-40 and other exciting orders of business
ok, so i'm not actually dead... just very busy... yanno... classes and stuff...
so, it's february, and it's like 40 degrees colder than it's supposed to be. i think this is payback for the mild winter we'd had. cuz it's definitely been -40 to -50 in the mornings for the past week, and hasn't made it above -30 for longer than that. in case anyone's wondering, that's EFFING COLD. and the window doesn't seal quite right in our room, so my little corner where my desk and laptop reside is like 55 degrees, and colder than that close to the floor. >.< *shiver*
ODD (AWESOME) THINGS ABOUT -40 and below
1. a 5 mph breeze leaves a 17 degree wind chill and frostbite occurs within 10 minutes.
2. a 15 mph wind leaves a 31 degree wind chill and frostbite occurs within 5 minutes.
3. even without any wind at all (which, thankfully, is usually the case in fairbanks), the rule is pretty much 'cover it or lose it.'
4. fahrenheit and celsius are the same (at -40).
5. your breath condenses on your eyelashes, causing them to freeze. it then appears that you've been crying when you use your fingers to thaw them out.
6. electronic thermometers begin to not work.
7. since you have a hat on your head and a scarf over your nose and mouth so that you expose as little skin as possible, your top eyelashes freeze to your hat and your bottom eyelashes freeze to your scarf, making it impossible to blink until you defrost them.
8. just because your legs go completely numb after 5 minutes outside and you can't feel that they're cold does not mean that you shouldn't wear long underwear. the thawing out of said numb legs is rather painful.
9. the card-swipe machine-thingie outside that lets you into the dorm only works the 3rd or 4th time.
10. metal door handles and bare hands don't go well together. parka sleeves can help with this problem.
11. when it's this cold, the air just doesn't hold moisture, so even at 100% humidity, the actual amount of water in the atmosphere is negligible, and it all freezes anyway (ice fog). this means that even with daily applications of lotion that is so medicated that they can't make it smell good, your arms and especially your legs look scaly and rather reptilian.
12. ice fog. 'nuff said.
13. there IS a leftover hibernation instinct that makes you want to eat bad-for-you things. why else would alaska have the highest per-capita ice cream consumption in the country?
anyway... thought i should share those. so... the biology department is stupid and fails at life and everything else. this results in sarah having to take a geology class. it's not so bad, really. it's about earthquakes and volcanoes and glaciers, all of which are cool and all of which occur in alaska with great frequency. it's a 100-level course, which means it's easy and doesn't require much effort. the problem is that it's a 100-level course and it's full of freshmen. i hate freshmen. in my lab this afternoon, we were calculating and plotting earthquake locations from seismic data from various locations (which isn't rocket science, lemme tell ya), and the morons at the other end of my table were arguing for 20 minutes because they couldn't figure out which one was latitude and which one was longitude. they really let you graduate high school without knowing that? what is american secondary education coming to??? honestly.
so, i spent most of christmas break applying for summer jobs. i'm just now starting to hear back from some of them. i've been offered one with IBP (a national agency that studies bird populations) for a banding internship in oregon. the job sounds awesome, but the pay is crap. i'm trying to work something out with ABO here in fairbanks, but the season goes into the fall, and that's the busiest time, and i have no idea what the schedule looks like for the fall. that would be awesome, since i know the people, i know where the nets are, and it's local. plus the pay is slightly more reasonable. the alaska sea life center wants to interview me for the avian husbandry internship (which pays exactly nothing), but i don't think i'm gonna take it. there were a bunch of others that paid actually pretty well that i haven't heard from yet... but i have to let the IBP lady know for sure by valentine's day....... grr. *shrug* oh well.
all my fishies died over christmas break. remus, the steadfast and angsty beta was among the casualties. *sad face* they had plenty of food (there was still some left in the automatic feeder) and the filters were running all break... we think the room got chilly when it did a -40 and the room heaters and water heaters couldn't keep up. oh well. tank's clean and refilled (thanks to chaia's help) and is just lacking in fish. i think i shall remedy that this weekend. the filters have been running for 2 weeks, so they should be ready for habitation.
i do believe that's all for now. back to homework and other productive things.
...or not...
so, it's february, and it's like 40 degrees colder than it's supposed to be. i think this is payback for the mild winter we'd had. cuz it's definitely been -40 to -50 in the mornings for the past week, and hasn't made it above -30 for longer than that. in case anyone's wondering, that's EFFING COLD. and the window doesn't seal quite right in our room, so my little corner where my desk and laptop reside is like 55 degrees, and colder than that close to the floor. >.< *shiver*
ODD (AWESOME) THINGS ABOUT -40 and below
1. a 5 mph breeze leaves a 17 degree wind chill and frostbite occurs within 10 minutes.
2. a 15 mph wind leaves a 31 degree wind chill and frostbite occurs within 5 minutes.
3. even without any wind at all (which, thankfully, is usually the case in fairbanks), the rule is pretty much 'cover it or lose it.'
4. fahrenheit and celsius are the same (at -40).
5. your breath condenses on your eyelashes, causing them to freeze. it then appears that you've been crying when you use your fingers to thaw them out.
6. electronic thermometers begin to not work.
7. since you have a hat on your head and a scarf over your nose and mouth so that you expose as little skin as possible, your top eyelashes freeze to your hat and your bottom eyelashes freeze to your scarf, making it impossible to blink until you defrost them.
8. just because your legs go completely numb after 5 minutes outside and you can't feel that they're cold does not mean that you shouldn't wear long underwear. the thawing out of said numb legs is rather painful.
9. the card-swipe machine-thingie outside that lets you into the dorm only works the 3rd or 4th time.
10. metal door handles and bare hands don't go well together. parka sleeves can help with this problem.
11. when it's this cold, the air just doesn't hold moisture, so even at 100% humidity, the actual amount of water in the atmosphere is negligible, and it all freezes anyway (ice fog). this means that even with daily applications of lotion that is so medicated that they can't make it smell good, your arms and especially your legs look scaly and rather reptilian.
12. ice fog. 'nuff said.
13. there IS a leftover hibernation instinct that makes you want to eat bad-for-you things. why else would alaska have the highest per-capita ice cream consumption in the country?
anyway... thought i should share those. so... the biology department is stupid and fails at life and everything else. this results in sarah having to take a geology class. it's not so bad, really. it's about earthquakes and volcanoes and glaciers, all of which are cool and all of which occur in alaska with great frequency. it's a 100-level course, which means it's easy and doesn't require much effort. the problem is that it's a 100-level course and it's full of freshmen. i hate freshmen. in my lab this afternoon, we were calculating and plotting earthquake locations from seismic data from various locations (which isn't rocket science, lemme tell ya), and the morons at the other end of my table were arguing for 20 minutes because they couldn't figure out which one was latitude and which one was longitude. they really let you graduate high school without knowing that? what is american secondary education coming to??? honestly.
so, i spent most of christmas break applying for summer jobs. i'm just now starting to hear back from some of them. i've been offered one with IBP (a national agency that studies bird populations) for a banding internship in oregon. the job sounds awesome, but the pay is crap. i'm trying to work something out with ABO here in fairbanks, but the season goes into the fall, and that's the busiest time, and i have no idea what the schedule looks like for the fall. that would be awesome, since i know the people, i know where the nets are, and it's local. plus the pay is slightly more reasonable. the alaska sea life center wants to interview me for the avian husbandry internship (which pays exactly nothing), but i don't think i'm gonna take it. there were a bunch of others that paid actually pretty well that i haven't heard from yet... but i have to let the IBP lady know for sure by valentine's day....... grr. *shrug* oh well.
all my fishies died over christmas break. remus, the steadfast and angsty beta was among the casualties. *sad face* they had plenty of food (there was still some left in the automatic feeder) and the filters were running all break... we think the room got chilly when it did a -40 and the room heaters and water heaters couldn't keep up. oh well. tank's clean and refilled (thanks to chaia's help) and is just lacking in fish. i think i shall remedy that this weekend. the filters have been running for 2 weeks, so they should be ready for habitation.
i do believe that's all for now. back to homework and other productive things.
...or not...