Battle Scars!!

On Monday, the last time I went out into the field, I was stepping over a dead tree and was not careful enough with my footing. I stepped into a branch and the tip of it drove into my leg and the tip broke off. "Eh..." I thought, "A splinter. It will work itself out." Four days later, with an angry red welt and a black spot in the center of it, I had to call the campus health center and have it looked at. The doctor cut a 1/4" incision in my leg, and it's at least as deep, to dig the thing out! Seriously! It's still numb right now but I think it's going to hurt!

No more cinder pits!

The field work is finished. Yay!! Now I can work on my statistics. I have a spreadsheet for all my data that I can use to run statistical tests on a software program the university uses. Then I am going to do a poster.
The class has been a huge waste of time so far. We all sit and "discuss" topics put up by the teacher, but there are only three people she really wants to hear from, so the rest of us watch while the four of them "discuss." It's a long three hours, let me tell you. It's Mondays and Wednesdays from six to nine, so there's a lot of time to "discuss."
Meanwhile I brought a TV back with me and there is cable in my room, so I am happily sucked into the vortex of food network when I get back to my dorm!

Flagstaff

Here are some pictures of what I am doing on the days I go out in the field. I go two or three days a week. My freckles are increasing exponentially!

Measuring last year's growth...

This is why I'm hot. Walking in the cinders is a lot like walking on the beach.

The puffy brown parts are called strobili. We have to count them.

They can number in the thousands.

This is me and my best friend, Bug n' Sun, out in the field.

I have a question.

It's a research question, mind you. Here's my project for the summer:
What is the effect of scale infestation on mortality of pinyon pines during a drought?
I want to do two things in order to answer this question. First, I want to be a part of the research team that collects data for the project. Basically it's a day long hike slogging around in the cinders, and every 15 minutes or so we find a tree that is tagged with the right numbers and we measure the growth. Not hard. Except that there are about 900 trees. The most important thing for my project will be mapping the trees that have died. As my mentor says, "Death is good for business."
After that is done, I can begin to crunch the numbers. I want to compare the trees that have died a drought-related death to the trees that have died a drought-scale-infected-related death.
Here is my hypothesis: Scale infestation of pinyon pines during a drought increases mortality.
It's more complicated than it sounds, really! Here's the deal: Arizona has been in a drought for about the last 10 years. The pinyon pine population is suffering from three major maladies. First is the drought, then the two insect infestations of moth and scale insects. The moth population decreases during the drought, but the scale population increases. This is all just stupefyingly boring, but it matters not! The trees are dying or dead, and I get to figure out how much of the dead trees died due to drought versus drought combined with scale infestation. So there's my job. I'm sure you were dying to know. Ha!

Scale Insects

Well, I found out what I will be doing for the next few weeks! Well, sort of. For the last 30 years or so, the biological sciences department has been studying the local ecosystem and gathering data. My project is focused on the pinyon tree population. This population is inhabited by two parasitic insects. One is a moth that makes the trees look more like shrubs because it eats the tips of the tree, and the other is a scale insect which looks like a tiny black dot on the needles of the tree. They are barely visible to the human eye. They sit on the needle and suck the phloem out, which eventually kills the needle. So trees that have this insect have branches that are bare except the very tips, which have new growth that the bugs haven't killed yet! Tomorrow is my first day in the field. I sort of get to design my own research, and I am thinking about looking at the seedlings to see if I can figure out how old the trees are before they become infected. I have lots of articles to read and research to do on the scale insect, so I can firm up my ideas and present them to my boss on Thursday. She is very laid back and seems so nice!
Now, I am going to go eat sushi for the 3rd night in a row. I don't care if it's selfish. I'm doing it anyway.

stupid foot

I have located the gym, and I walked there, worked out, and walked home this morning. On the way back I had to get a parking permit, and it took me a while to find the place. Bottom line, I walked for about an hour. Now my foot really hurts. I am going to be very upset if my stupid foot gets in the way of my weight loss goal this summer.

I'm here!

Here are pictures of my room. The temperature is 78 degrees. There are some clouds and some intermittent rain. I have my own room so far. There is another bed, but only my name is on the door! I met my RA earlier and she is a young student. She seems nice. There is a Target right next to the university where I am going to go in a few minutes to pick up things I forgot to bring.
So, so far so good!!

Flagstaff, here I come

I'm heading up to the mountains today! I am so excited! Right now I am at my older sister's house, sitting on her patio. She has a pool with a waterfall that is so nice to listen to. It is very peaceful. Alas, now the sun is in my eyes and I will go inside.

Hot Math Teacher

My armpits are almost back to normal... man, that was some serious pain.
Class yesterday was indeed stupid and boring. There was a very bright spot though... one of the people who is taking the class in order to mentor next year is my daughter's math teacher, who is totally hot. The added pleasure of my daughter being mortified beyond all belief just sweetens the deal. Today said math teacher is going to bring his camera and take a picture of us together doing something math-y, which I will promptly post on Myspace. Oh yes, life is grand.

A work in progress

Today I officially start my master's program! It's a one unit class that goes from today through Friday from 8 a.m. - noon. I've already taken the class under a different name, so it will be stupid and boring, but I will get to meet the people in the program with me. There are eleven of us. All the other teachers are from TUSD. They might already know each other.

Pits

I waxed my armpits yesterday. Of all the self-inflicted pain I have engineered in the name of beauty, this was by FAR the worst. It was even more painful than the infamous Epilady debacle of 1984. It HURT.
I am packing for Flagstaff. I leave on Friday for a training in Mesa for the teacher's union. I foolishly allowed myself to be elected vice-president for the district. Then I'll go from there to check into my dorm room at NAU. I'll post pictures after I get settled in.

At least it's better than plantar warts

My foot has been hurting ever since AIMS. All that walking, and in bad shoes, resulted in an ache that never went away. Last week it started hurting pretty darn bad, and so I went to the doctor and found out it's plantar fascitis. Meaning, in layman's terms, my foot hurts. All I have to do is ice it and stretch it and take ibuprofen, and stop wearing bad shoes even if they are cute.
So I told my principal that I had to wear tennis shoes to work for this last week or so of school. She doesn't care. She's just glad I am still showing up. The students are MISERABLE to be around. They just cannot believe that we still expect them to work. Every day they come in, and look at the white board where I write the learning objective for that day. They see an actual learning objective and start complaining before class even starts!! I think they are hoping by some miracle of tiredness and bad teaching that one day they will walk in, and instead of "I can find the area of a geometric figure," it will say something like, "My teacher is too tired, so I won't be learning today." Or, "It's the end of the school year, so I won't be learning today." Or how about, "My teacher doesn't give a rat's hairy ass, so I won't be doing squat today." BUT NO!!! Tyrant that I am, today we are finding area and circumference in anticipation of starting surface area tomorrow. How dare I, people? HOW DARE I??
The best part is when I remind them that some of them will have me again next year, and the ones that don't will have the dreaded Mrs. Barbier, who is meaner on her best day than I am on my worst. HA! Take that, you pubescent, smelly little monsters!
Oh dear. It appears I have lost track of my softer side once again.

No More!

Not a thing in the way of good news to report. I still haven't been to the gym, I have still been eating everything I want, and I am gaining weight. I keep thinking, after the end of school. After my brother gets back from his trip and I don't have to drive to his house every day after work. After I get my energy level back up. After, after, after! Enough! Enough, I say! I must go to the gym on Monday, and then walk on Tuesday! Then go to the gym on Wednesday, and walk on Thursday. No matter what else is happening! No more excuses! I must! I must! I must!!!

I give up

I'm done with dating. Again. I deleted all my profiles, stopped responding to emails, blocked a bunch of addresses. When I am considering therapy after a bad date, it's time to hang it up! I still have three more dates already scheduled, so I'll go ahead with those but after that I'm done. My expectations of the remaining dates are so low, I'm not even sure if I should still go on them. I'll just try to keep a positive attitude. One of them is a math teacher, so maybe that one will be ok. At least we'll have something to talk about besides the size of my boobs.

Breastalicious???

First, some good news: my tomato plant has brought me a ripe tomato! Behold:


Now, to get something off my chest. Something named Dave. I went out on a date with said Dave last night. It started off great... he did not lie about his age, appearance, or anything else. He has a job, a car, and he seemed to be intelligent. We sat down and ordered beverages, and he complimented me by saying that my picture doesn't do me justice and I should get a new one. I replied that I had just taken that one, and I probably just don't photograph well.
Then he proceeded to apologize to me for looking at my breasts. I attempted to play it off, saying something like, "It happens all the time. I am not sure why you are admitting it." He said, and I quote, "Because you're breastalicious."
You would think my stunned silence and whatever look I had on my face would give him a clue to shut the hell up about my mammaries. But he didn't. He said he works in finance, so you could say he has a head for figures. Hardy, har, fucking har. Then he called me breastalicious AGAIN. I said with the utmost kindness, "I'm feeling rather like a piece of meat right now." Then he finally stopped.
Come to find out he lives with his mother, makes extra money on the side by house sitting, and has a goal to get a master's in education even though he has yet to obtain a bachelor's degree in anything. He pressured me all evening long to come back to the place he was housesitting after dinner. He kept putting his hand on my thigh and I kept brushing it off. Somehow or another I made it through the date, though I probably should have said I was going to the bathroom and left. When I drove away, he was just standing there, staring at me, like he couldn't believe I was actually leaving. Five minutes later he called my cell phone. I didn't answer, and he left this message: "Hey. Call me when you go to bed." Suuuure, Dave. How about GET LOST, dickhead.
I just truly do not understand what makes a man think that he has the right to comment on my breasts. What if I met a man, and within the first few minutes of meeting, said something like, "That's quite a bulge you've got there between your legs." What would that say about me as a person? What would that say about my level of respect for him as a human being? I just do not understand. It makes me want to have them removed. Is it possible for a man to appreciate my body and still respect everything else that is attached to it? Is it just too much to ask? For goddess' sake, they are large bags of fat with some nerve endings at the tip. They do not define me!!

Maybe now?

Today has been a good food day so far, AND I went to the gym. My energy level is finally back up where it should be. Somehow I weigh the same even though I haven't been to the gym in 3 weeks and have been eating pretty much whatever I want. Probably I have lost muscle mass. Well, that's nothing that can't be fixed! So, let's have another one tomorrow just like today.

Finally, a good food day!

I didn't eat any sugar yesterday. None. At work, I ate only what I brought, and for dinner we stopped at Village Inn in between taking the entrance exam at the local community college and shopping for decent clothes to wear for Career Day. I had a very skimpy BLT on sourdough and a small portion of fries. Then I didn't eat anything else before bed. So, it was a victory. I didn't work out, and won't today either because I have a union thing to go to after work, but if I ate well yesterday then I can do it again today.
We were at the community college because my youngest decided on sign language for her foreign language requirement, which I think is very cool. The class, taken at her high school, is actually a college course and will count for college credit! The school is paying for it too! But she has to be admitted to the college, so she took the entrance test yesterday. Then same child has career day today at school where apparently they will be GRADED on their APPEARANCE??!! She has jeans and t-shirts. That's it. The child, in years past, would rather die than be seen in a skirt. But yesterday she picked out a really cute, age appropriate but still very nice skirt and blouse. She looks fabulous in it.
Older daughter has been offered an internship with the U of A, where she will be working the front counter two days a week after school. I hope that if she does well, they will offer her a paying position for the summer. She will be 16 by then. Speaking of which, she will be 16 in ONE MONTH. OH. MY. GAWD.

Seriously

All this looking for my softer side has exhausted me. I don't have energy for anything else. I haven't been to the gym in weeks. I keep talking myself out of it on the way home. I'm just too tired! Seriously, I went to bed at 7 p.m. last night. I had to get up at 9 to pick my daughter up from her student council thing, and she apologized for waking me up. I said no need to apologize! And promptly went back to bed. That's not normal. I am calling the doctor today.

Still looking...

Well, it's been three days now and I haven't found my softer side. My brain hurts from looking. Can I call my arse my softer side? It's soft and squishy and would never hurt anyone. HAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!!!

But what if I don't HAVE a softer side?

I totally lost it today in class and ripped a kid up one side and down the other for lying. In front of the rest of the class. He called his mom, his mom called the principal, I got called in. His mom wants him taken out of my class. Can't say I blame her. So I apologized to the kid, apologized to the mom, explained to her why I was frustrated with her kid, and asked for a week to try and smooth things over before we move him to another class. I think it will all be fine, but the principal thinks I need to look for my softer side. Problem is, I am not sure I have one.