Ten Days of Little Celebrations – December 2016

I decided to choose the little celebrations I looked in December that were non-traditional. There were four groupings:

Classes

I thoroughly enjoyed a 2-day class on aquatic macroinvertebrates last week. It’s been almost two years since I too anything that was more than a few hours in duration….and a long time since I had been in a lab. I celebrated the subject matter and the experience that reminded me a lot of my undergraduate days.

There are two Coursera courses that I celebrated – linearly since I was not taking them concurrently: Osteoarcheology and Anatomy of the Abdomen and Pelvis. They are probably among the most challenging Coursera courses I’ve taken…but I’m so interested in the topics that I’m celebrating their availability and that I have the time to dedicate to them.

Food

I volunteered at the Howard County Conservancy’s Natural Holiday Sale and celebrated the huge variety of cookies to choose from. I like trying different kinds of cookies – never having enough time to try all the cookie recipes that ‘look good.’

I made the Paleo Chocolate Pudding (made with avocado!) and wow! I’ll make it again as part of our celebration at the beginning of 2017.

Backyard Birds

I heard an owl in the forest behind out house just before it was light enough to see it…and celebrated knowing it was there.

A red-tailed hawk visited our backyard again. I celebrated that it did…and that it didn’t stick around long enough to scare away the birds that visit bird bath and feeder.

Out and About

The most Christmasy items on the list of little celebrations are a walk around Brookside Gardens’ holiday lights and the poinsettia display at Rawlings Observatory.

And I always celebrate seeing Bald Eagles at Conwingo. The birds – rare not so long ago – are back in large enough numbers that it’s possible to seem them often. Something to celebrate!

Going to Class in December

The community college in the neighboring county hosted a Freshwater Benthic Macroinvertebrate Workshop on Monday and Tuesday this week. It was two full days of day of taking small critters (preserved in alcohol) out of vials, putting them in a small Petri dish, and looking at them under a microscope. There were two lab rooms full of student – most teachers or Master Naturalists or environment monitoring related non-profits or government organizations. I’d signed up as soon as I heard about it….a great opportunity to see a lot of specimens and improve my ability to identify them for upcoming field trips with students in the spring.

It’s been a long time since I was in a lab like this – since the 70s!  I liked that there were actual chairs with backs rather than stools. I can remember classes held in labs and being very uncomfortable both from the hardness of the seat and not being able to lean back at all. We also had a microscope for every student; when I was in school we always had to share.

Some of the things I saw, I won’t see on the field trips because we don’t have enough magnification: oval shaped gills (easily detached when preserved) or comb-like spines (that look like false eyelashes) that distinguish certain families of mayflies (Ephemeroptera).

I learned about Macroinvertbrates.org and am looking forward to seeing its continued development. The family-level key we used in class is also online. Generally, we only classify to order on the field trips.

In the foyer of the building – where we registered and a table was filled with morning caffeine urns...and donuts that called all of us to jettison our diets…there was a display case of bones, which dovetailed nicely with the osteoarcheology class I just finished on Coursera. There were pathologies (like arthritis) and young bones (with the defined areas near the ends where growth was occurring).

I enjoyed the course tremendously and have signed up for another anatomy related course from the same university. I seem to be focused on biology related topics this December!