Thanksgiving vacation

My husband and I went to Omaha for Thanksgiving. Danny's mom still lives there, and his sister was also visiting. The trip was super fun. We ate a yummy dinner on Thursday. Friday I got to go to the Omaha zoo and check out the cool animals! The desert dome is pretty neat, but the jungle was the coolest "exhibit". A gorilla got mad at me for staring at him. That was kind of scary.
We also got to hang out with some of Danny's old friends, and we got a Gamecube (finally!). I got sick on Friday night though, so the trip back wasn't so great. Flying while having sinus problems really sucks.
AND I registered for classes this morning. Next semester it looks like I've only got class on Tuesday and Thursday. I have a 10 am class, a 2 pm lab on Thursday and a 3pm class on Tuesday. And I'm going to be on an RA for Cathy, so no labs to teach! Weird.

YAY for plant systematics

I just finished the first "key" exam in plant systematics. wow what a test. I was in there for 3 hours, but most of the class is still there! We had 12 unknown plant specimens that we had to key out to family, genus and species. After having done not so good on the site ID quizzes so far in this class, I am proud to say that I think I did pretty well on this test. I am dynamite with the key! It's beautiful when things just seem to fall into place and you're looking at a flower with a blue corolla and it says, "blue corolla" in the key. Keying is fun.

A few pictures of home

Below are a few pictures, mostly of our new furniture. They show our house too a bit. The things they don't show are the fireplace, our washer and dryer, and our kitchen. Those are the exciting things.

These are our bookshelves and our plants! They need as much sun as possible. So many books... 

Here is another view of our living room. It has a nice window, and we have lots of seating! Outisde is our grill, which is now covered in snow. 

And here is our new-ish loveseat that we bought at the beginning of November. It's comfy. It takes up a lot of space in our living room, but it's nice anyway. 

So here is our bed. You can't really see the frame, but it's not much, just wood. There's my alligator too... 

what is the difference?

So I know there is a difference between a pappus of scales and a pappus of capillary bristles. But on some species it is really hard to tell! On Monday I have a test in my plant systematics class. I'm not too worried about it, except for the Asteraceae. It is hard for me to tell if the receptacle is naked or chaffy, and if the pappus is scaly or bristly! I hope we don't get many different kinds of Asteraceae.
Plant systematics makes me dream about obscure plant words and names (like Solidago missouriensis or Sonchus uliginosis). Repeating these thing over and over again does not really facilitate memorization of what the plants actually look like. You just know some funny words.
Here is our class website, where Dr. Lavin posts pictures of all of the plants we've so far studied. Gorgeous!

culture

So I was just thinking this morning about the cultural differences between Montana and New Mexico. To me, they are striking. At least this part of Montana is more uptight than New Mexico. There is a huge "outdoor" culture here that pervades almost everything, and it doesn't exist to a large extent in New Mexico. There are other differences too, way too many to get in to.
So what bothers me about this? I don't feel right here in Montana. It definitely has to do with the culture, both the academic and social culture. It'll take some getting used to, but I got used to New Mexico eventually.

Wednesday Afternoon

This is my first ever blog. Whoa.
I've gotta get used to this.
I promise this will get more exciting as time goes on.