"what is vee oh el es?"

i have finally had the opportunity to participate in one of the most essential cultural activities of eastern tennessee. yesterday, i went to a UT football game!

that is, university of tennessee-knoxville. mark, my mentor, texted me late on friday night to let me know he had a couple of free tickets. some people were planning on going hiking in the smokies yesterday, and i really wanted to go with, but i decided that the game was more important. and i'm glad i went. it was fun, and i've never fucking seen so many people dressed in orange ever.

UT also has an unnecessary number of mascots. the main (maybe?) one is a dog named smokey, so they had two smokey mascots, but they also brought out a real live dog at the beginning. then there was some guy in a daniel boone outfit. and then, they call themselves the vols, which is short for volunteers. tennessee is called "the volunteer state" because a bunch of tennesseans volunteered their services at the battle of alamo. so bizarre.

the game was also unexpectedly exciting. they were playing against university of alabama-birmingham, a smaller state school with a so-so football team, so UT was supposed to have it in the bag. well, by the end of the third quarter they were tied! they ended up going into double overtime, but UT won it.

friday night, a bunch of people ended up going out to eat at a restaurant in knoxville called hong kong house. some of the chinese students had already been planning on going there because it has legit authentic chinese food. they even had a section on their menu called "american chinese food", haha. the food was quite tasty, but fuck chopsticks dude. afterwards some of us went to a pretty classy bar. apparently, you don't have to be 21 to go to most of the bars in TN, except for the smoking bars. which makes no sense.

new york times, baby!

this is the most exciting lovely thing that's happened to me yet.

we have a sister lab in washington state that's currently working on the same issues as us, the potential effects of hydrokinetic devices. mark has mentioned them several times and he may be a bit envious of their $40,000 (!!!) electromagnet.

so today he sent me an email with this link.

the article is about our sister lab, but if you make it all the way to the 11th paragraph, there we are!

skeeeee, i was so stoked when i read this. because it means that stuff i'm working on, at least stuff that's like what i'm working on, is worthy of an article on the nyt website!

i wrapped up my minnow experiment last thursday. basically, this experiment consisted of putting our newest permanent magnets (which are 2x as thick as the old ones and therefore the magnetic fields are 2x as strong) under three fish tanks, and setting up three more tanks in a similar fashion but sans magnet, and putting a fathead minnow in each. then i recorded the location of the minnows every 5 minutes. we wanted to see if the magnetic field in the experimental tanks would cause the minnows to be distributed differently than the minnows in the control tanks.

since then i've finished collecting all of the location data and have concluded that the minnows don't give a shit about the magnets. just like the snails didn't. which isn't so surprising.

hopefully i'll get to start experiments with an electromagnet soon. we are hypothesizing that the electromagnet, which produces an AC magnetic field, will actually affect the distribution of aquatic organisms. unlike the permanent magnets with their DC field.

and glenn may have found a suitable electromagnet (maybe). some company in chicago sells demagnetizers that produce AC fields and won't overheat when left on for 24 hours a day. they are also of a decent size and not prohibitively expensive. looks promising!

i like how "not prohibitively expensive" is $1,000. wayne and joann, the stockroom workers at LU, would flip shit at how readily the lab spends money. it's crazy.

also, nine of us aquatics people went barge electrofishing at a reference site called brushy fork last friday. it was suh-weet! electrofishing is like a treasure hunt. it was also nice to get outside and wade in a creek after spending all week in the lab, staring at a computer monitor for hours on end.

as for the social side of things, everyone in the ORSS program but one kid went whitewater rafting this weekend. we went on the ocoee river, which is a gorgeous, fairly wild river. most of the rapids we went down were class 2-4. nice nice. it was a pretty busy section of river, though, because several raft companies use that section. also, some guy in another raft, but from our same company, fell out and ended up breaking his leg. i saw the blood, dude. so we sort of had to chill out and wait for him to get to safety.

after rafting, which i think everyone enjoyed, we went and had a late dinner at a nearby restaurant called good fellas. in GEORGIA. yeah. we were in another state. it was a super fun dinner though. i think everyone is really starting to gel. we've started to have legit conversations, not those canned, script-like conversations that we started out with. gossip has also begun to occur, another good sign.

good. great. awesome. pics soon hopefully. my camera cord seems to have hidden itself, boo. i did finally give up on my damn iphone and i went and ordered a new one at at&t today. i can't fucking live without a smartphone these days. i almost couldn't even find the at&t store without mine!

pewpewpewpewpew

the titles of all my posts suck. i'm sorry for that. i just can't ever think of anything besides the weird noises and phrases i use. this time it's lasers! yoohoooo! (i'm just seducing guerin is all)

there was some lady in the lab today filming one of the projects. i think it was for a local news channel? i don't know. i just met the main guy working on the project (officially) today, though. he's another mark. there are like six marks in the aquatics building or some shit.

his project is really cool though! a couple of years ago, the kingston coal plant (which is near here) broke and released a ridiculous amount of fly ash. fly ash is bad shit. it's one of the byproducts of coal power and it's full of heavy metals and toxins. this fly ash got into one of the water ways. because there's so much crap in the ash, one would assume that it's fucking up the aquatic system of the water way. that's not the cool part though.

mark has been exposing fathead minnows to fly ash and seeing the effects of ash on their reproduction. he collects minnow eggs and records the number and qualities of eggs and compares them to the eggs of normal fathead minnows. i heard him talking to logan about some of the logistics of their project, and it seems super interesting! /geek out

i'm using fathead minnows for my current project too. apparently they're the "white mice" of aquatics research, which i did not know. they're cute little fish, but super skittish. every time i go near my tank of minnows, they all spaz out like crazy.

unfortunately, they're not all that smart either. one of mine got caught in a metal mesh and ripped a big hole in his side. i didn't really know what to do with the poor guy, so i asked one of the lab techs and she promptly fed him to a bigger fish. and that was that.

today was a bit terrible. i fucked up on a couple of things with my experiment, although i managed to fix the problems i had caused. it was just disappointing, is all. and i'm getting pretty sick of staring at a computer screen and recording fish locations for hours and hours. it's not so fun, but somebody's got to do it. and i'm enjoying looking at the data for trends after i've done all of that bitch work!

i don't think i've actually described my current experiment yet. it'll have to wait.

solid

all's well.

the most exciting update is that i went electrofishing for the first evvvvveeeerrrrrr on monday! and it was a surprise too!

when electrofishing, one sends an electric current through a body of water. this current should stun any fish in the vicinity, making it much easier to catch them. usually with nets. and yes, i have deemed it humane enough.

anyways. so one of the big ongoing projects in the aquatics lab is a bioaccumulation study. basically, they catch fish and other animals from several sites around eastern tennessee and determine the levels of heavy metals, toxins, etc. in the animals. when i went out turtle hunting a couple of weeks ago, we were trying to catch snapping turtles for this study. then, on monday morning, right after i finished putting my fish in their tanks for my experiment, amber came into my cube and asked if i could go out into the field! her and kelly were going to a site to catch exactly three properly-sized largemouth bass and wanted me to come with and help!

it was quite fun. we were boat electrofishing, which means the anode and cathode, through which the current passes, are both on a boat. you can also uses barges or backpack shockers to electrofish. and hopefully i will get to try out barge electrofishing on friday. kelly drove the boat and amber and i stood at the bow with nets. she controlled the actual current with a foot pedal. whenever the current was on and we ended up near fish, the fish would stop swimming and flip upside. it was really easy to see them because most fish have white ventral surfaces which stood out against the (fairly clean yet) green water.

there weren't tons of largemouth bass in the area we were in, but we managed to get three. and by "we" i mean amber. i didn't have strong enough id skills to really pick out bass from suckers, bluegills, etc. so i kind of sucked. it was a good learning experience though! by the time i get to use bart's backpack shocker back at LU, i'll be a pro!

there was a recommended brown bag seminar today for the ORSS students. i went. it was a waste of time. the session was on scientific writing and, because i'm a writing tutor, it was all very old hat for me. the presenter didn't have a ton of time, so he skimmed over a lot of topics that i'm already really familiar with. whatevs.

everyone at lawrence has already started classes. i want to be there so bad! i miss everyone. i registered for winter and spring term classes today though! it was sort of like being on campus...not. here's my schedule, for anyone who's interested.

winter:

-organic chem I (yippee, right?)

-independent study on microcystin with bart

-philosophy tutorial with ryckman

spring:

-organic chem II

-molecular bio (so so so excited for this one, for real!)

-intro to religious studies

speaking of classes, my calc class is really easy. first, i already know everything from AP calc in high school. second, it's a community college course, so the professor goes pretty slowly. third, my professor is actually pretty good and he explains things well, and uses technology aids efficiently.

hello mr. AT!

i hiked on the appalachian trail for the first time ever today!

so, for those of you who don't know, the appalachian trail (or AT) is a long distance hiking trail in the united states. it starts in maine and ends in georgia, and is over 2,000 miles long! it's one of three long distance hiking trails in the us, the other two being the continental divide trail, which is out west, and the pacific crest trail, which is on the west coast. the three trails are referred to collectively as the triple crown.

a couple hundred people "thru hike" the AT every year, which means they hike the entire trail at one time. this usually takes about 3-6 months to do.

after i graduate from lawrence, i plan on taking a year off before (hopefully, if i get in) going to grad school. the reason i'm doing this is so i can thru hike the AT! this is a pretty big goal of mine. i've wanted to do it for about three years and i occasionally obsess over the trail in my free time.

so today was obviously an important milestone for me! this was my first introduction to the trail, and was it a good one.

a couple of hours from oak ridge is great smoky mountain national park. this is the most visited national park. it's pretty large and, because it sits on the edge of the appalachians, it's quite hilly and forested. it's a gorgeous park and, like any other recreational area, as soon as you get ten feet from any paved surface you're basically alone. about 70 miles of the AT runs through the park. once i found out about this, i knew i would have to try the trail out!

i left the apartment this morning at 8 am and drove to the park. the drive itself kind of sucks because you have to drive through pigeon forge, which is a ridiculous tourist trap. it reminds me a lot of the wisconsin dells. ugh. actually, both pigeon forge and gatlinburg are similar tourist traps, but there's a highway bypass around gatlinburg, as i discovered today!

the drive in the park was fairly soothing. i just stayed on the main road, which slowly gained elevation as i went on. the road is at its highest point at newfound gap, which has an overlook and a bigger parking lot, and this was where i was heading.

when i got there, i wasted no time in getting on the trail. the trail ascended very gently for probably the first 3/4ths of a mile. after that, it was a bit more up and down, but the elevation change was never extreme. the trail was somewhat rugged but very well maintained. i actually passed a maintenance guy on the trail. he was using some sort of modified scythe thing to remove brush.

the vegetation was mixed deciduous-coniferous with a medium amount of underbrush. there were some sections that were totally coniferous, which made me happy, because i love coniferous trees. it was also perfect weather for hiking! cool, mostly overcast. the ground was still wet from all of the rain yesterday. when i got near the place i was going to eat, charlie's bunion, it got super foggy. i couldn't see more than like 15 feet away while i was eating, which was creepy. i realized later that what i thought was fog was probably actually clouds! that's how high up i was.

there were very few people on the trail, of course. i saw maybe ten other hikers the entire time, which is fine with me. i was hoping to see a thru hiker, but no such luck.

i hiked pretty fast. it felt good to just push my body, and i can tell i'm much stronger physically than i used to be. it's because of running. even though i haven't been running as many miles as i should be, the constant exercise has been adding up.

this is kind of a secret, but i started running to get my body in shape for hiking. so really, when running get extremely frustrating (which happens a lot), i always remind myself that it's so i can be a good hiker. haha. seems weird, but it works!

i took some good photos while i was out there. my lovely mum bought me a new digital camera this week. it looks kind of like an slr, but it's not, which makes me both proud and ashamed to have it. but anyways, i'm going to be able to add pictures to lots of my posts now! i really missed having a camera. i won't be able to put up any yet, though, because i can't figure out how to get them on my computer. stayed tuned!

newfound gap to charlie's bunion (and back): 8 miles

wtf

they don't have a movie rental place in oak ridge. srsly.

so i went ahead and got a netflix account! so pumped. i already watched the very fucked up "antichrist", a lars von trier film.

it was a solid week at the lab. i'm preparing to run another magnet experiment next week, on fathead minnows this time. we got some giant ass magnets in the mail this week. they're actually really scary because they're so strong, i was picking up small metal objects and opening drawers by accident with them.

mark and glenn and i had a short discussion about chatroulette yesterday. talk about...umm...interesting? haha. mark is going to be gone at a conference until the monday after next. that's one thing about the timing of this program...we get here right as the FY (fiscal year) for the lab is ending, so everything is little stressed and crazy trying to get projects tied up, budgets finished, traveling to different places, etc.

i made my first fully authentic asian meal last night, thanks to lin, who is awesome!

laura and sami and i are going on a quest to find an ethiopian restaurant that's apparently in knoxville right now. sami is from ethiopia, and it's apparently their new year or something today? celebration!

hmph

feeling like utter crap. i'm so glad it's a short week.

because this is the third week of the program, everyone gave a short 3-5 minute talk on their research in seminar today. it was actually pretty cool to hear about everyones' topics. the variety of presentation styles was also interesting.

something that i think is still freaking everyone out a little bit are the adults that come to our seminars. there are these older, (maybe?) post-undergrad people who are apparently in the SULI program with some of us ORSS students. but they do all the same things as us in seminar. i find it unusual that these adults are supposed to be on the same level as us and are doing the same things. all of them gave short talks, just like us.

my talk kind of sucked. i wasn't really that prepared and so it went horribly. you would think i would have learned that i have a complete inability to do anything well without overpreparing, but i guess not.

anyways. last night i went to a show in knoxville. it was a deftones show, but i went to see the support band this will destroy you. they were reaaaaal good. i cannot wait until they have a US headlining tour, though. their drummer informed me that such a tour will be happening after they tour europe, so hopefully early next year? and hopefully i can go? i'm sick of them being a support band and only have 30-45 minute sets.

the show was really the only spot of goodness for the last couple of days. everything else sucks.

shiiiiiii-

it's labor day, which = no lab.

unfortunately, this is also the day in which i discovered i had forgotten what it's like to do homework. here i am, frantically trying to remember trig identities for a calculus quiz tomorrow.

and my calc textbook hasn't come in the mail yet.

it was a good day, though. nic and i went to knoxville, bought some good books and ($70 worth of!) vinyl. we also found his perfect pressure cooker after spending waaaaay too long looking for one.

i'm feeling kind of crap now though. and tomorrow is going to be insanely busy.

week two: over

i finally completed the endless get-into-calculus-course odyssey this week. as much as it seemed like it would never happen, i am registered for calculus 1 at pellissippi state community college. i hate inflexible bureaucracies that rarely allow for exceptions to rules, grrrr.

so half of my credits from this program come from the research itself. this is equivalent to a bit more than two lawrence classes. everyone in the program also participates in a weekly seminar, which usually consists of an ORNL scientist telling us about their work or a tour of some lab facility. we also can choose to take an additional course, either one taught by the program director lori or at a nearby college. i've opted for the latter and chose to take calculus 1 as review to prepare myself for calc 2 and maybe calc 3 senior year.

i actually really like the professor who teaches my calc course. i thought, because pellissippi is a community college, that the professor would suck. he's really good. he makes calculus interesting and he's funny at the appropriate moments.

i ran my first experiment this past week! i set up the tanks on tuesday. mark and i went out to a creek behind the lab and caught a bunch of snails. he also caught two larval salamanders which are now my lab pets. i ran the experiment from wednesday morning to friday morning. from some preliminary work on the results, it looks like the snails don't give a shit about the dc magnetic field that the permanent magnets put off.

mark has ordered some more permanent magnets, some of which are twice as thick as the ones we've been using, so they'll have a stronger magnetic field. i'll probably run another trial with the snails this week using those thicker magnets. next up will be trials with the fathead minnows!

i've also been struggling with the electromagnets that produce ac fields. from some internet research and advice from glenn, it looks like it will be easier to just make our own electromagnets.

i've been really enjoying living in an apartment! i feel so grown up, haha. also, my roommates are awesome and we haven't had any problems. and for people who know me fairly well, i'm terrible at being a roommate, so this is quite the pleasant surprise.

last night, nic took lin and i to an asian market in knoxville. i bought a bunch of crazy new foods to try, mostly based on lin's awesome recommendations. i got dragon fruit and seaweed and a giant ass bag of rice. lin and i have co-ownership of a new rice cooker which i haven't had the opportunity to use yet, but i will soon!

we also had a little get together last night. everyone in the program, except one guy who was busy talking to his girlfriend on the phone, got together at one of the apartments and we all hung out. super fun. my greatest fear about this program was that everyone would be insanely nerdy and antisocial. thank goodness i was wrong! everyone is really interesting and fairly talkative.

nic tried to make fried bananas tonight. it was the most disgusting thing ever. i also played one of my vinyl records on his record player, and it sounded so gorgeous. one of my goals during my time here is to get a record player of my own.

i haven't played my clarinet once since i've gotten here. sorry mr. bell.

i have been running a ton though! it's been going so well, my legs are really cooperating with me because i've finally gotten accustomed to my new form. and i'm going to be in bomb ass shape because of how hilly the terrain is. i never really realized just how flat iowa and wisconsin are.

people have been putting up pictures and videos of cross country preseason on facebook. i miss the team so so so much. they had their first meet yesterday and it seems like it went well.