Low Man on the Totem Pole

Interns washing dishes! April 12th through the 23rd I became well acquainted with my “low man on the totem pole” status. We helped out with two weeks of GIS courses and I was in charge of everything from washing dishes to answering questions while people worked through the course lab manual to flagging transects in pouring rain. Moving data, setting software settings, organizing shortcuts, adding print drivers, seemingly easy tasks to prepare the computers for the participants, took much more time than expected. One day I spent all day going from computer to computer installing software. At the end of the day we had only two fully ready computers (when we needed twelve), which meant working well into the weekend.

And, I really was sent in a downpour of a thunderstorm to walk a poorly marked transect and re-flag it to make it visible for the course participants to walk during lab. I returned two hours later a cold, soggy, soaked mess. Usually there are plentiful deer droppings along the transect. This week there were not enough piles for a statistical analysis due to the rain. It was decided that I would walk the whole thing again and place raisins to supplement!

18 April 2004

Sandwiched in between time working in the lab, David and I drove to D.C. to plant trees along the Anacostia River in honor of Earth Day. I am still (in May) waiting for the blisters on my hands to heal. The actual digging to plant was hard work in the upwards of 88 F degree weather, but it felt good to do some manual labor. We get much too soft sitting in front of computer screens all day.

20 April 2004

I officially extended my working time in the GIS lab. Mel gave me an extension until mid-September. This is a good place for me right now to balance learning and relaxation. However, I am just starting to get used to the other interns being temporary. It has been a month, I’ve gotten to be friends with the others living in Leach House, and now they are going. Laura, Mandy, and Dillon have already gone. Tamar is leaving in a week. Ecology Dan is leaving in week. We have room for eleven people in the house, but by mid-May we will be down to two.

22 April 2004

When I stopped home for lunch today I was surprised to see a plastic white hospital bracelet around Heather’s wrist as she lay sunbathing on the front porch. Thinking she must have cut herself or gotten a bump at work, I walked up to talk and as she turned the right side of her face toward me I gasped. Apparently as they were wrestling a captured deer to the ground to tag her ear the person holding the back legs slipped. Heather was kneeling gripping the front legs, with her head within easy kicking distance. She got pummeled directly in the eye, leaving a bloodied hoof mark. Luckily no eye damage, only two stitches on her eyelid and a nasty shiner.

23 April 2004

After work David and I borrowed a shop-vac and started Spring cleaning. We wiped each slat of the vinyl siding on the front of the house by hand until dark. The boy actually got down on his hands and knees with a butter knife to pry out dirt caked between the porch boards so he could fully vacuum. Then, he made us dinner – lemon spiced tuna and ravioli with garlic bread for movie night.

26 April 2004

We spent the day hitting a few Smithsonian spots in D.C. Took the metro in to the Natural History Museum and concentrated on browsing the reptile, insect, and skeletal exhibits. IMAX movie at noon: Jane Goodall and the Gombe chimps. Interesting, but nothing new. The rest of the rain-soaked afternoon was spent trucking around the National Zoo. Highlight for me was low crowds, the pandas, and the mole rats. We watched and laughed at the rats for a good half-hour as they piggy-back each other within a tube system (a tight squeeze) and then shimmed their back legs to push the bottom one away.