Tuesday, December 16

The semester is finally over. Grades are posted, I get to kick back, and my new camera came. Happy days.  

Teaching two classes as adjunct, in the same semester, while working full time, is bad. Teaching the two classes on very short notice is even worse. Taking 20 days in the middle of the semester for a Peru trip is right up there with invading Iraq. Just not something an intelligent person would do. But hey, I or my kids won’t get shot at. Wish I could say that. I’ve got a couple students that are cleaning their guns. They were surprised to find out that you actually need to do the assignments on time to get a good grade. I may need the witness protection program.

So now I can take care of other pressing demands on my time. Like Christmas cards and presents. Or that funding proposal I have to get written to stay employed next year. Or the report on our bat acoustic sampling. Which I really need to get done before Christmas. So, if anyone can help me interpret these graphs I would be obliged. One big spike means the varmints are swarming around before hibernating. That’s easy. Two big spikes a month apart don’t make my life easy. Did they invite some friends over for drinks?  A little nightcap before the big snooze? What the hell am I going to do with this?

Number of nightly bat passes at our Cliffs site acoustic monitor. The blue are all bats. The red are the soon to be listed as endangered Northern long-eared bat. Possibly my meal ticket for the next year or two.

Number of bat nightly passes at three different sites on the Hiawatha National Forest. Blue is the cliff site, red a cave site and the green some limestone outcroppings.

And to brag a little, Molly got a 4.0 in all her classes for her first semester at MSU. Two of them, calculus and organic chemistry, are something to brag about. We’re trying to figure out where these genes came from.

Watch out Stephen Hawking, she’s coming for you.