A Christmas Tree

It's ok if you don't understand why the tree is covered with socks. In fact, it's probably for the best. But I hope that those of you who do get it, enjoy it. It was a very nice tree.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, or Channukah, or whatever feasting/gift-giving holiday you prefer. I've been really busy. I'll write something interesting when I get back from Home.
I had leftover chinese food for dinner, BTW.

Insert Whimper Here

I did go shopping yesterday morning. It turned into yesterday afternoon. At the mall. It was very painful, and I can't really talk about it yet. There was one moment, however, that ALMOST made shopping at noon on a saturday three weeks before christmas worthwhile - I found a pair of pants that I DON'T NEED TO SHORTEN.
For real. Honest. Seriously.
There was also a stop at a Borders, which both eased my pain and added half an hour to the time I spent in a mall, so that was a wash, really. Same for the falafel that sort of made its way from the food court to my tummy.
I have now done my part to stimulate the economy.

Stupid Clothes...

I had to wear a skirt to work today. None of my nice pants would stay up without duct tape, which seemed a little low-brow for a client meeting. Although... it was a meeting with other geologists, so it's entirely possible that they wouldn't've noticed.
I suppose I should be glad that all my clothes are too big for me, but I am annoyed at having to spend more money when I just bought new clothes in September.
So. I am going to have to go shopping. What a horrible way to spend a saturday morning.
Stupid clothes.

I'm Still Full

Busy weekend. Busy busy! Tell you all about it soon. Well, soon for me, anyway. For now, you'll have to settle for the what's-for-dinner report.
For Thanksgiving dinner we had:

• Blueberry soup (cold, as it was 80 degrees outside)
• Turkey
• Stuffing
• Mashed potatos
• Sweet potatos, mashed
• Gravy
• Camp Hillary cornbread
• Green beans
• Brussels sprouts
• Cranberry dressing
• Wild rice casserole
• Stuffed pumpkin
• Apple pie
• Pumpkin pie
• Mincemeat pie
• Other apple pie
• Pumpkin cheesecake

What did you guys have?

It's Finally Fall

Today at 5.57 pm I turned the heat on.
It got down into the 30s last night.
My grass is brown. I really hope it is supposed to be.

A Day at Lake Texana

Today I DID see something interesting... something rare... something I never thought I'd see in my life.

It was a 'POSSUM.

Not impressed yet?

It was ALIVE.

I didn't get a photo; you'll have to trust me.

Now, some of you might have noticed that I said I saw this today. Not this morning. Or this evening. Or last night. Today. It was about 1.30 pm. Mr. 'Possum did not run away from me.
Yup, looks like I saw a rabid possum.

I also saw a thing I have seen before, but I didn't think I would see in Texas:A tree with leaves turning color! There must be a non-weather-related reason for this. Any ideas, people?

Also saw a Bald Eagle. It flew up out of some brush about 10 feet (or 0.01 kilofeet) away from me. That's pretty close, it turns out, when one is dealing with a bird that size. Like the 'possum, no photo. But I did get a photo of a golden spinner, finally:They're pretty big spiders. 2-3 inches, with legs. They like to hang out fairly high up, so I can generally walk under them. Which I suppose means that most of the rest of you (who aren't my female relatives) would see them at eye level.

Dinner report: Gardenburger (original flavor) on a wheat bun (untoasted) with lettuce, tomato, and onion. And a beer.

This Entry is Paul's Fault

I talked to Uncle Paul last night, and he expressed disappointment that I don't write here more often. I explained that I don't do many things that are interesting enough to write about. He suggested I write about what I had for dinner. Who would want to read about what I had for dinner? I asked. He claimed that he would like to read such a thing.
So...
Tonight for dinner I am having pierogies from Schwans. I fried them in a little bit of canola oil, and added green beans and onion when I flipped the pierogies. Then I put them on a plate and ate them. I am also having a glass of milk. Later I might have a popsicle or a piece of chocolate for dessert.
Note to Jen: no, I didn't season the pan.
Creepy date reference, that was. If you didn't get it, consider yourself lucky.

I knew it!

I knew it! I just KNEW jogging was bad for you! Here's my proof.

Happy Halloween!

This year I am dressed up as a Responsible Adult for Halloween. What are you guys pretending to be?

Does This Count as Progress?

I got to use my freeway exit for the first time sunday night. I-10 has been under construction for... about four years, I guess, and my exit has been closed since I moved here. I had to get off an exit early this whole time (oh, the pain...). But sunday night, the freeway was suddenly opened up to five lanes, and I could get off at My Real Exit. Woot!. I thought about making a U-turn and driving it again.
Ok, my life is pretty boring, but at least I get a lot of amusement without spending a lot of money.
The really cool part was when I got on the freeway heading out of town at 4.30 monday afternoon and we were going 60 instead of 20! A Posted Speed during rush hour!

Less "Geological," More "Society" and "America"

I had a lovely GSA this year... what part of it I was able to attend, after my boss got done scheduling things during the convention. I started out with a field trip, as I like to do. This year it was a trip to study barrier island processes down on Galveston.
Hmmm.
Galveston. That's the town, on the island, in that Gulf thingy, right? The one that still doesn't have much electricity?
Yup, that's the one.
We're still going?
Turns out we are. Had to knock one stop off the trip, but here we go...



These boulders used to be about five feet lower than they are now. They were holding down the rap at the base of the seawall. Now they are on top of it (geologist for scale).








This is a truly sad sight - mini golf, deceased (depths of the sorrow in my heart for scale).




Houses on the beach in Galveston have the garage on the ground floor with living space above. The garages are supposed to be, essentially, tear-aways. This time, they did. This photo was taken from just west of the seawall. The house is approximately 3/4-mile west of the seawall. The flat bit is the garage floor of this house. It used to be at ground level. Now it is about 4-5 feet above ground (rest of house for scale). That much erosion happened in one day. Not even - about 12 hours, really.

In Galveston, the beach is public property. The beach is defined as everything between the water and the vegetation line. You can't build on public property, so your house needs to be behind the vegetation line. This house, like the one pictured above, no longer is. That means that, although it survived the storm, the owner must tear it down at his own expense. The only money he will get is for the damage to his garage (which now ranges from two to four feet above ground level; geologists for scale).




Folks on this part of the beach put in geotubes (big sacks full of sand) to try to re-establish dunes. Didn't work (drainage pipe for scale).




Still, not everything about hurricanes is bad (assuming you think that people being encouraged to move off of a barrier island is a bad thing in the first place). Ike excavated a good portion of the old wall posts of Ft. San Jacinto, freeing up local archaeologists to deal with other things, like drinking beer.


The storm left behind these beautiful ripples for me to enjoy (pen for scale).












The hurricane broke off a piece of this granite slab on a seawall placard, allowing me to view a fresh, unpolished and unweathered surface of the rock.





The retreating water even uncovered portions of a delightful shell layer (about an inch thick) along the beach for us to be intrigued by (beach for scale).


Ike has removed not only a whole lot of houses and piers and roads and trees and Bolivar Peninsula, but also beach ridges that were dated at about 1500 years old. 1500 years they lasted... Ike was the one that did them in. Kind of scary. What, I couldn't've stayed in New Mexico six more months?

We didn't get to study coastal wetlands on this trip, because there aren't any anymore. That, I believe, is actually a pre-Ike condition, and likely one that Didn't Help Matters any.

But on to happier things. I got to see four people whom I dearly love and have not seen since graduation - in one case, literally: Rich was sitting with me and Chris through that whole damn ceremony. Now he's in Germany working at a museum. And I get Houston? How is this fair?
I got to see lots of people that I love less dearly, but nonetheless enjoy seeing from time to time. My friend Robin even came from Albuquerque to stay with me during the convention. And I got to meet lots of new people who laugh at my jokes that end with things like "but the olivine in her pocket was the magnesium end member!" and who are not perturbed by fistfights begun over a disagreement over a chili recipe. Geologists are good at three things: rocks, chili, and free beer. I excelled at free beer this week.
Now... everyone has left, and it's back to work.
Stupid work.

Considerations for Considering

Ok, I got power back on thursday. My whole side of the street did. How did we celebrate? Well, we all ran out into the street to stand outside in the dark and talk about how happy we were.
The other side of the street still does not have power two days later. This surprised me, because I had expected that the wiring for our neighborhood went down one side of each cul-de-sac and back up the other side to the main trunk. Apparently not. Turns out that from across the street to about six blocks north of us, no one in the neighborhood has power (except for the guy with the generator running 24 hours a day... yes, even the hours between midnight and 6.00 am - torches and pitchforks, anyone?). What we have deduced from the scattered bits of information that we can pick up is that CenterPoint restored power to hospitals and fire stations and such first, and now is concentrating on getting power back to main arteries and intersections with stoplights ("They" have reported an increase in traffic accidents, apparently due to people's inability to treat a broken stoplight as a 4-way intersection) before the entire city's population runs out of gas (I saw one gas station in operation today which had run out of gas last week, so we are getting SOME fuel deliveries, but many stations around town are either inoperable due to lack of power or damage, or are out of gas) on their much-increased commutes home from work.
I have been leaving for work at 6.00 am, which is when the curfew lifts, to avoid worst of the stoplight issues. But that's another ramble.
I live one street away from Hammerly, which qualifies as a secondary artery. I am on the side closer to Hammerly; the people whose backyard I can now see due to lack of fence face onto Hammerly. When I was looking at this house, being so close to Hammerly was in the "cons" list. I figured there might be enough noise from traffic to bother me at times. Suddenly, though, being close enough to Hammerly to put me on the same power grid as the traffic lights is worth two, maybe even three, "pro" column entries.
I have an extension cord running across the street to Diann's house so she can have a lamp and a fan. I am switching out gallon jugs of ice so that my freezer refreezes two while her cooler uses up two at a time. There are currently four such sets of cords on our block. I am a bit disappointed that there aren't more, but perhaps some people declined the offer.
We lost water pressure slowly on saturday, right after the storm, but we never fully lost water. They must've restored power to the pumps sunday, because after about 2.00 sunday afternoon we noticed a slow increase in water pressure. After a night for the pumps to catch up to our water use, we were back to full water pressure. We couldn't drink it for a few more days, but we could SHOWER!
No one says, "Hi. How are you?" right now. We greet each other with, "Hi. How much damage did you get?" and more recently, "Hi. Do you have power yet?"
After a weekend spent collectively cleaning up our yards and streets, sharing batteries, and having former neighbors who now live several miles away drive over to bring us ice from their freshly-energized freezers... after spending sunday afternoon and evening with all of our grills lined up in the cul-de-sac cooking and eating as much food as we could cram in our tummies... after hearing people's phones ring when someone called to say "Hey, we have power! Come on over and bring your neighbors," it was with great disappointment that I read a letter to the editor from a woman west of Houston who stated, "I did not expect to have people from other towns coming to buy my gas, ice and groceries and cutting my own suppliers short because we still have power."
Got those torches and pitchforks ready, people?

6 Days, 1 hour, 5 minutes

Power came back on at 7:12 thursday night. I made toast. It was the best toast ever...
Today I even got internet back. How's that for fancy? The satellite TV isn't working, but that's ok - it's too nice out not to be outside anyway.
The house is fine; fence blew down, but didn't land on anything important.

Ike

Yes, I am fine.
No, we don't have power.
Yes, we are very glad the weather is nice enough not to need fans or AC.
Yes, we have water.

Still Upright and Facing Forward

I bought rollerblades today. They looked like a lot of fun, and I need something fast to do while Steve Jr. is getting a tune up next week. I didn't ride Steve Jr. very much while in NM, but there are a lot of nice biking trails in Houston, so it's much easier to get out and enjoy Going Fast. Steve Jr. has ridden on the bike rack across the country twice since his last tune up, and I suspect he picked up just a little dust and dirt in the process. I will have to wash the Buffalo Bayou mud of him before he goes to the bike hospital, which will be a bit disappointing, but I am sure we can get him looking pretty (not to mention Much Cooler than those wussy road bikes) in no time!
Anyway.
I bought the rollerblades. They're very pretty. My driveway has about a 1.5-foot elevation change, all at the bottom, which seemed like a bad way to start out my first stab at rollerblading (I think I was on rollerblades once, about 7 years ago - doesn't count). So I took the skates down to the curb and put them on there. I laced them up. I tightened the clicky thing. I stood up.
That's when things got amusing - for everyone else, anyway. My first trip up and down the block was... well, disappointing. I had a great deal of trouble moving forward. Then I noticed a distressing lack of ability to keep both feet pointed in the same direction. The neighbors' chihuahua started chasing me, but soon gave up because I wasn't going fast enough for it to be a challenge for him. He did, however, stand near me and continue to bark, probably to make sure that no one inside the house missed seeing this. I made a rude comment to him, which was cut short by the abrupt realization that there was a curb about six inches in front of me. Curb made a good brake, turned out.
The second trip went much better. Not sure why. I just... got it, I suppose. It went well enough that I... went... down... the road! That's right, a public road, in broad daylight. And somewhat surprisingly, I did not hear any laughter. A young man enjoying perhaps his fourth or fifth year of life did ask me why I was on rollerskates - a valid question, and one that I frankly did not have an answer for, other than, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
I made it back to the house with all my blood inside me. Today's status: sore as hell.

At Least They Don't Say 'California'

I did it. I finally went to the license plate store last week.
First I went to the building one block from the office with all the signs pointing to it that say "Vehicle Titles and Registration ->" and stood in line in the room covered with pictures of license plate choices, only to be told that this was not where a person goes to get a vehicle title or to register said vehicle. The Helpful Young Man had a list of places where a girl COULD get a license plate or two. I only recognized the street of one of them, and did I have my handy Map-o-Houston in the car? No. So I drove about 10 miles to an actual license plate store, which was labelled "County Tax Assessor."
I suspect that when it is time to pay my taxes, I will have to find a building with a sign reading "Zoning and Permits."
The nice lady at the actual license plate store was very helpful, and soon I was the dubious owner of a pair of Texas license plates. I brought them out and showed them to Fiona, and explained to here that she was going to have to wear them, but not till August 31st (when the NM plates expired).
On August 31st, at about 4 pm, I decided I could no longer put off the inevitable: the Texas plates went on. New Mexico is a one-plate state, and as I approached Fiona's front bumper, I realized that when I removed the front Minnesota plate, I had not put the screws back into the license plate holder. I had already made a trip two the hardware store (two, actually) for a set of metric sockets, and was unwilling to admit that I might need two visits to a store to put a damn license plate on my car. Off to dig through the thing-with-all-the-drawers-that-you-store-random-hardware- in! Within about five minutes, I had found not one, not two, but ALL FOUR of the original screws that came with the car.
Lesson learned: Grandpa was right. You should save EVERYTHING.

Butterflies

I took some pictures of pretty butterflies at Como Zoo last weekend. They are on my Flickr site. Any help identifying the little suckers would be greatly appreciated.

Don't Send Flowers; She's Allergic

My car, Fiona, is going to the hospital. It's been a little over a week since the transmission started acting up... a long, stressful week. First I was told that I needed a tranny rebuild. At 90k? Ridiculous! Then I was told just don't drive it when it's hot out. Um, I live in HOUSTON. Next I was told there was nothing wrong, it just needed a tranny flush... oh, and just ignore those lights on the dash that are coming on. Uh-huh. After that I was told to come on in and have those lights checked out fairly soon, but go ahead and drive all I want in the meantime.

Current status: the tranny is toast, but Honda is paying for it. I suppose that is the best I could hope for at this point. I would rather not have a transmission problem at all, but apparently with an early-2000s Honda that's not an option. So I'll be grateful it didn't happen 10,000 miles later, when the warranty would be expired.

That Could've Been Worse

Dolly has moved on, and I have survived my first hurricane. I got wet taking a walk, and I didn't have to water the yard for a while. Sounds like a pretty fair deal to me.

I Have a Lot of Photos of Rocks

... and most of you aren't terribly interested in them. But for those of you who are, I have made a page on Flickr so you can see them.

There's other photos there, too. Right now there are some pictures of Plants I Like.

There will be more photos, probably this weekend.

Good Things About Houston, Part II

I have not forgottened my intention to find some Good Things about Houston. It's been hard... really, really hard... but today I managed to discover two Good Things about Houston. Here is the first one:

Yes, it is a six-pound can of tomato sauce. I haven't seen one of these in years. I think I still ate meat last time I saw Mom make sauce with an enormo-can. Today I made a batch of sauce using only one can of Hunt's, instead of the three or four I have had to use in the past. The size of my batch of sauce is now limited by the size of my biggest pot (thank you, Mumsy, for the big pot) instead of how many cans I could open before I got bored (thank you, Grandpa, for the impatience genes).

Ok, now for the second Good Thing:

It's bread. Or at least, it was bread about an hour and a half after this picture was taken. It took only about an hour for this blob to double while sitting out on the porch, in the sun, with a damp cloth on. The second rising took less than half an hour.

Go, porch.

House of Toast Report

Thursday: HoT closed before I got there. V. sad. Guy said they ran out of toppings anyway.
Friday: Wheat toast with hummus, garlic, and tomato. Mmmmm.
Saturday: White toast with Nutella, Cap'n Crunch, and sprinkles. Also mmmmmm.
Also Saturday: White toast with cheesy artichoke topping. Say it with me: mmmmmm.

Ahhh, House of Toast...

Sorry, I've Been Busy

Where were we? Oh, yes:
27.5 hours until House of Toast!!!!!!!

WOOT! WOOT! WOOT!

44.5 hours until House of Toast!!!!!!!

WOOT! WOOT!

57 hours until House of Toast!!!!!!!!!

WOOT!

70 hours until House of Toast!!!!!!!!!

Ain't Technology Grand?

I finally got internet at home. More to the point: I finally got internet to work at home. To be perfectly honest, some huge guy named Robert Tech 124 finally got internet to work at my home. Now I can update my blog in the comfort of my own PJs.

But since I still have nothing interesting to relate to all of you, it hardly seems to matter.

The biggest news I have this week is that I finally took care of my HazWOPER refresher for the year. No, I don't really need it for this job, but those of you who have sat through the 40-hour initial course will understand why I would rather pay out of my own pocket for the refresher than let my certification expire and have to sit through the whole course again.

Tears of despair threaten even as I think such a thing.

Definitely better to pay to spend 8 hours with an online course that tells you things like "to clean up an acid spill, you should pour a base on it." At least I got a good laugh out of this.

In other news, according to Weatherbug it's 95 in Farmington, but the humidity is 8%, so the heat index is 88. Here it's 94, but the humidity is 39%, so the heat index is 98.

I want my desert back!

If I Water My Computer, Will It Grow More RAM?

This is my current office during a rainstorm. Some of you are unimpressed. You are probably the ones who never saw pictures of my old office during a rainstorm.



Can you see the difference? See all the rain pouring down the INSIDE of the building? See the line of buckets and trash bins trying to catch the rain pouring down the INSIDE of the building? Now let's look at the inside of my new office again.




See the remarkable lack of interior precipitation? It is entirely possible that there is something good about Houston, after all.

Hurricane Season #1: The Saga Begins

I have experienced my first official Tropical Storm Watch. Or Alert. Or something. Anyway, there was a tropical storm and it's hundreds of miles away but it was all over TV like a tornado warning.
Yay for flood insurance. Like my sprinkler, something I never wanted to own, but now find myself really excited about.

Finally

I have pictures of the inside of the house. Here they are:

Living room












Dining room

Kitchen. That's the range with the self-cleaning hood most of you have heard so much about. It's really fun. I'll show you when you come over sometime.

Bathroom

Bedroom. Note penguins pretending to be innocent stuffed animals, incapable of wreaking havoc and destruction everywhere they go. But the party hat is a dead give-away.

Guest room

I Brought Back Cookies from the Italian Store

Had a good time in NY. Had pizza and Italian cookies in NY. There might be some other point to NY, but I don't know what it might be.

The strangest things happened friday morning - we got up, made a plan for the day, and got NINE PEOPLE out of the house before 9 a.m. How bizarre is that? Kind of makes one wonder what was about to go wrong, doesn't it?

Nope. Nothing went wrong. We went for a lovely walk and saw this sign of life in rural upstate New York. We got et by a bunch of skeeters, but that hardly counts as something going wrong - that's just spring happening to you.

Dan graduated on saturday. Here's a picture of him and Briahna (she's graduating today). Doesn't he look all growed up and competent? I mean, if you didn't know him and all? Don't worry Dan, most prospective employers will buy it... and by the time they figure it out, it will be too late.

It very politely did not rain on graduation - good thing, too, or the cookies would've got wet! They were pretty good cookies. They had cookies shaped like pony heads, with green sprinkles (school color and mascot), chocky chip cookies, M&M cookies, peanut butter cookies, and some others. There was lemonade, too.

Another day it did not rain was tuesday. I guess I should say the other day it didn't rain. Maybe it did rain, but it didn't start till after we got done with our hike, and that's the only important part of the day. We went to a waterfall. Two waterfalls, actually.
This is the first one. It's called Beaver Meadow Falls. It's near a meadow. The meadow supposedly contains beavers. Didn't get to see one. Saw a muskrat, though, which probably tastes a lot like beaver (Paul? Dale? Input on that topic?). The second one is Rainbow Falls. Didn't get to see a rainbow, either, but there was some snow next to the falls. I like snow.

We went to China Buffet after the hike. We actually got to go to TWO China Buffets this trip. It was awesome. And they were totally different buffets, which is not often the case with China Buffets. They had different sauces on their sauteed green beans, for instance, and one place had sushi and chocolate fortune cookies, and the egg rolls were different... but the lo mein was the same. I am pretty sure that all China Buffets sign a pledge to serve the same lo mein. It's probably their way of taking over America - as if China Buffet needed any help taking over our thoroughly distended tummies.

So... that basically sums up vacation. Hiking and China Buffet. There was also a day of mini-golf, but I don't have any pictures of that, and it was a very stressful mini-golf day. Not ready to talk about it yet.

PAID Vacation Time?

Yes, paid. I haven't had paid vacation time for the last two years. It's already become a foreign and exciting concept. I leave tomorrow to go to NY for Dan's graduation. My baby brother is grajumatating! He's a big boy now! Now he'll have to go find a Real Job.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Dull is Your Friend

Hmm. It appears that it's been a while since I posted something. That's probably because nothing terribly interesting has happened lately. But that's probably for the best. "Interesting" is usually synonymous with "expensive to fix" in my world.
We got our rush project out on time. Last week was the big industry conference. That was kind of interesting, I suppose. Lots of free stuff, of course... I got a poster and two stress-squeezie-things and a lanyard and a bottle of Tabasco and a pen and three business cards and two tote bags and a bottle of sunblock and there was cake and cheese and crackers and cookies. Oh, and there were some interesting speakers, too.
Finally got my birdfeeders up. The first bird I saw on the seed feeder was a cardinal. Boy cardinal. His girlfriend was hanging out on the ground. That seemed like a good portent for future birdwatching.
Second thing I saw on the feeder was a squirrel.
The squirrel baffle seems to be working so far.
So far I have sparrows, house finches, doves, and mockingbirds... which is to say, my backyard does not appear to be a Ring of Death. I also saw a blue jay try to land on the feeder a couple of times yesterday, but the tray was in the dishwasher and he wasn't having much luck landing on the tiny perches. I told him to come back today and try again. Not sure if he was listening.
Now I am at work. We have another rush project this week. Bill better not be getting any ideas...

Another Brilliant Plan Crushed Beneath the Wheels of Life

I really did plan to have some photos of the inside of the house to show you today... I really did. But the deadline on our rush project got bumped up another three days, and I ended up working this weekend instead of unpacking. And for some reason, when I got home from work yesterday, I was not filled with motivation to unpack. The sofa was assembled, and free of boxes, and that was all I really wanted out of life at the time.

I did end up unpacking one box last night... the box of DVDs and video tapes, since I could do that while lying on the floor (fulfilling another of last night's life-goals) yelling at the TV (thing about hockey teams is that sometimes they have to be reminded that the point of the game is to get the puck IN the net. No, not the net behind your goalie, the OTHER net. With the OTHER team's colors in front of it. Do I have to drive up there and show you myself?), but all the other items left to unpack are Hard. It will require Thinking to determine where they go.

Screw that.

Tell Me Again Why Moving Sounded Like a Good Idea...

I am here. My stuff is here. Big piles of stuff. Mostly books and tea.

Also, I fixed it so those of you without Google accounts can leave witty remarks, too.

Now I Just Need Stuff to Put in It

I finally have a place to live. Thank Heavens. I am so sick of looking at lousy rental properties. This one is pretty nice, though. It's a house. Here it is:

Look! TWO garage doors. For TWO vehicles to go in. Two. That's more than one. Pretty nifty, huh? The one on the right even has a garage door opener. I could open and close that thing all day...

Simple minds, simple pleasures.

Here is the back porch. There's a toad living in it. He has a little hole in the little strip of garden inside the porch. When I watered the flowers there, he hopped out and went looking for a bush to hide under. Luckily for him there is something dark purple and leafy in there, too. I don't have a picture of him. On account of the dark purple leafy stuff being in the way.

This is the backyard. Being watered. I watered the lawn. How very growed up of me. I have never had to water a lawn on my own before. It occurred to me at this point that I really have no idea how to do it. Yes, I have a pretty good grip on the basic concepts involved, but the actual application thereof is a little lost on me.

Gravel doesn't require watering.

Houston, We Have a Problem

I did not think this moving thing through very well. I am going to have to put Texas plates on my car. I don't know how I am going to break it to her. Maybe I can tell her it's protective camouflage...

I will also have to start wearing Big Girl clothes again. I wonder if I remember how.

The Day My Back Stood Still

But that didn't help it much, either.

My back has been bothering me off and on since I started this trip. Before, actually. It's been a whole week now. I hadn't quite been ignoring it, but neither had I let it stop me from doing at least some of the thing I wanted to do.

Today my back won the argument.

I had a nine-mile hike planned for today. I had water, Gatorade, pineapple, two Clif bars, and my book. What more could a girl want? Maybe a cooperative body. I got about a mile into planned hike, and had just started going uphill when my back announced that it was not playing this game any more. I took another Aleve and tried to go on. Nope.

Luckily, there is a lot to do in Big Bend that does not involve walking up vertical slopes. Or any walking at all, really. I went on the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. He was a geologist, and he designed this road for geologists. Nonetheless, I managed to take a picture of something that was not a rock. It's a very pretty prickly pear. Note lack of javelina tooth marks.

This is the Rio Grande. You can tell it's a river because green things grow near it. Like cottonwoods. And apparently algae.

Finally! Some nice sedimentary rocks. I am so sick of volcanics. Here's a bunch of limestone. The left side of the canyon in the picture is the Sierra Ponce. It's in Mexico. The right side is the Mesa de Anguilla. It's in the U.S. Amazingly enough, they look a lot alike. I hear it's fun to raft the Rio through the canyon. Maybe next time I will try it.

Hey, There's a Big Bend in This River

I made it to Big Bend!

I wasn't entirely certain I would be able to include it in this trip. When I left Fmtn, I hadn't realized it was spring break this past week. No wonder everything was so crowded! I called the park HQ before I left Pecos (lovely place, Pecos. Even their Wal-Mart is the size of my first apartment) friday morning to find out if there was any chance of getting a campsite, and the Nice Lady told me that it had been full all week, but as of that morning people were pouring out of there like mad. Yay, people. Out of my way.

I got a lovely site in the Chisos campground. Ok, it wasn't lovely. It didn't even have a picnic table. But it was a two-room site, with a small clearing next to the main campsite where I could pitch my tent surrounded by bushes. I don't know why it didn't have a picnic table, but I had a folding chair in the backseat, so I was set. I chose Chisos out of the three campgrounds on account of the big signs saying that there are hairpin turns on the road to the campground, and that RVs over 24' shouldn't go there. Now THAT'S my kind of campground!

I hiked up the Lost Mine Peak trail on friday. It was a nice trail. It was steep. There was no mine - apparently they lost it. There was, however, a fantastic view.

Here's a coarse conglomerate overlain by a much finer conglomerate. Applesauce for scale.

Here is a javelina peeking at me through the bushes. It's eating a prickly pear cactus. They do that. The whole thing, not just picking around the pointy bits. This behavior leads me to two possible conclusions: a) javelinas have evolved very tough mouths which are not damaged by the spines of the cactus, or b) javelinas are dumb. But they are kind of cute without tusks.

Here's the view from the top of Lost Mine Peak trail. It's the contact between a porphyritic rhyolite and a boring rhyolite. Used applesauce for scale.

Here is another view from the top. Note the pretty striped volcanic rocks. The technical term for these is Pretty Striped Rocks.

On the way back down, I noticed this great rock. Note the concentric crystalization pattern around the inclusion and the deformation along the fracture lines. Animal cracker (sheep) for scale.

Ok. Done boring most of you with pictures of rocks. I hiked back down the trail and had a lovely camp dinner of Whatever Is In the Car.

It's Cold and Damp in Here...

Carlsbad Caverns = Houston in winter? What am I getting myself into?

I think I've heard of this...

I believe it's called a "vacation." It's when you are not at home or at work, you are enjoying yourself, and you don't have a cell phone strapped to your forehead.

I started my vacation/moving with a stop at White Sands today. Here they are. They're white. And they are made of sand. I walked the 5-mile "trail" out to the alkali flats. The trail consists of a bunch of markers telling you which way to go, and you can follow them if you want... if you want to make it back, that is. I did not do a lot of adventuring off the wind-swept, mostly invisible path.


I did, however, see some excellent evidence of rapid dune migration.

I walked part of it barefoot, since everyone else who was doing so seemed to be having rather a bit of fun.

I got a blister on the bottom of my big toe for my troubles. Definitely a smart move on Day 1 of a five-day hiking/biking excursion. Go me.

Here's a picture of some nice ripple marks exposed on the leeside of a dune, for Robin.

The weather was wonderful today; I can't imagine trying to enjoy this place in the summer, though.

Day 1 sunburn level: minor.

This is where I camped this night. Most of my fellow campers missed this, because they were in their RVs watching TV.

Why bother?

To Humidity and Beyond!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
I would also like to wish everyone a belated Happy St. Urho's Day!
Today is my last day in Farmington.
It's snowing.
The plan for today was to get together everything I want to take to Houston for the next three weeks. I will spend the next five days meandering my way down to Houston (currently planned stopping points are White Mesa Trails, White Sands Park, Carlsbad Cavern, and Bid Bend National Park). I must take with me all of the camping/traveling items I will need for the trip, and enough work clothes and living-in-an- empty-apartment stuffs to get me through about three weeks.
So far today, I have managed to have my mail forwarded, do laundry, get a car charger for my cell phone, return a pair of jeans that didn't fit, and stare at the pile of stuff in my living room in utter despair, trying to figure out how it's all getting in my car.
Meanwhile, it's snowing. This fact sure is motivating me to go outside and start loading up the car (where is the button for the sarcasm font on this thing?).
For those of you who have been following my quest to purchase a digital camera, the latest update is: no one in town can seem to keep in stock the cameras to which I had narrowed down my choices. Perhaps I will draw pictures of the places I visit and scan them into the computer...

Things I Will Miss... and Not

This was Robin's office today. This was taken from the wellpad at which she was working, looking down Canyon Largo (the shiny bit in the middle is Largo Wash). Add this to the list of things I will miss about this job.

The list of things I will NOT miss about this job include: filling up the company truck on an almost-daily basis; getting calls from clients who don't understand why cleaning up a [insert petroleum product] spill is so expensive (hey, don't spill your stuff and we won't have this problem...); getting calls from clients who want their lab results two hours after the sample is turned in to the lab; inch-thick layers of gummy clay mud on my truck; inch-thick layers of gummy clay mud deciding to let go of my truck on my driveway; sitting in line at the truck wash for an hour to avoid that driveway problem; driving oilfield roads (well, I'll miss that once in a while... some of them are a lot of fun); filling out a Form for everything we do, say, or touch; sitting in the back of my truck writing reports on my laptop while overseeing another job because we are shorthanded; and dust in the field equipment.

Where Did All This Stuff Come From?

The packing process has officially begun. I packed a few symbolic boxes earlier this week, but today I put some actual effort into it. The backyard has been divested of all traces of my occupation, apart from the birdfeeders (still weaning the little guys off this place as a food source), but the inside of the house... There is a disappointingly large amount of stuff in my house... I am not sure where it all came from, but I do wish the Stuff Fairy would stop visiting. Rather a bit of the clutter consists of items which I replaced as outdated, but for which I had hoped to find a final disposition other than the landfill. Doesn't look like that will happen now, for a lot of it. The Christmas tree, for instance, was hacked into pieces and shoved in the dumpster today. So much for my hope that I would discover a place around here that took trees for mulch or some such. I have given up on finding someone who wants my old computer, as well, and that will soon find itself at Best Buy, who at least will recycle what they can.

I am also making plans for the initial trip to Houston, which will begin on March 18th with a Badger Alumni dinner in Abq. There are several places between here and Abq that have caught my eye, but there never seemed to be time or excuse to visit them. I plan to hit one or two on my way this time. After Abq, I will most likely visit White Sands, then Carlsbad Caverns, and then spend whatever time I can in Big Bend National Park before arriving in Houston on sunday... just in time to start my new job on monday, March 23rd. I am either very excited or thoroughly terrified - will let you know if I figure it out.

Yes, Green Things Do Grow Here

I didn't spend very much time here in the Four Corners, and most of you didn't get to visit me here, so I thought I'd share some pictures of my home.

This is Mesa Verde as seen from the pasture of one of our clients in Mancos, Colorado. I spent a gorgeous spring day in this field - one of the bonuses of my job. I will spare you the photos of the lake we made when someone played a accidental game of "underground utility locater" with the backhoe and the client's irrigation line...

Sadly, the only time I have visited Mesa Verde in the past not-quite-two years was to clean up an asphalt spill at a construction site in the park. That has fairly well been the story of my life recently!

This is Sleeping Ute Mountain, near Cortez, Colorado. The Ute legend tells that he was a great warrior chief who helped fight against evil ones, and during the battle his feet formed the mountains and valleys. The chief was wounded and while resting he fell into a deep sleep. He wears a different colored blanket for each season - white in winter, green in summer, red in the fall, and six inches of thick clay mud in the spring. No, wait, the last one is my truck, not the mountain. The highest point, towards the left, is the chief's crossed arms over his chest. His head is to the left of that, not terribly visible in this photo.

This is a photo of ruins at Hovenweep, in Utah. I was standing down in a shallow part of the wash when I took it. Hovenweep is a very nice place to see southwest ruins - good preservation, a relatively short hike (2 miles to do the entire trail), not much elevation change, and a nice visitor center - but my favorite part is the drive on Montezuma County Road G (otherwise known as a McRoad) from Cortez to Aneth, Utah. The scenery is gorgeous, and it's a beautiful road to travel by motorcycle.



This is our Snoopy Rock. There are a lot of Snoopy Rocks (or Snoopies Rock) in this time zone, but I think ours is a particularly good one. This one's near Shiprock. Rumor has it that the little bump on his head is Woodstock, but I am pretty sure that it is just a wart, and that Woodstock has gone off to find some water.

This is an important landmark when one is driving back to Farmington from Gallup after a long day of installing monitoring wells or replacing the vacuum pump on a diesel recovery system, because it lets one know that it is time to start paying attention, so as not to miss the turn onto N36, which is the shortcut to Farmington that takes you around Shiprock instead of through it. Not that there's anything wrong with Shiprock, but when one is trying to escape the deep, sucking vortex that is Gallup, the last thing one wants to do is slow down for a town...


This is Molas Lake... at least, we were pretty sure it was the lake. Molas Lake was somewhere around there, according to the sign, and this was the only flat, tree-less area nearby. Molas Lake is at the top of Molas Pass in the San Juan Mountains, north of Durango, Colorado. There's a great Indian-Tibetan- Himalyayan restaurant in Durango, on Main and 10th... um, right, we went up to Molas to go snowshoeing. It was rather a lot of fun. And the lunch buffet at the Indian restaurant was delicious, as always.