Not the pleasure kind, but a cruise nonetheless

[mauledbylions]

Hi all! Sorry I haven't written in a while. Life has settled into the routine of work, which isn't much fun to read about. Right now, though, rather than being in a lab analyzing samples on a fancy, expensive instrument, I'm on a boat in the northern Gulf of Mexico. I spent the first day or so being very, very ill (and still collecting water samples because the person I'm working with was even sicker). That's the tricky part about seasickness meds: you either have to anticipate being sick and take the pills in advance (hard to do if you've never been out at sea before) or you have to wait until you're finished being sick so that the pills stay down (which is no fun). Thankfully, I am doing quite well now and will know better for next time. The work itself isn't much more exciting than what I would be doing back in my lab, but the novelty factor of being on a boat more than makes up for it. Also, the ship's cook is amazing. I can't imagine what he'd be able to do if his kitchen wasn't constantly rocking back and forth!

For those interested, here are a couple websites about this cruise:

http://www.stpt.usf.edu/coas/espg/magmix/home.asp (I should be up under the personnel link in the next day or two)
http://mag-mix.blogspot.com/ (daily updates of our activities--there's an awesome video of one of the grad students getting drenched by a wave when they were deploying the box corer)