Burning Daylight

It's June and the solstice is around the corner. The entire first week of June went by in the blink of an eye and now it's summer in Alaska. It's hot too. For those of you who still secretly harbor thoughts that it is always cold in Alaska I'll have you note that it was 85F (30C) all last week. The salmon have begun running and we are harvesting the first of our lettuce. This weekend I found a junco's nest in the grass and the mosquitoes got so bad that we were actually forced inside long enough to realize the power had been off for 6 hours. I got my fishwheel permit and we're on the neighbor's fishwheel so I expect a few 3am phone calls to clean a hundred fish or so. WE even did a little dipnetting but there was a rain on Friday and the fish were hanging loose in the water, gauging the new flow, and we didn't have any hits. There is so much I want to come and write about here, to share with all of you, and yet I never seem to make it here lately. There's just too much going on. We are burning daylight here - and like the metaphorical candle it is on both ends.

I'm headed to the most famous of Alaskan parks this week to pick up another crew of mine and to attend some of their training - they are part of a network effort so all of the training for several parks will be occurring there. I'm not looking forward to the 7 hour drive (starting as soon as I'm done here) but it should be an enjoyable week and I hope it will be cooler. Truth be told though, I think this park is rather over-rated and has too many visitors, I prefer my own (but then, I'm biased). But still, it should be fun and I will likely run into many people I know there from grad school and other jobs. If I'm really lucky I'll get out on a hike or a run there. But it's unlikely - that is, if you don't count field work. Thank goodness for fieldwork though! It's what makes all the lab and computer time worth it. Of course, it makes it hard to get around to reading all of you as regularly as I would like...

Crossword Breaks

One of the things I like at my new work, which is more or less totally unrelated to work, is the crosswords in the bathrooms. I don't know if this is a tradition carried on in the male toilets but in the female toilets there are clipboards with random crossword puzzles torn out by people from every conceivable place and pens. Everyone fills out a little every time they go in. It turns out this is a great brain stimulator and a great break and since several people work on it you learn a lot too - it's fun to look at the answers for that question that really stumped you. Sometimes crossword books appear when we've run out of tear-out sheets (let's face it, crosswords are hard to come by in the Basin). Currently I find myself wondering whose handwriting belongs to which of my co-workers. Perhaps I'll even get to know that and then I'll know who knows all the TV trivia, who knows the history, etc. I bet you all can guess which questions I'm good at.