Friday, March 11, 2005

 
No More Sleep Debt!

I think I've finally paid off a sleep debt I didn't know I had. I've been sleeping about 9 hours a night for the past two months or so, and up until this last week was still waking up tired (though I did automatically wake up at the same time every morning -- but conditioning is different). But this week I've been waking up about 15-20 minutes before my alarm, even when I get to bed up to an hour later than usual, so I think I've finally paid off my sleep debt. I think the theory now is that, if I keep going to bed at the same time every night, I'll start waking up at a more natural time when my body has had enough sleep, and I can use that to figure out what my ideal sleep requirements are. I never actually took the Sleep and Dreams class at Stanford, but I did keep a sleep journal one quarter, and I seem to remember that's how it works. Anyway, it's good to be caught up and waking up refreshed.

I've also enjoyed my morning exercise. I've established a fairly good routine of doing at least half an hour of stretching, yoga, or working out, or a combination of two or three, every morning before breakfast. It helps me wake up, warm up, and feel good about starting the day. It feels really good when I can get an hour in, with maybe a jog on the weekends, but I'm pretty happy with what I can get on any given morning. I'm also intending to ride my bike to school more often, but that seems a little more difficult to actually motivate myself to do. Plus, I like the walk to the bus stop. :)

The weather has been extremely summery here -- beautiful and sunny and hot! It's kind of hard to believe it's still early March, and not June. It's supposed to cool down a bit this weekend, but we should still have lovely weather for Graham's visit. Hooray for brothers coming to visit! :)
# posted by Lacey 12:29 PM

Thursday, March 10, 2005

 
One down...

My first (and only real) final exam is done! Hooray! It was actually pretty easy -- he had given us 5 essay questions to prepare for (we only had to write on one of them) and he gave us our choice of all five, so everybody got to pick the one they were most comfortable with. Much nicer than the midterm, where he didn't give us a choice. So that was pretty easy, and best of all, that class is over! Now I can concentrate on my shell project. I have a feeling my project report will be a tad longer than the required 8 pages... maybe more like 15. We'll see. My professor said she thought my project would be a good candidate for presenting at the Student Research Symposium next quarter, where students (undergrads and grads) present their ongoing or completed research projects in poster form for the campus and general community. I thought that was nice, but I'm not sure if I'll do it or not. Again, we'll see.

I celebrated my finished final with a two-hour lunch in the sunshine with my friend Cate, which was highly enjoyable. She's headed to Costa Rica for spring break with her "Geology of Costa Rica" class, so we were talking about Costa Rica a lot. It was fun to recall some of the fun adventures I had there with Graham and Quena -- what a lovely trip that was.

Anyway, I've been in the lab ever since lunch time, so it's time to go home, and do some more work there! :} Happy Thursday!
# posted by Lacey 5:57 PM

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

 
Garden Archaeology

No, I have not been performing excavations in the backyard. But I think I have found what I want to do this summer. I’ve been debating about the relative merits of continuing full-time school during the summer term and getting a job and actually making some money this summer. I was heavily leaning toward the latter, but then I was reminded about the archaeology field school at the Vancouver National Historic Reserve. It’s a 40 hour/week fieldwork class at Fort Vancouver, and this year they’re excavating the gardens – how cool is that? I had thought about doing it last summer, but they were working on the powder magazine, which was completely uninteresting to me. But it would be cool to do archaeology in an old garden site. The flyer says: “Excavations will search for remnants of the garden well, garden paths and beds, and collect samples for analysis of plant remains.” Fun!

Another cool thing about the field school is that it would fulfill all of my remaining anthropology elective requirements – 12 credits of upper-division electives. After the summer I would only have one more required anthro class to take! (That’s not to say I’d graduate immediately, since I still have some University Studies classes to take care of, and there are other interesting classes I want to take.) That would be very cool indeed. And they’re cheap credits, too – somehow the tuition is lower than regular tuition, which is great. Of course, there would be extra costs for transportation, but I’m sure people set up carpools, and it’s just over the river, so it shouldn’t be too bad. And it would only take the first six weeks of summer (starting the Tuesday after spring finals), so I’d still have nearly two months at the end of the summer to try to get some paid employment in.

I have a final tomorrow morning (thank goodness that class will finally be over!), and then I get to concentrate on the final project for my faunal class. It seems like every time I go in to my professor’s office hours with a question I come out with more things to think about and more things I want to include in my report. It’s kind of frustrating because it feels like it’s never going to end, but it’s good stuff to think about, and it’s a good kind of challenge. But I get a break from working on that when Graham comes up to visit this weekend – hooray! Let’s hope this beautiful weather holds up for just a few more days. :)
# posted by Lacey 6:27 PM