a face for radio?

Recently I was interviewed by two local radio stations, BBC Leeds and York, about crayfish. Originally, they wanted to interview my supervisor, but she's busy and out of town, so my labmate was going to do it, but the day before he was sick, and getting worse, so I agreed to do it. Well, the first interview almost didn't happen. Here's the story...in third person...just for fun.

It is the night before the interview, which is scheduled for 9:45am. Emily plans to arrive at 9:15, that is what the radio people recommended on the phone to her labmate. She goes to bed at 11pm, setting TWO alarm clocks for 7am, her normal waking-up time.

On the day of the interview, Emily awakes, but does not hear an alarm going off. She wonders why, and assumes it is just about to go off, any minute now. Slowly, she notices how light out it seems. Just a little too light. Also, it is raining. "Great," she thinks sarcastically, "going to the station will be pleasant." She gets up, and looks at one of the alarm clocks. It shows that the time is 9:07. Pandemonium ensues as Emily attempts to get dressed, let the dog out, gather the notes her labmate gave her, feed the dog, brush her hair, and figure out how to get to the station on time, in approximately 30 seconds.

She can't drive, the station is on the opposite side of Leeds, traffic is probably gridlock, and there is no where to park anyway. She can't walk, she'd never get there on time. Solution: bicycle. Cursing her recent flat cleaning exploits, she is unable to locate her waterproof over-trousers. Then she remembers that she left her bicycle parked at the office. Amazingly, Emily remembers to let the dog back into the house before fleeing, with an umbrella, to the biology department. Unfortunately, she forgets that her bicycle helmet is not with the bike, but is in fact on the coffee table in her living room. Hurling her helmet-less self on the bike, and leaving her precious, brand new, see-through umbrella by the bike rack, she pedals madly in the direction of the radio station. She will have to ride through downtown Leeds, in just-post-rush-hour traffic, in the rain.

That may seem harsh, but Emily has done that before, in rush hour, and her only real fear is not making it to the interview on time. Crossing campus, she turns onto the first 'real' road of her journey and heads downhill toward downtown. It is then that the car in front of her brakes suddenly, Emily forgets that her own front brakes are much more effective than her rear brakes, and she encounters a patch of slick road surface that is occasionally found on the streets of Leeds. However it happened, she found herself splatted on the road. Now, when one falls on a road, one does not wait around, one gets up as quickly as possible. So, the fall may have appeared more like a bounce to the woman across the road, who asked Emily if she was okay. After giving the woman a thumb's up, Emily rode off quickly.

As she made her way to the station, jumping her bike over small children and dogs that got in her way, she assessed herself for any damage. Things were starting to hurt, but everything was fully functional. Arriving at the station, she flung her loyal steed into a bike rack, flung herself across the street, and flung the door open. It was 9:37am. After signing in, Emily noticed it was very warm in the building. She removed her drenched jacket. She removed her long sleeved shirt. Ah, that was better. Just as she was examining some external damage to her elbows, some radio dude came and fetched her, and they went up into an office, next to the studio. Emily apologizes for being later than expected, blaming the bike incident (it sounds better than "I slept through two alarm clocks") but the radio dude insists that she is on time, and had in fact been expecting her "anytime between 9:30 and 9:45."

While they wait in the office, radio dude offers to get tea or coffee. Emily wants a tissue. She wants it to blow her nose, riding in the rain ups mucus production for some reason, and she doesn't want to sound nasal on the radio. Radio dude misunderstands, thinking it is to mop up the bleeding elbows. Which actually were not actually bleeding actively anyway. Radio dude returns triumphant with enough tissues to mop up an exploded blood donation collection bag. Emily blows nose and enters the studio, leaving the other 5,000 tissues on the chair.

Because of the excitement of the morning, Emily has no ability to produce any more adrenaline in order to be nervous about the interview, which goes very well. The interviewer is very easy to talk to, and hilariously makes a fool of himself by putting down America, only to realize later that Emily is herself an American, and only came to the UK to help with the crayfish invasion problem which the UK actually caused itself. Emily found it hilarious. Particularly because when he had been describing America, she at first thought he was preparing to make fun of Imperial Britain. Then Emily trudges back home, getting even more saturated in the process.

Arriving home, she assesses her wounds, which are basically insignificant, consisting of some scrapes and bruises, puts on dry clothes, and takes the dog for a walk. She marvels at the human body's innate ability to protect its vital organs.

Fin.

Well, interview two was pretty tame in comparison, I took the train to York, puttered around, did the interview where they asked me the same questions the other station had, then I puttered around some more and took the train home. Easy peasy, as they say.

And my wounds have all healed by now. That was about two weeks ago ;) I realize this is a very long post. But. At least I didn't describe each injury in detail, with photos, heh heh heh... but i will mention the coolest was that my right hand knuckles were all scraped, so people kept asking if I got in a fist fight or something. ha ha ha!

Unfortunately it is now my labmate's turn to be injured, having acquired tendinitis two weeks before (hopefully) running a half-marathon.

Further Finland

Yep, even though it occurred almost a month ago, I am now posting more Finland fotos. Oh, the audacity...

Here we have two pictures from the 'crayfish party.' We were able to taste both the native noble crayfish and the introduced signal crayfish. Both were cooked and served with lemon and dill. I do not enjoy dill, but the lemon was nice...unfortunately I don't like crayfish either, so I had one of each to compare, and that was it for me! They tasted basically the same. The native seemed to have a nicer texture. But, I only had one of each, so who knows.
Below, our host, Japo (wearing glasses), and friends dish up some native European crayfish:

Meanwhile the non-native crayfish were already neatly arranged and waiting:
The next night we were all invited to the city hall for a delicious meal and schmoozing with the local political leaders...riiiight. Anyway, here's a shot of the city hall of Kuopio. The square in front is a market during the day. Everything is packed away at about 4:30pm. There is a small outdoor stage visible as well, I never saw it used.
Inside was wood panelled (lots of wood in Finland) and had stencil-looking painted decorations. And there was a beautiful light fixture. Behold, the beautiful light fixture:
Outside the city hall is this interesting statue. There was no plaque, so it seems not to be any kind of memorial, but simply art. There is supposed to be water flowing out of the man's cup into the 'stream' below, but it wasn't turned on. I liked it anyway.
Here's a statue just for Dan. In fact, it might as well be a statue OF Dan. A boy, frolicking in the water, clutching some fish. He is also naked. The building behind him had a variety of shops - butcher, cafe, souvenir shop, yarn shop, etc. I believe it was formerly a school? Not sure.
Well, that's it for the photos. I didn't take too many. There are some action figure ones but they will be deposited later in their new designated blog.

Funny Finland

So, first let's get the humorous photos out of the way, eh? None of these were cropped, so some are sloppy photos, but enjoy nonetheless:

First, graffiti on the wall of a highway pedestrian/bike underpass. Awesome.

It was even funnier because one of the attendees was Dr. Hamr...so I referred to him as the hammer of crayfish justice during the conference. He's one of my crayfish heroes, he signed my Ontario crayfish ID booklet, heh heh heh! Anyway, next up we have a krazy kar spotted on a city street. It looks like a hearse. You might want to enlarge it to get the full effect. The Finns seemed to like cruising the streets in the evening, we'd see the same cars pass by maybe 3 or 4 times in an hour or so.


Here we have the Toilets Torpedo, which was directing the way in the massive bar/restaurant/partyhouse where we had our crayfish party. At first I thought it just said 'toilets', as that is all you see from across the room. When you get closer you see that it actually says torpedo too. Veeeerrrry odd.

Next up is a creep-tastic image from the crayfish party. That is an Astacus astacus (native species) carapace shoved up in a Pacifastacus leniusculus (introduced species) carapace.


Ah, what culinary bargains await at the local grocery store, the KKKmart?


These blue pedestrian signs were pretty common, so it took awhile before we noticed that this one had an extra figure added:

Yes, human-alien hybrid children may also use this crossing.

Well, that's it for the funny fotos, I'll put up another post later with more details on the trip itself!

untitled

another blog post so soon?!
why yes indeed.

Big news around here lately:
-yesterday I finally finished drawing three bird illustrations for a friend's article. Here is one of the images - in her paper it will probably be about 2 inches square:
-tonight I will go to see that new Batman movie, with a bunch of folks from work

-tomarrow I officially register for my third year here, i.e. I have to turn in a big report! also tomarrow the new X-files movie will be released in the UK! I hope to have time to see it.

-Sunday I leave for Finland to attend a crayfish conference! I'll be giving an oral presentation, and having way too much fun :D It is one week long. Tasha is staying with a friend of mine.

That's all!

I am terribly excited...

...about my new vacuum cleaner. It is possibly the best vacuum cleaner IN THE WORLD. I really needed a good one, as the one that came with the flat, though brand-spankin' new, was definitely not up to the task of cleaning a carpet covered in dog hair, Emily hair, and all the dirt I rather freely track in. So I ordered a refurbished Dyson Animal upright vacuum cleaner, and today it arrived, in all its lightweight, easy-to-use, purple-and-grey glory. So far the results have been phenomenal. I sucked up THREE chambers full of gunk already (it doesn't have a bag, but rather a tube-like chamber). WOW. and that was just my living room and hallway. It is even more amazing because I had just vacuumed with my old one a couple of days ago, and thought I had done a pretty good job! The house doesn't even have that just-vacuumed smell, thanks to the HEPA filter. Well, I could go on. Maybe I'll put up a photo later.

Dead catfish...

...for lack of a better title.

Hmm, its been awhile since the last update, mainly the long delay is due to my going home for vacation, which was AWESOME, despite what some may say about word misuse. But, if you are reading this, you are probably well aware of what I did at home. So let's not dwell on the AWESOMENESS of it :D

Back here in the UK, it is cold and wet as usual. The other day, at 6pm, I could see my breath. Easily. ITS MID-JULY!! Apparently, while I was gone, it rained almost every day, and all the rivers were flooded. Its been continuing to rain, I've only gotten one day of fieldwork in, with my new helper. She was great at catching crayfish, and doesn't seem to have any annoying personal habits.

I've finally found a way to stay warm. OMG, you say, IT IS JULY. Yes, it resembles Ohio's March. so, I, uh, liberated, a big fake fur coat. I'm wearing it right now. and do you know what? I AM WARM! do you know what else? It just started downpouring outside. yeehaw.

In other news, I managed to lock myself out, again. I gotta get a key copy to leave hidden outside...people keep giving me strange looks as I break in to my own house.

Lastly, I finally got a seat cover for Carl. It is actually just a sheepskin. It is nice and cozy and protective. Carl gives it two struts up.

So I went to Ireland...

I went to Ireland a couple days ago, to go crayfishing with a student at Queen's university in Belfast. One of my labmates went too. Here is a photo-synopsis of the trip.

Like all good trips to Ireland, this one started with an exciting discovery of the most disgusting toilet facilities, possibly on the planet, which existed in a previously unknown state on my labmate's rental property. Here they are. Unfortunately you can't see the truly horrid, ancient, moist, off-color toilet paper over in the box to the right. Yeah, I took the x-files figures on the trip. It was kindof an accident, they were in Carl's glovebox when we left.


Off we went and drove the 5 hours from Leeds to Stranraer in Scotland. There we got a 1.5 hour ferry to Belfast. On the ferry, I had to drive up a crazy ramp that made it look like a rollercoaster lift slope. There were yobs on the stairs. I drew a picture of a crayfish catching humans for my host student. No photo, sorry. We checked into the youth hostel, where we saw this:


What is wrong with the above picture? What ISN'T wrong with it? There is a human cage in the disabled parking spot. Let's not think about that too much... instead look at this, the best car paint job EVER. And its for sale? So, why don't I now own this car? I couldn't say.


We spent one whole day crayfish sampling with our unnamed host student and unnamed technician. Actually, they both had names. But let's not get into that. No photos of the actual fieldwork, at least none I can post here. That's classified!

The next day we had most of the day free, so labmate (also unnamed, how mysterious!) and I drove up to the Giant's Causeway, which was reportedly AMAZING. So we went, it took about 2 hours to drive.

and here it is! These fantastically-hexagonal stones exist in clumps around this point on the coast. They are also on the cliff faces. Very interesting. Not interesting enough to actually read the literature and find out how they formed, though, it would seem.


We looked in the tidal pools for awhile. There were lots of little crabs, and shed crab exoskeletons. Some of us had more fun at the tide pools than others:


Another view of the causeway, covered in humans:

Can you see the shrimp in this picture of a tide pool?


Neither can I! But there WAS one there when I snapped the photo...
And here we have a small tide pool that was mysteriously PINK. It was almost opaque. There was a bit of an odor as well. I let Mulder and Scully investigate THAT one.

Mulder: "Aliens. Obviously."
Scully: *walks away*

Here's an interesting bit of rock on the cliff over the causeway.
More aliens, right, Mulder?


Here's me, proof that I am, in fact, still alive. Notice the interesting curved rock columns up to the right of the photo. That's what I'm *supposed* to be pointing at.
There were cows. Labmate fed them and petted them and had words with them. I was busy with a snail that I had picked up. Cows = inferior, snail = superior. They were lovely cows though, some of them were quite pretty. They were yearlings heifers, I believe.

This next photo is really a testament to how bored one can become when sitting in construction traffic. That is the airhose for the crayfish, not alien guts. Really.


Mulder: "You, uh, want some help there?"
Scully: "If you must."

Well, that evening we picked up the crayfish and caught an overnight ferry from Belfast to Liverpool. No one threw up. Here's an interesting building we encountered when leaving the ferry port the next day. Notice on the left side of the building the bricks are a different color - it appears that it collapsed on that side at one time and was later rebuilt.


Overall the trip was a great success: no one died, everyone had a good time, the crayfish sampling was accomplished, and we ate alot. Also Carl behaved perfectly.