Tuesday

Today was one of those days that just makes you happy to be alive. I went to work with Les today, but he wasn't there until around 10, so I had an hour to read (Ender's Shadow) and then we worked with the corals we got from the cruise. I've been really going back and forth on my dissertation research proposal since Les gave me my ultimatum. I wanted to do cephalopod work, but should I spend my summer freaking out trying to get data, just to have him tell me I need to do something else? I decided, yes. I'm going to do ceph work, but keep an open mind for other research possibilities. He had mentioned a very interesting competitive interaction project between hermit crabs and amphipods in Palau. Ultimately, I'd still be an invertebrate biologist--and that is the goal. I guess I just hope people will still love me even if I don't study cephalopods... But, I will cross that bridge when I get there--I still have at least 4 months of octopod friends.

Speaking of octopod friends--we had our first night dive on Saturday. We saw a baby octopus, a slipper lobster, lots of fish (don't I sound like a marine biologist?). Someone saw a white tip shark, but I didn't :( The best part though was when we turned off the lights. I preferred to dive without the lights, actually. I eventually kept mine off the rest of the dive because I found it cumbersome, and the ambient moon light was enough to see. And you can't see all the cool bioluminescents with the lights on... The goal of the dive was to learn underwater photography though--so here are some photos of me looking silly :)





Anyway, Les let me leave early this afternoon because he didn't have anything for me to do. And, I found out that I won't have too much work to do for him this summer either, which gives me more time for my own research, but I'll still get paid the same amount--yay! With my free afternoon, I went to the beach. It's been way too long. I decided to treat myself and I just read Ender's Shadow and relaxed in the sun. When I finished the book (which was amazing), I went to see a masters defense of a friend of mine, then went to dive class. We have an exam on Thursday and were reviewing for it. It was a good class. But I think any class would have been good--I was just in such a good mood today. And then, after class, I got a ride half way home and walked the rest of the way under the moonlight. The air is the perfect temperature, the clouds are glowing with the reflection of the moonlight, the breeze from the ocean is fresh. Sometimes I can actually get my head out of my ass long enough to realize I live in Hawaii and am lucky enough to study science all the time :)