Whew.  It’s been a busy summer!  Classes started this week and it seemed like a good opportunity to reflect a bit on what I was up to over the summer.

I started out by visiting the Smithsonian for a working group meeting.  Read more about my visit and thoughts on working groups in general here. I also got to travel to Lassen National Park, Yosemite National Park twice, Wagon Caves and the Ventana Wilderness, a cave outside of Santa Cruz, and Point Reyes/Tomales Bay for a kayak/camping trip. More locally, I’ve also been out to the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge twice.  These trips were a mix of personal and work trips, but the great thing about my job is that work trips are usually a blast!  So I’ve had a busy, but fantastic, summer.  I feel like I’m fully embracing life back in the west and experiencing all that California has to offer.

Wagon Caves Research Natural Area

In between these trips, I’ve been balancing work on three papers, preparing for field work in Palau (more on that trip when I return at the end of September), ordering supplies and equipment for my lab, and welcoming my first grad student (Eric Williams). 

I’m not scheduled to teach this fall, so I’m continuing the travel theme.  I’ve got trips to Palau (fieldwork for a Dimensions of Biodiversity project with Mike Dawson, Mike Beman, and colleagues), the Vert Paleo meetings in Los Angeles, the IBS meeting in Montreal, and seminar talks in the Dept of Geophysical Sciences at University of Chicago, York University in Toronto, and the Integrative Biology seminar series at UC Berkeley. I’m looking forward to a fun and productive fall!