Monday, January 31, 2005

First Day on the Job

Today was my first day as an intern at the Marine Resources Center, a part of the Marine Biological Laboratory. It was a fairly quiet day with little to do. I started off my day bright and early (7:00am) in order to get pictures for all you dedicated readers so I hope you appreciate them :) There are too many to add to one post, but I'll include them throughout the blog as I go along.

My introduction in animal care began at 7:30 am in our Mariculture Room and Zebrafish Culture Room. Just a small portion of the animals that MBL houses. I did water quality tests today, checking temperature, pH, nitrite, nitrate, ammonia, and alkalinity levels. So my chemistry lab experience has paid off once again (for those of you interested in pursuing a career in biological, I definitely recommend getting experience in physics or chemistry).

I also got to siphon out the Aplysia tank, which can get pretty scummy. Aplysia californica is a large sea-slug.
Posted by Hello

Posted by Hello


The rest of the morning was pretty uneventful. The post-doc I'm going to be assisting came in later in the moring, so I was given some background material to read by Dr. Hanlon. The project I will be working on involves the use of disruptive color patterns and determining color vision. Interesting stuff. For more information, go here.

Once Lydia (the post-doc) arrived, I was able to watch her set up the experiment which consists of randomly choosing one of 11 juvenile Sepia and placing it on one of 10 randomly chosen checkerboard patterns and videotaping the animal. The checkerboards range from black and white to black and green to grey and green to green and white. This gives the cuttlefish a range of contrasts.

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Welcome to the North Pole... I mean, Massachusetts

Ok, this is a little late in posting, as I arrived in MA on Friday night, but I just had to comment on the massive quantities of snow that have blanketed Cape Cod. It's quite staggering, especially when you're faced with the prospect of shovelling that massive quantity of snow out of your driveway :P

Monday, January 24, 2005

Brrrr.....

Well, the storm is over. We didn't get as much snow as I thought we would. However, I did note that the area I'll be living in once I get to MA got about 3 feet (yikes!). Unfortunately, we got left with bitter cold temps. *shiver* Definitely makes it harder to get up early to study. Yup, I take my GRE's in about 4.5 hours. So if you're so inclined, perhaps you can send a little extra "smartness" my way. Until then, I'll maintain my cool facade of serenity.

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Snowed In

PA is supposed to get dumped on by a big snowstorm this weekend so my plans to study for my GRE shouldn't be interrupted too often. I take the general test on Monday. I've already taken the subject test in Biology and managed an 810 (92nd percentile). Considering how frantic I was before the test, I'm rather happy with the results. However, it's been difficult getting into a studying mindset. Especially when there are more interesting things happening outside my window.


Winter Wonderland? Taken from my living room window- the white expanse past the bench is (was) a lake. What looks like fog is actually lots of little snowflakes. Posted by Hello



Friday, January 21, 2005

One week to go

I'm creating this blog with two primary purposes: because I need to log my activities as an intern at the Marine Biological Laboratory and so I keep track of the steps I take to becoming a cephalopod biologist with the hopes it will someday come of use (either to myself or someone else). My internship starts in 10 days, but I'll be leaving for MA on the 28th. I'm excited about the opportunity that awaits me, but at the same time I'm going to miss my husband and my dogs, Brenna & Sasha