This is my 100th post!
It's pretty exciting, I feel. Instead of having a huge shebang since it's my 100th post, I'm just going to TALK some more about the things I've been up to in my life (aside from ringing in the new year like a boss).
Scuba Diving
The biggest thing I've been up to this break has been learning how to scuba dive. I am now officially open water certified and can go down to 60 feet! At first I was really anxious about it because I didn't know what to expect, it was something new, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to equalize. Pressure becomes greater as you go deeper in water, and since pressure in water is also greater than it is in air, this means that there's a HUGE difference between the pressure in the outside water and in the air spaces in your body. This creates what's called a "squeeze", which is the discomfort you feel when you try to swim in deeper water. You also feel squeezes when you go up in elevation, though since it's all air it does not hurt (usually, unless you have fluid in your ears from a head cold or something). So while in water, you need to equalize often in order to be able to go to any depth. If your ears start hurting, it means that you haven't equalized enough so you need to ascend a little and make sure to equalize before descending. I learned all this in our first lesson, impressive eh? Our scuba course was a "quick course" of four classes of four hours each and then two trips up to the Homestead Mineral Crater in order to do our open water dives. The first lesson we were in the classroom for the first half of class to go over the first chapter of our scuba manuals, which we had read/studied the day before. We also had homework for each class we had to hand in that helped us with our quizzes we took each day. After the lesson was over and our quizzes taken, we got our swimsuits on and got in the pool. We learned how to assemble our equipment, how to work our BCD, and how to choose a good mask for our faces before we got in the water and learned easy skills like clearing our masks underwater, which was really SUPER handy to learn, especially for me. I always end up with water leaking into the nose of my mask so it was handy to know how to clear it. When we finally put on our equipment and put our regulators in for the first time to breathe underwater, I freaked out a little because I felt like I couldn't get enough oxygen from the tank. Soon I relaxed though and felt more at peace with it. We tried on weight belts to make us neutrally buoyant and paddled around in the shallow end for a bit before he allowed us to go into the deep end to try our equalization skills. We worked on it, and I can equalize up to 30 ft deep now for the most part (my ear has been giving me trouble because of a cold). Throughout the rest of our lessons we learned how to do 5 point descents and ascents, the different ways of dealing with someone running out of air while on a dive or having your airflow blocked somehow, hand signals for underwater, how to maintain your buoyancy so you don't float everywhere, and different entries and exits out of the water. Now that we've certified, we're allowed to go back to Dive Utah (where we certified) and use their equipment in the pool anytime we want fo fwee. So we can brush up on our skillz before we go on a trip. For our open water dives, we went up to the crater, which is this awesome hot spring structure in Midway INSIDE A LITTLE MOUNTAIN!
We entered to find that it smelled incredibly awful, like a mixture of sulphur and ass. The tunnel to the pool inside has only recently been created in the past decade, as people who wanted to swim/scuba/snorkel had to originally repel into the crater through a hole in the ceiling that allows natural light into the inside of the crater.
According to its website, it is the only warm-water scuba destination in the continental United States (not including Hawaii I guess). The water was 94 degrees, which was a blessing considering we were certifying in the middle of winter. Basically it's a mountain with a pool of really warm water inside that goes down to 60 ft. It was tiny, about the size of maybe two regular sized pools combined. The walls of the cave aren't reinforced with concrete or anything, they're just natural compositions of soil and rock. It was amazing.
(this particular picture I snagged from this blog)
We got our gear on inside soaking tanks built on either side of the dock and then dove under to get to a small PVC-pipe square about 21 feet beneath the surface. I equalized pretty well and once we were down there we executed skills like showing our instructor neutral buoyancy and our mask clearing skills. At one point there were some scuba divers underneath us, and their streams up bubbles were propelling me upward at an alarming rate. The instructor had to grab my wrist and yank me back down before I floated up at an unsafe rate. We went down to 31 feet without issue in my ear and I went home happy. The next day I had a little more trouble descending because I couldn't equalize. I managed to get down to the PVC pipes again, however, and then we had to move over to a platform sunk to a depth of about 33 feet. It took me a long time to descend to that depth (because we'd just taken a surface interval of fifteen minutes) so I took my time. Better to be slow than to have exploded ear drums, I always say. We did a compass navigation to show that we could use it underwater (which I'm not sure if I did it correctly or not. I feel like I had the right heading, but I also feel like I went in an opposite direction than everyone else...oh well). Then our instructor (Sam) asked if anyone wanted to go to a deeper depth, which I said no too because my ear was giving me lip (hahahaha I made an inward joke) so I hung out on the surface with another girl who had a cold and couldn't equalize. Everyone else went to 55 feet and then we got out and were certified! The crater was definitely an awesome experience, though it's incredibly crowded. It was almost impossible to do a tired diver tow without running over some poor seven year old in his little yellow life vest.
We're going to maybe go on a diving trip in the spring to Monterey (kelp forests!!!) and then we're going somewhere tropical in the summer. I really hope I see a manta ray when we go. I always hold my breath and wish to see one when we go places where they might be, but I've never seen one. Maybe this year will be my lucky year. Also Alice is scuba certified too, so we might go on a diving trip this summer with some of her friends who are just getting certified. I'M SO EXCITED!
(none of these scuba pictures are mine, I got them from weheartit OR from various sources on the internet)
The Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum has been busy since November moving out of their old dilapidated (though well-loved) building in Presidents Circle to a new, super nice building up in the foothills by Red Butte Garden (officially called the Rio Tinto Center). It's covered in plated copper from the Kennecott Copper Mine (they try to hard to get support from the public even though the scar can be seen from space. They do try to be somewhat environmentally friendly though, which is good). Alice called me up and asked if I wanted to go and of course I said YES! So we went with her parents and older sister. After waiting in the (long) line, we were allowed to go UPSTAIRS! It was this huge, open-aired space with a giant, glass case reaching up to the ceiling filled with sort of "previews" for each exhibit, like ancient pottery and baskets, tapestries, a swarm of beautiful pinned butterflies, stuffed birds, animal skeletons, minerals, and fossils.
The first level was filled with minerals, rocks, crystals, and fossils. Alice ADORES geology, so we spent some time quizzing her on which rocks were rich and even learning some stuff! I love natural history museums because it's the stuff I like: evolution, creatures, ecology, animal behavior, etc. I always though being the curator of a museum would be really fun. In fact, when I was seven or something I wanted to be the person who made the fake exhibits for the taxidermy animals. I loved it, they were like giant dioramas with tons of small details to look at. Anyways, Alice taught me that tourmaline has watermelon coloring.
That's mostly the thing that has stuck with me. I also remember that some form of rock sometimes randomly forms as giant puffs like a kix kernel, but I forgot what one. Calcite maybe? So it can either make crystals or puffs that look like the drywall foam of an unfinished basement. After minerals, the next floor up was filled with ancient life. I skipped this and immediately went on to the Great Salt Lake section, which was filled with stuff like brine shrimp and giant dioramas of salt lake habitats peppered with animals and plants that you could try to find. You better believe that Alice and I tried to find every single animal depicted in the small spinny wheels at the front of every exhibit. The floor was a giant map of the lake that was filled with real water, so it squashed around when you stepped on it. There was a model of the valley that had a small cloud shower you could crank and make it flood to different levels. The ultimate goal was Lake Bonneville, when the water level was the highest, so we encouraged two small boys to do the work for us and fill the tank up to the top before we drained it.
White Pelicans flew overhead attached to small wires, it was a really cool new exhibit. Then came THE DINOSAURS.
Oh God I love dinosaurs. I spewed information about vertebraes and eras and phylogenetics while Alice exchanged information about rocks and fossils. There was this HUGE phylogeny of triceratops skulls on the walls, which was one of my favorite parts. It was so, SO cool and totally fueled the nerd within. There was this weird booklet that depicted what each of the triceratops looked like with skin (of course all different kinds of rainbowy colors because they had artistic license) and one of them was depicted with giant owly eyes on its head plate. I thought it was interesting because it was such a specific marking to paint on just this one triceratops, because in prey items it's to fool the predator into believing that the prey item is much bigger than it is due to its "eyes". Alice scoffed at how colorful all of them were, and I told her that those were probably fake BUT that in some cases the chromatophores in feathers from other dinosaurs have been preserved and thus scientists actually could figure out color patterns in these species. One such dinosaur was discovered to have primarily black and white stripes, like a zebra, with some bright red to accent it. Scientists have since decided that this might be a prey defense, like zebras, so that the stripes disallow the predator from realizing where one dinosaur begins and the other ends. It could also be for sexual selection, like the bright red accents. I digress. We continued through the dinosaur section and appreciated all of the amazing exhibits. They tossed out most of the old exhibits from the old museum (not tossed out, you know what I mean) and have instead focused a majority of their new exhibit on the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, which they have all of the real fossils from. 66% of the dinosaurs they've found there have been teenaged allosauruses, making scientists wonder if they might have hunted in packs like wolves. At the end of the quarry, we found a delightful collection of dinosaurs draw by various children visiting the museum.
A really cool part about the new museum is that there are labs for each floor that are full of activities that kids and adults can do (though mostly kids). We only had time to visit the mineral lab (where we sorted igneous rocks) and the dinosaur lab (where we sorted each creature into its appropriate era) because we only had an hour left by the time we went to my floor, the floor of LIFE. BILOLOGY! I breezed over the DNA/proteins/cell components section since it's not my favorite part of biology and then got caught on the case full of bird skins. I identified them for Alice and then we went to see the fake exhibit dioramas (my favoriiite). We spent a majority of the rest of our time there trying to find every animal in the dioramas. It was a little frustrating because in some cases, there would be just one animal missing, and in other cases it seemed like we could only find two of the animals on the list. We rushed to look at some skulls and then went down the section that talked about land formation and geology (no actual minerals this time). We then ran through the ancient life section that we'd skipped earlier and tried to take a quick peak at the last floor (which was about native americans I think), but some employees cut us off because the museum was officially closed. Oh it was cool though. I am definitely going there again and am spending an entire day there.
Future Planning
So far I've crossed out sheep herding in New Zealand, as most of these positions are volunteer positions and even if you're a volunteer you have to apply for a work visa if you get food and board since it's technically income, PLUS tickets out there are like $2000 + dollars so that's not going to happen until I am at least not living paycheck to paycheck. I would rather just travel to New Zealand or Australia or something and benefit from not getting paid by having ultimate free time. Maybe I'll herd a few stray sheep while I'm out there.
The biggest things on my list are
-take the GRE
-grab a job for the summer, either in my lab or at the aviary or something, so that I can remain here and save money for the future and for trips with franz
-go on a lot of memorable trips with franz, take pictures, make memories
-GET A COOL JOB! Cool job opportunities include CIMI, an outdoor instructor at a YMCA camp (that Mia told me about, though it is a YMCA camp), and Woods Hole research, which is a marine center up near Massachusetts that Alice went to for a couple of semesters. They do grants for people for a year after they've graduated, and I think it would be both a really fun thing and a really good thing to put on my resume (plus an extra semester of taking it easy, going to school sort of thing). So those are some choices as of right now. It's both scary and exciting, the future. It feels good to slowly start to work things out, even though I was thrown into it at first, kicking and screaming.
Hanging Out
A lot of this past week has just been hanging out. There were plans to go to Antelope Island to go birdwatching, but those fell through because Alice went on a road trip to Colorado with her sister and her friends (which I couldn't accompany them on due to scuba). Instead we just hung out around her house and did epic things like have a Lord of the Rings marathon (it was originally intended to be extended edition, but we ended up just watching the regular first two and half of the extended third before we realized it was 6 AM and I went home). I love those movies so much, watching them with GAAA really makes me want to read the books (Alice was constantly like "this never happened"..."yeah, that totes never happened" and then I would be like "Alice, please shut up").
Also, don't even try to tell me Sam isn't a fucking badass. Sam is basically THE REASON that the ring was destroyed (well I guess officially that was Gollum, but Sam is still a badass). A few summers ago we had a very "Lord of the Rings" summer because we tried to do an extended edition marathon, but failed in the aspect that they actually WERE the extended editions and we started at like 10 PM so we were only at the Battle for Helms Deep by 5 AM, which is when we passed out. Also we would go up to Girr's cabin and play the trivia game (which I won, P.S.), so we decided that Alice was Merry, Gillian is Pippin, I'm Samwise, and Mia is Frodo (mostly because she was at camp during the LOTR summer). At the part where Merry and Pippin run into Sam and Frodo when they're stealing vegetables, they're like, "Look! It's Frodo Baggins!" and Alice turned to me and was like, "No one gives a shit about Sam, sorry." SO LAME ahahaha Sam is the best! Oh well. I love Lord of the Rings you guys.
Anyways, here are some pictures from our last night hanging out while she packed. We were looking in her dad's art studio for a painting he'd done of the Lord of the Rings book covers and, in the process, I took some Iphone photos because his studio is SO COOL! Hipsters would die of happiness if they visited it. It is basically full to the brim with quirky figurines, vintage typewriters, case upon case of typewriter tape, rocks Alice has brought home, different types of tools, CDs and records, cameras, etc.
I love his studio, I could look around it all day. It's also spider central, but still cool. I also played with her dog, Zeppo, and her cat, Tom Tom. Tom is the best cat because he's so gentle and fairly predictable. The most recent run-in I had with another cat was Claire's family cat, who FREAKED OUT after I petted her and grabbed my hand and bit it. Then when I retrieved my hand and put it in my lap, she WENT AFTER IT and clawed it and bit it again until I bled. I was a little bit upset (I've never owned a cat but I assume most of them don't actively go after the hand that simply pet them, I'm not sure). So Tom, in comparison, is much less scary to me and he is sooo pretty oh I mean handsome.
Then Gillian came over and we ate banana bread and looked through this amazing "cool book" (that's what it was called) for a shop in Ogden or Orem that advertises "modesty is not an issue here!" which is a big deal in this state of Utah because most every dress shop is a "modest is hottest" sort of deal. There are even shops that alter dresses you get from department stores or something to be modest. So we looked through this book, and most of the outfits are INSANE.
Also CLEARLY this model is not in high school, she looks about 34.
QUEEN OF THE COSMOS
This montage of pictures was amazing because a) they are standing in a giant rubble heap, where the fuck are they and b) this boy is one of two male models they have for the entire magazine and he loves Blue Steel. Amazing. So we decided to make captions for every single one of them. This one is one of my favorites because of the beaver bear that Gillian drew in the forest.
That is the end to gigantor post of what I've been up to. Yesterday and the day before were HUGEEEE recovery days from New Years because my legs and knees hurt so bad from dancing (yesterday my dad freaked me out pretty bad because he wondered if I got the bends from diving, but I only went to 25 feet and my legs/knees feel better today so it is probably just lactic acid buildup). Today is a day for cleaning my room and then hanging out with Sunny!
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