toilet training a furry cat with frictionless paws

dog...

2012-01-25T16:34:00.000-08:00

Below is a poorly (and hurriedly, and while laughing) drawn cartoon of what I came home to yesterday after school...

Goodbye 2011

2012-01-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

In a last ditch effort to shove one backpacking expedition into the year 2011, I insisted on carrying my gear in to the cabin on skis despite the availability of a friend with a snowmobile and cargo sled. 4 of us went in to the mountains to have a peaceful and rustic New Years eve at "Doc Daniel's" cabin, built for USU forestry studies back in the 50's, and generally not used to its charming potential. We had gorgeous sun, and mostly nice snow (a bit of nasty ice in places), a lovely wood stove fire, and lots of tasty treats. It's really nice to shrug off the last remnants of my BC years and know that not one single part of 2012 will involve dealing with those particular administrators. Even though that's all part of the Gregorian calendar we currently abide by, it's still feels like a bit of closure somehow...

back in a winter climate

2011-12-11T13:14:00.001-08:00

Ahhh, winter. It's been a long 6 years that I've lived without it and only gone to "visit the snow". So, with one housemate away (leaving behind Q, the dog), one exam and one final report left for the semester - a plan of "exhaust the dog so that majorly productive studying happens" was concocted.

A snowy night hike followed by a sunny x country ski the next day occurred and all participants had a great time, however the dog exhaustion only seemed to last the one evening/night. As I type this post (not studying) she is whimpering for "more skiing! more snowshoeing! more! yay!" which is just not going to happen today.

mountains in my backyard

behaving herself to pose for a photo... moments before tearing off after a deer or something

the snow here is ridiculously deep and dry powder, I hardly know what to do with it... but I am pretty sure that my snowshoes will be of inadequate size to contend, and I will sink like a stone when I use them...

"yay! I'm a dog! I'm bounding through snow nearly as deep as I am tall! wheeee!"

...And then, a couple of days later, we tried a real challenge: 4 dogs, 3 girls, 2 skis (each), and 1 Honda Element. We skied into Idaho- it was fantastic!

"treats!"

meet my lab

2011-11-13T07:56:00.000-08:00

For my media tools class I needed to learn how to use InDesign, and with it, make a poster or flyer of a biographical nature. I used my lab as inspiration, and now we have a 3 foot version of the poster on our door (it's also been handed in for my class, I'll let you know what I got on it later).

my life as a math word problem

2011-11-12T10:50:00.000-08:00

Part A. If a PhD student runs a trickle of water overnight into a flume that isn't draining:

how many gallons of water will spill over the top of the flume onto the geology department floor?
how many gallons of water will leak out the flume seams onto the geology department floor?
how many gallons of water will the PhD student have to bail out of the flume the following morning between classes?

Part B. If the PhD student is bailing the flume with a 4 gallon bucket that doesn't have a handle at 4 gallons per minute, and the janitor is bailing the flume with a 5 gallon bucket that does have a handle at 2.5 gallons per minute, how long will it take for them to clean up the flume?

I had raked out the flume to set up a braided stream system, onto which I will plant sprouts in order to create a meandering stream system, and accidentally set up a Lake Bonneville system. Amazingly enough, despite the epic mess on a Friday morning, I did end up with a lovely braided stream, and as an added bonus, a lovely "flume delta".

Catch up 3: Podcasts about canyons and then rafting them.

2011-10-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

Field work officially began last week, and my labmate (let's call him OSL) and I took off for the Moab area to do some scouting before our adviser joined us. The first thing we did was score a super sweet base camp location and important supplies.

Image of super sweet base camp location and important supplies.

Our adviser arrived with our field vehicle, and we got set to start sampling. Rough life, eh? Well actually, trying to "steer" that thing is not what one would expect. Especially considering one (me) began rowing 2 decades ago. Let me just clarify for you, this inflatable rubber thing is not svelt like a rowing shell, and those oars are not sleek and lightweight. But I digress.

One could have a worse field area to sample in.

One's challenges could be worse than finding a living tree to dock at.

A conveniently located outcrop of Cutler formation on the river's edge... now where did I put that GPS?

This one is not griping.

Wildlife bums.

Related only because of canyons and things, I had a podcasting assignment for my media tools class, and that resulted in this. It's not any of the following: good, complete, interesting. But I'm sharing it with you anyway.

P.S. I oared that raft over 2 sets of rapids and only got stuck on one rock and no one died and nothing/no one went overboard and lots of stuff/labmates/advisers got wet.

Catch up 2: Geology, Awards, and Stuff

2011-10-24T19:07:00.001-07:00

Almost immediately after I returned from my sister's wedding in Canada, did I have to get on another plane and head up to Minneapolis for the Geological Society of America's Annual Meeting. This meeting is pretty much always awesome for many reasons:

free beer
reunions with geology nerd friends/colleagues/GSA buddies from last year/profs/friends who are the authors of the textbooks from your u-grad education
field trips
making new GSA friends
meeting the program director for the exact NSF grant you intend to apply for over free beers

I started this meeting off with a geology field trip called "cycling the Mississippi Gorge", it involved learning local geology, riding bikes, eating really yummy yogurt, making new GSA friends, and learning local "fun facts" like: when Minneapolis was emerging as an up and coming mill city it was also the biggest producer of prosthetic limbs, and no, not peg legs (I asked), real jointed top-of-the-line-for-the-early-1900's prosthetics. There was also this random park with giant polished slabs of hematite in it. And giant mirrors glued to other rocks. It was a little weird...

I was not presenting at GSA this year, but instead going to enjoy the meeting and be flashed momentarily on the 2011 Hall of Fame screen.

Oooh - there I am! Don't blink or you'll miss it! Really there was a big fancy (and extremely nerve wracking) luncheon with presentations and speeches and things. The 4 of us getting awards and our "citationists" (the people introducing us) all had to eat lunch awkwardly on stage while everyone in the audience got to eat their lunch while NOT sitting on stage, which would have been far more preferable.

There was an amazing quilt that someone had (painstakingly) made of the geology of Minnesota. Unbelievable!

I finished off the event with another field trip, although I completely FUBARed the original plan. I was supposed to go on a relevant field trip, but stupidly scheduled my flight back in the middle of the trip. Amazing. So, since I realized this exactly 1 week before the meeting I could not get a refund and changing plane/hotel would have been too expensive, so I traded trips. Unfortunately this other trip involved much less learning and cool geology and fun facts. I did find a handful of fossils, which I gave to a guy from New Zealand who couldn't seem to find any himself and was far too excited about these run of the mill crinoids and brachiopods.

Catch up 1: Pomp & Circumstance

2011-10-24T18:58:00.001-07:00

At the beginning of the month my "little" sister (can't remember how long ago it was that she surpassed me in height exactly - not that it's difficult to do...) got married. It was a big country club whoop de do involving taffeta and such. My favourite 3 photos of the event from my camera (operated by Becky) are as follows:

My fantastic cousin Fred.

My fabulous friend and camera operator; Becky, and my fierce cousin Amelia (can I actually limit myself to only "f" descriptors in this post?

The fiesty bride and fervent groom thoroughly enjoying their fancy speech. Ha! I did it!

Scenes from FOP Rocky Mountain, 2011

2011-09-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

FOP stands for Friends of the Pleistocene - I've been a "friend" of much much older geology for all of my geological career, so this was a new experience for me. Somewhere between 75 and 90 geology types from the USGS and various Universities gathered in southern Idaho for a 3 day geology and camping expedition. The characters, as one would expect, were diverse.

Naturally, despite the focus on the Pleistocene, I was drawn to the older, consolidated and crystalline rocks. There were lots. Unfortunately, they were all the same. Fortunately, they were cool columnar basalts from the Snake River Plain, which I happen to thoroughly enjoy.

These are holes left by a few plucked hexagonal columns from a "strath terrace" of the Snake River.

This is the view down Box Canyon, which was spectacular. Columnar basalts from numerous flows line the steep head-walled canyon, and there are two plunge pools filled by a natural spring sparkling in the center.

stratigraphy THIS!

2011-09-25T19:07:00.001-07:00

Sooo... first "real" lab in geomorphology: sketch the outcrop, identify stratigraphic units, and interpret depositional event history.

great illustration

2011-09-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

My new field area is bits and pieces of the Colorado Plateau... it's pretty big, and not even remotely like any of the geology I've ever studied before. Consequently I've been gathering materials to help me study and read up on on the area. Mostly I've purchased a bunch of current things off of amazon.com, but they haven't arrived yet - meanwhile I'm perusing some gems of finds that are so far out of date that plate tectonics is not even a glimmer in the eye of geologists at the time they were published.

Scenes of the Plateau Lands and How They Came to Be is fabulous because it is filled with hand drawn pencil sketches that I absolutely adore. Here's my favourite:

It's good for so many reasons, but I think what I appreciate most out of it is the random herd of dinosaurs about to drown in the river. At the far left is probably an Albertosaurus, judging by size, especially in comparison to what must be a T-Rex drowning in the foreground. To the right of Albertosaurus is an unlikely companion, almost certainly Vulcanodon, because it can't possibly be a Diplodocus or any other giant sized sauropod, unless it stumbled into an incredible shrinking machine or something, which is only slightly less likely than Vulcanodon, Diplodocus, or a Titanosaur herding along with Albertosaurus and/or T-Rex. The most obvious character is the Stegosaur dog-paddling along in the river, who also seems quite an unusual companion in this motley crew. Look closely and you'll see the only capable swimmer of the lot is watching, bemusedly, from atop the log.

apparently it isn't over yet

2011-09-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

For reasons that are likely rooted deeply in incompetence, I am still receiving e-mails from my former employer. For reasons that are entirely selfish and for entertainment/vindication purposes, I continue to read said e-mails.

Start from the bottom and read your way up.

1. I would not (mot?) have cared one way or the other if student was not (mot?) "feeling too hot" (or "to hot") and would have preferred to not (mot?) have that clutter my inbox even if I was there.

2. I'm not (mot?) there.

3. It's week 3? 4? there and this student still does not (mot?) know who his professor is? Awesome.

Field Vehicle?

2011-09-13T09:43:00.000-07:00

Last Friday my grad geomorphology class went out on a field mapping excursion -- new to me:

geomorphology
mapping geological deposits younger than the preCambrian (this was Quaternary)
mapping units (that are covered in grass) from afar
antidunes

There are two incredibly awesome things in this picture; I challenge you to identify them.

This is Cutler Narrows, where we went mapping. We were on that darker pointier hill, mapping that lower slumpier unit across the Narrows.

My geomorphology posts will become more coherent once I learn more stuff about geomorphology... probably...

Charm School for Bloggers

2011-09-03T13:59:00.000-07:00

Media Tools blog assignment #2 was to find some blogging best practices/etiquette -- and I've gone ahead and broken one of the best "rules" I found already in this sentence.

Unless you're now intrigued to find out what I'm on about... are you?

Really?

Who's still reading?

Well, anyway, echoditto has a nice list of suggestions, the second of which is:

Engage from the beginning. Blog readers generally pay attention to the title and the first two paragraphs of any given post, and then decide whether to read the rest. This means your title, and your first two paragraphs are your chance to entice them to read the rest of the post. Humorous, playful, and even whimsical titles are OK because they catch readers' attention. Sometimes, if it concerns a particularly hot news item, a straightforward title will do the same. Posts with compelling titles get read more often, and get more comments.

In the first two paragraphs, try to give the reader an idea of what you're talking about, what you think about the subject, and — towards the end of the second paragraph — a teaser to get them to read more.

This is obviously why my blog is named "toilet training a furry cat with frictionless paws". Not really. Actually, that is why I went and changed the title of this particular post from whatever boring version of "blog assignment #2" it was to my incredibly creative "Charm School"...

Seriously though, if I actually wanted to ensure that people were consistently reading this blog, and perhaps even gaining something from it, I'd be sure to make an effort to consistently be creative with my titles and try to draw you, the reader, in. As it stands, this is more like a public-online-diary that I established to record my adventures (for me) and take care of that pesky "communicate with people about stuff" thing that I prefer to do via handwritten letter, but really that just takes far too long to be able to communicate everything to everyone so I do this instead.

About.com offers helpful, and (from my perspective) humorous, advice on writing blog titles. It seems to me that point number 2, avoid "bait and switch", comes somewhat out of left field. I'm not sure what blogger wants to lure someone in to reading their own personal opinions and commentary on, say... apples, only to find out somewhere in the first paragraph that they have in fact been reading about, heaven forbid... oranges!!! Unacceptable.

Image from woot.com, you can still get the T-shirt! (This ties in nicely with item #2 from My Beak Social Media's lauraleewalker although this particular image really is quite irrelevant to the content of this post. It is cute though.)

Actually, strolling around campus lately I've found quite a bit of "bait and switch", when I first started writing this I naively thought, "why would anyone bother?", then I got schooled. By school. I got drawn into a "join our bible cult" table because they had stacks of pizza boxes and I thought they were selling pizza and I was hungry so I wandered over there. Boy, was I ever disappointed. I promise I won't do that to you readers ever. Except with my blog title. I probably will not be discussing toilet training cats ever on here. But there will be lots of hiking and stuff.

Along the aforementioned line of drawing readers in is item #4 from My Beak Social Media's lauraleewalker:

Use bullets, italics, and bold font. This makes for an easier read. Using bold font allows the reader to quickly scan your post.

Of course you'll have already noted that I instead make the font smaller, and a weird colour, and spell words Canadian-ly. I do believe that when I make fonts smaller it draws your attention in, though admittedly, it's more of the "squint and lean forward" attention than the "wow, that's super awesome and I want to read more of it" attention. I should probably work on that.

On a more serious note, there is something else that I feel is definitely worth discussing in terms of blogging best practices, and that is ethics. About.com describes some of these as well (note how I've referenced my sources by providing links directly to them in my text? That's part of it). Having taught for several years now, and having seen some epically bad cases of plagiarism, source citing is definitely of importance, even if you're "just blogging". Let's say I was to use blogging as a mode for assignments for my students instead of turning in super cool meganeura papers, I would still require that the sources from which their information was obtained be referenced! In fact, in the same class as the meganeura report, I had a student who created a facebook profile for Troy Pliocene, the mastodon with an attitude, and she had made an effort to cite her sources within Troy's notes. Brava.

Meanwhile, here I am stating this and while I went ahead and linked to woot for the apples/oranges T shirt image, I sure didn't ask their permission to use it first. Bad blogger.
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web addresses for blog references:

http://www.echoditto.com/blogging
http://weblogs.about.com/od/bloggingethics/tp/Blogging-Best-Practices.htm
http://lauraleewalker.com/2010/11/01/top-15-blogging-best-practices-2/

pedaBLOGogy

2011-09-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

Most of you who read this little blog of mine know that I started it when I embarked on my transitional journey from student to professor... over the years I've shared my adventures with you, and, of a more entertaining nature, my horrific (and occasionally impressive) students' work. If you need a refresher on any of these, I'm listing a couple of classics below for you:

Now I find myself back in a transition... from professor to student again - which is admittedly a little odd, and since I'm not a TA, I will be unable to share such educational gems for the next few years.

Currently I'm taking an instructional technology - media tools course, for which I have a couple of blogging assignments. This is blog assignment # 1 -- the blog as a pedagogical tool.

I was instructed to find and read a few educational blogs, and since my experience and my aspirations lie in higher education, I started with where I used to work and with the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is where I actually found that former job back in early 2005. Where I used to work brought me to two blogs that I previously knew about, but upon closer examination I found that one was not particularly useful in this context, and the other, on assessment, was relevant, but not even remotely appealing. The Chronicle proved a better resource, and I found myself drawn into a post that related hiring new faculty to planting fruit trees in the yard... I think it was the weirdness of the analogy that drew me in in the first place. While the article isn't so much about teaching or pedagogy per se, I can definitely relate to the roots (ha. trees. roots. ha) of the concept, in that, like a biologically active and growing forest ecosystem, the faculty of a college or university need to be diverse, filling the various academic, collegial, administrative, etc. niches in order to generate a complete functioning institution that is also inspirational to the student body.

somewhat crappy doodle I did of a rainforest run by evil forest monkeys during another class while thinking about this assignment and playing with my livescribe pen

This naturally reminded me of where I used to work and how unlike a rainforest it was... or if it WAS like a rainforest, it was one where the evil forest monkeys (chancellor and chancellor minions/puppets) were building an unsustainable reserve factory on top of the forest canopy and fueling it with the non-renewable lifeblood of the forest understory... anyway... surely that sort of system is one that generates the uninspired student body, the students that are represented in my horrific examples above. The students that prompted me to routinely read a blog that shut down last year, called "Rate Your Students". While it was primarily composed of rants, they were rants I could easily relate to based on similar experiences I had with my own students, like this one, and that made me feel like I wasn't alone in my dying rainforest. Every once in a while, however, a post would appear on Rate Your Students that had a valuable teaching lesson, genuinely inspiring to a young college professor, and that's the real bummer about the end of Rate Your Students.

Meanwhile, back in the current world of higher education, I stumbled across this blog and consequently this article -- which is right on the money. I can't even begin to say how many former colleagues I had that fit the "I'm perfect and I don't need to improve" mentality, and how little they did to serve the institution. I served on the Academic Senate Executive Board for 5 of my 6 years there, and in that forum was surrounded by fellow faculty who strove to do more do better do faster do bigger, and like me, were also the primary constituents of every other important committee at the College. Meanwhile, the bulk of the rest of the population ran their scantrons through the scantron machine for the billionth unchanged time and bitched about how little time they had for other things because they're teaching 8 identical scantron sections... I digress... you get the point. Thank you Dean Dad, it's nice to know that some Deans notice this sort of thing.

This is becoming a fairly lengthy ramble, and I'm not sure that I've even touched upon the relevance of blogging with regard to education, or its use as a tool in education. To some degree I've used this blog to educate you all about a few random/historical/geological places I've been-- and I can certainly see the applicability of this, say as assignments for students to show their comprehension of subject matter -- like my former student Terisaurus Wrecks demonstrates in this vlog:

In fact, posting their reflections on subject matter, to be graded, in the context of a publicly visible blog might just get a few more students to proof-read their work so that it's not an incomprehensible pile of misspelled words bracketed by capital letters and periods. Maybe.

Or, in the context of geobloggers like Garry Hayes and Silver Fox who use their blogs solely to share their geological experiences and knowledge with the general public. With a subject like geology, where the hands-on field experience is so crucial to learning the material in context, blogs like these provide a sort of "virtual field trip" that allows the reader to passively "travel" with the author and "share" their experience.
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web addresses for blog references:

http://chronicle.com/section/Blogs/164/
http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs

my other backyard

2011-08-28T13:15:00.001-07:00

While there is quite a wilderness in my actual backyard, my neighbourhood backyard has a lot to offer as well. Just a short drive northeast of campus brings you to the Mt Naomi Wilderness. On Friday all the new geo grads went on a field trip to the High Creek area and looked at Gilbert deltas then hiked/scrambled up to some Cambrian carbonates and shales and found teeny-tiny trilobites. Then on Saturday, my roomie and another new grad and I went for an 11.5 mile hike up Mt Beirdneau, along the ridgeline, and down Green Canyon.

Gilbert delta. I'm being immersed in soft rock geology now!

Super small trilobites! 0.9cm long!

View looking down into Green Canyon (aptly named)

Where the trail vanished, we found an airplane wreckage, and commenced bushwhacking. I think I'll be asking for a scythe for xmas...

Surprise! Mama moose! Moose baby! Moose??? YES! Moose! Awesome.

Hello Utah

2011-08-09T07:51:00.000-07:00

A new chapter begins: I resigned, accepted a fellowship at Utah State University, and moved to Logan, Utah. So in 2 weeks I'll be a student again, now trying to earn a PhD, but not before maximizing my time on numerous unnecessary projects.

The solar oven was the first one. With some insulation added and mirror extenders, a max temperature of 290 Fahrenheit was achieved. I cooked some pretty random concoctions with that, but then the picture frame glass cracked. I'm guessing that it wasn't exactly meant to be dealing with that sort of temperature range...

So rather than fix the solar oven, I naturally moved on to unnecessary project number 2: chickens.

There was already a coop in the backyard, so it just needed some repairs, cleaning, bedding and fencing. Several hot and sweaty days later:

Then all it needed was chickens:

They are mighty impressive composters!!! This is a FAR better place for my veggie scraps to go than a) in a pile, b) in the garbage disposal system, or c) just flat out in the garbage. I got older, less productive, hens - so not so many eggs. But I really didn't want to deal with baby chicks until I had some idea of how chickens would work out.

Then I needed to fly back to Canada and get my student visa to re-enter the US as a student. I got an awesome view of the Grand Canyon on the flight there.

Then I met up with some long-time friends and their new offspring for the only part of my summer that's truly resembled a vacation. Lots of good times catching up and hanging out!

First stop: the refrigerated Canadian beer section.

Greatest cut bank ever. I'm convinced these are a flood deposit that has since been cut into by this river channel.

Beautiful Kananaskis country - and the sign even held true to its promise.

Finally, I wrapped up another knitting project between flights, layovers and buses - so here's the Charvet pullover.

Solar Oven Saturday

2011-07-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

Technically it started on Friday evening, but most of the serious and meticulous building occurred on Saturday. We went to a thrift store and browsed around for stuff we could re-purpose as the box-base, reflectors, swing-stand, etc. This is what we came up with:

Base: filing cabinet drawer (filing cabinet also came in handy as a work bench - a really loud and tinny-sounding work bench, but functional none-the-less)

Reflectors: mirrors from medicine cabinet thingies (medicine cabinet particle board also doubled as odds and ends to use as support frame, handles, hinge bases...)

Swing stand: random heavy duty springs plus corner hinge bits from medicine cabinets plus some sort of stand (possibly for a printer) that we ripped apart

Cook pot: got a great ceramic pot that was the inside of a crock pot, the crock pot was a house fire waiting to happen, so it was easy to rip the ceramic inside out and remove the wires

Glass cover: gaudy picture frame - no matter how gaudy the picture and the frame was, it was a pretty-near perfect size of glass!

Then we had to buy some new components such as mylar tape (aka foil tape), flame duck tape (ok, we didn't need it, but I really wanted to use it), hinges of the non-corner variety (of all the pieces on the 2 medicine cabinets we destroyed you'd think there would be useable hinges, but NO), epoxy, and a glass cutter.

Lots of dismantling going on...

East LA drills into the file cabinet drawer for our support frame.

The way the swing-stand swings when the solar oven gets tilted for catching the best sun angle - after all, we can't be having our food spill everywhere!

The medicine cabinet mirrors needed to be cut to size, plus we needed corner pieces to make a more funnel-shaped rather than box-shaped sun energy amplifier. All the sharp stabby mirror pieces we then covered with mylar tape for safety while also maintaining high reflectivity. The glass cutter ended up being a great option, but this was only after we called everywhere around to see if a pro could cut the mirror for us. My favourite conversation went like this:

me: hi! I was wondering if I could bring some mirror in and have you cut it down to size
person at glass shop: sorry, we only cut glass
me: it is glass
person at glass shop: I thought you said you had a mirror
me: mirrors are just glass with silver paint on the back
person at glass shop: we can only cut glass, not mirror
me: nevermind

Basically complete at this point, needs a) flame tape decoration, b) a trial run, c) fine tuning. Here you can see the contraption for changing the angle of the oven - a simple giant eye screw and 2 bolts, one above and one below the file cabinet lock loop thingy (which we moved to a more appropriate location)

Complete with flame tape, we gave it a trial run with some pre-made cookie dough. It was a little late in the day to be starting, but we had to do it anyway, and in the corner you can see the meat thermometer that I taped to the glass lid.

Max temp reached was 175 - I'm pretty sure with a couple of minor alterations (seal around the glass lid, starting cooking before evening, possibly expanding the reflector size with more mylar tape) we'll get this baby over 200.

M is for...

2011-07-14T15:19:00.000-07:00

M is for marriage... as in the marriage of Dawn and Ramon

photo courtesy of Kilometres, who had a much better vantage point than I

yum!

M is for "Mrs Kermit" or whatever the heck that is hanging off the back of the truck flashing us as we drive home from the wedding

M is for mountains... as in the Sierra Nevada mountains at their northernmost extent, almost at the boundary with the Klamath mountains, where I escape every July to breathe the clean air and take photos of flowers that I can never remember the name of.

This is Skye running through the shot of paintbrushes and some kind of flower that might be trillium, but I can't remember.

This is Loki looking mostly confused and a little bit terrified.

This is Kiki looking condescendingly at Loki, and also basking in the sun.

These are obviously dragonflies, possibly mating, and also, my favourite part of this photo, is the translucent thing clinging onto the reed below the dragonflies. Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Greatest. Thing. Ever.

2011-06-19T04:17:00.000-07:00

Closing in on the end of our 3 week tour of (bits of) Japan, and inspired by this newspaper article that basically described an experience of watching an active volcano while lying in hot volcanic sand, we just HAD to make sure to have a suna-yu in Ibusuki. The Toronto Star article indicated that this tradition began some 350 years ago and originated in Ibusuki, but Beppu seems to have quite a history with this type of "sand bath" as well, possibly even back to the Nara period (~700). Anyway, I can't find anything verifiable on the interwebs at present, so I just need to get to the good stuff.

The. Greatest. Thing. Ever.

By the time we got to Kagoshima, nearly a week ago, it was clear that the rainy season had begun. Forecasts ranged from "light rain" to "rain" to "moderate rain" to "heavy rain" to "thunderstorms", and mostly seemed to settle on "heavy rain". Figuring that rain wouldn't greatly interrupt our sand bath experience, we got on the train to Ibusuki to seek THIS. Since we were practically there already, we also decided to "hike" out to the small island of Chiringashima, which is accessible at low tide via a tombolo! Yay! Tomobolo! (This is one of my favourite geology jargon words). We sought shelter for about 5 minutes from the torrential downpour, once it lessened to "moderate rain" we set off down the tombolo. Then the weather dramatically changed to "thunderstorm"... we figured we were half way there, so we just got soaked and made it to the island. Eventually, sopping, we made it to Yunohama beach and picked up our rental yukata for the sand bath. While getting changed I learned that my rain jacket is no longer waterproof (which I suspected during the walk earlier, but really couldn't tell while outside in a thunderstorm), AND my "waterproof" backpack wasn't even remotely close to waterproof.

At this point, nothing could possibly feel better than ridding myself of all my soggy possessions and getting buried in wet "sand" (really it's lapilli, but I can't imagine the Japanese translation for that) that is heated naturally from below by steam from a hot spring. It was amazing! I was snug and warm and the lapilli are coarse enough that it's a rough texture, but not scratchy or itchy somehow, and I could literally feel my own pulse everywhere in my body, like it was giving me a massage via the weight of the wet and steamy lapilli. Greatest. Thing. Ever.

We had been lead to believe that Ibusuki was THE place, the ONLY place, one could experience a sand bath. Then, yesterday, we arrived in Beppu. It's been raining pretty steadily (mostly of the "heavy rain" variety), which has seriously limited our sightseeing (especially after having learned of the ineffectiveness of my "rain gear"). Our ryokan, miraculously, has wifi and I have spent far too long trying to dredge up the history of sand baths, which may, in fact, have originated here.

Beppu 1926 • Hot Sand Bath

Thirteen women dressed in yukata are enjoying a hot sand bath in Beppu, one of Japan’s most famous onsen (hot spring) resorts.

Barely a few blocks walk from our ryokan is Takegawara Onsen, a Meiji period bath house that also boasts sand baths. Given the torrential downpours, going to Beppu Beach (like the Geisha Girls above) was not an option, but escaping the monsoon inside while getting buried in hot and steamy lapilli again? I had to make it happen.

Takegawara Onsen, Meiji period bath house, home to indoor sand bath.

"Sand ladies" burying some sand bathers and prepping new "graves" for us to settle into. Let me tell you, these ladies are PROS! As much as I left Ibusuki feeling like that sand bath was amazing, this one at Takegawara was out(ofthisworld)standing. Not only do they dig you a little grave to lie in and bury you with shovels like the Ibusuki people do, but they also tuck your feet in properly and wedge lapilli up under your shoulders and back and neck to make a cozy little pillow too.

I'm settled. It sure was steamy in there! This suna-yu was significantly hotter than the one at Ibusuki, which I reluctantly left after about 25 minutes (they recommend 15), at Takegawara I was disappointed that they make you extract yourself after a mere 10 minutes! But, considering that I nearly fainted in the bath house while rinsing the rogue lapilli off, I can see that the 10 minute limit is important. I'm sure that fainting in an onsen is even more taboo than bathing with a tattoo.

After each set of "bathers" has gone through the burial-extraction ritual, the "sand ladies" sluice more hot spring water through the sand to "cleanse" it before allowing a new set of "bathers" to enter. I find this a little weird, granted you sweat A LOT in there, but a) it's lapilli - which is essentially gravel-sized particles of volcanic DIRT; b) one must shower thoroughly upon exiting, otherwise one would be exiting wearing a layer of lapilli glued by sweat to one's skin; and c) the hot spring water is loaded with all kinds of dissolved mineral solids, often including lovely things like arsenic that one tends to want to wash off.

Oh well, weird = yes, but it is still the. GREATEST. THING. EVER!

but what does that MEAN???

2011-06-18T05:16:00.000-07:00

With a complete an utter lack of language comprehension or means of communication, some parts of Japan are easier to get around in than others. Most recently we were in one of those nearly-impossible-to-successfully-communicate places, and to add insult to injury, the Lonely Planet book basically left that part out (that should've been a hint) and there was no internet to be found to supplement our extremely poor knowledge of where we were. We fumbled our way around and made all kinds of transportation errors (taking bus 32-1 is easy enough IF 32-1 is NOT written in Japanese characters...), basically throwing our yen out the window trying to get from train station to hotel and back again (and failing frequently), and were incredibly frustrated.

I decided that since all I could understand were pictures in signs, many less obvious than others, my solution for all future communication issues would be drawings, either prepped in advance if I knew what I would be asking, or done on-the-fly with the hopes that someone would grasp the meaning. I had lots of practice interpreting Japanese signs, so I figured I'd do just fine... Today we figured out our train to get to Beppu with the help of little drawings of trains and tracks with circles and numbers and things. Most effective.

"Below this sign you will find singing she-male cyclists in races" (though I was unable to find any)

"Slipping beneath gymnastics rings will result in explosion" (It's been quite rainy, so there've been lots of opportunities for slipping, but luckily, very few gymnastic rings)

"Ninja pig and samurai cow are guarding the chicken, onigiri, milk and sweet pototaes, do not attempt to pass or you will regret it! Eat mochi and sardines instead"

My way of ordering food that will not kill me, it has garnered chortles from waiters/chefs, and so far I haven't died, so it's obviously working. I'm going to expand by having a double sided happy face/dead face sign so that when I point at random stuff in the menu with the no crustacean sign, there's an answer "ok/dead" that can also be pointed to - this will be most helpful. Unfortunately, as I experienced tonight, it can also result in safe-but-extremely-weird foods that get brought your way. See photo below with the following caption "what the crap did I just order???"

For all previous dinners, I've gotten along just fine with chopsticks. Suddenly I have tongs and scissors... And chopsticks... anyway, I'm pretty sure I ate pig intestine or uterus or something, the sauce was delicious and - obviously - it didn't kill me.

rowing Japan

2011-06-10T01:20:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we will row the last of the 180 km route around Lake Biwa that is the 2011 FISA World Rowing Tour, so far the people have been great, some of the food has been awesome (some has been incredibly disappointing - but none has killed me yet), the rowing conditions have been excellent... in the mornings, and sometimes treacherous in the afternoons. Here's a taste:

The start of day one, at the south end of the lake, Seta Rowing Club & flags of most of the nations present (and some that were not, and some present nations' flags missing...)

The Swiss boat on day 6 (with 2 Aussies, a Dutchman and a Norwegian... only 1 Swiss) rowing by Takeshima island (the island of many views) in lake Biwa.

A delicious lunch for us on Mt Hiei... note the sign for us, please, I was dying of laughter for an hour I swear.

A silly photo I took of myself and Anne (Norway), in bow, during a water break... on day 3???

We were so famous in lake Biwa that the local paper in Moriyama (where we are stationed) had an article on the front page the morning of our second day rowing! That's my crew from day 1 pictured too - I bet you can figure out which one is me...

We rowed through this gate/shrine also, and this time Ursel (Dutch/Swiss) was in bow. Same day as the silly Anne picture, but apparently I can't remember which day we went through the gate. We have lots of seating changes in the boats on the water, and crew changes daily so that we interact with all the people from all over the world! FUN!

This was quite possibly the best tuna sashimi on the planet. It will be pretty much impossible to top this lunch.

Everyone warned that there would be vending machines everywhere, but no one warned what would be in them. This one clearly features the strangely named beverage "Pocari Sweat". I don't know what a Pocari is, but I picture something like the Alot and I was extremely skeptical about drinking its sweat. Naturally, with the prevalence of the product my curiosity took over, and it's actually pretty good! Sort of like the lemonade flavour vitamin water, only with more flavour, and possibly less high fructose corn syrup (I'm only assuming that since there's basically NO corn here that I can see, that sugar is cheaper to use in Japan...)

Finally, I couldn't resist snapping this before leaving this shop with my green tea soft serve ice cream, which was delicious by the way. The green tea stuff is everywhere, and I know from Kingston days that green tea mousse pocky is pretty fantastic. I'm not so sure that replacing the chocolate in Kit Kats with green tea is a great idea; and I could NOT identify what green tea "treat" was being sold under the hilarious name "Collon"... but it did give me the giggles.

Up, up, and away!

2011-05-28T07:36:00.000-07:00

After 2 weather delays, the end-of-year geology club trip finally took place. We left at a grueling 2am in order to be east of Riverside by 5:30am for the hot air balloon expedition. The sky was dreary, and our hearts were sinking at the prospect of not being able to go up after all.

The crew sent up a couple of black "test" balloons to check the wind and the cloud height, and determined that even though we wouldn't likely be able to see much geology, we could still go up in a balloon.

We weren't expecting to be allowed to, but we actually got to take part in every aspect of the expedition, from unloading/loading equipment, to filling the balloons, to being part of the chase crew, to "milking" the balloons of their air and jamming them back in their sacks - it was awesome!

Then, just as I was saying how awesome the whole experience was "geology or no geology", we popped up through an air pocket in a cloud and the whole day jumped up a giant notch of awesomeness.

I'm still in recovery, 2 days later, of the no-sleep night, but the trip was definitely worth it, and now I really really really want a hot air balloon!

operation "eat the stuff in my cupboards" part 3

2011-05-11T09:16:00.000-07:00

Food experiment 4: salmon "pie"

Rationale: had a frozen pie shell in the freezer, frozen peas, and a can of salmon hanging around, plus eggs, which means I could make something sort of vaguely resembling a quiche.

Method: vigorously stir up 2 eggs, some random quantity of goat milk, mush up the contents of a can of salmon in there too, and a little bit of cheese. Put frozen peas lining bottom of pie shell, pour egg-salmon mixture on top. Bake at 375 about 50min until brown.

Result: Should have thawed peas out first - they thawed and cooked fine in the oven, but make the base of the pie crust moist instead of crisp. Otherwise, it tasted pretty good despite not being particularly solid.

Plus the Extreme Chef and I scavenged Biwa Fruit (loquats) off of someone's tree downtown and ate a whole bunch of that. Look at how pretty they are!

Pure California GOLD.

2011-05-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I blogged about Lake Dolores/Rock-A-Hoola water park, a ghost town of sorts on hwy 15 between Barstow and Baker. Recently I got a comment on that blog post indicating that there were intentions to rebuild the place and reopen it.

That lead to this site, where you can watch the transformation.

And this site, where you can hear about the documentary being made on the place.

And then youTube, which of course, had old Lake Dolores commercials!

1970's commercial:

Yes, those were the famous stand-up water slides! Wait until you see them in the 1980's commercial below!!!

1998 commercial:

Just in time for summer

2011-05-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Yup, finished up my Beatnik sweater last night, midnight actually - it's really really awesome. I used this fabulous baby llama yarn (Miski, by Mirasol - spun in Peru).

Unfortunately, it's also going to be 91 degrees F today, which is too hot for a llama sweater.

Meganeura? Megawesome.

2011-05-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

For those who remember last year's prize assignment, and for those who don't - below are the first 2 pages of this year's top contender. Remind yourself of the assignment and "Meganeura: Megaproblem" first!

Once again, I got this student's permission to scan and blog the project. I'm particularly impressed with the photoshop skills. There are many, many more pages - but only if you really insist on reading the entire thing will I bother scanning them.

operation "eat the stuff in my cupboards" part 2

2011-05-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

Food experiment 2: steel cut oat "risotto/polenta"

Rationale: oats are good and absorby like rice/polenta, steel cut oats take WAY too freaking long to bother with at breakfast - that needs to be FAST - so they're just sitting around in my cupboard NOT being eaten. Earlier solution had been steel cut oats for dinner, but that's pretty un-exciting, and oats are cheap and arborio rice is less cheap, and I have stock and parmesan...

Method: cook oats in stock instead of water (4:1 stock:oats), stir in some parm, salt & pepper, plus a bunch of sauteed garlic and chard, finish with half a fresh squeezed lemon

Result: not as weird as you might think, definitely edible - but still has that oaty undertone that makes it not quite right flavour-wise.

---------------------------------------Food experiment 3: lemon mousse

Rationale: had 2 random egg whites sitting around and lots of lemon, can't justify eating eggs without their delicious yolks, but figured that whipped up egg whites could transform into mousse without missing their yolks. Grandma used to make chocolate mousse, but I had lemons, not chocolate. They say that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade - well, I've tried that, and I have to say that I cannot seem to make drinkable lemonade...

Method: dumped 2 egg whites in mixing bowl, added juice of half a lemon and some zest for good measure, threw in some sugar, measured nothing. Put mixer on high for some time while I chopped up chard & garlic for oatmeal concoction listed above. When egg white mix was sort of fluffy and had soft peaks (didn't look like stiff peaks were going to happen) I plopped it into a glass and tossed it in the fridge.

Result: as you can see from the photo above, which was taken not 20 minutes after it got put in the fridge, the thing went and separated - so basically I should have eaten it immediately. And, I definitely should have, because I stirred it and essentially drank it, and the flavour was pretty great!

Spring 2011 Mojave Trip

2011-05-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

I seem to take students back to the Mojave desert every semester - and truly yesterday was one of the most spectacularly beautiful days we've ever had. On top of that, students this year found the most amazing trilobite specimens we've ever found on one of these excursions, AND the famous brine trench had completely filled in; I think National Chloride must no longer be in business.

The brine trench yesterday.

The brine trench before!!!

The stairs to the lava tube yesterday.

The "stairs" before!

Everything was green from the extensive rains we've had this spring - I just couldn't get over how pretty the volcanic landscape was this time around.

Epic trilobite finds this year - last year 2 of this caliber were unearthed. This year? 5!

I've driven by this sign on old Rte 66 I don't know how many times. Needed to document it. Unfortunately, this is about all I know about that snippet of California's Rte 66 history.

operation "eat the stuff in my cupboards" part 1

2011-04-29T21:49:00.000-07:00

Food experiment 1: cauliflower with marinara sauce

Rationale: had cauliflower in fridge from veggie basket, it's about the same colour as pasta, and it *seems* like it might be one of those starchy type vegetables? Kind of like a potato? So I don't really know about that, and no, I haven't bothered looking it up. Other rationale: it was 9pm, I was hungry, and that seemed like the easiest and fastest thing I could make for dinner.

Method: steam head of cauliflower, hack into pieces, pour sauce on it directly from jar (the cauliflower was hot enough to warm the sauce as far as I was concerned).

Result: surprisingly delicious! Although I'd also say that my 9:30pm level of hunger might have me slightly biased.

Geology Club, Solar Ovens, San Andreas Fault & Wind Wolves Preserve

2011-04-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

This semester the Geology Club has taken the school by storm. They are awesome, so here's a little overview of what they've been up to (with, or without, me).

giant human mudcrack on genuine mudcracks

Last fall, a time that longs to be forgotten, BC got the photovoltaic carport system installed. In order to make some degree of effort to inform the school about solar energy (not at all done by BC), I convinced the Geology Club that they needed to do something.

homemade solar oven expo - what you can build with less than $5 worth of material - they cooked cup o' noodles for any students who came by during "Spring Fling" week

you can't help but feel a little special when jumping photos are done in your honour and absence

1 of two field trips this semester; the first going to one of the usual hot spots, the San Andreas Fault. The trip was supposed to go to Montana de Oro, however the tsunami that occurred over in Japan also happened to trigger waves on the California coast, and consequently resulted in the beaches being closed... on the very day of my plate tectonics field trip. Oh, the irony.

Much earlier this year I trekked up to Wind Wolves Preserve to "train" park volunteers in their local geology so that they could... well... actually teach geology during their geology program.

turritella!

...and I've been making stuff too.

2011-04-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

Engineery and I have been working off and on (mostly off) on a totally awesome Pi quilt. Unfortunately, despite meticulous measurements and CAD drawings, we are still having issues. The Pi quilt will become a Pi floor cushion when we finally complete it.

I used a pretty neat tutorial to make these "tea wallets" for the Geology Club to sell at Garden Fest for fundraising. I still have a couple of them left, so if you want one, let me know. You may get lucky!

I FINALLY ground the punties off the remainder of my glass pieces that I made... oh, maybe 3 years ago? They're all so functional now, it's great!

In case you're wondering what the heck that even means, this might help clarify, but then keep in mind that novice glass blowers tend to be a little too generous with the punty, leaving behind a large wad of glass on the bottom that needs to be ground down.

Assessment, or something.

2011-04-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

I received the following e-mail today: "We have a large, blank posterboard where we can display the exciting ways we are assessing our students. This is due April 15th. If you can get it to me by 4pm Thursday, I would appreciate it. ... Anything you can contribute would be appreciated. Remember, use colors and big fonts." Well, I have no idea what they are looking for - but having recently seen a super cute faux Ikea instruction sheet for Stonehenge, I decided that was what I was going to do. During my lab this afternoon, in between helping students figure out rates of motion of various dinosaurs, I drew a bunch of cartoons. Note that I managed to not accomplish the "use colors" part of the vague instructions. To remedy this, I handed off the drawings (after scanning) to a student to colour during the geology club meeting. Mission accomplished. I can't wait to see what the administrators make of it.

the derby

2011-03-23T21:54:00.000-07:00

We've had a couple of bouts so far this season and have a tournament this weekend too. Meanwhile, I finally have some photos to provide evidence of my actual participation...

Against Santa Cruz - I managed to sneak through the pack and get lead jammer status a couple of times. Here's a sneak move, and no, I'm not hauling that girl back by her shirt! I don't know what's going on there.

That ref hand signal means "lead jammer", all that power and glory didn't make me any less tired though!

Against Angel City (LA) we had a super tight game that occurred only because of a major come back. The game finished 100-98, you can see the score here. Yikes! I also picked this photo because that's me over on the edge there bumping their jammer out of bounds.

snapshots

2011-03-01T22:27:00.000-08:00

It seems a while since I posted - but coming up soon are our first roller derby bout of the season (tomorrow!) and my first field trip of the semester (next Friday) so I'm sure I'll have a story or two then. In the meantime...

This is a little 4 week old Sulcata tortoise who came to visit my lab (one of my students is raising her for a breeding program) - so cute!

Kiki continues on his quests for food thievery, and not only stole my frozen bagel that was on the counter thawing, but also managed to consume nearly a quarter of it. Grrr.

Loki continues to be a character, and I caught him watching Cold Case a week or so ago.

This is a character that I introduced to my class last year, and I intend to keep him coming back for more cameos. Cockroaches with laser helmets will inherit the earth... probably...

It *almost* snowed *in* Bakersfield! I drove around last Sunday trying to find the best view of *our* snow - this was pretty much it. I wanted to not cheat by leaving the city and still find a snow photo; as a Canadian, I just don't think this counts.

it's exam time again!

2011-02-13T22:46:00.001-08:00

I tried to resist posting this so soon... but I just couldn't make myself NOT share it! I think this might be the "best" picture I've ever gotten. My comments are in pink - it's only slightly less harsh on the poor students' eyes than red.

I told them they could illustrate exam answers, but only if a) their illustration was clearly labeled and b) their picture was literally worth 1000 words.

This one might be worth 1000 words, but I'm willing to bet that the words would not be strung together in any sort of logical, meaningful sentences...

For those non-geologists who are thinking there's some way to make this work, this link is more or less what the student was supposed to be getting at...

beers of the world

2011-01-30T08:57:00.001-08:00

BEG and the Spaniard started a Beers of the World tradition when they were in Halifax, now that they are in Santa Barbara there was no reason to stop the festival - obviously! Consequently I brought one small addition to the party, decorations of geological timescales courtesy of the most recent lab completed by my students...

Santa Barbara = friends & whales

2011-01-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

This weekend, where I am currently, I came to Santa Barbara to visit BEG and the Spaniard, who are hosting their annual Beers of the World (more on that to come) celebration. We started the visit with frisbee on the beach where we found a giant macaroni shell pile. It threatened to start being stinky later, so it got to stay behind.

macaroni shell pile

watching the sun setting on the beach was pretty nice too, but then we had to bike home without lights and it was quite a bit chillier without the sun too

then we went whale watching out near Santa Cruz Island - with the assistance of LOADS of ginger and standing at the front of the boat we managed to fend off motion sickness (and drowsiness) - where we saw plenty of Risso's dolphins

Santa Cruz Island

we also saw this one Gray Whale, and the spouts of a few others - these things are NOT easy to take pictures of, especially in the "medium" chop the captain kept warning us about

more Santa Cruz Island, I have the inescapable urge to backpack on this bad boy

Painted Cave, a super long (nearly a 1/4 mile) sea cave in Santa Cruz Island, named for the colours of rocks, algae, lichen, etc.

Sequoia Skiing

2011-01-20T21:53:00.000-08:00

BEG, The Spaniard, and I decided to take the long weekend prior to the beginning of my semester to go snow camping in Sequoia. The weather couldn't have been better - it was serene, spectacular, gorgeous. And we had the place all to ourselves!

We like to camp safe and store our food appropriately in bear lockers. Unfortunately, the 90 inches of snow that would provide us with excellent snowshoeing conditions and deceiving skiing conditions, also largely obscured things like bear lockers.

Luckily I had remembered to purchase a shovel, and The Spaniard was keen to hone his shoveling skills.

We got creative for maneuvering around the campsite (snow shoes were really handy) and setting up a cook station, oh, and staying warm!

But then, with the sun and some giant red trees, we launched into a glorious new day!

It was consistently funny how much snow there was- why warn about the steps when the snow has buried them so deeply that the railing is at ground level?

I spent quite a bit of time watching youtube videos on xcountry ski techniques over xmas, and was particularly fascinated by the step turn... I think it's much funnier if you high-knee it, especially if your rate of forward motion is very slow.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, our solitude was broken. 20 boy scout tents formed a city around our campsite and flags, tables, sleds, saws, stoves, kids and fire pits littered the previously pristine snow.

out with the old...

2011-01-04T06:23:00.001-08:00

It's 2011, and consequently time to allow my mom to give my lobster trap away to Goodwill.

My lobster trap? Yes. That. I acquired it in 1995 in Newfoundland from a random fisherman.

In 1995 I went to Newfoundland for this:

Prior to the Jamboree we went touring around for a week or so, and during that time of touring, on July 6 at 1pm (thanks to the careful documentation of my friend Awesome Day), I picked up my lobster trap.

And strapped it to the roof of the van that we were to drive around for the next 2 weeks. It made an interesting whistling/humming sound as we drove.

Yay! Free lobster trap!

After several unproductive years of hanging around on the floor of my various abodes, it finally came to rest in my parents' basement. So now we say farewell to the lobster trap, poor thing, all this time it has only trapped rubber lobsters, not fulfilling its life-mission. Out with the old...

And in with the new! Almost. I started this sweater in 2008... and in between the off-and-on of knitting it, I completed several other projects. Now, I just have one sleeve left and this is done too.

How To Cross Country Ski

2010-12-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: this is definitely NOT how to cross country ski.

Follow the signs.

Keeping a low center of gravity is important for balance, though it's more useful when you're a) moving and b) going down a hill.

Skis are long. Picking up your feet to take giant steps with them in random directions is difficult. But it is not impossible.

Always keep your ski tips up while jumping.

holidays in the great white north

2010-12-22T08:01:00.000-08:00

due to my sister's work schedule, we did the whole gift thing early this year - which was fine, since that meant that we covered my birthday one week prior as well. to celebrate my last Monday being 30, I got to eat real bagels and lox, and my parents got me a new camera, which I "desperately" needed (this is, of course, relative - my old camera still functions, however since the lens cap hasn't opened or closed on its own in over 3 years, the lens is most definitely scratched and photos have been getting duller as a consequence - also, relatively - no one "desperately" needs a new camera, seriously there are far more important things in life than material goods... but I digress)

ok, where was I? right, so we did the last Monday of my being 30, and also, so far, we have country skied and eaten.

my dad bakes bread, excellently, and is also renowned for cutting enormously thick slabs of it - this is a fairly good representation of the following: dad, thick slab of freshly baked bread, and sister

a couple of streets away from where my parents live is a park that has a decent loop around it for x country skiing, it's very convenient, except that dog walkers seem to be taking advantage of the somewhat flattened ski tracks, using them as trails, consequently destroying the tracks, and also (joy of joys) leaving us frozen turds to ski over... anyway, here's mom skiing

here's me standing and posing with a stupid grin on skis

greatest thing about the new camera? (ok besides that the lens cap opens and closes and the lens isn't all scratched up) there's a ridiculous function that allows you to swap colours. this also allows you to take photos of people and make them look like zombies without photoshop! I have a very bad feeling that I will be taking a lot of absolutely terrible photos for the humour of them

one of several oddities inherited from my dad's parents, this wooden horse is apparently dressed like santa this year (actually, I'm here so rarely that I can't be sure it isn't ALWAYS dressed like santa), mostly I was just messing with my new camera and thought it looked crazy rabid from this angle

me messing around with my new camera, the best part of this tree is the 2 birds on top, which are so incredibly old, and no longer have either beaks or tails - those birds rule!

the very red looking moon during the total lunar eclipse (at -10 degrees C) on the solstice, pretty awesome despite the numbness - this is my dad's photo, my frozen fingers and shivering prevented me getting a single photo that wasn't blurry

One day I'd like to take flying lessons

2010-12-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

Triathlon-geology colleague from exploring mines with thigh-deep water came through big time to make amends with presenting an opportunity to fly in a Cessna 172 over the legendary and iconic view point of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain. I jumped right on that bandwagon, and took my Brewmate with me.

Saddling up and getting ready to go!

Ugh. This is the nasty haze over where I live - can you see traces of "civilization" below? Look hard, it's there... Gross.

Meanwhile, above the hideous haze, there was an amazing cloud cascade "flowing" through a gap in the Western Transverse Ranges.

Soda Lake in the Carrizo Plain was looking much more lake-like than I usually see it, so I suppose the clouds must have left behind a deposit recently.

Finally, the pièce de résistance, the big one itself, the San Andreas Fault. Its line is straight, crisp and true and literally goes on for miles. Oh how amazing it is to see it from the sky!!!

it's December already?

2010-12-07T08:13:00.001-08:00

Wow this year has flown by. It's been a doozy for sure. Well, the beginning of December in Bakersfield is marked by Mr Toad's Wild Run for those of us who like to participate in that sort of thing. I happen to be one of them, and I really do love that race, it is the most fun footrace I have ever done - starts with 1.5 miles of uphill, followed by about .5 miles of flat, and ends with a mile of downhill in a steep and windy gully. Totally awesome. This is the race that I did for the first time, on a whim in 2006 and placed 2nd in my age group - but did not stay for the medal ceremony and thus did not get my medal. Then did again in 2009, slightly hungover, wanting to get a medal, and came in 4th in my age group... sigh. This year, new age group, more competition, no chance to medal - but I sure was happy with 9th!

Meanwhile, later on that same day, was our last roller derby bout of the season. This one was to benefit Toys for Tots, and we had a huge turnout and loads of donations for the charity. It was great - really the only thing that was missing was our newest fan Ramón to cheer us on! A surprise for me was to get thrown into the Jammer hat - more surprising was that I didn't suck at it on the first run, and got thrown out there in that position 2 more times... I even scored us some points! I don't know the full tally by any means, and so far have nearly failed at locating any photographic evidence, but thanks to Into the Void Photography and Firefly Photography? There's at least these photos.

Finally, this blog post is brought to you via a break in reviewing the proofs of my article to be published in the Journal of Economic Geology. Oh yeah, that monkey will be off my back before 2011. Which ultimately means that in this year of disasters, I've managed to pull out the publication of a book, a peer-reviewed scientific article, and 2 presentations at GSA.

On the note of the book, it's being carried at the Buena Vista Museum, and I'm trying to get it at Russo's and Barnes and Noble. Meanwhile it's available in limited quantity from me (if you're in Canada and want a copy - let me know!) and from the publisher.

images from a wet exploration

2010-11-22T14:54:00.000-08:00

I somehow got convinced to spend a rainy Saturday poking around some "mines" in the Keyesville area with a semi-professional mine explorer and one of my triathlon-geology colleagues. I then convinced another colleague to come along too so that I would have less driving to do. It turned out that 1) the first "mine" was, in my eyes, not a mine at all; was quite filled with water, which for the height-challenged such as myself, meant getting a greater percentage of the body wet to explore; and contained at least 2 dead rodents: Bloaty McBloaterson and Fluffy, 2) the second mine was clearly a mine, and also clearly had Jarosite (and indubitably other sulfur-based minerals and bacteria growing in it, or some such stuff that was also off-gassing when the murky waters were disturbed), which resulted in an incredibly nasty sludge coating on our footwear.

Me, pouting, with my bra stuffed with my socks so that they would at least be dry, other stuff shoved into my fleece, my pants rolled up to my thighs, but still wet, and looking at the partial ladder that needed to be climbed in order to proceed; with its lowest rung being the height of my shoulder...

Irony. Rusted "iron"y. That might be the worst pun I've ever made...

Clean vertical shaft in the mine, unlike the other 2 we saw, which were rendered nearly invisible due to the rusty sludge coating (see above photo for sludge example) - but this one looked eerily awesome. It also made a fantastic sound when rocks were lobbed into it. The other shafts made cool sounds when rocks were tossed their way, but also sent replies in the form of potent H2S farts, we heard the message and trucked it out of there.

The following night and day was spent in my old favourite, Red Rock Canyon SP, where a full moon and relatively wind-free evening allowed for flash-light free night hikes to check out the few constellations that shone out against the brightness of the moon, as well as catching the last few stragglers of the Leonid meteor shower.

Garbage Cat, then and now

2010-11-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

Loki, AKA Bitey Whitey, is a 2009 model. So that means he's... going to be 2 or so in the next few months. When I first acquired him, some of the names tossed around, like "X head", were based on the big grey X on his head.

X head in an amazon.com book box, spring 2009

X head in a waste basket, Kiki for scale, 2009, inspiring the name Garbage Cat

Garbage Cat in the kitchen trash, 2009, inspiring me to always close the lid, even if I'm just taking 2 steps back into the kitchen to pick up more un-compostables to dispose of.

Now Loki is as long as Kiki, though not as tall or as wide, and interestingly, he is completely white - there isn't even a single grey strand of fur on his head. Thus the continuance of the name Bitey Whitey.

the semi-irregular knitting update

2010-11-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

Recently I finished a couple of big projects and whipped up a couple of totally ridiculous and small projects. For those who are interested in knitting, enjoy.

The world's itchiest sweater, knit from this pattern in this yarn.

I had a request from a friend if I would be capable of knitting a cthulhu hat. I had no idea what that was, but found that I was, nevertheless, capable of knitting it. I also wrote up the pattern to distribute on ravelry.

I finally finished my Bergen Street cardigan, knit from Finnish lambswool - it only took forever because I had to wait for the final ball of yarn to arrive from Finland, I am sooooo happy with this sweater!

Then I had to whip up a cat hoodie for Salsa in Calgary, it's starting to get pretty cold there you know... She obviously hates it. However, in comparison with Loki (below), who was forced to try it on before I sent it, she is significantly more cooperative.

GSA 2010

2010-11-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

I got to go up to GSA in Denver this year (that's Geological Society of America, in case you didn't know), and in amongst the regular conference stuff, I went ahead and went on field trips before and after the meeting.

On the pre field trip we looked at a lot of table mountains, flat-topped and capped with basalt flows, and then adding to the contrast was a fresh layer of snow. Pretty spectacular scenery, especially in comparison with Bakersfield.

When we stopped at "Finger Rock" on the pre-trip, pretty much the last stop of the excursion, 4 filthy farm cats came out of the woodwork immediately upon the extraction of muffins from our vans. The muffin kitties mewed and purred until their muffin cravings were satisfied - they were so cute! Even though at least 2 of them (like the one above) seemed to be missing their tails.

At the conference I not only got to meet a ton of great new people, but I also got to catch up with several Queen's folks from the good ol' days. Here's me getting out the 3D glasses for a "virtual field trip" to Death Valley with my old friend the Cycling Geochemist.

Finally, after the meeting I went on day trip around Dinosaur Ridge and the Morrison Formation - two especially fun things from the day were baby stegosaurus footprints - look at that scale bar! And, seeing the Great Unconformity at Red Rocks Park, with 1.4 billion years missing at Dimitri's (that's the Dimetrodon in the photo below) feet.

a little self-pimping

2010-10-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

Well, my little book is done and available. The history behind it is this:
1. Write curriculum for "Geology of Kern County" class
2. Discover there is no textbook
3. Panic about what to do for reference material for students enrolled in class
4. Write draft of book in 3 months
5. Teach class, get student input on book
6. Procrastinate a lot
7. Receive faculty scholarship award to continue research on project
8. Procrastinate some more
9. Eventually complete manuscript by ceasing to add potential chapter topics and slashing at ever-growing list
10. Find willing local retired geologist to read through geological material just in case of drastically major errors
11. Beg mother to proof read for "lay-mans terms clarity" before sending on to copy editor at publisher
12. Pimp book on blog.

We're going to figure out how/when/where to have a party for it in Bakersfield, where it will (of course) be available. The plan for this is for those wanting books to pre-purchase so that I have a better approximation of the number I need to order. Of course the book is available here and soon will be here too. And if anyone back in Ontario for some reason wants one, I'll be there over xmas and can hand deliver!

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: The Ugly

2010-10-12T22:50:00.000-07:00

Well, then things just got worse. Upon receiving my approved work visa, I returned to Bakersfield only to find that my Powerbook Pro had been stolen, worse, my goofy collection of jewelry, and even worse, my sense of security.

Beyond the heart breaking feeling of all that went missing, and the police indicating that the likely point of entry was my bedroom, items like my dinosaur necklace are truly irreplaceable.

All I can say is: 2010, you are the worst year of my life so far! If only I wasn't so darn dependent on this arbitrary Gregorian system...

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: The Bad

2010-10-12T21:36:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, my work visa was not processed in time, and I was restricted north of the border until USCIS made a decision. In order to try and save my sanity of not being able to work and being completely powerless in the situation, I found a few things to keep me occupied besides incessant phone calls and reading mystery novels.

The animatronic dinosaur "park" at the Calgary Zoo. Look at all the faux rock formations!!! Faux red rock canyon, faux devil's postpile, faux hoodoos! Plus how cute are the dinos?

The best part of this video is the screaming children running in terror as soon as it roars.

I just thought... how do they stay in business? I asked the cashier what the story was with the name, and believe it or not, she said the original business used to sell loose tea, tea that had been overweighted, and thus discounted. Suuuuurrrrre

On Labour Day weekend I went to my first Pow Wow at Stoney, it was outrageous! Dance and drum competitions all day and night every day, First Nations People from all across North America! Unfortunately everything was moving and the lighting was poor, so this is it for photos, but I attempted a video of a drum team - until my camera crapped out on me anyway.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: The Good

2010-10-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege of accompanying Sonoma State's Burgess Shale geology class field trip as a student/chauffeur. Chauffeur/student? Ok, mostly chauffeur. Awesome hikes were had to awesome locations, and it was hard to pare down my favourite images to commemorate the experience. Let's try these:

These funny mop head plants had an even funnier name, but I can't remember it now! Something like "dancing hippies" or "hippie hair" or something. Someone who knows feel free to remind me.

I was lucky enough to find a Marella fossil at the Walcott Quarry, which as legend has it, was discovered due to the finding of a Marella fossil on the slopes below. Moment of joy!

After the near-grueling Burgess Shale hike, the next day we trooped up to the Mt Stephen shale, where a plethora of trilobites and anomalocarid shrimp mandibles can be found. Or even trilonomalocarids if you're really lucky...

Some sort of inside joke provided the troops with knickerbocken for the visit, they were enthusiastically donned for all the excursions and consequently returned in less than tip-top shape (or at least smell).

The Athabasca Glacier was also a remarkable experience, by the end of the day it was glorious and sunny, but throughout the walk up to the ice steps we went through rain and snow and near white-out conditions, all while avoiding millwells, which are thrilling but deadly.

Hawai'i. Big island. Volcanoes. Awesome.

2010-08-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

I took advantage of the opportunity to attend the National Great Teachers Seminar in Hawai'i, on the Big Island, staying in the Kilauea Military Camp IN Volcanoes National Park. Aside from all the brainstorming and teaching techniques, I spent every day roaming the crater rim (really it's a caldera) and beyond.

This is where the flow is currently traversing the land to get to the ocean. This apparently was a subdivision 2 weeks ago. Note the helicopters - that is where I wanted to be.

At the very very end of the Thurston lava tube, it was awesome. We named a new "lava cave" feature too. While lava stalactites have long been known as "lavacicles", we have now officially designated lava stalagmites as "Pele's poop". This is what happens when you find equally nerdy teachers to go on 10 mile hikes with you on your afternoon off - and they weren't even geologists!!! L-R: math, english, computer science, english, ME

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to hang onto the edge of lava cooling cracks. Hawai'i is especially fun for this due to the lack of snakes!

Looking across Kilauea-Iki "crater" - a roiling lava lake in 1959.

Yay! Steam vents in Kilauea "crater"! Right there! Right next to me! Exciting!

Himalayan raspberry. Tasty. I just love trails that I can eat my way down.

Freaking awesome flower on some sort of GINGER plant!!! Except that this ginger root smelled like musty garbage and not the ginger that is tasty. Sure had a pretty flower though.

Flower on an Ohia tree. I love these - they give the trees this all-over firey pom-pom appearance.

A jumping photo, of course, who couldn't resist in this environment???

The Big Island in Signs

2010-08-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

I was perpetually entertained by signs we saw on our ventures - too much fun!

Why not try to make back a little money after your house has been consumed in a rebellious flow of lava?

This will be a new addition to my office: "use the resources immediately available to you"

no matter how much I reach out to them, volcanoes are perpetually unfriendly - at least these weren't filled with boiling pools of acid...

the nice thing about hiking across calderas is that signs like these can often remain unnoticed until you randomly come across the the designated "trail"

behind this sign is an active vent within a crater within a caldera, even I don't need a warning!

addendum to making update

2010-07-28T16:52:00.001-07:00

For some reason I completely forgot about the baby kimono for Irish Girl's little baby, who's due any moment now. Aaaannnnnyyyyyy moment...

But this addendum allows me to post a photo that cracks me up about my slightly "off-center" cat, Loki, who is caught here inexplicably licking a T shirt (fresh out of the laundry).

"making" update

2010-07-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

Someone recently asked if I was still knitting since they hadn't seen any recent blog posts about stuff I'd made... I guess I'd been posting things on ravelry, but not the blog.

Anyway, for those who are interested... here are a few of the things I've made lately.

This is a notebook cover that I finished today, has a pocket for pens etc., and you can replace the notebook inside whenever you run out of blank pages.

These are freaking awesome socks that I finished early this spring. I love this pattern.

This is a vest that I got a little carried away knitting while listening to Paul Stamets' mushroom talk, consequently it ended up being extremely long...

And finally, this is my soon-to-be finished cardigan made from lambswool from Finland. All that's left is half of the button band, but I am awaiting one more ball of yarn from Finland in order to accomplish this.

Drunk Bug

2010-07-23T15:43:00.001-07:00

Well, the story isn't very good, but the bug kept me occupied for an extended period of time one morning, and this is what happened.

J had several people over for dinner, and left pretty much one sole item out on the deck area. A small plastic cup with a small quantity of warmish wine in it.

In the morning, I saw a substantial (Bermuda cockroach size, only without the big wide cockroach top - it looked kindof like what I would imagine a naked cockroach to look like I guess) bug inside the cup. The bug, now established as a drunk, naked and clearly disoriented cockroach, did not look particularly comfortable in the cup. Well, I'm sure that many have awoken disoriented, still drunk, and possibly even naked, in an unknown locale...

Anyway, back to the bug. We thought we'd help it out by tipping the cup over so that the bug could walk (stagger) out to freedom. After an inordinately long period of time the bug made its way to the edge of the cup and started to lick (not sure if bugs CAN lick... but this is what it looked like) each and every leg and antennae, slowly and deliberately, but still inside the cup. Whenever a soft breeze blew by (frequently) the cup rolled around in circles and the bug would cling on until it stopped, then continue the licking. I was figuring that the bug was drying itself off from the overnight wine bath.

Eventually the bug made it to the outside of the cup, but it did not actually get off the cup, instead it perched on the lip and obsessively began "licking" its right antenna. Then a breeze would blow and the cup would roll around - on top of - the bug, which kept on hanging on (even though now it was outside the cup and getting onto the deck would have been very easy and convenient).

This went on. And on. Finally the bug lost its grip on the cup and I took it away, but even so, the bug kept on licking that one antenna... weird.

Bug. Continuing to lick? its right antenna.

And now for something completely different

2010-07-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

A while ago I sent a square I made out of one of my derby T shirts (the one where my name was spelled wrong) to contribute to the Roller Derby Quilt project. My original submission is here, and you can see it sewn into the quilt (under a cat) here.

What's totally cool, is that this project is actually a collaborative art project for Dreadnaught's thesis somewhere in Boston! Even more awesome that our team is a part of it, and that I got an invite to the thesis exhibition... not that I can make it, but either way, the thought is what counts!

Further - she's going to try and self-publish this quilt project as a book, so if you feel like supporting her, I bet she'd really appreciate it.

Lassen 2010

2010-07-22T12:09:00.000-07:00

When I first came to Bakersfield, I made it a sort-of goal to hike around all the places that I had lab assignments for my physical geology class. One of the less accessible, but more spectacular (in my opinion), locations on the list was Lassen Park - including: Bathtub Lake, Mt Lassen, Prospect Peak, Cinder Cone and the Fantastic Lava Beds. On my 2008 visit, I got around some of these places and a whole lot of others. This year, I was getting up Prospect Peak (a shield volcano), thus completing the circuit of the 3 different types of volcanoes one can hike up in the park.

Unfortunately, I somehow forgot about this year's unbelievable (but welcome) quantity of precipitation, and was not expecting my route through the park to be under 15-30 feet of snow. This caused some detours, WAY more driving, but did not hinder the Prospect Peak plan.

I first went to Warner Valley, a not-so-easily-accessible part of this already not accessible park, and hiked around Devil's Kitchen and Boiling Springs Lake.

The view of Mt. Lassen from Boiling Springs Lake.

A blond bear cub on my hike to Devil's Kitchen, this was a quick snap as I promptly kept walking (trotting) along the trail... only truly moronic idiots linger by bear cubs.

North of Lassen Park is Burney Falls State Park, so on my detour I went up to see the falls. The falls are pretty cool because there's a cap layer of volcanic rock on top, which the river flows over, but the main aquifer rock (vesicular basalt) is below the recent volcanic flow, and so loads of spring water from the perched water table gush out the wall of the waterfall too.

Then I went up Soldier Mountain to have a look at the surrounding area. Mt Shasta looked back at me tauntingly, and I could almost hear on the wind "haha you didn't summit me". Curse you Mt. Shasta. I'll be back. Just you wait.

And finally, on my last day, in a minor thunderstorm, I hiked up Prospect Peak.

The problem with Prospect Peak as a hike is that it is basically a forest on top of the shield volcano. So you're in dense trees hiking straight uphill for 3 or so miles with no reprieve OR VIEW until you actually get to the top. Once at the top you can see Mt. Lassen (behind me), Mt Shasta, and all other wonderful things - like in my case: giant thunderheads, lightening... Of course since I was also ascending in the high humidity of a storm, the atmospheric composition was something like 80% mosquitoes. Arrrgh. Well, the ONLY plus of the mosquitoes was that it prevented me from stopping and resting at all on the hike up, and pushing myself to hike at top speed (thank goodness I decided to bring my camelback this time), and reached the summit half an hour sooner than expected.

Crocuta crocuta

2010-07-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

For the last four summers now, I've made a pilgrimage up to Plumas National Forest in the northern Sierra Nevada, near Janesville. The place is called "Crocuta" after the funny sounding name of the spotted hyena, named over 40 years ago, even before the cabin below was built by my friend J.

Late last summer J built a second outhouse to accommodate some 30 people camped in and around his meadow.

I thought the ladies' room was a little plain, so during this year's visit I decided to begin decorating it a little. I found this mosaic-y hanging at the Blackhawk Solar Cookoff, which was an awesome hippie festival in Taylorsville nearby.

I also ripped this out of a magazine because it made me laugh.

Crocuta is rife with your standard cute forest critters. This golden mantle was being a little odd on the deck I thought... but cute, and so I had to take a picture.

Behind the cabin is the "feeding rock", which is where leftovers that just didn't make it go, and where they are almost immediately gobbled up by squirrels, chipmunks, beldings, golden mantles, scrub jays... you name it. I love the body position on this little guy too!

A new discovery this summer was a tree fungus growing high up on Lodgepole - I know very little about fungi, but thanks to my experience at the LA Mushroom Fair, I thought that maybe, just maybe, this might be an Agarikon?

Deep in the wilds of backcountry driving Plumas National Forest we came to the "rose quartz mine" (it's not a mine) - this photo shows the colour best, it was quite remarkable. If only we had some dynamite!

Finally, J needed a haircut, and digging around the bathhouse, found a little something from 1938:

Coupled with these:

They were quite stiff, and I figured they needed a good cleaning, so I took them apart, and I'm pretty sure that a large part of the issue was the LIVE spider and FULL nest that existed on the interior. The spider was less than pleased to be extracted with my careful toothpick operation, but I didn't kill it (or its future offspring), so it should be happy enough...

Year of the (Wood) Rat

2010-07-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

Among all the cute and furry woodland critters we see every year up at Crocuta, are the largely nocturnal and highly destructive woodrat. They're unbelievably cute!

However, this one (above) consumed an entire futon. So... well, he had to go. In fact, nearly every day of the two weeks I was up there in the northern Sierra Nevada, one of these (not-so) little guys was caught. Mostly they were caught in these "have a heart" traps and then released somewhere slightly more wildernessy than the cabins.

However, not all the rats were so lucky. Mikey (above) is a notorious rat hunter, believe it or not... this old, small, but fiesty, rat terrier lives up to his name, and one evening (during dinner of course) he came trotting by and off into the forest with a rat the size of his head in his mouth...

We caught this little guy, clearly in his awkward pre-teens, and set about releasing him where we had sent his (presumably) mama the day before. We were sure he wanted to be free, but clearly he was hesitant about life outside the bars (see video below). Believe it or not, these silly creatures actually go for CELERY as bait!

sneak peak

2010-06-29T10:58:00.001-07:00

My Jeep has a new "geo-mobile" decal that I drew up several months ago, ordered, and even put on the back window... but only now actually took a photo of it. I'm quite pleased, too bad its location in the carport means that the photo is dominated by reflections of the apartments...

Fresh and ready for the next expedition, I cleaned, waxed & buffed my boots and gave them sexy new red laces! I'm stupidly excited about this, obviously.

Finally, the pièce-de-résistance, coming soon to Bakersfield College and amazon.com! I mailed in my contract and submitted the manuscript, it should be available this fall. Pre-order your autographed copy now... just kidding!

The Wilderness Was Calling...

2010-06-28T14:59:00.000-07:00

For a much needed break, at least for me (but probably for all of us), BEG came for a visit and we went on a camping/hiking/backpacking expedition with the Fire Chief for a week in Kings Canyon National Park.

For some reason the Fire Chief and I always seemed to be matching...

After being warned about "winter conditions" persisting in most of the Park, we decided to do half of the Rae Lakes Loop, choosing to head into the back country via Mist Falls and Paradise Valley. Indeed water levels were high, making "stream" fording extra scary and challenging. Mist Falls was misty as usual, and we made our first camp at Lower Paradise Valley.

Our camp site was lovely, and a herd of deer came to hang out (stalk) for quite some time. So much time, in fact, that they were there always. We later learned that the deer like to eat your socks at night if you leave them out to dry after a full day of hiking. Apparently they like the salt. We put our socks away.

Who me? I'm not looking for anything... you don't happen to have any tasty socks by any chance, do you?

On the second day of our adventure we were en route to Woods Creek Crossing for camp, and were passed by an actual mule train. The pack leader was not particularly friendly, and later, on our return, we found the trail was loaded with mule train poop.

Perhaps it was because the water level was unusually high this year after we finally had some decent winter snow pack, but I am still not entirely sure what idiot would try to head out to the falls on this rock?

A really gorgeous valley that we strolled through after quite an extended climb up and up and up (there was more up to come).

Looking towards more up from the valley, we were soon to encounter a grouse on the trail. I tried to convince it that it wanted to trot over into our campfire later that night to provide us a delicious meal, but it just stared at me with beady eyes and never came.

Our camp at Woods Creek was quite spectacular, and an interesting thing happened up there. After locking our food "safely" in the bear locker, I went back to get my toothbrush and a mouse came running out after getting caught in the beam of my headlight. Sure enough we found that the sneaky little bastard had eaten through the bags of food that we had not put back into the bear-canister, which we were required to carry with us. This resulted in the re-naming of the bear-canister as the mouse-canister, stuffing our food in that, then putting it back into the bear locker so as not to loose our breakfast...

My favourite rock on the trek down from Mist Falls, with a fabulous U-shaped valley in the background. This was our fourth day, at the beginning of which we were greeted by BEG's new sweater having been partially consumed during the night by a marmot, and at the end of which we successfully had backpacked 30 miles. Beers and a shower were in order.

The next day, to keep things light, we decided on a 10 mile day trip on the Redwood Mountain Loop, which is actually a combination of trails from the Redwood Saddle trailhead.

As expected, we found enormous red-barked giant Sequoia trees, which never cease to amaze me.

Another remarkable fact is that the size of a Sequoia pine cone is maybe only 2 or 2.5 inches long, while a Sugar Pine cone is about a FOOT long!!! We thought it would be funny to stick a full size Sugar Pine cone in this little sapling...

Among the trees other interesting plants were also encountered. This "flower-mushroom" looking thing is a Snow Plant, which is a decomposer like a mushroom, but apparently is considered part of the blueberry family???

I have no idea what this pretty flower is, but I thought it, and the beetle on it, were a good target for a photo.

Me + Derby = Silly

2010-06-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

On this occasion, I had to extend my reign of silly just a little more. Luckily we won 102-25, so silly didn't mean "foolish".

From top to bottom: helmet decorated with sharpie marker (you've probably seen this before), new shirt (for when I play for the "Rough Cuts" rather than the "Diamonds") reads "Canadian Bacon", anatomy panties (say that 3 times fast!), alpaca socks (ok, this was just by chance as I grabbed socks on my way running out the door and didn't know they were the ones with alpacas on them until I put them on right before playing...), and Canada Flags hot glued onto my skates.

Peppermint Falls

2010-06-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went on a casual day excursion with a friend to Peppermint Falls in Sequoia National Forest up in the Sierra Nevada. The weather was perfect, the falls were fabulous: the exfoliating granitic domes really made the backdrop spectacular. We had intended on a little dip/swim in the pools at the bottom, but it was pretty clear that this year's snow pack turned those little pools into turbulent meat grinders. Not to mention that the water was ice cold. Instead our back up plan of reading worked out wonderfully, and we got a solid two hours of recreational reading in with the roaring of water in the background. Not a soul was where we were, not even a squirrel or a marmot... I guess that's what you get for a Tuesday!

Field Trip Class 2010: Adventures in Eastern-Central California's Geology

2010-06-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

The "Pink Postpile" - Devil's Postpile was inaccessible due to snow, so we found this in the Fish Slough Volcanic Tablelands instead. It was fantastic!

The group at the newly named "Pink Postpile".

Wheel changes were a multi-time-a-day occurrence: the pit crew at work.

Bodie Ghost Town.

The wooden ones I get, but the iron? Can you even imagine? (Bodie)

I'm not sure what this magical powder for men is. (Bodie)

When in Bodie, gotta get in a stamp mill.

An impressive balancing erratic at June Lake. Naturally this calls for tagging - not by our group of course.

Paper cranes at Manzanar cemetary.

Typical menu at Manzanar Internment Camp. The thing that puzzles me is the 4oz of curry powder available.

Heart-shaped arch at Alabama Hills, inclement weather in background.

Silly attempt at towing by hand... totally worth it for entertainment value.

Inclement weather + slow driver + two wheel drive van = getting stuck in a ridiculously small snow pile. *sigh*

Ascending the 680ft high Eureka Dunes, they too "sing", and are the highest in California and rivaling for the highest in the USA.

Teamwork and a little creativity means that anyone can go anywhere. Even at 9500ft.

The group at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest - trees over 4000 years old!

The Chaflant Group Petroglyphs (Fish Slough area), some of the largest (5ft diameter) petroglyphs around.

Two little brine shrimp from Mono Lake.

The group at the scenic vista overlooking Mono Lake.

Gotta love "xing" signs. (Gull Lake)

Why is this whole sign in quotes? (Mammoth Geothermal)

Foxy Brown and Troy Pliocene on the Eureka Dunes. These two were trip mascots; unfortunately Foxy Brown escaped at the ammonite site in Union Wash and was never seen again.

It's amazing how many people go in anyway, and end up receiving the $175 ticket. (Hot Creek Geologic Area)

And of course several other places were visited too - but these constitute my favourite images of the trip.

Meganeura? Megaproblem.

2010-05-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

In lieu of the norm (heinous exam answers) for this time of year, I would like to share with you my final research assignment that I did for my Historical Geology class.

Historical Geology: Megafauna

The term “megafauna” translates to “giant animals”, of which (even excluding dinosaurs) there has been an incredible variety in the geological past. For this assignment you are to create a profile on one of the extinct megafauna listed below. You will have to sign up for your megafauna of choice, as there is a limit of 7 spots available for each animal.

mastodon
woolly mammoth
Megatherium (cousin to the giant sloth)
Titanis walleri (giant bird)
Dragonfly of the Carboniferous
Jaekelopterus (giant lobster-like eurypterid)
Dunkleosteus (giant armored fish)
Liopleurodon (sea reptile of “Charlie the Unicorn” fame)
C. megalodon (the big guy from Sharktooth Hill)
Diprotodon (largest marsupial that ever lived)
giant ground sloth
woolly rhinoceros
Indricotherium transouralicum (largest mammal to ever walk on land)

Please feel free to get very creative for this assignment, a rough guide to writing profiles is available here. For another approach, check out TMZ for a tabloid approach on profiles.

The BC library has research materials on megafauna; additionally Natural History museums should have lots of information to guide you (i.e. Buena Vista Museum, La Brea, etc.)

Your profile should be 500-1000 words, typed (12 point font, 1.5 spacing), and will be graded using the following criteria:

Content (depth of research, references are cited)
Creativity (writing/presentation draws the reader in)
Clarity (writing is clear, logical, flows, and is free of errors)

This assignment is due by April 29^th. You may turn it in earlier, but late assignments will not be accepted.

Additional advice from my partner in Elvis exploration; English professor extraordinaire and former journalist: “Since this is a fun assignment, you should ask your students to interview extinct megafauna as if the students are reporters from some tabloid journalism outfit, such as TMZ, E, or The National Enquirer. Their mission: Find out the REAL reason this particular animal went extinct. As with any profile, they should do a background check on their subject first to learn about the animal's life and death. Usually a profile has these elements:

1) A creative beginning or feature lead (first paragraph). This can be an anecdote told by the animal, the reporter capturing a moment of description during the interview, or what I call the human hook: a cryptic beginning that makes the reader hunger for more.

2) A physical description of the subject interviewed. Ideally a profile might involve hanging out with an individual at work and at home with the kids.

3) Background on the subject explaining what's happened up to now.

4) Great quotes. (These might reveal The Untold Story of the creature's demise.)

In the case of tabloid journalism, it also could include rumors, scandal, and a scene of chasing a Giant Sloth down the street with a camera crew from "Extra" or "Entertainment Tonight" simply because the sloth refuses to be interviewed. (This no doubt would prove the animal was guilty of causing its own demise.)”

Though it wasn't a "typical" profile, but rather a conspiracy-theorist's guide, this particular project really needs to be shared with the world. Enjoy! (I know, I never share the work of A students, but I got his permission first too, which is also a first)

Wine and Buddhists on a Sunday

2010-05-09T18:35:00.000-07:00

In prospecting for how to spice up my Geology of Kern County (and wine) community class for the fall, I decided to add the "and wine" component. This came easily after being introduced to the wine of Sagebrush Annie's and the location of Triassic Legacy. Not having tasted any Triassic Legacy wines, and knowing that they only opened in December of 2009, it was imperative that I take a pre-field-trip field trip. That occurred today.

The place is charming and owned by a charming man, a retired geologist, and a conservationist. These three owners are in fact one person who decided to save a gorgeous piece of the Cummings Valley from strip malls by buying it and planting wine grapes. I was impressed before I even tasted the wine. The grapes used currently are grown in Paso Robles because their grape vines are still a wee bit young (and are being ravaged by gophers and blackbirds), but I hope they pull through and have a successful first harvest this fall. They are growing Zinfandel, Syrah and Viognier grapes, and I am thoroughly impressed with the creatively delicious Syrah-Viognier blend. So, if you're in the Tehachapi neighbourhood, you should definitely pop in for a taste, and tell Chuck & Sherry that I sent you!

After wine, a lemongrassy (read: yummy) lunch at Blue Ginger was consumed and followed up by a jaunt to find the mysterious Mountain Spirit Center; a Korean Buddhist retreat of some sort. Once it was found, there was nothing by silence and wind - it must have been prayer time or something. Perhaps "or something" means "poke around and take photos of stuff with your cell phone". Well, that's what I took it to mean anyway.

the sign for the road in... almost as cute as the map on their nearly indecipherable website

more signage...

apparently Buddha's birthday is coming up on the 16th... who knew?

peace bell - I'm interpreting based on their website where they list "peace bell" as a project - though it suddenly occurs to me that a bell of that size might not be all that peaceful

mural - there were lots, but I figured I'd just show this one

Paleo-trippin'

2010-04-27T21:40:00.000-07:00

So I took a few students to tag along on SSU's semi-annual PaleoPalooza field trip (combined with other schools as well). Kiki and Loki made valiant efforts to come along too, but the trip started without them and with a remarkably horrid freak April blizzard en route to Nevada...

the view out the window from my Jeep-hammock on morning #1

After we awoke to a snow dump and packed up wet gear and pushed and pulled the vans out of the wet sandy snowy campsite, we moseyed on to see some Ichthyosaur action in Berlin-Ichthyosaur state park, also coated in snow.

The next day we ventured off to find some Redlichid trilobites, but that too was covered in snow. Amazingly, one of the SSU girls found this awesome specimen.

Then a few of us took a break from geology and took a romp through an abandoned brothel, check out the snazzy wallpaper!

After some snooping we continued on to investigate some archaeocyathid reefs, which took us into the next day and up Mt Dunphy (near Goldpoint), where some oddly angled stromatolites can be found.

On our final day, the weather had cleared spectacularly and we hit the fossil jackpot with some pretty fabulous ammonites.

Bridge

2010-04-11T21:42:00.001-07:00

Extreme Chef decided that in order to prevent the onset of senility, we needed to learn how to play Bridge. Contract Bridge. One of these sessions occurred during the early afternoon, so I suggested that we do it with tea and scones and Devonshire cream. I volunteered to make the scones.

For some reason, our Devonshire cream source took it upon themselves to lemon and sugar up the cream, so the effect wasn't quite as authentic as we were going for, even considering the scones were fat little dinosaurs.

In completely unrelated business, except the photo of them was also on my phone, I received some delightful wildflowers from a student last week. So pretty!!! Naturally I did not have a vase to put them in, so I went with the tiki head mug instead. Thanks KM!

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 5

2010-04-11T11:46:00.001-07:00

The rest of the time, which was not much at all, was spent relaxing and making plans in Bakersfield and then visiting the Getty Center in LA.

Kiki caught in the act of being a "garbage cat" - what is he licking???

Loki "helps" us plan our day at the coast

I gave a (swimming) tour of Bakersfield's "mighty" Kern River, and the delightful scenery we have in the area by the bike path. More details in the video below...

the best place to eat in Bakersfield is Mama Roomba, it's fabulous, so we ate there

finally, last tour before the airport: the Hollywood sign

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 4

2010-04-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

To contrast the desert, we then ventured to the Central Coast for a little wine tasting and some Pacific Ocean.

Tobin James started the day off right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) with 18 tastes... GAH!

after more than enough wine, we made our way to Cambria and had a delicious dinner concocted from all things local, including, apparently, flowers

and finally made it to the beach - but it was a very gloomy, foggy, overcast day... so I guess these photos look somewhat ominous

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 3

2010-04-11T11:06:00.001-07:00

Death Valley - the lowest point in North America greeted us with some impressive wind; on the order of 50 mph (we were told it was closer to 100 mph up on the racetrack!!!) - as a result of this, the entire basin was pretty much a sandstorm when we arrived. We couldn't even SEE badwater, it was just a cloud of brown. So, we investigated the visitor center for a bit and grabbed a beer and pizza at the Furnace Creek Saloon before driving up into the Panamints to meet up with my Rockbuddy who'd saved us a camp site up at Wildrose - still windy, but no sand!

before entering Death Valley we stopped at Death Valley Junction to wash the sand out of my retinas, as I could no longer see (and consequently drive) by that point

the sand storm was still raging once we entered the park - I had to push the Jeep door open on my side with both feet!!!

the next morning at Wildrose camp - note the snow behind us, it was in fact pretty chilly up there

thankfully the sandstorm had quit (though the wind hadn't) so we were able to do a few hikes while we were there - I love the contrast of the highs and lows in Death Valley - snow on the mountains, 100% evaporation leaving behind salt in the basin

behind blown around by the wind at Badwater Basin

hike 2 - at the Natural Bridge - gave us some spectacular views back down into the valley

then we investigated Salt Creek for the pupfish that live in this most extreme of environments - not only a hot salty creek, but also a really bitc*y park volunteer, poor fishies!

then finally, the absolute best (and our final hike of the day), was Mosaic Canyon (any guesses as to why it is called that?) - it was amazing!!!

great views, great rocks, really astounding part of the park that I'd never even heard of before

the contrast of the breccia on beautifully polished smooth banded marble, was really outstanding - the Romans would have wanted this marble for sure

this 360 gives a good solid view of: 1. the wind, 2. the sandstorm in the valley, 3. the nasty thunderstorm we were driving rapidly away from, and 4. the sunny spot on the horizon we were aiming for to avoid flash floods

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 2

2010-04-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

After the Hoover Dam, we stayed at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. For me, the best part of the Vegas experience was stumbling across the "neon sign boneyard" - soon to become the neon sign museum. At the time of our visit, it was a couple of fixed up signs on Fremont St. with plaques and a massive pile o' signs in a parking lot in North Las Vegas.

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 1

2010-04-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Hoover Dam: We got a sweet tour of the Hoover Dam through tunnels from the original 1931 excavation, and this was all thanks to us going as a educational group - the BC Engineers' Club - our guide, Bill, was hilarious and the whole adventure left me feeling very small!

looking down nearly 600 feet to the water level

peering out of a 9 ft "window" (ventilation shaft) about 300 ft up from the water

the mandatory group shot from just about water level, looking up almost 550 ft

standing on the border... over the Colorado river

anyone need any cotton?

2010-03-13T13:55:00.000-08:00

A while back, something like more than 2 years ago, I thought I'd give hand-spinning a try, using a drop spindle. My friend the Extreme Chef, who works for the USDA, acquired for me a substantial amount of fresh and free cotton to give this a try with. I used a small amount, spun successfully, but still had a large clear trash bag full of it up in my upstairs closet. I left it there, safely encased in the clear trash bag... Nearly a year ago I acquired Loki, aka Bitey Whitey, and during that time he's been slowly and steadily destroying the bag in the closet. Finally, this morning, I committed to extracting the cotton explosion from my closet in order to be able to retrieve important things, like my camping gear for example, but I am now faced with an enormous pile and nothing resembling a bag to fit it in...

Say, do you notice anything NOT cottony in that pile?

"Mailable Monday" (TM) on Sunday

2010-03-07T10:10:00.000-08:00

The title is being borrowed just this once from the originator of Mailable Mondays (TM) - as most of the contents of the envelope were being sent for said feature, and were somehow lost...

"Insufficient address" it tells me. Well, I tell you, when I mailed this there was a complete envelope, including the postal code and country.

"we care" they say. Oh you do, do you? Might I ask then why you had your postal wolves devour 1/4 of my envelope and consequently lose half the contents then?

fossils

2010-03-07T09:53:00.001-08:00

What's new in 2010 at Bakersfield College? Fossils! It started with a grant that we wrote to build a display for Sharktooth Hill, a Natural National Landmark that is owned by the school (little known fact). We have the main display done, below, and are now working on a map that will reside on the slanted portion inside the cabinet and informational fliers that will reside in the trays at the front.

The other thing that is fossil-related and new (is that an oxymoron?) is the Historical Geology class that I am teaching. It only took a year to get the curriculum proposed, submitted, approved, approved for General Education, approved for transfer and articulated with the local university. With that done, it got on the schedule, and then I had to actually start compiling it... Anyway, yesterday was the first official field trip for the class, and I took the opportunity to take students out to the "Trilobite Wilderness" south of the Mojave Desert National Preserve. There one mostly finds cephalons (heads) of Olenellus mojavensis (aka: Bristolia mohavensis), the species of Cambrian (about 530 million years old) trilobite that is named for this "type locality". But, yesterday, a couple of sharp-eyed students found perfectly complete specimens (the photo below) and several more found almost complete bodies as well. No one left without at least a cephalon. I was quite astounded actually!

Hmmm, now that I look at this photo, I think they might be Olenellus clarki rather than mojavensis. Not sure. Not a paleontologist...

My Body is a Science Experiment

2010-02-22T09:35:00.000-08:00

Well, I fell. Stupidly. And when I landed, on my left knee, I felt a deafening "squish"... sqshlktsht

I thought... that can't be good. But oddly, it didn't hurt - it just felt incredibly weird. And then a purple grapefruit grew out of my knee. Obviously I iced it, but here's what happened: I ruptured my subcutaneous infrapatellar bursa. The little fluid sac beneath my knee cap - all these sacs hang around in your joints to prevent friction between bones and ligaments and such, and also to protect the joint from external forces (like landing hard on one's knee) - sort of like an air bag - only with fluid instead of air.

So basically, when my knee grew a grapefruit, this was the air bag going off.

The cool thing is how these bursae heal themselves, and before too long all the fluid will go back into the healed sac and my knee will be good as new again! Hoorah! Meanwhile, there's still some swelling and some significant bruising (I think it's funny that's it's a doughnut shaped bruise), I didn't take a photo of the grapefruit, or even the navel orange that followed the next day after I taped an icebag to it for the night. Once the left knee bulge has become a dent again like the right knee - all will be well again! Aren't bursae neat?

just read it

2010-02-21T09:09:00.000-08:00

Mushroom Fest

2010-02-15T08:26:00.000-08:00

I had grand plans for PaleoPalooza in Philadelphia for this long weekend, but unfortunately the armageddonesque snow in the northeast demolished those plans. As a substitute for adventure, I went to the LA Mushroom Fair with Extreme Chef, particularly because the keynote speaker was giving a lecture titled "how mushrooms can help save the world". It was fantastic - weather was warm, I reminisced about the days in England collecting shaggy ink caps from near the pool (I may be clumping memories together, but that's the association in my head for some reason), and the lecture was highly entertaining, interesting and informative. The man, Paul Stamets, is a speaker and a half. If you have the opportunity to listen to him, it'll be worth your while.

I finished the sweater I started over a year ago, knit with my Rock Buddy's mom's vintage red wool. It was too warm to wear it, but here is evidence of it being finished!

These peahens were for some reason scratching themselves little "wells" in the dirt to hang out in. I thought it was a weird sort of nesting thing, but there were no eggs... so I have no idea what was up with that.

This plant is called "fire sticks" how great is that?

A blewit from the morning mushroom "foray". Note the blue-purple stem (I think it's called a stipe actually, not a stem).

Some other kind of mushroom some lady found. It has a nice ring around it - possibly called an "annulum" (I took notes at the very beginning, then got completely distracted by digging around...)

This is the mushroom I took notes on, but it seems inappropriate to give its genus and species when I have virtually nothing to offer on the other photos. So let's just focus on the white fluffy stuff at it's "butt" (that's what Paul Stamets calls it) - mycelium - which is the matter of mushrooms and is pretty darn neat if I do say so myself.

The mushroom foray leader, Florence Nishida, was brilliant. Among her wealth of mushroom knowledge that she shared with us, she mentioned that some mushrooms will break down just about anything. This reminded me of the curious mushroom colony that seems to have taken over the old cat tree I inherited from a neighbour a few years ago that has been sitting on my patio (since I thought it was too catty to allow indoors). Well, now it's both catty and mushroomy, and I really really really have to dispose of it.

Finally, we ended our day with a lovely Chinese New Year dinner in Pasadena, during which I drank "dried longan beverage", which tasted like maple syrup, which was FABULOUS!

manipulating the magnetic pole??? nice!!!

2010-01-12T21:32:00.000-08:00

Well, a new semester begins, and with it comes a brand new challenge: cleaning up the lab room of the oddities that it has acquired over the last 50 years in order to create a semblance of order and make room for students, new lab materials, etc.

Today one of my faithful geo student helpers found this Life Magazine article from 1952 about the moving rocks in Death Valley. Pay attention to the middle column, it's brilliant.

Meanwhile the 2nd page of the article was also pretty entertaining, but admittedly the rock tied down with a peg and string was nothing to the high-waist tighty-whitey themed ad next to it.

The pages were torn and taped and I had to creatively scan it in bits and pieces, but hopefully all the goodness comes through!!!

A New Semester Begins

2010-01-11T09:38:00.000-08:00

Part of what we have to do at work is assess "SLOs" (student learning outcomes) every semester. I was a little slow in bothering to tally my pre and post semester assessment quizzes, and literally just got around to it now when I remembered that I had to create a new set for my new class starting next week...

Anyway, see if you can find what's wrong with this picture...

First Ski of the Season

2009-12-18T05:30:00.001-08:00

Monday brought a few friends and I to Alta Sierra, about an hour and a half drive from Bakersfield, for some cross country skiing after the weekend had brought some 12 inches of snow to the area.

I finally got to try out the gear that I had bought at the end of last season and was extremely pleased with the results. Especially the boots - worth every penny!

When we took a little break for lunch in a wide open area, the sticky sunny snow was calling for a snowman. It was a little too easy to roll the large balls of snow, and I destroyed the body with an extra large head on the first try... we did finish him successfully, and even with "hair"!

I'm still a little awe struck that this lies literally in my backyard and up until last year, I had absolutely no idea.

2009-12-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

Does anyone see anything wrong with this? Something just seems so inefficient...

an accomplishment... sort of?

2009-12-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that since my arrival to California, nearly 5 years ago, I've been pressing for our school to "go solar" - I mean, of 365 days a year we get maybe 3 with rain and/or clouds. It was (and still is) astounding to me that every building here is not equipped with rooftop photovoltaic cells. It's more astounding that it's not in the code for all NEW buildings being constructed.

Well, despite my constant suggestions (primarily being PV carport installation in the parking lots or on building roofs or both) at various campus-wide meetings, which tended to generate grumbles of annoyance from the administration, I kept on pushing. At one point I was told that I needed to cease all outside inquiries because I had somehow single-handedly pissed off PG&E (which is Pacific Gas & Electric) - an entire company - an entire company who provides rebates for PV installations. I never quite understood this, but under threat of ruining my green dream, I stopped.

Later I was asked to serve on the "Facilities Planning Subcommittee" and also the "Action 2012 Facilities Team" to head up the "green" division. I mostly asked what the hell the point was, since all my efforts had so far culminated to a loud SHUT UP NATALIE from above. But, I guess I also saw those committees as an invitation to keep on being the squeaky wheel. Last year I invited a student to work with me on a project proposal: car port style PV installation as a pool shade. We presented this, and solar security lighting, to the President. At that time, he stated that "a plan is being conceived for PV carports". I was all of excited, angry and confused.

Over the past 4 years I had been told the following: 1) solar carport over the parking lots is way too big of a project, think smaller (hence the pool shade), 2) PV installations are too expensive (hence the 3rd party purchase agreement I had proposed and also... oh, the PG&E rebates), and 3) in our community, which is driven by the oil & gas industry, there's no way a PV installation would be accepted (thus, I suggested Chevron or someone being the 3rd party purchaser so that they can appear to be "greener").

Now, in my 5th year here, we received the following announcement via e-mail yesterday:

Bakersfield College invites our neighbors to learn more about an exciting new project

Beginning in Summer 2010,

Bakersfield College will commence construction on a Photovoltaic (solar panel) field, to be located above the College’s northeast parking lot at Panorama Drive and Mt. Vernon Avenue

Please join us for a presentation, information and a question and answer period.

December 7, 2009

6:30 p.m.

Bakersfield College Fireside Room (Campus Center)

I have absolutely nothing to do with this (on paper). In fact, I am currently in stages of begging to be included in this project - to observe the installation, to be able to use this as an educational tool. This plan, this "new" plan, has been entirely conceived by District Administration...