buoyancy-freq

[buoyancy-freq]

Beginning a new job at sea…

… well not totally at sea, but at sea often enough to mark this moment as a heavy transition into a strange new era in life.

As things unfold, I'll be able to get into more detail. For this first log, though, I'll count it as sufficient to give some motivation to drive the unsteady motion of this record.

Currently, I'm finishing up a graduate degree at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, on Cape Cod in backwards ol' Massachusetts. To put it succinctly, beginning a graduate program 3000 miles away from home during the isolation and uncertainty of a pandemic back in 2020 was a pretty big bummer. As I was thinking of which path to stumble down next, I was reminded that I do not have much of any solid good example to trace my own trajectory against. Maybe this record will help someone someday someplace else. Mostly, I suspect it will be a nice spot to ramble out messy prose and get into more technical detail than anyone would ever care to dig through! Sick.

Really, as a teenager I enjoyed reading decade-old out of print zines to discover little cookie-dough-bits-in-ice-cream-sized pockets of timeless, relatable experience which to measure against my own limited cache or at least pin up on the wall for further reflection. Another decade later, and I still dig up those memories serendipitously, like, all the time. I guess this is me attempting to put a little something back in the pot.

Ok, I'm sitting here in Cape Cod writing this, but where to? To the Pacific. The Lost Coast. Back in the familiar town of Trinidad, California. A university with a new name but old friends and older coastlines. A tough little workhorse research vessel, a dozen unopened boxes of clever instrumentation, a few plankton nets, the homies sea tee dee and ay dee sea pea. In the place of old studious obligations, many of which have long past overstayed their welcome... something a bit more fresh, and hopefully longer-lasting.

Well, when the words here are too silly, at least expect the regular procession of action shots, un-captioned figures, and possibly even some snippets of code.

That all will make more sense soon -- I hope, for mine own sake, at least.