Struggle Bus

I have a sad story for you all. Unfortunately, for the past week, I have been on the struggle bus.

I have just been really good at messing things up this week. Nothing detrimental of course, but similar to the time where I managed to drop and break multiple glass things on the first day of chem lab.

During this semester, they warned us that the smoke detector in the dorms sometimes mistake steam from the showers as smoke. Now, I didn't really think they were completely serious in this threat. I mean stream is not smoke. They are two very different things. However, they were very serious. So at 11:30 the other night, just as I stopped my shower, the alarm went off. Whoops. To top it all off Cramer (who knows the code to turn off the alarm), was not at the dorm. It went off for about 5-10 minutes before he finally got back to the dorm. Luckily, my classmates have forgiven me.

Additionally, the next day we had to return our tadpoles that we caught to their pond and then collect some pond water. So the day after I set off the alarm, we drove down to the pond. I drove on the way back because there was a very large part of the road we had to back up the van and the Prospector and I have a special relationship. I had to back it up for over a mile last week. So I backed it up, all is going well. However, on the way back to the dorms I got the van stuck in the mud. Stuck BADLY in the mud.

To explain the roads up here are very narrow and all gravel so when you meet someone coming the opposite way you have to try to get as far as you can to your side of the road to insure both people can pass. So when I moved to the side of the road in order to let a few cars pass the car got stuck in the muddy shoulder. Needless to say, we had to call the main office and get them to come tow us out.

That is our tire halfway covered in mud and us waiting for Gary to come pull us out. He was very nice about it thankfully. I felt rather dumb for getting the car stuck.

You would think that would be it. Alas no. Today our van ran out of gas when we were out in the field and we had to walk back. HOWEVER, I was not driving at this point. Matt was. The best part about this story though is that the van has two tanks and we could have just switched to the second tank.

Other than that this week has been pretty great. My project is in a way coming together. We have to buy a bunch of things for it in the next couple of days. I am also discovering that Science is 1/4 science 1/3 stats and the rest is ingenuity and elbow grease. I get to cut plywood, caulk bins, and hopefully everything works out to the point where I can actually do my project. Fingers crossed.

In other news, I get to memorize 24 scientific names of amphibians and reptiles tonight. Woo party! ....and instead of studying I am currently watching the Cane Toad movie.

Sincerely,

Cane Toad Drug Abuser

Resident of Melbourne

UPDATE: Today we were in a different van and that van also ran out of gas. This time we switched the tanks. Our group has still been dubbed team car trouble.