rain, rain and more rain

well, today is cool and cloudy, with rain in the evening. and it's a good day, compared to the past week or so, where we've had continuous rain over 2 days, and a bit of rain before and after the 2 days. and tomorrow, and for the foreseaable future, we're supposed to get more rain. and this is during turtle nesting season! the females started moving towards their nesting beaches early, around the beginning of june, which had us scrambling because none of the volunteers for the nest monitoring programs are in place yet. but, we finally got organized (well, some volunteers arrived early) and we get rain. also, it doesn't bode well for turtles that nest early, since there's a chance their nests might get flooded. AND it doesn't bode well for my field season in the fall...if the nests get flooded, or if it's too cold, i might not get any hatchlings to follow around in the fall! =(

otherwise, things are going ok. life has settled down into a routine of sorts, and next week (we hope!) we might be able to actually start doing wetland habitat characterization, which is what i'm here for this summer. i've talked (again) to my supervisor and he said they will be ordering the radio transmitters for my hatchlings (even though the funding is not entirely secure yet) and that they'll have to find money for a rental vehicle for me in the fall. also, i received notice that my nserc pgs m extension got approved (not that i was worried, except i wanted to know if they got my paperwork or not) and SRES has also promised to add another $3750 to that! so, with any luck, i won't need to do a TA job next year, unless i decide that i want to do it for the experience, since i had a good time last time.

in halifax news, my future roommates (Laura & Lori) found us a 4 bedroom apartment in the north end, near the halifax commons. i haven't seen it yet, but they assure me it's great and soo much better than anything else they've looked at in the past. one of lori's current roommate, lindsay, will room with us starting in the fall. the place will cost about $470 per person, including heat and hot water. not bad, it seems much bigger and definitely cheaper than the place we have now. and we think it's about the same distance from campus, although i will probably only have one class next school year anyway. Laura and Lori will also be coming to keji (Laura to visit, and Lori to do interviews in the area for her summer internship), so i'll get to hang out with them for a couple of days here. i'm hoping to be able to at least take some time off during canada day long weekend to go back to halifax and spend some time with my friends there.

that's pretty much it so far. this afternoon, i'm thinking of going to check out the keji-mtri research conference that's going on..either that or go out and track a couple of female turtles to find out if they're gravid or not. hmm...choices choices....