Even in Kyoto

We're generally getting ourselves settled into a routine here. It's a bit funny and strange to be in Tucson, where I know hardly anyone, as compared to Tempe, where I wind up feeling like I know far too many people and have to deliberately carve out time and space for focus work. Here, I am more concerned about my research students feeling socially isolated, all in the middle of a big city. I have some ideas for addressing that, at least - we could see if the local yarn shop has knitting/crochet groups, for instance.

Anyway, for me the basic routine is looking like: up at 4 am, go for a jog/walk, drink coffee, head out to the field very shortly after sunrise to look for foraging ants for a couple hours. Return, eat breakfast, work on computer-based research tasks until lunch. After lunch, process any collected ants and leaves, then dinner and early bedtime for me.

We had the beginnings of monsoon weather last night, which dropped rain on outlying areas but not yet the places where it matters most to me. If we get real rain, that will blow any notions of a routine right out of the water, because we'll need to prioritize work with any queens we can get, and that's always a major race against the clock.