Category: AlwaysAScientist

Joining the Ranks of Tourists and Fangirls in Yellowstone

Obligatory “NP Sign” Photo

Day 13
Yellowstone National Park
Total Miles Hiked: 3.5ish (70.7 overall)

After the rain

Nearing the completion of their Master’s theses, two young, wild women struck out on the adventure of a lifetime. Meridith and Rachel’s 2012 Besties National Park Roadtrip was a transformative journey around the Western US National Parks. 10 states. 9 National Parks and 1 National Monument. One summer of fun!

Yellowstone, the Disney of U.S. National Parks. America’s first national park welcomes over three million people each year, and Rachel and I were certain we wanted to be part of the excitement during our adventures. When we were first planning our trip (which was a very exciting and motivating time during that spring semester) we knew we wanted to take our time exploring this particular gem. Three days seemed adequate, but I’m sure we also could have spent the entire summer there hiking and learning. Even after all of the hiking we had just completed at Rocky Mountain NP, plus arriving at Bridge Bay Campground at 2 am, we couldn’t wait to explore this national treasure!

Right on time!

I hope we don’t need to remind you folks, but on our Awesome Besties National Park Roadtrip we weren’t messing around. We went on an early morning jog along the Natural Bridge Trail (this was when we were being extra amazing…I don’t think it lasted all summer), which was both invigorating and a prime opportunity to try and spot a moose!  Post-jog and granola hoovering, we struck out toward the epicenter of all that is Yellowstone: Old Faithful. And wow, the crowd here couldn’t have been more different from others we’d seen at the previous parks. People of all ages, itty little dogs on leashes, bikers, hikers, photographers, families, and us were all milling around until the next eruption time. Conveniently, eruption timers were plastered all over the viewing area. Old Faithful really did live up to it’s hype and was spectacular to view.

As per usual, we sought out the park ranger that looked like they had the full low-down on the park, and, as per usual, we were not disappointed. A lovely old couple took turns answering our questions and suggesting possible itineraries (Editor’s Note:  Jim and Dot are the business!  Go find them!). We explained we had three days, and while we wanted to hit up the major tourist attractions, we were also quite badass and wanted to do some tougher hikes and see some wildlife. Pausing only to insist we go check out another geyser about to erupt, this couple quickly outlined where we should adventure, and and passed on an important safety tip. Apparently, up until this point in our trip we had been walking bear lunches and didn’t even realize. My thoughtful, well-meaning mother bought me a Bear Bell to attach onto my pack to ward off bears. How sweet!  However, according to our newest ranger friends, these bells acted more like dinner bells than warding off bells. Good to know; acquiring bear spray was necessary.

Meridith’s idea of heaven

Luckily, we could mosey on over to one of the many stores scattered around the park by way of the the largest log structure in the world. Thanks to my love for science documentaries I was able to give Rachel the briefest of overviews of the famous, historic Old Faithful Inn. The highlights: super fantastic craftsmanship and the ice cream shop we found. Rachel treated me to an ice cream cone, and I was in heaven. But, as my luck would have it, heaven was about to get even better. As we wandered back into the lobby, we noticed a man at a small table, which seemed to be set-up for a book signing. Recognition washed over me as I felt my face flush with excitement and sudden anticipation. There, seated before us, was one of my personal heros. The dude who writes the “Who Pooped in the Park?” books. Gary D. Robson, in person. Rachel was kind enough to let me fangirl a bit and we went up to get a photo. If you’ll take a moment to imagine a grown woman, possibly with ice cream smudged on her face, trying to contain her excitement whilst in line among a sea of young children, waiting to meet a gruff older man sitting at a table with scat samples covering it….well, then you’ve pretty much nailed the scenario. I managed to resist elbowing a few 8-year-olds out of my way before getting to the front of the line.

Our second Grand Canyon together!

Still star struck, we battled the brewing rains to finally get to the gift shop with bear spray. I was a little dumbfounded at the steep price, but I suppose if you are investing in your personal safety that price is well worth paying (Spoiler Alert: we never needed the bear spray so now when not out on hikes with me, it lives on the rack behind my apartment door where it waits for State College’s unluckiest home intruder.). I honestly don’t remember the entire conversation, but I chatted up the sales clerk while purchasing the bear spray and through some combination of comradery and the ol’ Meridith charm, I walked away with the staff password to the wireless internet in addition to the bear spray! SCORE! We waited out the rest of the afternoon rain while bingeing on stolen…borrowed internet.

You know, just hanging out on top of a mega-volcano

Now you might think that it was a total bummer to have rain on our first day of visiting Yellowstone, but it was actually quite beneficial! The afternoon storm scared off the majority of people so we were able to hit up the major tourist highlights without dealing with the crowds! We were treated to amazing experiences and sights at the various geothermal elements, artists paint pots, and even the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Even more, we got to enjoy a pretty sunset and several of the majestic bison! One even was sweet enough to pose stoically in front of the setting sun before ambling across the road right past our car. Being the responsible and safe park goers that we are, we kept a safe distance from the wildlife and stayed inside the car in a designated pull off area. (Excuse me while I side-eye and judge everyone else not as responsible as us). All in all, it was a perfect first day in Yellowstone. We tucked in early because we knew that day two was sure to hold ever more excitement!

Magestic

Share a Science Documentary Day

Science documentaries. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you love them. You’ve watched both iterations of Cosmos; you’ve joined Stephan Hawkings on an exploration of the universe; you’ve learned about the rovers, landers, orbiters, and space stations exploring our solar system; you’ve experience Sr. David full-on gushing over a hedgehog. If I were to write a blog post trying to convince you to check out some of Sweet Tea Science’s favorite science documentaries, you would scoff because you are so on top of that. And that’s awesome! Seriously, let’s take a moment to appreciate our collective thirst for knowledge!

However, let’s not get so ahead of ourselves that we forget to share this excitement, enthusiasm, and thirst with others!

I have been inspired by a lovely evening out with my partner and his friend. We had been enjoying a few beers, and we got on the subject of education, intelligence, science, space and…well, you know how conversations can go. We eventually got on the subject of exploring our solar system and trying to understand the creation of the universe. Now, keep in mind that I love these kinds of conversations and could go on and on for a while. My comments are often prefaced with “I saw once in a documentary that…[insert science here]”. I was shocked to find that the friend had never heard of some of what we were discussing. It wasn’t that he didn’t have an interest in the topics, quite the opposite! He tried to write it off as us just being inherently smarter than him, but honestly, it was just a product of being an avid science documentary watcher. The knowledge is out there, I just Netflixed my way to it! I want others to know that they can too!

I am beginning to realize that there exists a set of people out there that are interested in exploring the sciences, but they don’t believe in themselves or don’t know what avenues to explore to help with their intellectual endeavors. This is where we come in. I’m going to assume that the majority of readers are here because they are totally into science. If we all independently hosts screenings of science documentaries and invite lots of our friends that might not normally choose such a film, then think of all of the science converts! I propose we
take this opportunity to organize. I nominate September 17th, 2014 as the first annual Share a Science Documentary Day!

This is a project that will require the help and support of the online scientific community. Science Side, I’m looking at you!

Your STS Homework:

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1. Share your favorite science documentary. You may do this in the comments here, on our Tumblr, or on your own social media outlet of choice! Be sure and tag us, @SweetTeaScience, so we can reblog/post/tweet you. Feel free to use the tag #SciDocuDay2014!

2. Host a Science Documentary Viewing on September 17th, 2014. Invite friends now and get people excited!

3. After your viewing don’t forget to try and start a dialogue. Talk about what you just learned and encourage others to share their impressions.  (Editor’s note: I think this would be a great time to talk about how to pick a documentary that isn’t bunk and how to be a skeptical consumer of information.  I mean, I love me some Netflix docus, but I’ve also quit some half way because…bunk.)

4. If you’d like, write up a little something about your event. What did you watch; did people enjoy it; would you host a similar movie night again, etc. We’d love to hear back and post your feedback on our blog or Tumblr!

Best of luck to everyone choosing a film to watch. Here might be a good place to start. We’ll keep you updated via tumblr about our own plans and movies that we choose to watch at our respective events! If you have any suggestions we’d love to hear them.

Fiscal Responsibility feat. Sweet Graphs

Back in April, I took a big step towards being a Real Adult and started my own budget spreadsheet. After just the first month, I was completely shocked at how much I was actually spending (read: THAT much on dining out?!) Now that I’m heading back into the tight grip of grad schooldom, I know that I need to prepare myself for the grad school lifestyle. Which, of course, means living within my means. My first step in this preparation process was to create a budget spreadsheet for myself. I’m a big believer in ‘knowledge is power,’ and had to embrace that mantra to keep my head up while working on this project.

I started in Excel with two of the provided templates: College Cash Flow and Monthly Home Budget. Both templates provides you with a file already outfitted with calculations to auto-fill the green boxes based on data in the yellow boxes. In the College Cash Flow file, you input your starting money on hand and monthly expenses by convenient categories likely to be used by college students (e.g. books, tuition, etc). Your total income, expenditures, cash flow, and ending balance are automatically calculated for each month. The Monthly Home Budget sheet performs a similar task, but on a shorter time scale. You also have an opportunity to compare your actual income/expenses to budgeted ones. Together they are both useful, but I found that with a little extra work I could create a more interconnected, useful budgeting tool, complete with visuals.

I wanted to know more about my individual purchases in addition to total monthly charges, so I added a section to the Monthly Home Budget sheet at the bottom where I could input each individual purchase with Date, Cost, Type, and Notes. I found that having to record each transaction separately also helped me stay aware of my spending as the month progressed. I have Office 2008 for Mac on my computer, so everything I mention subsequently will be specific to that version of Excel.The major amendments to the spreadsheet templates are as follows:

  1. I wanted to have a drop down menu of categories for when I input individual purchases, to eliminate the possibility of typos. This was more an issue of formatting than coding. 
    2. Screenshot 2014-05-21 21.28.05.png
    May was a pretty cool month. I was much more conscious of what I spent even after a month of keeping track and budgeting.
    1. Highlight the boxes where you want the drop down list.
    2. Data -> Validation
    3. Allow: Select “List”
    4. Source: highlight the categories from the Variable Expense section
    5. Okie doke. You can also copy/paste this format into other cells.
  2. Next, I wanted the “Actual” cost cells in my Variable Expense column to automatically update from my individual transaction list. But that meant that each categorical cell would only update with it’s specific type of expense.
    Let me reassure you, this was not too difficult at all! And I felt like such a badass every time I figured out a tiny little thing. 
    1. In the Actual column next to the first category (household) type “=SUMIF(“
    2. Highlight “Type” column then insert a comma
    3. Click the category name then another comma
    4. Highlight the expenses column and end parentheses
    5. Repeat steps for each category/type (e.g. household, groceries, gas, etc.)
    6. Now that the Variable Expense Actual cost cells auto update, I changed the color to light green.  
  3. I wanted my monthly expenses to automatically be filled in on the College Cash Flow sheet. In hindsight, I could’ve made this a little easier on myself by rearranging the “Expenditures” list to match the ordering on the Monthly Home Budget sheet. 
    Oh man, Meridith, there’s not much going on here. Are you going to release a template for everyone. Maybe. Just maybe. 
    1. I started in April, so I would’ve gone to that month’s column in the CCF sheet. Clicked on the cell that matches up with the Household Costs row.
    2. Entered =’April Budget’!$C$55, where April Budget is the name of my Monthly Spreadsheet for April and C55 is the cell where my Household Variable Expenses are totaled. 
    3. Some expenses on the yearly sheet, like utilities, may be broken down into more specific categories on your monthly sheets. You can use =SUM() to compile those cells. 
  4. I love visualizations. I wanted to see these data represented so I could see, at a glance, where my spending was occurring. Where are the sweet graphs?! Missing?!  No sweat, I just had to make my own. I had a pie chart of my variable expenses on my monthly spreadsheets. I kept the fixed expenses off because huge costs like rent would just overwhelm the graph. 
    Can you tell I like food?
    1. Highlight “Variable Expenses” and “Actual” columns
    2. Insert > Chart > Pie > whatever the most basic one is
    3. I also did a similar pie chart for the yearly sheet using the “Expenditures” and “Yearly Totals” columns.
Celebrating my time in Newcastle the proper
 way – dancing my heart out. 

Ahhhh, fiscal responsibility and organization. You really can’t beat it. Don’t be afraid to try your own tweaks to the budget sheets. I’d love to hear your insights. The important thing is that you’re staying aware. I’ve known many a young lad and lassie who just wanted to ignore their financial obligations and responsibilities. Your twenties are not for mistakes and frivolity! Ok…they are a little bit. I’ve mistaked and frivoled. But I’ve also been conscientious of long term savings, and because of that (in addition to supportive parents and lots of living at home) I’ve been able to do some really frickin’ cool shit! After completing my Master’s degree I moved home, worked for a few months, bought a plane ticket, packed a bag, and left for a completely wild 90-day, self-funded, solo adventure through Europe. I had zero responsibilities. Minimal worries about my funds. And all of the funs. All of them! Sure, it meant watching my money closely during my time in New Mexico. I rarely went out and spent money on beers and food. I lived with roommates with ridiculously cheap rents. I nearly never went shopping for clothes. But it was all completely worth while when I landed in Dublin and immediately had adventure after adventure!

I’ve been looking into what other things I can be doing to be extra responsible with my finances. I’m not anywhere near 40, but this cool article has really inspired me to think about awesome next level goals I can set for myself. I’ll be studying for my PhD for the next five years, and while that comes with a stable stipend, it’s not the same as having a job with a 401K and retirement plans and all of these other benefits that I’m mostly clueless about. If you are looking into other ways to keep yourself in check with your cheques, then you might want to consider the many financial apps available. SciFri has a lovely podcast on them. You know how much we love podcasts. I have friends that also swear by the cash envelope system. Each month you take out the budgeted amount of cash (lump sum or broken into categories) and that’s all you have for the month. You run out…tough cookies.

If you’d like more money saving tips throughout the week keep an eye on our STS Tumblr for extra posts. We’ll share different articles and our own personal insights on how we live on the cheap! We also want to hear about what’s your method? Any super awesome money life hacks that we could benefit from? By all means, let us know!