Hyalella!

Latin name: Hyalella azteca

About this ugly creature: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyalella_azteca

Yep. Ugly. And...crawly. I spent my first day counting these little guys for an experiment and it started out shaky. I normally use a light box to count most of the small animals in our possession because they are easier to see. It turns out, Hyalella do not like light boxes. They were practically leaping out of the water container to get away from the bright lights. The behavior was so abnormal that we had to re-test the pH, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen of the water. When everything turned out normal, we turned off the light box and...poof...normal behavior. So, there's an aversion to light there.

Their jumpiness grossed me out. It reminded me of the scene in World War Z where the zombies made a 100 story stacked human staircase to climb into a city. Hyalella were using the same strategy to get out of the bowl. EW. Once the lights were turned off they finally calmed down, but I held a grudge. I like using those lights.

One part of the experiment requires us to take dry weights of several individuals to get an idea of how much they grow over the course of the study. Dry weights. As in, cooked in the oven. I trapped those little suckers in beads of water and popped them right in the oven. No regrets.

Sand Dollars

I had a "Today I Learned" moment at work on Friday. We got a shipment of live sand dollars in and I didn't take a look at them until several hours later. 

Let's review: marine biology bachelor of science degree here, and an environmental science master's degree. I have only ever seen live whole sand dollars. Round. All the way round. I've seen plenty of chipped ones that are dead. I could not stop staring at the batch of sand dollars that were collected for us. They were all chipped and broken to some degree and...alive.

For all my years beach combing, collecting cool objects, and studying marine life, I had absolutely no idea this was possible. I was impressed by their hardiness - some look like chew toys. How much can they lose before their...missing parts...become an issue? Hmmmm.

Nautilus

I moved to San Diego for a reason! It was to begin working for a really great environmental consulting firm called Nautilus Environmental.

In 2011 it was named one of the fastest growing private companies in San Diego (http://www.examiner.com/article/nautilus-environmental-honored-among-fastest-growing-san-diego-private-companies) and we focus on well, a lot of things.

Marilyn says it best: http://www.savorthesuccess.com/member/marilyn-o-neill

And if you still want to know more, here is our company website: http://www.nautilusenvironmental.com/

I'm still learning a lot of new things/techniques/regulations etc. and it's exactly what I was looking for when I started job hunting. We work really long weeks, but we also get to listen to music during the day and I usually listen to books on my ipod. Everything goes so much faster.

Our entrance: (There's that fat plant wall I posted about a while ago on the left!)

A small portion of the lab:

Washing out a board that holds water fleas. We study the effects and toxicity of stormwater on those little guys.

The urchins are out to study urchin development:

The Green Room:

One of the clients we work with is Chevron. We do hours and hours and hours of work for them. I like learning about the project and how the work we're doing helps them improve their environmental footprint. Everyone else has been working with them for waaaaaay longer than I have and they are a little...jaded. Partly as a joke, and partly because I've always liked the chevron pattern, I just bought this necklace to wear to work on our heavy Chevron days :)

And then I found this lamp and now I want it too...

Dad Visits!

My dad came to visit this weekend on his way to Yuma for work. He's been in San Diego plenty of times before, but not since I moved, so we went to a lot of new places!

First, we rode the trolley to Old Town where we explored the candy store, museums, garden center, tile shop, and several smaller historical houses.

Candy:

I want this plant.

Checking out the Wells Fargo wagon mail routes.

After Old Town, it was too early for dinner so we hopped on the trolley and took it downtown to Petco Park and went next door to Mission Brewery. This one is in a sketch part of town, but it's really good and there are always a lot of people there.

Our last stop was dinner in Little Italy. This is probably my favorite part of San Diego.

WTF Bathroom

I swear. This bathroom. Not only is it where the devil washer/dryer combo resides, it only has one power outlet (blasphemy) and some other interesting irritating features.

1. My sink is great. A+. Underneath the sink, in the cupboard, patchouli oil. Like, someone had a patchouli farm down there at some point. And no, airing it out does not work. Want some toilet paper? Patchouli oil. Going for the nail polish? Face full of patchouli oil. Mouthwash? PATCHOULI. OIL.

2. The toilet. Yes toilet problems. At first, I thought it was just me. Does my toilet water smell? Why do I smell a urinal cake? Is this what a truck stop bathroom smells like? It was driving me crazy. I bought bleach stones to put in the back of the tank to bleach the water, cleaned it every week, stuck those gel cleaners to the inside of the bowl, crawled on my hands and knees looking for the source of the problem. Nothing.

So I did some googling. "Why does my toilet water smell like" ...and then I stopped. Because the auto fill finished that with... "old man piss". BINGO! I'm not crazy. This is a real thing! Turns out something wasn't sealing correctly and I was getting a giant whiff of underground sewer whenever the toilet refilled with water. Oh goody.

Hopefully that problem is fixed now. I feel like hot urinal cake smell is stuck in my nose so I can't tell yet.

3. The shower. It gets a mediocre review for two reasons. As we all know, California is in a drought so my complex replaced all of the shower heads with "low-flow" water pressure heads. Great! Conserves water. Maybe? The complete lack of water pressure makes things difficult. Oh, you wanna wash that shampoo out of your hair? Stand there for a while. And then a while longer.

Second, it's short!!!! It doesn't even hit Terry's face.

4. It's where the spiders live. Big ones. I kill them with shoes, which means I have to run and find a shoe and run back before it hides again.

Adams Avenue Street Fair

I went to one of the largest street fairs in San Diego last weekend with some friends. It is held every year in an area called University Heights, which is right next to Normal Heights and I will definitely be back next year!

This part of San Diego is really awesome. University Heights and Normal Heights have a big younger crowd, which means very cool street fair items, good live music, beer gardens, and specials at all of the neighborhood bars. University Heights is also full of parks!

I will be returning to this part of San Diego more often - I liked it a lot! One of the places that was especially good was a brand new bar called the Rabbit Hole. They had several garage doors that opened up directly onto a patio and the Moscow Mules were delicious. Because they are located in Normal Heights:

If anything, the street fair is amazing for people watching. For instance, here's a couple filming their very ugly dog "dancing" to one of the live bands. That cracked me up.