Things on my desk

A number of my students have already played this game, so I've decided to join in.

Lets see...

On the right side of my desk are the normal desk accoutrements - letter organizer, inbox, Navy recruiting cup (Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of all who threaten it) with pens and scissors.  There is also an automatic stirring and heating mug, which one of my lab mates at Texas A&M bought me for a "Secret Santa" gift after I kept leaving lukewarm cups of tea lost in the microwave.

To the left of my desk are the 3-hole punch, various cups of lukewarm, several-day old tea (did you know mold will grow in tea?), a bottle of mint Chloroseptic from my desperate battle with the canker sore, and my newly acquired "Project Learning Tree" manual and other science education paraphernalia.  Also to my left is my monitor.

Directly in front of me is a black kitten (6-8 months old) purring madly and trying to dig his way into the 1-gallon aquarium also residing in the back center of my desk.  Said aquarium contains two freshwater mussels, two crayfish, and one giant water beetle.  It also contains one pond snail and a zillion zoo and phytoplankton.  Next to the aquarium is the mason jar, containing yet another pond snail (it did have one of the mussels in it previously) who likes to amuse itself (and me) by doing its "snail buoyancy trick."  Seriously.  It makes a controlled floating ascent to the top of the water and then just as controlled, descends back to the gravel.  Love it.

Behind my monitor is my latest piece de resistance, the decomposition chamber.  Fashioned out of two 2-liter soda bottles according (roughly) to the Bottle Biology website, I have been filling it with random bits of food and other decomposable material from my working meals.  Now I decompose things on purpose on my desk.

I should also mention that not far from my desk is the new mealworm breeding facility.  I find this all very exciting, much to the dismay of my husband.  He is currently still insisting that I label the Magic Bullet container I used to make the spinach-cat food-yeast puree for the mussels since I used aquarium water to help mix it instead of tap water (tap water has chlorine).  He is convinced the dish washer will never eradicate the "fish fecal matter" that surely made it into the cup.

Sigh...