Pufferfish@

Icy Peril for Students at OWU

SALT ALL THE FUCKING WALKWAYS!!!


ESPECIALLY STEPS!!!!!!!!

I swear, ditch the blue treatment salt and just grab the massive amounts of table salt from the Chartwells cafes if you have to.

posted by Natticus @ 12:11 PM 1 comments

Quarries Information

Need to post this so that I can access it easier anywhere.

Fates of Abandoned Quarries

What is the fate of a rock quarry? A quarry is a type of shallow open pit mining used in extracting some minerals and dimension stone such as granite, limestone, and gypsum to name a few. Like most mines, quarries are eventually abandoned, leaving landscapes pockmarked with quarry holes. What happens to a quarry after it has been abandoned?

Ohio is the site of many quarries for limestone, gravel, quartz and sand which have been abandoned since operation in the 50s and 60s. Today these quarries have since filled with groundwater and are undergoing natural ecological succession as ponds, creating habitat for many amphibious creatures. However, not all quarries are simply turned back to the wild. Quarries in Ohio have served as geology classrooms, and are a major nature attraction, and also face the fate of landfills. Quarry reclamation is now a public works, turning quarries into parks and fishing ponds. A SCUBA diving culture has evolved in the midwest due to the management and reclamation of abandoned quarries, complete with artificial reefs, fish stock, sunken helicopters, semis, mailboxes and schoolbuses. The deepest diving quarry in the midwest is Gilboa Quarry in Ottowa, at 137 feet it exceeds the depth limit of basic certified divers. Many quarries are home to the endangered and rare paddlefish and freshwater jellyfish.

Some basic questions I hope to investigate:

What are the main types of quarries in Ohio, what were they used for, why were they abandoned, and what happened to them now? How much responsibility does a company take for an abandoned quarry? What type of succession happens in a quarry? What are people now doing with abandoned quarries?

Outline:

I. Quarries

A. What is a quarry? What do they do the the environment?

B. Why are quarries abandoned?

C. What happens to quarries from a natural standpoint

1.Water and ecological succession

D. The quarry habitat

1. Benefits for endangered species and wildlife

2. Ecological problems

II. Revived human interest in old quarries

A. Who is in charge of quarries?

B. Recreation

1. SCUBA diving

2. Boating

3. Fishing

C. Community Reclamation

1. Parks

posted by Natticus @ 5:48 PM 0 comments

Gardens- Botany and Mapping

Today is a very dreary day. I've felt extremely tired all day. I attributed it to the weather, but now I see we haven't had much of a drop in pressure or anything. It did smell like it does when it snows today, though.

Today I had a very nice conversation with my botany professor, Dr. Johnson. It started with mushrooms (due to a beautiful Pearl Oyster Mushroom in the classroom today) and my friend Alex was talking about the Mycology class. After he left, I asked my business and then we got into a meandering conversation about whatever.

I was reminded about the gardens project I did last semester and how I wanted to map all the gardens on campus and publish it in the directory. I need to get on that.

posted by Natticus @ 5:40 PM 1 comments

Busy, Busy

Been too busy to post, though I get to think about a lot.
Right now I am too brain-fried from trying to absorb the 300 pages of information I tried to cram before my Human Ecology midterm tomorrow. So stupid, why am I not on top of anything this semester?
Somehow I read and I read and I read and I learn things- I learn a lot of things
But I feel like I'm reading the same things over and over and over again. If I could take a break for a bit to collect my spinning head I could write some pretty damn good synthesis. But no.

Krygier hinted that maybe it is time for me to sit on, think about, apply or otherwise put to use whatever themes I keep seeing. Sounds to me like an independent study is in order soon, but I don't know what I should do. I've never been good at coming up with project ideas. I dabble in too many things to really get deeply involved in any one of them, I feel. And I have so many things to learn about before I want to settle into one thing.
I would like to take more botany, take geology, pick Arabic and French up again and maybe a new language. I also want to learn to play an instrument, but I guess that's a hobby and not a study (for me, at least).

I know Wolverton saw me upset in the botany lounge last week. I'm sure everyone thought I was stressed about my midterm that was about to happen, but I had just found out-- 30 minutes before my exam-- that my great uncle was involved in an accident at the railyard. I can't say I liked being so upset in the middle of an area that is part of my serious academic life and being seen by my professors.
I took the news pretty hard because I'm still trying to cope with the passing of my great-grandmother on that side of the family. I didn't really expect to hear more bad news, especially involving her son (who has been antagonizing to everyone in the handling of everything since grandma's passing). Is that why this year is so hard?

posted by Natticus @ 12:42 AM 0 comments

again it started as a comment

"Do you ever feel like… unrooted.
When you think back to all the friends you used to have, or when you think to several years ago, and notice everything has changed. Everything. It was years ago, but it felt like it could have been yesterday. And you don’t know where people are or what you did with things or what happened between then and now.

Then your head is spinning and the people in front of you now are not the ones you saw yesterday. The place you are in is somewhere else. And you are reeling without a grip on anything, nothing has stayed constant and nothing ties you. Do you ever feel like you have sunk into nothing, or rather haven’t sunk into anything to root yourself.

Is this a life carried by the wind, without taking root. What is the rooted life, being secure and unchanging. What is it like to attach, to feel grounded and based in something.

Some writing might be a good start, or at least a trail.
I just wanted to talk to an old friend."

posted by Natticus @ 12:27 AM 1 comments