I just ordered three tins of tea. Darjeeling tea , spring cherry green tea, and blueberry tea. Happy. :)

A few trees around town are just starting to show their colors. Dammit, I'm not ready for fall yet. I spent too much of the summer working on my thesis. Hell, I didn't even upgrade the layout for this journal.

My postdoc position in my lab has been approved. All I have to do is turn in my thesis next week and I'm good to go! (Slightly) higher salary, here I come!! ^_^

I finished sorting through the photos from my trip to Wisconsin in July, so I'll post some of those next. The current count of Yellowstone photos is...2700 and falling. Still, I think it's getting manageable enough to start posting photo travelogs soon.

Back from Yellowstone today! We saw tons of wildlife, including grizzly and black bears, elk, moose, bison, wolves, and lots of birds. I've never seen that amount of wildlife in the park before. We got (purely by accident) WAY too close to a black bear two separate times on trails. They didn't seem to care at all and went on their way. Good thing - we didn't have the bear spray either time because the trails were so short.

The 500 mm lens was awesome. Lovely sharp and close photos of all kinds of animals and birds. It certainly attracted attention. Many people asked if they could see the wildlife through our lens to get a better view. We were more than happy to oblige (tightly gripping the tripod to make sure nothing was tipped by accident, of course).

We took 50 gigs of photos. O_O Sorting and deleting them all will be a bitch. I hope to post daylogs with photos here when I get the time. We got some fabulous pics.

Now I have two weeks to prepare for my thesis defense, which includes finishing writing the thesis, doing the last few experiments, making the presentation, and studying for possible questions. This is going to suck, big time. Sigh. I've been so damn busy I haven't had time to catch up with everyone. I know I missed wishing minimiles a happy 30th birthday a month ago. Yes, a whole damn month. So HAPPY LATE 30TH, MINIMILES!! Your gift will come...eventually. :P

I see Stargate fandom is still doing the same old, same old. ^_^

If we weren't camera crazy before, we definitely went off the deep end this weekend...

The bf has purchased a second camera body. And not just any body, it's Canon's latest EOS 1D Mark III. One step shy from top of the line. Yikes. O_O So now we're going to have two bodies for Yellowstone - the 20D for me and the Mark III for him (I prefer the 20D anyway because the body is smaller). I'm already planning on competing with him for the best photos. And I'm going to win. :P

So our setup for Yellowstone is:

Canon 20D and Mark III
10-22 mm lens
17-40 mm lens
24-105 lens
70-200 mm f/2.8 lens
300 mm f/4 lens
500 mm lens O_O
monopod and tripod, natch
various filters for landscape shots
24 GB worth of memory cards, plus the laptop for backup.

The bf wants to photograph a bear, so we're going to check out Lamar Valley and other areas that are known to have bears. We're also going to buy bear spray - it's like mace but with a larger range. Let's hope we don't have to use it...


Crunch time - the draft of the entire thesis is due to my boss next Monday, and the entire thing has to be finished and sent out to my PhD committee on the 23rd. And I don't even have the final few experiments done yet, yikes. So I have to cram in the experiments while finalizing the written edits, plus finishing up the figures and inserting them into the damn thing. Apologies in advance if I'm scarce around here or posting on my flist, I'm more than a little stressed.


I think I'm going to be giving GW the finger for a while. Maybe I could deal with all the nastiness if I wasn't already so stressed, but right now I have far better things to be doing than squabbling with people about Weir.

Oh and...MONKEY FIGHT!!

I wasn't watching where I was going the other day and I ran square into the sharp side of Kiwi's cage. I now have a bruise on my thigh the size of an egg. :(

Worse, the bf is now concerned that he's contracted Lyme's Disease from that tick several weeks ago. He's got an odd, red mark on the same leg that had the tick. Now I feel bad because I think I did something wrong getting the tick off or something. He's on antibiotics now at least. :( :(

Good news reversal: I saw a rather uncommon bird when I was out last weekend! Look!



An indigo bunting! You can't miss their vivid blue color. It wasn't that frightened of me either, so I got to snap some shots before it left. I'm now using the 300 mm with the 1.4 teleconverter PLUS a monopod to steady things out. People give me long stares as I walk by with such a contraption, heh.

We are GO on renting the 500 mm lens for Yellowstone. Rental price for the week comes to...$250 plus shipping! Still far cheaper than the $5500 retail price. Ye gods though, just LOOK at how big it is!!! That's just ridiculous! ;)

If we get lots of nice shots in Yellowstone we're thinking about making one of those online photobooks. iPhoto has one but you can use other companies as well. You download their softward, upload your cropped and enhanced pics onto pages, add backgrounds and captions as desired, and they'll print it out and bind it into a hard or soft-cover book. Decent prices too!


Oh, and good news X2: I received a HUGE package today containing tons of fancy edibles. Elderberry preserves, whole walnuts in syrup (you apparently can eat them shell and all!), Spanish chorizo, a mean looking BBQ sauce, and LOTS more. I can't wait to try them out. THANK YOU, K!!!!!!! ^_^

Well, we've made camping reservations for Yellowstone in the beginning of August. How exciting! We were there several years ago and now we're going to go back with all the camera gear. We may also rent some large lenses for wildlife. I love that park for all the thermal features and waterfalls and gorgeous scenery. We'll be taking the bf's brother and his gf as well.

One caveat - we're going for a week and we're not going to take a cooler. I just think it would be too much of a pain to go get ice every day. We may have cool items on the first day like hot dogs but then it's all room temp, baby! I figure things like PB, instant pasta and rice dishes, and canned chicken and tuna will work just fine. Has anyone done cooler-less camping before and has recommendations for food?

I have a reading recommendation for all Pern lovers. I'm currently reading "His Majesty's Dragon" by Naomi Novak. I picked it up because it's in the running for the 2007 Nebula award for best novel. It's an AU set in Europe at the beginning of the 1800s. A British navy captain acquires a dragon egg which hatches and Temeraire, the dragon inside, bonds with him. They're then sent off to serve Britain by flying in battle against Napoleon's dragon forces. It's a great book so far - pick it up if you're in the mood for something like Pern! :)

There are 4 books in the series so far, so it looks like I'll have plenty to read!