Saturday, January 8, 2011

And all is well.


Can't say too much than that. I've been here just over 8 days now, and i'm loving it. It's been busy, but in a different way from Hawaii, busy in that I have a lot to do, but not overbearing. Things are much more laid back here, it's the quiet season, the perfect season to move into the lab in, as many are not around. There are no undergrad courses in this semester and many of the faculty teach up in Orono this time of year, there have literally been just a handful of people in the lab this week. I'm still surrounded by boxes, and have no idea where any thing is at any point in time, but i'm told my main lab will be ready next week, so i'm hoping that will change soon. 

My technician Christian arrived on Thursday for ten days of helping to unpack and doing this dive training with me. We had our first dive day yesterday, the pool day and went through the fitness test and some basic skills (both in a wetsuit and drysuit). Fitness test went fine, 400m swim in under ten minutes (9 mins), 800m snorkel in under 17 (14 mins), 25yrd underwater swim (okay, so I had to do this twice to get it!) and a 15 min treadwater. It was good to get that out the way. I'm not feeling terribly pool fit right now, so was a little worried about it, and I won't lie, it wasn't easy! 

So today we're having a down day, i'm catching up with some things, maybe a little unpacking, some laundry. Christian is catching up on sleep after so much travel, maybe we'll take a wander and go and look at Boothbay Harbor later, haven't been there yet. It's just started to snow too - fun! Tomorrow it'll be starting to unpack so we can repack boxes for the Antarctic cruise, but nothing too hectic. Then Monday we start diving in the ocean - brrrrrrr! Hoping to get 2 dives a day all week in, so it's going to be a busy one, but I need to do 12 total and a whole bunch of skills before I can go to Alaska in March, so it'll be worth it - eye on the prize! 

Some other sad news is that Barkley is not arriving next week. And it might be on hold indefinitely. There are concerns as to her ability to fly, trying out some different drugs, and just her general wellbeing. I'm not sure what's going to happen, but hopefully soon we'll be reunited! 

2 comments:

Nicola said...

Barkley as in dog?
Glad you are enjoying it there!
Sounded from my parents to be very small town? How is it going looking for a place to live?

RGW said...

Yup, pup. So far i've had about a dozen or so promising places thrown at me as suggestions. My head just isn't quite there yet, too many other things to follow up, but it's looking like there are a lot of options which is good! It's about the same size as the town I lived in MA (Falmouth), so i'm quite enjoying it!