they say it's your birthday / we're gonna have a good time

my daddy turned fifty at the beginning of this month. to celebrate, his side of the family met in the mountains near morgan hill (where his parents live) to camp and celebrate.





it was a good time: good to see family (whom i don't get to see enough), and good celebrations complete with cake, bocce ball, pin the motorcycle on the race track (because my dad races motorcycles), and a pinata.





plus, as an aside, brad, parentals, and i got to go to the monterey bay aquarium and see their new white shark!!!! words cannot describe my level of giddiness/excitement about this. she is the fourth white shark they've had there (incredible) and beautiful. and at only 50 pounds, most of the tuna in the exhibit outsized her.



[courtesy of dad]


since then, life has actually been fairly quiet here in oregon. for once, i've actually been in corvallis on the weekends and not out in the field (field season is winding down). it's been great going to the farmers market every saturday and soaking in the last sun of summer before the rain comes.

newfound love of npr is a good sign i'm getting old

at work lately, i've been spending outrageous amounts of time sitting in front of a microscope counting larvae. it's a bit mind-numbing. at first, i thought it'd be a great time to practice my spanish and listen to the various tapes i have and practice, but somehow, trying to count mussels and recite spanish phrases don't mix well. my mind just couldn't wrap around those two very different things at the same time very well. and i love listening to music, but i needed something else to help make time go faster.

enter the podcast.

i did not understand podcasts at all when they first came out a few years ago. i just didn't really understand the point. i did download the monterey bay aquarium one for a while and then just never listened to it, so unsubscribed.

but - podcasts are absolutely perfect for scope work. they keep my brain active, which is really nice. and, as a good sign i'm getting older, i listen to npr podcasts a bit obsessively. i always hated npr as a kid - i thought it was so boring - but i am loving listening to fresh air, talk of the nation, all songs considered, science fridays, and book tour. i also really like this american life, wnyc's radiolab, nytimes book review, pri's selected shorts, etc. i mean seriously, i get my news, science, and book fix all while staring through a microscope.

i am regularly sitting at my scope, ipod plugged in, earbuds in, laughing hysterically over some ridiculous thing.

p.s. i really recommend radiolab (especially the "language of music" one) and all songs considered, "the 80s, was it really that bad?" podcasts.

gorge-ous

one of the things everyone around here recommends doing is going to "the gorge". this refers to the columbia river gorge, where it divides the states of oregon and washington. and then a few weekends ago, a friend from the lab lent me her car for the weekend, so brad and i decided to go up to the gorge, check out the waterfalls, and then go to a portland beavers minor league baseball game.

and the gorge really is gorge-ous (haha).





it was hot and sunny, and we sat along the river and soaked in the sun. we also visited multnomah falls, a 620 foot waterfall.





i love the portland area.

northern cheese

(i have somehow managed to forget to update this blog - unforgivable, and i am sorry)

so, the next few posts will be attempts to update on what has happened in the last month. at the beginning of august, brad's family came to visit. i hadn't seen them since last may, so it was really great to see them. they were staying on the coast at a resort near lincoln city, so brad and i went up there with them for a few days.

and it was very exciting because we got to go to the tillamook cheese factory! it's a huge company around here that makes really fabulously delicious dairy products. so we got to watch all the massive blocks of cheese go by, taste cheese curds, and get amazing ice cream.



[looking down into the factory watching huge blocks of cheese go by]


it was cool to see some of the more northern coastal areas. tillamook bay and cape meares are really beautiful.



[tillamook bay]


[cape meares]


since they're from the east coast and this is the first time they'd been to oregon, brad and i really wanted to take them tide-pooling. of course, we're always working the best tides, but we still managed to get out to otter crest at a somewhat decent tide. and even though we couldn't see a lot (being covered with water and all), we still managed to see some pretty fun nudibranchs and chitons.



[inspecting the rocks]


[sea lemon nudibranch]


[hairy chiton]