Intro, I guess

The immediate goal for this blog is to keep track of the next five months or so; I've got a lot of travel and field work, so I thought I'd try this out as an alternate option to mass emails that I usually don't end up sending. After that, I guess we'll see.

I've discovered I like keeping track of my friends through their blogs (a very handy procrastination tool), so maybe this will help me reciprocate some.

So, to start with, I got back from Alaska a few days ago, where I was a part of a group of six doing an Easter ski traverse. The original goal was to get to the top of White Princess, a peak in the Delta Range, which apparently is in the easternmost part of the Alaska Range. We didn't make it; strong winds and some snow took the peak out of reach, but we laughed a lot, had chocolate easter bunnies and managed a fun day ski in the area, up a gully and down an alder grove.

I came home with a very tan face (to which I get the frequent response: "wait, I thought you went to Alaska..."), and poison oak (?). I'm still a little puzzled about that last one. The most likely option is some of the evil itching oil traveled with me from Santa Cruz, but the alternate idea is I'm just allergic to alders.

Next up on the calendar is Pasadena; I leave tomorrow to run some samples and if all goes well, I'll take those results to Germany at the end of August.