4 years since college

Katie W and I recently were discussing how long it has been since we graduated from college. (Katie’s comment: “Lindsey, you could have had two bachelor’s degrees by now!”) This made both of us feel very old. (But notice that Katie is even older than me!) It is crazy to think that it has really been over 4 years since I graduated from college. It got me thinking about all the things I have done in the last 4 years. I’ve:

--Driven my car almost 60,000 miles

--Attended over 120 Griffins games

--Set foot in 3 foreign countries and 11 US states (it will be 12 in a few weeks!)

--Taken blood samples from over 1,200 house wrens

--Attended at least 15 weddings…and 4 funerals

--Taught 3 classes at MSU and attended 11

--Bought my first (new) car, couch, cell phone, and adult-sized bed

--Given at least 10 formal talks about my research

--Moved 9 times (although those were all during the first 2 years after college)

--Used 3 different cell phone carriers and 4 phones

--For my wren project: used 249 nest boxes, 6 assistants, 2 pairs of field pants, and one pair of boots

Happy Solstice!

I'm celebrating the official start of summer by celebrating (counter-intuitively) the end of my summer field season! Woohoo! The good thing about starting your field season earlier than everyone else is that you get done earlier than everyone else! This summer I'm ending a little earlier than usual, even for me, because my Jr. labmate Jean is taking over the 2nd brood. Now there is time this summer for me to start writing that pesky little thing called the thesis...

Also, more good news: my PCR is working! I finally figured out what was wrong (only took me 1 1/2 years) and now my lab tech is making progress on getting my nestling blood processed.

The only sad news of the day is that my good friend Katie L left this morning for her new job (and new husband!) in California. I will miss her a lot. :(

New Phone!

Fyi, my replacement phone has arrived, and I can now contact the world again! :)

My phone is broken...

...so if you need to contact me please use email. Luckily, I got my phone 356 days ago and it has a 1 year warranty, so they are sending me a new one which should arrive in a few days. I feel so out of contact with the world...how did we survive without cell phones? ;)

Fun name link

http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

I'm not expecting a baby anytime soon, but this website has a really fun interactive graph that shows the popularity of different names over time. (It goes as far back as the 1880s.) You can look at a specific name or parts of a name (for example all the names that start with Li" and you can look at each gender separately or together. I wasted way too much time playing around with it just looking at all the cool trends. :) For instance, the name Jessica had a peak in popularity around the time I was born but has since died off while Emma was popular around the turn of the century, almost disappeared for a while, and now is really popular again.

(Yes I am a nerd.)

Isis' big adventure

I arrived home from the office today to find the screen from my window lying on the grass. Since nothing in the house was missing, it suggested to me that someone had broken out, not broken in. That's right, Isis staged a jail break! I was so worried for her, but luckily about an hour after I got home I saw her stalking around in the backyard. I grabbed some treats and called her to me and amazingly she came! I brought her back into the house safe and sound! Now she keeps sitting by the window and crying though...she wants me to let her back out! I wonder what exciting things she did during her few hours of freedom.