it has been some time since I have written many of you, so I will try to sum up the year so far and leave it at that. You are always welcome to email me directly--I love getting mail! In the following post, if there is an & in the text it means there is or are some photos. I have yet to figure out how to attach photos, but hope to get that together soon.
I did go to Antarctica from last December to early February &, with a week stay in NZ helping out a fellow grad student with his invasion plant/insect study. I returned home to find that my mom, who had been doing pretty well with cancer since the fall, had become much worse and she died shortly after I returned home. We spread her ashes in a nearby nature area. I also had the task of sorting out her house--she was quite tidy and had little "junk" but it still took some time. The house is on the market, and we are hoping for a sale before the winter &. Don't hesitate to contact me if you know any one who would be interested in a cute, 2 bedroom, Cape, with lovely gardens and a little screened gazebo in the back in Pittsfield, MA--a shameless plug for the house.
In the spring I also decided to leave my PhD program for a variety of reasons, personal and professional, and at the end of June I bid farewell to the schooling part. However, I do like biology and academia in general, so I took a position as a field/lab tech for another professor at Dartmouth, so I am still living in the upper valley near Hanover, NH. For part of the summer I was heading to Lake Champlain to collect water and zooplankton samples for a NOAA funded project looking mercury levels. Now that it is fall, I am doing more lab stuff and working on other projects as well.
As to love life, I have a boyfriend who lives a little over an hour away, and since we both like our own space, that is working out just fine for now. It has been a year and Don and I still seem to like and enjoy each other &. Both of those things are good.
As to other adventures, I am afraid that I recently got to watch my car roll down a hill on its own, after popping out of gear, do a flip and land rather heavily on its side &. There was less damage than one might expect with a roll over, but it is still a bit pricey to fix my car. However, I really like this one, and figure it is still good for another 30-50,000 miles. So, fixing her I am.
Life otherwise is pretty good. My cat, Phoebe, is as cute as ever &, I often bike to work (~4miles), been doing some running and the like. I hiked on the Vermont Long Trail for 6 days this summer--mostly in the rain-- so there are very few good photos &. Last weekend, I joined a Wyoming friend (Melissa Thompson) on the last leg of her cross-country bike trip, to bike from Worcester to Boston with her and two other women who biked from LA to promote bicycling (jointhecycle.com). I alsogot to catch up with a couple college friends while in the Boston area and attend a college production of South Pacific with my brother, Rob. I don't have any big plans for travel at the moment--have to fix the car. But you never know what I might get into next.
I hope that everyone is having as good a life as possible and enjoying the moment whenever they can.
I think I have finally gotten all this to work correctly. If you click on the photo below it should take you to the Picasa web album with the photos that go with this entry. If that does not work, you can always paste the URL into your browser.
http://picasaweb.google.com/elizabeth.traver/SeptBlogPhotos?authkey=Gv1sRgCILSv9KH2JP6DQ&feat=directlink
