and getting ready

 Today I went in and started looking at my research plans again. I had really intended to get out in the field earlier this month, but I was so busy with the class. But I had more planned out than I realized, so I have a better idea of what I want to do - and anyway, maybe carrying this on into the fall will give some kind of interesting results.

I managed to gather (most) of the supplies - I needed that bridal-netting stuff (with roughly 1 mm holes), and permanent markers to label the bags, and tracing paper to serve as a stabilizer when I sew up the bags, and then paper bags for collecting the leaf litter/leaves. 

I went to wal mart. I admit I was tempted to drive to Sherman, to the JoAnn, but it was hot and I knew construction is bad right now on 75, so I decided to chance that I could get it locally and I could. 

The tracing paper, which I thought would be *easy,* was not. Walmart didn't have it ("We can order it for you" the checker said. Well, yes - I checked that myself on my phone, and it would get here in 10 days. Amazon, which I ultimately used, should be faster). Same with Walgreens (I needed more loratidine anyway). Also at Walgreens they've begun locking some items behind plexiglas (not just the Sudafed type stuff, but small items I presume are shopliftable - this seems to be a new corporate policy, there was a news story about lots of things in San Francisco getting locked up because apparently there's such a theft problem*). I checked the campus bookstore, which is small - no art supplies. And tried an office supply shop near the Pruett's. Also no dice.

But I did stop and get a cherry limeade shave ice, because the shave ice trailer is in Pruett's lot.

I wound up ordering the paper on Amazon; it's supposed to be here Thursday, which is early enough - I could spend Monday of next week (if I'm not grading) making the bags, especially if I already have the leaf litter. Or, I could spend Saturday after graduation doing it (ugh)

Tomorrow morning I plan to go out and gather at least SOME of the leaf litter (early, before it gets hot). I think I will need almost a pound of each - that's a LOT of leaf litter. I figure I'll gather what seems right, and then take it back to campus and dry it in the drying oven (to remove any existing decomposers) and weigh it and see if I need more. 

If I just poop out partway through I can go back to campus with what I have and go back. My plan is to put between 6 and 10 grams (I will have to see how much it takes to fit) in a 10 cm by 10 cm bag. And then make up LOTS of those, and then bury them out at the site, and retrieve a subsample every 2 weeks for 12 weeks, and then weigh what's left (I'll have them weighed and recorded before) and also sort out the invertebrates in it...and see how it goes. 

I admit I'm relieved to be getting to this, and relieved that I did so much prior work on it so I kind of know what I'm doing (until I don't know) and I can at least say "yes I started some new research." I worry about the expectations of me, and while I know you need two bad three-year reviews for them to even threaten to revoke tenure - well, I have a long history of trying to be an overachiever, and I've not really done any research in a year or so. And anyway, they wouldn't fire me - I teach too many essential classes. But the disapproval, or inferred disapproval, would bother me. 

(*the whole "shoplifting from Walgreens' in San Francisco" has been a huge news story here and like a lot of these things it's hard to tease out the various contributory factors - is there genuinely an increasing problem? Is it that there's reduced policing in the city center for Reasons? Is it that their criminally-inclined population is that much higher? Are there no attractive options for hungry people to get food (it is implied that that's *mainly* what's being stolen, though some of it is stuff like condiments that are not directly food). In some markets I've heard that some brands of laundry detergent are heavily stolen; I presume there's an underground market in that stuff.

Anyway, as a result, more and more stores are locking stuff behind plexiglas, and you have to find an employee to get it for you if you want to buy it. And given the understaffing of many stores now - the CVS here literally has one employee a lot of the time, and that's the pharmacist, and I guess it's honor system and you use the autopay kiosk, or that's what I did when I was in there last - I can see how that might take a long time to get your stuff.

And you know, this is YET ANOTHER step backwards in our culture. As I remember reading, before 1920 or so, there were no self-serve grocery stores: you walked in, told the clerk what you needed, they retrieved it, you paid. Or, if you were rich, I guess, and had a telephone, you telephoned your order in.

And I admit, I'm so used to picking out my own groceries - in some cases, roaming the aisles looking for "ideas" for future meals - that in 2020 when I was doing "order online, pick up at the curb," I found it REALLY hard to think of what I needed to buy while staring at a computer screen. And I found it very disempowering to have to send in an order, trust someone else to assemble it, deal with the substitutions (and there ALWAYS were, in 2020), and then sit and wait for someone to bring it to the car. I remember once waiting over an hour! 

Anyway, I find it low-level offensive that the law abiding people who would not shoplift now have to pay - in time and inconvenience, and probably higher prices too - for the bad behavior of a few (or, depending on who you read, the attitudes of the CEOs of the company who are quick to lock stuff up to keep out those perceived to be undesirable

And yes, going back to the pre-Piggly-Wiggly days (I also remember reading Piggly Wiggly was the first self-serve grocery chain, that could be wrong) won't WORK given how  poorly paid clerks are and how understaffed stores are. I would not be able to wait in a line for a half hour or more to get food while the solo clerk ran back to get other people's orders and just having to STAND there and wait for my turn.)

Anyway. Even though I couldn't buy tracing paper at Walgreens I did get my loratidine and one other thing....

 

Stitch! In handy travel size! (I already have a big furry one that I mail ordered from the Disney Store a few years back, but they were closing out these little guys and I decided I wanted a small treat - this was before I thought of getting the shave ice)

Really, that is one of my favorite Disney movies. Maybe not so much the chase sequence towards the end, but the whole idea that both Lilo and Stitch are hurt in some way, and need someone to love in this world (well, Lilo does have Nani). But there are so many lines that tug at my heart - the bit where Stitch is wandering off after (I guess, on some level) realizing he's not good for the family, and Lilo says "I remember everyone that leaves" as he walks out of the room - and then she looks at the photo of her dead parents (elsewhere in the movie the car crash that took them is alluded to). And of course the bit as Stitch is being "arrested," after he (apparently) taught himself to (sort of) speak English, he tells he interplanetary dignitary bringing him about "ohana" - family - that it means no one is left behind or forgotten. 

And I admit, those two bits, if they hit me in the right mood, can make me sob. "I remember everyone that leaves" - oh, that's so true; I regularly am reminded of some of the people I've cared about and lost in these past few years - something reminded me of Dell just the other day, and something reminded me of Mecy....

I think I also like it because deep down, it's a story of redemption, and I'm always a sucker for redemption stories - Lilo is trying to make Stitch "turn good," but of course, in her own way, she was a problem child - she beats up Myrtle at the beginning, and she's kind of rude and at times destructive. And of course, she's wounded in her own way - losing her parents suddenly, her older sister having to take over that role, them having very little money. And Stitch - created in a lab, having no family of his own, not even realizing what a family was until Lilo talked about it. 

And at the end, there is a sort of family that finds itself. Nani and Lilo get to stay together (instead of CPS or whatever putting Lilo into foster care), and the disgraced bounty hunters Jamba and Pleakley stay around, and it turns out even the alleged CPS agent "Cobra Bubbles" is actually in on the whole aliens thing, and he wants to see the odd little family succeed....and it's implied there's a happy outcome. (I know there were follow up direct-to-video movies; I've never watched any of them, I prefer to headcanon that once Lilo gets a bit older, Nani and David decide to get married, and she has a more secure and comfortable life with them both working. And that Stitch sticks around, at least for as long as Lilo needs him....)