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.

A lot of stuff.  Seriously.  A.lot.of.stuff.  My purse is a good insight into what I'm like in the greater scheme of things.  Ahh, disorganization. Anyway, it's good that I'm doing this because maybe it will inspire me to clean some things out.  Starting with this thing.

My mom made this purse for me.  It's great.  I've gotten a lot of compliments from people on it.  If only they could see the inside...  Let's journey into the great abyss.

This one was easy peasy!  My favorite superhero is, and always has been...  du du du du...

Inspector Gadget!

Why?  Because he's awesome.  He has lots of cool gadgets that don't always work right, which makes him even more badass because it never brings him down.  In the end, he still gets the job done, even if it is done so with the help of  his niece, Penny, and his genius dog, Brain.  They're his sidekicks, his partners in crime-fighting, even though he may not always realize it.  I also like that the Chief always has something self-destruct all over him.  And of course, the mysterious Dr. Claw and his cat.

I'll get you, Gadget!  Next time, next time!!!

Funny, entertaining, nostalgic.  What more could you want in a superhero?

Of course, if I did have a runner up, I'd have to pick


Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

What can I say?  I like the scientist/inventor type.

1) I wanted a puppy for a really long time, like, as long as I can remember.  Ok, maybe since I was eight.  Or was it six?  I don't know.  I never got one, though.


2) My hair looked like this (see ridiculous 'fro above)


3) We still have that dress I was wearing.  My sister found it in her closet and tried it on.  It fit, albeit very tightly.  She showed my mom, who got very upset and said, "It's not a dress, it's a costume!"


4) For about 10 years (maybe more?) my mom organized a block party for our neighborhood.  We kicked it off with a "bike parade."  Here we are getting ready, decorating our bikes and such.  That's me on the trike.


5) I got my hair cut really short one time and I hated it.  After it got cut, I cried.  And people at school called me Corey Matthews (from Boy Meets World).  One day, I got really mad about it in gym class and I pulled on a string that was hanging from the bleachers a little too hard, and the railing broke.  No one noticed, though.  So I just left.  Ha ha!


6) I really liked playing in the sandbox.  My favorite thing to do was dig really deep past the sand into the soil, which was really clayey and collect it to make art projects.  At one point, I had all the kids in the neighborhood helping me to get more clay.  Most likely all the ones pictured here.  And maybe a few more. 


7) Oh, look.  There's me in the dress again.  We still have that couch, although it has been reupholstered and is now blue.  Its back consists of a flimsy wooden board that is constantly falling off.

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

Hmm, tough one.  I kind of like all the seasons, for different reasons.  I guess since I have to pick one, it would have to be fall.  I know, I know, it's fall right now, so it's a bit biased.  But here's why I like it.

Balloon Fiesta October 2009

Balloon Fiesta October 2010

4th of July Canyon

Rio Grande Bosque, near Alameda

Alameda Bosque

North Bull Basin, Gila National Forest

Ok, I'm gonna try this out.  I was trying to find a recent picture of me, but they all look crappy.  I don't want ugly pictures of myself on my blog.  That will just not do.  However, as it turns out, I'm just not that photogenic.  So you're just going to have to deal with an ok, not so recent, picture of me.


That's me in the VCNP, or Valles Caldera National Preserve.  I chose it because I think it goes along with the essence of the title of this blog.  I decided to call it Adventures in the Underground because of a couple reasons.  The first and most obvious one is because I'm a soil scientist so a lot of the stuff I deal with on a daily basis is underground.  And to get to all the different kinds of soil, I go on lots of adventures, of course.  The other reason is loosely based on my Russian ancestry, and the fact that I like Dostoevsky, although I have yet to read 'Notes from the Underground.'  Perhaps someday...

As usual, I am behind on my posting.  Let's get up to date with some pictures from 4th of July Canyon (obviously not taken on the 4th of July; I'm not that far behind) in the Manzano Mountains.  East side, yo!

It's been a while.  I have some catching up to do.  I like October.  There's lots of stuff going on, which makes me very busy.  But I have a few minutes now, so let's go back in time, shall we?

I'll start with the first weekend in October.  Matt was off seeing some stuff like this.

image from here

That's a B-29, in case you didn't know.  Don't worry, I didn't either. 

So I decided to go see some flying things of my own, at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

I decided to go very early in the morning, so that it would still be dark out and I'd be able to see the balloon glow.  I took the bus over to the park, and rode with a group of sorority girls, who said things like "Wow, it's early in the morning and we still look great!"  On the way over, I saw the remainder of the dawn patrol flying away.  I've decided that next year I'm going to try to get there even earlier so I can see them take off.  Because it's cool.

When I got there, it was already crowded, and I made my way through the mass of people to the field where the balloon glow was going on.  The lit up balloons are pretty but it would be cooler if they were flying. 


As the morning wore on and the sky brightened, the rest of the balloons began to go up for mass ascension.


Then they started to take off...


...and fly away.


There were a lot of cool special shape balloons this year, including the much anticipated Darth Vader Balloon.


The famous Creamland Dairy Cow


Some cool chickens



A penguin


A wagon


And, some of my favorites, the bees.  There were three this year!


Later, I stumbled upon the chainsaw carving competition, and came across this, which I thought was pretty awesome.


Altogether, another successful balloon fiesta.