A much needed update


View on Kennedy Peak
Originally uploaded by Matthew Singer.

Wow. I realized I haven’t updated this place in quite some time. A lot has happened in the past year. I went back to Ferry Beach (www.fbes.org) in the fall and had some fun on the coast of Maine with weekends in the White Mountains again. I spent the winter in Hagerstown unsuccessfully looking for a job. And now I’ve finally found one in Luray, Va with the Sheridan School’s Mountain Campus (www.mountaincampus.org). I work at a facility nestled up against Shenandoah National Park, and literally somewhere in the photo above.

We’re still in training week, but work has been great so far. Everyone there is friendly and its great to be out of the dirty city. The job is less science-based and more adventure and teambuilding, though the science content is certainly growing and expanding. I’m excited to be taking students on hikes, backpacking trips, overnight canoe trips, rock climbing and into caves.

Over the fall and winter, I also applied to the zoology graduate program at the University of New Hampshire. If all goes well, I shall be moving North again by the end of summer.

Happy Spring, and more updates to come.

Similar Posts

  • The Garden of 2013

    Because I was laid up and out of commission for much of the spring, I wasn’t able to work on expanding our garden much this year. Last year, I built a third 4×8 foot box and a 2×4 foot box which were meant to be tiered for planting small annual herbs in large quantities. I never got that box filled with dirt, so that will have to wait until next year. In the mean time, we’ve planted our usual array of crops in the two 4×8 foot boxes with limited success. Erin had bought some tomato plants in April, and…

  • |

    A Walk Around the Yard

        When you live somewhere long enough and see the same scenery day after day, you sort of become numb to it. It no longer thrills you the way it did when you first moved in. That’s sort of how I feel. Don’t get me wrong, I love my house and its location, but it feels like I could have better scenery out my window living somewhere else. The scenery here is never actually dull. I’ve got a great view of Spud Hill, Deary’s local “mountain” that stands over 1000 feet above the town, and most evenings, we get…

  • |

    My Research: What I have been up to

    Last week, the fruits of my last three year’s work has finally come to fruition in the journal PLoS One. The premise is that the personality behavior we call boldness, or the bold-shy continuum, is not only heritable, but a genetically correlated multivariate trait. The research is essentially a continuation of a project Mary Oswald completed for her dissertation, however upon first submission, reviewers criticized the study for its lack of replication. So, in the Summer of 2010, she set up a second selection experiment which I took over and have been maintaining since. Boldness is an interesting behavior to…

  • The New Kitchen

    Three months ago, we had some pipes leak in our kitchen that caused some damage to the flooring and the cabinets and resulted in us basically getting a brand new kitchen. We contacted State Farm to see about getting any coverage, and thankfully, they agreed to help cover some of the damage. So, we set about getting a contractor in to look at the damage and give us an estimate. We ended up using one that works directly with State Farm, a decision that may have caused us more strife that we were hoping to avoid, but after several delays,…

  • |

    August Update

    I just realized that August has come and gone and I have yet to write about anything that happened during this month. It’s not as though I haven’t done anything. In fact, I was quite busy every weekend. So, let’s see, what happened in August? It got really hot. In fact, it got so hot, that doing things became unpleasant. Nevertheless, we took Clara out to Elk River to beat the heat. At first, she didn’t like sitting in the cool water, but by the end, I got her to tolerate it. We also took Clara up to Kamiak Butte….

  • Flight Paths

    [map style=”width: auto; height:400px; margin:20px 0px 20px 0px; border: 1px solid black;” maptype=”ROADMAP” gpx=”http://www.mineral2.com/wp-content/uploads/Flights.GPX”] If you don’t already know me, I have a thing for maps and geography. It’s an absolute delight to see the landscape from the air. I’ve been bringing my GPS with me when I fly, mostly to keep track of flight progress and to identify what I’m seeing out the window. But it’s also interesting to see how the FAA routes flights. Spoiler Alert: it’s not a direct path between cities. The two tracks above show the flight path between Phoenix and Cancun in both directions….