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?

Light at the end of the tunnel...

I spent most of last week up in the City at the yearly geo-fest. This is the big meeting where 15,000+ geo-nerds descend on the city and talk shop. The meeting is a lot of fun in some respects (Christmas time in Union Square, seeing lots of old friends, hearing about the latest science) and thoroughly exhausting in others. It usually happens during finals week and the meeting is just TOO big. And it grows every year. How many geo-geeks are too many?

It is nice to be back in Santa Cruz; it is raining (finally) and the last real hurtle is getting the grading done. We diligently spent the weekend and yesterday grading the final projects. Hope to finish some time tomorrow???? Then Seattle on Friday. Yay! Looking forward to sleep, family, the smell of many tasty baked things, sleep....

Tis the Season

For decorating the palm tree.
We didn't get very far with our tree decorating last year (one strand of lights and about 3 balls). Seemed better to just decorate the slightly sad-looking living room palm. I think it looks happier now. Especially with the cardboard and tinfoil star tucked in the top.

For unrestrained eating.
The next time someone asks me what I'm training for, I will tell them I'm perpetually in training for the season of unrestrained eating. Otherwise, I'd have to turn down some of the many opportunities for dessert/turkey/friends' miscellaneous family delicacies/multiple days of eating in the City during AGU. Yum.

For rain?
We haven't gotten much of that yet. This could be a problem; many areas still have official water restrictions and it is already December. This doesn't bode well for the upcoming ski season or, more importantly, the snowpack and reservoir recharge status out here.

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.