I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I got a nifty rental car while mine was in the shop.  It was fun, I liked driving the different car for a while.  Matt thought it was ugly.  I had no real opinion on how it looked.  It got me from Point A to Point B.  I also said the acceleration was bad and brakes were weird.  Well, the acceleration was always crappy, particularly on the highway, but the brakes and just the general feel of the car began to grow on me, and when I picked up my own car, over two weeks later, it felt big, heavy and bulky. 

But that's not what I want to talk about.  You may have noticed that I said above that I picked up my car OVER TWO WEEKS later.  15 days to be exact.  I will remind you that my car did not have major work done.  It had a scratch, and a small dent.  Mind you, they were ugly and I wanted to get them fixed, but I really didn't think it would be that big of a deal.  Wrong-O.

It turns out that the collision place I was originally supposed to go to was one of the insurance company's preferred shops.  They didn't need someone to come out and make an assessment before work could be done.  But the place I ended up taking it was not one of those places.  I found this out a couple hours after I had dropped the car off and gotten my rental.  The lady I talked to on the phone said it was no big deal, and she'd set up an appointment for someone to go look at the car.  Ok, everything's good.  Wrong again.

Several days later the collision center says the insurance person still has not shown up, so I call them back to find out what's going on.  Well, turns out that someone had made a note for someone to come out to look at the car, but oops!  the actual appointment was never made.  By this time, it's Thursday afternoon and the earliest someone can come out is Monday.  I'm ok with this.  I'll just drive the rental a bit longer.  No problem.

Or so I think...

I know it's not Friday but I thought I'd throw something up here since I haven't posted in a while due to recent circumstances that have not given me a lot of time to myself.  Plus, I feel like it.

1.  One song that always takes me back to my youth is any Girl Scout Camp song.  I still know most of them verbatim.  YEAH Hilltop.

2.  My first concert ever was Professor Marvel and the Fourth Quadrant at Top of the Park.  Does that count?  If not, then Jars of Clay at the Hope College chapel.  Yeah, I know, wow.

3.  If I could create my dream music festival I'd want these bands to be there: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool, Foo Fighters, ya know... bands that would BRING IT.

4.  The best make-out/"boot knocking" song ever is probably Everlong by the Foo Fighters, Sweet Disposition by Temper Trap, or any sort of jazz instrumental type thing (except Kenny G...Yuck.)

5.  The best concert I've ever been to was Tool.  Hands down.

6.  A memorable music moment for me was when I was taking piano lessons during my elementary school years, we had competitions every once in a while that tested musical theory and technique.  My teachers tried to encourage me not to go, because they thought I sucked (though they didn't say that out loud) but I went anyway and totally kicked butt.  HA!

7.  The song on my iPod that's getting the most play these days is: Oh, I don't know.  I haven't really been listening to my iPod lately.  I've been listening to the radio mostly.  I'm kind of on a Muse kick right now, because I just found out they're coming in October, but I'm not going because SOMEONE doesn't like them.

I used to write almost every day.  It was a part of me.  It was what I was good at.  I wanted to be a journalist, because it was exciting and challenging.  I loved creating a product, something that was mine, and providing it to the community.  But over time, it became a burden.  I was stressed out all the time, and it was because of this "job" I had.  I didn't have the time for many of the other activities I would have liked to participate in.  And because of my anxiety, I was afraid that I would never make it in the cutthroat journalism business.  I felt it had been an enormous waste of time.

When I discovered geology, I became interested and engaged once more.  In studying the Earth, I found something in me that I thought I had lost.  I spent the next several years throwing myself completely into the Earth sciences, and journalism was all but forgotten. 

But I was still writing.  I concluded my graduate student experience with a thesis and two published papers under my belt.  I remember getting the first draft of my thesis back from my advisor, and him telling me it was better written than his first draft as a Master's student.  I was very proud of this compliment.  Naturally, I am not exactly scientist material.  It's just something that happened along the way.  Writing is my true talent.

I love words.  The way they sound, what they mean (especially when they have multiple meanings), the way they can be strung together to make endless sentences.  It's fascinating.  I also like how letters can sound different in different words, depending on where they are placed within a word.  Think about it, it's cool.
 
Let's face it.  I am a huge word nerd, and often fused my love of words with my love of geology, as evidenced by this old post from September 22, 2006.

waiting for the epoxy again
This week was a busy week.  I... learned some things about structure, taught some kids about minerals (and got a good evaluation! yay!), got my soil chemistry book in the mail and was actually kind of excited to read it, got a little better at catching a baseball, and threw one that hurt Caro's hand, was late to a meeting and got my name on the board, learned how to save people's lives, drank a lot of mountain dew, got really excited about mineralogy (and was confused as to why no one else seemed to be), bought some really expensive chai tea, handed in a lot of forms, made some new goals, lost my office mate, said goodbye to Nathan...

I felt very strange this week.  I'm not really sure how to describe it.  Maybe happy?  Productive?  But I'm not really sure if I was productive or not.  But anyway, I dunno, I was thinking about geology words and how they're so grand sounding, especially the way people here say them, like provenance and detrital.  Such good words.  Hmm, that's kinda random, but I like words I guess.  I think I am getting excited about geology again.  Like real geology.  Not just 101 stuff or how to present a paper on some topic or another.  But the actual act of learning new things about the earth.  I feel like the way I did when I first started learning about optical mineralogy, with the oil and becke lines and birefringence and all that stuff.  that was some good smelling oil.

I love this, and I love that I felt that way at least once.  It gives me hope.

I may have mentioned that someone hit my car in the parking lot at work a while back.  Well, after filing a claim with my insurance company, contacting the woman's insurance, getting her to make a statement, and setting up appointments, I was all set to bring my car into the shop this morning.  My appointment was at the Chevy place on Lomas.  Unbeknown to me, there is more than one Chevy place on Lomas.  I went to one, and my appointment was with the other one.  Yet another intelligent moment in my life.  The people at the collision center didn't mind (obviously), and it actually seemed to work out better for me because it used to be the old Saturn dealer until they went out of business, so this place specializes in Saturns.

I waited there for the rental car guy to show up, and then went back to their office, signed some stuff, and got my rental.  A lovely Nissan Versa.

It's okay.  The brakes are weird and the acceleration kinda sucks, but it's kind of fun having a regular sized car instead of an SUV for a change.  There is one thing that bugs me, though.  When I was at the rental office, the guy told me the car would have a full tank of gas, and I was expected to bring it back the same way.  No problem, but when I got it and drove away, I realized the tank was only half full.  I'm wondering if I should mention this, or just fill up the tank halfway when I return it and call it good.

Another problem I'm having?  It's a bit hard to pick out of a crowd.  A bright red Saturn Vue with a scratch down the side stands out.  A gray mid-size sedan?  Not so much.  At work, it wasn't too bad, but a crowded school parking lot is another story.  At least I have a numbered parking spot at my apartment.  Hopefully the apartment managers don't walk around the parking lot and put one of those annoying bright pink stickers on the window tonight...

This is a continuation of the regurgitation of my old lj posts, to be continued as long as I feel like it, whenever I feel like it.

The following sequence includes the events leading up to and during the geology conference I went to in Denver to present the dinosaur stuff with my Wyoming group.  We drove all the way from Western Michigan to Denver in a 15 passenger van, but that's not originally how it was supposed to happen, as you will see.

I associated with three different people named Mark in college.  One was blind, one was a paleontologist, and one was the student newspaper advisor. I talk about the former two here.  

October 26, 2004

 fuck this i don't need this shit i'm down with the sickness (i was totally into making quotes and song lyrics as my titles at this point in my life, and sometimes they had swearing)

goshdarnit. i'm in such a bad mood right now. quantitative labs stink. can't we just go back to the qual ones? i had to breathe into this tube that was stuck in a tub of water because no one else in my stupid group wanted to do it and then the t.a. decided it would be funny to throw some dry ice into the water. so i'm gasping for air trying to concentrate on this experiment and he's just sitting there laughing. what a jerk. a really hot jerk, but still a jerk.
then after lab dr. h comes up to me and asks if i'm flying to GSA (Geological Society of America) because that is apparently what dr. b told him. why would i be flying to GSA? okay, considering i talked to dr. b TWICE about this, i would have thought he could have gotten it straight. but apparently not.
everything is so confusing right now. why does everyone have to be such morons all the time yet then i am still considered the dumb one because i can't do stoichiometry or whatever crap we're doing right now.
and now i have to go write my column for the anchor for which i will probably be spending all of eternity at tonight and get nothing done homeworkwise. this stinks. i quit. i'm going to run away and live out my 8th grade dream of becoming a street bum in ecuador with a hairstyling business on the side.

October 28, 2004
right as usual, king friday (this is from mr. rogers neighborhood.  a girl in my class said it to me that day and I thought it was funny)

so today was not so bad. this morning was kind of crappy because i had to get up early for GIS the worstest class ev-ar, but alas, it was just dr. b today because the other lady who normally teaches it had to go somewhere. and i finally figured out what's going on with GSA, for the most part. in a span of about two days, i was driving, then flying, then driving again. apparently since the wyoming group has money from the grant, i could have flown, but hope is cheap and i am not. i guess they hadn't even bought my ticket yet. what were they expecting me to do? hitchhike to colorado? hmm, that could have been interesting... i'm happier driving though, because it would have been really boring flying by myself. plus i get to go on all the fun field trips with dr. h and everybody now, which is exciting. yay!
the mineral quiz was good. i have no clue how i did on the individual part but i actually knew the formulas well enough this time to not have to make them up. and the second part was pretty fun, even though sean was being a jerk (and i was on his team, even). yeah for me knowing the formula for epidote. that was pretty much my only contribution. oh well... (I totally do not remember the formula for epidote.  I think it has aluminum in it?)
the japanese food at dinner tonight was really gross but i was hungry so i ate it anyway. i should have had that beef and noodle stuff that michelle got. it was much better. too bad.
well, this is getting to be somewhat long so i'm going to go attempt to do some homework or something before bed, because i have much, but, guess what, it is 10 p.m. and i am DONE with CAPA! woohoo! i rock. i guess the eclipse wasn't a bad omen after all, but still very cool to see. 

 October 29, 2004
i can't tell you anything, and i can't commit.  you're right, i can't commit... to you (William Shatner)
well, today was weird. i go to spanish class this morning and find out that i have a test on monday. grr. i was really hoping to be able to focus on chemistry this weekend but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. so here's what i think of you mr. spanish test !@#$%^&**!!!!!!!!!
now that that's done, i guess i am somewhat happy because i got an 87% on my mineral quiz. plus a good job!(exclamation point included) and a really weird drawing of some monkey looking thing from dr. p1.
eric came over this afternoon to work on our project. it was good to see him but it seemed kind of pointless for him to come all the way here because basically all we did was print off our trench drawings. i could have done that on my own a long time ago. no matter though. i showed him the display case with all the dinosaur bones and pictures of us at the site in it.
when i was about to leave, dr. p1 came into the computer lab. he said hi but it was one of those "don't talk to me" kind of hi's. i needed his help with something but it seemed like a bad time to ask. earlier he said he wasn't trying to blow me off or anything and i know he's busy. heck, i'm busy too. i still feel really annoying, though. i wish i understood things better on my own. oh well. 
(I was one of those students who utilized the prof's office hours to max capacity to ask questions about all sorts of crap i didn't understand.  I didn't understand a lot. There were 2 Dr. P's.  Dr. P1 (geology) and Dr. P2 (chemistry).  Anyway...)
dinner was a lot better than last night. i went to the kletz with dana and mark. i was leading mark around and it was kind of funny, actually, because i kept forgetting i had a blind person on my arm and he kept running into things.
hmm. i'm tired. i wish i could go to bed but there's too much homework for that. this morning i made a weekend plan, and i'm going to stick to it if it kills me.  

November 11, 2004 
there and back again 
well, i just got back from denver about half an hour ago. it was really great. and weird seeing so many geologists all in one place. it felt so awesome to be among them, to be a part of one of the coolest clubs (in my opinion) in America. i wore my nametag all over town. goshdarnit, i love geology.

i used my assignment notebook as a sort of makeshift journal while i was gone so i wouldn't forget anything i thought was important. so, here's what happened:

Friday, Nov. 5
Something I heard on NPR: "A city in Georgia has too many squirrels." The steering wheel's various degrees of freedom. Feet falling asleep (this was actually really annoying). Staring out at the stars and imagining universes far beyond us.


Saturday, Nov. 6
Driving. Dr. H's driving with us because he lost the coin toss. The Rocky Mountains. Snow! Falling numerous times. The cool birds and the weird noise they make. Falling asleep to mountains and waking up to buildings.


Sunday, Nov. 7--GSA in Denver!
Waking up early and registering with Jenny, Eric, and Dr. H. A very long breakfast and not knowing what to do. My hero the paleosol guy. Amy Ellweiss? Seeing all the Wyoming kids, but where's Emily? Tim getting up and giving me a hug as soon as he saw me. aww...Tim. Turkey stories. The guy who called me a dork for liking paleosols and groundwater. Met the Northern Arizona guy. The (annoying) Oklahoma lady whose sister is named Maureen, but wanted a nickname, so now she's called Mo. Being bored and thirsty. Dr. H's talk and the crazy overwash bank lady. Free stuff! Doing CAPA. Ready for sleep and another day.


Monday, Nov. 8
Poster presentation. Hanging out with Emily. Met the Nebraska guy. More free stuff! Dr. P1's popular pictureless poster (and his orange and blue striped tie). That guy... whose book I used this summer. I have a baby B.A. Dexter Perkins' prizes. Free dinner. Dr. P2's right. I still have a lot more rocks to get through.


Tuesday, Nov. 9
Sleeping in. Looking for Keiko's poster, losing everyone else, but finding Mark. Movies, media, and geology (or the lack thereof- the kind of stuff we could never get away with at the anch). is this the sexy part? (an old man said that.  it was pretty awesome) The giant rolling can. Dog, cat, and mice? Food (finally). Weird noises in the hallway. Exploring, stealing, and frolicking. Oliver and Company. Sword fighting. Frisbee throwing. Pen floating. Oh yeah... the Anchor. Chemistry. Tomorrow's our last day? Already?

Wednesday-Thursday, Nov. 10-11
The 4:30 a.m. alarm of doom. Jenny and Eric's poster. Yet more free stuff and people thinking I'm from UofM. Bagels. Taco John's. The guy on the side of the highway, the accident and the search party. Driving... and the semi. among other things. alternating between sleeping and having to pee. coming home glad but sad to be back.  (On our drive home, I was pretty much forced to drive at 5 am.  While I was driving the headlights kept going out.  The person in front who was supposed to stay awake with me had fallen asleep, and a girl in the back told me to pull over at the next exit.  So I did, in the middle of nowhere, and the prof, who was sleeping in the back, got all mad at me for stopping.  Oh yeah, and I really had to pee but the gas station was closed.  Fun times.)
well, folks, that's it in a nutshell. i'd love to stay and chat but it's already 11 a.m. and i have much to do. and if you've made it this far, you're probably really sick of reading this by now anyway. so goodbye.  

This week's spin cycle is all about going back through our old posts and finding our favorite one.  Since I haven't really had this blog for very long, that would be kinda dumb for me to do, but I have actually been blogging in some way, shape or form for quite a long time. Some of you read my wordpress blog, A Chronicle of My World Travels, which I kept for two years until I realized I wasn't exactly traveling the world, so in fact the whole premise of my blog was a lie.  Hence Adventures in the Underground was born.

But before all that, I was on livejournal, and before THAT, xanga.  Yep, I've been blogging since... umm, my freshman year of college.  I really wish I could find my old xanga posts because I'm sure they are so terrible and angst-ridden, that they might actually be interesting to read (for me, anyway), but luckily, I do still have access to my old lj posts, so that is what I am going to subject you to today.

After going through them, I am realizing that they kind of tell a story, the story of my life.  I can go back and look at them and think, oh I was so worried about this thing that one day, but then it actually turned out like this.  It's kinda cool.  So this is what I'm gonna do.  Every now and then,  I am going to post some really old stuff like this so that the story comes out bit by bit and it will be way fun!  Okay, maybe it will only be fun for me, but I'm assuming that those of you who have kept reading so far actually have a slight interest in what I have to say, so I'm going to go with it.

 Monday October 8, 2004
let's start at the very beginning...it's a very good place to start. umm, okay, so here's my journal of sorts. some people may say this is a waste of time but, well, i don't really care. so anyway it's a pretty pathetic looking journal right now because i don't know anything. that's about it for now. i think i'm going to go do some homework or something. yeah. bye. 

Thursday October 21, 2004
Well, I just got back from a GRE info session. It was okay but I'm afraid of failing, especially since I got a lovely 970 on the SAT oh so many years ago. I did okay on the ACT, though. Oh, well, maybe they'll still let me in anyway. I'm a nice enough person, I think... haha. I can't wait to go to Denver and meet some people from my prospective schools. That and seeing all the Wyoming kids. It will be exciting! But what I am mostly looking forward to, of course, is the mineralogy field trip tomorrow. It will be so cool! yayness! If there's only one reason I decided to stick with geology it's the field trips. Those are the best. Putting up tents in the atrium is always a plus as well. Except this summer when I ended up waterproofing the big tent all by myself while everyone else just sat around not even realizing I wasn't there. Those dirtbegs.
I don't really know what else to say. Mainly I'm just avoiding doing my CAPA. Michelle should be coming over soon. I hope she didn't forget. I wonder where Julie is... maybe class? Hmm. 
 

At this point, I should probably offer up some background information so that this actually makes sense to you.  First of all, wanna know what I got on my GRE?  The exact. same. score. as my SAT.  Yeah, I'm a frickin genius, I tell ya.  This caused some worrisome times for me in the months to come, as I wondered whether I would ever get into grad school.  Obviously, I did, but that part of the story comes later.

The summer before I started up this journal (which was the summer between my junior and senior year in college) I went to Wyoming to dig holes and break dinosaur bones (on accident?) and stuff like that.  I was in a group of about 10 other college students from different schools, so I was excited to see them again at the geology conference we were all going to in Denver that fall.

The atrium was a big room in the science building at Hope where we sometimes had ice cream parties, and apparently practiced putting up tents.

Dirtbegs is spelled right.  My friend Emily is from Minnesota and that's how she said it.

CAPA was my chemistry homework that I handed in electronically every week.  It was kind of nice because we got three tries to get it right.  Instant gratification.  But it was still ridiculous amounts of difficult so I had my friend Michelle, who was a chem major, come over to help me.  If it weren't for her, I most likely would have failed.  Really truly.

And Julie was my roommate.  She was cool beans.

I think I'll end with this one, for kicks.


Tuesday October 26, 2004
i'd be that girl... (I'm pretty sure this was a reference to a Barenaked Ladies song)
oh, goodness, i'm tired. i should be doing more homework or sleeping right now but the anchor (student newspaper, I'll talk about this more later, I'm sure) takes a lot out of me. when i was over there, i was thinking that my love/hate mineral should have been ankerite. but barite is okay too.
anyway, my spanish class today was actually kind of all right. the professor told us a funny story about a girl who he went to a bullfight with. apparently she threw up all over some old guy and then the guy turned around and yelled at my professor for bringing a girl to a bullfight in the first place. then he went on to explain bullfighting and how it worked and that the bullfigter had to stand really still so that the bull wouldn't know he was alive and proceed to gore him to death. i don't think i would like to be a bullfighter. the reason he told us all this was because we read this poem about bullfighting and death. the poet had a hard time accepting death because it was absolute, and absolute things are hard for us to understand. at 5:00 the bullfighter was alive and by 5:03 he was dead. the poet didn't want it to be 5:03; he wanted it to be 5:00 still because if he could stop time, then his friend wouldn't have died. but time keeps moving on for some reason. i am not sure why.
hmm. this is not really making any sense. perhaps this is due to the fact that it is almost 1 a.m. darn time. 

I can't stop time.  And I can't go back, but the stories are there, and that's what's important.

I've been in a horrible mood all day for a variety of reasons ranging from someone hitting my parked car, work being total shit, and not being able to figure out my programming homework.  I took this video one afternoon earlier this month and thought the snow and birds chirping were very peaceful and relaxing. Something good to watch on a stressful day.

 **UPDATED With Pictures!**

If you had told me a week ago that I would be attending a heavy metal concert featuring a band called Fear Factory, I would have said, yeah right, buddy.  So when Matt and I were driving around last weekend and an ad for the concert came over the radio and Matt expressed interest, I was more than a little skeptical.

I wanted to hear what they sounded like so when we got to my house, we listened to some clips on the internet.  It wasn't exactly my type of music, but I did like some things about it, especially their more technical stuff because it's kind of like drum & bass, which Matt also introduced me to.

So on Tuesday night we headed over to the theater for the concert.  The last time we went to the Sunshine Theater was for the Static X concert and it was PACKED.  We were lucky to get a spot on the topmost rank of the balcony.  This time, the balcony wasn't even open.  There weren't many people at all.  There were maybe about 50 people all crowded up by the stage, and that was it.  We opted to stand a little behind that group in case they got rowdy and tripped or something, but we were pretty much front and center.

There were three bands performing before Fear Factory.  The first was Periphery.  They were all right.  They had four guitars, which was probably overkill (one guitar player was really hot though) and the singer wasn't that great when he actually sang.  He seemed really off pitch.  And I know this.  It was one of the few things I was good at when I played piano.

Hot guitarist

The second band was Dirge something.  They were probably the best of the three opening bands.  The singer was pretty good, but kind of weird looking, and he was all about starting a mosh pit.  The audience didn't seem all that into it, though, so I figured I was safe.  One minute, everyone was just standing around listening to the music, and then someone ran through the crowd (more people had shown up by this point and the floor was pretty much full) and I was pushed down as more people joined in and I was in the middle of the dang mosh pit.  My reflex was to grab onto Matt and we went over to the side of the stage.  My shoe had fallen off partially so I was hobbling around trying to get it back on.  Luckily I had my purse tucked under my coat, so I didn't drop anything, but it was definitely interesting.

Weird, kinda emo looking singer dude

On the side where we opted to stand, we encountered the most interesting of all the concert-goers.  A middle aged man wearing his business clothes.  No joke.  He was just hanging out and head-banging with the rest of them.  At one point, he left for a while and I was able to make it to the front of the room, right in front of the stage.  That was kinda cool, except I was pretty much next to the speaker during the performance of my least favorite of the bands.  The instruments were all right, but the singer's style was that sort of deep evil groan that my old high school Theology teacher would have said sounded like someone put a microphone in hell and broadcast it over the speakers.  And he kept promoting all his CD's and crap after every song.  Kind of annoying.

Annoying, scary sounding singer

When the main band came out, I was pushed out of the front area a little but not before I got a couple pictures.  I took them with my phone so they probably turned out really crappy, but it's ok.  I'm still bummed about not getting any pictures of Tool at all, so I wanted to get at least a couple of these guys.

Anyway, the first thing I thought about Fear Factory were that the guitar and bass players were very much overweight and not attractive at all to look at. Yes, I know this is super shallow, but it's not my fault they looked like nasty unwashed fat slobs, and probably stunk like B.O. 

One of those guys

The singer was much better looking so I tried to focus on him the most. I liked that he actually had a decent singing voice, as well as a heavy metal voice, and enjoyed the songs when he actually sang the most.  To be honest, it took me a while to get into it, but I started liking it a lot better when they began playing songs from what Matt told me was their best album.

Lead singer of Fear Factory

Plus everyone else was getting into it and that's always fun to watch.  It's a very interesting demographic of heavy metal fans here in New Mexico.  They are a very pushy lot.  The guy in front of us was definitely on something and kept falling backwards.  And there was a random blond chick (possibly the only one there) who was totally into the music.

So, yep, all in all it was a pretty good time.  I probably wouldn't want to see them again, but it was a good experience for me, and it made Matt really happy, which was the best part.

Spring break from school really is not the same at all when you also work full time.  But the timing actually worked out really well for me last week because instead of normal work, I spent the week taking a plant identification course with some of my co-workers from the other forests in New Mexico and Arizona.  We didn't get out of class until 5pm which would have meant I would have had to rush to get to school on the other side of town by 5:30.  I also got to spend some time with my out of town friends and Matt on St. Patrick's Day, which is normally a class day for me.  So it worked out perfectly.

During the class we looked at A LOT of plants ranging from flowered plants (including composites, dicots and monocots) to grasses and sedges, because those are the hardest for most people to learn and pretty much all we could cover in one week.  

The class involved looking at plant samples with the naked eye, with hand lenses and through microscopes to be able to see the tiniest parts of the plants characteristic in helping to identify what kind they are.  It was not easy and got pretty repetitive at times, but I found myself getting better and better at it every day.  That made me feel good.

To help us identify the plants, we used a 2-volume publication entitled A Flora of New Mexico by Martin and Hutchins.  It is set up as a taxonomic key -- utilizing couplets allowing the reader to choose between different plant characteristics to finally determine the tribe, species, family, and variety of a particular plant.  It's a decent publication but was published sometime in the 80's, I believe, and a lot has changed since then because botanists get bored or something and change plant names all the time.  There are also bad couplets, meaning that if you choose one thing saying a plant may or may not contain a certain trait, there is the potential to go on to the next couplet in which you must describe the trait that the plant may or may not have.  If it doesn't have it, then it turns into a matter of trying out both options to see which fits better, and that's annoying. 

Our teacher was a retired botanist who used to work in the same office as me, along with my boss and his boss, for many years.  He wasn't going to teach it anymore but I think the main boss convinced him to do it because we have had so many new employees during the past couple years (he didn't teach it last year, which would have been my first opportunity to take it).  He really knew his stuff, which was good, but that sometimes made it frustrating for us who don't know anything about plants except for the tiny bits and pieces we've begun to put together during our time in the field.

The hardest part, especially in the beginning, was all the terminology.  Plant taxonomy, like soil taxonomy, is a language in and of itself.  We would constantly be asking each other, "what does that word mean?" as we went through the keys.  Luckily we had a couple good term books, including Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary.  It's nice because it has pictures of the term it's identifying, which makes it a lot easier to see and understand on the actual plant.  I'm seriously considering buying one for myself.

So that's what I was up to last week.  If you're not totally bored, come back tomorrow and I'll show you more of what I learned.  And I'll have pictures as well. It will be spectacular, you'll see.

Recently, one of my favorite bloggers, Sam from Off Black, passed this award on to me.  For those of you who are like me and have an idea of what the word 'prolific' means but don't go around using it in everyday chit-chat, it is synonymous with words like fruitful, abundant, and productive.

I suppose my blog has been fairly productive as of late.  I try to post at least a couple times a week.  However, I would like it to be a little more fruitful in the sense that I write about things that would be of interest to many people.

It's kind of like this: At my parents' house in Michigan, we have two apple trees.  Neither of them are very big despite being nearly 20 years old, and the bigger one leans significantly to the right.  For many years, hardly any apples would grow on either one, and if they did, they would not be edible.  Then one year my dad got it into his head that maybe we should fertilize the heck out of them.  So now we get the fertilizer spray guys to come over once or twice a year, and in the fall we get LOTS of apples.  My mom thinks they might number in the thousands.  Everyone in the neighborhood and all our relatives get several grocery bags full, and there are always still plenty left over to last us beyond Christmas time.  The apples are still very small and not great for eating just plain.  But they are fantastic for apple sauce, apple pie, apple crisp... pretty much any apple recipe you can think of.

So that's an idea of what I think a good blog (or any good writing) is, and what I strive to do with my writing.  It doesn't need to be perfect, because like with the apples, there is beauty in the imperfections.  It just needs a little fertilizer to get it going and some creativity to make it into something even more special.

I believe I am supposed to pass this award onto someone else, and there is one person who I think epitomizes the idea of prolific blogger for me.  And that person is the Barista from Your Barista Revealed.  She is prolific in the sense that she writes a lot, but also in that what she writes is always good and interesting.  It's like a good book that you can't put down.  It's prolific.



And you know what, now that I think about it, I'd also like to give this award to Jen from Sprite's Keeper because she does an awesome job hosting the spin cycle every week. That's a lot more commitment than I could ever have.