Productivity?

Yesterday I finally moved into the lab (figuratively, of course) to start trying to amplify and sequence DNA from moth specimens I collected last summer. I have a PCR running this evening and tomorrow I will find out if it worked. I'm very excited about this, but it's a little bit overwhelming because although I've done it a few times before, that was a long time ago and I am usually a klutz about things the first few times around.

This morning I served on a mock oral exam. A few weeks before your oral qualifying exam, you assemble four students who have had professors on their committee that you will be having on yours, and each pretends to be that professor and ask questions of the sort that the professor usually asks. This was kind of fun because imitating the professor's personality is part of the process, and the professor I "played" has some rather interesting mannerisms. I'm not sure I pulled it off very convincingly, though...

Last weekend I went on a field trip to Pepperwood Preserve in rural Sonoma County for a field course on California ants. The weather sucked but on Sunday morning, right before we were about to leave, it got sunny, and the scenery was amazing. We found some good ants, including Messor andrei (a species of harvester ant) and a species of Pheidole (a hyperdiverse genus that E. O. Wilson works on--it has very distinctive "major" and "minor" worker castes which are different sizes). I'll put up some pictures this weekend.

Today is Johanna's 21st birthday! Congratulations Nana!

Tomorrow morning I am getting up early to go get tickets to hear Jimmy Carter speak next week on campus. If this is anything like it was at Harvard, there will be a huge line when the ticket office opens...