Ryan took the kittens to the vet yesterday for their last round of shots. Choco weighed 4 lb 10 oz and Grem was 3 lb 8 oz. Choco is a little growing machine! And to think at the beginning of May he was only 1 lb 1 oz! In mid-August they're going in for their little snip-snips, if you know what I mean (shhhh, don't tell them!).

Those painted snails that I showed you? They grew twice as fast on the "seaweed washed ashore" area as compared to a beach that doesn't get much washed up. Helloooooo results! This was an awesome thing to find so early on. To be honest, after a whole school year of planning my dissertation around this topic, I was beginning to worry that maybe the extra seaweed was irrelevant. But no! Science, Nature, here we come! Ok, maybe not. Ecology would be a reach, but the specific marine bio journals would be easy to get this into.

My advisor said today that even if I stopped collecting data now, he'd consider my summer a success. Score! I'm only halfway through my Maine time for the summer. Unless I somehow lose all my data, I'm golden! (knock on wood)

Know what else I discovered today? If you have published articles, you can submit them each as a chapter of your thesis in lieu of writing thesis chapters! I think it is even possible to just submit a stack of journal articles if you had 5-6 good ones, and not have any "thesis" written. This is only in the past decade or so, but the trend is more in that direction. I doubt I'd have enough articles to let them stand alone, but it's nice to know that I don't have to write a several hundred page thesis if I get my act together and publish some papers.

I love love love the ocean: the salty sea air, the view for miles, the weird looking creatures. Why'd it take until I was 22 years old to figure out I should be a marine biologist? Duh! I remind me of the Seinfeld episode where George pretends to be a marine biologist. I even find golf balls!