The Loony Bin

Yup, I'm headed off to the loony bin. Do my Icelandic readers know what that means? A loon is a bird called himbrimi in Icelandic. It makes this very strange and haunting laughing sound that drifts across lakes from far away. This sound led people to associate the birds with crazy people and such people were called loons. Then, the institutions where crazy people were kept were eventually called loony bins because they house so many loons. This is all a lead up to a very bad joke which will be completely explained in this post, by the end.
To begin with, I'm not going to go to work at a 9-5 job after I graduate in the Spring. Instead, I'm going to start working on a Master's Degree in marine biology. This kind of fell into my lap (strangley like just about all of the great things that have happened to me have) without my really putting in lots of effort to find it. I was mulling the idea of more schooling after I finish my BSc and went to my favorite professor for advice. I came up with an idea for a research project based on the changes that would take place in the animal inhabitants of a beach near my house after the two sewer pipes that currently run out onto the sand wre moved to the other side of town. He said that this was not very interesting-unless I were to examin what the sewage is doing in a given group of organisms.
Then he asked, "You want ot get some type of salary while you'r etaking your MSc?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "And you want to do some kind of classification of species?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Well, it just so happens that I have recently received a really good grant from the European Union to research the animal life on the sea bottom on the ridge between Iceland and Greenland. Would you like to take part in that?"
I had to go home and talk to The Wife about it first (we are a team afterall and what I do effects her life), but I was sold on that question! I went back to him the next day and signed p for the project.
So, what will I be doing? I will start off going out on a boat with a small programable submersible (Gavia 2000 AUV) . My mission will be to send the sub down to the bottom where it will take photgraphs and then swim back to the boat. Once it's back in the boat, I will be loading the photographs into the computer for analysis. The analysis that I'll be doing is not going to sound exciting to most people I know, but I's exactly what I want ot be doing. I'm going to be classifying the animals that appear in the images. This is a pretty exciting project because the area being explored is relatively unknown and because the sub is brand spanking new.
So, now back to the joke...The sub is called Gavia 2000. Gavis is the Latin name for the genus which includes the bird the great northern diver. The great northern diver is the British name for what I believe all Americans would recognize as a loon. So, I thought it would be funny to refer to a project that may, in fact, drive me crazy (staring at a computer screen to figure out what the little colored blobs are) as the loony bin. Hey, I said it was a stupid joke. I've always had the philosophy that if I tell enough jokes at least some will be funny. I never know what will be funny to other people. So, I say just about everything that comes to mind and hope for the best!