Well, that's done

Today was "assessment testing day," which means 20% of the student body takes tests (supposedly randomly selected, though I think some of the faculty think there's a bit of a Hand of God weighing on that "random" selection, seeing which students get picked). The idea is for assessment, to "prove" we're doing our job. (Don't get me started on assessment. I think the best assessment of our program is that our graduates either get accepted to professional school or get jobs in their field at a pretty high rate)

Anyway, so there are no morning classes this day. There was an optional thing we could go to, but as I needed to get my fall fieldwork done, I opted to do that.

Today was apparently the last gasp of summer. (Or I hope it was. It's close to 90 degrees now with a dewpoint near 70, and it was equally humid this morning).

I went out in the field ecologist's version of a ghillie suit: long pants, pants cuffs tucked into long socks, long sleeved shirt over t-shirt, t-shirt tucked into jeans, big, broad brimmed hat, gloves, kerchief, and, for me, an N 95 dust mask. (To try to keep from inhaling so much pollen). The idea is to expose the minimal amount of skin to insects/sun/allergens.

Yeah. It's not fun wearing all that in 82 degree, 70 dewpoint weather.  At one point, my lungs were going "Captain! I canna' do no more, that's all the oxygen I can send ye!" and my brain was going "But.....we need....more oxygen!" and my positional sensors were saying "Captain, it is about all I can do to keep her vertical. We will have to find some other solution to this. This is highly illogical."

I finally wound up pulling off the mask periodically and getting a few gulps of air. But I got the work done.

One side note: It's been a banner year for Argiope aurantia, also known as the common garden-spider. I must have seen about 30 of them out there, all of them HUGE, several of them with  multiple egg sacs made already. I think I know the reason for this: most of them had a grasshopper wrapped up somewhere in their web. They're taking advantage of the hyperabundant grasshoppers we have this year.

I would like garden spiders for that fact alone, but there are a lot of other reasons I like them. They're just cool animals. (I am not arachnophobic. I don't like black widows and if there's one in my living space it gets squished (same with brown recluse), but I'm cool with other spiders. I've caught and rehomed (to the outdoors) wolf spiders that blundered into my house.  Garden spiders are especially nice; they are non aggressive and you can usually see them well enough to avoid walking through their web. And as I said, they eat bugs I'd rather see gone.)

Leaving the site, though - my "tire low!" light went on. I don't like this light; it's freaked me out in the past. (The worst part of it is, in my make of car at least, it looks like a flat tire with an exclamation point inside, which tells me "No good can come of this."). I pulled off and visually inspected the tires; none looked dangerously low so I drove back to campus where I checked them. Low, according to my little Slime brand sensor, but not "you have a flat" low.

I decided at that point showering was non-negotiable but after that I called the dealership (where I bought the tires). I didn't feel like trying to find an air pump on my own - relatively few gas stations have them any more. I used to have a little compressor that plugged into the cigarette lighter, and that was handy, but it broke.

Fortunately, the dealership wasn't busy and they told me to come in. They checked the tires (I was especially concerned I had driven over a thorn or a nail or something) and said all they needed was a bit of air (no charge, which made me happy - that was cheaper even than going to a gas station and feeding quarters to their air pump).