Last Friday I turned 27, and got to celebrate with my new friends in North Dakota! I woke up to a banner and flowers in front of my door (the flowers in a homemade wooden "vase"), and happy birthdays all around (well, there are only two other people here...). I didn't do much during the day, watched "Iron Lady" (interesting movie), and then got ready to go to Fargo. We were meeting Anna and Pete (quite the character, both very fun to hang out with) for Indian food! I've been wanting Indian food since I got the ND, but when we go out for lunch on Sundays with the native North Dakotans, Indian is not an option (their mouths could not handle the spice). The food turned out to be amazing, and our server overheard that it was my birthday and brought out a delicious cake for all of us! We went for drinks afterward at a nice, uncrowded pub. It was another great birthday.
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| Not a very good photo, but this is what I woke up to! |
It's now July 12, and I am almost done with the work I was assigned for the summer. I have 5 veg transects left to do in Bjugstad, which will take about 2 hours. That means I am going to be making much less money than I had hoped! I rarely made it to 40 hours a week for the first part of the summer, and even still have enough time to go home for a week. Does this mean I can ask my boss for a retroactive raise, since I was so efficient? I don't know...I always say it doesn't hurt to ask!
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| Bluestem, a very important grass in the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. |
When my boss found out I was so ahead of schedule, she did mention another project I could do. I would go to each point count and determine the "ecological site" at that count, which is based on the soil type found at the site. However, point counts cover a large area (>200m radius) and "ecological sites" can change very rapidly here, and each point count could include many different eco sites. So, I'm not sure if I will end up doing the necessary soil sampling, but perhaps I will have some other classification to do when I return to Brown Ranch.
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| Neato caterpillar I saw one morning! |
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| Monarch caterpillar on Milkweed. |
On Monday and Tuesday I drove to Lincoln (and back!) to find an apartment to live in during my PhD (and one that hopefully I can spend four years in so I won't have to move). I found a nice place, on Apple Street, which is within walking distance of Hardin Hall, where most of my classes will be. The first couple places I looked at were not very nice, and I started to get discouraged, but then Nancy (my agent) said "the last one on Apple is pretty quaint", I wasn't sure if she meant quaint in a good way, but my ears perked up! The first-floor apartment I looked at hardwood floors, a decent kitchen (although a bit out of date), a decent bathroom, and two bedrooms. I liked that it had big windows and a good sized living room (and didn't feel like a jail cell, like the others did). So I put in an application for a second floor apartment (I think I'll feel safer on the second floor), and today got the e-mail that I was approved. Yay!
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| Back of my apartment building! |
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Jones' grocery store, too bad they're closing because they even
had good grammar! |
After doing veg transects today I decided to take the scenic route home past Pigeon Point...I ended up getting lost and drove twice as many miles as I normally would have for the Bjugstad pasture (60 miles instead of 30), and got to visit the booming town of Sheldon (actually was larger than most towns around here). I stopped and asked some guys working on telephone lines how to get back to the highway, and they didn't even know! But I stopped another older gentleman in his car and got directions to the way out. Phew! It's not fun getting lost in the grasslands!
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| A truck filling with grain in Sheldon, ND. |
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