A-sailing I will go

This grad school thing is going to be excellent. How can I tell? I was just issued my official 1-pair-per-grad-student steel-toed galoshes. How many people give you puddle-splashing boots with steel toes. They make me happy, in a very silly sort of way. A good omen of things to come.

What else is new? Well, for those that don't know, I was issued those galoshes for a 10-day sailing trip with the SEA education association aboard the Corwith Cramer, a brigantine (aka: big ship with lots of "white flappy things"). Over the next 10 days, I'll be learning lots of ropes and sails, helping navigate, cook, clean, and dumping big metal cylinders into the briney deep, only to pull them out later and analyze the water inside.

We're going out to do lots of samples along a "shelfbreak" (place where the ocean gets deeper faster) south of the cape. We'll also be going from a cold polar current toward the gulf stream (and if the weather cooperates, all the way into it). We'll be measuring lots of physical characteristics of the ocean, as well as plankton density and nutrient levels.

My sleep schedule will be re-wired to match the "Swedish watch" system, which involves 3 groups covering 5 watches per day (2 day shifts of 6 hrs, and 3 night shifts of 4 hrs). The students are a part of the crew, and so play a real role in keeping the ship going where it needs to go or staying where it needs to stay. Because we're in the north and crossing from one water type to another, the weather could range anywhere from really cold and wet to really hot and sunny.

The trip should be a whole lot of fun, and who knows, I might even get around to posting about it afterward. See you all (some in person, some electronically as it were) in 10 days!

Interesting LJ people

Here's something to keep you busy when you don't have my frequent and voluminous posts to keep you occupied:

limyaael: How to write fantasy good. She tends to pick a topic/subject/theme and rant about her top five or so pet peeves and stereotypes, then about how to fix them to make a good story. Lots of useful ideas, combined with an excellent writing style. Hasn't updated much recently, but has lots of older entries.

ozarque: Writes about linguistics, living in an underground house, the Ozark dialect, verbal self-defense, touch-dominance, science-fiction poetry and lots of other interesting things. A very interesting person and one of the rare people on LJ out of their 20s.

ursulav: She draws My Little Hadrosaurs! And Digger and lots of other things. She also writes about the plants and critters that surround her new home. A nice journal by someone who is not so much inspired by a muse as dive-bombed.