T-day and a wonderful home weekend

Just got home from Turkey day in Chicago with the Peterson extended family. I realized I didn't take any photos except 15 tries at the snow-coated tree in the backyard. As is tradition, it seems to snow on the way to Thanksgiving, or the way home. This year it was on the way to. I also realized I rarely see snow falling much, so this dusting seemed like a novelty. Hmm.

Lots of good food, Mom's birthday (which falls, every so often, on T-day), lots of talk of the state of the farms, the state of the Bears (which is usually bad?), the state of the Cyclones (also usually bad?), the occasional random geologic question for Katie ("they built a hospital in eastern Iowa that runs off geothermal power. What do you know about this?") and the usual life questions for Katie ("when are you going to get a boyfriend?" When are you going to get a real job?") to which I usually laugh and say that the answer is the same for both: unclear.

The weekend before T-day I finally spent at home and enjoyed a sunny Saturday sleeping in, and spending time with friends. Sarah and Rachel and I went up to the park to slackline, which Sarah and I have done extremely inconsistently for the last couple of years. We saw a couple of kids at the park who stop by every time we're there and are fascinated. They made us realize how long we've been going though, because the first time Cate tried it out, her little brother was too small to try, since he could only just walk. Now, they both charge down the line.

Shortly after, Cate abandoned the line to climb the tree.This little guy has a big old smile on his face!

Then it was off to celebrate Dai and Sora's half birthday and Wendy's whole birthday by having a "the 90's are the new 80's" party. This was an interesting idea; most of us can free associate for this category, since we were in high school in the 90's. So, there was a lot of flannel, Green Day, Naughty By Nature and imitation Doc Marten's. The obvious trouble is that we aren't really far enough from the styles, in fact most people's costumes were old clothes dug out of the closet, supplemented by the thrift store, which led to scenarios like this:

Patrick: Hey! That's a nice flannel.
Katie: Thanks, I got it at the thrift store this afternoon.
Patrick: Really?
Katie: Yeah, you should see if it fits...

Patrick: Hey it fits! Can I keep it?
Katie: Sure...

Maybe still too close to home? Anyway, that's about it. About 2-3 weeks left in the quarter, AGU and a paper to write.

Field Trip recap (aka where have all my weekends gone?)

I've gotten used to hearing "it seems like forever since I saw you" around the department during midweek. But, we took the last field trip for the quarter this last weekend, and I'm going to be in town for 9 days in a row (if you do the math, that has to include a weekend!) But, that doesn't mean the field trips haven't been fun. Here is a quick recap, with emphasis on the most recent weekend, since I can remember that one the best...

We had a couple of Saturday trips to the beach: Point Lobos and Ano Nuevo. Point Lobos is always spectacular. The area is part of a state park with some incredible rocky coastline and (as I know now) some great folds and faults. The top photo is a nice view of the students doing their best to ignore the gorgeous surroundings.

Ano Nuevo was sunny, beautiful and windy, with one geology tour sighting. How can you identify a geology group at the beach? They always face the wrong way:

The view for a normal beach-goerOur class....

The culminating project for the class is to map an area just outside of the old, mostly abandoned mining town of New Idria, and they do this in the course of 2, 3-day field trips. So, this requires logistics that include mass grocery shopping, hauling port-a-potties, long field days (rain or shine), beer and music around the campfire and a victory stop at the Panoche Inn on the way home, which is a cross between the Salty Dawg Saloon (Homer, AK) and the Chainsaw Sisters Saloon (Ely, MN).

The caravan resting at the Panoche Inn after the first successful weekend. That idyllic scene changed to a more comic scene as toilet paper from one of the toilets became a fluttering streamer behind the van as we drove. The vehicular equivalent of walking out of the bathroom with TP stuck to your shoe? I'm sure if vans could be embarrassed, it would have been.

Anyway, these trips are great because the students get so much better over the course of that first weekend. The overwhelmed, slightly panicky looks when first asked to draw a contact line on their map give way to debates with lots of emphatic gesturing among field partners about the orientation of faults into the hillsides. In the second weekend, they are exposed to more complicated structural scenarios and finally finish off their maps with an instructor-free afternoon.

First meeting with the Yokut Formation
And a more advanced view back to their mapping area.

And miscellaneous shots:
QuasiHilde: demonstrating mapping-in-the-rain techniques or serving up a platter of shrunken students? You decide.
When forced to decided which side of the creeping fault to be loyal to, most went Westside..
Evidence that full geodork-dom has set in for these students. Note the offset in Chris' birthday cake. The transform to official geologists followed with many bad puns over the weekend and excessive singing-while-mapping of songs with lyrics changed to bad geology puns. Case in point, the new song Lodo for the Lodo Formation, sung to the tune of (yeah, you guessed it) the Kinks' Lola.
Marshmallows sacrificed to the weather gods to keep the rain at bay Sunday.

The District (well almost)

Continuing on with catch-up goal... I took advantage of my first field-trip free weekend for the quarter and went to DC to visit my grandparents. A pile of United miles and my parents also visiting might have played a small role as well.

So, I caught up on some sleep, graded some papers, ate lots of Grandmama's excellent food and enjoyed the family. Pretty relaxing. The excitement mostly came from the cancelled flight out of San Jose, which ended as well as it possibly could. They threw many of us on a direct flight out of SFO and while I got to DC 3.5 hours later than I was supposed to, I did get to watch the new Harry Potter as a result.

On Saturday morning, we went into the city to see the Natural History Museum. The last attempt at this failed because the basement had flooded during 3-4 days of intense rain that flooded the basement of many of the Smithsonian museums and some Metro stations. I haven't been to the museum since I was a kid, and figured it was high time to stop in again. We saw a special nature photography exhibit; among other things was a nice set of arctic photos with skinny polar bears and some pretty skinny-looking glaciers. Then off to "Geology, Gems and Minerals." Mom liked the Esterville meteorite (we always drove by the crater during visits to NW Iowa) and I like the musical seismic stations, that make a sound everytime there is seismicity somewhere in the world. After that we met up with Malea, her boyfriend Eric and her dog Areck (spelling?) for a sun-filled fall Sunday lunch (the theme of the weekend seemed to be food). Sorry no pics, I didn't have my camera.

This weekend it's off to the field for the last time this quarter, which is good because I think the recent in-and-out of town is taking its toll on my ability to figure out the days of the week. I tried to put the trash out on Wednesday night, and only when I got the cans to the curb and realized there were no others, did I realize it was actually Tuesday night. My housemate then informed the next morning, that I must have gotten the month wrong too because it isn't my turn for the garbage. Oops.

Halloween

Ok, I'm getting a little behind. I'll start with Halloween, since I'm already behind on field stuff. I love halloween, and they do a pretty good job of it down here. Regardless of the day of the week, main street shuts down and the whole town comes out in costume. If nothing else, it's a good excuse to tap total strangers on the shoulder and ask to take their picture. (top photo was the New Idria field pumpkin. Hilde asked for suggestions on how to make it scarier; I think the bags under the eyes made him look resigned to trying to scare.....)

Ze French (and not total strangers; among them are some applied mathematicians/statisticians).

Pascale and I are Singing In The Rain.

We thought this guy is supposed to be Prince??

And a couple of goodies from Halloweens past. I don't think anything will ever top the halloween my first year here...

The famous jellyfish of Santa Cruz. All in all, a brilliant costume (Halloween '04)

Jem and the Holograms. That pink hair was the bane of my existence for the next couple of days, but making the guitars was a ton of fun.....(Halloween 04)

Sora, Kena and I are not in costume. We really are mad scientists (Halloween '06).