Weekend recountings: Welding and gardening

On Saturday morning, I woke up early, briefly tended to Tootsie Wootsie Woo, and then rode over to the farmer's market to pick up a few things. I must confess that I'm envious of my northwestern friends and family whenever I look for fruit at the market. Typically, at my farmer's market, there's a single stand that carries one or two types of fruit at a time, and it isn't cheap. This week, it was a few peaches for $3 a pound and the beginning of an apple crop.

But enough of the self-pity, for there are more interesting things to recount.

On my way home from the market, I meet up with R, E, and L at Davis Salvage, where they were searching for metal for several projects. Davis reminded me of the TLC show Junkyard Wars and made me wish I had some kind of massive scrap metal project to complete. It was replete with the proper supplies for things like creating a "junk garden," with plants growing out of old washing machines and toilets and the like. I love that sort of whimsical project, but it must wait for now.

Anyway, while they looked, L managed to find an old gurney that was mostly functional, and decided to take it home with her, and the gang also loaded up on some 1-inch square tubular steel (methinks) for other projects. With that, it was time to head home.

After unloading my groceries and eating a delicious brunch burrito, I headed over to the bike co-op to help R get started on building a bike trailer out of the steel. As with any project, most of the time was spent getting ready--measuring things out and thinking about dimensions and handling. I even had to do a bit of math by hand, and I actually got to put my trigonometry skills to use. Who knew that math could be so useful?

Then we chopped things up and did some initial welding to get the trailer frame underway. I should mention that in the whole process of doing all of this, I learned how to weld. It was terrifying and awesome, all at once (voltage and sparks and helmets!), but it makes me extremely happy to know how to join pieces of metal together. This whole trailer-building enterprise is going to be another fantastic learning opportunity, much like the construction of the worm chest.

Subsequently, I made my traumatic once-annual trip to IKEA (gfrancie knows what I mean) to pick up a few things. Once that trauma was said and done, it was the end of the day.

I spent almost the entire day on Sunday in the garden, tidying things up: pruning branches and chopping them up, and attempting to tame parts of the garden which have been getting overrun by irksome plants that do not produce food or delicious flavors. Altogether, it was a good lesson in the importance of careful tree selection (I'm not so fond of the trees that required attention), as well as a lesson in how nice it would be to have decent gardening tools. I did all of the pruning with a pair of hand pruners and the wee saw on my Leatherman, which took a long time and left me with a sore hand. And then I did a lot of weeding with the aid of a flimsy trowel and screwdriver. It was labor-intensive, but it is done, and now the yard looks much more tidy and presentable for a rather large party we'll be hosting next Friday for new biology graduate students. It was still hot enough out (high of 103 degrees) that I drank voluminous quantities of water and sweated most of them out.

But that wasn't all--in the evening, I went back over to the co-op with L and A to continue overhauling a bicycle for around-town travel. It is empowering to learn how bicycles are put together: last night we learned about the components and arrangement of the headset (where the frame meets the front fork), and how to take apart the bottom bracket (the part that connects pedaling power to the chain). And then it was time for bed.

Altogether, a satisfying weekend.

Bureaucratic Nonsense

One of the undergraduates in our lab originally joined the lab to help my advisor with our lab's paperwork-related matters. He has been phenomenally helpful in this role--so much so that he got promoted to research instead of paperwork. However, in the process of being our paperwork guru, he reorganized some of the lab's files and labeled all of the cabinets and drawers in the lab. My favorite label (aside from the DANGER - ANTS label that I stole and put on my planner) is the one on a drawer full of paperwork, which says, "BUREAUCRATIC NONSENSE."

It's only too true.

"Could I borrow a cup of sugar?"

People at school often send around e-mails asking to borrow random pieces of equipment (e.g. metal detector, 500 mL of Chemical X, some rubber hose, etc.). Oftentimes, they simply ask to borrow something without explaining why they want to borrow it. This, of course, gives me ample opportunity to imagine all sorts of scenarios, most of which have little to do with boring research. Life's just more fun that way.

Hurrah!

In March 1, 2006, I took the last of a set of pictures of the fungus growing in a set of laboratory leafcutter ant nests. Today I am happy to announce that I have just finished measuring the surface area of the fungus. That involved tracing a lot of convoluted shapes, and countless hours that I don't want to dwell on. The important part is, I finished!

Now perhaps I should go home and cook some dinner, 'cause it's late. Thank goodness for my stash of somewhat-stale emergency foods. Heck, they work when necessary.