Frazzled April into Glimmering May

Well….     2 months without a blip, a blurb, so much as a noun.  Not that I’m in high demand, but my psyche misses it.  My immediate circumstances leave me with good intentions of talking about the rhubarb I have marinating in grapefruit juice/rinds and sugar for jam, or the pies, or our lovely garden that is sprouting green beans and raspberries and lettuce, but alas….I’m knee deep – or neck-deep, bogged down and mired is more like it – in prep for field work:  it is taking over my brain.  It is almost as if there is no end in sight, though I know that is not true.  A new project is in the works and it is a monster. NSF has kindly given us 1.2-ish million dollars to discover some things over the next few years, and we are feverishly prepping to lay the ground-work for it.  We’ve said we’d do quite a bit.  More than what most of us argued we could do, from the get-go, but it turns out writing mentality and implementing mentality are two very different things.  Arguing about minutia and dribs and drabs when no one wants, or has time, to focus on such slop is not how I would have liked to move forward.  Thankfully, I hope and think we are past that and onto making it all happen.  The truck leaves in 11 days.  Even if we wanted to, we have no more time.

Long term, we are at a point where I am not worried.  The sites will be set up.  The research will be accomplished with our normal grace and skill, and it will be good.    

If you’ve never set up a million dollar research project in the middle of nowhere, I assure you, expenditures are front-end heavy.  We are currently $4 million deep in projects up there, so this is nothing new, but we are ramping.  We have a lot going on.  I just received a quote for 700 rough-hewn 2x6x10’s that need to be delivered to gps coordinate-identified spots and then we will tromp the lumber into wetlands, cut it with chain saws, and nail it together into plots which are spread across central/northern Alberta (a feat that will be mostly accomplished by variously-skilled and patiently-taught (hopefully) graduate and undergraduate students… ).  I have bought $7000 in weather stations….  Thousands of dollars in electrical bear fence supplies….  You don’t want to know how much pvc of all sizes…  over 3000 crank wires… 200 plastic buckets…  temperature buttons, temperature probes, hand-held thermometers…  DI water…. Gas standards…  bags, bottles, books…. oh my.  The list is growing and this isn’t even the half of it.   

So, a big sigh.  I’m just now seeing a glimmer before the next real-life-make-it-happen-obstacle slams me in the head.  Wish us all luck.  If you care to follow our adventures this summer, I have set up a blog for the research group to share their thoughts (http://55parallel.blogspot.com/).  We shall see how it goes, and hopefully the group will be posting some fun things over the field season for what is probably Meanook’s last hoorah (sad, so sad).  I’ll try to keep up, as well.  You’ll find me in Alberta soon.   For now, the garden really does grow, and the Peony in my backyard just started blooming today.  The bats are back, and spring is manifest in many many ways.  I will strive for non-work before the work takes over in a few weeks again, in earnest.