What you've been missing

Here's the part where I try to sum up my entire summer thusfar in one tightly packed blogpost.

Readyset?

So, after returning from OIMB, and a short side-trip into Washington before actually returning home, I scurried down to Utah to attend my brother's fantastic wedding.

I'm so happy to add Nadia to our ever-growing family. It was a gorgeous reception, and a great opportunity to spend time with my family.

My next adventure was another great chance to be with my family - The Despain Family Reunion! This year we went over to Montpelier Idaho to spend some time together and enjoy the great fun that is Bear Lake. I was kicking myself for forgetting my camera, but you'll just have to trust me that it was fantastic. It was my first chance to go in about 2 years, and I'm so so so happy that I made it!

My next real adventure will be moving into my new apartment back in Provo - which can happen as soon as the 20th. Hopefully in there I'll also squeeze in a trip to Minnesota.

In the meantime, I have a couple-few background projects to keep me entertained.

My job - the fantastic OCDC. I usually have nothing but the highest praise for this fantastic institution, but right now I have this year's horrible death and puking disease. I should be happily back to work tomorrow. I love the kids, I love the business, and I love love love the chance to brush up my Spanish.
My other background project has been working along with After School Productions to put together a performance of Sweeney Todd. Check it out, come see it, show your support, and enjoy the FANTASTICNESS that is Sondheim!

Last but not least, I've been scanning in a bunch of the family's old negatives, in the hopes that eventually we'll get around to a big scrapbooking project. I haven't had a *huge* amount of free time, but hopefully in my time between ending work and leaving Mosier I'll be able to get more things done.

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.

Makin' Babies

Yesterday we started our developmental biology class - as if I wasn't swamped enough. On the plus side, apparently this means that the next few days are spent chillaxing and occasionally checking on our "babies", as Dr. B refers to them. This is giving me a bit more time to organize notes, draw diagrams, and fret about the looming research paper that I need to write.... oi vey.

Anywho, we're working with two different species - dendraster excentricus (a sand dollar) and strongylocentrotus purpuratus (a purple sea urchin). We were originally only going to use the sand dollars, because their eggs are so much prettier.

This is a sand dollar egg - notice the pigment cells around the egg in the jelly layer.

And these are the urchin eggs - no pretty dots around, so Dr. B likes them less.

To get the animals to broadcast their gametes, we inject them with KCl. This gets them CRAZY excited. Ever think that an urchin might not be an animal? Check out this clip - watch that sucker dance!

So, I uploaded a picture of each early development stage of both species, but now that I think about it, I doubt y'all are that interested. So I'll just share a few of my favorites.

4-celled sea urchin. See that circle surrounding it? That membrane forms after fertilization

8-celled sand dollar

One reason why we're working with both species is because only two of the groups were able to get their sand dollars to take. My group was one of them, but in the process, many of our cells lost their jelly coats when they were exposed to too much heat. Which is lame, because aside from that, the two species have more or less identical embryos. It means I have to be RIDICULOUSLY meticulous about labeling the pictures and paying attention to when I took samples of which..... blech. Also, while changing out their water, we got a bunch of filter paper in with the eggs, so a lot of our pictures have fibrous nonsense in the way.

BUT, things are a lot less stressful now that things have at least started moving. We spent the first three hours or so of today fretting over these sand dollar eggs that just would not take. Now that things are moving, we can sit back, relax, and watch these babies grow! Tonight my shift is from 10-1 a.m. - not too much later than I'd already be up. I'm not excited for the 1-4 shift, though....

Short and sweet

Nothing too terribly eventful today. Jason gave me a bit of a self-esteem boost at the tidepools, calling me an "Adventure Woman", because I was clambering to hard to get places with him. Helped relieve me of some of my frustration with my own silliness from yesterday.

Speaking of which, remember that crab, the one that took a chunk out of me?

Well, he was delicious. :)

Now I'm off to try and fix the jumbled impossible to understand quandary that is my lecture notes... or maybe Dr. Who. We'll see ;)

In the Land of Giants

Yesterday was fantastic, even though it started far too early. Low tide was at 5:30, so we skipped breakfast, and headed down to the Lighthouse Beach.
At first glance, I was a bit confused. Where was the endless sea of tidepools that I'd been promised? The trick is, they're over on the other side of the light house. It was a fun scampering-over-rocks hike on the way back, but on the way back, when the tide had already.

We stumbled upon a lot of giants out in these pools.

This is pycnopodia helianthoides, also known as a "sun star". I didn't get a good scale in this picture, but to give you an idea, the center part of this star alone is about the width of the span of my hand.

Nice rock, right?

Nope. It's a chiton. Secretly. The whole time. Cryptochiton stelleri, also known as the Gumboot Chiton, was all over these rocks. Side note - whenever we'd find one of these, I'd start humming Come Together.
Ok, this ones a little hard to explain. See the whorl of the shell? The brown part there is the snail, poking out a little bit, and the green part attached to it is called the operculum. When the snail retracts fully, the operculum fits perfectly into the opening of the shell, and wha-bam! It's water tight! It was one thing to hear about it in class, but so fun to see it in action!
This was a crab. I just liked this picture lots. "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. Demille".
These are the tidepools. That bridge goes right to the island with the lighthouse in it, as was shown in the first picture. However, it's condemned, so no luck there. I loved watching the fog roll in.
Fish heads fish heads, roly poly fish heads!

These are two separate sea anemone clone colonies. That empty space in the middle is where they duke it out and refuse to let the other clone win territory. Sweet, right?

These cormorants were nesting on the plateau above the pools. They made strange barking noises that I kept thinking belonged to a dog or a sea lion. It was fun to watch them bringing back sticks and such for building their nests.

When the tide came in, it brought with it a lonely seal pup. It kept calling out for someone to love it, which was super sad, but we enjoyed showing it some affection. As soon as we got out of sight, the mom came back! We're pretty sure that she left the baby to go feed, then waited until the scary humans had left before she came back to nurse the pup. I didn't get close enough for any especially great pictures, but others in the group did.

So, Jason tried to get close to take a good picture. He was wading through the water, when the mother seal started moving. We all started yelling at him to watch her, and he scrambled to do so. In the tussle, he flooded his boots. See how they're sagging down at his ankles? That isn't supposed to happen. :)

So, this might be my favorite part of this whole trip thusfar. The tide was coming in, and getting back to the beach we'd come from was turning into a rock climbing adventure. The guys who'd already gotten over started a bit of a bucket brigade, passing those of us behind them (mostly girls) from person to person until we were safe on the beach.

I know it's a silly thing to get teary eyed about, but it actually meant a lot to me. I'd been fretting about falling, or getting stuck, and I really felt safe with them. Josh talked me through the best way to get around the bend, Spencer pulled me up from a surge channel, Micheal got me safely down the side of the incline, and Sam led me over rocks through the deep murky water to the beach.

It was kinda like one of those cheesy team-building exercises that they make you do to get to know people in a group, except that this wasn't scripted. These guys are just genuinely good eggs. They're being especially kind about my recent injury (keep reading for details).

Ok, NOW for today. We went to Cape Arago, a couple miles further down the beach. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I wasn't feeling especially adventurous, so I didn't go to the harder to reach pools, and I missed out on some interesting specimens. Here's a few of my favorites.

These are called Sea Sacs - halosaccion glandiforme. Dr. B refers to them as "fingerlike". I had tons and tons of fun squishing the water out of them.... good entertainment for 6 a.m.
Remember my other post about tidepool johnnys? Here's another one. It's a different color, because the tidepool is a different color. Neat, huh?
Here's another one! See it? It's right next to the close anemone. That anemone is closed because it's eating.
This seastar is called a BATSTAR! I want to write a short novel about a VAMPIRE batstar - a vampire that turns into a batstar instead of a normal bat.

.... it's still in the works.
Ok, MOST RANDOM THING EVER. As we were heading back, I ran into Lettie Young! Lettie is more a friend of Chrysta (my little sister) than myself, but it was still fun to see someone from The Dalles! A bit of a shock though - I'd more or less forgotten that I was in Oregon, as I'm here with all of my Utahn friends, in an area of Oregon that I've never really explored before.

So, Michael caught a dungeness crab, and I decided to be snarky and tell him the gender. I was wrong. So I turned it on its back to prove it to myself, and when I went to turn it back over, I let my finger get in its claws.

So, in case my idiotic, self-righteous behavior wasn't bad enough, I was now stuck with a crab on my finger, that was boring down with more pressure than I knew any crab could. I can't explain how much it hurt, I'm not sure if I've ever really felt that kind of pain. I actually thought for a second that my finger might be pinched off. I felt the pincers right down to the bone, TIGHT, and I felt the skin breaking as the pincers moved back and forth. It would've been better if it had been a sharp blade, but it was a blunt, serrated edge, forcing its way between the bones.

In a word, ouch.

On top of this, I had to keep my mouth shut and not let all the cool guys around me (especially Michael, who I'd just so stupidly tried to impress....ugh) know how much pain I was in. So, I quickly reached down with my other hand to pry off the pincer.

So, of course, the crab grabbed that finger too.

I. Was. Mortified. All I could think was what a blow this was to my pride, and how much I was in need of help. I didn't have the guts to ask, and I was to busy clenching my teeth and trying to not panic anyways.

Luckily, Michael came to the rescue. My second-trapped finger came out easily, but the first one, not so much. It took him a while to get it off too.

Once it was off, I shamefacedly turned to him and said thanks, and he said "you should grab them from behind, like this."

.... yeah..... thanks. UGH I'm dumb.

On the plus side, people have been being really sweet. I've been trying not to whine about it and add to my already tarnished reputation, but I also really wanted to get back and clean out this sand-filled, crab infected cut. I got an Ernie and Bert band-aid out of the deal! And the guys have been really sweet about asking if I'm okay. Which only makes it worse, because I know they must know how DUMB I am...

Even better, we write journal entries about what happens on our field trips. Jason's scramble for safety was the topic of everyone's journals yesterday. Apparently my incident is what was popular today. Who knows what'll happen tomorrow?

Oh! Also, I might've seen a whale today. I'm not totally sure, 'cuz there wasn't a dorsal fin. It was too big to be a seal, but it might have been two swimming tail-to-nose? I'm scared to really stand by that statement, because I definitely made enough of a fool of myself today.

Bandon

Today started with lecture, then lunch at noon, then we sat around and watched Modern Family.

I am falling in love with this show - and I love that I get to share it with all of these guys. I'm so lucky to have ended up with these guys - not to be overly cheesy, but I'm pretty sure I was meant to be here with them. I'm learning so much - especially about myself. I'm not liking everything that I'm finding (i.e. it turns out that in this group, I'm the Debbie Downer. When did I let myself become so critical and pessimistic?), but I'm glad to be around people that are sweet enough to let me learn and grow.

After T.V. time, we spent the rest of our Saturday in Bandon's Old Town. It's a cute little tourist town, fairly similar to Seaside - or really any other small beachside town. The shops were fun, but my favorite part was the boardwalk. It was chock full of wood sculptures.

Me with my favorite carving (big surprise, right?)
One of my new buddies, Kathryn. She put up with my excitement over the sculptures and checked them out with me. Out of the whole group, she's probably the one who best understands my humor.
This is some of the group waiting for food at the restaurant recommended to us by Dr. B. It's called "Fish & Chips", which also happens to be their specialty dish, go figure. I got a shrimp sandwich, which was surprisingly delicious for its simplicity.
This is a monument dedicated to Bandon's 1936 citizens. Apparently there was a fire there that burned down most of the town. The good folks of the 30's rebuilt it, and it looks fantastic!

Dr. B. told us about the fire before we went down to Bandon. He also talked about how, apparently, Bandon used to have a big cheese factory, until Tilamook bought them out. He's now mad that the cheese factory isn't there, because it was a big financial blow to the town. Because of this, he says he doesn't like going to Bandon. I think the opposite makes more sense - wouldn't you want to go and support their small shops? I think he was having a senior moment and just not understanding what he was saying. He does that.
Chinook Salmon. Oh, another thing, ALL of these statues are dedicated to someone (usually as a memorial). In addition, there are a bunch of benches all over the boardwalk - also all dedicated as a memorial. As Spencer pointed out, even the public bathroom was dedicated!
My favorite sculpture, without any faces to distract you from its beauty. I like how from behind this just looks like a cool log. It wasn't until I came and touched it from behind that I realized what was on the front.
Ok, I'm sorry, but I really don't get this one. It was dedicated by some siblings in memory of their mother. The whale looks deflated and miserable. Is it some kind of statement against pollution/whaling/something else that makes whales sad? Or were the kids sad, so they wanted their whale to be sad? I just find the whole thing kinda upsetting.
Crabs! Behind them is the dock from which you can actually go crabbing (there are signs all over the boardwalk saying that you are not to fish or crab from there). I'm excited for my family to come down for Memorial Day weekend. I'm hoping I can convince them to go to Bandon, just 20 minutes away, and we can go crabbing there.
Sea lion and pup - There was a surprising number of seals/sea lions in the little cove. We got to see one catch a fish, and then smack the fish against the surface to kill it. Sadly, the pictures I did get were too far away, and when they were closer, my battery died. Pfft.
THIS TURTLE HAS THE CREEPIEST SMILE. AAAAH TURN IT OFF! Doesn't this thing scare small children?
Jason in a shop - the hat says Diva Party. He was excited to play dressup. This shop also had kites. I meant to grab one and didn't. Ah well. There's stores in Coos Bay too - probably even some in Charleston!

Katherine on an extension of the boardwalk - these seagulls let her get ridiculously close.

Welp, that's about it for Bandon! This is a kinda short post, but we're about to watch Pirates of the Caribbean - we're going to try and watch all of them before the newest one comes out.

Comment! I'd love it!