Beavers!

So the government did not go into shutdown, and a big sigh of relief was heard from over here. Of course we can't speak too soon, as although no shutdown is good, they have agreed to some massive budget cuts, and at the moment, no-one knows where those cuts are coming from. We'll find out soon I guess.....

This weekend has been amazingly productive and lazy at the same time. Despite being highly jet lagged all week and having a tough time pulling myself out of bed, this weekend i've woken up at 5.30am on both days....argh! But I have managed to reorganize my "living room", as much as I can right now without shelves, couch etc., which are just going to have to wait until I get back from the Antarctic and have a few more paychecks under my belt. 

I tidied the spare bedroom, as with the potential for Kathy to come visit, and hopefully Diane visiting shortly after I get back in June, I bit the bullet and ordered a bed for that room - the mattress has arrived, the bed should get here sometime next week. I did also manage to make a decision and order myself a dresser, which is much needed to get the piles of clothes that cannot be hung off my floor. I always seem to move from house with lots of shelves to a house with lots of hanging, and that is true here, there is very little storage compared to my little place in Hawaii, which is amazing really. But I finally feel like i'm almost organized enough I can find most things and won't drive myself crazy when I come back from the Antarctic staring at boxes. 

I also did a little drive around houses for sale this weekend too, there's a bunch on the market right now, and although i'm not quite ready yet (esp as i'm headed out for 2 months really soon!), it is fun to look, and it's good to drive around. The snow has mostly melted (though i'm told more is on the cards) so everything looks different, it feels like i'm discovering for the first time again. It's been a gloriously sunny few days as well, the kind of days that made me fall in love with New England way back when. Ahh. Why am I headed back to winter in Chile? 

And, I had a first today too. I went to check on Chris and Gabby's house (they're on vacation) which is just up the road and drove past a pond and saw this little fella. So cute! 

Hope you all have a great week! 

Furniture!

This week has been a week of furniture, and i'm so excited about. Excited and nervous. This is the first place i've ever rented unfurnished, and though i've always bought small items, the big things have remained out of my reach until now.

This week a bed arrived, unfortunately frame first and then the mattress, but either way, it's here now and i'm sooooooo happy not to be sleeping on the floor anymore. It's a (cheapo - not the one you're thinking) memory foam mattress, and is so so so so comfortable. After 2 months on a futon in Hawaii and then the floor here, my back is so much happier with me now.

And today it was kitchen table time! I ordered it last week from a local place and today Chris helped me pick it up. It's nothing fancy, but I am completely over the moon to have somewhere to sit and eat. To put this in perspective I haven't had a table I could eat at in over 5 years. In Hawaii my place was 300 sqft and back in MA the last place I lived in was too small for a table. Sitting in front of the TV eating dinner is okay on occasion, but every day and night really sucks. It's just nice to be somewhere else other than the couch (not that I have a couch here yet) to eat, to type, to work.

I loved my little Grodnick in Hawaii. I loved being confined to 300 sqft, it kept me honest, it kept me from expanding. But long term, it's just not me, I LOVE having a table to be able to eat, type, craft, pay bills, etc. etc. on. It sounds ridiculous to be so over the moon at a table, but I am. I feel like an adult. :0)

And just as I get comfortable again, I'm off again. On Monday i'm down to Boston overnight to catch an early flight out to Hawaii. I'm back on the islands for 5 days for one of my graduate students defenses. It's going to be nice to see everyone again, i've been missing my friends. I've made a couple of friends here, but with the madness this few months has been, haven't really met many people yet, especially not my age and "hang aroundable" with. It'll come, I just need to be here, both in body and brain, and that might be closer to fall/winter before that happens.

Here are some photos. Don't forget Earth Hour tonight!

If all else fails i've found i'm a prepacked furniture wizard......

My BED! Oh so nice to be up off of the inflatable mattress on the floor! I even bought some new bedding today, decided it was worth the splurge to replace my 8 year old el-cheapo threadbare sheets. I particularly like my bedside table, don't you?

The much more assembled kitchen. Still not totally unpacked and in place, but much more useable, and I think i've found most kitchen boxes now. 

The light of my life right now (sad isn't it). My table. 

Exhausterpated....

That's my new word of the day. I don't know if i'm coming down with something (possible, but I really hope not) or the exhaustion of the last few weeks/months caught up with me today. Either way, horizontal has been my position for a lot of the day, I didn't really get out of bed properly until 1.30pm, quite possibly a record for me.

I can honestly say I've never put this many proposals in in such a short period of time (4 in 3 months), and they all take so much mental energy (they've all been "new" proposals this time, rather than recycled unfunded ones) out of me I just feel so drained. Add that with moving, unpacking office, lab & home (twice), dealing with the Antarctic cruise prep (which has been a real bear this time) and then the Alaska trip, and I can honestly say i'm beat up. I'm hoping it's that rather than a cold, I have a proposal due on the 28th I need to put a lot into next week.

I'm still loving Maine, making some fast friends and starting to get into the swing of things, but I also feel like i'm not putting my energy into being here right now. And that's probably just how it's got to be for a bit. I REALLY like it here, and REALLY want to stay, so REALLY need to keep throwing in proposals so I have a job past next Feb. It's so much at the forefront of my brain i'm finding it hard to relax at all. Not really how I wanted to start up here, but I guess it is what it is, work my ass off, suck it up for a while and hope it all works out.

I did finally get out for a run yesterday, which was just glorious (thanks Mum for sending me my running jacket - and thanks for the mini eggs!). My first 2 miles in Maine, and it was a gloriously sunny day (i'll download some photos from this weekend and post them, it's been gorgeously sunny, still cold, but just beautiful). I'm thinking about races in the fall, about a big hiking trip in September, keeping the eye on the prize and trying to convince myself all this work at the start of the year will pay dividends. It'll all be worth it, I have a good feeling about this place, I really do feel like i've come home.

Hope all is well out there, i'll try and get back into updating, apologies for the hiatus! As usual i've come back from this trip pining to go back. The photo was taken by our first mate, loaded on the zodiac and getting ready to head out to dive (it's about 80lbs of gear you wear!). It really was so spectacular, I hope I get to go again next year, let's all put in good thoughts for that proposal to get funded!

Fruits of my labor....

Looks like my first crop of papayas (the rest have all blown off in the wind!) are all going to be ready right around the time I fly to Alaska...typical...! 

The finish line.

Reaching that finish line can be hard, in many things and not just marathons. A friend of mine just wrote a blog post about unfinished projects and it hit a chord. How many things do I have unfinished right now? I think this particularly hits me because I have a certain paper i'm writing that is driving me crazy. I NEED to finish it, it NEEDS to go, but can I sit down and finish it. Nada. Sigh. Tomorrow I have several pre 5am conference calls (Hawaii time can be hard you know) and the university campus is going to be inundated by crazy people, so i've decided to stay at home to work on this paper. I've brought home the books, and i'm hoping i've brought home the motivation. This NEEDS to happen.....

At any one time I probably have a dozen projects going on at once. I joke it's my ADD side breaking through, but in reality it probably is just that. I've always had trouble focusing on one thing at once, whether it be a craft project, work, sport or new skill, I tend to have a zillion things going, and probably finish 50-75% of them. It's a pretty high number though, so usually I get away with it, and often i'll come back to a craft after a "break", so it all feels new again when I restart. Crafty things like crochet and pottery work with me because each time you can make new forms, new stitches, new uses for the outcome, so it keeps me interested. Tonight I started yet another crochet project, alongside the other 5 I have going right now. All with deadlines, and somehow, I know they will all work out, I just got the idea and got motivated to start this other baby blanket tonight........and so it goes. I often post about my crafty outcomes, but rarely about the other projects sat around that have been that way for many months. Maybe I should start posting about them then I might feel the guilt needed to finish them.....

I think i'm lucky i've ended up doing what I do, because to keep yourself afloat in research, especially 100% soft money research, you need to be doing a million things at once - writing papers, writing proposals, doing lab work, advising students, collecting in the field, going to meetings, collaborating with colleagues - all at the same time. You also have to face the fact that some things work out and some don't, and that just kind of works for me and my attention span. Besides if everything worked out, there wouldn't be enough hours in the day to do it all! With this though comes balance and the need to finish things. Certain things just sit and sit until the deadline looms and it finally gets out the door. It's all about balance, a balance i'm finding a little hard to find right now. I write proposals like crazy as I need to to keep in salary, but that often wipes out my "writing brain" to the point where writing papers is torture. Not that i'm doing badly, but I seriously have 3 papers that I have all the data for that should really get written here someday....

I'm hoping this move to Maine is going to help me with that balance. Having all the facilities I need right there for me to get the data to write the papers, i'm hoping, is going to make a big difference. The station i'm hoping will be a little less crazy than the University of Hawaii too, a little quieter for working and less distractions. I'm hoping.

Until then, please just let me finish "draft 2" of this paper tomorrow to send to me colleagues....

Operation: Eat through my cupboard....

Anyone who's lived with me knows I have probably a years worth of food stored at any one time, all be it in slightly "different" combinations of meals. Primarily this is because i'm somewhat fickle in the food department, though I eat pretty much anything, what I fancy on a daily basis really changes, and if I don't have something I fancy in the house, I tend to eat chocolate for dinner, so it's important for me to keep my fridge/freezer/shelves stocked at all times so I can eat healthier than a bar of chocolate or nutella sandwiches (which though awesome, are not whole nutrition at it's best). The food stockpiling thing is all the rage right now too, so I feel slightly ahead of the times on this.

So i'm starting to think of the "big move". In reality my things will probably be shipped out sometime in November, which gives me until November to eat through my fridge/freezer/shelves. So i've decided, for a few weeks at least, not to buy any food. None. Now before anyone panics about this - I use dried milk because it's considerably cheaper than real milk, and I have a whole new Costco box of it, and I have a ton of frozen fruit and veg around, as well as multiple packets of yoghurt. So i'm not going to die of malnutrition here. It's just going to be a good exercise in using up the major components of my kitchen. So wish me luck as I go through the next few weeks, eating some pretty unusual meals i'm sure. In all this too, i'm going to keep bringing in my lunch to work, so there might be some eyebrows raised....we'll see!

Oh - and i'm starting to update my lab blog - so be sure to check that out as I'm running up to some Alaska projects. Tab is on the sidebar!

Wow

One of my geckos just came out of hiding, gobbled up a cockroach that i've been trying to catch all night, and wandered away. Maybe I can deal with the gecko poop after all.....:0)

Cool.....

Love it. Just came back from a run (in the rain....sigh) and sat out on my swingseat out front to cool down with an ice pop. Two Geico geckos came out and were running around on the deck. I love their colours and wish my camera had been closer. One of them was a lot larger and actually had a blue/green tip to his tail. Pretty cool! 

Gecko....

My camera has an awesome zoom........

......I totally wouldn't have known Gecko is molting! He would have skittered away before I could get close enough......

Sunday Sushi...

Ahhhhh, a nice, low key sunday. Today I went into work and unpacked some of my cruise boxes, changed out the water in the coral larvae and moved the starfish larvae into a tank. Then came home, had lunch and napped on the couch, unpacked all my travel bags then went for a swim at the pool. Topped off by my first solo sushi session! Alison showed me how to make sushi once in Woods Hole, and while shopping on friday I decided I wanted to try it myself, with great results! It's so easy and so much cheaper than buying, have to do this more often, maybe with wilder ingredients than I did today! And as I have a new camera, I of course documented the entire process.....:0)

Ingredients at the ready! 

The main ingredients - vegetables! And some crab sticks, which I love....:0)

My overstuffed roll......

A cut up roll.........reminds me I need to sharpen my knives! 

And the end result - yum! And left overs for tomorrows lunch too! 

Day one.....

Day one at home and I did something today I didn't expect to have to, I bought a new camera. This bites on more than one level as my old camera is only just over a year old, and I loved it and really liked the photos it produced. Yet, it is only working intermittently after it's salty-mud bath and the lens has salt crystals on, so a new camera was on the cards. Frustrating as I really wanted to get a digital SLR, but hadn't planned to for at least another year, so today was a bit of a compromise - a Canon SX10 - not an SLR, but larger and better zoom and functions than a regular point and shoot, as well as being in the same $$ range as a good point and shoot, rather than the SLR price range. 

Why so soon after getting back? Well, i'm off to visit the little lady Lucy (above) in 2 weeks and don't want to miss taking good photos of my little niece (isn't she adorable!), and want to have the time to test out the new camera and to make sure it all works before I go away. Pain in the butt, but I also used up 2 gift cards for Best Buy in the process, so it wasn't as bad on the bank balance as it could have been (and if not for the gift cards, I definitely would have come away with a lesser camera).

So I went and took a bunch of photos of the things I like to see and do when I get home from sea........still playing with the functions, but it definitely takes as good photos as my old Canon, and I love the zoom.....

Flowers........these bleeding heart vines are right outside my front door, and go from white and red to this beautiful pink/purple......

The mountains......

Making sun tea in my new glass jugs.....

My garden, though the picture of neglect right now, I love that I can grow a few things..........these are the papaya leaves.....

A good crunchy salad with lots of extras like bean sprouts, pineapple and bacon sausages, pumpkin seeds, cucumber and peppers.....

Fresh fresh fruit........pineapple is my favorite fruit, mixed in with some gorgeous smelling strawberries......

Free Shipping

Well, i'm not an auntie again yet (as far as I know) but I did get something nice in the mail today. One thing I have learned living here is to take advantage of free shipping where you can. Shipping charges can be horrendous here, so when I had to order some books for work and ordered through Amazon, I ordered a few extra items to fit in with the free shipping. 

One thing i've been looking forward to is these jugs - 2 Gelo jugs from Bormioli. I've been looking for a replacement ice-tea container since I broke my old one ~6 months ago, and rather than buy the same jar I had before I wanted something a little smaller, something more suitable for just me and a little tougher. So I found these online a while ago and had been looking everywhere for a set here, so when I found them on Amazon jumped at the chance to get them on free shipping. 

Nothing too special about them, just small (1L), compact, inexpensive, thick glass, and to be honest, I just really like the shape of them. So even though i'm not going to be able to use them for a while, it'll make me smile knowing they're here for me when I get back.....:0)

Coming home to....

When I got home I was met with a large pile of boxes, cards and letters, and for once they were not all from the bank. In fact they contained a fair few of my favourite things.......pictures and photos! My favourite picture was drawn by Callie - a purple dino-reino-moose  (as Stian dubbed it). I love it and it has pride of place on the fridge! 

Another thing I came home to was some of my pottery fired and finished! These are a few of my initial pieces, I have much more to be glazed and fired, exciting! 

Positively spacious!

Welcome to Grodnick! I finally measured my tiny house the other day, and it comes to a positively spacious 323 sq ft! Actually much larger than I had thought, having the separate kitchen is a definite bonus here and a decent size (not to mention new!) bathroom. Remembering that I moved here from a 2 bedroom house with garden (and from that an even larger 2 bedroom apartment!) it is still a small space for me, but one I am really loving. Yes I would like a separate bedroom, yes I would like a spare bedroom, i'd even love a kitchen I could actually turn a circle in, but I am really enjoying finding ways to make this small space work for me, not to mention the $$'s i'm saving over most places here (though remembering i'm paying almost what I paid for the 2 bedroom house on the cape!).

So I thought i'd take you on a tour, now that i've actually been here for a long stint and have things pretty well set up.

So - the view from my front door (by the futon) -

My desk/TV area. Computer, printer and the TV which is actually a monitor, so doubles up when I need extra desktop space. I recently bought a bracket to hang my TV/monitor on the wall, which has cleared up a bunch of space, and it tilts, so it doesn't matter that it's high, I can still see the screen.
The view from my backdoor (by the bed) -

The bathroom (I can't squeeze in there enough to take a good photo of the shower unfortunately). So this recently got redone, and although it is super nice, I actually lost a lot of storage space when they redid it, so i'm hoping to find some suitable shelves for the wall. I used to keep all my bedlinen in here as well as all my towels and laundry soap and the usual toilet items. Now there is no room for the towels (if only they had made the drawers deeper!) or my linens, so they have moved to my closet.
View into my kitchen, so nice for a studio to have a separate kitchen!

View the other direction. Counter space is so small that I often use the cooker top as an extra surface, which is nice that it's a ceramic top! The cooker is slim so I still get the cupboards and things on the ceiling and wall.

The wall opposite in the kitchen - my "pantry" well organised and in canisters (left over from the cape where mice were an issue, and now good for ants and cockroaches!), the black bins are my recycling, all my gardening things are in here too on the floor tucked in the corner.

The best thing for a small kitchen - get things up on the wall!

My princess bed.....:0) Yes, the mosquitos are still biting......The bed is unfortunately on a box spring, so doesn't have much "under" room, but I do have two underbed boxes which have "present" supplies in and some pictures that won't fit on the walls here.

My large closet. This houses basically everything except my larger luggage which I have in plastic boxes under the house. So all my camping gear is in there, all my cruise gear, my clothes, my crafting supplies, my laundry and probably a few other things. It needs some major reorganization otherwise I would have taken a photo inside. I love this closet, and am so lucky to have such a large one in such a small space, otherwise I would be pretty sunk for storage...

And my way of disguising my clutter.....put it behind the chair....:0) This is part of my yarn stash, just the stuff I am using now for my many crochet projects.....

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Penny pinching....

Today I took all my loose coins (in my piggy bank, from my desk at work and out of the car) down to the Coinstar machine (I don't have a bank account on the island, so couldn't change them in a bank) and made two big scores. 

First I had way more than I thought - having done some internet research I discovered that you can use Coinstar machines and get vouchers for things like Amazon and iTunes and not get charged for it counting your pennies. So i'd decided I would come away with probably a $20 amazon voucher, threw my money in there. I had $88 worth of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters - woo hoo! So I paid the fee and ended up with $81 in cash - not the way I was going to go, but at this point $81 cash was more appealing than $88 on Amazon. Way to go desk drawer.

The second big discovery was Star Market - my god, how had I not walked in one before. It's a supermarket, but had way more choice than the local Safeway. They actually had a British section. I loved it, didn't buy much as I go away next friday, but enjoyed wandering - a good selection of organic foods too, average prices for Hawaii, but just having the choice is good. 

So I bought myself a few goodies (tofu, curry sauce, chocolate....the basics) and headed for a drive through the wet weather. Even down on Waikiki was wet, plenty of tourists wandering around in $1 clear plastic ponchos. It stopped raining about an hour ago, not sure if it's a lull or that was that. 

A wet Waikiki...

Sandbagging the university, which does lie on a low spot....

Parcels

One thing I enjoy as much as receiving parcels is wrapping up parcels! And it is that time of year! Here is a pile waiting for just a few more additions before I take them down to the post office. The post office has such annoying hours here it's worth waiting and taking them all in one! 

And, i'm finally feeling better! Though maybe my cold travelled through the ether to NEA and family - get well soon guys! 

The best things come in packages!

I'm not sure which I was most excited about - the box of yarn or the drawing from Lala! Thanks guys, I miss you too! 

The is the front door Gecko (as opposed to the back door gecko), they were really going for it this evening, but I saw this one eat two flying things, so keep it up! 

Baby gecko on my light. This is the first time i've seen the babies inside (they are usually outside living in my crocs). This little fellow was just across from the front door Gecko, so maybe mamma was taking the baby for a walk. I then saw another baby behind my TV. Grodnick is suddenly becoming quite crowded.....

Going in with the Big Guns.....

Okay thousand little anties snaking across my ceiling.......lets see if this Terro power i've heard all about works.........

Ben and Jerry's

Back at home, and tucked up in bed by 8.15pm. Hoping to last out until at least 9pm so I don't wake up at 3am.....we'll see. Uneventful journey home, stayed with Kristen K last night in Boston, which was sooooooo much fun, and Jenny was a superstar and came and picked me up from the airport this evening with my horrendously heavy luggage............histology supplies and fish gonads.....need I say more?

So just in case you thought there couldn't possibly be another reason to totally adore Ben and Jerry's ice-cream (I mean aside from their scrummy flavours and good business attitude), I had a frozen coffee slushy at Dallas airport and they now all come in cups made from corn, so can be composted. Pretty cool huh. Catch up Starbucks..... 

Adventures in Home Soap Making - Melt and Pour

So a few weekends ago I decided to purchase a few items to try out home soap making. The cost (both $$ and ecologically) of cosmetic products has been scaring me recently, so it's been on my mind to try this for a while. The ultimate goal would be trying to make soap from scratch (using fats and lye), but as that is somewhat involved and requires more equipment, I decided to try the easier Melt and Pour to begin and at least get to grips with the basics and also what smells and additives I like. 

So I bought my melt and pour bases from a local store here in Honolulu, so were somewhat more expensive than most online stores - not too bad, but you can do better if you live on the mainland. I bought only SLS and SLES free glycerin  bases of a few different varieties to try - white gylcerin, clear glycerin, honey, organic goats milk and shea butter. These averaged at $8 for 2lbs. I also bought some molds - 3 sheets (with 3 bars in each sheet) for $3 each, as I liked the look of a more professional bar, but you can use anything that will hold liquid and you can push it out of, there are lots of suggestions online. For additives I used what I had around - essential oils, baking soda (good for deodorant soap bars (good for boys!)), aloe, vitamin E. I also bought a non-spreading gel colour pack for $4, which are fun (and non-toxic, non-dirty dozen), but think I will move to natural colours from things like paprika etc after I run out (except maybe purple, I like that one....:0)

So all in all, you can make some pretty good for you soap bars, and it's a fun activity too. I sat this evening and worked an excel sheet on my ingredients and surprised myself with how much they cost. If you don't count the cost of the molds and the new pyrex jug I bought specifically for soap making, they come out pretty good. For my ingredients and a 4oz bar, I averaged at ~$1.75. I also worked out from an online store and you can get down to ~$1 per bar. Considering you can pay up to $5 a bar for a good eco-friendly soap, thats not a bad investment. If I move to lye I can get that even cheaper.

So here is what I did....

Cut up the base into small cubes

Melt in a double boiler (or jug in pan of water) - do not let boil, stir gently when you get down to the last few lumps - stir too vigorously and it gets bubbles. When it had fully melted I generally left it in the hot water for a minute, then pulled it out to add additives. 

Things I had around the house - baking soda, vitamin E, aloe vera - add less than 10% of these to your soap so it still firms up, the essential oils I played by nose, and not more than 10 drops per bar to make sure you don't get a sensitivity.  

Once you've added everything you want (this bar has poppy seeds in it for scrubbing!) and it's well mixed, pour the mix into a mold and allow to cool for a few hours (i left overnight). After you take them out you need to either use or wrap them up and put them in an airtight container. For Hawaii this seems essential because it's so humid - the high glycerin content makes them sweat in the humidity. I wrapped mine in wax paper rather than plastic wrap, and it worked great. 

One of them I made up some coloured bars, then chopped them into pieces and placed them back in the mold. Then covered them in melted clear base. They looked pretty cool when they came out! I think you would get more breakage with doing this though than a solid bar. 

And improvised mold for a little left - an old cookie cutter with a foil base. This is good for making a small bar to try out the mixes before giving away the larger bars, just in case they're not so good! One blog I read the woman kept all bad bars and left over bits in an old tin, and when full, re-melted it all down and poured into ice cube molds. She then used these soap pieces by the kitchen sink for handwashing, as they still work as soap, just aren't too fancy! So i've started collecting all my waste pieces to do just that! 

Some of the finished products - clockwise from top - lavender shea butter; goats milk and honey with a touch of peppermint; and unscented goats milk with lavender bubbles hidden.