Pop

Ah, that familiar feeling of wishing I wrote more often.

So what has been happening? PhD land, mostly. I'm making progress- I wrote my proposal! Distilling all of my thoughts and plans and understanding of everything I've read about my topic for the past 8 weeks (is that all??) is way easier said than done. But I did it, and in 5 pages to boot. The next step is a meeting with my supervisor, co-supervisor, and two members of my panel to make sure I'm not trying to do something *too* impossible, and then I'm off on my merry way.

Next stop, literature review, and hopefully something publishable. When I got sick of writing my proposal, I was digging around in 30 + years of herbivory and/or biogeography work and looked for studies that told me something meaningful. Sadly, those papers are few and far between. I recently trudged through 2,000 + papers, about 600 of which looked promising, and about 30 of which had data that was useful. Of those, I think only about 2 are what I truly need. This is going to be a long, long road. But I am making little tiny baby steps, slowly but surely blundering along like a confused and flight-challenged moth towards the light of truth.

I think I might have neglected to mention this, but I almost dislocated my shoulder a couple of months ago. Long story short, don't climb when you're tired! It popped out, then in again, and after 3 visits to the physio I was told to keep strong, pay attention to my scapular position, and then all will be well. I haven't been climbing since the incident, but I'm hoping to get back into climbing form soon. I figure I can handle dive-bomber pushups and one handed downward dog (thanks Zuzka!), so I'm off to a good start. With some rock-ring action, I'll be super-strong again soon. Climbing again is going to be frustrating since I'll probably get spanked on things that were easy just 3 months ago, but oh well. It's not so much about getting spanked or setting records as it is about having a good time and being outside. I think overcoming the trust issue with my shoulder will be the main obstacle!

Until next time...