Sandy, Stress and Sunny skies

Well, I have to admit, I was KINDA right about Sandy. I mean, it is wreaking havoc in the US right now, and in Toronto someone was even killed by a sign that blew down. But in Kingston at least, it wasn't that bad. Sandy did prevent me from sleeping a few times. It sounded like there was an airplane outside the window most of the night, but the power never went out, we got minimal rain (compared to other spots in Ont) and there doesn't seem like there was too, too much damaged caused here. That being said, I am glad the US especially took those precautions in NY, etc. and hope that things turn up there soon.

The sky outside as I wait for the bus. Looks
like a fire in the horizon.

The view out the window at my desk at 8:30AM. Wait.. what hurricane?

I had the first mental breakdown of my PhD yesterday. It was a classic, so much work, no idea what I am doing, my ideas suck...dear God someone help me type breakdown. I recovered I think for the most part. Lost some sleep over it, but back at it again today. A little stressed still but will just keep going. Worked HARD on my lit review yesterday afternoon, post-breakdown, so that was a good sign. And I also got here early (like pre-8AM) today in an attempt to get as much done before noon as I can. I am wasting some time blogging because I a) needed a break and b) our weekly coffee time is in 15 minutes. I guess, one would think, that weekly coffee time is a break, but I think I needed a pre-break, break. You follow?

I turn 24 tomorrow.. Pretty crazy that I've been on this crazy earth, living this crazy life for 24 craaaaazy years. It's a little depressing, but it's a good indication that real life will begin soon, which I suppose is also a little terrifying.


Anyways, that's all for today, I must go be productive. Here are a few pics of my cooking Extravaganza on Sunday!

My chicken/vegetables invention before

and after!

Beginnings of chicken soup

Beef Bulgogi...mmmmm mmmmm

Sandy

The TV, the radio, the newspapers, even the conversation at the bus stops is all about Hurricane Sandy. For the whole weekend people have been preparing for this, and the entire time I have been super skeptical. And I think that given the way the last few "storms of the century" have panned out, I am wise to be skeptical. New York and the Eastern US/Canada are taking serious precautions. I saw news articles that showed them sand bagging the outside of the NYSE and that transit in New York has been shut down. Monday was supposed to be the worst day that Ontario would feel, and it has not close to delivered yet... but "tonight" everyone says.

As the day has progressed I can see the effects of Sandy coming into play:

a) It is absolutely FREEZING outside. The current temperature in Kingston is 9 and feels like 5. That's not too crazy, but given the temperatures in the past week with 17 and 18 degrees it is definitely different.
b) The sky is grey, can't see clouds or anything. Just pure grey. And miserable looking.
c) It has rained ALL day... not the torrential downpour...just constant light rain and mist
d) It is WINDY out.

I am looking out the window in the lab and it looks like a classic fall day in Southern Ontario. Just blah. Although I have remained skeptical of this storm the entire time, I have the strangest feeling it will prove me wrong. I shut all of my windows before I left today. I had them propped up and open a bit for the past month... it never rains inside my apt. Well, I wasn't taking any chances and I ALWAYS take chances. I suppose we will see tonight.


I feel SUPER behind in my literature reviews, I better get going on that.

Some more photos

Nice day in the park. View from the Elevator in BioSci building

vines climbing the buildings are sooo pretty

"angel with fur" as my Mom called him

Lazy days

Love

The key to success

I woke up at 7:30 A.M. and I think I would have rather been dead than awake. Somehow I managed to pull it together. Today I tutored allllll day long at the library, and did some prep for the course I am teaching Monday night. It was exhausting. I don't think I have an ounce of energy left to do anything today. Tomorrow, I was hoping to get into the field, but Hurricane Sandy is wreaking havoc across the Northeastern US and the tail end is hitting us here I guess. That complicates things a bit. So hopefully that means instead that I can get to the gym and KHS! I haven' been in 7 days (yes, another broken October goal) and I am excited to go!


Now, on to what I actually wanted to blog about. The key to success. I have taken a real interest in the blogosphere these past few months. I first learned about blogging in a communications course I took and the professor spoke really highly of blogging. He said that it was a great tool for scientists to use. Anyways, I came across a great blog called Study Hacks: decoding patterns of success. I wrote about this blog, written by Cal Newport, in my last post as well. I went back through his blog archives and read years worth of his posts. He is a very talented guy. One of his older blogs was about how to succeed in your field. He suggested, find someone who is exactly what you want to be, and do what they do. I couldn't think of anyone. I had read this blog on Thursday morning and then at 12:30 on Thursday was the weekly EEB seminar. On Thursday it was given by Dr. John Smol (probably the most renowned scientist in the department). After that seminar, I knew who I wanted to be like . . .  him! He is amazing. He is very well-known as a teacher, students rave about him. His research is relevant and interesting, all about climate change and paeleolimnology. I went to his website, and was shocked with the sheer number of awards he has one, books he has written, and everything else. He is a Canada Research Chair, has done over 700 conference presentations and in his 25 years at Queen's brought in over 15 million dollars of funding. Importantly, he is passionate, a down-to-earth-guy and  clearly loves what he does. He is everything every academic would want to be.

I guess, according to Cal at least, I need to figure out HOW he did that. That's the hard part. I guess he did his PhD at Queen's. That's one thing in common. His research is waaaay more important, and well-funded than mine. I guess we'll see how it goes...as is with everything. More research to do!

Yawn. No idea what to call this.

Campus trees, looking good!

I just came back to the lab from one of the seminars I am taking for the professional development certificate. It was about research methods. And it was the most boring thing I have ever been to. I, for the most part, have enjoyed my time in these seminars. Most of the topics I have been to so far have been very cross-discipline, in that, people would share their experiences from their own backgrounds (which are all very different) and then the presenter would apply their knowledge to the individual situations. Also, a lot of the topics, generation gaps, assessment, etc. have broader applications to all areas of study. Today's seminar was about using the library's online tools to find information. And it was hard. Everyone has a different way of researching, there is no right or wrong. That being said, it was tough to gain anything out of the experience because it was SO broad. Also, I was one of two PhD students there, the rest are all starting their MSc degrees, so that puts me on a different level of research experience, at least in my opinion. I have done all of this before, and was looking for new tips or tricks to improve my methods, but time didn't really allow. It was good to see some of the other students benefit from it. In the end, this will be written off as a seminar I attended simply to go towards my certificate. I don't like that, because I like to get something out of going, but so is life.

Today I also managed to work pretty productively, and read many papers (on paper, not the computer). I am exhausted today though, and all I can think about is heading home for some dinner! I think I will make beef bulgogi but with a twist. Will probably post pics because I have nothing better to do apparently!

Some other random photos:

My new tackle box/bag

What my new tackle box/bag will be used for!

The sweet and sour meatballs I made for our Elbow Lake potluck

Somehow, 40 huge meatballs fit into these two pots, with sauce.
They were SO good. 

My new favourite drink! It made making meat balls at
11PM bearable. 

My productivity for the day. SO many papers. This is like 0.0001% of them

My newly organized book shelves... I did this BEFORE
my procrastination blog thank you very much.

Beautiful colours all over the campus buildings.

I'll do it later

I feel like my posts have been few and far between in the past little while because that's how my sanity has been too. I also feel like my posts always begin with, or at least mention, something to do with me being busy. Yes, I am busy. I am ALWAYS doing something. Today was my first full day in the lab this week, which was nice for a change. The past few days have been all over the place. I am all about routines, and getting into one, but I find that I am struggling to do that this year. It is nearing the end of October, and I thought, I wonder how my goals have been going?  Those of you avid blog readers may remember I set some goals way back at the beginning of October. I can say with confidence, that I met NONE of them thus far, and in one weeks time, on the last day of October, I won't have met any of them still. Today was fairly productive in that I did read through several papers for my big competitive ability review. That being said, I probably could have easily doubled or tripled the number I did read, if I was capable of reading more efficiently and focusing. Focusing is a big thing for me. I will sit down to accomplish something and end up wasting half of the time just surfing the net, or literally staring into space. Another issue is that as I read papers, I zone out, and suddenly realize I just read a paper, and couldn't tell you a thing that happened in it. When I am less productive than I anticipate, I just say that I will finish my work at home, and then never do.


Why do I do this? How do I do it?


Here are some ideas I am going to test out:

• Not reading articles on the computer, and physically closing the laptop when I am trying to read. Hand  in hand with this is putting the cell phone away. 
• No work is done, unless it's done at my desk, in my office. It never happens anywhere else, so why do I expect that to change? 
• Working in a clean environment. When I get stressed, I get messy. I leave things everywhere. If you saw my apartment right now, you would die, same with my desk. Then what happens is as I attempt to do work, I think, I could clean instead, and off I go. It's a vicious cycle. 

I totally realize I am not the only person who does this. Procrastination  distraction is pretty much ingrained in our culture, especially younger people. It really got me thinking about procrastination from any evolutionary stand point? Why do we wait until the last minute, when we know that isn't the right thing to do? Studies have shown that the longer you wait to do something, the lower the quality it will end up being, especially for students, but again, we keep on doing it. 

I just procrastinated in finishing this post, and  I came across a really interesting blog post on Study Hacks called "the procrastinating caveman". It argues that a common reason for putting things off, or procrastinating, is that our brains don't believe our plans. They say that our brains have evolved to evaluate the plans that we make and then assess them and decide to accept or reject them. They use the example of a student that knows they should be studying for an exam, and they aren't. Why is this? It's because they don't really have a good, solid plan. Maybe their plan is to spend all night studying, but their brain will reject that plan as not sound and thus, they put off doing it. I thought this was super interesting. Check out the link I embedded as the whole post offers way more than I summarized here. 

So I guess on that note I should go make a solid plan of attack...maybe later. 

What a weekend!

I had a pretty fun time at the Elbow Lake weekend. Campfire, potluck dinner and board games (I won 3 out of the 4 I played - Yahtzee, Pictionary, Apples to Apples and Cranium (lost at this one). Was fun, but am EXHAUSTED now.

Elbow Lake Environmental Education centre is a property about 40 minutes North of Kingston and came about as the result of an agreement between the Queen's University Biology Station (QUBS) and the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The Nature Conservancy bought the property from Hewlett Packard and recently, due to a 700,000$ anonymous donation to the Biology Department, Queen's was able to purchase the rest of the property, meaning the 3.5 million dollar property is now fully owned by QUBS. It is beautiful there! I had never been but WOW, is it ever nice. A lot nicer than the QUBS facilities I can admit. The photos I took there are below. The site to check out is: http://elbowlakecentre.ca/index.php

Elbow Lake

Fire pit and behind that, the game house with a ping pong table

Sunset at Elbow Lake

Cute little cabins

Cabin

Main lodge

View from the lodge

Now I am beat! I was in the field on Saturday and went to KHS before the field. I can't say I have had a productive weekend per se, but I did DO a lot.

LOVE this guy. 

FATTEST cat ever!!! But he's SOOOOOOOOOOOO nice and
keeps his cage very clean.

Good old pile of kittens

Driving to QUBS

I legit DON'T KNOW where I got this photo! Sporting the
orange coat! Heard SO many gun shots at Elbow Lake.

My apartment is SUCH a mess... I should probably just move. Off to do.. something.

< Enter Random Post Name Here >

I have had a busy past couple of days between work, chores, TV (very important) I feel beat. I guess that's why they call it hump day. Once I get through today it will be better, I hope!

Yesterday was the first Biograds coffee time. Coffee time is at 10AM on Tuesdays in one of the lounges in our building, we make coffee, and tea and have treats as well, yesterday was timbits. Everyone that contributes a dollar can join. It was great and had about 12 people come. A lot of the time was spent planning and talking about our Elbow Lake Retreat which is this weekend.

I had a minor panic attack last night. It was about 11PM and after playing 4 games of Boggle on my phone I figured it was time to turn in. As I tried to fall asleep I thought about random things. I started thinking about Coffee time, and for whatever reason I thought about how one girl said she couldn't go to Elbow Lake...because of her boyfriend's graduation. Then I thought, wait...I know her boyfriend...I think.. I thought he goes here...Why is he graduating this weekend? Graduation is in November. Then I thought, yes, Graduation is November 20th. WAIT this Saturday is OCTOBER 20th! What did I mess up???? I leaped out of bed to my laptop in the living room and went to the registrars website...No.. It said NOVEMBER 20th there. So in the end... I am not sure if a) her boyfriend is NOT graduating from Queen's b) there is a random graduation this weekend at Queen's or c) her boyfriend has the wrong month. Needless to say my heart was racing for awhile after that one.

My new books!

I did a lot yesterday and surprisingly, didn't focus too much on Ecuador, so that was good. This morning I made it to the gym at 7:15 (yay!) and then back to my office for 8:30. I got a lot done this morning, during my office hours, which again, no one came to. My volunteer, Allison, also came for two hours again today (I thought maybe the awful field work day scared her off) and she finished entering nearly ALL of my data! Sooo happy! On the lunch hour I walked to UPS, and picked up not one, two packages from Amazon! Yesterday when I got home from the lab at Noon before heading to the library I had a UPS missed delivery notice. Then when I got home at 9PM last night I had another. I had ordered a book about travelling in Ecuador and the Galapagos the night before but thought that could not possibly be it. But why two? Anyways, when I got there indeed it WAS the travel book... Amazon is SO fast, always, I love them. AND the book "The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary" by Andrew Westoll. I TOTALLY forgot I ordered that on the weekend. This was a book written by a former 537 thesis student at Queen's about his time rehabilitating these abused chimps at Fauna Sanctuary, I read the blurb online and knew I HAD to have this book. I bet it will be amazing, it has one many awards.

I also went to the Farmer's market at Queens (every Wed) and picked up some produce and the lunch special (5 perogies and a cabbage roll for 5$) from the Taste of Russia stand. So delicious. I TOTALLY meant to take a pic-ate it too fast I guess.

Yum! Eggplant, green beans and garlic!

I met with my supervisor but really had no news for him. My progress thus far is sloooow, and I hate it. He doesn't seem to think it's bad but I wish it was better.

With sauce... SO good. I add feta after

I need to learn how to make sweet and sour meatballs for this weekend's Elbow Lake potluck and also will be doing field work on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Blah! Here's a few more photos I haven't posted yet.

My eggplant parmesan, this time with mushrooms,
yellow and green zucchini

Too cute not to post

The leafy vines the climb outside my desk window are sooo red now!

Not much to say

It's 2:12 PM as I begin to write this post. My plan for the morning was to get up and take the 645 bus to the gym, be done at the gym by 8AM (and showered), run over to UPS and get my sister's Xmas gift that has been sitting there for 5 days and then come home, and head to the library, but that didn't happen. In fact, the only thing that did happen was me going to the library for 9. I was up, I swear, before 6:45, but as I lied there, I realized that my original plan wasn't possible, there just wasn't enough time, so instead I did none of it. I will go for a job later this evening and I just made it back from UPS now....My sister better appreciate her gift... It weighs 36 lbs, and I carried it over 6 blocks in a huge awkward box, and the handles on the box are only big enough to fit your fingertips in to. I made it to the parking lot on campus, and since I had the keys to our research van, I just threw it in the back.. I could not make it any further. When I finally put it down, my hands were stuck for a few seconds in the position, and I got a tea at Tim Horton's and nearly spilled it 5 times because I was trembling so badly. I think I am recovering now.

Another gloomy day outside

I want to get to work on my competitive ability review today, but I find it's hard. This project is sooooooooo big. It requires reading literally thousands of papers and reviews super-closely and it's hard to motivate yourself to do something like that. Regardless, I NEED to get going on it. I have no excuse not to work this afternoon and it's getting far into October...its the 15th!!!! I think a huge current motivational issue is the trip... so exciting! And because we are going independently and not on a tour it is going to take a lot of research and planning on our part. We leave in 4 months tomorrow! haha, so far, I know!.I also got my Gilligans Island the complete series today.... I really need some motivation!!! I shall go attempt to work now (after I take my new dvd's out of the box). I may blog about something later....

Unproductive, wet, scared AND excited

This whole weekend has kind of been a whirlwind of ... just everything. I got NOTHING done, with the exception of some field work, but do feel rested enough to start the week now.

Like I mentioned in my last blog, I am going to visit the Galapagos Islands for 5 full days and 2 half days in February. I was so EXCITED alllll of Friday night. There are so many amazing things to see there including: lots of birds including flamingoes, blue footed boobies, darwins finches etc, fish, sharks, giant tortoises, sea lions, rays, penguins, iguanas, lizards and more, and all in their natural habitat. What makes the wildlife in these islands so amazing is that is has evolved in isolation for so long. The islands are part of Ecuador, but are over 1000km off the west coast. We are planning to visit Santa Cruz (the main tourist island) and then one (or both) of Isabella and San Cristobal. You need a guide when in National Park areas of the islands (which is 90%) of the islands, so that's one thing we need to look into, along with accommodations. I had a great day on Saturday morning, I got Starbucks and sat in Chapters for nearly 2 hours looking through travel guides and picture books about the Galapagos, and familiarizing myself with what it will be like there- after all this is my first big trip... my first time outside of the country! We also have to look into getting Hep A and Typhoid fever vaccines, etc. Anyways, after Chapters I went to the mall to check out the 2 days to close Zellers sale (big disappointment) and look at luggage at the bay, and cameras at various stores. I planned on coming home with SOMETHING from the mall... but didn't, except I did come home with a Greek salad, and a wildlife book from Chapters.

I got home that afternoon, and was browsing things online and thought to myself about how safe the Galapagos were. I was happy to learn that it was very safe there, but the mainland of Ecuador was not. In fact, we were flying into a very dangerous city, with more than 12 hour lay overs there, and we will need to get a hotel there the first night. My excitement turned to terror quickly. I decided after probably 4 straight hours of freaking out that, lots of people travel there, and nothing happens if you are cautious and aware of the problems they have there. I feel a bit better now, but I can tell you already that for the 14 hours we are there before the Galapagos, and anytime we are in transit between the airport and hotel in Ecuador, I think I will be holding my breath.

Waiting for the bus to campus...great day
for field work!

After spending a quiet, rainy Saturday night watching teen movies on Netflix, I got up and went to the field with my volunteer this morning. It was very rainy, and miserable, but we needed to go. It was my first time taking the volunteer out and she was amazing, she mostly did recording on the data sheets for me, but in a few plots I would give her a few species to find and count herself. We ended up harvesting almost 4 plots, but even with our plastic covers, the data sheets got soaked and we could no longer write on them so we had to go. The rain soaked through my rain coat, my pants, and my t shirt so I was chilled for a long time after I got home. I have done nothing except some trip research tonight and watched an INCREDIBLE documentary on Beavers, called "Dam Beavers"...clever I thought. 

My old rubber boots, they look sketchy
but they do the job

No more photos please!

It's getting cold

Today I went for a very brisk walk at Lemoine Point, a conservation area in Kingston. It was beautiful. I was kind of surprised how far ahead QUBS leaves are in terms of colour change. I think in another week or so Kingston will catch up. There's a big frost warning tonight and fingers crossssssssed please please don't let that happen. My poor plants! Sunday will HAVE to be one of the last days in the field!

Photos from lemoine

Beautiful day!

Very big, friendly squirrel

Beech!

Meanie photo of the day!

And in other BIG NEWS: I am going to Ecuador in February...the Galapagos Islands!!!! I can't wait to walk on the same ground that Charles Darwin himself walked as he put together the pieces for on the origin of species by means of natural selection... trip planning commences now!!!