I got tagged by Chloe.  She is cool, so I will play along.
 
The Rules:
1. Post the rules
2. Post 11 fun facts about yourself
3. Answer the questions the tagger gave you in their post & then create 11 new questions for the people you tag.
4. Tag 11 people and link them in your post
5. Let them know you've "tagged" them

11 Fun or Random Facts About Me

1.  I am allergic to Robitussin.

2.  I am currently taking classes on how to be a firefighter.

3. Matt and I recently made a new addition to the family... More on this later.

4. Since I've lived in Albuquerque, I have witnessed more criminal activity and vehicle accidents than any other time in my life.

5. I have not had my wisdom teeth out yet.

6. Matt's family is from Kansas.  I have never been there.

7. For my Master's Degree, I basically studied the properties of air bubbles in dirt.

8. I used to sweat a whole bunch when I lived in Vegas, but when I moved to New Mexico, it magically went away.

9. I took ice skating lessons.  For kind of a long time, actually.  But I could never get the concept of rollerblading.  Especially downhill.

10.  I probably love chips and salsa more than a normal person should.

11. If I really like a song, I will listen to it over and over, and get sad when it ends.  And listen to it again.


Questions from Chloe

1. What is your most embarrassing nickname?  In high school, some people called me Maureen the Moron.  It made me sad.
2. What makes you anxious or nervous?  Haha.  Everything.  Driving.  Getting lost.  Not having the right answer.  Most social interactions....
3. What is your biggest fear? Hmm... I don't know. I guess I'm afraid of something bad happening to me while I'm in the field by myself.  Getting bitten by a snake, getting in a vehicle accident, falling into a hole, a rock falling on my head, falling off a cliff, getting accidentally shot by a hunter, being mauled by a bear.  You know, stuff like that.
4. Facebook or Twitter?  Facebook.  I don't even have a twitter thing.
5. Dogs or cats?  Dogs, but I like cats too.
6. What is your favorite recipe?  Pretty much any kind of dessert I can bake.  I like baking more than cooking, generally.
7. What are your resolutions for 2012?  Save money and get out of debt.
8. Books or magazines?  Books.  Everyone at work says that I'm always reading.  I only read at lunch!
9.  What is your favorite color?  Purple.  Obviously.
10. Worst part of the day?  The middle of the day, when I'm at work and really bored but I still have hours to go.
11. Favorite part of the day?  When I get to go home, play on the computer and eat a snack. 

Questions for You
1. What do you like to eat for lunch?
2. What is your favorite part about the place where you live?
3.Your least favorite part?
4. Would you rather clean and fold a large pile of laundry or wash and put away an equally large pile of dishes?
5. Coffee or Tea?
6. What was your coolest injury?
7.  Do you have a favorite pair of socks?
8. What food do you despise with a passion?
9. Would you rather camp or stay at a hotel?
10. What movie do you want to watch right now?
11. If someone said, I will give you a million dollars but you have to move to someplace you hate, would you do it?

I hate tagging people, because I'm always nervous that they'll think I'm dumb for tagging them, but I'll do it anyway.  I will tag:
Pam
Sam
Rachel
Jessica
Camille
Megan
Wildlife Biologist (I don't know your name :)

Do with that what you will...

Over the holidays, I took lots of pictures of food.  And I'm hungry right now while waiting for dinner to be finished (spaghetti squash! yum!) so I am obviously thinking about delicious food and wanting to look at pictures of it. You can too! Isn't that lucky?

Christmas dinner.  My plate would have been more full if I hadn't already eaten a million snacks.

My brother made cake for dessert and it was not very good, but my aunt made my favorite cupcakes and they were spectacular.

This is a sandwich from Zingerman's (local restaurant in Ann Arbor).  It had green chile on it, but the spiciest part was the dang mustard.  I seriously could feel it burning in my nose.  Ahh, the pain!

My brother and I went to a restaurant in East Lansing and he said I needed to get this soup because it was the best soup ever.  It's white chicken chili, I think.

I have traveled to many different restaurants in search of the best Philly.  (It's not in Philadelphia)

My mom made these for breakfast one day.....mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

My mom also made these, from some kit she bought on sale.  She kept calling them whoopie cushions.  (we also drank a lot of tea while I was there)

While I was back in Michigan, I went to my dad's temple for a latke dinner.  My dad is Jewish, if you didn't know that, so we also celebrate Jewish holidays (such as Hanukkah).  My dad's men's group was hosting the dinner, so I was already familiar with the side dishes -- cole slaw and homemade applesauce -- before the dinner even happened.

Also included in the dinner were latkes, of course, and hot dogs.  It was actually pretty good.

And a pickle.  Jewish people loooove their pickles.

After the dinner was over, the rabbi tried to convince us to stay for the service and menorah lighting.  He said they lit about 50 menorahs at once.  But my mom and I had plans to go out for dessert instead. 

Anyone who says they do not like dessert is in denial

At home, we celebrated Hanukkah by lighting our own menorah.



We also have a sticky window menorah, which I had the duty of "lighting."

I wanted to get the reflection of the Christmas tree lights in for the double holiday effect

I'm not gonna lie, part of the fun of Hanukkah is seeing what kind of presents we get.  It's usually some cheap thing my mom found on sale the year before, but it's amusing to see what she comes up with.  I'm not going to post everything I got for each of the 8 days, because my mom enjoys giving us underwear in hopes that we'll throw our old ones away.  Haha.  But here's a few things.

Matt actually used this oven mitt today

Adventure Time! (if you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up)

wool socks are the best field socks

In the spirit of catching up with things, I will now post about my trip to Phoenix.  Did I mention I went to Phoenix?  Well, I did. 

I went for some soil meeting thingy-majobber.  Basically, we went to tell another agency(ies) how our methods are way more awesome than theirs.  Okay, not really (well, not totally, anyway).  I went because I wanted to know how the other agencies worked.  Because things vary from one place to another, whether it is in a different region or a different agency, and I generally get a very biased version of how things are "supposed" to be done.  I won't get into the details of Ecological Site Descriptions, because that would be boring, but that's pretty much the gist of why I was there.

But if we really want to be honest, then I went because I wanted to stay at my favorite hotel in Phoenix, The Embassy Suites.  I attempted to make a video blog, all travel channel style, the last time I was there.  Unfortunately, my camera and I are not that awesome, so this time you are just getting pictures.

Since the last time I was in Phoenix, some hotel policies have changed.  The first one, although it didn't directly affect me, was somewhat unpleasant.  They now charge $5 to park in their lot.  Lame. 

The second change, however, was much better.  The last time I was there, we were given tickets that allowed us to have 3 free (alcoholic) drinks per night.  This time, happy hour lasted several hours each evening, during which time you could have as many free drinks, and snacks, as you wanted.  That was pretty darn cool.  Except for that for my first drink, I wanted Jack and Coke, but all they had was... bourbon?  It was not delicious.  I decided to stick with the old standby, vodka and cranberry, for the rest of the night.

But you want to look at pictures, I'm sure... so, here are some pictures.

Dining Room

Living Room

Kitchen.  The water from the sink tasted weird.  Like mold.

Bedroom

Cool fountain outside the lobby

The best hot tub ever

Old Smoky lives in the apartment downstairs and kiddie corner from mine.  He is old, and he smokes cigarettes.  Hence, Old Smoky.  He likes to sit in his gray computer desk chair, which is outside on his patio, and smoke his Camels or Marlboro Reds, or whatever the heck it is he smokes.  During these times, he enjoys "trapping" innocent passerby into long, drawn out conversations about a set variety of topics he enjoys.  I will get into more about those topics in later posts.  There are some large shrubs in front of his apartment, so we don't always see him right away, and sometimes he surprises us.  We'll be heading towards the stairs up to my apartment, and will hear:

Old Smoky has a deep voice.  It sort of sounds like the guy who does the voice-overs for Dodge Ram commercials.  So, picture that voice in your mind as you read the above greeting.  When you hear it, you know what is going to happen next. Well, YOU don't.  Not yet, anyway.  But I do, and over the course of this series of posts, I will introduce you to the man that is Old Smoky.

As usual, I'm ridiculously behind on posting.  So I'm catching up.  Last month, we went sledding.  It was an interesting adventure.  Let's have a look into the past, shall we?

We decided to use inner tubes to sled with.  So we went to the store and looked for some.  But all they had were ones for water.  But we thought, 'what the heck!' and got them anyway.  This will be important later in the story.

After we finished blowing up the inner tubes and getting all our snow gear, we (finally) headed off to the mountains.  It had snowed a crap-ton up there and it was cold, really really cold.  Like 15 degrees (F not C -- which are both bogus units of measure by the way, but that is neither here nor there). 

We found a good parking spot and hiked a little way in to find a good little section of an awesome hill for sledding.  Matt went down first, and he went down FAST.  I started to get a little bit nervous.  Especially since some jerkface was sitting at the bottom of the hill with his dogs, and would not move.  But I decided to face my fear, and started down the hill.

That's one of us at the top of the hill (probably Matt)

Everything was going decently well... that is, until I got to the bottom and my inner tube scraped over a rock we hadn't noticed before.  And immediately deflated.  True story.  This is the problem with floaty inner tubes.  Not exactly the best ever for sledding down rocky mountain slopes.

At least I got a good workout walking back up the hill

We had to take turns after that.  The idiot was still there with his dogs.  So when I went down I screamed the whole way to get the dumbass to move, but he never did. That F-er.  My third attempt was the best one, and amazingly enough, that's the one when we got video.


After that, I was like "oh yeah, I am totally awesome at this!"  and went down again.  Only to freak out right at the end and plant my feet, resulting in me flipping over, flying in the air, and face planting right in the snow.  It hurt.  And it was cold.

And since 2011 was the year of technical difficulties, I should mention that my camera didn't like the cold either.  Ever since, the digital screen has decided to stop working.  I can still take pictures through the little view finder window thingy, but it may be time to consider a newer model.  I mean, my phone camera takes better pictures than my actual camera.  But it can still take some pretty good ones.

A while back, I went to Socorro to see some migratory birds.  Migratory birds love Socorro.  There is so much to do, like eat at the crappy Mexican restaurant and shop at WalMart.  Who wouldn't want to go there?

Okay, Okay, I guess they don't really like to go to Socorro, but they do like to go to Bosque del Apache, which is near Socorro.  It's one of their favorite vacation spots.  They go there every year, and have been going for a very very long time.

It's quite the journey.  In case you were wondering, this is the route they take, according to the International Crane Foundation.

So, what better for a bunch of silly humans to do than go bother them by taking about a million pictures while they're just trying to relax and enjoy their time in sunny New Mexico?

Seriously, they are just trying to eat lunch.

Sometimes, they like to take a little walk down the road.



Or meet up with their friends at the pool.

Poor duck.  He feels left out.

And end the day with a sunset flight.



Then settle in to enjoy the view.

It's seriously been forever since I posted anything.  I have so much to tell you but it involves looking for and adding in pictures and I've been rather lazy about that.  I got into Ann Arbor last night and will be here for the next 2 weeks, so expect to be hearing some more from me now that I have a break from the all-consuming work.  I hope to make a "real" post soon, but this seemed like a good fill-in post for now.

I spent my last couple field weeks alone at Negrito.  There were a few people there, besides me.  But mostly I was just by myself.  It was not my favorite, but I lived through it.  I missed my field buddies.  (Yes, I will include both of them) Whether it was out digging holes or back at camp, we always had a good time together.  That's something I've rarely experienced in my 3 and 1/2 years here.  The nice thing is that J still works in our office while he goes to school, so I see him a couple days a week.  It's nice having at least one person who I can talk to at work.  The office is more highly populated than the forest, but it can still be lonely at times.  I like being back.  I like being able to work 8 hour days and then go home and relax.  But I miss the quiet stillness in the air, and the stars at night.  I wish you could see them.  So many, so bright, so unlike anything in the city.  It's like living in two different worlds.

I have a boyfriend who likes airplanes.  He knows how to fly them.  He knows how to build them.  He knows about pretty much every airline and airport in the world.  He can tell you the history of every fighter aircraft since World War II.  Sometimes... it drives me crazy.  But other times, it's pretty darn cool.

Even though it's not my first choice for a hobby, it's been interesting getting to see and learn about all the different kinds of planes out there.  And recently, we got the opportunity to see a bunch of them in action at an air show hosted by Albuquerque's very own Kirtland Airforce Base.

When we arrived, the first thing I noticed were all the attractive military men in uniform.  What girl doesn't like that?  They were very efficient, directing us which way to go to get on the bus, giving us the rules and return procedures, etc.  Before getting in, they had to wave metal detector wands over us (which I didn't mind one bit... hot uniformed guys, remember?) and there were also law enforcement dogs at the entrance.  We were admiring one of them when they told us that there would be a demonstration with the dogs in a few minutes.

Let me tell you, these dogs are talented.  It was pretty impressive, the things they could do.  One thing I was not impressed with was my camera's video feature.  For some reason, it can't handle bright lights very well and everything ends up washed out, but I did manage to get this one of a super awesome dog jumping into a truck.

After the dogs, the air show activities began with a demonstration by the 58th Special Operations Wing.  First, the Osprey came out.  And I have no idea why I don't have a picture of it, because it is awesome.  It's like this weird combination of an airplane and a helicopter.  One time, I saw one flying over the Gila, and I was like WTF is that???   Anyway, back to the air show.  The next thing that happened was these guys


dropped out of this plane, the C-130.


Then, there was a Black Hawk that came and picked the guys up when they were done with their "mission," or whatever.  I don't really remember all the details.  We went to this kind of a while ago.  Here's the Black Hawk.


The next event of the show was a fly-by of a pretty darn cool plane called the B-1.  For all of these planes, it was really hard to take a picture because the sun was blaring in my face and these guys were going by suuuuper fast.  Here's the closest one I could get.


And if you don't believe me when I say how big it is, this is what it looks like on the inside.


I also took a picture of this B-52, mainly because I like butterflies.


The grand finale, and probably one of the coolest parts of the show, featured these guys.


The Thunderbirds.  The pilots of these planes are incredibly talented.  It takes a lot of training and skill just to make a plane take off, fly in a straight line, and land.  Which makes the stunts that these planes can do pretty amazing.