2007 round-up

Here is a little photo mosaic of notable things I've seen and done this year:

Woo-hoo, I did a lot in 2007! I was based in Costa Rica for the entire year (and still will be until this summer) working on my dissertation, which is pretty much a 24/7 job. I made a couple of trips back to Miami this year to update my advisor and committee on my progress here. My advisor also traveled to Costa Rica for a few days to see what I’m doing firsthand. In July I took a trip to Mexico to present my research in the palm seed dispersal and predation symposium at the 2007 annual meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. I helped a dazed and confused sloth. I took care of and played with a cute (though slightly inflated) wiener dog named Salchichita until she moved to the city. My mom and her friend Judy came to La Selva for a visit in September and we had a great time seeing the forest and celebrating my 26th birthday. I got to meet Jane Goodall -- one of my childhood heroes. Thanksgiving at La Selva was a really extravagant affair filled with friends, fireworks, and food! And finally, Carlos and I spent Christmas in La Fortuna, soaking in the hot springs, eating good food, and relaxing for once!

I hope that 2008 will be just as great if not more so. I will be finishing up data collection, driving across the USA, teaching, writing my dissertation and submitting papers for publication, and hopefully traveling to a couple of conferences to present my research and start inquiring about post-docs. ¡Feliz año!

New year's eve tonight

Hey, tonight is new year's eve! It really sneaked up on me and I can't believe that it is soon going to be 2008. I really liked 2007, but this year did seem to last a long time. I am trying to make a little list of resolutions -- I never really do this, but I thought it would be a good exercise to organize and re-prioritize things for the upcoming year. Most of my resolutions pertain to my dissertation and its completion -- pretty boring sounding but definitely topping the list of next year's priorities.

As for new year's eve, I don't have any major plans. I might go out to dinner with a few of the other researchers from the station, but it won't be anything big -- I do have to work tomorrow! I haven't ever really been that into new year's parties so Carlos and I will probably take it easy at home and maybe watch some fireworks outside at midnight. The ticos LOVE any excuse to shoot off fireworks...the louder the better. It sounded like a war zone on Christmas!

Back in La Selva

Yay -- Carlos and I made it back from La Fortuna late last night after a pretty long bus ride (it really was only 2.5 hours, but the bus stopped about every 5 meters to let people on and off). Our vacation was so awesome and it is great to come back to work revitalized. The hotel we stayed in (called Hotel San Bosco) was excellent -- it had 2 pools and jacuzzis, nice breakfast included each morning, cable TV, AC, hot water, and really pretty plants everywhere. It was well worth a bit of extra money to stay at such a nice place.

Fortuna is really crowded with tourists at this time of year and they were everywhere. It was pretty strange to see so many gringos everywhere! The weather was fairly cloudy (since it's the rainy season after all!) the entire time, but it was very nice. Our first day there we spent mostly walking around the town looking at souvenirs (nothing interesting -- just the same old junk they sell everywhere here) and relaxing at the hotel. The following day (Christmas), we went to Baldi Hot Springs and enjoyed all the pools and waterfalls. Baldi is a really fun spa/hot springs/water park which we had visited before. Our third day in La Fortuna we relaxed and did some more exploring around the town. Yesterday we stayed in town, checked out, and ate a really nice Italian food lunch before hopping on the bus to head back home.

Here are a bunch of random pictures from our trip. It was weird to spend Christmas here in Costa Rica (I missed the cold weather back in Washington), but we had a great time relaxing away from La Selva! Woo-hoo -- I hope everyone had a great Christmas vacation too!
(one of the pools at our hotel)

(Volcan Arenal -- the peak is covered in clouds, but at night you can see lava!)

(one of the warm pools at Baldi)

(another set of pools at Baldi)

(Tanagers eating some plantains)

(Italian restaurant where we ate our last lunch in Fortuna)

Vacation starts tomorrow

Tomorrow, Carlos and I head off to La Fortuna for a 3-day vacation and boy do I need it! We are currently finishing up here on station to prepare for leaving and this past week has been super busy -- for some reason busier than usual.

We are going to take the earliest bus (5:30am) from Puerto Viejo to Ciudad Quesada and from there take a short ride to La Fortuna. We are setting out so early since tomorrow is going to be a huge travel day around here...blargh...lots of people. We should get to Fortuna before lunch. We don't have anything really planned for tomorrow but the following day (25 Dec) we are planning on going to Baldi -- a hot springs/water park/resort. We've been there before and it was really fun with slides, pools with lots of different temperatures, waterfalls, etc. Woo-hoo!

We'll return to Pto. Viejo on the 27th and then it's back to work. Merry Christmas everyone!

Felt crafting

I’ve been really into making more felt things recently during nights at home after dinner when we watch TV. I was inspired to make a red poppy a couple of nights ago after browsing the totally radical craft site called Etsy (www.etsy.com). If you’ve never heard of this site before, you should really check it out -- especially if you are into crafting. Basically, you can buy crafts that other people make (the selection is enormous!) and you can also open a little store on the site and sell your own stuff. I might set up a little shop when I get back to the states since it is really easy and a good deal (20 cents to list an item and Etsy gets about 3% of each sale). Fun!

Anyway, back to my recent craftiness. Two nights ago I stitched together a little red poppy (inspired by the seller Lupin on Etsy). It looks really pretty and would make a nice pin maybe.

Last night I made 2 more little potential pins: a stack of pancakes and a pretzel! Mwahahaha! Maybe I will make more tonight!

Gecko wake-up call

Has this ever happened to you? It is 6am and you are awake but still snoozing. All of a sudden -- SPLAT!! -- a huge fat (6cm body length) gecko falls on your face! Well, it happened to me this morning and it really freaked me out. Once it splatted on me (it was heavy!) I sat up and slapped it away and Carlos said that the gecko looked just as scared as I was! Heehee, at least it wasn't a scorpion like I initially thought.

That may be weird but the even weirder thing is that this has happened to me before. I was sitting on my bed watching TV in my last apartment in Florida and a little gecko landed on my head! What the heck! At least geckos in the house are supposed to be lucky right?

Christmas travel planning

I will be staying in Costa Rica for Christmas this year and this will be my first Christmas away from home and my family. I am really going to miss everyone and it will be weird to not be in a cold/seasonal place for the holidays! I am going to take a break from working though -- Carlos and I have just made reservations in a nice hotel in the town of La Fortuna. Fortuna is about 3 hours away (by bus) and is a nice little town situated at the base of an active volcano: Volcan Arenal. We have been there before (back in September 2006) and it was great! There are gorgeous hot springs and waterfalls to hike. The hotel we will be staying at is pretty posh (for our hostel-level standards!) and has cable, air conditioning, a pool, and jacuzzi! We will leave Puerto Viejo on 24 December and come back on the 27th. We will probably spend a full day at one of the hot spring parks (probably the 25th) and spend the rest of our time relaxing. This will be the first vacation I've had for a while. I think the last time I took a break was in July when I visited Mexico (and even then I was pretty busy!) so this will be fun. Carlos and I don't even take weekends off here!

Sketch post -- Day 7

Today's sketch is of a village scene from the Greek island of Santorini. This is basically a work in progress. A couple of the domes are colored now, but the sketch is still far from finished. One of these days I will be able to visit Greece -- and eat real Feta!

Sketch post -- Day 6

Nothing much going on here today -- I collected some data and did some laundry. I am probably going to go home soon to work on writing a paper (almost all done and ready to submit!).

Here is a sketch of a Dipodomys sp. -- a kangaroo rat!

Sketch post -- Day 5

Here are a couple of agouti sketches I did a couple of months ago. Agoutis are suprisingly difficult for me to draw -- if you don't get the face or hump in their back just right...they look weird.

I drew agoutis from two species: one is found here in Costa Rica (D. punctata) and the other (D. leporina) ranges throughout South America.

Sketch post -- Day 4

Today we have two sketches for the price of one (one is a re-run though)...these are sketches of some 8-bit and 16-bit characters from two of my favorite Nintendo games.

I've talked about Mega Man before, but Ness (the other character) comes from a little-known game on the Super Nintendo called EarthBound. This is my absolute favorite video game of all time! It is an RPG about a boy (Ness) and his 3 friends (Paula, Jeff, and Poo) who set out to save the world from an evil power (Giygyas). This game is really fun and very quirky. It has a pretty significant cult following, but the game was not very successful for Nintendo commercially so there are no sequels in the US. I still have my original game and SNES console back home and play it every now and again. If you like Super Nintendo RPGs you should definitely give EarthBound a play!

Sketch post -- Day 3

Here is a sketch I did back in September when I watched the movie My Neighbor Totoro for the first time.
This sketch is of a scene in the movie where Totoro stands at a bus stop in the rain waiting for his bus. The bus he is waiting for is not a normal bus -- it is a cat-bus...basically a huge cat with lots of legs, windows, a door, and mice with glowing eyes as lights in the front and back of the "bus." Rather than an umbrella, Totoro only has a leaf to shield him from the rain. Totoro is a forest spirit who lives in a big tree and harvests acorns and other seeds with 2 other Totoros (a tiny white one and a medium-sized blue one). This is a great movie with fantastic animation produced by a famous Japanese animation studio: Studio Ghibli. I also highly recommend the movie Spirited Away by the same director (Hayao Miyazaki) from the same studio (Ghibli).

Sketch post -- Day 2

Here is the sketch from the 2nd page of my Moleskine. I have drawn 2 different views of a leaf chafer beetle (Macraspis lucida) that I found one day in the forest. I found this beetle dead on the trail and brought him back to my office. After arranging the legs and letting him dry out for a few days, I pinned him and made some tags so now he is a museum specimen. This beetle species is really beautiful and I would like to bring him back to the states, but if I can't I will likely donate him to the arthropod museum here so they can add this M. lucida to their collection.
PS. I have also included a photo of my specimen so that you can see how shiny it is!

Sketch post -- Day 1

I think I am going to try and post on this blog more frequently than I have been. I was really on a roll in November with NaBloPoMo (despite missing one day) and it was fun trying to think of interesting things to put on my blog. I have also been making an effort to sketch a little every day in the beautiful Moleskine sketchbook my parents gave me for my birthday. So, maybe I can try and post a scanned picture from my sketchbook each day! This is a pretty daunting task, but I just scanned a whole bunch of pages a couple of days ago so there is a little backlog that should take care of a few days' posts! OK, lets start from the beginning. Here is sketch 1 from my sketchbook:

This is a chambered nautilus (no, not the submarine from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea...it's Nautilus pompilius!).

Motmot

Yesterday was a beautiful day in the forest. The weather was warm with a cool breeze and the light was great. There were no tourists to walk around on the trails and the forest was silent except for the constant buzz of insects and the chirps of birds. While checking one of my seed depots, I heard a commotion in the vines above my head -- I had startled a Rufous motmot (Baryphthengus martii). These birds are beautiful and this guy let me get pretty close before he would fly off to another perch. I probably spent a good 10 minutes stalking him to take a picture, but I never got a good one so I drew a sketch of him in my notebook.

Isn't Motmot just about the best name for a bird ever?

Animals, animals everywhere

Wow, today has definitely been an animal-rich day! I usually see tons of animals each day (if you count birds, lizards, insects, peccaries) but today I saw an unusual abundance of more rare animals. This morning I saw a huge tayra (Eira barbara) which is a member of the weasel family but is BIG -- body is about a meter long plus a half-meter (or more) bushy black tail. On my way to lunch, I heard a commotion in the trees and watched as a group of howler monkeys (3 males, 2 females, 2 babies) jumped from branch to branch, making their way to the bridge, then crossed on the bridge cables to the other side of the river. This happens fairly frequently but is always fun to see. Finally, this afternoon (about an hour ago) I saw a huge Boa! He was at least 1.5 m long and was really chubby.

New blog header

Yesterday I added a new header to my blog -- did you notice? I like it, but I think it still needs a little work. There are a couple of other sketches in my notebook that I still need to scan and tinker with a little. I have Photoshop on my computer now (yay!) and it is a big help when recombining images. I have gotten pretty good at using Photoshop (for instance I used it heavily to color, arrange, and crop images for the ATBC logo I made a few months back), but I am still restricted to its most basic functions. Let me know what you think of this header -- at least it's better than the bland, text-only heading that I had up there before!

Sad

I am feeling pretty sad right now because yesterday I talked to my parents and learned that our dog Sierra passed away the night before. It feels like we lost a member of our family. She was over 15 years old, which is extraordinary for a large dog (most German Shorthair Pointers don’t live to see 11). I know that she had a very happy life and she was not in any pain -- it all happened very suddenly. I had known Sierra for the majority of my life. All of our animals are getting very old so this was inevitable, but it is still really hard to deal with when it actually happens.


I also still miss little Tiffy our Siamese kitty who died a few months ago. She was 18 (I think -- it’s hard to keep track after a while!) and she is also very much missed. Tyler is still alive and kicking and now he needs lots of extra attention since his buddies are gone. I just thought I would let everyone know so that you can understand if I neglect this blog for a few days or if I sound a little less than upbeat.