Books recently read

Just a quick list of some of the recent books that I have been through

Owl - by Desmond Morris: This is a look at the relationship of Owls to human history and mythology, it's an interesting look at where some of the current and past superstitions and misunderstandings about owls have originated. It also provides some basic information about owl natural history, but nothing that I found riveting. An interesting book, but not an outstanding one in my view.

Exile's Valor - by Mercedes Lackey: A fantasy novel by a popular author. This round was as good as the first book focused on Alberich. A bit more character development, and a slightly more intense plot line, but to be honest I read it in a weekend and didn't read it for the depth of it's literary genius. I read it because I was stressed out and wanted something non-committal to focus on. So I guess it's good for a distraction, but it you want deep literary meaning look elsewhere.

Still alive...

...and getting a little panicky. I graduate in something like three weeks and I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself. I need a job, but I haven't the faintest idea of where to start looking for something that relates to my degree and is also at least somewhat satisfying for my personal sanity. I suppose this is something that I should have been thinking about for a while before graduation was upon me....but somehow it never really made it to the forefront of my to-do list. (To be fair I have been telling myself I need to go spend some time in the career center for 2 years now.) I skipped out on the career fair this quarter because there weren't any companies that I was remotely interested in working for, and it was the business career fair so I guess I'm not all that surprised. I did spend some time poking around various websites related to the National Park Service and the State Park Service....but I just don't know. I still have no real overriding ambition of a career to aim for.

I'm really enjoying my classes thus far and I wish I had gotten the opportunity to take Evolution earlier than this because I'm finding that I not only really enjoy the class but those are the sorts of things that I'm interested in ecologically speaking. I'm pretty certain that in order to become a research biologist like Eric I need to do graduate school and possibly more, but I can't really commit to that much more school right now. So far I've managed to scuttle away from have a ridiculous load of student loans...and I don't really want to take two steps backward in that department.

Ugh, well with wind speeds of around 40 mph and gusts up to 60 I'm afraid we might lose power again, so I will revisit this thought process later.

at a loss

I've been at a loss for what to post in the last few weeks. Nothing horribly interesting is going on in my life aside from the fact that I'm going to graduate and I have no clue what I want to do with myself. My classes are going well and are interesting, and I'm learning lots of fascinating things, but I can't motivate myself to write a whole blog post about any particular nugget of information that I pick up. I'm reading a lot of book that are also interesting, but again, lacking the motivation to make an interesting post out of anything. We're talking about salmon and salmon fisheries and salmon aquaculture this week in oceans, which an interesting topic but one that I feel too depressed to write about and I have a midterm in evolution this week so I'm studying all the things that I've learned so far in that class. Perhaps I'll write out some of the answers to the study guide just to give myself something to post and something proactive to do at the same time. I've probably been playing WoW far too much lately, mostly as a result of the hallow's eve festival going on and my insane obsession with mount/pet collecting and achievements on all the nine toons that inhabit my home server. My creeping fig is recovering. It didn't get watered for a few too many days while I was gone this summer and most of it died back, leaving only some branches that were shaded from the direct sun alive. I was worried about it and ended up moving it inside for the winter and it's taken off again, now covered in a bright halo of fresh growth. My button fern also seems to have started to make a comeback. It was all but dead after not being watered while we were gone for another trip this summer. We came home to find it completely shriveled, soaking it barely revived three small fronds, the rest were toast. It's been in limbo for months now, attempting to put out some new fronds only to have them die back before the leaves opened. Now it has put out at least one successful new frond that has gotten significantly larger that the other attempts and successfully put on new leaves so I'm hoping that this is a good sign. I gave it a few drops of fertilizer and am going to hope for the best. One of the hoyas put on a last show of blossoms that are all but done, and they will probably slow down their growth for the winter now, which is a good thing because my window closely resembles some sort of jungle habitat now. I knit two small washclothes out of some pretty cotton yarn we've had laying around forever, they turned out nicely and will probably get used. I've been kinda obsessing over natural history and wish I would get out some more to do more observations, but I guess I'm rather lazy at heart. Ok, /end ramble

Tiny Fish PSA

nothing new in the neighborhood

It's been a while since my last post...nothing new or exciting has really been going on.

We rearranged our apartment a little bit, sparked by getting a new bed skirt at goodwill, ended up switching around things in the 'bedroom' portion of the apartment so that we can walk all the way around the bed. It's a nice change although there is a funny gap in the wall decor now.

Read a few more books, finished Kushiel's Mercy as well as Renegade's Magic. Kushiel's Mercy was amazing...Renegade's Magic was not so much. Now I'm continuing to work on my 'textbooks' for Esci 330 as well as Gaia's Garden, Garbage Land and Weather of the Pacific Northwest.

I've been keeping the apartment a bit cleaner than usual lately, making the bed and such.

Classes have been fun and interesting and not too much work. I have a midterm today that I don't anticipate taking more than 20 minutes (50 mc q's.) I didn't end up going on the other camping trip with my class, and it sounds like they had a really wet weekend. I stayed home and did a whole lot of nothing, got to see Drew again which was nice and also went out to see Where the Wild Things Are, which was different than I thought it was going to be but still a good movie. The Muppet costumes were absolutely amazing, it was very well done.

I've been spending a goodly amount of time trick-or-treating in Azeroth, trying to get a few squashlings on some alts, working on A Mask for All Occasions and goofing around on my fledgling Paladin.

Fisheries

Came home from class a bit depressed today, we watched End of the Line in oceans, and it tried to have a happy ending, but the overall feeling it left me with was wanting to crawl into a corner and die. Either that or discover some plague that would wipe out most of the human race. Essentially the world's fisheries are going downhill, and getting to the point where most major fish stocks are on the verge of collapse. One of the most striking examples is the bluefin tuna stock. Marine biologists recommended that the fishery be limited to a quota of 15,000 tons a year to prevent the stock from collapsing. They recommended a quota of 10,000 tons a year to allow the stock to recover. The Powers the Be set the quota at 29,500 tons, which the fisherman completely ignored, catching over 60,000 tons...which is 1/3 of the total population. I can't believe that humanity can be so dense as to not realize when a problem of this magnitude is staring us in the face...

Of cats and coyotes and songbirds

I would never have thought this as a kid, or as a teen, but I guess my opinions have changed as I've become more informed.

Domestic and Feral cats kill billions of native critters each year, from reptiles and amphibians to rodents and songbirds. Most of these hunters are fed pets, they aren't hunting for food, they're mostly hunting for sport. The impacts have been shown in many studies across the nation, where in various places cats are decimating ground-nesting songbird populations that are already under tremendous stress from habitat loss, threatening endangered seabird nest sites, and reducing songbird fledgling survival from the 50% natural rate to an astonishing 10%. And they're doing all of this without killing many rats in urban and suburban areas, a persistent myth used as reasoning for letting them roam free.

One study found that areas with coyotes had less cats (the coyotes killed them) and more songbird diversity, while the results were reversed where coyotes were excluded.

I never thought that I would be a proponent of indoor-only cats but I am now. Not only does it help to protect our native animal populations from intense predation that they aren't able to cope with (most birds especially don't recognize the sound of a bell as dangerous, so belling your cat doesn't make a difference), but it's also good for your kitty. Cats allowed to roam free not only can get in fights with other cats, hit by cars, or killed by predators, they also live an average of three years less and they have a much higher likelihood of contracting diseases or parasites.

So do your neighborhood wildlife a favor, and keep kitty inside.

Green Building

I've been reading and watching and picking up bits and pieces of green building techniques for a little bit now. A bit of a check-list for me as of now (providing we ever get the chance to build our 'dream' home.)

• Humanure system (no septic for me)
• Graywater reclamation system (slime monster, constructed wetland, garden irrigation)
• Rainwater catchment system (dishwater, showers)
• Straw-bale construction (this looks really promising, saves on wood and gets rid of fiberglass insulation)
• Solar panels (are attractive, as long as we can afford them)
• A woodstove for cooking
• Root cellar

Two Quotes

" The sad reality is that we are in danger of perishing from our own stupidity and lack of personal responsibility to life. If we become extinct because of factors beyond our control, then we can at least die with pride in ourselves, but to create a mess in which we perish by our own inaction makes nonsense of our claim to consciousness and morality. "
- Bill Mollison

" Slowly, even among the squarest of citizens, the suspicion is growing that it is the very nature of our vastly developed industrial system to produce an environment which is poisonous to our bodies and toxic to our minds. Perhaps the making and buying goods is not the main goal of a sane society. Perhaps a bigger Gross National Product is not a god worth sacrificing our lives to. Perhaps we must question the whole orientation of American values. The early labor-union leader Sam Gompers once summed up the aims of the labor movement as "More!" But maybe now we need less. "
- Ernest Callenbach