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I can't believe it... It's done. I tagged everything. Every single observation I've made. All 1,472 of them. All 50 pages of them. It took me 2 months to do it, but I have officially tagged every single observation I've ever made with information on the species/subgenus/genus/tribe/order/etc, the common names, any taxon swaps and inactive names, whether it's unidentified or Research Grade or casual, approximately where it was located, etc.

I had a few goals in mind doing this project. First, I was having a lot of trouble searching for specific species I couldn't remember the names for. I could only remember a specific thing, like where I found them, what plant they were on, or what color they were. I wanted to make it very simple for me to search for an item based on the limited number of things I might remember about it.

Second, I wasn't getting a lot of help identifying some species, and I figured that might be a visibility issue. I made sure to update and tag addresses and pertinent info about each species so that people following them would see what I uploaded, and I saw results from that almost immediately. Dozens of my observations got attention very shortly after being tagged.

Finally, I wanted to sift through and get rid of duplicate and "junk" observations. I have files saved to my camera, phone, and two computers, as well as multiple Google Drive accounts, so there is always some overlap. Plus, I made some mistakes earlier in my hobby as a naturalist and uploaded some images that were just useless and could not be identified to any extent. I chucked those out. I've learned that not everything I take a picture of has to be an observation, while any species I intend to submit as an observation should be thoroughly recorded.

In other news, I sent my camera out for cleaning because somehow, dozens of little black fibers and bits made their way into the viewfinder. That was on Monday, and the camera shop told me it's about a 6-week turnaround for that service because they have to send it to Nikon to get it done. It's in the wind now, but I've been very antsy without it. I considered saying screw it, and upgrading to the D800 right now, but the cheapest body I could find was $800 before tax and because of that, I would have had to do a payment plan that would have had me paying almost $100/month. I opted to send my camera to be cleaned instead, assuming that would be cheaper, buuuuuuut...

Today I was sitting outside on the asphalt in the back of the parking lot. I like to sit there because there are some agapanthas and ivy and there are a lot of neat bugs and birds that I can watch. I watched a mockingbird chase a crow, and wished I'd been able to record it. They passed me twice. Then, what finally broke me, was what I saw when I zoned out staring at the ground. Just the teeniest bit of movement, and a red dot, but too big to be a spider mite, and I knew it was a jumping spider. It was Attinella dorsata, which I just discovered the existence of earlier last month. But near it on the asphalt were two even teenier ones, smaller than an ant, smaller even than a gnat. They hopped on and off of my fingers and I couldn't stop thinking about how badly I wanted to record it, and that basically broke me. I went back to my office and hopped on eBay and found the D800 plus the battery and charger for just under $800 with taxes and shipping included. I ended up maxing out a credit card to do it, but I figured that was better than a payment plan because I could pay off the card at a lower rate and at my own pace.

I still have to wait until next Friday to get it, but at least now I have something to look forward to, and I'm not so stressed about not knowing where my old camera is. When it finally gets back to me I'll probably just sell it with its accessories to recoup some of the money I spent on the new one. It was in pretty good condition, and I know a couple of people who might buy it off me. The D800 takes photos at 36.3 megapixels, which is just, so many more megapixels than any camera I've ever owned, so I can't wait to experiment with that. Next week is going to feel terribly long.

In the meantime, I still have a few more observations to upload before I run out of material and I can take it easy and try my hand at ID'ing other folks' stuff for a change. I'm getting more confident with certain species , so I'd like to contribute back where I can, and now is the perfect time to do that.