So far today:

1. Have started 7 liters of extract extracting. (That required going and getting deionized water from the nearest tap - on the other side of the building. Yeah, our research labs don't have DI taps - old building and all - so we all have carboys but mine was empty)

2. Planted all the seeds, including retrieving the inland sea-oats seeds from cold storage where hopefully their dormancy was broken, and scarifying (rubbing with sandpaper to scar the seed coat) the partridge-pea seeds.

3. Re-filled some of the conetainers where the soil ran out. This is going to be an issue with the sieved soil, it looks like.

4. Stripped much more cedar litter for the treatment where there is a litter layer on top of the soil, and applied it.

5. Called my doctor's new clinic and left a message for the nurse about "records transfers, how do they work?" and also hoping that she's got room for at least one more patient in her schedule. (The nurse checks her messages at noon, she said - I hope she's free to check earlier than that, but whatever).

Actually, of all those things? Number 5 was the hardest for me and the most emotionally draining. I hate the phone and I kind of hate having to ask for stuff like this where the answer might be "no" and then I'm back to Square One. (I suppose if my doctor can't still be my doctor, maybe she can recommend someone. As I said before: I don't want to walk blindly into some random doctor's office, not after having had someone years back suggest a prescription for Fen-Phen when I was in for a flu shot (!) and after a friend of mine had a doctor who told her to lose weight by, "If it tastes good, just spit it out" (I THINK the doctor was serious about that, or at least my friend took it as such).

Heh. I also remarked on Twitter that I hoped my doctor wasn't "too covered up in alligators" to take me on as a patient again and a couple of people (one Canadian, one originally Welsh living in England) were baffled at that turn of phrase. I guess it's not that common outside of the South, or maybe outside of my own little area.

And actually, "covered up in alligators" is the "lady" form of stating it - the actual phrase is more commonly "up to your ass in alligators" but I heard "covered up in alligators" FIRST because someone from an office here on campus called me asking me to do something to help them "as long as you're not all covered up in alligators." I got the meaning from context and figured it was just an idiosyncratic thing to that person, but then I mentioned it to a colleague, and he laughed, and told me the "real" version of it.

But yeah - we DO have alligators here in the Red River (and, it's rumored, in Lake Texoma), but as I'd never actually SWIM in the lake (I'd be afraid of a much smaller danger - there is that brain-infecting amoeba there), I'm probably pretty safe.

and honestly, it would be kind of cool to see an alligator. From a distance, at least.

(One year my colleague the herpetologist raised a bunch of baby alligators - their mother was killed by a poacher and the state fish and wildlife department had him deal with them. They are rather....cute....as babies but I still wouldn't want one as a pet)