S17 & Data Collection

I am not taking any classes this quarter. 

I started on data collection again the other day since all the snow had melted and flies were out. But today, this happened....

Ugh! How am I supposed to collect data! A major crimp in my timeline. Oh, yay! It just stopped snowing. We got about an inch. Now it's raining. 

I was able to collect data last week. Some flies are out, but way less than last September. No colonization occurred. The thermometer for the liver in tall grass read 72*F while the ones in short and tall trees were around 46*F. The humidity was drastically different-single digits in the tall grass and between 30-50% under the trees. 

Here are a few photos...

This fly is slurping up a snack. 

Some of my equipment. The meter is for light. How much light there is in the different settings also varies quite a bit. 

Handling liver is messy business. 

Thank you so very much to the hunters who donated deer, elk and moose livers for my experiment. You guys are awesome! I am still accepting donations too! 

I am still not getting much writing done. I know what I need to be doing, but it's difficult to get the words on the page. I have been doing a lot of reading in these books...

And here is my thesis binder...

It's all organized. 

I finally got a copy of the book on carrion ecology that was stolen from my office last year. I already bought a copy for the university's library and just got my copy of it last month. 

It comes with fancy gold corner protectors. 

I also replaced my stolen copy of The Human Bone Manual. The new copy is clean, with no highlighting. My old copy was full of notes. I miss it. 

I am using an add-on for Word called Grammarly that suggests corrections for spelling and grammar. It also keeps track of how much I write and compared it to other people who use the program. It used to tell me I wrote a ton more than other people, but lately, all I get is a weekly progress report email that says "no activity found." Sigh.