Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The best name for a plant
So, I was just looking up a genus of plants - Lemna, the duckweeds, and I discovered the very best common name for a plant, ever. The species is Lemna miniscula, which is also pretty good, but its common name is "Dinky duckweed." Honestly. I can't stop giggling. Marian says it's the perfect name for my firstborn.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
regretting my job
if you want to see some adorable fuzzy creatures, check them out here:
http://www.ualberta.ca/~sfm2/Movie.html
These are Pikas, which Vijay has been studying all summer up in the Yukon. The lucky guy.
this is the view from his front door:
and i've got pavement and people.
http://www.ualberta.ca/~sfm2
These are Pikas, which Vijay has been studying all summer up in the Yukon. The lucky guy.
this is the view from his front door:
and i've got pavement and people.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
on the sidewalk
little old lady, little old dog. they stop to do some business.
little old lady to little old dog:
"Push, PUSH! pushpushpushpushPUSH!"
that's my kind of friendship.
little old lady to little old dog:
"Push, PUSH! pushpushpushpushPUSH!"
that's my kind of friendship.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
saturday
my day on Saturday consisted of the standard business: laundry, farmer's market, cleaning, etc. I discovered the value of being a loyal customer at the market - i got free apples because the lady remembered me from last week and was excited that i was patronizing her stand again (not all free apples, just bonus apples - definitely good salesmanship - i'll be back to her again)
my saturday afternoon was spent at the Village Discount thrift shop with my friend Rachel, where we found some amazingly good deals. i bought a bathrobe that appears to be brand-new - it's fleece, and fleece definitely feels different when aged. it is covered with monkeys and snowflakes - an excellent combination, in my opinion. i also got an apron that wraps all the way around my butt, which is perfect for me because i always wipe my hands on my hind end. this should save me some laundry.
from Rachel's house, i went straight downtown to see a free showing of Nosferatu, the 1922 Dracula silent film, at the Chicago Symphony, with live music done by a band named Tortoise. They are sort of a rock band, but they also do a good deal of electronic stuff. they did a *very* good job. if you have never seen Nosferatu, you should - it's very entertaining.
From the movie, i went on with my friend David, who had been at the movie with me, out to bars with his friends (whom i also know by this point; we've been hanging out all summer). we spent most of the night at this local dive bar, with a bunch of 40-, 50- and 60-year-olds, who were stuffing money in the juke box to hear all of their favorites - with these two men in particular who actually had choreographed dances for many of the songs. it was incredible, and i hope those very drunk folks were at least slightly embarrassed today, because i was kind of embarrassed for them last night. i also did some dancing, which was nice, as i haven't done that in a while.
my Sunday was pretty lazy. i baked bread and muffins (i've decided to stop buying bread and just bake it myself, as i do like baking bread), went for a run in the lovely autumn rain, and spent my four hours at Nevin's. it was a great session, with lots of fast songs, which i *love* to play. now it's before 9 pm and i'm about to get in bed.
my saturday afternoon was spent at the Village Discount thrift shop with my friend Rachel, where we found some amazingly good deals. i bought a bathrobe that appears to be brand-new - it's fleece, and fleece definitely feels different when aged. it is covered with monkeys and snowflakes - an excellent combination, in my opinion. i also got an apron that wraps all the way around my butt, which is perfect for me because i always wipe my hands on my hind end. this should save me some laundry.
from Rachel's house, i went straight downtown to see a free showing of Nosferatu, the 1922 Dracula silent film, at the Chicago Symphony, with live music done by a band named Tortoise. They are sort of a rock band, but they also do a good deal of electronic stuff. they did a *very* good job. if you have never seen Nosferatu, you should - it's very entertaining.
From the movie, i went on with my friend David, who had been at the movie with me, out to bars with his friends (whom i also know by this point; we've been hanging out all summer). we spent most of the night at this local dive bar, with a bunch of 40-, 50- and 60-year-olds, who were stuffing money in the juke box to hear all of their favorites - with these two men in particular who actually had choreographed dances for many of the songs. it was incredible, and i hope those very drunk folks were at least slightly embarrassed today, because i was kind of embarrassed for them last night. i also did some dancing, which was nice, as i haven't done that in a while.
my Sunday was pretty lazy. i baked bread and muffins (i've decided to stop buying bread and just bake it myself, as i do like baking bread), went for a run in the lovely autumn rain, and spent my four hours at Nevin's. it was a great session, with lots of fast songs, which i *love* to play. now it's before 9 pm and i'm about to get in bed.
Friday
On Friday I got to go to another ravine for this Lake Forest/Fort Sheridan ravines project. this ravine, Bartlett, is actually on the Fort Sheridan army base, in the residential sector. There is a road all the way down the ravine, but it is not associated with the residences. it runs through people's backyards. apparently the road was for access to the beach for army vehicles. now the road is closed to vehicles, because Open Lands bought it to restore it as a nature preserve. it wasn't quite as beautiful as the other ravine, but it was still pretty cool, and the beach part was nice - lots of huge boulders.
Friday night found me driving to my friend James's favorite hot dog place, SuperDog, whose roof is graced by a six-foot-tall hotdog dressed as Tarzan, and another dressed as Jane. This place has a *lot* of character, and the hot dogs are awesome. You sit in your car and order, like in the 50's, but the waitresses just walk, they don't roller skate. It was still fun, though, and the first time i'd driven anywhere in about 2 weeks.
Friday night found me driving to my friend James's favorite hot dog place, SuperDog, whose roof is graced by a six-foot-tall hotdog dressed as Tarzan, and another dressed as Jane. This place has a *lot* of character, and the hot dogs are awesome. You sit in your car and order, like in the 50's, but the waitresses just walk, they don't roller skate. It was still fun, though, and the first time i'd driven anywhere in about 2 weeks.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
the best day i've had at work
About 10 miles north of the Botanic Garden, on the lake, is the city of Lake Forest. This is a very wealthy city, and it has a very wealthy, very active garden club. This garden club recently won some big award at a gardening competition in England for a garden they created with the theme of "Ravines." They chose ravines as their theme because Lake Forest has many of them. Lake Forest is in the middle of the stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline that is riddled with ravines. The ravine-y part stretches about 30 miles, from just north of Evanston to Waukegan. The ravines flow into the lake, and the longest one stretches just over a mile back from the shoreline. These ravines are considered a unique ecosystem, as they create an out-of-place cooler climatic zone, allowing plants whose usual southern extent is somewhere in Wisconsin to hold on here in Illinois, as well as allowing for a greater-than-average diversity in a smaller area because of the extreme topography.
As a result of winning this award in England, the Lake Forest Garden Club decided to 'give back' to the ecosystem that inspired them and take on ravine restoration in their city. they joined forces with OpenLands, a Nature Conservancy-like conservation NGO, and have acquired one ravine (area=77 acres) and somehow gained rights to work on another (187 acres) ravine that the City of Lake Forest owns. These two ravines will eventually become "teaching preserves," where ravine restoration techniques will be tested and showcased for the public, and the unique ravine ecosystem will be preserved and displayed.
This project has just begun, and the Lake Forest Garden Club and OpenLands convened a 'field team' of experts in various fields to look at the ravines, tell them what they have now, and make recommendations on how to proceed. this field team includes geologists, hydrologists, restoration ecologists, etc., and my boss, as the hope is to get Plants of Concern in there monitoring plants from the get-go, so that there is a record of plant populations as restoration efforts proceed. I feel pretty lucky because I get to be involved in this project to help my boss. So far, this has meant sitting in on one meeting and schmoozing afterwards while eating wine and cheese, and going out to visit one of these ravines on Wednesday.
Wednesday was the best day i've had since getting to Chicago - at least for the 6 hours i was in the ravine. This ravine looked almost exactly like the backyard at home, out in the area where the second stream has the fork, and to the east of that, where the slopes are very steep. It was so beautiful out there. we walked down from the upper reaches of the ravine, all along the rim, down to the lake, and then back up in the bottom of the ravine. the whole field team went along on the way down, but we all left the beach at different times and i ended up heading back up the ravine with just my boss, my coworker that i hate, and a very interesting restoration consultant guy who talked like a professor - lots of open-ended questions. i took the job of point, heading out in front on my own to make sure that we had a way forward, as there was no path. we made it all the way up in the ravine, but it was so exciting to be unsure of what was around the corner and if we'd have to turn back. we found a number of cool plants but i realized that i didn't really care about that so much as checking out the ravine and trying to visualize the course of the water as it shaped it and trying to understand the underlying structure of the soil.
it helped that Wednesday was our first real fall day, with a high of about 55 degrees and a stiff breeze all day, ensuring a delicious smell and invigorating feeling all day long. today was the same way. i kept having to come up with excuses to go outside so i could take it all in.
we are going to the other ravine tomorrow. i hope the weather's the same. i hope i get a chance for some alone-time, away from the plant-nerding.
As a result of winning this award in England, the Lake Forest Garden Club decided to 'give back' to the ecosystem that inspired them and take on ravine restoration in their city. they joined forces with OpenLands, a Nature Conservancy-like conservation NGO, and have acquired one ravine (area=77 acres) and somehow gained rights to work on another (187 acres) ravine that the City of Lake Forest owns. These two ravines will eventually become "teaching preserves," where ravine restoration techniques will be tested and showcased for the public, and the unique ravine ecosystem will be preserved and displayed.
This project has just begun, and the Lake Forest Garden Club and OpenLands convened a 'field team' of experts in various fields to look at the ravines, tell them what they have now, and make recommendations on how to proceed. this field team includes geologists, hydrologists, restoration ecologists, etc., and my boss, as the hope is to get Plants of Concern in there monitoring plants from the get-go, so that there is a record of plant populations as restoration efforts proceed. I feel pretty lucky because I get to be involved in this project to help my boss. So far, this has meant sitting in on one meeting and schmoozing afterwards while eating wine and cheese, and going out to visit one of these ravines on Wednesday.
Wednesday was the best day i've had since getting to Chicago - at least for the 6 hours i was in the ravine. This ravine looked almost exactly like the backyard at home, out in the area where the second stream has the fork, and to the east of that, where the slopes are very steep. It was so beautiful out there. we walked down from the upper reaches of the ravine, all along the rim, down to the lake, and then back up in the bottom of the ravine. the whole field team went along on the way down, but we all left the beach at different times and i ended up heading back up the ravine with just my boss, my coworker that i hate, and a very interesting restoration consultant guy who talked like a professor - lots of open-ended questions. i took the job of point, heading out in front on my own to make sure that we had a way forward, as there was no path. we made it all the way up in the ravine, but it was so exciting to be unsure of what was around the corner and if we'd have to turn back. we found a number of cool plants but i realized that i didn't really care about that so much as checking out the ravine and trying to visualize the course of the water as it shaped it and trying to understand the underlying structure of the soil.
it helped that Wednesday was our first real fall day, with a high of about 55 degrees and a stiff breeze all day, ensuring a delicious smell and invigorating feeling all day long. today was the same way. i kept having to come up with excuses to go outside so i could take it all in.
we are going to the other ravine tomorrow. i hope the weather's the same. i hope i get a chance for some alone-time, away from the plant-nerding.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
lonely home
Emily has been out of town since Friday. Her grandfather died (not unexpectedly) last Wednesday, so she went home for the weekend. She comes back tomorrow. This is the third time in 4 weeks that she has been gone for a long weekend. i think the cats are starting to take it personally. They are getting very very needy. Especially since I have been either working long days or doing things after work such that I have been home less than usual. These cats are in dire need of constant cuddling, but when i'm at home, i'm cooking, cleaning, and studying for the GRE. And sleeping. They seem to take this one quite personally, and spend many hours every night cavorting directly outside my door. It will be a long time until I am ready for children - i can't even handle 2 cats alone for more than 3 days.
I'm glad Emily's coming home tonight. It has been quite lonely here - i watched two movies by myself! One was Babel, which was actually very good - there are large portions of the movie in 4 different languages, American English, Mexican Spanish, Japanese sign language, and whatever language they speak in Morocco - Arabic, i guess. It's actually a very cool movie, with some good insight into cultural interactions and lots of different emotions. Definitely a drama.
I also, out of loneliness and boredom with studying, got bitten by the furniture-moving bug and spent an hour last night rearranging my bedroom, only to end up putting it back the way it was because i couldn't find a more attractive configuration. i will have to regroup and plan a new way, because i don't want to leave my bed in the window all winter. that seems cold.
now it's time for bed - must get good rest until this test.
I'm glad Emily's coming home tonight. It has been quite lonely here - i watched two movies by myself! One was Babel, which was actually very good - there are large portions of the movie in 4 different languages, American English, Mexican Spanish, Japanese sign language, and whatever language they speak in Morocco - Arabic, i guess. It's actually a very cool movie, with some good insight into cultural interactions and lots of different emotions. Definitely a drama.
I also, out of loneliness and boredom with studying, got bitten by the furniture-moving bug and spent an hour last night rearranging my bedroom, only to end up putting it back the way it was because i couldn't find a more attractive configuration. i will have to regroup and plan a new way, because i don't want to leave my bed in the window all winter. that seems cold.
now it's time for bed - must get good rest until this test.
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