First off what I did today:

When stuff starts to rot it can do several things. If the thing rotting is decomposing in a nice oxygen filled environment then it will attract some nice little aerobic bacteria. If however there is not any oxygen around (or very very little oxygen) you get these little beasties called Anaerobic bacteria eating the rotting stuff. These little guys are pretty good at breaking down organic matter that has say, become lodged under a bed of oysters, or become trapped in muck at the bottom of the ocean.

One of the amazingly pleasant side effects of these little monsters is that as they munch along they produce a lot of sulfur compounds. And as we all know sulfur compounds smell like rotten eggs. So imagine, if you will, the furious joy one could have if they were to cover themselves in this sulfurous muck!

That’s what I did today. We spent the day removing oysters (who themselves have a lovely smell) from bags (covered in rotting algae), and then spreading them out onto trays (that are covered in rotting muck and the aforementioned sulfur bacteria shit) and then moving them out into the ocean (to further expose yourself to goo).

We were helping with an ongoing project to remove nitrogen from this particular waterway. The oysters filter out the nitrogen from the water and store it in their shells. This combined with several other factors helps to address the problem of Eutrophication, or in plain English, algae blooms.

Too much nitrogen = too much algae = rotting muck = not enough oxygen = dead fish.

Oysters help to stop all this.

This may sound horrible, but we had a wonderful stinky time. The mood stayed high, we got really dirty (always good) and the weather was fantastic for this time of year. Last night I used almost an entire tube of leak aqua-seal on my waders and wonder of wonders they didn’t leak at all! Nothing ruins a good time in the muck like a soggy bottom. Lucky for me my bottom remains dry.

Ohh and there was a nice kitty, we called him minx.

Now for thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving was amazing!! Tess’ family cooks the best veggy food ever. I also hiked a mountain, and ran in a 4 mile race. I will give you a second to let that all soak in. A MOUNTAIN and a 4 MILE race. That’s right I am like an iron man and some stuff. As it is every time I am with Tess it was not long enough. She is great but I can never seem to spend enough time with her. That’s OK because she is coming to visit for the holidays.

I really like NH and her family is always so nice to me. The whole weekend was great but my favorite part was eating stuffing sandwiches at the top of our mountain. (that’s right its ours, we licked our fingers and put our spit on it) Last year when we hiked OUR mountain it was all snowy. This year it was nice and sunny and good. That also meant that a lot of little scoundrels were climbing on our mountain. But we let them hang out cause it would be mean to hog the whole mountain.

Tess is very smart, and in Law (capital L) school. This means that she has lots of work to do. This sucks because she has to spend all her time on her work. But I get to help check her papers for spelling mistakes (which is hilarious because I can not spell). But it makes me feel good to know that I help in some way.

To put it simply I love her…a lot.