You know it's bad when...

So, I've got 3 papers due in the next 80 hours. Yikes. How many have I written? uhhhh, I'll get back to you on that =D. Actually, I'm working on the first one right now. I'm substantially into it. It's a proposal. I've written the entire introduction, including the research questions addressed and hypotheses. That just leaves the methods, timeline, and budget. And I've already done all the research I can for the budget, so the methods is the only major part left. I also might throw in a significance section, if I'm not over the page limit yet.

Researching for the budget was irritating. I've decided that I need to have repeated measurements of soil moisture levels to really be able to get at the most likely mechanism behind the dynamics I'm investigating. The easiest way to do this is through TDR (Time Domain Reflectometry). This works through the placement of two metal rods (TDR probes) into the soil. You then send an electric current through one of the rods, and measure the amount of time for it to come back on the second, completing the circuit. That time is related to the amount of moisture present in the soil. It's a lot faster and less destructive to estimate soil moisture in this way than through actual soil sampling. Especially if you want to get at deep soil moisture. Unfortunately, I've not been able to find a price for these systems online. All the manufacturers I've found will happily send you an estimate, but in several business days. Doesn't really help me out, seeing as this paper is due tomorrow. Oh well. I figure, I know people who have TDR set ups, so I'll just say in the budget that it already exists, so it won't have to be purchased specifically for the proposed study. Either that, or just budget in $10,000, just in case.

So anyway, I just started working on the methods. I figure, I'll do a mesocosm study. A mesocosm is a mid-sized experimental community. It's kind of a scaled-up version of a microcosm, which would be something like bacterial communities in a flask. The other day I went through and taught microsoft word a lot of ecological terms so that it would stop irritating me about jargon such as: invasibility, starthistle, successional, phenology, monoculture, syngergistically, etc... Apparently, I forgot to teach it mesocosm. It suggests masochism as the word that I really mean.

Yeah. That sounds about right...