Yes, I would like to science please

This is a sign on my dorm’s bulletin board (advertising lab tours) that’s pretty adorable:

Speaking of which, I got learned some scienceology this week.  Every Sunday night there’s a science lecture.  The teams doing fieldwork here report in laymen’s terms on their research.  Apparently, teeny tiny snails the size of lentils, officially known as pteropods, are sentinels of ocean acidification.  These scientists were refreshingly well-spoken presenters.  They talked about how cool (haha) it is to dive here, and the unique challenges of trying to do anything with your hands underwater wearing multiple pairs of thick gloves.  They collect specimens, scope them out in the lab, and subject them to varying conditions to measure how they’re affected and how they might possibly adapt.  Long story short, as carbon dioxide gets swallowed by the ocean, it is broken apart into oxygen and carbolic acid (maybe? I think?).  Our snail-friends’ shells get eaten away, which is sad, as they are pretty, and unfortunate, as they are a key link in the food web between phytoplankton and d&jk#xlpwty, which eat pteropods.  I’m pretty sure I’m now qualified to be a marine biologist.

I am also now qualified to be a space physicist (pretty sure that’s what we’re called).  The friendly young grad student who runs the LIDAR operation invited some kitchen folks out to show and tell about upper atmospheric iron ions.  With his toolbox of laser parts—

—he blasts lasers (pew! pew!) into the sky, and records the distance and speed and stuff at which they reflect back off of iron particles.  This, too, tells us about global warming.  You might be beginning to think that Antarctica is a vast left-wing conspiracy to brainwash people into believing humans affect nature…

After a few solid weeks of dense gray clouds and limited visibility, we’ve shifted to rather warm weather (it’s 30F today!), and I lucked out with a totally gorgeous, sunny evening for a pressure ridge tour.  The ridges (where the sea ice and pack ice meet near the shore) have been building and pushing up higher over the last few weeks, and a mama seal had a pup right smack on the trail we hike.  We walked nice and slow and quiet and they seemingly remained asleep, big and little piles of fat-fur.

Oh yeah, and I work in the kitchen.  So, roughly nine hours a day, I make-believe a jar of capers, a handful of anchovies, tomato sauce, and leftover breaded-conglomerate-of-salmon-and-filler into “seafood puttanesca.”  One nice surprise was getting to make spanakopita from scratch.  My contribution included squeezing water from thawed frozen spinach, but my team thrilled to the chef-ly glory of brushing real butter onto phyllo dough, mixing and seasoning the filling to their own standard, and selling out halfway through lunch.  We listened to Greek mandolin folk music and remembered for a few hours how pleasant it is to make good food for people you like.

P.S.—Thanksgiving is happening in like 36 hours and almost no prep has been done.  More on this next time.