Bored

[ May 4, 2013 | 0 comments ]

So, I've had this blog for a few years now.  And I'm  bored with it.  I mean, I like it and all.  And it has a nice header and layout and everything... Oh man, now I like it and want to keep it...  But no, I've already committed.  I decided to go back to Wordpress for a while.  Just to change things up a bit.  Because I have a fickle mind, apparently.  So, it's an experiment.  And maybe I'll hate it and come back to this blog.  I don't know.  I was just ready for something different.  And now: Go here.

 

Gila Hot Springs

[ Mar 16, 2013 | 1 comments ]

I haven't made a post in a while, and I had this one in my draft folder with a bunch of pictures from the Gila Hot Springs, so I thought I'd go ahead and post that today.  I really wanted to post about the retreat we just had at work but all my pictures are on my phone and Matt has the photo adapter chip in his phone, which is off camping with him right now.  Also, I can't find my camera battery charger.  Life is hard!  In other news, it's been really warm here.  It's like summer.  Okay, it's more like summer in Michigan.  70 degrees and cloudy today.  But still.  On Monday, I have to go to Silver City.  I don't really mind going there but hate the drive.  It's 4 hours but feels like 4,000 years.  On a related note, the week I went to the Gila Hot Springs, I took a wrong turn and ended up in Silver and didn't realize it until I saw the Forest Service office, and was like WTF?  How did I get here?  I am awesome.  Anyway, here are the pictures.


I love daytime moon pictures
 
Where we stayed





 

The Big Bang Theory: Zombies in Arabia

[ Feb 12, 2013 | 2 comments ]

Last night I dreamed that I was hanging out with the cast of The Big Bang Theory.  In Arabia.  And we were just walking along in the desert when we realized Raj had turned into a rabid zombie, so Howard had to kill him.  Then some Arabians were after us so Penny and I decided to put on head coverings as a disguise.  But we couldn't figure out how to tie them right so the Arabians figured out who we were and sentenced us to be beheaded by a crazy, drunk Texan with a machete.  But before the Texan could get to us, I thought to myself, "I bet I could outrun that guy," so I started running and was doing pretty good, but the Texan was also surprisingly fast.  Then Cochiti jumped on the bed and I woke up so I never did find out if I escaped.  Hopefully I did. 

I'm not sure why I'm posting this.  It may be deleted later but I'm bored and it's been a weird couple of weeks.  I will try to post something about real life soon.

 

How I Spent My Anniversary

[ Dec 30, 2012 | 3 comments ]

So, Matt and my 4 year anniversary was in October.  Yes.  October.  And yes, four years.  Anywho, for our anniversary we went to an air show in Socorro.  Yay!  And we didn't actually go in October.  We went in September, and I am therefore even more behind, but it was close enough to October to call it our anniversary trip. 

Now, what did we do there?  Well, we saw some airplanes, of course! (duh)

Musketeer

Stinson

Stinson interior.  I thought this was very fancy!

T-6 
Matt took about 10 bajillion pictures and I honestly can't remember which planes he or I thought were the coolest, but for some reason these few stand out.  I do recall that the Stinson was especially popular and the T-6 had a female pilot.

The main attraction of the event was the B-17.  It is an old plane that dropped bombs.  That is pretty much all I know about it.  Apparently it was a pretty big deal.






They were offering rides for $400.  Needless to say, I did not allow that. 


One thing I did allow was the $5 tour of the plane.  We waited until pretty much the end of the show after everyone else got tired of it and left, and ended up with our own private tour. 








 Pretty neat, huh?

 

End of the Year Update Stuff

[ Dec 21, 2012 | 3 comments ]

Okay, it's true.  I've been neglecting the blog.  Not necessarily because I wanted to.  I've just been bombarded with life as of late.  Not bad things, necessarily, just busy things.  For one thing, I've started running.  I'm not a good runner so even running for 3 minutes straight is pretty difficult for me right now, but I really want to do it, so I'm going to keep trying.  Another thing that I've started, which is easier for me but still a challenge, is I've decided to get back into writing again.  To help with this, I joined a writing critique group.  Sometimes we do challenges that are assigned and sometimes we just bring in whatever we want.  The other people in the group are a bit older than me but that's good in a way because they have more experience and insight into how to get published.  And that is what I want, eventually.  I'm working on a fantasy-ish sort of novel that could potentially be awesome or could potentially be horrible.  Some horrible books do get published, but I don't want mine to be one of those.  I'm reading a really awesome book right now called "The Soul of the Ghost Moth" about an entomologist's journey to "enlightenment," I suppose you would call it.  It has to do with radio wave receivers and the collective mentality of moths and other things.  I'm not doing a very good job of describing it but it is cool.

In other news, we now have two dogs.  Not really by choice and I'm sort of frustrated by the whole situation, but Girl Dog, which is what I call her, is really sweet despite being a rottweiler and it's not her fault that her previous owners were irresponsible.  So for now she is ours and that is that.

Presently, I'm taking a break from work, and from Albuquerque, to kill off my remaining annual leave and spend the holidays with my family in Michigan.  I would have liked Matt to come with me, but the expense and the issue of what to do with the dogs kept him in Albuquerque.  I just hope he is not too lonely on Christmas, because I would be.

Anyway, I'm going to try to reach back into the archives of my mind and make some posts about the rest of field season and some other things that went on.  But it may be a while, so don't hold your breath.

 

Indian Peaks

[ Nov 11, 2012 | 3 comments ]

This is another post about my time in the Gila this summer.  For several weeks, we were in the Indian Peaks East and West quads (all my mapping area).  Here are some pictures from that time.

This is bear poop.  I thought it would be fun to start out with a picture of that.  Don't you agree?


I think I was on top of a mini rhyolite volcano when I took this picture.  I don't know.  It looks cool.


This was our portable home away from home.  There are a few items in this picture I would like to point out. 


1.  The tarp.  Especially fun to put up when it was windy.  And it always took forever for us to decide what trees to tie it to.  Honestly I didn't really help too much with the tarp putting up, because it involved climbing trees, and the other girls were skinnier than me and had smaller boobs and therefore were better at it.

2.  The table.  We got it at the end of last year and used it for one week and thought we lost the canvas bag that it came in.  One person was actually convinced that a bear stole it.  Then, sometime this summer, I was cleaning out the tool box in the truck and found it.  Go me.

3.  The stove.  This thing. was. awesome.  It was easy to set up, easy to use, and it worked great.  It boiled water really fast and it used propane instead of the gas that Coleman makes you buy for their stoves.  I had so many issues with those stoves last year, it was nice to have something that worked well this year.

One of my sites for this year's field review was in Indian Peaks West.  The soil was shallow, which was nice.  I also didn't have to dig it, which was even nicer.  I described the whole thing by myself, though, and was very proud of it, regardless of how I did on the review.  The soil was a Lithic Haplustalf, if you know or care what that means.


I also took pictures of the whole site.  We're supposed to take pictures of all our sites and put them in the database.  I forgot to bring the work camera, so I used my phone instead.  I actually used my phone as my camera the entire field season, and it worked out pretty well. 



 

This was my favorite view from the site.  I was up on a hummock looking toward the south of the plot.


 

And thus ends my little hodge-podge tour of Indian Peaks.

 

Saliz Pass

[ Oct 27, 2012 | 2 comments ]

Hi.  I'm back.  I just finished my 20th week in the field and we are calling it quits for the year.  We were thinking about going back next week to collect production data, which is basically throwing around a metal hoop, clipping all the grass inside it with scissors, putting it in a bag, and weighing it.  Something like that.  But, now we're not going to do that... (this year, anyway) so, yay!  We're done!

I'm going to try to catch up on some field stories and pictures, so we'll see how that goes.  As usual, I don't remember what order things happened in, but I separated all my photos into different folders, so at least I know where I was when I took the picture.  This is from the day I took an awesome hike through a pretty little stream channel in Saliz Pass.  It was probably my favorite hike of the entire season.  Super easy and flat and tons of cool scenery.







potentilla



 

Some blank filling in

[ Sep 7, 2012 | 3 comments ]

I'm sure everyone else is happy that it's Friday, but I am sad because it means my vacation is almost over and I have to go back to work!  Boo!  I don't feel like making an actual post, and it's been a while since I've done this, so here's some fill in the blanks.
 


 
 
1.  My favorite grade in school was    I'm not sure but I was going through some of my stuff and found a book series that I wrote in 8th grade about various idiots who died in tragic accidents.  My friend Pam was also involved.

2.  My favorite teacher was  my 7th/8th grade history teacher Mr. Longe      because,  he was old and funny and he broke the chalkboard, and he looked like Thomas Jefferson  .

3.  The highest level of education I have completed is    a Master's of Science in Geology and Soil Science.  And now I miss school and want a PhD.

4. School lunches for me were usually    made by my mom with post-it notes in each one telling me what I was supposed to do after school (e.g. walk home, go to after school program, get a ride home, etc.) because she thought I would forget or something.

5. The amount of money you'd have to pay me to go back to high school would be  a lot.  High school students are scary these days.  Exactly how long would I have to go back?  I might be able to handle a day .

6. A few things that will always remind me of going back to school are:  back to school sales at Target.  College rule notebooks and loose leaf paper and folders and all those exciting things.

7.  The first day of school was always   a day that I got up really early feeling nervous and probably sick, and then all the kids in the neighborhood would have to stand in a big group to get our picture taken before walking to school .

 

Soil Texture Pool Party!

[ Aug 31, 2012 | 1 comments ]

Hello world.  It has been requested...  no, demanded, that I write more stories from the field.  Of course, I must have pictures to accompany my stories and I still need to get the last group of pics off my phone so these are the only pictures I have to show you right now.  I honestly don't remember the order that things happened in anyway.  I mean, it's been 15 weeks since I started this whole field season deal, and quite frankly, my mind is shot.  Anyway.  Pool party!

One day, we were just like, screw this, we're going swimming!  So we did.

This is a lake.  I can't tell you which lake, but we swam in it.

I also have a picture of a person swimming in the lake but I might get murdered if that person finds out that I posted a picture of him in his underwears on the internet, so I'm not going to do that.

The next week, my boss gave me a bunch of calibrated soil texture samples and said that the students and I should have a soil texture party, so we turned it into a soil texture pool party.  Hey, he told us to do it. and we actually did texture soil.  We had a contest and everything. 

Here is where we had our contest.  The pool had some weird gross seaweed type stuff in it.  There were also cows.  Not in the pool.  But near it.  Just to clarify.

And here is where we swam.  The lower waterfall was particularly fun.
 
That is all.

 

Garden Part 2: Composting

[ Jul 21, 2012 | 3 comments ]

I was trying to remember where I left off about my garden and realized that I wrote one post on it.  Lame.  We have vegetables and stuff now so this is kind of behind but I want to do it in chronological order.  It just makes more sense that way.  Except for the part where I pretty much forgot everything that happened in the beginning.  Luckily, there are pictures.  So, at least there's that.

Here, we have some mulch and compost.  They brought it to the house in a big truck and when I got home from work we brought it all to the backyard so that hoodlums wouldn't steal it overnight. 


 Then, we put the compost in rows.



Tilled the compost.



Watered the compost.



And that's pretty much it.  Oh yeah, and then we put on mulch.  But I don't think I have a picture of that.  So you'll just have to see what the mulch looks like in the next post when the plants are actually growing.