Almost done?

My project is probably 85% complete... maybe. At least the field portion of my project is... we'll have to see what Kurt wants me to do with it when I get back, which could be a lot or a little. In either case, it will be a whole lot less work than some of my colleagues will have to do.

It has rained almost every day this past week and is supposed to rain the next three days. It's really a downer on everyone's mood. Meanwhile, I've taught myself how to weave flowers out of grass while waiting for the rain to pass. Not very productive, but it is rather hard to map anything when any amount of dampness will ruin the paper.

I've started reading a new book entitled Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Very interesting, and I recommend reading it so far. I finished reading The Namesake. I started it in New Zealand and didn't have time until now to finish it. Not much else is new. We went to the Boulder Farmers' Market last Wednesday and are planning to go again this Wednesday. They have mango sticky rice, which I am eagerly looking forward to. The dining hall here is not too keen on ethnic food, and if they do serve it, it lacks some serious flavor.

the beginnings of a "thesis"

So for the past four days here, i have been doing roughly the same thing: surveying the stream in Gordon Gulch. So far, I have about 50 pages in my little notebook full of data points to graph, which will eventually end up being a map of the stream. Once i get this map, I then have to go survey both the north and south banks of the stream and draw out the terraces onto my map. Eventually, my project will end up being similar to this one, maybe a little less extensive:

http://www.azgs.az.gov/sanpedroriver2009.shtml

Obviously, these people had a lot more time and resources than I will, but it's roughly what I'd like to achieve. I (hopefully) only have one more day of surveying the stream, which means only one more day of wet shoes. I'll probably still have to fight the vegetation when I map the terraces, but that's okay. It's a whole lot easier than hiking up a mountain. I'll probably even end up coring trees, which means that I take out a small cylinder of the tree to count its rings to see how old it is. That way, we can know a minimum age for the terraces. We'll probably end up using radiocarbon dating to get a maximum age by dating some old logs that are buried in the terraces. I've probably been working the most out of everyone here, and probably still have the most to do. But that's okay with me. I'd rather work on my project than be someone else's assistant.