more than half way!!!

Time passes really oddly while on a boat.  No one knows what day it is, what month it is, only when the next meal is.  Someone told me yesterday that we made it to the hump part of the cruise, and I didn't know what to think....wait, it's only half way?! yessss, it's already hallfff way!!!! oh shit, did I pack enough supplies for a whole other half of this cruise!?  were the basic thoughts that were swimming around up there....my days are spent filtering, dodging things the res tech throws at me (will explain later), filtering some more, hopefully sneaking out to play some hockey, and then titrating or running the spec - oh and then hot tubbing it at night.  Somehow, even on this cruise, I give the impression that I'm always smiling - so people are expecting that from me and things are getting a little more fun.  There's a lot more joking and fun boat games, and just all around fun.  At this point of the cruise, people will start to go crazy if you don't have fun while working.  Take the res tech for example, his fun is throwing different objects at me to see if my goalie reflects will let me dodge, dip, duck , dive, or dodge from the projectiles or if I'll just try to block them....I've been trying to block everything, which gets a little dangerous when he starts throwing fishing hooks at me...

hockey on a boat???? maybbeeee....

This has been a really hard cruise for me, and I haven't been as happy as I usually am on a boat.  There's another hockey player here though and she made herself a hockey stick out of plastic pipe with a metal plate for a blade - once she heard I was a goalie of course.  At first I strapped some pads we used for shipping scientific equipment to my legs and that worked amazingly....but then I realized that if I kept playing with them, they would be of no use for sending the scientific equipment back - I know, so responsible of myself, right?!  So instead I just grabbed some of the crew's extra pair of knee pads and am currently strapping those to my legs, so I can semi-butterfly....yeeaaa    BUT it's good to at least get back into the hockey motions, and it's been taking my mind off of more annoying, depressing, cloud of doom that never seems to disappear - it hides for some amount of time, but it always rears it's face up when I least expect it (now I'm always ready for it)....The science is going well, we are getting some good data, my days are very long....but hockey is good :) oooh, also, I'm making shrinking cups if anyone wants one and the store is gonna be open soon if someone wants a t-shirt...let me know

all quiet on the science front....

So we have steady schedule going, and this cruise is going to be a rough one.  We have a cast at 7:00 every morning, where we have to rush and get the water so we don't miss breakfast.  Then we filter until a little after lunch, which I have to take a break to help my boss deploy the spectroradiometer  (a kinda missile looking thing that gives us characteristics of the water).  After filtering we spend the rest of the day processing the samples from the day before.  I've been spending this time on the oxygen titrator everyday, because for some reason one of my bosses doesn't feel comfortable letting anyone else run "her" samples - and that takes me to dinner.  Every other night we are sampling from an incubation experiment that we are running, which means we get "free time" every other night - at this point we are so tired that our free time turns into an early bed time...speaking of which, I need to get up in 6 hours - time to go!
I'll try to give more details of the other aspects of the ship, and pictures tomorrow during my beloved (and hopefully existent) free time.....

avoid and conquer

We are kind of on a schedule now, half of our day will be spent filtering while the other half is spent processing the filters and water samples we've taken for Oxygen. This means I'm either sitting at the fluorometer reading my kindle or at the oxygen titrator reading my kindle. Either way it's a mindless activity., and I'm going to have very little time to go out in the sun - so much for being more tan than everyone else when I got back (I should have known that would never happen...). There are times during the day when things get a little tense in my lab, and the people working around us have been amazing. There are definitely people on this ship that are making this cruise bearable....and did I mention the food is ammaazzziiinngggg - sooooo goood. We had chinese yesterday, mexican today...the food is definitely making me happy. Oh also, forgot to mention that I can't skype this trip because they changed the rules so that only head scientists can get internet on their laptops, sorry mom.
We were supposed to go to Brazilian waters on this cruise, but their government won't let us so we won't be able to take samples at the mouth of the Amazon River - which was one of the main goals of this cruise. Funny how science works.....Instead we are sampling the line as close as we can get and trying to get an understanding of the waters coming from that area. That is all for now, I started taking some pictures but I'm not gonna post them until they seem worth it...so your just gonna have to wait a little longer :P

I'm gonna be a vet

There are somethings on this cruise that are really pushing me to going back to school sooner than later. I'm gonna try to be a vet, because apparently I'm too arrogant to be a marine biologist. Oh, and I don't know anything.....

We are doing a lot during this cruise. We are filtering at least 80 Liters of water - i.e. cleaning the ocean one liter at a time. And actually processing more than half of it - which we normally bring home. This cruise is going to be an exhausting one...that is all.

Where I felt like I got into a fight with a sumo wrestler last post, I now feel like a sumo wrestler sat on my head or beat my emotions out of me.....it's only day 4

sooo tirreeddd...and we JUST left port

It's so nice to be back on the Melville! The food is amazing, the crew are awesome, there is so much space, and I actually know what I'm doing! These last two days I was able to answer questions people asked me about how, when, and what I'm doing this cruise. I have two girls working with me so I've been teaching them everything we're gonna be doing, and so grateful that we're going to have these extra hands. Of course more hands means my boss can assign our group more work, which he did, but it would have been hell trying to do this all with just me and my two bosses. I don't know what it is about this cruise though, I'm more exhausted after these two days than I've been on any part of any of my cruises....
Last night was the final night on land before the science begins, which means everyone tried to drink more than their month and a half worth of alcohol. As with all the cruises, this is when the science party actually meets each other and the "I'm smarter than you" walls come down. It's pretty much the same way every time: the casual where are you from conversations (1st round), little more deep what got you into this field (2nd and third round), the laughing and story telling of previous cruises (4th round), dancing - or at least what you call it when scientists try to dance (what round are we on now??), and then the last and most interesting part of the night --> drunken scientists in the process of making their funny stories for future cruises. This is when I hiked my skort up to make them shorts so we could go swimming in the ocean and hop from speed boat to speed boat anchored on that shore.....needless to say my body looks like I got into a wrestling match with a sumo wrestler. There is more to this story, but I'm falling asleep typing this sooo you'll have to ask me about it later in life :) nighty night

Welcome to Barbados!

Just got into Barbados, and surprisingly I have no complaints from the travels coming here. Everything went amazingly smooth (and with that comment I just jinxed the next three days of set up...)! As I'm travelling to more and more places they are all starting to fuse into one, especially here. As we drove in the taxi to the hotel (which was also very uneventful - thank God!) every house reminded me of the different places I've been. There were small pink houses that reminded me of Costa Rica, there were outdoor bars and dives that reminded me of India, and there was even a house that reminded me of my old grandmother's house....I think that means I'm becoming cultured?!?!?!?!?

This is the one and only night we're on land, and then we're sleeping on the Melville (the boat I had my first cruise on in Costa Rica) for a very longggg time. We'll be in port for the next two days setting up, which means all our meals will be on land so I'll be able to stretch my legs...and then the fun begins! OK, it's way passed my bedtime.....pictures, complaining, adventures, shit show that is me all to come in the future!