Greg and Kat's blog

I haven’t blogged for a week, but there isn’t really much to say. But, here goes anyways.

We’ve been working on getting the log cabin neat and tidy and Sunday we had incentive. We had the Sockman and Burmeister labs over for dinner. Actually, is was only half the Burmeister lab as 2 of the women are in Panama doing fieldwork, and their tech and her husband couldn’t make it. Lucky for us, as I’m not sure there’s enough room for both full labs. Anyways, Greg made salmon with onions, dill, and lemon; garlic mashed potatoes; steamed green beans and strawberry-blueberry compote to go over ice cream. All went well, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. They also all seem to like the quirkiness that is my new home, so that’s nice.

Speaking of the new home, the pictures of the fully furnished log cabin are now up in the gallery. I’m still working out (with Suyoko) what the color scheme should be, so the sky blue futon cover will soon be gone, and all three of the white bookcases will have fabric hanging in front of them. Just have to figure out what kind of fabric. It’s slightly difficult to “design” the log cabin because all of the furniture was handed down to us from the people we subletted our old place from or found near (but not in!) dumpsters. So, of course, nothing matches. But, I’m working on that.

On the science side, I’m working on my NIH proposal to get funding for the rest of my post-doc. If I don’t get any $$ in this round, I may be coming home sooner than expected! Last year I was running around frantically trying to get reference letters because one of my committee members was on vacation and didn’t leave a letter before he left, and the other had written a letter but didn’t inform me that she had sent it, and then promptly left for a conference where she was incommunicado for a week. Luckily both Jim and Francois (old members of the Williams lab who now have spectacular positions at Max-Planck Institute for Ornithology and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research) wrote me letters at the last minute. This year I was prepared. I wrote to people early. Unfortunately I again missed Norbert, who again went to Germany. But, no worries, it was still early enough to contact Jim and Marilyn (one of my undergraduate project supervisors) to write me letters. Whew! Everyone had sent their letters out. I was calm. But that didn’t last long. To date, I have only received 3 of the 4 letters. The remaining one is Tony’s, my PhD supervisor, making this letter the most important one! Funnily enough, he was the first one to mail his letter on July 11. It is now August 1, and I still don’t have his letter. So, yet again, I was freaking out over reference letters getting in on time. This year, Oliver and Emily are the lifesavers as they are FexExing me a copy of the letter. Craziness! At least there’s still time for FedEx!

Catching birds is also not going well. I think for some reason there are no more HOFIs in Chapel Hill. Well, at least none around my traps! So, I’ve packed up my feeders at the one site I’ve been catching at and will move them to the original site that is closer to the department. Today is Adam’s last day, so I won’t have anyone to help me haul the traps out. So, being closer to the department will mean that I can still try to catch on my own until mid-August. But, the birds I do have are doing well. The conjunctivitis ones are getting better, and no new cases have developed. Yea!

New bites: 10 (including another one on my face which I think I got from a mosquito in my office). Total summer bite count: 63.