Sunday, December 30, 2007

Autumn in to Winter

Polishing off a photo backlog ...

In September we took an overnight field trip to Southwest Montana looking at Miocene faulting and sedimentation directly influenced by the "Yellowstone hotspot". The last stop was an outcrop of some fluvially-reworked tuffs.
The whole thing was a playground for the students who'd been cooped up in a bouncing van for two days.


September in Missoula was deeelightful. The smoky skies cleared and the leaves started turning.


In early October I jumped in to Zippy and we cruised down to Stanley, Idaho at the foot of the Sawtooth Mountains.

Cottonwoods were at the height of their color and the roads were clear, curvy, and fast. I got a speeding ticket.

At the end of October I drove to Portland to raid Ikea. I only spent four hours and four hundred bucks. This was followed by Halloween in Eugene. No pics unfortunately, but we discovered how hot I look in super-tight bell-bottoms.


For the Annual Veteran's Day Memorial Road Trip, I dragged an Irish undergraduate down to Moab. For once I didn't try to hit all the parks inside 24 hours. We spent most of our time in Arches. After driving through the park and setting up tents in the pitch-black, Cormac woke up the next morning and looked around. "This isn't real."

Most of my pics are of him. This is my super subtle propaganda to convince his Irish friends and family to stuff their suitcases with euros and come tour around our outrageously cheap, friendly, and euro-welcoming country. We want you! And your euros.

The second night out we were sharing a growler of Eddie McStiff's and looking up at the Milky Way when, for some odd reason, I turned on my cell phone. By coincidence someone on the other side of the country texted me at that moment and the message somehow made it through the one-bar signal. "The plunger in the bathroom at the bar im at looks like a dildo. Creepy or cool?" The word "surreal" came to mind.


In early November we got a pretty good first snow. It turned very cold.


The semester gained steam and became a litany of deadlines and bitching grad students. Fortunately, unlike any other graduate students before us, we somehow finished our projects on time and made it to the end of the semester without permanent damage. Truly a miracle. For the record: an A- in phyiscs.

This past week I cruised down I-15 to join the rest of my family for Christmas at my brother's in Orange County. Trav has decided, at the age of 32, to join the Army. He starts basic training on January 9th and moves on to Officer Candidate School sometime in March. Anyway, after several Christmases apart, it was great to be back together again. We took a day trip out to Catalina Island. The sun and warm temperatures were a nice respite, though the short days still threw me off. According to my body, warm weather = long days.
Dad got ice cream.

Susan got saucy.

I ducked in to Zion's Kolob Canyons Unit on the way home.


And now? Everyone's gone for our five-week break and I'm here working on a recently-funded grant. I'd rather be out exploring hot springs but a paycheque isn't such a bad thing. Happy New Year.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Vacation Idea

I want to see a Space Shuttle launch before it's retired. Anyone up for early August?

Monday, December 03, 2007

And now for something completely different:

Richard D. James is completely insane. Not safe for work.



From Wikipedia: "There are 127 uses of profanity used in the dialog segment of the video (which is under 4 minutes), including 44 uses of the word 'fuck'. This averages to about 1 use of profanity every 3 seconds." Yay!