Morehead

I drove to Morehead City yesterday to meet with my advisor Rick, and find a place to live. So far no luck on finding a place, and I'm staying in the bunkhouse.

Rick and I talked a good bit about what would be a good research area for me, and it looks like I may work on storm surge, and in particular the effects of wetland vegetation on it. We have computer models that can predict storm surge fairly well, but there are indications that they don't get wetland effects right. It's known that wetlands act as buffers against storm surge, but the statistics out there in the media (e.g. that 2.7 miles of marsh reduce storm surge by one foot) are more or less rectally produced.

If this winds up being my dissertation work, it'll sort of be cool. My very first day of graduate school, August 29, was the day the levee broke in New Orleans. The wetlands around New Orleans had been largely destroyed by development.

Brain Fried

Tomorrow is my 2.5 hour presentation from hell. I'm not really ready, and am having a hard time getting ready because my brain is fried. This morning I had to listen to my friend Elaine's presentation, which ran over: 3 hours and 40 minutes. I'm not kidding. We did take a 10-minute break. That pretty much cooked me mentally, but then I had to spend several hours this afternoon and evening grading final exams for oceanography 101.


I have another prospect for a place to live in Morehead, but I won't be able to get down there again until next Wednesday, when things will be all wrapped up here. After tomorrow all I'll have left to do is read a paper for small-scale physics on Monday and take the geo final on Tuesday, so I should be able to relax some this weekend.