Emi's Journal

Back in Eugene for the weekend. I got here yesterday evening, 1.5 hours after leaving Florence (an entire half hour longer than it should have taken, thanks to 6 miles being down to 1 lane for construction….). We had a very productive work day, visiting 14 sites and assessing 13 (one had unleashed dogs on a nearby property that decided to come up on the tracks and bark at us). Most were trestles but there were a couple of culverts. We are projected to finish this first set sometime next week, and then they will prioritize the smaller sites and give us a new list. We will also be switching to 4-10′s next week (long weekends! ). Next Thursday we’ll switch things up a bit, with me helping with an estuary seining in Florence and Katelynn heading up north to help out with some stuff in Newport. By then we should be done with our high priority sites, so that’ll give them time to put together a new list for us, and give us something cool to do.

As for today… I think I’ll head down to CG to visit the pupper. He wont be coming to camp with me because apparently he has taken up barking when he’s alone… Something no one has ever complained about in Corvallis, so maybe it’s a CG thing. I wont take my chances at Honeyman though. I also need to swing by REI to pick up my aquaseal and water bottle. Will be patching my waders tonight!

Before I get kicked out of the library….

Today was our first day out in the field alone, which was pretty exciting. We got to 7 sites, after a bit of a struggle with maps and other such exciting things. We also tangled with nettles (which give me really attractive welts and leave me numb for hours), blackberries, and fun stuff like that. We saw a bat, which was pretty exciting, but also concerning. It was 4:00 in the afternoon and this bat was cruising around the river and flying within inches of us. Pretty crazy stuff.

Alright, I’m off to see if Siuslaw has any ILLs for me to deliver, then I’m out of here!

I’m sitting here at the library so I feel like I should post something.

Today we drove along the railroad to scope out some of our surveying areas. We did two trestles and a culvert, and I got attacked by biting flies. We were up above the Mapleton area for the culvert, and it was hot, so I bypassed the waders and walked the stream. Which felt great, minus the attack flies that bit at my legs. The blackberries didn’t bother me, but the flies sure did…

I drove the truck for a bit, but it still intimidates me. Which a lot does, being a semi-rookie driver and all…. But I did drive it, and it wasn’t too bad. Just a lot bigger than I’m used to.

Last night I went to the bat talk at the campground. That was fun, especially when a bat decided to fly over us in circles for quite some time. Some older equipment allowed us to hear it echolocating above us, which was fun. I talked bat surveys with the guy, and heard that the call recognition stuff is working now, so that’s pretty awesome. I hadn’t heard, since I didn’t make it to BatGrid training this year.

Well, I think it’s about time to head back to camp. I have plans for making Mac&cheese with roasted hot dog chunks and chili. I’m kind of excited about it…

I am now syncing my WordPress (emisspot.com/journal) with my facebook notes via RSS import (a facebook feature). And testing a wp plugin that supposedly syncs comments from the facebook counterpart to the wordpress post. We shall see if it works. I thought it was worth testing.

Back from the field and back in the library.

Today we got trained for doing the culvert assessments. It was pretty fun stuff… If you like wading through streams (and sometimes more…), bush whacking, and all around running around outside. This being my idea of a good time, I was game for it. The occasional being pulled out of the mud or being boosted up a ledge was in order as well. Doing this with two people should be interesting…

There was also a great deal of firewood gathered in the process, so starting fires should be a bit easier now (we got it going last night, but it took raiding the cardboard recycling, and a lot of TLC). Apparently I guilted my supervisor into carrying some back for us when I started dragging large branches behind me… Which didn’t stop me from dragging more large branches behind me, so we ended up with some good wood in our truck, and a site to go back to in case we ever need more.

We managed to asses 4 culverts and gather wood… A good day’s work if you ask me! I also spent the morning getting my scooter back into operative condition (though the back brake still needs adjusting… A trip to Bi-Mart for a set of hex keys should remedy that just fine). And tonight there’s an interpretive thing about bats at the park, so I’ll probably hit that up to see if I can learn anything about bats on the coast. A fire for a couple of chili dogs… Some toasty marshmallows…. Sounds like a well fulfilled day of fun.

So, here I am in Florence! I don’t have much time to post… The library is closing in 10 minutes and then I’ll head back to camp for dinner. Gotta salvage some cardboard to start a fire with so I can make my dinner.

Anyway, today we did a quick fish extraction for a culvert replacement (all of 6 fish!), and then did the runaround meeting people and getting set up at camp. It was a bit crazy, but it works! Tomorrow is the training, and then it’s off to survey culverts for fish passage! Sounds fun, eh?

The state park we’re camping at is, well… Amazing, pretty much. We’re getting settled in and it should be a great 4 weeks!

Which begs the question: Why am I sitting here posting?

Well, I don’t really know. But I felt like it. Plus I’m cooking a tuna melt. And watching the CMT countdown, or more precisely listening to the CMT countdown. And in a bit I’m going to take Ret and hang out with a couple dogs for the day. I still need to make my Winco run today for camp food, but will probably do that this evening.

Tomorrow I’m brining the birds and geckos to Teresa’s, then going to farmer’s market, then going to Eugene. Need to bring Ret down, get some stuff from Mom, and stop by REI to get a couple things.

Well, my tuna melt has been eaten and I need to get back to work.

Well, it sure has been a while. I got caught up in the LJ->WP transition, and today I found out they made it easy. There’ll still be some manual changes being made (such as avatars), but I can work with that. That’ll be an ongoing project.

So, I think I’m going to sum up the events of the past month or two and see if I can get myself on track here. I’d like to try to get posting again, so we’ll need a bit of the backstory.

I got a summer job with ODF, after my first real interview ever. Pretty exciting. Doing stream surveys throughout the coast range. All was well until dead week rolled around and the 6 ODF interns got calls saying our position no longer existed. This after I was layed off by COSINe at the end of spring term. Not cool.
So anyway, that left 6 of us with no job and about a week to find one. Fantastic. Four of the six scraped something together or made other plans or whatever. Two of us left, myself included. We got data entry/random other stuff work for the month of June courtesy of a grad student who had a grant that needed to be used up (what wasn’t used would be taken back). So that was good. We entered data (which isn’t terribly exciting), but also got to go out in the field for a few days and help do some backpack electroshocking. Which was awesome!
We got home on the 1st of the month, and I had an e-mail about ODFW jobs. I ran to campus to talk to our awesome internship coordinator who gave me the contact info for a job out of Corvallis and a job out of Newport. I applied for both, and heard back a couple days later from the guy in Newport. The job sounded awesome, so I said I was interested. Next thing I know I had a job.

So on Monday I will be heading over to Newport, and we will be driving down to Florence. A few weeks in Florence doing fish passage surveys, and camping for free at the state park. After that is up I will head back to Newport and stay at Hatfield (at no cost to myself), and work there for the rest of the summer. I am psyched!

So that is the drama of the past month. It worked out well, as it always seems to do (the spring job situation resolved itself as well). Regardless of the amount of panic I put into it.

I’ve got some other fun stuff coming up this summer. More on that later. I hear a grilled cheese sandwich calling my name!