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Archive for April, 2009

Because Murphy’s Law was pretty much invented in my family’s honor…

There were many lovely things about this past weekend. There were also several really funky/bizarre/crappy things. I’ll start with those because I like to end up an upper. Keeps the kids happy.

Friday: We leave an hour later than anticipated, end up spending more time at the grocery store in Lakeport than we thought we would, and were forced to fly over the backroads to the state park, where we proceeded to set up our campsite in virtual darkness. The one saving grace was the speed at which mom was able to locate, assemble, and light the lantern, followed by the campfire. Though at that point I’d already gotten most of the tent upright after feeling around with my feet for a flat, burrow-less spot upon which to throw the ground tarp. I barked my shins on various inanimate (and therefore, immobile) objects at least a dozen times, and mom outright ran into the fucking truck. Honestly, we were like a really bad Jim Carrey movie.

Saturday: The day started with a really shitty text message from what I now consider to be an equally shitty friend. Because I haven’t been made to feel like a loser enough from this person in all the years I’ve known them, they decided that the best way to get out of associating with me this time around was to just drop me a text message, punctuated with the phrase “Nothing personal. Sorry.” though since I’m the only one of our circle of friends that this happened to, I fail to see how it’s not personal. Thx for the complete facefuck, dude. You’re a class act as always. Remind me again why I’ve spent so much time trying to maintain our friendship?

Saturday afternoon brought a broken-down truck on the way to go wine tasting. By the time we got a tow truck to show up and we collectively figured out what the problem was (get this: the fuel pump cutoff switch is on the passenger side of the truck, about three inches above the floor. Guess who hit it with their foot while trying to readjust their seat? THANKS, FORD, FOR YOUR QUALITY VEHICLE DESIGNS.), the wineries were all closed and Dad, Cutter, and Dam had arrived at the campsite and were waiting for us to return with the other half of the groceries for dinner.

Mild irritation: being crammed into a 4-man tent with four other adults. Seems nobody thought to bring an extra tent when Dam was invited to join us at the very last minute. And because nobody wanted to be the one to volunteer to sleep in the back of the truck, we all suffered the sardine effect of five grown adults and all their gear overlapping all over the floor of the tent. I slept in a ball in the corner because every time I woke up during the night (and believe you me, I woke up so many times that I’m not sure if what I did actually qualifies as sleep) I found myself dangerously close to rolling over onto Dam, and not only would that have been slightly inappropriate and awkward, it also would have been fatal for his slim frame. I am the human equivalent of a steamroller. Nuff said.

There were plenty of upsides to the weekend of course. Gorgeous weather following Friday’s sudden rainstorms that left everything smelling nice and fresh and the night freezing as fuck. This brought the birds out en force on Saturday so that during the pontoon tour of the rookeries, we were able to spot far more birds than we would normally see. This is probably the most heron we’ve seen during the festival ever. We also actually spotted a Clark’s Grebe amongst the scant few Western Grebe still hanging out at the lake (they’ve relocated temporarily due to a shortage of their primary food source), plus a green heron, several gorgeous osprey, and more yellowheaded blackbirds than I’ve ever seen on the lake. There were other species around but my brain is addled at the moment and I’m drawing blanks.

The most awesome part of the weekend was the opportunity I had to network and talk shop with many agency representatives that ran booths at the festival. I chatted with two guys from the US Forest Service about prescribed burns and current plans for the upcoming fire season. They gave me their business cards and told me to call them if I was looking for any internship/volunteer opportunities, and they certainly encouraged this as they said it would provide me with a more direct route for hiring on with the Forest Service. Nice. I also talked habitat restoration and restoration ecology in general with a guy from the BLM who went to Oregon State and Chico State. We traded comments on riparian health within the local watershed, and he directed me to the next booth over to talk with the Army Corps reps about the dam along the nearby creek. I had a wonderful discussion with them and two reps from PG&E regarding anadramous salmonid recovery, and they pointed me towards the BLM reps. At which point I’d already collected so many business cards, booklets, information, and invitations for tours and talks, my eyes were going crossed. The BLM folks were awesome, and we lamented over how poorly California actually approaches their natural resource management compared to Washington and Oregon (in California, the BLM is forced to fend for itself, subsisting on grants; in Oregon and Washington, the state budgets for the BLM). I was told I needed to finish my education and bring that Oregon sensibility to California and help out. I laughed my ass off at that. California is fucked. There’s not enough sensibility in this entire country to fix that.

The last two ladies I talked to were incredible. I had started out talking to this woman in a booth representing a local watershed conservancy group. I mentioned to her that I was working on a watershed evaluation within the same river system her group was also representing, and she whipped out her business card and told me to give her a call because they were always working with students from UC Davis on their own projects of a similar nature. Turns out she’s the executive director of this group that is actually an agency that has restored and managed the restoration of this huge segment of the river and the land is actually being used for various research projects by college students as well as for educational tours with local schools and youth groups. Holy shit. I tried not to look stunned. I then struck up a conversation with a woman who is a scientist assigned to monitor the health of Clear Lake, and together we went on a rant about invasive species and how careless people are. (the lake has been suffering from a hydrilla infestation for the last couple of decades, and now there’s the constant threat of invasive mussels) She had a great Australian accent. It made my day.

Needless to say, it was a good day. I rarely get to talk shop with anyone. Nobody gives two shits about these sorts of things around here, and more often than not I just feel like I’m talking to the walls if I try to have a conversation about the environment or any facet of it with anyone. It’s nice to have normal conversation with people who actually know something. Especially when it gives me a better sense of what to expect when I finally go out into the world.

I’ll try to put up some of my bird pictures sometime this week. I have some osprey photos that make me giddy. No. I have no life.

This weekend is shaping up to be a whiz-banger. In a few hours I’ll be hopping into a truck and heading for Clear Lake State Park for the annual Heron Festival. Here’s to hoping that this year it doesn’t rain…especially since we’re camping. Camping in the rain = much suckage. I’ve done it too many times to count. At this point in my life, I’m perfectly content not trenching before bedtime. There’s nothing more depressing than installing a moat around your tent in the hopes that you can redirect the water towards somewhere other than your nice absorptive sleeping bag.

I’m hoping that my bird systematics skills are unrusty enough that I will be able to identify species more accurately this year. Half of the birds we encounter, we only get to hear and not see. Identifying birdsong is therefore extremely crucial in those cases. Last year I got about 1 in 5 right. I’ve spent an entire year working on understanding and memorizing this stuff, so. We’ll see. Obviously I need to get laid, since this is now a hobby of mine. Dear god.

Buttered Buns

The nicest thing about being forced to buy a new refrigerator is that you get to start from scratch with all of your foodstuffs. This pleases me to no end because I don’t feel like I have to consume all the stuff I had crammed into my freezer, be it healthy or not. Since my life is relatively hectic and at the end of the day I prefer to keep my time in the kitchen to a minimum so I can focus on my schoolwork, I had a lot of frozen vegetables, Amy’s Organic dinners, cook-in-bag pasta mixes, and other sundry items stashed in my freezer. Yeah, losing it all sucked fat balls. But now my freezer looks awesome, filled only with The Roommate’s normal crap, a fresh loaf of banana bread, the requisite package of frozen peas (don’t need the frozen spinach; my farm box comes with fresh spinach almost year-round), and individually-wrapped chicken breasts in marinade.

This last item is one of my favorite freezer tricks. You get those half-pint Ziploc bags, a package of boneless/skinless chicken breasts, and either a bottle of your favorite marinade or make your own. I use Newman’s Own Organic Italian dressing because I have yet to make one of my own that tastes as awesome as that. Cut your chicken into proper portion sizes (3oz. of chicken equals one serving…about the size of an average female fist) and place one portion in each bag, then fill with a couple tablespoons of marinade per bag. Push the air out as you’re sealing it up, massage a bit to goosh the marinade around, and pop in the freezer. Voilá! Easy single-serve chicken! Be sure to wash the bag after you consume the chicken. You can reuse it if you scrub it up with a bit of antibacterial dish soap and hot water.

I’m hoping that this year I will be able to can enough tomatoes from my summer farm boxes to turn around and make batches of tomato sauce in the fall. Last summer I came into the program midway and could never amass enough tomatoes to outright can any of them, so I was mostly making and consuming tomato sauce and pasta sauce within the same week or two that I received the tomatoes. Same with all the basil. If I can get myself organized enough in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be ready to rock and roll. Theoretically. You know me. I tend to mostly roll. Downhill. Into a pile of fresh runny dogshit. My life, it brings the lulz.

Aw, you poor thing. You were reading up to this point, feeling all good and warm. And then I had to drop a disturbing visual on you. Honestly, you should’ve learned by now. Tsk.