Comme la vie est fantastique en France and other parts too!

I started this blog in 2006 as a way to stay in touch with friends and family while I was living and working as an English Language Assistant in Nantes, France. Since then, I've become a bit of a "blogger", sharing my adventures on the town, exploring new areas by bike, and any other random details that come along.

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Working, being silly, calling Jodie when I'm lost, yummy dinners outside with a bottle of wine, text message junkie, reader, sister, auntie, donkey-loving fool.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Way to go Daddio

Scientists alarmed by ocean dead-zone growth

Friday, August 15, 2008

(08-14) 18:03 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Dead zones where fish and most marine life can no longer survive are spreading across the continental shelves of the world's oceans at an alarming rate as oxygen vanishes from coastal waters, scientists reported Thursday.

The scientists place the problem on runoff of chemical fertilizers in rivers and fallout from burning fossil fuels, and they estimate there are now more than 400 dead zones along 95,000 square miles of the seas - an area more than half the size of California.

The number of those areas has nearly doubled every decade since the 1960s, said Robert J. Diaz, a biological oceanographer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

"Dead zones were once rare, but now they're commonplace, and there are more of them in more places," he said.

Diaz and Rutger Rosenberg, a marine ecologist at Sweden's Göteborg University, have just completed a global survey of the imperiled areas, and their report appears today in the journal Science.

The phenomenon that drives life away from so many coastal habitats is called hypoxia - the lack of enough oxygen in bottom waters for fish and other valuable marine life to thrive, the report notes.

The causes of hypoxia

Hypoxia is caused by tons of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilizers that run from farms and spill into the seas from rivers and streams as well as by fallout from power plants that burn fossil fuels.

The chemicals become prime nutrients that fertilize rich blooms of microscopic algae near the surface layers of coastal waters. The algae eventually die, sink to the bottom layers of the ocean and become food for masses of bacteria that decompose and consume the oxygen around them. The result is the dead zone, devoid of most marine life forms.

The largest dead zone on Earth is in the Baltic Sea, according to the survey, and the largest in the United States lies at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where the water is "hypoxic" over an area of 8,500 square miles - roughly the size of New Jersey.

The scientists found only a few small dead zones along the California coast and none in San Francisco Bay now, an improvement over previous eras when conditions made it impossible for marine life to thrive there.

That was during the 1950s through the 1970s, said James E. Cloern , a marine biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park who has been monitoring the bay's health for more than 30 years.

The problem then, Cloern said, was the result of continuous discharges of poorly treated sewage from communities surrounding the bay and wastes from many cannery plants. But the issues were resolved when waste treatment facilities were updated all around the bay, he said.

San Francisco Bay also benefits from "strong tidal action" that mixes the water and also supports active communities of clams and mussels that help keep anything like a dead zone from developing, Cloern said.

"But things can change, and there's no guarantee that we won't be seeing blooms of algae in the future here, too, so we need to be really vigilant," he said.

According to Diaz's survey, the few dead spots along the California coast develop only periodically where water circulation is limited. They include the inland portion of Elkhorn Slough near Moss Landing in Monterey County and Alamitos Bay at the mouth of the San Gabriel River near Long Beach.

Diaz's institute is part of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and he has been surveying the world's dead zones, starting with nearby Chesapeake Bay, for more than 20 years.

Jane Lubchenco, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a leading marine biologist on ocean ecology at Oregon State University, said by e-mail that the report is "a sobering documentation of the growing threat of nutrient pollution in coastal waters around the world."

"The conclusion is inescapable that dead zones are now a key stressor in coastal waters," she said.

But she added that the problem is solvable.

"The evidence suggests that if the spigot of nutrients can be turned off, coastal systems can recover," she said. "Doing it can be accomplished by using fertilizers more efficiently, preventing human and animal sewage from entering rivers, and replanting vegetation (along riverbanks) to absorb excess nutrients."

Diaz and Rosenberg cited the Black Sea as an example of the improvements that can be made when solutions are applied. Until the 1990s, the shallow northwest continental shelf there was a major dead zone, but then nutrients declined as fertilizer use diminished for several years.

'Nutrient inputs again rising'

"However, nutrient inputs are again rising (there) as agriculture expands and a return to hypoxic conditions may be imminent," the scientists wrote in their report.

About half the known dead zones develop once a year during the summer after the algae bloom widely, the water is warmest and water layers along coasts are most distinctly separated, Diaz and Rosenberg reported.

From limited surveys in the past and their own continuing research, the two scientists counted 49 dead zones around the world in the 1960s, then 87 in the 1970s, and 162 in the 1980s. The dead zone global count is 405 today, Diaz said, and could well be climbing.

E-mail David Perlman at dperlman@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/15/MNLD12ADSN.DTL

130 miles, check

Jodie's birthday night out Monday August 11 was celebrated properly at Straits on Santana Row. I can't remember the last time just she, Kristi, and I hung out. We've been friends over the past 13 years and had a blast this night (but paid the price all day Tuesday). We'd started celebrating on Sunday at Raging Waters. Yeah boyie! It was the perfect day- warm and sunny w/o being too hot. It wasn't too crowded either; I think we definitely planned it right by getting there at 11.
I feel like I've been missing out on my little blog here. This pic is from 2 weekends ago at the Saddle Rack in Fremont. You are almost 100% guaranteed to have a good night out there.
Pics from Jodie's and my birthday dinner with Monica in S.F. She can't make it to Vegas, so she took us out for a night on the town....
We were all so excited to see eachother and chatty that we had to come up with this sign to signal to person talking to halt so that the other could get in the conversation.


Not much going on. Been out to the Saddle Rack, out to the city, Raging Waters last weekend. Cruisin' around on Pokey cuz we've had a little bit of a heatwave here that's seemed to affect her, plus I've been lazy with the high temperatures. I had 2 awesome swims this week. Tim's (the coach) back from his vacation, and he was missed while away! Last Saturday I met up with Jeffrey for lunch and then got a little ride on his motorcycle- which was a blast, but if you ask him, I will deny deny deny.

Andrea's in town for the weekend, and we headed up to S.F. after I got off work to see our buddies from Go West Tours. It was so nice to see them all; I really do miss you guys! I don't think anyone could have asked for a better group of co-workers. It really was a great time. We couldn't stay too long b/c we had to meet some other friends in downtown San Jose (which by the way it took us 1.5 hrs to get there!!!! Friggin Bay Area. Everything's so close, yet so far). Anyways we hit up the SJ Bar & Grill for some appetizers. It was a really warm night, they have quasi-outdoor seating in the front, and we hung out and watched Mr. Phelps do his thing on the many big screen TVs showing the Olympics! He is truly amazing.

Just got home at 12:30 completely beat after a busy week and a late night out to find a package from my good friend Allyson in NY. Muchas gracias chica! Will be headed to beautiful Lake Tahoe after work on Fri. for the weekend and can't wait. Then, in only one week, it's Vegas time!

That's all for now. I'm headed to bed. Ciao ciao.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

"Well, you're living in a right-handed man's world"

Fellow lefty, Mike Weir.

So I hit my first golf ball this past week. Well, my first real try unless you count the round of miniature gold I played at a friend’s 10th birthday party when we were kids. Who would have thought I’d actually like it- scratch that- love it? I typically gravitate towards more boisterous activities like pub crawling, galloping my 1200 pound Thoroughbred mare in the hills, cycling 40mph down a windy road, shoot, even swimming can feel pretty quick when you’ve got fins on and are pushing it, but this was a completely different experience, and I imagine, once (if ever) you get past the sucking phase, there is an element of both speed and strength involved. Combine that with the meditative-like concentration it demands, and I can see why people become obsessed with the sport. So as my friend BD says, I will become a, “student of golf”. Yes, master.

Works been pretty busy, and I was all off of my schedule last week (I got called in on Sun. night to come in at 6 AM Monday morning). I ended up working 6-2 again on Tuesday as well. By the time Wednesday rolled around, I was getting used to sleeping in a bit and was just too lazy to get up for a morning swim. I couldn’t bike in on Thurs. b/c I had a date with the driving range in Palo Alto after work. The weather’d been hot, and Thurs. was no exception. I got a little lesson, learned about the 14 clubs that are typically carried in the bag, how far each one could generally hit the ball etc. etc. Well I wasn’t able to hit it any of the distances mentioned. In fact, I think a generous estimation would be about 15 ft. but it was fun nonetheless, and now I’m determined to be a little bit less awful at the sport.

I was completely and utterly exhausted after an “off” week and then a busy 4 days partying it up. I shamelessly stayed in bed in my bathrobe watching Netflix until 3 PM on Sunday (ahh memories of France). I finally made it out to the barn around 4, and just my luck, I ran into Kristi as I was about to leave. I don’t think we’ve seen each other since Christmas and it was soooooooooo nice to simply pull up some chairs and hang out in the shade while Pistol (her pony) enjoyed some time in a turnout pen.

For some reason (maybe it was my cracked-outedness) I couldn’t fall asleep later that night. But I woke up at 4:30 on Mon. after an alright sleep and forced myself back to the pool. Thankfully, it’d been covered the night before so it was fairly warm. And wouldn’t you know it, just my luck, Tim was on vacation and we had a guest coach who, bless him, decided to have a “recovery swim”. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! I could hang with that. While most people may have needed a recovery workout from their weekend swims, I on the other hand, needed one from all the fun I had.

In the end, I think it was a good thing for me to have some time off from biking/swimming b/c my ride in today was AMAZING. I felt so strong and it literally felt like I blinked and I had arrived at my destination. It could have been that they were playing Salt n’ Peppa (yeah you know you like it) on the radio. I’m not really sure. I definitely need to get some long-fingered gloves b/c my hands are starting to get a little bit freezing when I leave my casa. And sooner rather than later I need to get a serious headlight for my bicycleta b/c it’s starting to be D.A.R.K. when I leave the house and I don’t want to get ecrazéd (how’s that for some franglais for ya?) by a car, ya hear?

Entertainment anyone??

-Saw Dark Knight and LOVED it. I have been a fan of Christain Bale’s since he played Teddy in Little Women.


-Also saw Mamma Mia and loved it equally as much. So much so that I went straight home and downloaded the soundtrack. Now, I have to say one thing here, apparently Madonna’s song “Hung Up” is to a remix of an Abba song. So they kept playing the beat during the movie, which made me want to hear the whole song. So, now I’ve got my own custom soundtrack which includes that song as well.

-And finally, after a dark literatureless period, I’ve picked up a book again. I will let you know how that goes, once there’s a little more to report.