zygote daddy

grad school brings out the bad parent in all of us

Oh, I SO know how that feels. That has been my life for months now.

The end of the semester is upon us. I am finally finishing up my dissertation proposal, I have a class presentation on Wednesday I've almost started thinking about, d.w. is trying to salvage a term paper group-written with some appallingly underachieving undergrads, and she's about to put in some very long hours in the studio finishing a mixed-media work for another class.

Oh wait, don't we have a baby at home or something?

Yes, yes we do. And thankfully he plays well by himself. But sometimes the pull of Tivo is simply too much, and we have to put on Sesame Street or March of the Penguins so we can get just a little more work done. And he just loves those damn penguins.

I'm afraid we're bad people. No, I'm confident we're bad people. Next thing you know it'll be Ritalin and behavior modification.

I'll be a good dad when the semester ends. I promise.

[By the way, you might want to check out the latest addition to A Compendium of All Knowledge Related to the Rearing of Offspring. At least if you like reading about diapers.]

the fabulous timberline lodge: a pictorial journey

As promised, a few shots of the beautiful Timberline Lodge:

life in the glorious timberline lodge

Now that the spring semester is finally over, ecology grad students everywhere are fanning out to research sites across the globe in search of fame, fortune, and deadly parasitic infections. For me, this means studying birds in the beautiful rolling prairies of southern Iowa and northern Missouri, where thankfully the parasites are limited to mosquitoes, chiggers, and a diverse array of ticks. And yes, in the the four days since I've been here I have become intimately familiar with all of them.

For the next few weeks I will be living in the glorious Timberline Lodge, overlooking beautiful Lake "The grass is wet...is that a septic tank leaking?!".

Timberline Lodge: a less suitable moniker for this place would be exceedingly difficult. Far from being a "lodge", it is actually a cheaply-constructed addition tacked onto the back of a gun shop (oh, I'm sorry, that's "hunting outfitter") in the little town of Mt. Ayr, Iowa, more than 700 miles from the nearest timberline.

The other researcher staying here thankfully brought a giant fan with her, which we have had going full blast since we arrived, so as not to gag from the overpowering stench of mold emanating from the "bedrooms", really a couple of hastily partitioned sections of a very wet basement. I shouldn't be too down on the place, because after all, there are beds here, with sheets and everything.

Of course, those sheets look like they haven't been washed since 1972. Seriously. I was barely able to bring myself to take them off the bed they were so nasty. And when I did, I decided that I would be better served bringing my own pillows...I really don't want to sleep on something with that much of someone else's blood on it.

I'm guessing it's from bed bug bites. OK, add those to the list of encountered parasites.

At least I can sleep in my sleeping bag, which contains only my own funk. Sure, it's 15 years of funk, but it's somehow not creepy and gross when it's mine. Well, it's a little gross, but at least it's not creepy.

And did I mention the bathroom? Should I? I'll save the gory details, but suffice it to say that I wish I brought shower shoes. And from now on I think I'll leave the lights off. It's just better that way.

Just curious: If you were charging $250 a week (or more than $1000 a month) to rent out your dank basement with a single bare bulb and loose wires descending from the ceiling, wouldn't you at least do a once-over with a sponge? Anyway.

So while I miss d.w. and Chins terribly, I think everyone would agree that having him stay here would not be the most prudent course of action. Especially given his penchant for rolling around naked and stuffing everything within reach into his mouth. We're going to try to spend weekends together, although I have a feeling that means a motel. I should ask the proprietor of the Timberline Lodge if he might know a decent one.

And then again, maybe not.

[Pictures to follow this weekend, when I head back home for Mother's Day (since, you know, I want to have a home to come back to at the end of the summer). Goody goody.]

thrush + overly enthusiastic milk consumption =

...one very unhappy, very purple baby. That's what you get for smooshing your face all around while you eat, buster.

After unending rounds of ineffective prescription meds, we've had to resort to gentian violet, which is what was used "before they invented medicine," in the words of one alarmingly obtuse pharmacist we consulted during our quest for the elusive substance.

Here's a little tidbit the pharmacist probably should have known, and that I only just now found out (but can pretend to be an expert in anyway) thanks to wikipedia: despite its name, gentian violet is made from neither gentians nor violets, but is actually tecnically known as hexamethyl pararosaniline chloride, a rather frightening substance derived from coal tar. Besides being an antifungal agent used with amusing results on the mouths of infants and the nipples of breastfeeding mothers, its main application is in staining bacteria so they can be identified to species.

Ok, now that is a career path in which I can safely say I hold absolutely zero interest: bacteria systematics. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there are people out there classifying bacteria to species. But I'm also glad I'm not one of them.

Now if you'll excuse me, I believe there's some coal tar residue on the ceiling that needs cleaning.

the halloween post

Not much in the way of Halloween festivities this year. During the last day or so d.w. has started having a few contractions, which have been strong enough to be irritating and distracting, but sporatic enough that we know there's a long way to go yet.

Not that Halloween is all that great a holiday between the onset of puberty and when one has children. Our only real Halloween-y option for this year was to get really trashed partying with a bunch of other 20- and 30-something grad students at somebody's house. No thanks. I mean really, isn't that the kind of thing you get over by the time you're, I don't know, 19? Oh well. Maybe I was just born a curmudgeon.

Anyway.

I recently came across a mostly-exposed roll of film (film? What is this thing called "film"?) in d.w.'s old (but really fantastic) SLR. It's always so exciting finding old rolls of film and getting them developed. The days spent speculating and wondering, waiting for the lab to finish it, make the anticipation unbearable by the time you actually see the photos, reliving forgotten memories (or else seeing 36 shots of your garage door, from that time you finally got around to calibrating the light meter several years ago).

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, the negatives I got back contained a few pictures d.w. and I took before leaving for a costume party last year (See? Costumes? Halloween? Get it?). I could lie to you and say that it was a Halloween party, but I won't, and it wasn't. It was better: it was the Friends of Science.

Every year we ecology grad students get together for a night nurturing our inner scientific superhero (or supervillain). Last year d.w. and I partook in the festivities (and I must say I was a little, but only a little, better than d.w. at keeping the camera still...):

   

Meet first the Arboriculture Avenger, leading the charge against bad pruning and other horticultural crimes. Her nemesis is of course Sprawlo ("Paving the planet for Jesus!"). Not sure exactly what our respective superpowers were supposed to be. Maybe we didn't get that far. Most people didn't. I mean, it's hard enough just trying to come up with ideas like the Lepidopterrorist, the Decominatrix, and Semivario-man ("Minimizing nugget variance!"). Trying to figure out logical superpowers is another story entirely. Besides, for a bunch of science nerds this pretty much amounts to our total creative output for the entire year.

d.w. is, of course, the exception. Those art students always are...

Hi, my name's z.d. and I'm an ecology addict.

As I've mentioned (incoherently) before, I'm about to start working on a Ph.D., just as soon as I defend my master's thesis next month. I can't wait to start in on my research, studying the effects of prairie restoration on birds in southern Iowa and northern Missouri. You see, I love spending my days outside. And I love science. Discovering how nature works is like crack to me. Or maybe church. Or a little of both. Either way, ecological research allows me to get my fix while spending a lot of time outside (well, actually I end up spending a lot of time in front of the computer, but that's another story), so what could possibly be the downside, right?

Not so fast, buster. There's a catch. There's always a catch.

In this case, the catch is that I will spend the next three summers away from my dear wife and hatchling (nee zygote). My master's research allowed me to spend my nights at home (actually, I was out in the field every night — But Sweetie, I was just out counting frogs all night! Honest! — so technically I spent my days at home), which I really kind of got used to.

Not this time.

This time around I will spend all of May, June, and July living in a little research station just outside the little town (boy, that's putting it generously) of Kellerton, Iowa (pop. 361). I'm sure I will make it home periodically, being only about 2 hours away. But because field work is a 24/7 job and d.w. will have the car, she and the hatchling will be the ones having to visit me. And I can't imagine the trip would be all that easy for either one of them. So I have no illusions about being home on weekends, despite the seemingly short distance.

So where does this leave us? Well, I suppose it means I'll pretty much miss all of the hatchling's months 7-9, 19-21, and 31-33. I know, I know, hardly "woe is me" territory. But that's not what I'm getting at.

Well actually, it's a little of what I'm getting at.

Here's what I'm really getting at: I can't shake the feeling that I am totally (though temporarily) abandoning my family for pretty selfish reasons. I knew the zygote was on his way when I took this job. I probably could have found something closer to home. But I took this one anyway, and not only out of the (borderline) financial security it affords us for the next few years. I accepted the position because it sounded like a cool project in a beautiful area, selfishly disregarding my responsibility to my new family.

Just one more fix for an ecological crack fiend.

a rather odd scientific meeting

Just a little update while my eyes unglaze from staring at scientific posters the past couple of hours:

It certainly is amusing here right now. In addition to the several thousand ecologists discussing the intracacies of fairy shrimp genetics (among other things), many, many devotees of this guy are also here. And hoo boy, are his flock chipper at 6am.

Whoa. This dude in black spandex just walked by with WAY too much gel in his hair and one of those funny little head-mounted microphones. And now Madonna's "Into the Groove" is blaring from a ballroom down the hall a ways. Of course, it's been Pride Weekend in San Francisco, so that kind of thing really isn't that out of the ordinary right now.

But where was I? Oh yeah: motivational strangeness. So yesterday I had three spandex-encrusted women come up to me while I was very obviously in the middle of working, and they started telling me all about how important it is to follow your passions and never to sell yourself out for the sake of money at the cost of your dreams, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, because nothing says "sellout" like seven years of grad school-induced poverty followed by a lifetime of student loan payments. But whatev'.

dusty and danny

Let me tell you about my job this summer. You know how I have this whole thesis-writing thing going on right now? Well, that doesn't exactly pay the bills. So I've been working as a field technician for another grad student's research while I moonlight as a (behind-schedule) grad student myself.

So anyway, there are two other members of the crew I am on, Dusty and Danny (names changed very slightly, in case of vanity Googling). Well, there's also the grad student whose research it is, but he's a really nice guy who's easy to get along with. In other words, poor blog material.

But Dusty and Danny are a piece of work. I use the singular here because for two 20-year-old guys, they sure are joined at the hip like a couple of middle school girls. They are nice enough. Earnest. A little dim. A little too much of a penchant for chewing tobacco, Mountain Dew, and Slim Jims for my taste, but whatever. There is one thing about Dusty and Danny I have kind of a hard time with, however.

You see, their taste in music sucks. Big time. And driving around in a car together ALL DAY gives us LOTS of time to listen to god-awful music. Most of what they listen to is what I would consider post-teen-angst-poser-rock. Actually, I don't really know what it is. What's really sad is that I'm too old to have heard of most of it. Except for one mix CD that generally comes on at about 3 in the afternoon, just as we're all a little tired of walking through soybean fields counting bugs.

Actually, now that I think about it, the middle school comparison really is fitting. Here it is, what Dusty calls "Rock Classics" and what I call "Dusty's Shittiest, Cheesiest Middle School Dance Mix Ever":

1. Neil Diamond: Sweet Caroline
2. Whitesnake: Is This Love
3. Warrant: Cherry Pie
4. Whitesnake: Here I Go Again
5. Genesis: I Can't Dance
6. Asia: Heat of the Moment
7. Warrant: Heaven
8. Mr. Big: To Be With You [Noooooooooo!!!]
9. Styx: High Enough
10. REO Speedwagon: Can't Fight This Feeling
11. Foreigner: I Want to Know What Love Is
12. REO Speedwagon: Keep on Loving You
13. Quiet Riot: Cum on Feel the Noize
14. Poison: Every Rose Has its Thorn [Because it's just not a middle school dance without it]
15. Phil Collins: In the Air Tonight
16. Michael Bolton: When a Man Loves a Woman [This one, of course, has always sucked big time. And ever since Office Space it has still sucked, but sucked hilariously.]

See what I mean? Can you imagine being subjected to this day after day, sitting in the backseat with Dusty and Danny bopping their heads and doing their best air guitar in the front? I must say, were I not forced to listen to this several times a week, this would totally be my entry for the Shitty Mix Tape Challenge. I don't think I could have come up with one this bad if I tried...

it's a... !

Just kidding.

Not sure yet. Of the sex (not to be confused, of course, with gender — that mutable continuum of self-awareness and self-acualizing-ment-ness-ity, or something), or even of the number, although d.w.'s pretty sure it's only one.

And I didn't realize it, but apparently a mother's intuition has been shown to be the single most accurate predictor of the baby's sex. I'd find out the citation on that, but d.w.'s asleep and she has to get up early to to put those three years of grad school to good use, slaving away for $7.50 an hour looking for bugs in the prairie.

But of course, such is the life of the field technician. The person I hired for my own research last year, a frighteningly brilliant woman already in possession of a master's degree, who had graduated Phi Beta Kappa at Columbia, got paid eight bucks an hour to muck around mosquito-filled, trash-ridden urban cesspools wetlands in the middle of the night.

And did I really just offer you a citation? I've definitely been writing my thesis for too damn long. It has felt like the worst finals week EVER for six months solid. Good thing it'll be over soon.

Speaking of which, sometimes the Onion gets it absolutely dead on...

frogs and pregnancy in the same post? nice.

Please forgive me for blogging about an article published back in September. Pregnancy wasn't exactly on the ol' radar screen back then, you know? OK, now that that's out of the way, let's move on, shall we...

Hold on, first just a little context:

Just about half the world's amphibian species (frogs, salamanders, and caecilians) are in decline because, frankly, they don't take too kindly to all the habitat loss, increased UV radiation, and climate change we throw their way. One of the main culprits to which people have been pointing in recent years has been the fungus Chytridiomycosis, or "chytrid fungus" for short, which has been found in frog populations worldwide. This fungus, which inhibits the uptake of oxygen through the skin, may explain why species are disappearing in what are obstensibly the most pristine of habitats.

Sorry for the Saturday afternoon science lesson. Now on to the post. For real this time.

So I was reading this article today on the BBC News site about the link between frog declines and pregnancy tests. The article stood out, seeing how one does not normally associate frogs and stick-peeing. The third paragraph said this:

In the 1930s, African frogs were exported for use in human pregnancy tests and it is suggested they may have carried a fungal disease with them.

Wait, what?

Did you know about this? This is completely new to me. Do you know what pregnancy tests used to entail? Well, thanks to the good people at the BBC News science desk, I do now.

It wasn't always a game of "Is that a blue line? Well, sort of, but it's more a kind of cool taupe. Does that count?" No, back in the 30's and 40's, a doctor would inject a woman's urine under the skin of a Xenopus laevis, the African clawed frog. If the frog ovulated, you were pregnant.

Wow.

Also, apparently lab-raised frogs weren't good enough, so doctors imported wild frogs from Africa (OK, am I the only one who thinks this might be just a tad bit wasteful? Using wild-caught frogs from southern Africa? There I go again, recontextualizing my own specific moral framework... Bad z.d.! Bad!), and some of these frogs happened to carry the chytrid fungus that has been plaguing amphibians around the globe.

OK, but beside the whole pregnancy-tests-causing-worldwide-extinction angle, I still can't get over the idea of a frog pregnancy test. Can you imagine a frightened, embarrassed teenage guy going to the grocery store and nervously scanning the shelves looking for this?

Actually, I'd probably pay to see that. The box, I mean, not the suffering of others. What kind of person do you think I am?