15 January, 2000

Greetings!

I spent most of the day indoors....pooh! I am running some tests for my PI, Karen Baker, from Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, I had to stay inside to do them. It was always fun to step outside and be treated to the sight of a penguin or elephant seal hanging around like it was common place. I don't think I will ever get used to that. I am running tests with a solid standard on a fluorometer. She wants to know how accurate the standard works. The fluorometer measures the amount of chlorophyll within a given sample of ocean water. Fluorometers are routinely used on station as part of marine environmental studies. The good news is the solid standard is reading as it should. I conferred with Karen via email and she made some suggestions and answered a few questions I had. I really appreciate how accessible she has made herself to me. Next week I will test it again while altering the temperature of the solid standard. This will check to see if temperature effects the accuracy of the solid standard.

House mouse chores were this afternoon. I had to clean the girl's head in the GWR building. Oh boy, my favorite thing. Actually, it wasn't too bad. A brief station meeting was held after house mouse. Pretty routine stuff. After pizza everyone relaxed and socialized. I tried my hand at pool.. Woe to the man who allows me to be his partner. Ugh! I really stink at it.

I am continually impressed by the sense of community that exists here. Could it be that this place is magical? My experience thus far suggest that that may very well be the case.

Until tomorrow...

Mimi

A fluorometer measures how much chlorophyll is in a given sample of sea water.

Doug Quin, a soundscape artist working at Palmer, shared this great aerial photo of Palmer Station with me. He also labeled points of interest. This photo was taken by the British.