Calmer seas and still sailing

Hi all. Last night was pretty rough with the waves and wind. K-Dude was even considering sleeping in one of the lower cabins, on the floor if necessary. I'm usually fine with it, other than the climbing the stairs that keep moving. And in fact I was fine all night. Until this morning, when the seas were calm. My tummy doesn't like to go from wild to calm, it can handle calm to wild, but every once in a while, the wild to calm isn't so great. I wasn't so much sea sick as just not feeling well. There were no bouts of nausea, just the "eh" feeling. And on top of that, one of the deck crew thought it was a great idea to scrape paint off the boat by using an electric grinder, at 8:30 am, on one of the few days I get to sleep in, right outside my porthole. Gee, thanx.


Most of today I have sat in front of this computer. So if you're wondering why this post is going to be short, that will be why. I was sitting here answering kids questions from across the country on the Write the Scientist portion of our ship's web page. They weren't all that bad, but the fact we had over 70 questions to answer, and they weren't all simple ones, was a bit tasking. My brain is fried on what a hydrothermal vent is, do I like my job, how long is a giant squid and what would you do if the hydrothermal vent exploded while you were in ALVIN..... Oy vey. Those are all really good questions mind you, but after about the 20th one, it begins to be a bit less of a fun educational event and more of a task that has lost its luster.


I also got an email from a reporter to ask me questions about me and the upcoming MS Walk I'll be doing out here. I found that one of the questions was quite sexist and its taking me some thinking on how to phrase my answer to address that fact while still getting my point across. His question was this: "Tell a little bit about yourself. A neat part of this story is that you are a woman scientist." Apparently there are no other "women scientists" and it is super "neet" that I'm a woman and a scientist. I thought I was taking this too much to heart, but asked other women and men onboard how they would feel if they were asked such a question. Only 1 out of the 9 people I asked said they saw nothing wrong with the statement. So 8 people agreed that yes, this was inappropriate and not at all a wise question. Sigh.... people these days! Really, right now, of the science crew out here, women out-number the the men 15 to 7. And the ship's crew has four women, one of which is the Third Mate and another the First Assistant Engineer. Maybe the reporter is like 90 years old and has no clue? I don't know......


I also failed to take a single photo today. That's right, my camera never snapped a single shot today. How sad is that? The upside is that we are in calmer waters, my "eh" feeling is gone (although my shoulders and fingers are aching from typing too much) and we only have 3 more days to get to the Guaymas Basin. We did also find out that tonight our clocks go back one hour, so heads up to Jeboleth that I'll be 2 hours behind you now as of Friday morning.


That is all for now, I feel bad for not leaving you with a photo so I'll leave you with a quote from one of my favourite and most admired scientists,
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. --Albert Einstein