June 20, 2010

Shame on me. 2010 has run away with me. I was certain that I had written an email more recently than December 2009, but I see that I was wrong. As a result, this email is lengthy and packed with information. Read on at your own risk! I last left you with a promise that family would be descending on us in December. We had a very nice time. Mom got to meet Matt’s family and vice versa. We all enjoyed the cold but dry winter that Toronto had to offer, and we relaxed. Our highlights included visiting the Hockey Hall of Fame and the restaurant known as “Captain John’s”. This is a large boat anchored in Toronto’s Harbor. Stepping onboard, I felt like I had gone back in time. The food wasn’t good but the atmosphere was incredible. I am not quite sure what happened in January and February. Mostly I think I continued what have been ongoing activities: Applying for jobs, dealing with manuscript revisions, and planning our upcoming wedding. At one point, Animal Planet contacted me about a possible job, and I had two days to film myself talking about lemurs. This was a challenging but fun endeavor. I haven’t heard back from them (so I guess I didn’t get the job), but at least I have my video. Maybe it will be useful down the road.

We didn’t pay too much attention to the Olympics but the rest of Canada sure did. Hockey, in particular, was probably watched by every single Canadian. Matt and I watched the final game between the US and Canada at a nearby pub and enjoyed the mayhem. We politely exited during overtime because we feared that the audience might turn into an angry mob should the US win. After the game ended, we wandered about Dundas Square among thousands of extremely jovial rather than angry Canadians. I have never witnessed anything quite like the throngs of red, white and sound. Perhaps you saw a video or photos on the news.

In February and March Matt and I went through a period of immersing ourselves in the “culture” of Toronto. We had two separate visits from Pittsburgh friends who found that they could escape the terrible Pennsylvania winter by driving North. It was marvelous having guests and we enjoyed sharing some of our favorite Toronto sites with our company. In the beginning of March Matt and I saw the National Ballet Company of Canada dance to Chopin’s preludes, and Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons. What a treat! I felt very cultured. We also took in an evening of local art, wine, and dinner at the University of Toronto Faculty Club. Wow. It must be nice to be faculty. The club’s pub had some of the cheapest beer in town. We’ll have to keep an eye out for other events that allow us the privilege of returning. We also checked out some of the less classy venues in Toronto. One evening we walked towards the west end of the city and watched the Huun Huur Tuvan monks sing eerie chants at the Mod Club, and the DJ Daem Funk play in the basement of the Drake Hotel, where every effort has been made to make the hotel an artistic and upscale 1950’s venue. Finally, we saw “Yo Gabba Gabba” live at a really lovely old Theater called the Elgin and Winter Garden Centre, which is just two blocks from our house. If you know nothing about Yo Gabba Gabba, let me tell you that it is a delightful children’s show full of pretty amazing dance music, beat boxing by BizMarkie, famous guest stars, and good messages like “don’t bight your friends”. One of my personal favorite songs is “Yummy Yummy in my Tummy”. If you have the time you should check it out on YouTube. You will not be disappointed.

In addition to culture, we have tried to get in a bit of nature as well. In the winter, this was a bit tough, but we did rent a car for a day on a cold clear day in January or February and drove to Lake Simcoe, which is about an hour north of Toronto. The lake was frozen solid, and we spent a surreal few hours wandering about on the ice, marveling at how alien everything looked. There is something very strange about stepping off of a shoreline onto a frozen lake. It just feels wrong. We shared the lake with ice fishermen, SUV’s and snowmobiles. There were little snowmobile highways crisscrossing the frozen lake and we avoided these for fear of being mowed down. Instead, we wandered across relatively untouched ice. I loved the way large, delicate ice crystals had formed across cracks in the deeper ice, and I spent some time photographing a number of them. Eventually, Matt and I grew a bit tired and cold, and we headed into the local town for a tasty dinner at the only dining establishment we could find. The weather warmed in March, and spring was decidedly lovely. In early May we escaped from the city and went camping at a Provincial Park called Presqu’ile. The park is a small Peninsula jutting out into Lake Ontario. We saw many birds, including a ridiculously tame woodpecker, and we camped feet away from the lakeshore. There were only a handful of other campers and I could physically feel the stress depart and the relaxation set in. Matt and I wandered about the trails crisscrossing the park, and greatly appreciated the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the flowers, young grass, and new leaves that define spring.

Despite the temperature and the wind, Toronto is surprisingly outdoor-oriented in the winter. Many of the city’s fountains are turned into ice skating rinks. We only got in one afternoon of ice skating ourselves because winter ended abruptly and the rinks melted. There were also a number of outdoor festivals, the largest of which was called “Winter City”, which took place outside of city hall. There were ice sculptures, fire pits, giant fire-shooting metal sculptures, fireworks, and live evening performances ranging from a man dressed in a giant cube to dancing acrobats. The acrobats were incredibly beautiful. They danced on a vertical wall, escaping gravity by wearing climbing harnesses. Images and colors were projected on the wall behind them. Winter City happened to coincide with the Chinese New Year, and one of the performances featured flying dragons. Absolutely unforgettable performance.

Matt and I have been working on making closer connections with people in Toronto as well. We have a regular group that gets together for trivia night at a local pub, and I am pleased to report that I managed to get together a small group of other post docs and grad students for periodic craft-filled evenings. We have even had a few social events for Lou. One of Matt’s labmates has a young parrotlet that grew up with Lou, and they have little birdie play dates. This might sound really silly, but it’s fun. The birds clearly enjoy each other’s company. Speaking of Lou, he now speaks! He has a host of words he says, and develops new phrases regularly. Every day, he’ll sit by himself and then starts working himself up into a quiet talking frenzy. He started with “Peek-a-boo” (which I have to say, was almost painfully cute). He also regularly asks “what are you doing?” and he frequently says “’Scuse me”. He’s a good little blue friend and he often makes me laugh.

After a brief period of intense fatigue every time I thought about research, I have been successfully moving forward with my academic life. I have made some contacts in different departments, I have attended some interesting workshops, and I have successfully started creating a new workspace. I figured out where to get important lab supplies (e.g., liquid nitrogen), thanks to my new supervisor, Shawn, and a fellowship awarded to Matt, I secured my own ultrasonic water bath and centrifuge, and I recruited some new fantastic students who are helping me process samples. I am feeling very positive. Starting in March, I completely re-immersed myself in the academic world. I presented a lecture and demonstration about how one might use stable isotopes to answer questions about foraging ecology at a very successful workshop at George Washington University in DC. I ate some great food, reacquainted myself with some old friends, and met some new friends. Good times. I then attended the annual American Association of Physical Anthropologists conference in New Mexico in April. My poster was VERY well received and I was floored by the number of people who came to speak with me. I almost lost my voice. I also enjoyed being back in the Southwest, even if it was brief. I ate LOTS of salsa and tortillas, and even managed a rendezvous with Kirsten Menking, one of my professors from Vassar.

I am also proud to report that despite several months of frustration, I can now report that three of my dissertation chapters are published or in press, a fourth paper is in review, and my final “big bang” manuscript will hopefully be submitted sometime soon. It is almost unfathomable how much time and energy it takes to put a manuscript together, and to see it through to completion. These are the final products of years of research. I am very pleased and feel quite productive. Of course, none of my research would be possible if it were not for my colleagues who have helped me obtain samples, run analyses, and edited my writing, or the small army of student who have helped me process samples. Wow.

And of course with every success there comes some failure. I have not yet managed to secure a job after August. I have applied for dozens of jobs, but none of my applications has yet met with success. I do think I might get a teaching position in the U of Toronto Department of Anthropology or Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the fall. I put a lot of careful thought into my applications and I think I would be an excellent candidate. Plus I really, really want to try teaching my own course. I have always enjoyed teaching and believe that I would be a good teacher, but I have never had the chance to teach my own course. I think that this opportunity would answer a lot of questions for me. I have high hopes that this will work out. I also feel good about sniffing out a volunteer position with the Royal Ontario Museum here in Toronto. This isn’t a paid position (in fact I have to pay the museum a small annual fee to be a volunteer), but at least it will allow me to regularly interact with other people, which something I don’t actually do all that often. Plus the museum is truly superb. It houses “over 6 million natural and archaeological objects” and I look forward to learning more about its collections.

Mom came to visit for mother’s day. We had a very lovely, albeit brief time together, and then Matt and I traveled west to San Francisco for our fifth year of Bay to Breakers. As usual, the weekend was filled with chaos and general drunkenness, and the race itself was replete with people dressed in all sorts of costumes (some in their birthday suits). Similar to last year our group went as a 70’s basketball team. We had a pretty intense scrimmage in the Panhandle Park just east of Golden Gate Park, and then called it quits as the fog rolled in. After the race, Matt returned to Toronto and I made my way down to Santa Cruz. I had a very full two weeks of lab work and socializing. During the days I prepped and successfully analyzed what I would consider inhuman amounts of samples, and during the evenings I enjoyed dinners at my favorite Santa Cruz restaurants with the majority of my friends who remain in Santa Cruz. Some of my highlights included watching my lab mates successfully defend their PhD dissertations, and getting a group together to drink beer at Seabright Brewery. Oh how I miss their beer! Over the weekend I had one of the sweetest mini-reunions ever. My colleagues from South Caicos, Kristine, Marta, and John, happened to all be in California at the same time as me. I miss them. We all had such an unforgettable experience living together on a tiny island for half a year. They are very special and dear people and I am so happy that we got to see each other. I cannot believe that it has been over four years since I was on that little island.

We met up on Saturday morning and I took them on a grand tour of Santa Cruz. The weather was perfect. We saw it all – the harbor, the bay, the redwoods, the boardwalk. We played a hearty round of laser tag and we even got to see a free boardwalk show. On Sunday we kayaked in Elkhorn Slough, which is an estuary between Santa Cruz and Monterey. I coerced my friend Peter to be my kayak buddy because I feared that the currents and/ or the wind might be rather fierce. What good foresight I had! We saw many otters, seals, sea lions, and seabirds, but nothing that lived below the water surface. The currents and wind were surprisingly strong, especially considering that I was expecting both of these conditions. We literally blew up into the slough for half an hour. We then turned around and paddled continuously to get back out of the slough. It was delightful and refreshing to be outside and surrounded by nature. I got covered in salt water and loved it. This was definitely a memorable experience, AND something that I have wanted to do ever since I first set foot in Santa Cruz.

Returning to Toronto, I had a few days of rest. Matt discovered a really neat citywide annual event, called Doors Open, which allowed us to enter many of the buildings that would otherwise be off limits. We couldn’t possibly see all the buildings, but we did have very nice tours of the grand old Parliament Building, the space ship more commonly known as City Hall, and the artsy and bizarre Drake Hotel. We also saw part of the historic wall that used to surround the Center for Mental Health and Addiction ca. 150 years ago. The wall and the story that surrounded it were intriguing.

And then we had a week and a half of visitors. First Dad and Scott visited. Initially we had absolutely ideal weather. We saw exciting llamas, emus, and an assortment of sheep at High Park, we feasted in Korea Town and attended a Korean festival, and we checked out the art museum in Toronto. We ate some WONDERFUL food, both out and at home, and we investigated a wide variety of local venues including two bars that are new to us “the Bishop and the Belcher” and “Hair of the Dog.” We celebrated both Scott’s and my own birthday by singing, playing ping-pong, and drinking some beer. Dad departed on Scott’s Birthday and mom arrived the following day. Her visit was briefer, but also filled with good food and cheer. We revisited Korea Town and we stumbled upon a street festival on the way back. We also played a lot of foosball. All four of us can hold our own in this game, and playing two on two for several hours was very rewarding.

And to add to the excitement, I leave for Madagascar in a week. I am very excited about this impending trip. To begin, I look forward to seeing the red island and I hope to catch up with some of my contacts there. Plus I am very excited because I’ll be visiting a new part of the island and conducting new research with a new set of people. This all feels very exhilarating after spending the past 6 months more or less glued to a computer in Toronto. This will definitely be a much needed, but productive break from my normal routine. I will let you know how it goes. And then it will be a quick summer of processing samples, attending weddings, and hopefully delivering a departmental seminar at McGill University in Montreal. October and our wedding is then just steps away. Planning the wedding has been a challenge. I have only been to a handful of weddings in my adult life, and only one of them could even remotely be considered “traditional”. This combined with the fact that we reside several thousand miles away from our venue (and in a different country), makes planning interesting to say the least. Despite these challenges, I think that we’re going to put together a solid event and I am excited. As you can see, it has been, and will continue to be, a fast-paced year. I plan to update you on my life sooner than December, but just in case you don’t hear from me for a while, know that I am doing well.

As always, please let me know if you think you will be in the Toronto area or would like to come visit.

Happy Summer!