Sorry it's been so long! Life has settled into a fairly uneventful routine of eating, sleeping, and schooling. Winter is well on it's way into Fairbanks, which to some extent has curbed any outdoor activities.
I pity you poor Californians with your crazy 90 degree weather. The past week has seen a high of about 30, and lows in the single digits. We are expecting below zero temperatures in the next few weeks. I've been told this is one of the warmest years yet :) It just makes me laugh. We've also had snow, and plenty of it to go with this cold weather. Big surprise for Alaska, I know ;) I both thank and curse the heavens for a lack of a vehicle while I'm out here. While it curbs the availability for activities, there is no way I would be able to handle the roads out here. It's insane. They don't clear the roads....people just drive over the snow guessing where the lines are. Everyday a guy in a gravel truck makes a horrid noise of crunching gravel...said gravel spewing out of the back of the truck as he goes along to cover the roads and give the semblance of traction. The buses in town are absolutely terrifying. I have learned which drivers to go with, and which to avoid at all costs. And have I mentioned the crazies on the bus? I thought it was bad at home....but it's way worse out here. There is no law against being drunk in public in Alaska, just drinking in public. So there are people who do nothing all day but sit about bus stations drunk as drunk can be. They terrify me more than the bus drivers. Every single one of them is a native of Alaska complaining about how I (because they always direct their conversation at me...it's like I've got a big sign on my forehead saying "I'll be polite, come take advantage!") as a white person have completely ruined their lives, and don't I feel horrible for forcing them to drink all day? It doesn't matter if I've got my nose buried in a book or talking on the phone, I am always singled out while I wait for the bus. I politely listen, terrified to be rude because I have no idea what they'll be driven to do in that state, smile and nod my head.
My favorite bus crazy is not a native Alaskan though, and not drunk. But totally insane. He has a habit of riding the bus all day long, pretending to talk on a phone that is never turned on, or through a headset not connected. his conversations revolve around the oddest topics. I usually become totally fascinated by what he says...last time he was talking about Vikings, atomic moon dust, and kryptonite. He also never pauses for his "listener" to chime in. I am always careful to not look like I am actively listening for fear that he'll think I want to join the conversation. I really have yet to meet any normal people, minus college students, who ride the bus.
I've recently expanded my crafting hobby to include knitting. I was in downtown and passed by this tiny little yarn shop called Inner Knit. It carries luxurious yarns and offers classes, so I spur of the moment decided to pick up a knitting class, which has lead to a pair of truly ugly socks :) Of course I don't picking something simple for my first project, oh no, I go for something that involves five needles and tiny yarn. The gal who owns and runs the shop is totally amazing, and made a complicated task easy enough for me to handle. She was super patient and her explanations made perfect sense. I put some pictures up on my facebook of that particular adventure if you'd like to see it. I already have plans buzzing about my head for future projects. So much more can be done in the world of knitting as opposed to the crochet I used to do. I'm excited, and have only held back from doing anything more because I have turned into a yarn snob, and don't want to use the cheap stuff anymore. But natural fibers are not in a poor students budget, so all my plans must needs be put on a back burner for now, which is fine as it will give time for my creative genius to develop ;)
Classes for the most part got super busy with midterms coming and passing, and woohoo, I've A's all around. Yay for me. It's amazing what no distraction from friends and family does to one's grades. I've no excuse for failing. I do so miss having those distractions though. I do what I can to keep the missing a bay. Artur and I play Diablo II, which is awesome, so if you have it and want to play with us, I am so game! I love phone calls too! I finally have my phone back and running properly, thanks to my Artur-love. He was super awesome fantastic in getting it fixed for me and yelling at the silly Verizon people. Packages/letters from home have been super duper as well, and always warm my heart.
Exciting labs and field-trips for my classes slowed for midterm, but are back on track. I had a ecology lab this week that involved looking for animal tracks in the snow in our forests behind campus and identifying them, looking for critters lying dormant in the leaf litter (so many bugs below the snow I was amazed!) and observing chickadee behavior. My expedition to the Chena River was so amazingly fun a few weeks back. I was so pro with my uber duck handling skills. Unfortunately no pictures, as having hands full of mallards makes picture taking an impossible experience. Just yesterday I had more fun with birds. For my wildlife class we got the chance to do study skin preparations for the museum on campus. As I waited til the end to do so, I got a really great bird. They ran out of the ones that didn't matter with the prior groups :) Basically, the museum is part of a group that prepares bird skins for distribution across the state for educational purposes within schools. The ornithology lab is run by a fantastic set of people, Kevin (the uber genius bird specialist) and his two grad students Jack and Kyle (who were mega helpful and patient with us throughout the process).
Now, if you get grossed out by dead things and what we do to 'em, I suggest you skip the rest of this paragraph now. The bird lab has a giant freezer where they keep the collection of birds, gathered from around this state and many others. The birds died from a variety of natural causes, as well as from human intervention. Freeway accidents involving windshields and such. No preservative methods are used on the birds other than the freezing. The lab took 'em out the night before to thaw for us, and away we went with our scalpels. I bless my zo lab at GWC that got me acquainted with this particular sharp and pointy object, as my hands are usually less than graceful and I didn't exactly feel like getting sliced fingers. In short, what we had to do was skin the birds by making a single incision along their keel and down to the cloaca, and turn 'em inside out. I got a Cooper's hawk from South Carolina, which was way cool. She was super impressive in size (way bigger than the males, which I gather is normal as they are sexually dimorphic species) and her plumage was a gorgeous mix of cream, browns, and gold. Due to her size, my three hour project turned into a five hour one. The removal of the skin is a super delicate process, as you want to avoid ripping, but almost the entire skeleton had to be removed as we also wanted a partial skeleton preserved for educational purposes. The hardest part was the legs, wings, and head. Hawks have super long legs, and the skin had to be removed kinda like how you take off your pants, but in order to do so the joints had to be disarticulated without breaking anything. One leg was removed entirely for the skeleton, keeping all the skin and feathers associated with it, while the other was left with all the meaty bits removed. The wings were even harder, as the shoulder joints had to be disarticulated as well, and skin removal was made even more difficult as the flight feathers are attached to the bone, so they had to be broken off without making them unhinge from the skin. The skin was removed down to the wrist joint, all the meat removed, the bones of one wing taken for the skeleton, and then the wings tied together in the inside by sewing 'em through the wrist joints. The head was probably the ickiest part. By this point the entire bird is inside out and you have the carcass on one side and the skin on the other, only attached at the head. The skin is super delicate here, tears easily, and hawks make it even harder to remove the skin as they have a bony brow protrusion that makes their head super wide. I managed to get the skin off without tearing, popped the eyeballs and cut off the beak to keep with the skin. And tada! The skin was all removed, and just needed to be turned right side out. I think the hardest part of the whole process was keeping the feathers clean and clear of bodily fluids, which there was plenty of and we combated with cob dust (amazing stuff) and most importantly unruffled. I did a super awesome job :) I took way longer than the other people in my group, but hey, I was meticulous, the bird was huge and it looks good. After the skin was done, it was put back in the freezer for the stuffing and mounting of it next week, and I moved on to the carcass. Tissue samples had to be taken from the heart, liver, kidneys, and muscle tissue, the bird had to be sexed, and then cleaned out as best as possible and meat removed. I learned how to adeptly fillet a breast, which was cool and way easier than I had imagined. The carcasses were bundled up, labeled, and put on the "jerky tray" to await a really cool process for bone cleaning. They take them down to lower campus to a beetle lab, let a particular beetle go to town, and presto chango you've got super clean bones without putting any work into it. Very efficient!
Since I took forever doing my bird and was the last to go, I got a tour of the museum lab, saw a complete set of baleen from a whale they have sitting outside (random and way cool) and even cooler I got to see one of the grad students pet project, a robo-grouse :D Kyle had apparently shot a grouse, damaged many of the body parts beyond repair, so replaced it with robotic bits n pieces. It had a red glowing eye, lower body and one wing/arm of metal, and it could move! Very reminiscent of Robot Chicken. I was super impressed!
And....that's been my excitement for the week. I go back next week to finish the bird, and I'll be sure to take some pictures (it won't be gruesome). I got offered a volunteer position with the bird lab to do more of the same, as they have lots of birds and not enough people to prepare them. As I got along with the staff really well, I figure I'll give it a go, and working for a museum laboratory will look awesome on a resume to boot.
My adventures for the next few weeks involve learning to knit thrum mittens (super warm and perfect for the temps out here with its double layers), finishing my bird, and an unfortunate amount of essay research and writing.
And by the way....44 days til I come home :) I've been keeping a countdown..and while 44 seems like a lot, its way better than the over 100 I started with :D
