Holidays over
So the holiday season seems to be over for a while. It's been several weeks of holidays now, and people are finally back to work. Most seem to be sort of walking around in a daze, trying to re-orient. It feels a bit like January 2 in the US - the first days after a long break.
Not much of interest has been happening. I've mostly been trying to push things along slowly, and been trying to get some job applications out the door. Looks like a good season for jobs. I've got 17 lined up to apply for, spanning the whole of the US, from Seattle to Los Angeles, to Texas, to Florida to Connecticut to Michigan and Iowa. Not much right in the middle, though there are good ones in Colorado and Wyoming too. There are about 5 that would be great, and most of the rest would probably be quite good as well. We'll see if I get any interviews. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Let's see, on the Australian front, not much. The elections came at a pretty lousy time for the grant cycle. Normally the Parliament would be voting on the recommended proposals right now, so we'd be hearing in the next week or so. Instead, there was an election this weekend, which is going to delay things for a while. We're hoping to hear about the grant the first week of November.
On the lizard front, well... Still haven't actually talked with the guy at the Nature Reserves authority, but I have heard second hand from him. Apparently, he's got a spot lined up for us, and wanted to go this week to do some collecting, but the ranger that is supposed to be with us is doing his military duty this week. Ugh. We're trying to work something out. I wonder if I'll ever actually talk to this guy with the unpronounceable name - Dror. Looks innoncent enough, but the hebrew 'r' is not easy for english speakers. It's a lot like the french 'r' - sort of a 'uwrwah' sound. Try putting two of those together with an 'o' in between and it sounds like you suddenly forgot what you were saying in mid word. The first time I heard it, I just blinked. Hebrew speakers have the same reaction when I try to say it. Oh well.
I'm pretty nervous about getting these lizards soon for two reasons. First, the weather is changing. It's definitely starting to feel like autumn here. It's been increasingly cloudy, and today it rained. Well, there was water coming out of the sky in drops. It was almost possible to count how many drops fell, but they did fall. I think the only way to measure the amount would be to measure the distance between the drop marks in the dust. But it was rain. Along with the moisture comes cooler temperatures. It's been consistently 25C (75F) during the day and 16C (60F) at night. Too bloody cold for cold blooded animals. My salvation is that the Arava valley is much hotter than here, but I'm still very worried. A cold snap in the valley now would send them into the burrows for good. So, I'm a bit nervous.
The other reason I'm worried is that I want to get the experiments done with them before going back to Australia in December. It will take a good month to do that (if things go smoothly, which they won't, if Murphy has his say), and a couple of weeks of acclimation to captivity. That doesn't leave me much slack. It's going to be tight.
I suppose there is another issue related to the weather also. I'm not sure how warm I can keep their outdoor enclosure. I've got a bunch of heat lamps set up, but don't know if I'll be able to keep them warm enough to keep them out and active if it gets cold. I also don't know how temperature will affect the experiments we're doing. Argh.
The bat work is moving along slowy also. I'm still waiting for people to return so I can use their centrifuge to process samples. (at some point, I'll describe the actually process here, but not today) I'm also still waiting for some capillary tubes. Turns out that it is really hard to get heparinized capillary tubes in this country. Not sure why - I'm sure that they are used. The ones I ordered last month are supposed to arrive in December. Maybe. I just found out today because everyone has been on holiday for most of the last month, and not returning phone calls or responding to orders, etc. I may call one of you to order some capillary tubes for me and ship them here. It's bound to be faster than ordering them directly.
Not much of interest has been happening. I've mostly been trying to push things along slowly, and been trying to get some job applications out the door. Looks like a good season for jobs. I've got 17 lined up to apply for, spanning the whole of the US, from Seattle to Los Angeles, to Texas, to Florida to Connecticut to Michigan and Iowa. Not much right in the middle, though there are good ones in Colorado and Wyoming too. There are about 5 that would be great, and most of the rest would probably be quite good as well. We'll see if I get any interviews. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Let's see, on the Australian front, not much. The elections came at a pretty lousy time for the grant cycle. Normally the Parliament would be voting on the recommended proposals right now, so we'd be hearing in the next week or so. Instead, there was an election this weekend, which is going to delay things for a while. We're hoping to hear about the grant the first week of November.
On the lizard front, well... Still haven't actually talked with the guy at the Nature Reserves authority, but I have heard second hand from him. Apparently, he's got a spot lined up for us, and wanted to go this week to do some collecting, but the ranger that is supposed to be with us is doing his military duty this week. Ugh. We're trying to work something out. I wonder if I'll ever actually talk to this guy with the unpronounceable name - Dror. Looks innoncent enough, but the hebrew 'r' is not easy for english speakers. It's a lot like the french 'r' - sort of a 'uwrwah' sound. Try putting two of those together with an 'o' in between and it sounds like you suddenly forgot what you were saying in mid word. The first time I heard it, I just blinked. Hebrew speakers have the same reaction when I try to say it. Oh well.
I'm pretty nervous about getting these lizards soon for two reasons. First, the weather is changing. It's definitely starting to feel like autumn here. It's been increasingly cloudy, and today it rained. Well, there was water coming out of the sky in drops. It was almost possible to count how many drops fell, but they did fall. I think the only way to measure the amount would be to measure the distance between the drop marks in the dust. But it was rain. Along with the moisture comes cooler temperatures. It's been consistently 25C (75F) during the day and 16C (60F) at night. Too bloody cold for cold blooded animals. My salvation is that the Arava valley is much hotter than here, but I'm still very worried. A cold snap in the valley now would send them into the burrows for good. So, I'm a bit nervous.
The other reason I'm worried is that I want to get the experiments done with them before going back to Australia in December. It will take a good month to do that (if things go smoothly, which they won't, if Murphy has his say), and a couple of weeks of acclimation to captivity. That doesn't leave me much slack. It's going to be tight.
I suppose there is another issue related to the weather also. I'm not sure how warm I can keep their outdoor enclosure. I've got a bunch of heat lamps set up, but don't know if I'll be able to keep them warm enough to keep them out and active if it gets cold. I also don't know how temperature will affect the experiments we're doing. Argh.
The bat work is moving along slowy also. I'm still waiting for people to return so I can use their centrifuge to process samples. (at some point, I'll describe the actually process here, but not today) I'm also still waiting for some capillary tubes. Turns out that it is really hard to get heparinized capillary tubes in this country. Not sure why - I'm sure that they are used. The ones I ordered last month are supposed to arrive in December. Maybe. I just found out today because everyone has been on holiday for most of the last month, and not returning phone calls or responding to orders, etc. I may call one of you to order some capillary tubes for me and ship them here. It's bound to be faster than ordering them directly.
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