Electric Ladyland

5/21/11
First day of work! Slow set up, but everyting ran very well. I drove 105 miles so at $0.35 a mile I made about $65 yesterday! Tiring though. Wooh boy.  We came back to pretty much laze around. Got a little rowboating in with Mel. The second coming of Christ didnt happen..

5/22/11
Holy crap. Busy day. Lots of birds. Especially big bitey Cardinals and fucking Empids and Empid worksheets. I got eaten alive again by mosquitoes and I got lost in the forest for a bit. Then came thunder. Then came rain. At one point I was at the banding station by myself, hunched over the worksheets and my bird, trying to keep everything dry while figuring out what kind of flycatcher I had because his stats fell into similar ranges for different spp. Closed early due to rain. We were all really tired and frustrated. Something got into our garbage last night..

5/24/11
EATEN ALIVE BY MOsQUITOEs YEsTERDAY! so I wore my rain jacket, hat, and hood even though it was hot and sunny out in order to defend against most of the parasite onslaught. The aftermath was not pretty. My face and hands are covered with bites. Just everywhere. And they itch like hell. I hope I stop reacting soon cos this sucks. We caught a whole bunch of male scarlet tanagers today. It was James' birthday today so I bet that made him happy. Festivities also included Mikes homemade sloppy joes, drinking, epic thunderstorms, asshole, and shithead.

I'm pleased to see that I'm getting use out of my cookbook. Other people are as well. It's a hit. The Joes were really good! A thunderstorm hit while I was playing guitar on the porch. All of a sudden I was blasted with a gust of wind that was quite impressive. I looked up to see the field grass blowing like crazy. soon came the rain, lightening, and thunder. The sound was so immense that the whole trailer rattled like it was going to collapse. Thats a good sign, right? Especially during a TORNADO WARNING and later TORNADO sIGHTING just down the road. We ended up getting pretty drunk. Morning was not happy, but it happened.

Today was a good day for birds. Pileated Woodpecker! IT looked like if Rufio got raped by a pteradactyl. Pecked the shit out of my hand, the bastard. Earlier in the day I cut myself on my pocketknife saw like an idiot while trying to clean up a netlane. Oh well. The cool thing about knife wounds is that it means you were playing with knives.

I've almost learned how to play classical gas. I'll give it a week before im awesome at it. =)

5/29/11
Busy end of the work week. We had to take a break from banding to do more set up. What a bitch! We couldnt finish up completely because of Navy stuff, so we'll have to get to it later. We did finish up the banding period. A little wet and cold, but we got all of our hours in.

Then it was the "weekend". And it is gooood. started the whole thing off with a BBQ and since it was my night to cook, I was the grillmaster. I made some bomb burgers and corn. Fuckin nom. Ended up playing kings and asshole and got a little drunky. We converted drunken energy into rowing power on the pond. Rowing is the shit. We just hang out and talk and sip on beer in the middle of our private lake. It's good times.

Yesterday we were at a loss as to what to actually do on one of our first days off. What is there to do in Bloomfield, IN? Even google couldn't find anything good. I made do. I went on a run on the road by our house. 157 N has too many cars, not enough shoulder, and huger rollercoaster hills. This route (230?) ultimately leads to a Christian daycare called Tulip Church or something. I tried to head for there. It was a real change of pace, excuse the pun. Exactly what I needed to do on a boring day. I saw some cows; they're beautiful animals. The young ones run a lot and its a very interesting gait. I found a dead redheaded woodpecker on the road, but I kept going and forgot to look for it on the way back. Lotsa dogs. Guard dogs. At one point I ran past a house with 3 dogs (and two little kids) in the front yard who started barking at me. They ran alongside the fence, which wasn't very tall, to keep barking at me. Kinda scary, but at least they were behind the fence for the time being.

I stopped when I hit the train tracks about two miles from the house. I was reminded of young Mac and Charlie throwing rocks at trains. sure enough, the train passed and on the other side of the tracks were two teenagers with ripped jeans and longish hair hurling rocks at the train. Their house was about 40m from the tracks, so I dont see how they could NOT throw rocks at it. On the way back the same kids were being driven in a truck by someone who I assume was their father, and they took a curious look back at me. I dont think there are too many runners around here. Although as I'm writing (not typing) this we just passed a seasoned looking runner in Bedford. But it's close to the city center. Iono.

Finally, on the way back I passed the house with the 3 big dogs again, except this time the dogs weren't in the yard. For a moment I breathed a sigh of relief because I thought they were sniffing around in the back or maybe even inside the house. But when I looked left I noticed to my mild horror that one of the more Rottweiller lookin ones was trotting toward me from the field across the road. I know that you're not supposed to run away from dogs, but what else could I do. I was running first. Luckily he just smiled and trotted home. The little boy was on the porch. He waved to me and said hi, and I gave him a tired hi back.

At home I watched Barca stomp on ManU. Sweet. Mel and I went on a hunt for boardgames. Got apples to apples and knockoff Jenga. The pieces arent even flush! We spent the night playing "Jumbling Towers" and rowing. Right now we're on the road to Madison to visit Sam and Victor. It should be less boring than Bloomfield.