

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The_windiest_road.zip (19737 KB)

I can't decide if I am more amazed that someone managed to fit these paper cranes into the the plastic bulbs or that someone thought that the ornaments could sell for $17.95.

Glen and I never go to Chinatown in part because we are too lazy to drive to the other side of the city and in part because finding cheap parking is difficult. Yesterday's visit to Chinatown with a couple out-of-town friends made me realize how much good food I am missing out on. We decided to park in a public garage instead of wasting time and money trying to find street parking. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the fortune cookie messages painted in each parking spot. I was amused enough to walk the length of our floor, reading all of the whimsical, sometimes non-sensical fortunes, but I still felt that the labor and materials to paint the fortunes was a complete waste of parking fees that could have been used to help balance the city's budget. 

               

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San_Francisco_Chinatown.zip (25372 KB)

Lab geeks usually complain about developing carpal tunnel from pipetting too much. Over the last few months, I have developed tennis elbow, or rather, pounding-things-into-the-ground elbow. I was proud of myself for having the strength to do most of my grueling field work solo. By the end of some days, I could barely lift the mallet to pound the very last chamber base into the ground. Apparently the repetitive motion of lifting my arm damaged the tendons in my forearm.

Apparently stirring your hot tea with a biodegradable spoon is not the solution to having a dishwasher full of dirty spoons and a drawer full of clean forks. Hot water + freshly squeezed lemon + orange blossom honey + melted spoon = delicious!