It is Slain!!!

Many of those close to myself and my family are familiar with this picture. My brother (click the picture to go to his blog) drew it for our small town newspaper in The Dalles during a district merger.

That particular image has been stuck in my mind all week, but my personal hydra seemed more of this variety:

Oh noes! It's the dreaded Ecology Journal!!!!

So here's whatall was due today:

Ecology Journal -

100 pictures of Ecological Events

100 descriptions of said events - handwritten on index cards

Species, Date, Locality, Tidal Level, and Event description for each.

Silly little borders for each picture

Chopping scrapbook paper into 50 8.5 x 11 sheets

Chopping the scraps into 1 inch strips for the silly borders

Draw lines on both sides of all of the newly cut sheets to have the cards and pictures be placed centered

Ecology Notes -

Formatted Notes (harder to do than you'd think... our professor is hard to follow)

Diagrams - done to Dr. B's standard, which is ridiculous. The man teaches a course on biology illustrations

Embryology Notes -

Formatted Notes (see above)

Diagrams (see above, and multiply by two)

Embryology Pictures -

Pictures of the developing embryo (stresssssful - I lost some of my pictures)

Sketches of said pictures (see above, multiply by four)

See why I liken this to a hydra? With every head I thought I was tackling, I found myself with more coming at me from all sides. The whole week was super stressful, and even though I'd thought I was making good progress throughout this whole course, and that I'd been fairly productive this week, I still found myself down to the wire at the last minute, putting finishing touches on a project that I wasn't especially proud of. I just know that I could do so much better! Hopefully I do fairly well with my grade, as our professor seems reluctant to give less than an A as long as everything is complete. I hope I'll have the discipline, however, to re-do the parts I'm not proud of so that I can have a journal that I'll be more proud to show off.

So THAT'S a huge load of stress off, but now we're moving on to the research project presentations. Which we're giving in front of many esteemed professors at BYU. We have two days to get everything done, and my group still isn't completely sure what our data proves.... oh well, I'll worry about that tomorrow.

My dad came down for the weekend, and my wonderful Aunt Pam is coming down Monday for "Dr. B's Bash". It was great to have Dad here, although I wish I'd had more time for him and spent less time with my journal. Still, I managed to get him to buy me a meal, show him the campus and the nearby beaches, go sea lion spotting, and tidepooling at my favorite pools, all in the about 24 hours that he was here! He also made it up to Bandon without me while I finished up my journal.

The lighthouse of Lighthouse Beach

I'm crazy excited for Pam to make it up here. I haven't seen her in a few months, and she and I don't get to hang out just the two of us very often. And this'll be a great opportunity to nerd out and be marine biology nuts together!

Random picture from a couple weeks ago - those of us who got wet at the docks.

It was requested by some of my peers here that I mention them in the blog. But I have to find a way to do it unforced... I think that'll be my next posting, a detailed, in depth description of all of my new pals and our shenanigans.

I'm so excited to finally have some time with no class and few obligations to spend with these amazing people! Too bad it didn't happen until there were only a few days left.... :(

Undah Presh-uh!

Woof.

Okayso.

OIMB is drawing to a close. And I am waaaayyy more stressed about everything than I should be.

Things that are stressing me out:

Class - I still need 20+ pictures for my journal, my "babies" all died before they got to the stage that I needed them to get to, my research project just changed and I am once again not sure that we're doing it right, I can't get the drawings for my notes to look as nice as my classmates, Dr. B gave us a semi-impossible assignment on plankton, and I have to get it alllll done in the next week.

My personal life - my room is always a mess, I'm such a loser when it comes to keeping goals I set, I have been sleeping wayyyy too late (tomorrow I have to wake up before 8 for the first time in like, 4 days. Which I haven't been doing), and I've just kinda been failing at life in general.

My future life - and this one's a biggie. I have to decide whether to go back to Mosier and work at OCDC over the summer, and be surrounded by the not-so-great influences of The Dalles, as well as the risk of terminal boredom. OR I can go back to Utah, struggle to find a job, pay rent, but make some new friends and get a head start on life away from Oregon.

What it all culminates into is this:

I. Love. Fast. Sundays.

I am so grateful to be a member of this church, and so grateful for the Tender Mercies of a loving Heavenly Father. He knows exactly what I need, even when I fall so far short of deserving it. I know fast Sundays can often be seen as a chore, but I am always so excited for them. Every Sunday is a chance to renew and repent, but I know that if I really commit to every fast Sunday, my Father will add a little more light into my life. I am rarely so close to Him - which isn't a good thing. But He offers me this little chance every month to feel His love and presence just a little more, and I am so grateful for that.

Anyways.

What it comes down to is that I feel much better. I've decided I'm staying in Mosier for the summer. And my heart is just so much lighter. Pressure's still there, life's still crazy, but I know I can do it!

Also, I was introduced to this song in Relief Society today:



"We Seek After These Things"

It was perfect - exactly what I needed. It's especially poignant out here where everything is so beautiful....

Yay for the gospel!!!!

On that note, let me fill the rest of this post with some from pictures from life 'round here in Charleston. In no particular order....

I got to try out my new underwater digital camera down by the docks - it was also a good excuse to finally put on my wet suit. I was happily surprised with how warm it kept me, although my feet were still numb fairly fast.
Here we all are in our fancy duds - those of us who wore them, anyways. Some people stayed dry.
We went dredging out in the boat for plankton such as this. We didn't catch a lot, but this little guy was by far my favorite.

The two are crazy similar, amirite?

My mom, Lauryn, and Evan all came down for Memorial Day weekend. This is a picture taken while we were all crabbing and Mom was testing out my new camera.
Okay, so, this HUGE PELICAN JUST CAME FOR A VISIT. We were down in the mudflats and it just landed right in front of us! It actually landed closest to me, but I moved away once it started walking at me. That thing was surprisingly intimidating.

Here's some video. I have more like it, maybe I'll upload it later.

These are some of the hermit crabs that we're using for our research project. They've all been painted with nail polish and have numbers written on them. the only problem is that these numbers fall off, which keeps us on our toes.

This is kinda unorganized and sporadic. I'll try and catch up on Memorial Day weekend better, once I download all the pictures from my mom's facebook album.

Till then, I have class in 7 hours, and I should probably get some sleep before that.