Ready to eat!

All these beautiful pictures are taken by Evan!

They are so freaking cute!!! And I hope that they will be delicious!!! With some luck I will eat some tomorrow in an omelet if I can make one and take a shower in less than an hour when I am home before I go to the International Latino Film Festival! But we will see how possible that turns out to be...

Also dissecting a shark for 3 hours that has been soaked in ethanol is not a pleasant thing.

She will be missed

Janet Guzman was a wonderful mother, friend, wife, co-worker, and sister and she will be greatly missed. She struggled with breast cancer for over 10 years and it finally got the best of her. She will be greatly missed by us in the soccer community.

Just went snowshoeing again and am enjoying another beautiful sunny day up on Spyrock.

But watching the news has made that feeling subside a bit. I just don't understand how we are still debating abortion rights. I mean Roe vs. Wade happened in 1973. That was almost 38 years ago! Woman should have the right to decide what to do with their bodies. Woman have been preforming abortions for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense to have a child. The world already supports 6.7 plus billion people and this large amount of people is consuming resources faster than they can be regenerated. Babies should be born to parents that actually want them.

Abortion and same sex marriage should be non-issues in this country because we are supposedly a secular nation that doesn't make decisions based on religious views. Yes, abortion is not a pleasant thing that should be prevented by emphasizing birth control and practicing safe sex but it should ALWAYS be an option. Most people have problems with abortion and same sex marriage because of their religious views. People should be able to marry/have sex with who they want to and make decisions about their own bodies. There is my little rant for the week.

Cosas

I painted my nails for the first time in over 3 years. Wow. That is a really long time. Evan had never seen me with painted nails before. I enjoyed watching Glee and painting my nails with Jordan and being extremely girly. Oh yeah and eating delicious brownies too.

I will not pain my few readers with more pictures of my shiitakes (had no idea that shiitake was spelled with two i's) but they are getting so big! I'm thinking I will harvest some within the next couple days.

It snowed here yesterday. And hailed a lot. Strange weather we are having.

Mushies!!!

Look at my shiitakes!!! We shut them in the bathroom during and after I took a shower and they absolutely loved the steam! They also love being inside. We had them outside but then decided it was too cold. My army of lettuce is also very happy that it is raining.

Look at how big and delicious they are getting!

On another note I rode the bus home with one of my neighbors and we talked for a while even after we got back to the apartment complex. She is super nice and is a wildlife major so we have taken a lot of the same classes and she is taking a spanish class, so we have a lot in common. It is really nice to actually know your neighbors. Evan and I play futsal with our other neighbor. I have decided that we need to have a neighborhood pajama party with beer because nobody would have to worry about driving home. And that is a beautiful thing.

Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed

That is the name of a kind of lettuce starts that Evan bought me today. We officially have an army of lettuce out in the backyard, 18 plants to be exact. Not sure exactly why he bought so many but I am happy. It was nice working outside in the dirt (bagged dirt I might add as there is no exposed d) after being so sick yesterday. Hopefully I will be adding some spinach, swiss chard and kale to my brood.

Look how cute my Shitakes are! We just opened them out of their bags yesterday and they were already starting to sprout little primordia! We are still trying to decide whether or not to keep them inside. Evan didn't like how they smelled inside.

Skunky

Fresh skunk smells like a mixture of gasoline, onions and garlic, just in case you were wondering. And not having water really sucks. We finally got it working at 11:30 last night and then got to wash the skunk off the dog. Lovely.

Here is what it looks like at Evan's parents house currently:

Evan takes really good pictures with his very expensive camera.

I am sick and tired of having a sore throat every morning.

Time to bring in some more firewood so it is at least somewhat pleasant in the living room.

Winter Wonderland

So Evan and I are up on Spyrock. The water pipes are frozen and there is about a foot and half of snow on the ground. I got a nice round of snowshoeing in today, which is a great workout. We had to park the truck down the hill because it couldn't make it up the hill and as far as we can tell only quads have been able to make it up. This is a picture from a long time ago but it gets the job done.

I need to study for my vertebrate anatomy lab practical, which is on monday, and my genetics quiz, which is on tuesday. But......there is a hot tub here and a big screen tv with movies....so that could be problematic.

Update: the dog just got sprayed in the face by a skunk. It smells awful and there is no water. There goes our night.

Shitakes

I just bought 3 compacted sawdust logs that are inoculated with Shitake mushroom spores! A couple botany students that I have classes with are selling them for $8 a log, which is an amazing deal considering a log usually costs around $20 or more. So Evan and I get to eat shitakes for dinner all the time for a while. I'm going to see if I can figure out how to make my own logs with some spores and some Alder logs or something. Basically this is awesome and I'm really excited about it! I will post pictures when I actually get my little logs! I think we are going to keep them in the bathroom, where it is warm and moist. Weird, I know, but I don't care. Shitakes usually go for $13/lb so basically this is a great deal and it is helping out my fellow students!

Also today, there is a guy in my Plant Tissue Culture class that is culturing some Sphagnum moss (aka peat moss) for his project. A little bit of background: in California no sporophyte (the sexual reproductive structure of moss) has ever been observed (the moss reproduces asexually instead) until this guy in my class found it here in Humboldt County!!!! AND I SAW IT TODAY!!! SO FREAKING COOL!!! So basically, this guy, an undergraduate such as myself, gets to write a paper about his find and it will be published in a scientific paper!! So cool!

I want to discover something cool....I love science so much!

Picture

I wanted to put this picture up on the previous post but I was on Evan's computer and couldn't find it.

Similaridades

Sometimes, like right now, it really scares me how alike my brother and my boyfriend are. It is 11:08 and my brother is sleeping on the floor and my boyfriend is sleeping in our bed. They both make identical grunting noises when I try to wake them up. They both thrive on being on the internet as much as possible. Both love to tease me as much as possible. They are night owls they are carnivores, and are hard to get motivated. And they make me stay up til 1:30 in the morning after getting me intoxicated.

Dr. Simmons, Lichenologist/Mycologist?

Who knows when I will graduate but.....

What will I do AFTER I graduate???

Right now Evan and I are both looking at grad schools that have majors that we both want. He is thinking about business or environmental engineering (I'm hoping he goes for the environmental engineering myself). I am thinking about mycology and am LOVING my lichens and bryophytes class right now and that is definitely something I would want to pursue further. Just look how cool lichens are:

So cool right? Yes I am a botany nerd I know. Basically I would really like to get my PhD one day and teach and get to do research in amazingly beautiful, diverse places. To be able to make a positive impact on the earth by learning about the flora and people of the world is what I want to do. The only thing I worry about is whether I have to choose between that life and having a social life where I can spend time with my family and friends and not be completely stressed out all the time.

I guess time will tell!

Now I am just waiting to see if I have gotten into the Spain program and all the other botany programs I applied to in Alaska, Puerto Rico, Kansas, and Costa Rica!

Also, I miss having a Spanish class : ( I really need to make more time to practice my Spanish so I don't get too rusty. Even though my spanish advisor said my spanish had improved a lot when I met with her last week : D

PMS

SUCKS.

Crying over basically nothing 2 days in a row is not normal and is not fun. Hopefully it will end soon.