Stepping outside my comfort zone.... WAY OUT

Besides my job with the DNR working with the federally endangered Karner blue butterflies, I am "critter sitting" for one of my professors that is gone to Cambodia for five weeks.

Talk about a big leap outside my comfort zone.  Yikes.
I am responsible for the care of two tarantulas, a parrot, a chameleon, a chinese water dragon, koi, two cichlid fish tanks, two tortoises, four turtles, two sand snakes, two sonoran sand snakes, a frog, a king snake, four boas (snakes), a frog tank, another frog tank, two scorpions, a hermit crab, a rat snake, and (for those of you wondering if they have any "normal" pets) 20+chickens, two cats, and a dog!

Mr Wilson, the parrot, is my favorite.  He has a very extensive vocabulary that is usually pretty situational-appropriate.  The other day I was getting ready to leave and I said "Bye Mr Wilson" and he said (in a really sad voice) "Bye" and then as I was stepping out the door he said "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine".
Another day he kept saying "Fire! Fire! Save the bird!"  Finally I said, "Really?  Is there really a fire?"  to which he promptly replied, "Nope".
He can talk in both the husband and wife's voices.  And he just started doing my voice the way I say "heellllooooo".
If he is bored, he makes a sound like someone is knocking on the front door, which causes the dog to start barking and run to the door.  Or he will meow to the cats.
The other day I was trying to teach him to say "Hurry Hurry! Late late!"  (cuz Deb is always running late).  Instead, Mr Wilson said "No habla espanol".
He is so funny!

Learning to handle and feed all these animals has been a challenge!  You won't catch me dead with any of the tarantulas in my hands, but I have had to handle a couple boas as well as seperate two sand snakes that were trying to eat eachother.

"Mr. Wilson" -African grey parrot

Abby begging at back door

Abby and "Pokey"

some kind of gecko

a rat snake.  Very nice snake

can you see the hidden gecko behind the fish tank?

some kind of chameleon

Chinese Water Dragon (he is sick, that is why part of his upper jaw is gone)

big cichlid fish tank

hermit crab

One of many African frogs

"Glump"

always ready to eat Boa

"Peter" -a boa

 Nice Boa

Naughty escape-artist boa

Koi

How many can you fit?

One night of our family reunion we had a cheeto cheese ball-stuffing/eating contest around the campfire.  We had hot ones and regular ones.  Wish I had caught pics of everyone....  It was hilarious!

Seth

Tim setting the bar really high! (Aundray, Lexi, Justine in background)

Amy

Ellie

I had my money on Josie

Dad took off his glasses and got serious!

Kenalee

Nic and Marley. ( Max, Kelly, and Seth in background)

Mason and Skott

Kelly was the winner!

Tim bowing to the new champion

What happened to July?

The weekend of the fourth of July, we went camping up in Door County.  That Saturday, Heidi, Ellie, and Josie flew in to Minneapolis/St Paul and went camping with us.

We enjoyed the political advertisements, oops! -I mean, the Parade in Bailey's Harbor on Sunday.

We ended up coming back to Eau Claire a day early due to rain.  The same rain that also threw a giant wrench into all of our carefully made reunion plans for the entire week....

Carrie, Josie, Heidi, Skott, Ellie, and Aundray at parade

A very patriotic camel

Only in Wisconsin.  Notice anything wrong with this float?  Maybe the GIANT pack of beer?

Mason, Ellie, and Aundray.  Baileys Harbor

Ok, this blogger thing is really bugging me.  I can't get text and pictures to go where I want them.  So I am posting, as is.  Try to put more up later.

13 wonderful years

Who knew that two crazy kids who met while working graveyard shift in a casino....

Could fall so madly in love..... and....

two years later get married....

and eleven years later, still be madly in love!

Happy 11th anniversary to my best friend!

my baby

I have to brag a little.

I did research last summer along with my internship at Cedar Creek.  Once all the data and analyses (is that how you spell "analysis" plural?) came back, it was time to present the research at the university's Student Research Days.  My mentor and I spent countless hours on this project so it felt really good to win an award for all our hard work. 

Some lessons I learned along the way:

1)  No matter what you are doing, there is always someone along for the ride and the best thing you can do is ignore the fact that they are not contributing at all whatsoever to the project, but at the same time, accept the fact that you have to include them since they were on the grant.  Anger and resentment are horrible feelings to harbor.

2)  Immediately when opening a working poster document from your email, "save to" in a safe location.  That way, after 5 hours of meticulous editing, you do not lose your hard work to some random, untraceable temporary internet file.

3)  Remove yourself from the project and ask "Does this make sense?"  Lucky for Skott, he got to be my guinea pig.  I would explain a concept on the poster to him.  When the glazed over look happened, I knew I needed to change the way I was presenting and explaining.

4)  People will criticize and attack your work.  Some are genuinely being mean.  Some are trying to be helpful and make you think outside the box or take it a step further.  Wear thick skin.  Don't dwell on the mean people who are out to find fault no matter how well things are portrayed.

I like doing research and hope to continue with this project this summer as well.  We want to get three days of measurements in.  This doesn't sound like much but for this project, we are monitoring leaf activity (gas exchange, water content, air in/out, temperature, etc) all day which means starting at 4:30am and measuring a set of plants, at set intervals, in set locations every two hours until 7pm.  So far, we haven't been able to do anything because of all the rain.  Our project involves droughted plants and "normal" plants grown under ambient and high carbon dioxide levels to better understand how plants are coping with global warming and decreased water availability.

(Not quite sure why I am leaning in all these pictures) Me and my mentor Dr Tali Lee.  Oh, and that one guy who was along for the ride.

Memorial Weekend Camping Trip

For Memorial weekend we went camping in Door County.  It was so pretty.  The weather was perfect!  This is our campsite.  I am amazed that everything fit in the back of the car!  We just got this new tent.  Love it.  Slept with the rain fly off because the ceiling is all screen and we could see the stars.  Luckily, Skott woke up the night we had thunderstorms.  We got the rainfly put on literally seconds before torrents of rain came down!

I enjoy camping but an air mattress is a necessity.

and bathrooms.

and showers.

I was making some sauteed mushrooms wrapped in tin foil.  Didn't realize the bottom of the bag got a little moist.  Imagine my suprise when I reached into the bag for another handfull and there was nothing there!  I was so bummed we lost half the mushrooms on the ground.

We spent a lot of time walking on the little beaches.  We went to Peninsula State Park one day.  It was so pretty there.  Hard to capture all the brilliant colors.

Skott even spotted a frog!

This is a tower that we climbed.  It was really high (I think 75 ft?).  It had way too much sway for my comfort!  But the view was great from the top!

Lucky for Skott the top level was more stable than the middle areas on the way up. 

Hanging on for dear life!  haha