Communication Breakdown

Alright, we know you guys check out the blog every so often but we don't know who is reading it. A quick comment or responding like "cool pictures" or "sounds like a good weekend" etc. would be nice. Something to let us know you're still out there. It doesn't have to be long and you don't have to leave one every time. But we feel like this is a one-way communication and we would like some more interaction people!

Feeding the Geese

We rode our bikes to the park today and brought along some of our old bread heels to feed to the ducks. The ducks weren't interested in us at all so the geese got all the bread. They were so domesticated that if we started walking they followed expectantly, practically begging for more bread. After we ran out of bread we had a snack and threw the frisbee around for a while.



After cleaning up from riding our bikes we decided to end our expensive weekend with more expenses at dinner down the street at a pizza joint. It was a good ending to a great weekend. Back to the grind...

Last week of classes for me!

A Good Week

Spring has been here for a little while now and the trees/flowers around the city are looking pretty good. The trees around campus are especially nice.

This week and weekend were chock-full of fun! Atalie started her temporary second job at a small ad firm here in town and is now working a full 40 hour week. She then bought a bunch of new work clothes (much to her delight) which she was in need of. The week started with an unusual purchase- a bike for Atalie. It is a really nice bike but unfortunately the numb-skull that designed it made a certain piece on it out of plastic which of course we managed to break the same day we bought it. There is no need to explain how livid I was, so back to the store it went the next day and we haven't seen it since. "Apparently" the mechanic will get to it Monday or Tuesday. The point of the bike was so Atalie could get around Springfield comfortably since we went on a 20 mile bike ride last Saturday and couldn't sit for the past week.

Friday we went to our first Springfield Cardinals baseball game and it was good fun. The fireworks were pretty neat as well.

Saturday was Artfest here in town and we spent the majority of the afternoon walking amongst cool artwork and listening to some good bands. We rounded the night off with "The Symphony Under the Stars" in a park near the baseball field. They played a bunch of Broadway songs and were very good.

The week in Boston

This past week I flew to Boston to present some research at the annual conference of The Association of American Geographers. It was great fun! We had, or rather will have, all expenses paid by the school and our $300/night hotel was just the beginning! It turns out, Boston is EXPENSIVE! Literally everything costs twice as much as here in Springfield. The food was great and I ate lots of it though I didn't have the guts to try oysters (maybe next time). I did a little bit of the tourist thing off and on during the week with a couple of the other people from school. We walked the "Freedom Trail" which is a guided walk through Boston to places of importance during the Revolution in the 1770s such as the burial ground that has Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and others; Paul Reveres house, the USS Constitution, Old North Church, and the Bunker Hill monument, went to Cheers, and Harvard Square. I ended off the week with a tour of the Samuel Adams Brewhouse which was really cool and Saturday Derek, Amanda, and I just relaxed in Boston Commons park and people watched before getting on the T to go to the airport. Oh yeah- I presented the poster Friday morning. :-)

Statue of Paul Revere.
Old North Church.
USS Constitution- the oldest active warship in the US Navy.
Fermentation tanks at Sam Adams Brewhouse.

The past 10 days

Hey everybody- sorry for the delay in blogging! The past 10 days have been a bit busy! The week before last, Patrick and our friends were staying at school late every night to get their posters done for a graduate forum on campus, and for an AAG conference in Boston. A couple of nights I visited them and brought food, and stayed for moral support until midnight or a little later. Friday night before the forum, we were there until 4:30 in the morning because the printer was absolutely stupid, and we only got 3.5 hours of sleep since the forum was in the morning.

The nice thing was, Patrick's parents came Friday night, so they were able to see Patrick's research and poster. It looked fabulous and he was one of the 6 finalists (and Kat got 2nd place, so they both did very well!) We were also spoiled (going out to eat, filling up the gas tank, etc), as is the fashion when we are around family members older than ourselves. :D

Everybody got up super early this past Monday morning since Patrick's parents were headed back to Michigan, and Patrick met up w/ some of our friends at school to carpool to St. Louis for their flight to Boston. Consequently, I've been alone all week!

Actually, it wasn't too bad though. Patrick's kept me informed over the phone and it sounds like he's been having a fun time and seeing a lot of the city (and some of the Missouri State people there received awards so the conference was a success too!) As for me, Kat and I were the only ones not in Boston so we hung out almost every night- dinner, shopping, and the movie theatre kept us quite busy!

Patrick is coming home late tonight though, so despite the week not being too treacherous, we're happy to be back together again!

Wine Tasting Tour!

This past Saturday, Patrick & I explored our refined side. :)

Our friend Kat is doing her thesis on mapping the soil, elevation, etc. of a boundary of wineries and vineyards in the Ozark area, so some of her field work involves visiting those locations and asking questions. We accompanied her on the 3 hour drive to Augusta (a little west of St. Louis) and on a mini-tour of 6 different wineries along Augusta's main road.

We kept our purchases light, only making off with bottles of a rose and a seyval, and a yummy mixture to make a wine based ice slushie, but we had to use some self control not to buy a few other unique and tasty types! I saved my notes I wrote down during each tasting though, so we might order some more online in the future.

In any case, it was a long day, but a fun one and the weather was gorgeous- perfect for driving with the windows down through wine country!

Field Assistant

I'm currently trying to get some field work in for my thesis project in order to have some data to present at a meeting in Boston in two weeks and I've been in the field several times in the past 1.5 weeks. I went out today, but it was a little different: Atalie tagged along. She portrayed perfectly the role of the "unlucky field assistant." Her first misfortune came when the person that used the waders previously didn't hang them up to dry when finished, never mind the fact that the waders leaked (which we found out later). Getting the waders passed her knees seemed to be a feat in and of itself, cue misfortune number 2. It turns out that it is nearly impossible for a woman possessing a bit more rump than the average woman to pull on a pair of youth-sized waders (again, which we found out later). After some tugging, she squeezed in only to find that she couldn't bend her knees or lift her feet more than a foot off of the ground: misfortune number 3. At this point it was getting comical. To make matters worse, as she was slowly hobbling over some vines I turned around and just about stabbed her with the GPS pole, luckily, the waders absorbed the impact. She's tough, that's for sure!




We went on anyway and managed to get some work done. Atalie's principle role was photographer, which she did well (as you can see) and I used a GPS to map some landforms and survey points. She put up with a lot and didn't whine at all and even though it wasn't the most productive field day (mostly because I still don't really know what I'm doing) it was still fun!