Belizean Sunrise & Primates

Yesterday we had a chinook wind blow through here.

That's what they're called where I grew up, but around here they are small winter gifts from the "Pineapple Express."

With them comes unseasonably warm air.

I use the word gift deliberately; in Swedish it means poison. Some people out on the coast got hammered with hurricane force winds and rain like you wouldn't believe. People died. The governor is trying to get some areas declared disaster areas so federal funding can be used to clean up and rebuild roads and bridges.

Inland, we got nothing but the benefits of the Pineapple Express.

The air smelled tropical this morning when I woke up to take the doggies out. It reminded me of a few mornings in Belize. It really did. In the inland mountains in Belize it got cold enough in the mornings to see your breath. The humidity was palpable even though it was cool. It was like that here this morning - except the only sounds of wild birds were the juncos chirping from the branches of our plum tree, and the only sounds of monkeys were the imaginary ones in my head.

I wished for a moment that I was actually in Belize.

I went back in side to attend to my work. I have orders to fill, items to list (a new OrnaMonkey ring-tailed lemur) and Pay It Forward gifts to send among other tasks.

Having Belize and primates on my mind, I decided to locate conferences that I could present my dissertation research at. I found two and intend to apply to both. If I get into both, great! If I get into neither, oh well. If I get into one, I hope it's the better one. The deadlines aren't for a while, so I have time to run my proposal abstracts by others first. Figuring out who to run them by is where I am stuck. My committee members? Only one has actually gone to one of the conferences. I don't know anybody personally who has gotten into the other one. That's why I end up doing these things by myself. If I can get into the conference then I can meet people who might be helpful later. That's the idea anyway.

This is just the impetus I need to get my publications together. That way, I can pave the way to turning my dreams into reality. And, maybe just maybe I will be in the field collecting dung or other samples from primates a year from now.