 |  |  |  |
 | |||
|
27 December 06 Ah, I'm home. And for the first time since August, I have no homework to do, no place to go, nothing else going on. Just a day to rest and relax and go through the photos I've taken this past week.  
Speaking of this past week, it was spent up in Ottawa and Montrèal. I took Frederick up there to visit and meet (some of) my relatives whom he hadn't yet met, and hopefully experience my first-ever white Christmas. Well, the weather barely dipped below freezing and the only white I got on Xmas day was the tablecloth under my plate of maple crêpes. Oh well. This was, however, the first time I had ever travelled to visit relatives for the holidays, and it was nice spending Xmas Eve with another branch of the family. 15 December 06 I haven't been writing much here lately. it's not for a lack of things happening in my life, but rather, I just haven't gotten around to it. School is wrapping up and I have my Chemistry final on Monday. I register for next semester's classes later this afternoon, and all sections of the Biology class I need to take are already &#^@% filled up (again!)! I do not know why my registration date is so late, and how the fuck to they expect an upper-division student to take upper-division classes if her registration date is after all the freshmen, and she can't get into the pre-req class she needs? I'm really, really getting frustrated with school, for many reasons. I love the learning part of it, but cannot stand the inept bureaucracy involved. The pinnipeds are doing well, and for the last month and a half I've been knee-deep (sometimes literally, when you go into a pen and suddenly you're surrounded by them) in fur seal pups - there's 21 of them at the Center now.  
We took a trip to the hot springs last month, I visited a good friend in Portland last weekend, soon we're headed to the Great Not-So-White North (the weather in Ottawa is still above freezing, wtf?), then it's off to explore SE Asia. I've got to get in all of my travelling during school breaks, but with my current school frustrations, I don't have much motivation to stop travelling and go back to school. 1 December 06 [A number of months ago, I wrote about whether or not I should censor myself when it came to topics that might offend others. This is one of those topics. It's not written to cause offense, but is simply how I feel.] I just found out another friend is pregnant. I guess I'm happy for them (they do want the baby), but hearing the news I actually feel disappointed and I can't help thinking that I've lost another friend. I'm too selfish to have children. I care more about myself and my spouse than I do having a child, and there is nothing in the world that can change that. When people have children, it completely changes the dynamics of a relationship. If you are spending time with the friend and their kid(s) are present, everything the person does revolves around the child and very little of their attention is spent on you. And like I said, I'm selfish, so I'd rather the person actually paid attention to me. Things get even worse when there's a group gathering and several children are present. In a situation like that it's not even worth it for a child-free person like myself to be there - the parents are all pre-occupied, and the kids are just in the way. So, yes, in most cases I do equate having children with losing friends. And I suppose I should take a moment here to apologize to my friends with kids for being distant, but I just don't know how to deal with children. (Hell, I have a difficult enough time dealing with adults.) 16 November 06 Five years ago today I got laid off from my job, and I've been thinking about just how much my life has changed since then. At the time I was working for TechTV. I think my title was "LAN Administrator", and I managed the company's Lotus Notes email system and databases, their NT servers, and the Sendmail server. Even though I knew the company was planning layoffs I thought I was safe because, well, I handled important things that everyone needed every day. Boy, was I wrong. This was the first time I had ever been laid off, and the market for tech jobs was slow, so I figured I'd take a couple of months off and look for a job after the holidays. Well, a couple of months turned into six or seven glorious months of unemployment, and then my savings was almost gone. So I started sending out resumés - first for jobs I wanted, then, after no responses at all, to jobs that I was way overqualified for and didn't really want, and still, nothing. Money started getting dangerously low so I went back to what I had done in the past, medical office administration, and took that horrible soul-sucking job at UCSF. A couple of days into the job I made the decision to go back to school, and here I am now. Five years ago I couldn't have imagined not wanting to work in the tech field, and now I can't imagine ever doing it again. (Nevermind that I've forgotten most of what I used to know.) Five years ago I never would have imagined that I would be studying to get a B.S. or working with sick sea lions, and even though I had hoped for it deep inside, I wasn't sure if I would ever find someone to fall in love and live happily ever after with. Life is good :D 15 November 06 You know how pets can sometimes "predict" an earthquake? Well, the seals have predicted that El Niño is coming this winter. Normally we only get a few fur seal pups each fall/winter, but so far this season we've admitted at least 14 of them - 1 Guadalupe fur seal and 13 Northern fur seals. In the past a lot of fur seals signalled the beginning of an El Niño year. One theory for this is the rising ocean surface temperatures drive fur seal prey to deeper, cooler water and the recently-weaned pups don't have the energy or stamina to catch enough prey, so they weaken and eventually strand. For the past few weeks I've been on fur seal duty. Of the 12 pups we currently have on-site, four (possibly five now) eat on their own, and the others we have to tube feed. And they need to be fed three times during our day shift, plus once more after the night crew gets there. This means using a towel to make a "seal burrito" out of a very squirmy 12-14 pound critter with very sharp teeth, then sticking a tube down its throat, and using a large syringe to push fish pureé into its stomach. The weaker pups spend the night in protected "condos", and then we bring them up to the big pool to spend the days in the sun. It is so funny to walk into a pen and see a dozen little pups all over the place - some in the pool, some hiding in the corners, some running away from you, and the others chasing after you. These little guys are high-maintenance. It takes a lot of time to move them back and forth, prepare their feeds, figure out which seal is which and then feed the correct ones, and then clean up after them; yesterday I literally worked from sunrise to sunset. But then you look at their adorable little faces and it's all worthwhile. Although we usually wear gloves when working with animals, last week I happened to handle a fur seal with my bare hands. Wow, their coats are luxuriously soft and thick. Sadly, that was also the reason they were hunted to near-extinction in the past. Let's hope that doesn't happen again.   
13 November 06 Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to vegetarianism, and the changes my diet has been going through. For both health and environmental reasons I haven't been eating much meat for the past couple of years. I'll go days or weeks without eating any meat at all, and over the last few months I've started going out of my way to avoid eating it. But when someone asks me if I'm a vegetarian, I reply, "Not really." I don't want to fully commit to being a vegetarian for a few reasons, primarily because I'd like to be able to go out to restaurants and eat with friends. Often I can find a (good) vegetarian meal at an otherwise non-veggie restaurant, but sometimes I can't and have to order a meat dish. The same goes for places I travel - in many countries, particularly those where you cannot eat fresh fruits or vegetables for fear of getting sick, it's very difficult to find vegetarian fare, and I want to leave myself the option of being able to eat meat if need be. And finally, on occasion, there is something I find very tasty that just happens to contain meat. Why not just call myself a vegetarian-who-sometimes-eats-meat? Because I feel that would be cheating, and it cheapens it for the people who absolutely will not eat animals. So why call it anything at all, and just eat what I want? Because I feel that if I don't say anything, I will be served anything, and I don't want to eat just anything. As Michael Pollan was researching his book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals", he became a vegetarian for awhile and had this to say about it: "What troubles me most about my vegetarianism is the subtle way it alienates me from other people and, odd as this may sound, from a whole dimension of human experience. Other people now have to accomodate me, and I find this uncomfortable."Although he was speaking about the burden he places on the host(ess) when he goes to someone's house for dinner, I think it says a lot (see my statement above about eating in restaurants, for instance). Wouldn't it be nice if vegetarians and vegans didn't have to be "accomodated", and everyone could find something yummy to eat wherever they went? 1 November 06 I'm looking out the window and already the daylight is beginning to fade. It'll be dark in an hour. And later on, after it's been dark for a few hours, my brain will think it's bedtime but it'll only be about 8:00 - I hate it when that happens. I think I need to migrate with the seasons to spend summers way up north and winters way down south so I'll always have 16 hour days. And if those worked out to be 16 hour sunny days, then that's a cure for seasonal affective disorder right there! (As an aside, I think I am affected by SAD. My moods dramatically improve when we actually get a sunny summer day, and when we have too many grey, foggy days in a row I find myself getting depressed.) I'm not yet ready to leave San Francisco, but I do look forward to the day when I can expect to see the sun for weeks and months on end. And maybe be surrounded by birds that aren't pigeons. 26 October 06 Remember that sea lion I thought I killed? Well, the head vet tracked me down the other day to let me know that I did not kill that animal afterall, which was a relief. She said that even though I did give him too much medication, you can't fatally overdose an animal with Lorazepam. Post-mortem the animal was found to be suffering from both severe pneumonia and meningitis, and the vet said the injection I gave probably just relaxed the animal enough to stop the seizures, put it to sleep (not "to sleep"), and allowed it to die painlessly and in peace. It was very nice of her to let me know that, and now I'm a little perturbed at whoever it was that told me I did kill the animal. -- I work up in the Marin Headlands, and there is a lot of wildlife out there! I see deer almost every day I'm out there, and lately there's been a big buck (nice rack!) wandering around. Just after sunrise the sides of the road are lined with fluffy-tailed bunnies foraging for food, something which the local carnivores are aware of. On her way into work on Tuesday, a coworker saw a coyote trotting by the side of the road, carrying his breakfast of rabbit. And on my way home that afternoon, I spotted a bobcat on the edge of a meadow! I stopped the car to take a photo, and after a minute the cat started walking along the edge of the meadow, towards the road. So I did the Gina thing - grabbed the camera, got out of the car and started following the cat. He didn't seem bothered by my presence, and I was able to get a good look at him.    Click on the last two photos to read the stories of Zaven the elephant seal, and Ozeki the California sea lion. Two stories with happy endings. 17 October 06 I've often looked back at my life and wondered if things would have been easier if I had been "normal". I think they would have. If I instead was like all of those "ordinary" girls you see whose ultimate goal was to have a place in the suburbs, a dog and 2.3 kids, and thought those Budweiser-drinking guys yelling "Wooo!" were really cool - I bet I would have found it much easier to fit in, and my life wouldn't have the rough spots that it has. It seems as though many of my friends also have/had rough spots in their lives. But those people are also incredibly wonderful, interesting, smart, and anything-but-ordinary. I know very few of those ordinary people and, frankly, they're pretty boring. I know why ordinary usually equals boring, but why is there always so much heartache and difficulty associated with being smart, interesting, and/or unique? 11 October 06 While at school today, I got a text message from Frederick, who was working at home, saying the police were surrounding the house across the street. By the time I tried to come home, the streets surrounding our house were completely blocked off, and no one was allowed to enter or leave their house. Instead, I went to a coffee shop while Frederick gave me the sms play-by-play. He wrote a bit about his day and took some pictures. His day was much more exciting than mine. 
8 October 06 Recent Readings: The Devil's Teeth - Susan Casey - A non-fiction book which is as much about the Farallon Islands as it is about the great white sharks who live there. The author is a journalist who spent time with the resident biologists out on the Farallones on three separate occasions. She describes the allure the islands have for her, as well as the handful of people who willingly spend months at a time out there, and you begin to feel it yourself. It just so happened that the day after I finished this book I took a trip to the Farallones - it was my first time at the islands, yet I recognized the landmarks and knew so much about what had happened out there; it was like visiting an old friend. The author has been criticized for the impact of her actions however, and that really cannot be argued. But what has happened, happened, and I still highly recommend this book. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan - This book is very similiar in scope to The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, which I read a couple of months ago, and complements it perfectly. The author traces different meals and farming techniques and, as thoroughly as possible, describes the different methods and outcomes. One large section of the book is devoted to describing a fully-sustainable farm, and how so many of those old-fashioned, yet perfectly environmentally-friendly, farming practices have been lost due to the adoption of "modern" factory-farming techniques. Reading this book you learn things like just how much corn is grown versus how little we actually eat, and rather than growing less corn, food scientists are continually trying to invent unnatural uses for corn (corn sweeteners, animal feeds, food additives, etc). This book is a wake-up call to how messed up food production is in the U.S. Highly recommended. 7 October 06 As most San Franciscans are probably aware, the Blue Angels are in town right now. They're fun to watch as they do their loop-de-loop aerobatics, but what I really love about them is the noise those F/A 18 jets make! When one of the Blue Angels flies right overhead it sounds like the sky is being torn apart. I absolutely love it - I get a big smile on my face, jump up and down, and get all giggly. It's like aural sex. 5 October 06 I grew up in Daly City. Our house was at the top of a cliff, overlooking the Pacific Ocean (the houses directly across the street from ours had backyards facing the water, and they eventually tumbled down the cliff). For the first nine years of my life I could look out my living room window and see the ocean. On those rare days when the weather was clear enough, I could see a group of islands on the horizon. Being a child with no real concept of distance, I thought I was seeing Hawaii (they seemed really far away!); turns out, they were the Farallones. Last Saturday I was finally able to see the Farallon Islands up close! Frederick and I went on a wildlife-watching trip and saw countless critters. Although the weather was overcast and chilly, the sea was as smooth as glass and we had a wonderful trip. Our boat captain took advantage of the great conditions and we were able to travel around Southeast Farallon (the largest, and closest) Island, head further West over the edge of the continental shelf, and loop back around the North Farallones. We saw so much wildlife, starting with harbour porpoises while we were still inside the bay. Several more pods were seen out in the ocean, and we saw our first humpback whale no more than a half-hour past the Golden Gate. We saw a total of five adult humpbacks, but none of them were feeding or exhibiting any extraordinary behaviours (breeching, tail slapping, etc). In addition to the thousands of seabirds, we saw hundreds, or possibly thousands, of sea lions. The islands are covered with both California and Steller's (Northern) sea lions. Our guide was able to spot Northern fur seals (which are actually sea lions) with her high-powered telescope, but I couldn't see them. The highlight of my day was seeing my first-ever wild white shark! Whites are one of my favourite sharks, and before Saturday the only live one I had seen was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I'm so happy I was able to see him in his natural environment, without having to attract him with decoys or chum. This guy was an adult, and he was thrashing about at the surface as though he was attacking something. There was no blood or carcass on the surface afterwards so it was either a failed attempt, or he caught something small and drug it down. And of course, there were the islands. The night before the trip I has just finished a book about the Farallones, so seeing them in person was like visiting an old friend. The islands are beautiful in their desolation, and a bit dangerous as well. But at the same time they are enticing. I wish we could have gone ashore to explore, but alas, that honour is reserved for biologists with the proper permits.    The whole photoset. 3 October 06 Well, I killed my first sea lion today. My supervisor and her assistant took the day off today, so I was in charge. When I first got to work there was an animal seizuring. I misunderstood the vet's instructions and instead of giving the animal 5 mg of Lorazepam, an anti-seizure medication, I gave 5 cc - which is 20 mg. An hour or two later I found the animal dead. The bad news is: the animal died. The good news is: 1) the animal was most likely going to be euthanized anyway, 2) upon necropsy it was revealed he had severe pneumonia and wouldn't have survived; the seizures were likely agonal (death) throes, 3) everyone makes a mistake eventually and at least mine wasn't bad, considering, and 4) I will now never forget the correct dosage for that drug. So yeah, I feel bad that I messed up, but I'm otherwise doing fine. You can't really help felling bad when something like that happens even though everyone else was telling me, "Don't worry about it." Hopefully it will never happen again. | |||
 | |||
| [ me ] [ musings ] [ mischief ] [ music ] [ home ] | |||