Week #9 Spring Broke

I am proud to admit that for the first time in my life, I did absolutely nothing, not even remotely related to academia over spring break; unless calculating calories in alcohol to determine my work out passes for mathematics. It was liberating. But somewhere during the hot mess I started wondering when school was going to start up again. Could this be a passion of mine <<tongue in cheek>>?

I write with good news. I have completed another two rounds of gardening or as Amanda G. calls it, "farming", and have the process down to about three hours. Once you see my protocol you will understand. I also posted a couple of videos below. 

The first shows me meticulously picking up seeds for my planters. For each plant, I used 60 seeds; 30 for the control, and 30 for the Rhizobium. It was starting to feel like neurosurgery or at least how I envision neurosurgery to be; my only reference is Grey's.  The second video illustrates what vermiculite looks like when water is added to it. If you pay really close attention, it almost looks like jumping larvae of sorts. It's a little creepy. Can anyone tell me what vermiculite is and why it is used? Class?

I hope we hear back from Estrella Mountain soon. We only have a few more weeks until we present our experiments. Good to see you guys in the lab. Cheers, J.

Positive thoughts to all of those recently affected in the airline tragedy. Is it just me, or is this becoming more commonplace?

Also, I witnessed a cat getting hit by a car tonight, had to finish what was right and almost couldn’t do it.