the week in review

So the week in Searcy (pronounced "sur-see") was pretty productive. I may have gone deer hunting and eaten beef jerky...I will neither confirm nor deny.

Arkansas is supposedly "the natural state." But I saw mostly rice, cotton & soybean fields. Lots and lots and lots of them. Not terribly natural. The food in Searcy and the surrounding communities left something to be desired. Sweet tea is a bad thing. And I went a week without good coffee. I had an interesting exchange with a cook in a motel/gas station/convenience store/lunch counter. He had rattled off the omelet options (which I think were something like cheese, ham & cheese or western) and I spaced out for a second. I heard him say something about onions and peppers and jumped to the conclusion that there was some sort of vegetable option. I asked for a vegetable omelet and was met by a blank stare and the question, "you mean, like lettuce and tomato?" I just got the western.

The people were lovely, though. A member of the housekeeping staff seemed genuinely sad to see me go, even though I had never spoken with her before (or had any interactions with any of the housekeeping staff, for that matter-- I kept weird hours). At home, I'm pretty sure this woman would have ignored me. The Fish & Wildlife guys that went out hunting with us at night were all nice, too.

I'm in Athens now. Not sure how the weekend will go. I have some errands to run, but there's a football game tomorrow. Athens is supposedly impassable on home football Saturdays (people are making it out to be something on the order of Boston on Marathon Monday...I can't imagine it's that bad.) And the buses don't run on Sundays. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to get stuff done. Oh, well. I have a lot of boards review questions to go through. I can always stay here and so that.

Too tired to think clearly right now...more to come.

Searcy, Arkansas

Searcy (population 21K) is a little bigger than I thought it would be. There are a few non-Wal-Mart grocery stores, and the one that we visited today had some hippie provisions. Yay. I can eat my regular cereal and organic yogurt. The hotel has free high-speed internet and a fitness room. More yay. I don't particularly enjoy living out of hotel rooms. It's nice when they have some decent amenities.

A few people went into the field this evening to collect some deer. The rest of us will post them tomorrow.

More to come.

photos

The girls, who will hopefully behave themselves for Peter while I'm gone.

Or adventures down South, as the case may be

Hopefully I'll have frequent enough access to the internet to use this blog for my month down south.

Flew from Boston to Atlanta yesterday. Studied for boards in the airport for a few hours (yuck), then got picked up by 2 SCWDS grad students. (SCWDS is the Southeast Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, the group with whom I'm spending this 4-week externship). Emily & Jess are nice girls. We drove for a looong time. There's not a whole lot in central Alabama.

(I tried to post a map in there, but it didn't work. Go to google maps and type in directions from Athens, GA to Memphis, TN. You'll get the idea.)

We spent the night at a hotel on Beale St. in Memphis. Got a beer at Silky O'Sullivan's (dueling piano bar with goats that live out next to the patio). I forgot that one can still smoke in bars that aren't in Mass or NYC. Ew.

Breakfast soon, then heading northwest into Arkansas.

Among my goals for the week in Arkansas-- not to break my streak of never having entered a Wal-Mart. Wish me luck.