Soon sleeping the sleep of the just

I'd be asleep already but I ate too much and need to digest first. Back from 4 days in the lab. After spending 3 days in the home lab to be ready. I'm tired. I'm a little behind. Someone said it is only the 2nd week of the quarter. That seems impossible. When I drove home today, there was snow on the side of Hwy 17. Strange. But there is revelry ahead. I'm excited for that. Check back when I have my verbal skills up and running again.

a little steamrollered...

I think Quarters have a tendency to behave like the bookends of March - either lamb-like and midquarter crunch sneaks up before you know it or lion-like. Or, as with this quarter, it's like staring down one of these:

Monday night I found out I can have time on the science machine at Caltech this weekend, which meant a dramatic overhaul of my week to be ready with four days worth of samples by Thursday night. Monday night I also read a piece called "Women in Science," which basically offers up an alternate reason for why there aren't so many women in science. But if you are also a grad student, don't read it before bed. I had trouble sleeping. Anyway, the collision of these two events (trying to rearrange my life for the week with the little nagging doubts of my current path in life brought to the front) made me feel, well, I felt a little sorry for myself. On the bright side, I did see an incredible shooting star that seemed brighter than Venus and took at least 30 seconds to cross the sky [gross exaggeration: it was really only 20] on the midnight ride home. That helped.

Thing is, it doesn't seem like it should feel so taxing, but I think the root is that, while I'm grateful for the time, I have to mentally gear up for these trips. I really don't look forward to 14-hour days in the lab with no human interaction. For four days. The hard part here is the lack of interaction as opposed to the long days. My phone takes a pretty heavy hit on these trips. I never realized how much I need some kind of human interaction in the course of a day until grad school.

Related to this, I want to make a shameless plug for a book I read over break called "The Female Brain." No, it isn't a cheezy pop-psychology book. It frames a lot of the different aspects of women's lives in the various chemical and hormonal concoctions going on in our brains. I was really surprised at how much I liked this book. Thanks Sarah! So, if you're a woman, you should read it. If you're not a woman, but like women, interact with women, can't hide from women, you should read it. I hear walking around with this book is a pretty good chick magnet too.....

Fruits of the storm

Given that the storm dumped 10+ feet of snow in the Sierras, I couldn't turn down a chance to swap my Sunday for Friday, and headed to South Lake Tahoe for some skiing. No sense in letting those hard-earned ski boot calluses go to waste! We spent Friday at the resort practicing our turns (thanks to some free/discounted passes) and successfully found those lost thigh muscles. Saturday, we skied up Waterhouse Peak (or faux Waterhouse peak to be completely honest), and the skies cleared at the top just enough to see beautiful views of the Sierras and Lake Tahoe. And a couple solid face plants at the bottom helped me find rarely-used neck muscles. And I got one more chance to hang out with Kena before she heads to Kenya, then Laramie.

The lake is the flat blue patch...

Happy Skiers (Kena, Mike and Robert).

Lots of mountains. Lots of granodiorite.

Conveniently enough, the trip also helped me with my homework. We're supposed to make up one question for each assignment for my order of magnitude estimation class and then solve it and in the course of conversation, the minimum thickness of ice needed to support human weight came up...Perfect!

Stormy Weather

Just to spice things up, I'll tackle the holidays in backwards order, starting with the flight home from Anchorage. I left Thursday morning, with the original itinerary including a long stopover in Juneau, a flight to Seattle that was supposed to leave me sleeping in SeaTac and an early Friday AM flight from Seattle to San Jose.

What REALLY happened was a "free" rountrip flight from Anchorage to Juneau and back, and nearly a second roundtrip from Seattle to San Jose and back. In Juneau, our plane never arrived due to mechanical trouble, so they stuffed us on a flight back to Anchorage, and then on a direct flight at 1:00 Friday AM from Anchorage to Seattle and got in with 45 minutes to spare for my final leg to Cali. All was calm until we tried to land in San Jose. Turns out I managed to fly in during the worst storm we've had since 2002. Good timing. We circled, we attempted to land, and then the captain said, "we'll give it one more try, otherwise it's back to Seattle." Fortunately (?) we landed, and then the adventure to get back to Santa Cruz began.

Original pickup bailed since Hwy 17 northbound was already closed. Second driver, a friend making the trek from Oakland, bailed due to high winds blowing semis over. As luck would have it, I ran into my next door neighbor, who was there to pick up his sister. After her adventurous landing, we stuffed into the pickup and crawled over Hwy 17 home. Sometime after that, they closed Hwy 17. Needless to say, I was relieved to get home. Spent the rest of the weekend cooking, eating, and sneaking out during breaks in the weather to run and peek at the surf.

I spent post-Christmas/New Year's in Alaska, skiing with Tomas, Eleanor and Luc, who are friends I know through Bryn and Louis. Got some turns in, ski toured to some huts along the Resurrection trail system for a few nights and even got some skate skiing in, so I got a solid dose of winter. Also, lots of laughter and plenty of bruises from the rounds of Euchre (mental bruising only), Semi-Awesome Ball (still a little fuzzy on why it isn't Awesome ball, but I was told clearly it was NOT), crab-walk kickball and Nail 'Em. Sorry no pictures. I forgot my camera. And the other pictures are likely of folks demonstrating the concept of "see food" or a poor beany baby chicken way out of his element.

Spent Christmas in Seattle with the family and Carla (old friend from Minneapolis) came and spent the holiday with us as well. We got a light dusting of snow so I can say we had a white Christmas.
I was pleased to see my 2.5 year old niece has taken to the pumpkin hat I made her when she was born.
Since I've designated myself the aunt that will make knitted projects she'll grow into, all seems to be going according to plan. We'll have to wait another year to see the red jacket I make her LAST year for Christmas. Right on schedule.

Christmas pics: Carla trying not to laugh at my attempt to read upside-down

OK, she is really cute!

The whole clan embracing unrestrained eating

So, let Winter Quarter 2008 begin. And the official New Year's Resolution is to eat as much chocolate and cheese as possible. Or to put my money where my mouth is (literally and figuratively). Or both?