It's that time of week again.. our day off! Michelle and I both managed to sleep in until 11am.. complete luxury! I wasted no time filling the place with the smell of brewing coffee, bacon, and pancakes, and now that we've finished our morning/afternoon feast, we're ready to go back to bed! Rough life...
This week has been slow. Although there's plenty of work to be done, temperatures have been far below their annual average, lingering around 1 degree all week. Most days start off feeling like -3, warming up to about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Lately it's been going the other way, warming up over night and into the mornings and cooling off in the afternoons. Anyway, the point is, it's been a little chilly for our little yellow birds! The willows around the lagoons have fallen eerily silent. We do as much as we can in the warmest hours of the day, but it's difficult. For instance, most of the males have found females and have established their territories. Now, the females should be building their nests, but it's too cold. They just forage to get enough energy to sit out the cold. It'll be interesting to see how they respond to this abnormally cold spell. They're on a strict timeline before they fly south again, and they're running out of time. Will they spend more energy providing for themselves, or will they commit themselves to reproducing even if it's too energetically costly? Will they lay fewer eggs? Will they stay longer? We shall see..
In other news, Michelle and I have signed up with our friend's team to participate in the Relay for Life up here! It's happening on June 25, on which our team will be walking around the track in front of the elementary school from 7pm to 7am with many other teams in an attempt to raise awareness and funding for the Canadian Cancer Society. Our team is doing luncheon's/bake sales each week to try and fundraise, but if you're interested in supporting me and my team, you can always make a small donation online too! Donate. We baked cookies the other night to pitch in, filling the house with the small of sugar. It seems the whole town is participating in the event and so there are bake sales and silent auctions all over the place! I'm incredibly susceptible to bake sales and as a result, our kitchen now has a few plates of various pastries and loaves... :)
We also gave a presentation at the college the other day. It's part of our agreement in working up here that we have to engage the community in what we're doing, which I think is a great idea! We talked to the class of students studying Environment and Natural Resources about Michelle's research and what it actually takes to implement a project like this... they seemed interested in the topic and had plenty of good questions for us. We've offered that any of them can come out with us to see what we're doing if they like, but I don't know if any of them will take that extra step. We'll see.. it would be fun to bring some other people out with us and show them what we're doing. Maybe the fact that it's around the sewage lagoons puts them off? Who knows..
Today, we're going to wrap up yesterday's data entry, as we spent last night down at the bar watching the hockey game! I have to say, seeing footage of Vancouver makes me homesick... I would love to be there for just a day to get a taste of the madness that has consumed the city! Running around the sea of blue downtown with my friends.. celebrating with my family... but as it is I'll be screaming and shouting in my Canuck shirt up here in the north. Anyways, after data entry, we're going to head out for a walk around Boot Lake, which I'm sure will be terribly muddy but which I'm looking forward to none the less! Despite the amount of walking we do each day around our study site, I'm feeling grossly sedentary lately and could use a bit of exercise over and above the day to day routine! After that we'll probably stroll over to the library and take out a movie for us to watch tonight!
And so, life is good! Looking forward to things warming up again!
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