Wow, lots of questions!  That's cool.  Thanks, everyone!  As it is, I'm splitting it up into several different posts.  This one will be more general questions and the next will be more science related questions.  Then I will write a post about why I became a geologist. 

Have you ever been abroad? Where? (from Chloe)
I have been abroad.  I've been to England for a class in college.  At my school, everyone had to take a senior seminar.  Basically a culminating course usually having to do with some sort of religious aspect.  I decided to take my senior seminar abroad.  It was called "The Sacred and the Profane" and focused on the relationship between traditional English church and folk music.  We went to London, Cambridge, Stratford, Dover...  (I'm totally forgetting all the places we went) I even got a semi-private tour of some Napoleonic caves/forts built into the Dover cliffs.  All of it was amazing, but my absolute favorite place we went was Cambridge.  I loved the college town atmosphere, the farmers market, the buildings, the fact that everyone rode bikes (except for the presence and subsequent arrest of a guy who went around stabbing people on bikes while we were there).  It was the coolest place.  If I were to go back to anywhere in England, it would be there.

in the tunnels

Cambridge market

Why do you blog?
I started keeping a blog in college, as a way to just release my emotions or whatever out into the world.  I liked writing and it seemed like a good outlet for me.  Blogging wasn't really social back then.  It was more just writing and putting it out there.  Then, I got LJ to communicate with a few college friends and kept that through grad school.  It wasn't until I moved onto wordpress that I actively started reading other blogs and writing in mine more regularly.  Now, I blog because it's fun and I like reading about what other people have to say on various topics.  It's entertaining. 

What is your favorite hobby?
Ummm... I'd have to say blogging.  It's the only thing I do on a regular enough basis.  Although I also enjoy scrapbooking and yoga, and I'd do a lot more kayaking and rappelling if I had the time/water/money. 



Tell us about one of your happiest memories/moments.
Some of my happiest memories are of Las Vegas.  My field trip to California, a boat trip on my 24th birthday, Cinco de Mayo... I could go on forever on how much I love and adore Vegas.  But I think my happiest, proudest moment was the day of my thesis defense when everything I'd worked for just came together perfectly and I was finally able to share it.  And afterward, when my advisor told me I gave a "kickass" presentation.  I was so proud of myself to have accomplished something so big.  The day I handed in the final copy of my thesis and walked away with a Master's Degree was pretty great too.



What are your plans for the next 5 years? (from Chloe) What do you hope for in the next ten years? (from Rachel)
Well, there are some things that I want to do within the next 5-10 years.  I want to go back to school to get a PhD so that I can fulfill my ultimate goal of having a research position.  I want to collect data, and work in a lab and do analyses and write papers and go to scientific meetings.  I'm currently tossing around ideas of what I'd want to get my doctorate in.  I've thought about paleontology/paleoclimate, or just climate studies in general.  I think it would be fun to work in a museum for a while.  Or in a national research lab.  However, I'm not sure this will ever happen since I have this full time job now and I'm not exactly in a position to leave it, and that bums me out a little.

Favorite movie? (From Wildology)
Oh, I can't just pick one favorite movie.  So here are my top five as per Facebook.
Little Miss Sunshine - makes me laugh/cry every time
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson, Vegas, and Johnny Depp... what else could I possibly want?
Frequency - it's just cool
Amelie - made me want to learn French
Finding Nemo - I like the ocean 

1 embarrassing/funny moment/memory?
Ok, this one is kinda bad... So, one day in high school I was walking into the building and the girl who drove my carpool told me I had blood stains on the back of my pants.  I didn't really know what else to do except untuck my shirt to cover it up. (We had a dress code that required us to tuck our shirts in) I got away with it for my first class, but while I was waiting in the hall to get into my second class, the assistant principal noticed and asked me why my shirt wasn't tucked in.  So I'm in his office, explaining to him that the reason I'm not following dress code is because I got my period and it's leaking so I wanted to cover it up.  Suuuuper awkward.  All he could say was "ummmm.... ok, well don't do it again..." and send me on my way.  I don't think I got in trouble after that.  Even when I was late for school three times and walked around without a hall pass.  I was such a rebel.
 
Miracle Whip or Mayo?
Hmmmmm...  they're both pretty gross.  Miracle Whip, I guess.  But only a little.  A very, very thin layer on a sandwich.

If you could click your fingers and be anywhere, doing anything - what would you choose? (from Rachel)
What I'd really like is to have several months of free time to just travel, with no worries about money or time commitments.  If I had that kind of time, I'd go to Europe -- Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium...  I'd stay in hostels and walk or take public transportation everywhere.  I would keep an actual paper journal and write in it every day.  Maybe I'd write a book and become famous like Eat Pray Love.  Haha.  I'd probably do some blogging too.  And I would take a lot of pictures.

That's it for today.  I'll be back later with questions part two.

Why is the bandwidth exceeded? It's written all across the top of my page. Does that show up for everyone or just me?  I would check it on my computer at work, but I gave up all blog-related things at work for Lent.  I mean, they can check my work computer and find out what I do all day if they really wanted to, so I probably shouldn't be on it anyway.  So here's some incentive, right?  When I was in college, I gave up internet computer games, like text twist and bejeweled and some other weird games, for Lent, and I haven't played one since then.  I just didn't find it interesting after I had given it up.  I think I will still find blogging interesting when I'm done (obviously I will still be blogging), but I'm training myself to not want to look at it at work.  I don't need to get in trouble for something dumb like that.

Anyway, what was I talking about?  Oh, the bandwidth.  It's probably my new layout.  And I really like this one, too.  Darn.

Oh guess what, I found my aerial photos, if anyone cares.  My boss accidentally put them with his stuff and forgot about them. I snooped around in is cubicle and found them.  Heeheee.

Is it just me, or did this week go by really fast?  I'm not complaining but it just seems like Monday was not that long ago, when I was watching all those Bachelor bizzos talking about their drama, and Matt kept changing the channel so he could watch Scarface.  I watched the end where he has a huge pile of coke and goes crazy shooting everyone and then some dude shoots him in the back and he falls in the pool in a pile of blood.  Good times.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how to manage my finances and invest my money in a beneficial and meaningful way.  While I was going through my mail this morning, I found that I had received a few things that made me begin to consider these options a little more.  First of all, I got my income tax forms.  Exciting.  It's interesting to see the difference between how much money I "made" and how much I actually got to keep.    Next, I got two letters from two wildlife foundations asking me for money.  One is the National Wildlife Foundation, which I have given to in the past, and the other was the World Wildlife Foundation.  I'm considering giving to one of them, since I do like animals a lot (I mean, who doesn't?) and I got really upset the other night watching a show about two moose babies whose mother got shot and there was no place to put them so they had to be killed.  Matt turned it off before they got to that part though.  He's nice like that.  And also?  Donations = tax deductible.  I don't know how much it really amounts to in the end, but it would be an interesting experiment.  I should just ask my dad.

Ok, so far, I've gotten stuff telling me how much money I make and how much I give to the government and some places asking me to give them money.  Wouldn't it be nice if someone gave me some money in the mail?  Well, the stars must have been aligned correctly today, because this was the next thing I opened.

yup.

Now, let's backtrack a little bit to last summer, when I received a mysterious survey in the mail with two crisp dollar bills inside.  The letter attached said, "Here, have $2, and if you fill out this survey you will get $10."  At first I thought, yeah, right.  I didn't even think the money was real at first, so I asked Matt to check.  After it was confirmed that the money was, in fact, real, I decided, what the heck?  I'll give it a shot.  They said it would be about 6 months, so of course I had forgotten all about it until just now.  But they kept their promise and I now have $10.  Woo-hoo!

So now that I am super rich (haha) I really do want to give back.  I'm thinking I'll go with one wildlife foundation and one nature-type foundation.  So who should I give to?  The Nation or the World?  The world is a big place and can use help from everyone, for sure, but there's a lot going on right here at home too.  I'm also seriously considering donating a case of food to our local food bank, maybe a couple times a year.  It's a better alternative to giving those bums at the intersection a dollar toward their beer/drug fund.  These are things I need to consider, along with some other investments I need to make (again, need to ask my dad) and just keeping better track of my day to day spending, which I will start doing once my computer gets fixed and I can make myself a little spreadsheet.  This year will be the year I stop just spending money, and actually figure out what I do with it. 

Oh yeah, and I'm participating in Saturday Steals.  You should too!

I want to travel to lots of different places around the world, learn French, have a house with lots of windows, a big kitchen and a backyard, throw a really great party, lose 20lbs., go dancing, make my favorite chocolate chip cupcakes, do the laundry.

After thinking about this for several days, I have decided what I really need is a personal assistant.  Someone to schedule my appointments, balance my accounts, pay my bills, organize my clutter.  Stuff like that.  So if you know of anyone who could do that for me, for free, please be sure to let me know.

Until then, I've decided to take things one step at a time.  Tomorrow I'm going to my first dentist appointment in... who knows how many years?  It took me a while to figure out my medical insurance covers some dental things as well.  But not all of them, which means that the first thing on my to- do list is:

1) Get dental insurance.  That should be about as fun as my impending wisdom tooth removal.  Actually, no. I'm sure the wisdom teeth thing will definitely be better.  Can't wait.

2) Clean my front closet(s).  About a year ago, when I got my new computer and my dad took my old one, he asked to find some software disks that came along with the old computer.  I knew that they were somewhere in my closet, but I have yet to determine exactly where in my closet.  I actually made decent progress on this yesterday afternoon and found a whole bunch of stuff that I thought I'd lost.  So... yay me!  Still lots more to do, though.

3) Pick one day a week to work out in my office gym, apartment gym, and play Wii Fit.  Three workout days for sure.  Maybe more.  And sit-ups every day.

4) Be more confident.  Ok, this isn't a simple goal and it definitely isn't short term.  But it needs to be done.  I guess my simple goal will be figuring out what to do first.


As for now, though, I am exhausted and want nothing more than to lay on the couch and watch Gossip Girl.  Ahh, I love mindless television.

This is a tough one because I have a lot of habits I wish I didn't have, but the one that comes to my mind first is this: I eat too much junk food.  In fact, here is what I am eating right now.

See?  Not photogenic.

But I'm going to try to do better.  Now that I am no longer going to the field, I have no excuse to buy tater tots from Sonic or gas station potato chips, or anything else of the like.  I really want to start my self made up diet again, which is basically not eating crap.  It's hard, though.  For motivation, my work has started up a biggest loser challenge.  We're on teams and whoever loses the most weight/inches in 13 weeks wins some sort of cool prize.  The collective weight of my 4-person group was somewhere around 630 lbs, I think.  My goal over the next 13 weeks is to help make this number lower, one potato chip/piece of candy corn/etc. at a time.  Maybe I should put the chips away now...

Meal planned for this evening:

Butternut squash soup (recipe courtesy Small Home Big Start)
Wild cod fillets
White jasmine rice
Broccoli

In theory, I like to keep things clean.  When I first moved into my apartment, I said "I am going to clean a different room in the house every weekend.  That way everything will stay clean all the time!" 

Even though that didn't really happen, at all, I still have the desire to have a nice, clean apartment where I can invite people over, if I ever had any people to invite over.  Oh well.

Anyway, it's hard to clean up after myself especially during field season when apartment life consists of walking in with muddy boots, dropping all my stuff somewhere in the living room, finding something to eat in the freezer and collapsing on the couch.  Stuff can get a little dirty.

But I found a simple, free way to (partially) remedy this problem.  And all I had to do was renew my lease.

Remember the muddy boots?  Well, muddy boots make for muddy carpets.  I've been thinking about renting a shop vac or something to clean up the drippy, muddy spots that have accumulated over the two years that I've lived here.  But it's a funny thing how working hours seem to coincide so well with business hours, so I don't really get much of that stuff done.

So imagine my surprise when I find a note stuck to my door announcing that if I renew my lease, I will get a FREE carpet cleaning.  What?  A carpet cleaning that costs no money and involves no work for me?  I'm in!

I scheduled an appointment for this past Friday morning, between 8:30 and 9 a.m.  This was an added bonus because I got to sleep in while waiting for the carpet cleaner guy to arrive.  By 9, everything had been picked up off the floor and the dude shows up with his special clean-y vacuum.  I waited while he did his thing, which couldn't have lasted more that 15 minutes, and when he walked out the door, I had a fresh clean carpet under my feet.

A guy I knew in school once told me that he would vacuum his room every weekend because he liked the way the lines looked on the floor.  Now I see what he means.  And now that my carpet is clean, I'm going to work hard to keep it that way for as long as I can.  And who knows, maybe I'll get another free cleaning next year!

I really like that quote.  It asks some good questions.  Questions that I have thought about over the past year but haven't really done anything about. This time of year, like every new year, is a good time to clear my mind, if you will, to get rid of the clutter and start over.  Because a cluttered desk is a cluttered mind, or something like that.   So I decided to make some goals, or "resolutions," for the new year that will allow me to look at my life and the world around me in different ways and decide what's next.  Some are more personal, while others are an effort to make some sort of impact on society while also improving myself and my outlook on life.  So, without further ado, my goals for 2010...

• Go on a road trip with Matt.  I do a lot of traveling.  A LOT.  But it's either for work or to visit my family.  Matt and I haven't ever had a chance to just go away together, with no ulterior motive other than to have some fun in a new place.  The circumstances of last year really tested our relationship, and although we've gotten through it, there are still many challenges ahead.  It would do us a lot of good to get away from it all for a little while.

• Read the news.  I really don't know as much as I would like about the state of our nation and the world, so this year I have decided that it is important for me to learn about what is going on and think about what I could possibly do about it.  (If anything... there has to be something, right?)

• Join a volunteer organization.  This is something I've been wanting to do for a while but I haven't been able to decide what kind of volunteering I should do or what type of organization I should join.  I'd like to do some research in the near future to help me figure this out.

• Train for and participate in a 5k race.  (Or some other kind of racing-type thing).  I'll have to see what's out there, but whatever it is I end up doing, I really need to get in shape this year, not only for myself, but for my job.  Last field season was rough, and I think the main reason for that was how hard it was for me to hike up mountains and other tall, rocky geography.  I figure having a concrete goal to work up to will make it easier for me to achieve it.

• Ride my bike down the tramway trail.  I've ridden my bike about one time since I moved here.  This is sad.  The Tramway trail is close and paved and (relatively) flat.  Seems like a good place to start.  I'd like to do the Bosque trail as well, but I don't want to get too ahead of myself.

• Do yoga at least twice a week.  I really like yoga but I've kind of failed on doing any at all since field season started last spring and I had to stop going to the gym during the week.  A couple new opportunities have come up recently so I'm going to work on that.

That's probably enough, eh?  I would like to use this blog as a means of documentation and communication about what I am doing to achieve these goals.  As I (hopefully) achieve these goals, I plan to post about what I've been doing and what I've learned.  I don't know what's going to happen or how well I will do at achieving these goals, but I'm going to try, and hopefully I'll come out of this year a better, more informed person, and maybe you'll learn something too.