Three weeks of madness

My field work in Ontario is over and I am now beginning to feel human and awake again after a few days of recovery back in Montreal. It was a crazy few weeks, consisting primarily of either preparing for, doing, or recovering from the field. It all came to a head during the 24 hour sampling period, which began at 8:15am last Wednesday, and finished at 8:00am Thursday. We were lucky enough to have quite mild weather for the whole period, but I still managed to wear 7 layers of clothing at night (singlet, two shirts, three jackets and a rain coat). I wasn't cold :)

To give you an idea of what we were doing, here's a movie showing what needed to be done every 15 minutes (actually it's just a bit of what needed to be done, but a movie showing the whole process would be even less exciting):


The mosquitoes were out in force for a couple of hours in the evening but amazingly I didn't get bitten. I suspect it was due to the thick layer of sunscreen and dirt covering my exposed skin. Bats also made an appearance later in the night, but I only managed to catch a glimpse of one. I also managed to catch a glimpse of this strange monster (I have to mention this was at something like hour 20 of 24).

We were well looked after in the food department, with a huge cooler bag of sandwiches/fruit/cookies/muesli bars etc packed by yours truly. The highlight however was getting pizza and a thermos of hot coffee delivered by Jen during the night. The thermos was new, and has a little compartment where you can put milk in case one person wants milk and the other doesn't. The compartment seemed a bit dodgy however, and the milk spilt out a little if you weren't careful at keeping the thermos upright (hard to do in a a crowded boat). I eventually got sick of this so decided to just drink some coffee and use up the milk, but when I opened up the compartment there was no milk left, it had all spilt out. Typical.

So now the field work is over and I am back in Montreal, searching for somewhere to live and trying to finish writing my proposal. I'm not sure which is the more difficult or annoying task. Have looked at a few apartments now. The first one was really nice but too expensive, the second was a bit of a dive and the guy kept talking to my chest, the third was a dump but in a cool area (and Leonard Cohen would be my neighbour!!) but the fourth actually was great and the people seem really nice and I'm crossing my fingers and hoping to hear from them.