Pursuing inspiration

Productivity has been lacking this week in the writing department. It's final draft time for my thesis and after getting a head of schedule last week progress came close to stand still this week. It didn't help that I spent the last two days many miles away from my computer. I stole the husbands day off and employed him as a "volunteer" field assistant at my research site one day, doing the needed fall (and final) maintenance around my study plots. Spend the next (and significantly longer) day at my professors field sites doing that end of season maintenance. I thought today would move me forward, but it seems to be a day of delay, followed by interruption, then a dash of distraction, and a lab-mates thesis defense to round out the afternoon. Not a bad day, but I haven't been able to retreat to that place in my head that makes slogging through another chapter of my thesis a desirable prospect. In pursuit of writing inspiration I cracked open my field notebook and found the passage I wrote so many months ago after long work days spend in only my own company. It's not too bad considering the funny mental state I always get in after that much exhaustion and isolation:

Machete Therapy - Mower broke after about an hour work, so I spent the next 5 or so swinging the machete. It reminds me of a hard up hill backpacking trip. After the first few minutes the pain and difficulty make you think the task is impossible. Then your body melts into the movement, and all is fluid and possible. There were uplifted moments when I thought the task seemed at hand and then....

It really is a vile plant, this weed of mine. Oh to live to see it's pestilent form wiped from the landscape. It makes me question all the truths I've learned in ecology. Surely there can be no balance with this plant, no divine purpose for its existence. There is no ecology I can imagine where its presence would be welcome. And yet I toil in its shadow like a slave to it's robust but chaste nature. A wasteful contradictory plant that makes slaves of man, strips utility from the soil, and defaces the landscape with it's domineering monoculture. What an evil, conniving plant, this weed of mine.

I suppose it's as close to a motivational speech as I'm gonna find this late on a friday afternoon.....

Failing to repeat failure

Does failing to repeat a failure result in success?  Nope, it's just failing twice.  I've been frustrated for the past few weeks since determining that the most exciting part of my field experiment had failed.  I know the adage that negative results are still results and should still be published, blah, blah, blah.  So I planned a field day to set up a duplicate experiment under the same field conditions, essentially repeating my failure so I'd have enough negative results to publish.  And what do you know, I failed again!  Monday I was shocked to discover that the plants at my experimental site had put on two months of growth in two weeks.  The end effect of this mammoth growth is that the field conditions in no way matches the conditions of last springs experiment, so it's not at all possible to repeat my failed experiment.  

I had to scramble to deal with these unpredicted conditions, and have decided to throw logic and methodology into the wind and start a new and different experiment, which I also wont be able to repeat based on my program schedule.  So, the end result will be multiple unrepeated field experiments with uninteresting and negative results.  Yeah for science!

Sometimes science hurts

A weekend of field work has left me sore and exhausted and my trusted field assistant (the husband) in bed dreadfully ill.  Nothing ever seems to go as planned when I'm in the field.  There is always something I'm unable to do that I have to report back on to the professor come Monday morning.  This time events were totally out of my control, which actually made me feel a bit better.  The tasks may be unfinished, but not because of some personal failing on my part.  

This weekends mission had been to do the regular site maintenance (mowing down the alleys between the plots) and to cut into the weed jungle to install two new experiments (28 plots).  We utilized a dull machete and gas powered brush mower to cut paths in the jungle (my hands are soar enough today to make typing a great challenge).  It was exhausting but exhilarating and the field assistant and I collapsed into the tent that night confident we'd have the job finished by noon the next day.  

And then the vomiting started.  

Camping is usually great fun, even work related camping, until you are ill.  And then there is no place you want to be besides at home in your bed.  I'm quite certain it is the same for all people around the world, when you are sick you want to be at home, in your own bed, period.  I've had this experience before, the research group I worked with as an undergrad camped during the field season.  A delightful experience until I got the flu, and suddenly even the most luxurious camping was a misery.

So, sunday morning I packed up camp and drove the field assistant home to his own bed and the comfort that it could provide.  Unfortunately the 3 and 1/2 hour car ride was lengthened to nearly 5 hours because of the need to stop repeatedly (and the need to wash vomit of the side of the truck).  

Once the patient was tucked in and sleeping feverishly I was able to finished the job of unloading gear and returning the half washed pickup.  It was incredibly draining to do all this on my own, but even as tired as I was I had resigned myself to a sleepless night.  I thought with him feverish and sick I'd sleep lightly, ply him with medicines, try to help him feel better.  All the proper caregiving duties that you feel obligated to do when your loved one is sick, but alas I did not.  Instead I slept like a corpse, selfishly ignoring the rest of the world until the alarm called me to consciousness.   

As a result of the deep sleep I feel quite refreshed for a monday morning, but also a bit guilty.  Beyond the soreness of my hands and a slight stiffness in my back I fared quite well this weekend, but the poor husband/field assistant is going to need at least a week to recover.