I had my first live online presentation last night, and I was quite nervous about it. I had a couple hours off beforehand, and decided to start with a shower. My first real shower since coming to Toolik, though I have rinsed off in the sauna each time I've been there. I even washed my hair last night. Afterwards, I put on jeans and a clean shirt, things that don't normally happen here. I looked in my clothes cabinet for the first time since coming and realize I brought way too many clothes. I felt nice and clean for my presentation.
The event itself got off to a shaky start, as we were having some tech problems for a while. My webcam doesn't work, so I tried using Cory's computer for the video feed and mine for the audio, and eventually none of it worked until I called in via Skype. It was probably due to low bandwidth in the evening, as there is not much work happening then and people may be streaming videos, etc. I had not considered this before. But once we got everything working ok, it went well. So many teachers and students from my school logged in, and it was great to have so much support and interest shown in what I was doing. The presentation went longer than expected, due to the late start, and it was close to midnight when I finally left the lab. Of course, I treated myself to a brownie and ice cream afterwards and finally got to bed close to 1am.
Today I changed my work clothes to the "other" set. Very weird to wear new clothes. This morning at breakfast I learned that the "wolverine" in the trap last night was no wolverine, but a fox instead. Though it would still be nice to see a fox close up, I am glad that I didn't head out last night. It was quite cold and it would have been even colder by snowmachine.
Yesterday and today there have been a lot of these ice crystals around. It's new for me.
A closer look.
After breakfast, we processed one of our two female squirrels from yesterday, and after lunch we did the second. We'll drive back to Atigun tomorrow to release them. It's still very cold today, though the fog has lifted, but Cory and I headed out by snowmachine to see if the squirrels were out today here at Toolik. I offered to ride behind him on his machine, to make better use of our time, and we did one lap around and saw zero squirrels. They may be goofy, getting caught in traps easily for some carrot, but they are not fool enough to be out in the cold weather for long. So, it was a short day of work and then we looked through some more GoPro footage, which was fun.
My new snowmachine-in-the-cold look.
Tonight there's a sauna and I'm hoping to get to sleep early, because my second live event is tomorrow morning at 7am. Here's to hoping.
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