I had quite a bit to do last night and boy did it feel great. I woke up an hour before midrats so I went down to the scientist's lounge and talked with Pat and Tracy for about an hour. This of course made it time for midrats so we went down and ate. I ate some chicken pot pie stuff which was had a WHOLE lot of black pepper but it was pretty good. They also had those french toast sticks again. I've never eaten those before I came on board and I'm really taking a fancy to them. I like the texture better than the real thing.

Anyway, after I finished eating my breakfast I went down to the lab. Tracy told me that Rachel left a note with tasks for me to do while she slept and I was awake. I expected a hastily scrawled note but I found a neatly folded piece of printer paper with my name neatly printed on the outside fastened to the Board of Lies. I opened it and was surprised to see that it was typed in a rather formal prose. The instructions were quite clear but the task was simple: finish acid washing those carboys. That wasn't so bad, there were only seven or so left so I finished in an hour. When I was done, I went to get ready for the MOCNESS casts. We had three of them back to back to back last night and I didn't take off my mustang suit until I was completely done. We started about 1:30 and finished just a quarter after six. It was a long morning, but like I said before, it felt pretty good to be doing something. You might be wondering why we're doing so many MOCNESS casts in one evening. That would be a good question, if you were thinking it. If you weren't, just sit back and let me explain. Alexei was doing multiple casts trying to collect pregnant krill. You can tell that they're pregnant because a significant of their insides are blue. I believe that's because they're full of eggs and they're ready to pop (not literally). Alexei wanted these krill so he could raise them in captivity and part of his experiments with them would form a backbone for our lipofuscin centered krill-aging experiments. He would have krill of precisely known age and he could cut off their eyes and see how much lipofuscin each one has. By doing this to several krill, all of known age, for a span of two years and taking lipofuscin measurements, he can form a standard curve of krill age versus amount of lipofuscin. Roughly speaking, this curve would allow anyone to take a lipofuscin measurement and based on the curve, determine how old that particular krill was. Unfortunately, after three casts we didn't get a single pregnant krill. I asked Alexei about it and he said that a couple of years ago he was getting pregnant krill all the way up until August. He also said that the year in discussion was a warmer year and this is a colder year, so perhaps that factors in somewhere. There are so many other variables that it's hard to pin one down without thoroughly checking the matter out. Last night was supposed to be the last adventures I had with the MOCNESS but Alexei wants to give it one more go just to see whether or not last night was a horrible fluke. I think we'll be just as disappointed this coming night as we were last night, but that remains to be seen.

Well, we're done cleaning so we've been helping other people out as much as we can. We also had a big group photo after lunch with all the science people and the coasties. I hope I wasn't squinting as it was very cloudy and thus very bright, not to mention that they didn't give a customary countdown. Well, I've got a few hours to go until I'll go to sleep, probably around eight or so. I hope everybody is having as splendid a week as I am. Tune in next time as there won't be very many of these left. Get your enjoyment while you can, and remember that if you want to ask me anything about science or living on the Bering for a month, my offer of accepting e-mails directed to cm3620@lyon.edu still stands. Long days and pleasant nights.