back from the big city

yup, just got back from the Hawai'i Conservation Conference, which was awesome. Here's a picture from the convention center there. the conference was great, but they kept trying to feed us these wax apples in our lunches. the first day nobody ate them, so the second day the organizers made an "Unwanted Fruit" table. since there were about 900 attendees, there were about 899 apples on that table. shoulda took a picture of that. they were absolutely inedible.

but anyway. there were cool presentations on monk seals foraging (with nat'l geographic video, awesome), baby sea turtles, spinner dolphins.... oh and stuff i'm doing too, bugs and plants and everything. it was all really cool and i got to get a larger view of the kinds of conservation issues HI is facing. the challenges are many, and the obstacles pretty much boil down to a lack of money/interest from the State and Federal governments. huh. fancy that.

oh, and we took a Lexus taxi to the airport with a large and colorful assortment of little buddha figurines on the dash. there were tv screens on the seats in front of us, and the driver talked on her phone nonstop in vietnamese the whole ride.

i've been a very poor blogger lately. this whole work thing really cuts into my blogging time. i'll have to discuss that with my boss. oh wait, but he's gone to FIJI for two weeks. yeah. fiji. bastard. meanwhile, the rest of us are fixing to get back into fieldwork and set up the plots for my project. so i should be losing about 10 pounds in the next month or so. unless i make up for them in mai-tais.

that's it for now. i'll try to be a better blogger, but the problem i think is how infernally boring i've become. i'll work on that too....

up on de big mountain

i just spent 4 days on Mauna Kea, the "most massive" mountain in the world. (It's bigger than Everest, but in contrast to the big E, "only" about 14, 000 feet are above the ocean. The rest is submerged and is weighing heavily on the crust of the earth, which is usually why we have earthquakes here.) It is above 90% of the earth's atmosphere and the stars were amazing, as were the sunsets and sunrises from our cabin just above the first cloud line.

so yeah, we were taking samples of koa in Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, which used to be cattle land and was almost completely grazed until about 22 years ago, when the park service stepped in and started replanting koa, a native tree lots of birds nest in. Many of these birds are endangered or threatened. I saw my first (and second, and third, and...) 'i'iwi! I also saw wild turkeys and heard Urkel's Francolins, who like to get up really early and start yelling at each other. it kind of reminded me of the chickens outside the hotel Chris and I stayed at in Captain Cook.

so this is sunrise:

and this is sunset:

and ha ha, this little piggy has opposable thumbs and the combination to the lock on the gate!

back to the blogosphere

sorry for my absence. a lot has happened since i posted last, and i don't really know where to start. first let me link y'all over to chris's blog so you can see some of the fun stuff we did. (i thought about creating an Identiblog and just cutting and pasting from his site, but that would be Lame.)

the one thing i don't have a picture of is the chameleon my boss found on thursday trying to cross the road! yes, a chameleon. with crazy cone-y eyeballs and sideways feet and the whole chameleon dinosaur weirdness. he puffed up all big and scary when we picked him up, and one of his eyeballs was checking out ppl on his left while the other one was looking for a way out. i wish i could look behind me and in front at the same time. anyway that was the one day i forgot to bring my camera. won't do that again! chameleons, like most things here, are not native, but there is apparently a population of them hanging out in the jungly rainforests.

chris and i did a loop of the island by car and one by little airplane. we went playing in the tidepools and saw urchins and eels and teenage sea turtles and pretty fishies. we also drank lychee martinis (YUM!), ginger-lemongrass vodka with pomegranate juice, and ate our weight in sashimi and poke. y'all got to come down here and try this poke stuff. it is so freeking good. we also drank 'awa, the narcotic tea the hawaiians drank before there was booze, and it got us kinda mellow and giggly. doesn't taste very good, but it's kinda fun.

chris got to experience Hilo's rainy reputation firsthand. it got sunny when he left, but it was kinda miserable the whole time he was in Hilo town. we went to a bar one night and met a young man, quite soused, who explained that he had been depressed from the rain and had gone to check his mail earlier in the day. when he had no mail, he decided to go to the nearest bar and drink seven gin and tonics to make himself feel better. i explained to chris that hawaii attracted a lot of people from the mainland who were trying to get away from something, and chris cannily deduced that the thing they are trying to get away from is themselves. i don't feel like that's what i did, so when i meet ppl like that, i'm like, okay BYE. god bless'm. as blake told me my last night in nawlins, wherever you go, there you are. for some ppl that's no fun, i guess.

then i had to go back to work. we have another intern now, molly, so the boy to girl ratio has decreased and the ladies now outnumber the fellas. this coming week everyone but me, melody, and kulai are going up to Hakalau Forest Refuge to do some fieldwork. the week after that, i get to go! then we'll alternate weeks. that should kick my ass even more than the fieldwork we've been doing. it's halfway up Mauna Kea and very remote. I can't wait to see it! we have to be very careful to check the car and ourselves for seeds, bugs, anything that might establish itself in the virgin forest. shd be interesting. i'll keep you posted.

tourists in kailua-kona

Road Trip!

yesterday chris and i went to Puna. we stopped in at the Painted Church, which i'd never bothered to do before. it's so pretty! look!

today we're headed to waterfalls, up the hamakua coast, north kahala, and then down to captain cook. i'll try to post from there as well.

aloha!

chris is here! chris is here!

i picked him up this morning! he got lei'd and we're having a rainy day eating lots of food from the farmer's market. i think we're about to get all up in some champagne.

sorry i've been outta touch. fieldwork last week kicked my old butt. i was whooped. still lovin it though. yesterday after lunch we had a croquet match in the yard amidst the hydrangeas. gotta love a workplace with a croquet set on the front porch.

hope all's well everywhere. check back for pictures of doodle wearing chris's lei and looking not-very-pleased about it.

first day at work! but first let me say

sharelle, chris, kristcha, beely, and aimee. i didn't make it thru my list on sunday. i'll try y'all on saturday, okay?

first day at work! omg i love it! there's 5 other kids right now:

Justin = sharp as a tack. he is super-funny and we love him. listens to joanna newsom, joni mitchell, elvis, small faces. looks at plant/bug interactions.

Sam = california boy. also extreeemely intelligent and humorful. listens to sunset rubdown, wilco, the mountain goats. looks at parasitoids of caterpillars.

Ben = british chap. listens to bowie, the damned, belle & sebastian, lee "scratch" perry. he's leaving on thursday for PhD in Scotland. we'll miss him.

Melody = from pennsylvania. of some sort of asian descent. surfer girl. gave justin the newsom cd. looks at pollen and native pollinators of native plants.

Kulai = hawaii boy from Volcano, of all places. goes to duke. only met him for a minute. he wears earphones. the only thing i've heard him listen to is crosby, stills, nash & young.

Bob = bossman. encourages free-thinking, going off on tangents, listens to everyone as peers. this lab is known to have Very Low Turnover because of the think-tank atmosphere he engenders. a rare boss indeed.

this is really really cool. the boss went home early today and the kids were just as productive a bunch as i have ever seen, constantly batting ideas back and forth. this is gonna be a great experience for me as soon as i get up to speed. i'm reading a lot and asking a lot of questions but i feel like the new kid at school for sure. we're getting a new intern tomorrow, emily. then in another week Molly arrives. i'll keep y'all posted, but this is gonna be fun! tomorrow we do fieldwork, yay!