Tuesday's Adventures

Hockey

2012-02-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

It took until February, but I have finally put on my ice skates this season. Just over a week ago was my first time out this year, and it was a beautiful day on Occom Pond. The temperature was perfectly warm for skating, but plenty cold to keep the ice solid. And the sun was shining so I got to wear my amazing pink sunglasses. What more could I have asked for?

Greg and I had been planning to go skating, mainly so I could get my ice-legs back, but we found out a visiting priest had brought his skates along, so we headed to the pond with him. I borrowed a stick, and we ended up playing a game against two kids.

They were basically skating circles around me, but I got a breakaway once and scored a goal. Take that kids.

Last weekend we were at Lake Morey for a pond hockey tournament that Greg was playing in. The ice was in beautiful condition, but I never really got inspired to put my skates on for that one. I did get some amazing pictures though!

The "pond" is huge and has a 4.5 mile skating loop around the perimeter.

So I skipped the good pond ice, but last night I got to skate again, this time at the fabulous Thompsen Arena. Our intramural hockey team had a game, and we were very short-handed, and no one wanted to be the goalie, so I got to have my first experience with that. In case you were wondering, it is not possible to obtain goalie skills by osmosis. That would have been really nice though.

It was kind of a scramble to get the gear on before the game started, so it ended up that I only saw one shot for warmup, which mostly was a test of whether or not I could stand back up after falling down while wearing gear. Luckily I could. It just took awhile. Then the game started, and the first two shots I saw made me feel invisible. I couldn't even move with all the padding I was wearing, and yet somehow, it was not enough to keep the puck from going right through me! After the second goal Sam advised me to keep my stick out in front of me a little further to "cut down on the angle". Oh yeah! I know all about angles! And for that matter, why was I standing as close to the goal as possible? At this point in the game I started to make more of an effort to keep my whole body a little further in front of the net to cut down on that angle too. Shots number 3 and 4 I blocked and it was amazing! In my head, the quintessential hockey goal song was playing, in celebration:

Unfortunately on the fourth shot that was a block, I also gave up a rebound, which was another goal. We ended up losing the game, and I ended up letting in more shots than I blocked. But the fact that I blocked any shots at all was a victory in my mind. I also felt accomplished once when the other team's good skater had a breakaway, but his shot was just outside of the net. I'm pretty sure that happened because I was playing so good positionally, I didn't give him any open net :)

And I was so wired after the game that I basically did not sleep at all last night.

And because I see them all over and finally took a picture, a gratuitous photo of a dog running on ice:

An analogy

2012-02-02T15:06:00.000-08:00

In physics classes, if there is a scenario where you have two people, person A and person B, it is often the case that we will talk of Alice and Bob. I had the lucky experience to have a college professor talk about MaryKate and Ashley, which I thought was pretty hilarious, so I will follow suit.

So let's say that MaryKate and Ashley decide that they have some spare income, and they each decide that giving money to feed the poor is what they would like to do. They both have good intentions. Feeding the poor is a good cause. So they find two charities, and both of the charities give chickens to feed the poor. MaryKate and Ashley do a little research on the charities, and they find out that Charity A donates chickens from a chicken farm where the chickens never see the light of day and eat a lot of corn. Charity B only donates free range, grass fed, vegetarian (they have really good technology to keep bugs out of the free range grassy area) chickens. Ashley realizes that Charity A can donate more chickens because of their operations, so she decides to give her money to Charity A. MaryKate is morally opposed to the poor treatment of animals, so she donates to Charity B.

Is it okay for Ashley to be mad at MaryKate and yell at MaryKate for choosing the charity that is in agreement with her morals? Should MaryKate be made to feel like she is doing something wrong by donating to Charity B over Charity A? Is not MaryKate still contributing to good (feeding the poor) while still being conscientious?

A facebook friend posted that he donated some money to the Komen foundation, following this whole thing. One of his friends, who is a person I do not know and have never heard of, commented that she was "disappointed he felt this way" among other things. I just think it is the most ridiculous thing that someone would try to make a person feel bad for donating to a charity that has a mission in accordance with one's sense of morality.

I understand that there will forever be a debate as to whether abortion is a women's issue or a life issue.

I really hope I am not guilty of this in this post, but people need to take the time to think through what they are about to say before saying it, lest it be deemed illogical, rude, and unfair.

Also, please don't be "disappointed in me" if I choose those vegetarian chickens, because they are just so cute running around in their fresh green grass.

A tiny sneak preview of what has been happening at the letterpress studio lately

2012-02-02T07:42:00.000-08:00

I want to be an old-world woman (who blogs)

2012-01-17T14:03:00.000-08:00

Recently I heard the phrase "old-world woman" used on hgtv to describe how a room was being decorated. That phrase sounds so good to me. Even without knowing what that meant really, I knew I would love that style, and I decided I wanted to not just decorate in the style of old-world woman, but I wanted to actually be an old-world woman.

Lucky for you and for me, I don't have to try to describe what this means, because the hgtv website does it for us!

Not only do I strongly prefer the old world style, but I also have a deep love of contra dancing, and I am developing a new love for letterpress, and I think both of these passions help to qualify me as an old-world woman. Unfortunately, blogging about these things does not really add to the old-worldliness.

Printing in the letterpress studio

2012-01-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

Last week I had my first orientation session at the letterpress studio. We were instructed to bring a sonnet or other short poem. In that session I got all of my type set, with the exception of the title and author. In this session I got started with those two things, and then it was on to printing!

Here is my type on the Vandercook press. The wood blocks around it are the "furniture" that holds it in place. Learning the letterpress lingo is all part of the fun it seems. When the type is not on the press, you store it in a "galley" which is the proper word for the metal tray. Bob will correct you if you just keep calling it a tray.

A close-up of the type. Just ignore the lack of proper white balance in these photos.

And the finished product! I printed six of these, and then it was time to start cleaning up. Each letter has to go back in the case. It is a time-consuming process, and I never even finished. Luckily, you don't have to sign up for open studio time if you are just putting type away, so I'll have to go back tomorrow to clean up after myself.

The part of the process that actually took a long time was fixing errors. Once I had my sonnet all set, I printed a proof. Well, that showed a few errors, like letters upside down, or just the wrong letter altogether. When Bob checked my work he said,
"Is 'floots' a word?"
"Nope. That was supposed to be 'floats'."
"Okay, I just wasn't sure. Some of these poets make up their own words."
Fair point, Bob.
After I fixed the errors and made my six copies on nice paper and cleaned off the type, I noticed one more very minor error. I didn't fix it though, and I didn't want Bob to be disappointed, so I just didn't tell him.

When the press was all cleaned up and I was picking up my stuff to leave, I was asking Bob what kind of presses he had at home. He has a bunch and he lets people come in for day-long sessions to use his studio. I asked how people found out about his studio, and he says he advertises on Craig's List, so that was pretty neat. He is actually pretty close to The Barn and he said I could come by and check out his studio sometime. He also gave me a copy of his Christmas "card" which was actually a small pamphlet, all done with letterpress. Apparently it only took him a couple months. Very impressive!

Letterpress Studio Adventures

2012-01-09T19:52:00.000-08:00

A friend recently told me about Dartmouth's letterpress studio, which, as a grad student, I am allowed to use for free, including materials. There are two required orientation sessions, and since the studio is small they fill up fast. So I had been waiting months, but tonight I finally got into my first session. My second one will be a week from now. And then I will have free range in the studio during open hours (which are also limited to 6 people, I believe)!

I got to the orientation session, and there were two girls already there, and an older gentleman, who I quickly learned was Bob, our instructor. The other two were sitting there silently, but I was feeling chatty, so I was asking Bob how long he's been working at Dartmouth (part of me thinks undergrads don't even think to ask questions like that (actually, I think I never knew to ask questions like that until I started meeting a lot of new people at contra dances, and then that is a pretty normal question)) and how he got into doing letterpress stuff. He said he took a class in high school, which I wish I could have done. He also said he started learning type-setting just as it was "going out of style" in favor of all automated things.

So anyhow, Bob is awesome. We are friends, and we are going to have a good time in that letterpress studio.

For the first half hour of orientation he told us a bit about the history of letterpress, gave us some handouts, talked a bit about the typecases. The terminology "upper case" and "lower case" when referring to THIS and this, respectively, came from the original typecases, in which the upper case letters were located in the upper typecase, and the lower case letters were located in the lower typecase. Pretty nifty bit of info that I never knew.

We were also instructed to bring a sonnet or other short poem to use as our practice piece. I am definitely not a poetry person, so I was having a hard time finding something that I was moderately okay with. This morning, out of desperation, I googled: "sonnets that don't suck", and was led to Sonnet 1928 by Elizabeth Bishop. It is actually quite nice.

Setting type is a wonderful process that takes a fair amount of time, all while being quite meticulous. The amount of care put into forming each word made me so much more appreciative of the richness of the poem, which is not something I had expected. That Elizabeth Bishop certainly could make words beautiful.

There wasn't enough time to actually do any printing of my sonnet, but next Monday I should be able to do that. I also forgot my camera, but Bob said that I can take pictures as long as I give him 50% of any proceeds of sales of the photos. So next week I will have another letterpress adventures post, complete with (hopefully) neat-o photos!

Probably why I have a headache right now.

2012-01-06T12:48:00.000-08:00

This is what I have eaten so far today:

- the last of the raspberry kringle
- a piece of hummingbird cake (don't worry, I verified it was not made of hummingbird's before I ate any)
- a piece of spice cake
- two cups of coffee
- half a bottle of Xtremo Mango Gatorade (pretty delicious)

Hence the title of this post.
Should probably remedy with some real food.

I'll have the sopitas.

2012-01-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

For Christmas Greg gave me the book The Hummingbird's Daughter, which I really enjoyed reading. He got it for me because it was the prequel to the book Queen of America, which he had heard about on NPR and thought I would like. The books were both awesome. I rated them both a 5 on my goodreads, although I'd have to say I liked the first book more.

I think it was the second book that had a very funny anecdote about sopitas, which actually made me laugh out loud. So last night I decided to make sopitas for dinner, roughly following this recipe. They were pretty delicious, and I thoroughly enjoyed the excuse to constantly proclaim, "I'll have the sopitas."

2012: year of the cappuccino

2012-01-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

I generally am not super into New Year's Resolutions, but in the past few years I have had a "year of belts" and a "year of scarves" in which I tried to start wearing each of the above items. The year of the belts worked, because now I wear belts and I never used to and they are pretty handy for keeping your pants from falling down. I think the year of scarves failed because I never really got any scarves.

But 2012! That is the year of the Cappuccino! Greg and I were gifted a super-fantastic espresso/coffee maker combo machine for Christmas. It is awesome. It gave me instructions for making Cappuccino, which I have done, twice. I think I end up drinking them more quickly than it takes me to make them, but hopefully my skillz will improve with time. I also don't really know if the beverages I am making are classified as lattes or cappuccinos. According to this handy chart, the two are pretty similar.

Also, why have I never ordered a Breve?!

So basically, I am making awesome beverages that have espresso + steamed milk + milk foam. I generally prefer to drink lattes, but I like proclaiming cappuccino (You've Got Mail-style). Plus I bought vanilla syrup. The good brand. Plus I have already started making amazing latte-art. Check it out:

Turn your head to the left slightly and you'll notice the knight helmet I made.

Christmas preparations

2011-12-19T07:59:00.000-08:00

I haven't really been getting too much into the Christmas-spirit lately. We did cut down a tree, and set up the manger (sans Baby Jesus, and with the three kings in a huddle on top of the bookcase (since they don't need to start traveling until Dec. 25)). Parenthetical clarifications aside, I think part of my hesitation for Christmas-spirit is to avoid being too strongly society-Christmas driven. I just don't want to spend all of Advent listening to Christmas music, and then turn it all off the day after Christmas. And the lights on our tree will be on until the Epiphany, you can be sure!

Last night I did spend some time baking cookies. First I made shortbread cookies (I still don't understand how the combination of butter, sugar, and flour can be SO delicious), and then I made monster cookies. The monster cookies are delicious and gluten-free. We are having a hockey holiday party on Wednesday, so I wanted to make some treats for that. Hopefully they last. I also plan to make this most delicious treat, but I can't make that beforehand because I know it will absolutely Not last.

So I did a pretty good job of forcing myself into the Christmas spirit last night, especially because I played Love Actually in the background (twice) while I was baking. And now today I am listening to this song on repeat:

Whole Foods-style gatorade?

2011-12-11T13:44:00.000-08:00

Haven't tried it yet, but I am pretty sure this is intended to be gatorade-like.

This is my attempt to combat dehydration while traveling. As I write this, I am not yet traveling, but I have big plans for pre-hydration, because in my mind that counts, and knowing it in your mind is half the battle. When I arrived in San Francisco I battled the dehydration with fancy coconut water, but the bottle was tiny, so for traveling home I sought out this Recharge!

Cupcakes are all the rave.

2011-12-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

I know this because there are entire television shows devoted to them. While in San Francisco I saw a special cupcake place at the up-scale mall food court, so I decided I would try one. I had a hard time choosing my flavor. It was a debate among oreo, coffee toffee, s'mores, and raspberry lemonade.

I chose:

Coffee toffee!

It was a last minute change, as I had thought I had decided on raspberry lemonade, but then I saw that the raspberry lemonade had cream cheese frosting, and I usually prefer the sugar-sugar frosting. With hindsight I probably should have stuck with the first choice. The coffee toffee was much better on paper than in reality. It was also reported to me that oreo was amazing, so even my third choice probably would have been a better one.

Don't get me wrong -- I ate the entire cupcake (even though it had toppled over, despite the excellent carrying case design). And it was good. But I was kind of hoping it would be better than any cupcake I ever could have imagined.

As it turns out, this little cupcake stand, Cako, is going to be on Cupcake Wars (see above note on popular television shows devoted to cupcakes) today (or maybe tomorrow?). Sadly, I don't think they will win.

Motivation

2011-12-09T19:00:00.000-08:00

I got my picture taken with the president of the American Geophysical Union. (I am pretty sure that is who that is anyhow.)

The chance to have cardboard cutouts of me all over this meeting place (I've seen at least three of these.) provides a huge amount of motivation for one day becoming the president of AGU.

The view from here

2011-12-09T12:33:00.001-08:00

It is AGU time, and this photo gives a pretty good idea of what that looks like. Technically I took this photo yesterday. So far I haven't resorted to blogging during people's talks, but there is an entire afternoon of talks left!

AGU @ SFO

2011-12-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

By the time you read this, it is quite likely I will be on a plane to San Francisco. It is the AGU time of year again. Last year at this time I thought I'd be so close to finishing my PhD that I wouldn't be attending the conference this year. But if you refer back to the first sentence, you'll see I'm (happily?) on my way once again. Feel free to read into that discussion all you'd like.

Usually at this conference, I either need to plan out my schedule such that I skip out of the talks for at least an hour a day, or else I go to everything and then feel so burnt out by Friday that I am sitting in all of the important talks and not paying attention. So this year I planned my time such that I'll spend Monday, a fairly uneventful day, traveling. This way I can be in intensive conference mode for the rest of the week.

My only other plan for the week is the Berkeley contra dance. Every time I go to a conference or travel for work, I check contra dance schedules. Usually the dances are Friday or Saturday nights, which are generally the two nights I am not on location. But luckily, AGU coincides with the Wednesday night contra dance in Berkeley every year. So hopefully this year I'll be able to go for my fourth (?) year in a row! yessss

Predicting Aurora: Optics

2011-12-04T15:12:00.001-08:00

So what better way of knowing if there is aurora than by looking at the optics! There are plenty of places to find data online, the one I check is run by some colleagues in Alaska, which can be found here. The site has some archived data, but is best for looking at real-time data (note that there won't be anything on the real-time pages if you look at them during daylight hours). Spend some time clicking around those different pages, at night, so you can see the different options. There are several different stations which are at different latitudes. If the aurora starts to move to lower latitudes there is a better chance that things will get very active.

Two of the main things you will see on this page are keograms (the rectangular ones) and all-sky images (the round ones). Let's talk about the all-sky images first, or ASI, as I'll probably continue to call them.

The ASI are probably easiest to understand, because they are pretty comparable to regular cameras. You can think of it as a regular camera that is viewing the entire sky. If you want a little more detail, imagine that you are lying on your back with your feet pointed to the North, and you are looking at the entire sky. The view of the entire sky that you see is the same projection that an ASI gives (so North is generally at the bottom of the frame, I apologize on behalf of the entire community). Some of the all-skies show white light (as in, what we would see with our eye, converted to black and white), and some show particular wavelengths (for example, 630.0 nm, which corresponds to the red aurora at higher altitudes).

The keograms are useful for knowing what the aurora has been doing over the past however many hours are plotted. One way of making a keogram is to take a slice of the all-sky image from the north to the south. Then you put a bunch of these slices together over time to show how the aurora has changed with time. Another option for the keogram (which is possibly more typical) is to use a Meridian Scanning Photometer, or MSP. An MSP is an optical device that measure photons (the light we see as aurora), but it generally doesn't use a lens like the all-sky does, so we don't actually call it a camera (hence "optical device"). The MSP, as the name implies, scans the meridian, so once again we are getting a slice of the sky from north to south, which is then plotted in sequence with time. I hope that makes sense to anyone who is not already familiar with a keogram.

For now this is all I have to write about predicting aurora, unless anyone has specific questions for me.

:) Thanks for playing.

Predicting Aurora: GOES

2011-11-30T08:57:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I got a little distracted and never finished this series. Today I write about the Goes satellite. Two of them actually. GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environment Satellite. I just learned that from Wikipedia actually, so I guess it doesn't make sense to keep saying "Goes satellite".

One of the very best plots I check when wanting to know if I will see any aurora on any given night is this one:

which can be found here.

If you are looking at this plot from the past two nights you will be kicking yourself for not looking outside (because there was probably some good aurora if you are at a high enough latitude).

So what does this plot mean? Along the x-axis you have three days of time, and along the vertical you have magnetic field strength. There are two traces plotted. The red trace (as seen from the label on the right) is at a longitude of W75 (oh look Mark Twain's 176th birthday, thanks google). I live at a longitude of W . The blue trace is from a satellite that is over the West coast. I guess the main purpose for these satellites is for weather measurements. We use them because they have magnetometers to measure the Earth's magnetic field.

What does measuring the Earth's magnetic field have to do with aurora? Stop getting so distracted by Mark Twain and magnetic fields.

Don't worry, the magnetic field is important. Mark Twain is important for things not related to the aurora.

So imagine the Earth's magnetic field as a perfect dipole. Like so:

source

If you were a satellite, orbiting around the Earth at the same rate as the Earth's rotation, measuring the just the vertical component of the magnetic field, what would you measure? If you said a straight line, you were correct. As you orbit around the Earth, the magnetic field you would measure is constant, say 90 nanotesla.

But the Earth's magnetic field is more interesting than a perfect dipole, because it interacts with the sun's magnetic field, aka the IMF (interplanetary magnetic field), and the solar wind. Remember this post? That is what actually happens. So the Earth's magnetic field ends up looking more like this:

The field lines on the Sun-side of the Earth get shoved in, and the field lines on the opposite side get stretched out into a tail. Ignore the labels on that photo that say "acceleration region" and "auroral electrons" because they are wrong/don't make sense.

So now, as your little-satellite-self orbits around, when you are at noon, you measure a stronger magnetic field, say 100 nT. And when you are at midnight you measure a less strong (vertical component) of magnetic field, say 80 nT. If you plotted this, you would end up with a sinusoidal wave. A sinusoidal wave is a realistic trace to see on the GOES plot, and unfortunately that means there will probably not be any aurora.

The aurora, in the simplest way of thinking of it, is the result of a giant energy release. Which means you need to somehow get energy into the magnetosphere system. This energy comes from the solar wind, which is why we look at ACE as part of predicting aurora. When a lot of energy is being put into the system that magnetic field will no longer be nice and stable, but highly variable. If you look at the plot at midnight (conveniently labeled with an 'M' (and there is an 'N' for noon)), you can sometimes see that tail getting stretched out like crazy, so you are only measuring a magnetic field of 25 nT or even less. This measurement is indicative of a huge amount of energy being put into the system, and that energy needs to get released, and the beautiful result is an amazing light show.

And since we are talking about predicting the aurora, I'll mention that if you see a sudden spike in the magnetic field measured at GOES, this is indicative of aurora to come in 30-60ish minutes.

The main idea: smooth sinusoidal curve is no good, jagged trace with big spikes and dips is very good.

I guess the last main thing I look at for predicting the aurora is the optics from the ground, so that will be up next!

Predicting Aurora: ACE and the solar wind

2011-11-23T16:56:00.000-08:00

Now we are really getting into the meat of the matter. The ACE satellite is located just upstream from the Earth, so it basically measures the solar wind about an hour before it reaches us at the Earth. But why does the solar wind matter?

The aurora is essentially a result of a huge energy release. This huge amount of energy that gets pumped into Earth's geospace is coming from the sun, via the solar wind. So if we want to know when there will be a lot of geomagnetic activity, we need to know when the solar wind is going to be putting a lot of energy into the system.

This is the ACE plot I look at most often. You can follow links on that page to look at longer or shorter timescales and also at different variables. Here is how to interpret this plot:

In the top panel, the red trace shows Bz which is important. This is the vertical component of the sun's magnetic field (the sun has a magnetic field too!). The white trace shows the magnitude of the sun's magnetic field. A high magnetic field strength is good (say, over 6 nT). Generally, if Bz is high, but also flipping between north and south (large positive to large negative) this is a good thing.

The solar wind speed and density are also important. Ideally, for strong activity you would like to see a high solar wind speed and a high density. Unfortunately, if the speed is high, the density is usually lower, and vice versa. This is like cars on a road, if you let them go fast the spread out, but if they have to go slowly they get bunched up. For solar wind speed, 300 km/s is kind of a baseline. Getting up to 600 km/s is really good. For the density, 1 /cm^3 is baseline, and getting up to 10 /cm^3 is really good.

The NOAA page takes this information and tries to put it in an easy-to-understand "dial" plot, and they will have a little arrow pointing to the current value (like a car speedometer):

This plot can be found on this page.

One of my favorite plots to look at combines the data from ACE and from Stereo-B. Check it out. This shows the solar wind density, velocity, and magnetic field from both satellites, only the data is shifted appropriately along the x-axis so that they should line up in time. This is a great way to see solar wind changes that might be observed at Earth.

Next up will be the GOES satellites, which give us around a one hour predictor.

Predicting Aurora: Stereo B

2011-11-22T19:35:00.000-08:00

Stereo-A and -B are a NASA satellites that are taking images of the sun. If you looked down on the Earth-Sun line from above, you would find them here:

Stereo-A is named A because it is on approximately the same orbit as Earth, except Ahead. Stereo-B is Behind. So imagine we see a new sunspot, as viewed from the Earth. The sun is rotating, so then Stereo-A will see it, and then (assuming it hasn't disappeared) Stereo-B will see it, and then it will be back in view from the Earth. With these three views, we basically have full coverage of the surface of the sun. This is useful, because if a new sunspot appears on the exact opposite side of the Earth, we still get a warning, because we can see it in Stereo-B. This gives us our ~3 day predictor. [Sidenote: These two satellites are slowly drifting further ahead and behind (while still staying on an orbit similar to Earth's), so we are probably looking at slightly more than 3 days at this point.]

Here you can find the latest images from both Stereo satellites.

The Stereo satellites are also measuring the solar wind. Next up we will talk about the ACE satellite, which is measuring the solar wind just upstream from the Earth.

Predicting Aurora: Kp index

2011-11-21T16:09:00.000-08:00

I was recently talking with my brother, who spent his summer closer to the auroral oval than I did. He had a lot of opportunities to see really good aurora and asked what some of my methods are for knowing when the lights will be bright. So I'm going to do this blogging series, Predicting Aurora.

It will be fun.

So one thing he was checking was the Kp index. Kp index is averaged over three hours from ground magnetometers across the US and Canada. Basically, when a lot of geomagnetic activity will occur in conjunction with auroral activity. The geomagnetic fluctuations can be observed on the ground. Then they are averaged and put into this arbitrary 0-9 scale. Usually if Kp is below 3 aurora will be limited or be at very high altitudes. Kp between 4-6 will make really awesome aurora (as long as it is close to midnight over the US & Canada, and not noon). If Kp goes above 6, anyone living below latitudes of 45 degrees should go outside because you could be getting a rare auroral treat.

This is where I go to view the Kp index.

There is another great advantage of the Kp index. You can keep track of it on longer timescales than the 3 day plot linked above, and this gives you a method for predicting activity ~27 days in advance. From the Earth, we observe the sun to have a rotation period of ~27 days. So, if we see a sunspot and observe aurora to occur in conjunction with that sunspot, it is likely that sunspot will reappear again once the sun makes a full rotation. Obviously sunspots don't last forever, so we might only see each one two or three times, but it is still a good predictor.

And lucky for us, someone has already taken the time to keep an updated plot of the Kp index on this conveniently useful cycle of 27 days. So if you go here, you will find that often, spikes of high Kp are on top of each other.

Next up will be how to predict aurora ~3 days in advance.

Love of Contra

2011-11-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

Recently I polled my facebook friends with the prompt:

Friends who love contra dancing:
Please tell me one (short) reason Why you love contra dancing.
(I am fine with repeats if your top reason is already posted.)

I didn't get a very strong response, but the responses I got were great and much appreciated. This is what they were:

It's such a joyous thing to do!

spinning/twirling

Dancing with you and all the nice people who like dancing!

‎"There is something just so RIGHT about it" Testimonial from Ted via. Peggy Pegster

I was particularly excited about the last one, because Ted was a great dancer who was always at all the dances. He died (unexpectedly) of a heart attack in the spring. And I totally agree with him that there is something just so Right about it. I've been trying to think of a concise way of describing why I love contra. This is what I've come up with:

It is an incredibly enjoyable way to connect with people of all ages in a healthy and logical way.

Trying out my Gimpy hand

2011-11-17T11:58:00.000-08:00

I've been trying different things with Gimp more and more these days. I knew it was possible to make a photo edit and then somehow get that same photo edit onto another photo. I figured out a way to easily do this today. Basically I just add a new layer and make the edits I want, and then click and drag the layer to another photo. If I wanted to duplicate edits on a large collection of photos I'm not so sure this would be efficient, but for now it works!

I started with this photo, which shows the snow accumulating on one side of trees on the top of Mt. Moosilauke. The photo was kind of monotonous, so I wanted to tone down some areas and leave the top right corner brightest. Then I added a nice border.

Then I applied the same edits to this photo, which was taken on the way to the top of the mountain.

These photos were just taken with my little camera, which is why they are on the Adventure blog instead of the Photo blog.

Style Tip

2011-11-13T11:44:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to an amazingly abundant contra dance. Lately at the dances in Norwich there is a fairly constant amount of regulars and also always a handful of newcomers. Last night was a different story. There is a dance organizers conference going on in the Upper Valley this weekend, which brought over 80 dancers who dance often to the dance. Some would call them "experienced" dancers, but that term also has a lot of negative connotations, so we'll just say they were a large group of people who are quite familiar with contra dancing. There were also almost 50 high schoolers from the Mountain School who came to the dance. They have come to the Norwich dance before, and it is tons of fun to have so many people with such high energy. Most of these people would fall into the "beginners" category. Then there was also a larger-than-normal Dartmouth contingent, many of whom were at their first-ever contra dance.

Trying to call a dance for such a varied group is really an amazing feat. You need to choose dances that are easy enough for the first-timers to not get totally frustrated, but also interesting enough to keep the regulars from getting bored. Needless to say, the caller did a fantastic job. Fantastic to the point where it was announced that we were doing the last dance of the evening, and I couldn't believe that three hours had passed in what seemed like one. Last night was an incredibly fun dance, and I particularly enjoyed seeing so many people from the dances I travel to, all at my hometown dance.

However, all of that is not what I intended to focus this post on. Often callers will give "style tips" when they walk through a dance. For example, a common one is "look at the person you are balancing" because a balance is kind of like a greeting, so it is just nice to make eye contact with the person you are greeting and dancing with. There are plenty of other style tips that have been pointed out to me (and hopefully others) at the various dances I've gone to, which I find really helpful in enriching my dance experience by making me feel more connected to the other dancers. To me, a good style tip is just like a little nugget that isn't totally necessary, but if the tip is acted upon, makes the dance exponentially better.

One style tip that I have yet to hear vocalized is regarding eye contact during a do-si-do. I was lucky enough to somehow notice that sometimes during a women's do-si-do, the other woman was sometimes making these intentional moments of eye contact. So we would step into the do-si-do, twirl, make eye contact, step, twirl, make eye contact, and if there was enough time even a third time. Once I figured that little tip out, my do-si-do experience was revolutionized. Typing it doesn't make it sound like a huge deal, but it was. Just trust me. If I encounter a woman who will do this, our dance experience is totally different than when I encounter one who doesn't. The woman and I who make eye contact are dancing with each other. We are "socializing" maybe? The point of social dance is to connect with others, right? Whereas the woman who does not know this style tip is just off twirling as many times as she can, often while admiring her twirling skirt.

Sidenote: Last night after the dance I was so exhausted, and upon trying to comment on how I really liked the twirliness of my skirt which I hadn't worn before stated, "I really liked that squirrel."

So the thing that really surprised me at the dance last night was just how many women are unaware of this do-si-do style tip. The majority of women there, including those from the conference, never danced a do-si-do with me, but rather just danced around me twirling their twirly skirts. Booooorrriiing.

Don't get me wrong. I do love to twirl a twirly skirt, but I prefer to focus my social dance experience on the social aspect. It does make me wonder what other style tips I have not yet picked up on, and that no one is really vocalizing..

ECD

2011-11-07T16:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I ventured out of my comfort zone and ended up at the English country dance. English country dancing is similar to contra dancing in that there is a live band and a caller who teaches all the dances and then calls throughout the dance. I actually think contra dancing was born from English country, but that might not be true. There are also a lot of differences between the two though. The English dance seemed much more varied to me, although this could be just because it was all new to me. In contra there are usually two main formations. At the English dance there were all sorts of formations. There were also all sorts of time signatures. There were a few dances in waltz time, which is not something I've found at contra. And there was a slip jig, which I've only encountered once at a contra dance, and it could have just been an English country dance that the caller just stuck in there without us knowing the difference. The main difference I noticed at the English dance was just the feel. I know that is very vague, but it really was the main difference. I think there was more emphasis on elegance and style.

And above all, going to the English country dance gave me the experience of a dance form originating from the 1600s (I think, again, might not be true). Basically it would have been exactly like Pride & Prejudice, except that Mr. Darcy wasn't there.

Barrett Hall

2011-10-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

A dance floor worth getting excited about!!

(Also my first attempt at hodge-podge-panorama, which I am a big fan of.)

Follow-Up and Re-Cap and Open-Question

2011-10-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

I know this isn't quite the same as seeing Greg and I wearing the matching Arizona outfits, but this is the sneak preview. I told Greg's mother the story of going to the dance and bidding on the outfits. I think I validated any questions she might have had about my sanity.
:)
But just look how happy I was within moments after finding out I won them!!

Also, to clarify, the wedding I was taken to when I was forced into the dance circle while sitting on my chair was not a wedding for anyone I knew. My cousin had taken me along to either a friend of her family's wedding or a family member on her other side of the family. Probably the fact that these were all strangers (aside from my cousin and aunt and uncle), had something to do with me not enjoying the circumstances.

Anyhow, onward!

This weekend, Greg and I went shopping, which is not something I have spent much time doing in the real world lately. I basically do all of my shopping online. It is a much more pleasant experience for me that way, with the exception of being able to try things on. In Tilton, NH there is a fairly large outlet mall, which I had heard much about, but had never been to. This is fairly close to Greg's mother's house, so we made a trip of it.

I ended up buying six things! (I think.) I think Greg got seven, so he won. Actually, no, I got seven. And spent less, so I win!

All in all it was a good time shopping. Usually I get pretty stressed out being in stores with other people. I always have people being incredibly rude to me (generally other shoppers, not the people who work in the stores), which I'd much rather just walk away from than deal with. I'm perfectly happy with online shopping, so why bother with these people? Greg actually reminded me of how this ties into the the book Love & Responsibility (written by Blessed John Paul II, before he was Blessed and before he was pope). Our society seems to be tending toward egoism, in which everyone acts in ways that are dictated only by self-interest. I mean, the shopping mall example is kind of wimpy, but it is true. If I am standing in front of a rack that a lady wants to look at, she will just stand right up against me to get to the rack, instead of patiently waiting the whole 8 seconds that I probably would have stood there.

Hmm, so now I get to thinking more about Utilitarianism. I think it makes sense that utilitarianism doesn't really work in its ideal form, that it always leads to egoism. But is contra dancing a true example of utilitarianism that actually works?

Ernie's Favorites

2011-10-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I was invited to go to a special contra dance. This event was called Ernie's Favorites, and it was a dance held in memory of a great dancer, who was quite well-known in the area. Unfortunately I never knew him, but fortunately this did not mean I could not go to the dance!

There was a star-studded line up of well-known dance callers and musicians. We did many of the classic dances, like Petronella and Rory O'Moore and Money Musk. I danced with the man responsible for making the Petronella spin be for four people instead of just two. That is a pretty big deal, if you didn't know.

I also got to meet the family of Ernie. His son is actually a well-known scientist in my field. And his wife was there and she was a very sweet old lady. At the dance they had about twenty matching outfits that Joan had sewn for her and Ernie for various occasions. They were auctioning them off to raise money for The Parkinson's Disease Foundation. And they were aMAZing. I told Greg that I was going to this dance and that I was planning to bid on one of these outfits for us. I saw some pictures of Ernie and Joan, and knew that the outfits should fit me and Greg perfectly. I also think that most of the people at the dance were not there to bid on outfits and also would not have fit into the outfits.

At first I bid on one nice brown set that was a dress for me and a vest for Greg. The dress had some nice lace features that I was a big fan of. But as I sat there, admiring the other outfits, I started to really really love this Arizona-themed outfit. I put a bid on it (which made me currently in the lead for two sets, woops!). Someone else outbid me on the first outfit, but I did end up winning the Arizona outfits. I was and still am So excited! And I think the family was pretty excited that I was so excited. And just like I thought, they fit us perfectly :)

Hopefully in the near future I can get a photo of us wearing them to feature on the blog!

Dancing

2011-10-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

Dancing is an amazing amazing thing.

When I was maybe ten, I remember being invited to go to a wedding with my cousin and her family. I specifically made sure that I would not have to dance before I agreed to go. And then I got to the wedding, and my cousin and I were doing just fine, resisting all invitations to go dance. At some point, she decided to join, but I stayed sitting on the side, quite content.

But then..

These people just decided that I must be having a terrible time sitting on the side, and they pulled my chair right into the middle of the dance floor.

That was a pretty uncomfortable and unfortunately memorable thing for me. I have lived most of my life with a great aversion to dancing, in any form.

Something major happened, which changed every thought or feeling I ever had about dancing.

It was contra dancing.

A lot of people (I guess) think I'm pretty crazy with my enthusiasm for contra dancing. I will try to explain how dancing makes me so enthusiastic. Because there is really just something about contra dancing. This thing, it is something you can't fully know without actually experiencing a contra dance, but I do think it is possible to at least begin to explain with just words.

The reason I ever agreed to go to a contra dance was because I was told I would "absolutely love it" or something, but mainly because in a contra dance you are told what to do, and you don't have to invent any of your own moves. I still have an aversion to free-form dancing, like what you find at most weddings, like what my 10-year-old self found at that wedding. This was my first great discovery about contra dancing: It is possible to do a type of dance that has specific moves, without actually knowing anything, and without actually needing to take time to learn set moves.

If you have ever thought to yourself: Wow that flash mob looks so awesome, and I wish I could be a part of one some day, except that it is probably too hard, and it would take me forever to learn that dance choreography, but still, it is just SOO cool!!
If you have ever thought that to yourself, you should probably just start going contra dancing regularly.

Another major thing about contra dancing is that the community is absolutely amazing. I know of no other situation in life where people of literally all ages are interacting in healthy and happy ways. There are people who say you need some number of hugs a day. I don't know how many the number is. And I don't know who started saying this. And I don't know if there is legitimate research on this topic. But I am in total agreement that there is something about the human touch, that physical touch. I absolutely do not mean anything inappropriate. I mean holding hands with people and dancing with people, in healthy and appropriate ways. I think I first realized the connection of a need for touch to contra dancing when I read a line in a book that was something like "we all need the human touch, that physical touch." I think this is also one of the reasons why I meet so many science-types at contra dances. These types of people are often just socially awkward and don't know of any other way that is appropriate to get that human touch. So they go contra dancing. And the caller tells them "join hands in a ring and circle to the left." And then there they are, connected to these people.

Another reason I, along with other science-types, enjoy contra is due to the structure. The structured choreography of the dance sequence, the repetition of the dance, that corresponds to the repetition of the tunes. It is all quite pleasing.

And generally speaking, contra dance bands are just awesome. It is an awesome privilege to hear so many amazingly talented musicians who play for contra dances. And it is even more awesome to be given the outlet of dance to be able to fully enjoy the music.

I feel like the grinch, like I can literally feel the size of my heart swelling.

These and many more dancing thoughts have been steeping in my brain, so it was time to put them into words. I'm sure I have more to write on the topic. I'm actually curious to look back and see what I have written before.

Julie & Dave got married!

2011-09-05T08:47:00.000-07:00

Happy Wedding Julie & Dave!

My amazing lunch

2011-07-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

I just took a picture of my lunch. This is a post largely celebrating my love of avocado.

I thought about eating the avocado plain for lunch, but since I had the pita I figured I could shove it in there. So delicious.

Yellow skirts are for twirling

2011-07-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

Hooray for a summertime contra dance! My local dance has gone on summer vacation, so now when I want to dance I must travel. Last night Greg and I made the trek down to Brattleboro for their spectacular dance. The music and calling were so spectacular.

Don't pay attention to the fact that I'm not actually doing what the other people are... despite the fact that this is supposed to be all choreographed and whatnot. Also, I might look like I'm about to smack that guy, but it is really just dancing. I promise.

That is a photo of Greg's blurred shorts and my blurred skirt in the foreground. The two gents in the background were visiting from Australia. These are my kind of people -- finding a contra dance in every place they go.

water conservation

2011-06-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

It is super important here in New Mexico. Check out these features:

There is a fire near Santa Fe

2011-06-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

St. Francis of Assisi and I witnessed the smoke rolling in, covering the setting sun.

The email I just sent to my housemates:

2011-06-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

So here is a good story for you all. Possibly this is not a story you will be thrilled to hear, but at least you didn't have to experience it.

Last night, Greg turned off the kitchen light. And no more than 5 minutes later I went back into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Turned on the light. Started to round the corner. Spotted a BAT on the floor directly in front of the refrigerator, panicked, and ran into the living room. I managed to get Greg's attention (funny what a little screaming will do), who managed to cover the bat with the white basket that is now on the front porch. He slid some cardboard under it, and took everything outside. He tried to fling the bat into the woods, but from what I understand it mostly just rolled out onto the ground. And it was still there this morning, either dead or just about dead.

Soo, I don't really know how a bat got into the barn, or how he decided to nearly die just in front of the refrigerator. Greg is guessing he hit it. I don't know what to think. As far as I can recall, we have never had a bat inside the barn, although I think I remember a story of one in the barn the year before I moved in.

Will anyone be getting any bonus points?

2011-06-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

Now I think you can see him a little better. There he is, that sly deer. He looked over at me for this photo when I yelled "Hey Deer!"

Look what I saw this morning:

2011-06-22T06:30:00.000-07:00

Can you see what I spotted, that is slightly more interesting than grass and trees?

Anyone who guesses correctly gets 8 bonus points. I'll post a zoomed higher-resolution photo tomorrow!

A storm

2011-06-20T13:04:00.001-07:00

Less than 6 minutes passed between these two photos. A week and half ago we had this huge storm, but it didn't last longer than 30 minutes. It cleared out as quickly as it came rolling in.

LSE

2011-06-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

LSE - long straw embarrassment

Thank you, Dear, for getting me this very delicious treat. And thank you for picking out the appropriately sized straw...

pshing for birds. squirrels?!

2011-06-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

My mom taught me this technique called "pshing" for birds. Or at least, that is what I am 85% sure the technique is called, and also 100% sure I taught Greg that is what it is called. Basically, if you hear a bird and want to maybe entice it closer to you, you just stand there and say "psh psh psh" and the bird, being the curious little fellow he is, just flies over closer to see what that noise is. I don't think I've ever noticeably made a bird fly closer with the "psh psh psh", but I definitely got a cute reaction out of this little guy!

The last frame is his reaction to the pshing :)

Mystery Photo Revealed

2011-06-03T07:41:00.000-07:00

Actually it was revealed in the previous post, but I'm not sure the revelation was very telling. The mystery item I made, was, in fact, a mushrooming bag! As of writing this post it has not actually gotten any use, despite the fact that I found this swell fellow growing in Julie's garden.

Unfortunately I don't actually know what kind of mushroom this is, so I am just going to go ahead and assume he is not of the edible variety, for my own safety.

I learned about the importance of mushrooming bags from the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The idea is that once you pick a mushroom, it is still dropping all of its spores, so if you want those spores to hit the earth and have potential to become new mushrooms, it is best to use a mesh bag to carry your harvest.

Can you guess what I made now?

2011-06-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

I'll give you a hint: It is not a hairnet.

Can you guess what I made?

2011-06-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

welt

2011-05-29T20:32:00.001-07:00

Can you see that welt on my hand?!
Let me just go ahead and trace it out for you.

Today I was outside gardening when I saw this little black bug on my hand. I was about to swish him away from me when I noticed a droplet of blood forming next to him. This was no innocent little black bug I tell you. This was a black fly (sometimes called a buffalo gnat, turkey gnat, or white socks), and he got me good!

A lesson in thrift store clothing

2011-05-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

I love buying clothing from thrift stores. I have found many amazing things at thrift stores, generally for an amazingly low cost. My mother taught me to always wash my thrift store purchases, and I used to be revolted at the thought of Not doing so. Then one time I made a plan to wear a piece of clothing before I washed it. And that wasn't so bad at all, so now I basically do it all the time. If something is so in need of washing right out of the store, I am probably not likely to buy it.

One thing that slightly freaks me out about thrift store clothing is putting my hands in the pockets. And I may have realized that my hesitancy to just jump right in, with my hands in the pockets, is Not unfounded. I may have discovered that this very weekend, in fact.

Several weeks ago I bought some amazing pants. These pants are purple and comfortable and beautiful. One important lesson in thrift store clothing would be: if you see purple pants, buy them. That is not the one I am referring to in the title of this blog post.

Back to the purple pants though. They were a little too short for me (as are most pants in this world) but luckily they had a cuff, which could be undone and would make them long enough. They also had very wide legs, but I figured sewing them to make them skinny/boot cut width wouldn't be too hard. So I did just that this weekend.

I simply pinned the purple pants to make them approximately the same width as these red pants. And then I sewed the straight line. And now they are even more spectacular because they fit just how I would like them to.

But I still hadn't broken the ice as far as use-of-pockets goes. So I decided I better just put my hands in there because I didn't want to have pants that I could never use the pockets on. So I did it. Hands went in the pockets (knuckles first of course, because it is way less bad to touch a foreign object with your knuckle than your fingertip). Unfortunately I felt something in the right pocket, but it seemed to be just a tissue, so I pulled it out, and as I was grabbing I realized it was a bit more squishy than a tissue ought to be, and before I can even pull it into view my heart rate had increased to an abnormal level, and as I flung it to the ground I realized that it was not, in fact, a real worm, but just one of those fake worms they make for fishing.

Because the first activity I had planned for myself while wearing my new (used), purple banana republic pants, was, hands down, fishing.

kernel panic

2011-05-23T11:53:00.001-07:00

I have been having computer issues.

Right now I am using an ancient PowerBook G4, that once had coffee spilled on it, and was taken out of commission (not by me, don't worry).

My dear computer's kernel panicked last week. I have been getting help from many people. It turns out that the video controller was the cause, and my computer qualified for the recall on those. So it is being fixed for free. Phew. I did not plan for buying a new computer at this point in time, so all is well. Hopefully my computer will be back tomorrow.

I have a smattering of pictures and blogging ideas based on those pictures. Hopefully I can make that happen soon!

WTRB

2011-04-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

What's that in the middle of my yard? You may be wondering? Oh, well friends, that is the newest addition to Harjitshire: our rain barrel! Or, as I fondly call it, our White Trash Rain Barrel (WTRB). It was originally proudly perched in the middle of our yard. It is still too cold to plant (at least for my comfort level), and we haven't even tilled up the earth yet, so the WTRB was looking a little out of place, considering there isn't yet a garden next to it. There will be a garden there soon, but upon careful consideration, Greg and I decided the WTRB ought to be moved to a more ideal location. More on that later.

The rain barrel was constructed using an un-used trash can we had at the barn. In the bottom we (basically just Greg) sawed a tiny hole, and we attached some hardware, which amounts to a spigot with a turny knob to control the flow of water. It is a pretty good system, and it allowed us to fully explore the Lyme Home and Hardware store. Since the spout is on the bottom, we have it propped up on cinder blocks. Plus cinder blocks add to its white trash status.

Most rain barrels are ideally located under a downspout, so you can gather water from an area as large as the roof of your house. The barn does not have downspouts. This should not surprise you, as we do not even have an outdoor spigot. Part of the motivation for a rain barrel is to be more crunchy, by using rain water for watering the garden, as opposed to pumping well water. But part of the motivation for a rain barrel is mere laziness, so we can minimize the number of times we have to fill up the watering can in the bathtub and haul it outside.

Anyhow, since we don't have a downspout, we just covered the top of this trash can with mesh to make sure our rain barrel does not become a mosquito breeding ground.

We also decided to move the rain barrel in order to catch more rain. When it was sitting in the middle of the yard, it would have been conveniently close to the garden, but it was also catching water from an area of about four square feet. We moved it under the overhang of the barn's tin roof. Now we are collecting water from something more like twenty square feet. It isn't quite the same as collecting water from the Entire roof, but it is still a large improvement. We have great confidence that this was a good move, and a move that will work, because we moved it while it was raining.

Ta daa!

Pencils!

2011-04-13T09:51:00.001-07:00

I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils :)

VOTING!!

2011-04-11T11:52:00.000-07:00

The voting has opened for the Design Your Look Challenge, hosted by Jess LC. Head over to her blog, Makeunder My Life and leave a comment with your vote. I'd recommend voting "Meghan M. - Tuesday Adventures" but you can really vote for whoever you want. There are 113 entries and prizes for the top three winners! I really like my outfit best, but there are several other really good ones (and also some hideous looking wonders).

Design MY Look

2011-04-01T19:57:00.000-07:00

The blogging world is a magnificent thing. Jess of jesslc.com is hosting a spectacular Contest! She calls it a challenge, but there is a super sweet prize for the winner, so to me it is a contest! The idea is simple: to design your ideal spring look. I have been searching all over for a floral sweater I can afford, but with no luck, so entering this contest (based on a dream of a floral sweater) is my next best option. Here is my creation:

The winner is chosen by vote, which begins April 11. I'll keep the blog updated with a link for voting! Each of these items is SO wonderful, but also completely unaffordable (by me), so here's to hoping for good-winning-luck!

Origin of the Aurora

2011-03-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

Mister Sun-Shine! Mister Golden Sun! Please shine down on me!

The Lemon

2011-03-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a conference in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was pretty awesome, probably the best conference I've been to.

Sometimes during the morning break between talks there would be a large bowl of fruit next to the coffee station. One day I found a bright yellow lemon trying to blend in with the apples, oranges, and pears. I went back in several minutes later, and the fruit was slowly being eaten, but still the lemon remained. I knew the lemon had to be mine, so I snatched it up before I thought better of the idea.

Then I ate the lemon like an orange.

Yum!

Crazy Gradient in the Sky

2011-03-16T15:02:00.000-07:00

This is what I saw the sky looking like one day. I happened to be on a plane, flying from Anchorage, AK to Fairbanks, AK. And I saw this crazy gradient, where the sky nearest the horizon was bright, going to a darker blue with increasing altitude, and then after reaching that dark band, it started to go light again. How did this happen?!? What is going on?!?

This sky does not look natural to me. I promise the photos are showing a true view of what the sky Actually looked like. I think these were taken at something like 8 AM local time, February 27 (ish).

AURORA!

2011-03-01T09:11:00.000-08:00

We saw it last night! yay! I need to get myself dressed for talks. I also need to learn to use manual focus in the dark... These photos make it to the adventure blog due to blurriness. Hopefully I'll see more aurora, and be more in focus next time!

first gimp project

2011-02-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

So, this weekend I downloaded Gimp, which is a free program that is basically the same as photoshop. only free. It is a little more tricky to use than I was hoping, but I am at the early stages of catching on. I think it will be one of those things where once I know how to use it, it will be very powerful.

Last week at the bar after one of Greg's games, one of his teammates mentioned (in my general direction) how cool it would be if someone was taking photos at the games and making cards out of them. I can take a hint people. Plus it sounded like a super fun project. This is my first attempt:

I modeled it after Patrick Roy's rookie card. I think Greg approved.

The only problem is that my proportions are slightly off. I think my version is a little wider than a standard hockey card.

Safety First

2011-01-20T18:47:00.000-08:00

Today after work I went to State Line Sports for the special purpose of purchasing a hockey helmet. This will be handy for two things:

1) Being safe while skating on the pond.

2) Not having to wear the stinky helmets they provide for intramural hockey.

Here is me, posing with my new gear. I got this sweet helmet for a mere $55, which is about the best price you could ask for for a new adult helmet, especially considering this baby was on sale from $119.99. This is the kind of amazing deal you can get when you walk into a store and upon asking if any help is needed you proclaim, "I'd like the cheapest helmet you have!"

My helmet purchase was largely inspired by a very sad horror story. One of the guys Greg skates with was playing pond hockey, and hit a crack or something when he was changing from skating forward to backwards and fell straight back. He cracked his skull and was bleeding from his ears. I do not EVER want to be bleeding from my ears. He is recovering and doing better every day. But still. If a guy who knows how to skate well can have such a terrible thing happen to him, who am I to go skating around without a helmet? So there you have it folks, always wear a helmet when you skate. ALWAYS.

Contra Dance Calling

2011-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

I just did a quick review of former posts, and it seems I have yet to blog about calling contra dances. I guess it goes without saying that I am incredibly passionate about contra dancing. Sarah and I always talk about "the contra spirit" which basically entails all the good things involved with contra dancing.

So, about a year ago, I started going to a workshop led by David Millstone for learning to call contra dances. My intention in joining was to not actually call dances, but just to learn the mechanics of how calling works, and how the dances work. Well somehow, it managed to be arranged that I would call one single dance at one of the dance sessions that David runs. It was a bit nerve-wrecking, largely because that involves me, on a stage, with a microphone, in front of a large group of people (>50). But despite the nerves and the shaky voice (and not properly lining people up at the start, so the instruction before music started fell apart completely the first time), it was fun! And it worked! It was some sort of great feat of communication, to see if I could get this whole hall of people (or at least a large portion of them) all coordinated up.

So anyhow, David has helped me along, and it has been great to have him as my mentor. I could not ask for anything better really. I have now called a few individual dances. I have also met dozens of other callers, some of whom are starting to remember my name as well, and even offering me guest calling spots if I ever attend a dance they are calling! Plus! I got my copy of Tony Parkes' book autographed!

I was very glad to see the new edition released, since it is nearly impossible to find a copy of the original edition. You can purchase your own copy from Beth and Tony here. I think they said you can also buy the book from Amazon.

The other thing I recently learned about was an online listserv for contra dance callers. I joined up, and from looking at the archives it seems to be a good resource for keeping in touch with other callers, both for asking questions or sharing useful information. I learned from the latest post that there are people who write software to be able to organize dances and program evenings, and then check the dances to make sure there is not too much repetition from one to the next. It is really quite amazing, but also not free. So my new long term goal is to write my own. I haven't done a ton of programming, but with Greg's help, we can make it happen. The plan is to make it freeware that will work on any operating system.

The future looks bright!

San Francisco

2010-12-20T10:01:00.001-08:00

You may be thinking, "oh cool, she went to San Francisco, this post will be full of neato photos." Wrong. How very wrong. I did have a good time in San Francisco, but I only took one photo the entire time. I was pretty busy doing work stuff most of the time (since I was there for a conference). On Wednesday night I did go to a contra dance in Berkeley, which was a good way to add some play into the week. I didn't have my camera though, and I would have been dancing the whole time anyhow, so no loss there. The only other fun thing I did was a little bit of shopping.

So now.
The moment you have been waiting for.
I present to you,
the one San Francisco photo.

Amazing and delicious.

sunset

2010-10-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

I have been in a new office lately, and now I have a west-facing window, which provides a lovely view of sunsets. Yesterday the sky was getting extremely pink and I didn't have my new fancy-pants camera in the office, so I took a couple photos with my trusty little point & shoot. These photos don't even do the colors justice, as the sky got less bright in the amount of time it took me to grab my camera, shut off the light, and climb onto my desk to get a clear view through my heavily-ivy-covered window.

It was a really lovely sunset!

Photo Blog!!!~

2010-09-22T09:08:00.001-07:00

I have started a new blog! It is a photo blog!

http://tuesdayphotos.blogspot.com/

This is where I plan to post photos I take with my new camera. Possibly a photo a day, although that seems Very ambitious.

Tour de Taste

2010-09-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

On Sunday Greg and I did the Tour de Taste. It is a "progressive pedaling picnic" hosted by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. We rode the Classic loop which was a 17 mile loop from Fairlee, down to Thetford, across the river to Lyme, and then up to Orford and back to Fairlee. Along the way there were 6 different stops serving food from local farms and restaurants. It was Awesome! We rode at a nice leisurely pace, enjoying the scenery and the food. Plus now I am inspired to start riding my bike more!

Here is a photo of Greg and I at the Cedar Circle Farm. We are posing with our compostable spoons that were provided for the ride. At the end of the loop we got a free prize for disposing of the spoons in the proper receptacle. The prize was a booklet with all the trails they maintain, which I was quite excited about.

Canning Joy

2010-08-19T11:57:00.001-07:00

Greg and I are having a ton of fun canning things! Exactly two weeks ago today we started our first batch of dilly beans, so they are ready for eating now. We haven't opened a jar yet. I am tempted to let them sit a little longer, but I'm not sure that will actually improve them. We have also made blackberry jam with free blackberries from Harjit's yard. And spiced blueberry jam with some blueberries we picked at this great secret blueberry farm I know of. And lastly we canned pie filling! This one I am particularly excited about. We have two blackberries (more of Harjit's blackberries) and one blueberry (from the Super Acres pick-your-own place in Lyme). yummmmmm

Garden Log

2010-07-24T08:27:00.001-07:00

This post is mostly for my own purposes of remembering how our vegetables did as well as when and how much we harvested throughout the growing season. I hope to keep it updated and also possibly add photos if appropriate.

July 7: 6 green beans
July 14: 5 green beans
July 24: 4 green beans, 1 cucumber

July 27: 6 green beans
August 4: 2 cucumbers, 10 green beans, 11 green beans (barn), 1 pea
August 5: 8 green beans
August 8: 5 green beans
August 11: 8 green beans, 5 peas
August 12: 2 cucumbers, 14 green beans (plants at Greg's have been demolished by deer, should have had Much more)

Old Notes

2010-07-02T08:12:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in the airport, not really wanting to read, and also having zero access to free internet, so I am doing some blog-writing, that will hopefully get posted shortly after being written.

On the topic of my hair:

I settled into a no-shampoo routine. About 1 or 2 or 3 times per week I would shower and do a salt water rinse on my hair, followed by an apple cider vinegar rinse. Most days I felt "meh" about my hair. Some rare days I felt like I really liked my hair. Some days I also thought my hair looked terrible. I don't want to go back to using shampoo because I really don't think it can be good for me. I have now tried using a baking soda and water solution to "wash" my hair. I think it worked fairly well, when followed by the acv rinse. I also spent a week in Aspen attending a conference with my friend Allison, who originally got me interested in avoiding shampoo, and she suggested trying a dry shampoo, as a fast alternative to doing the shower routine with my hair, if I woke up one day hating how my hair looked. I think she said corn starch works as a good dry shampoo, just shake a little on top of my head, and brush out. I need to look that up though, to make sure it was actually corn starch, and not some other powder substance.

All in all, I feel like my hair cleaning is super low-maintenance, which is my favorite part. I am also so amazed that I was able to curl my hair and have it keep the curl without using any bit of hair spray.

On the topic of travel:

Over Memorial Day weekend, Malory came to visit me in VT. We had a lot of big plans to do a lot of fun things. She scheduled her trip around the Vermont City Marathon in Burlington, which she ran like a champ. Greg and I took on the important role of "support team", which included making giant neon signs with puffy things saying important things like "You Rock Snakebite" and "Don't Trip" with a picture of a jaguar crossing the finish line. OH and one funny but terrible thing that happened at the marathon: one of the wheelchair racers fell into Lake Champlain! For those unfamiliar, the wheelchair racers ride these super fast tricycle-like things. Well at the end of the race there was a 90 degree turn, right on the edge by the water. I am pretty sure that is where he went in, because I don't know how any bikes going a decent speed could make it around that corner. Another interesting fact: the winner of the foot race beat some of the wheelchair racers, who had started 5 or 10 minutes before the foot racers. THAT is crazy!

Aside from that, pretty much everything we wanted to do on that trip went wrong. We spent one day visiting Montpelier, where we had a terribly disgusting dessert eclair, followed by a visit to the Trapp Family Lodge, where nothing was really going on and they didn't have a tandem bike we could rent, followed by a visit to the Ben & Jerry's factory, where they gave us a tour, but they weren't actually making ice cream, because the workers had a long weekend. Another day we wanted to go to Afternoon Tea in Chester, VT at a little B&B. We got to the door, but it was locked, so we knocked/rang, and about 4 minutes later a woman comes to the door and says, "Oh I'm sorry I'm closed today." Malory and I stood there for a minute, not sure what was going on, especially since I had called two days prior and made a reservation and had actually talked to this woman twice. So we were kind of like "oookay" and started to back away, and then the woman started talking. Apparently she was up all night with her dog who had eaten an entire bottle of ibuprofen (which is highly poisonous for dogs, she informed us, not to mention poisonous to any living creature when eaten in doses as large as a full bottle). Therefore, she was closed. Again, "oookay" and start to back away, and the woman starts talking more. "Did you have a reservation?" "yeeeah we came for afternoon tea?" "ooh... OOh (this is when she realized she totally forgot about us)... OH I am SO sorry. Now I even remember talking to you on the phone" and on and on. We stood on that porch for a lot longer than I felt comfortable with, but the fact of the matter was that no food was prepared and therefore we were not having tea. The woman actually did call me later and left a message on my phone. She was practically crying into the phone, so I'm not Positive about what she said, but I think, sandwiched by apologies, she offered us free tea. Unfortunately (fortunately?) Chester was far enough away to make me feel like it was not worth another awkward experience with this lady.

The one other thing that I remember going wrong was that it rained on the day we were planning to go canoeing. By that point the disappointment was not so great, because we weren't really expecting our plans to actually work out.

Malory did bring me a giant spoon, so that was great!

Flying Notes

2010-07-02T08:05:00.000-07:00

Flying from Manchester to Chicago is definitely one of my favorite trips. We were flying at maybe 10,000 feet, and the sky was totally clear, so I could easily see everything. I actually slept through NH and VT. I woke up when we were over NY, as recognized by Lake Ontario to the north. I actually had to spend some time thinking about the Great Lakes, because I kind of forgot what they all were.

Plus I wasn't sure if I was over NY and seeing Lake Ontario or if I was over Ohio and seeing Lake Eerie. Luckily the Finger Lakes were easily discernible, so I got that all straightened out. I watched out the window as we made our way to Ohio. The neatest thing I spotted was a bunch of wind turbines! At first I couldn't quite figure it out, but then I realized that must have been what it was. A giant patch of them in NY, west of the Finger Lakes, south of Lake Ontario, southeast of Lake Eerie, just hanging out and being awesome. I could even see the actual spinning on the ones that I was looking straight on. It does take a long time to fly along the Great Lakes though, so I also did some reading of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and also got a snack to eat. On Southwest they give out 100 calorie packs.

100 calorie packs are about my least favorite invention ever.

It was an especially odd food to be eating considering the book I am currently reading. Also, on the front of the package it has this special little blurb:
Snacktime Inspirations: Remember, frozen fruits and vegetables are just as nutritious as fresh - so stock up the freezer and incorporate them into a variety of different recipes.

First of all, according to my text editor, snacktime is not a word.

Second of all, what is the message here? Having fruits and vegetables in the house encourages you to eat more? And you don't have to worry about them spoiling if you don't eat them, because they are in the freezer?

Most importantly, why does my 100 calorie pack of tiny cinnamon roll shaped graham crackers care if I am eating fruits and vegetables? Kraft Inc. I shake my fist at you.

I'm not really intending to become a total food snob, because I know I could never make it as a locavore, but honestly, some things are going too far.

Anyhow, back to my adventure. I stayed awake until we got to Michigan, where you can see Canada sneaking in to the south of Detroit. I really like maps a lot, and I also really like when I can be far enough away from land to pick out features I can recognize from seeing a map. Mapmakers, I salute you. Also, sidenote, what exactly do surveyors do? I feel like this is an important and neat job, but when I see two guys surveying Main Street in Hanover, are they really doing something that hasn't been done before? This I cannot believe to be true, but I really have no clue about surveyors. I should do some wikipedia reading. Anyhow, then I slept through Michigan, and woke up to see we were quite close to landing, and had a nice morning view of the Chicago skyline. Good trip everyone! Thanks!

Sadly, Midway has no free wireless, so I am not posting this immediately upon typing, but at least I am back to blogging!

Giant Marshmallows

2010-05-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

Look what I got at the grocery store the other day.

Stuff Sucks

2010-05-17T05:55:00.000-07:00

Thank you toothpastefordinner.com for that.

I rode my bike to school today.
An oil truck came within a foot of me, going at least 10mph over the speed limit of 30.
The gust of wind/My overwhelming fear made me start going all wobbly on my bike.
Maybe this is my fault for not being that good of a bike rider. Maybe it is my fault for loading my crate on the back too full instead of evenly distributing the weight of the stuff I was hauling.
Either way, I was at least going slowly enough to be able to stop instead of fall over.
And I almost cried.

Hair Update

2010-05-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

I am a day shy of five weeks with no shampoo. All in all I feel very positive about this. There are days when I think my hair looks not-great, but it hasn't been bad enough to force me to do any shampooing. In fact, even if I decide something more needs to be done, I have a lot of options I can try, and I'm pretty sure shampoo will never be one of them.

Here is a low-quality photo I took on my computer just now. You can see my awesome display case with rulers in the background. This is what my hair looks like on a Tuesday morning after not having showered since Sunday afternoon. For the past two weeks I've only been cleaning my hair twice a week. I think that is probably stretching it a bit more than I ought to, but I really want to test the limits here. I had been rinsing my hair with just water on occasion though, for example, if I needed to shower off after going running, but it wasn't quite time for an acv cleansing routine. I think the days when I did just a water rinse were making my hair look more greasy though, so I don't want to do that anymore. So we'll see if I make it to thursday this week before I want to clean my hair again.

This weekend I have a wedding to attend, and I was thinking I might try to curl my hair a bit. This is a big feat people. I have tried this before, and because I don't put hair spray in my hair the curl is gone pretty much instantly. Last night I did a sample curl just to see what it would look like, and how it would stay. Hair that has not seen shampoo in weeks holds curl in the most amazing way!! I didn't even let the curling iron get hot, and I could get curls to stay. My real concern is what will happen if I go swimming in a hotel pool filled with chlorine...

Riding my Bike!

2010-05-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

About three years ago I purchased a bike from Craig's list. It looked a little like the one above, a Giant hybrid, only mine is plum colored and I have a crate on the back to carry things, as well as a rack on the front, but so far I haven't used that to carry anything. I also have two cup-holders, which hold my travel mug really well, so I can bring my coffee. In previous years I always intended to ride my bike to school instead of driving, but I never seemed to stick with it. This year I'm going to try to be more serious about that.

Here are my reasons for wanting to ride my bike more:

1. It makes me feel healthy. I definitely am one who hates exercising for exercise purposes alone. This doesn't mean I hate physical activity. I just hate going to the gym. I love doing things like hiking or gardening, or even running outdoors with a group of friends, because the primary focus is not 'getting fit', it is just an added bonus. So biking to work fits right in this category. It gets me to my office, but also gives me a bit of a workout. Also, since I only live 5 miles away, it only takes me slightly longer to get to the office by biking than it does by driving, since I have to walk about 10 minutes from the parking lot to my building. And I think if I start getting better at biking (aka not using the brakes on big hills because I'm scared of going fast) then the times should be pretty equivalent. Plus biking is easier on my knees than running.

2. I am all set up to ride my bike in a variety of conditions... or at least I have the ability to be. I got bike lights for my birthday from my mommy this year! A front white light, and a back red light, and both have various modes of flashing or pulsing and whatnot. Very Cool! I still have to get batteries in them and put them on my bike though. Also, I have a really nice rain jacket as well as rain pants, so even the weather shouldn't stop me.

3. This is my sneaky plan to save a lot of money. The cost of gas alone for driving to and from work is somewhere between $.80 and $1.00/day. That is nearly $30/month, just for the gas to drive to school. If you add in other car expenses, like oil, maintenance, tires, etc., the national average cost of a small sedan is around $.50/mile. Obviously this average changes depending on the source, but I went with that number as it is the amount Dartmouth reimburses for mileage on expense reimbursements for work travel. That is $5 per day that I would be spending if I drive to school, which is a LOT of money.

4. Opting for riding my bike over driving is the green thing to do. I have been a Vermonter for almost three years now, so it is about time I started actively trying to be more environmentally friendly. This seems pretty self-explanatory, although I did just find this disturbing article that basically justifies driving, since walking requires more calories, and food production has become so energy-intensive that the pollution from a car is actually less than that of additional food production. There were also some other odd facts* on things like how organic cow's milk is worse than non-organic because the cows produce less milk, making their methane emissions higher because more cows are needed. I feel justified in not buying organic milk, but I'm still going to ride my bike.

Anyhow, I kind of got off-track there, but I am Super excited for my new plan to ride my bike more. This is the third spring that I have said that, so I hope I actually stick with it this year. I have hopes of having bike-riding become my natural choice for getting myself places, and having my car be the backup plan. Plus I want to ride my bike to all sorts of great places, like the farmer's market, the local contradances (I'll still need to drive to the far ones, but at least I can carpool), The Chutes by the Union Village Dam, Isabell's for delicious breakfast, the Whippy Dip for delicious ice cream, and probably other places as well. Ta Da.

*I use the word "facts" loosely, as I don't really know the source for this info.

waving at kids

2010-04-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was the passenger in Greg's car and when we stopped at a red light I looked over at the car next to us, where a pudgy kid was sitting with his window down. I smiled, and he smiled and waved in a really excited way, so I waved back. Then I told Greg about it, and when I looked back the kid looked over again and gave me another friendly wave, so I waved back, and we were both laughing a lot at that point. Then his mom's light turned green, and she was laughing too as the kid waved one last time while driving off. Super Cute. I don't have a picture, but it was essentially like this:

Elephants

2010-04-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

My friend Scott posted a link to this article on elephants. Now I can't stop thinking about elephants.

-------------------------------------

Elephants are lovely guys,
Who are good and true and tell no lies.

They don't take more than they can eat,
And always watch where they put their feet.

They don't play with electric wires;
I never have heard of them starting fires.

They have no vices and do not smoke.
An Elephant is a kindly bloke.

Elephants take good care of their young.
They seldom speak with angry tongue.

When in school, they do not cheat.
They walk in lines which are quite neat.

They don't beat up on smaller folks;
Don't care if they're the butt of jokes.

They don't worry what to wear today;
Look mighty splendid all in gray.

Super strong, yet very nice,
And no, they're not afraid of mice.

I've tried and tried but simply can't
Find anything better than the Elephant.

By - Wayne Hepburn for Elephant Appreciation Day

No More Shampoo :D

2010-04-12T08:31:00.000-07:00

So my friend Allison has been blogging about her experimentation with not using shampoo. This inspired me to do a lot of reading on the topic and do some experimenting of my own. I used to have a roommate who would only wash her hair every few days. I was always amazed that her hair did not look all greasy and gross, since mine would look greasy and gross after just one day. For awhile in the fall I had managed to cut back to washing my hair every other day, but I had recently gotten back into the trend of shampooing (and conditioning) every day.

This is my new plan. I will start following Allison's routine and will adjust it according to my needs if necessary. This involves doing a saltwater rinse and an apple cider vinegar rinse every other day. First, sea salt is dissolved into a glass of hot water.

Pour that over your head and massage it into the scalp. The purpose is to cleanse the hair and remove dead skin cells from your scalp and whatnot. Then, rinse your hair with the acv, diluted with an equal part of water.

Massage this into your scalp, and be sure to rinse Really well, because smelling like vinegar all day is not part of the new plan. So far I have only tweaked this routine slightly, in that I once waited three days to do these rinses because I had rinsed with just water on the "off days" and I also dilute my acv slightly more so it is more like a quarter acv and three quarters water.

A short summary of why I am trying to be a "no shampoo" convert:

1. Shampoo is bad.* Basically, shampoo was invented in the 1930's(ish). Apparently as a result of houses having tap water with more minerals which made washing regular soap out of your hair quite difficult. Shampoo is the equivalent of laundry detergent.* Even super-expensive, all-natural shampoos will dry out your hair and scalp.

2. The more you shampoo, the more shampoo you "need". My understanding of it is this: you shampoo your head and it thinks, "aaahhh I am feeling so dried out and flakey! Help, Help! Quick, make more oil to put things back in balance!" So your head gets into this tread of over-producing oil, which makes you think shampooing every day is necessary. The unfortunate part about changing to a no-shampoo-routine is that it takes your scalp some time to adjust to not needing to over-produce oil. I guess this can take anywhere from weeks to months, but I'm not really too concerned (see point #5). I think your scalp was designed to produce oils that are good and healthy for your hair. Somehow we decided that it is best to dry out our hair by taking those oils off, but at the same time encouraging our scalp to produce more oil. My poor scalp has been getting mixed signals for my entire life.

3. Shampooing is unnecessarily costly and time-consuming. Shampooing your hair every day is not necessary. Shampooing your hair ever is not necessary. Don't waste the time and money doing so.

4. There is an alternative way. I am initially inclined to say it is a better way, but there are a lot of things I haven't quite figured out, so for now it is just an alternative way. It can be explained with Science. Basically, anything that has water in it is either an acid, a neutral, or a base. We are talking about pH folks. Water is neutral. On a scale from 0 to 14, 7 is neutral, 0 is the most acidic, and 14 is the most alkaline (strongest base).

Hair and skin have a natural pH of 5. Soaps are bases, which dry out your skin (think of your hands after doing a lot of cleaning with strong cleaning solutions). Vinegar has a pH of 3. So basically, using vinegar acts to keep the pH balance of your scalp where it wants to be. Sea salt has a pH of something like 7.5 to 8. It is very weakly alkaline, but still makes it necessary to use the vinegar to restore the pH of your scalp. I have read that a lot of people use baking soda (pH of 9) to wash their hair, which would be slightly more alkaline than the sea salt, but still quite mild. Here is the catch: I don't actually know the pH of the shampoo I was using, which is why I don't know if this routine is better based on a pH argument. At least it is better that I now actually know what I Am putting in my hair. Also, aside from being good to your scalp you also want to be good to your actual hair. I haven't done enough reading on this, but there is a Science to hair as well, and shampoo is essentially making your hair very unhappy.*

5. What do I have to lose? Seriously. The one negative side effect is that your hair Might get really greasy for awhile until your scalp adjusts to not over-producing oil. So far I have not used shampoo for 5 days, and I don't think my hair looks that bad. Even if it did look kind of bad, I doubt anyone in the physics building would even notice. This is a place where it is acceptable to wear the same outfit for a week, no problem. In fact, physicists are so into low-maintenance that I will probably start to feel an even greater sense of camaraderie with these people. Aside from that, I know a certain someone who will strongly encourage me to reconsider my new routine if my hair starts to get out of control. But honestly, I don't ever think it will.

Also, I don't really do anything with my hair as is. I don't even brush my hair. The only thing that I do care about is making my hair grow long enough to be able to chop it and donate it. One of the problems with hair donation is that you cannot donate split ends, so it often takes me a long time to grow 10 inches of good hair, because I need to keep trimming off the end. I am so sure that an avoidance of shampoo will make split ends much less of a reality for me.

Also, in preparation for a possible really-greasy-looking-early-stage-of-new-hair-routine, I bought a new scarf to wear on my head and also some cheap fabric from the remnant bin at Joann's so that I can make some sweet headbands. Now I have become a headband-wearer, which I am really enjoying. When people see me wearing a headband it totally distracts them from my hair, and (I am pretty sure) they don't even notice the state of greasiness of my hair.

Also, small sidenote: this research has been very enlightening. It makes me wonder about my face soap as well. The active ingredient is an acid, but it still dries out my face so much, which then makes a face moisturizer necessary. Are these "necessities" also not necessary?

Anyhow, now I am just waiting for the time when someone compliments my hair without even knowing I gave up shampoo.

*Please note that broad generalizations are a result of me taking everything I have read about this on the interwebs to be fact.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

2010-03-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

I was feeling like doing some baking this weekend, and what I really wanted to make was something like banana bread without the bananas, since I don't even like bananas. I did some googling, and ended up finding this recipe for a delicious sweet bread alternative. When I was shopping for ingredients, I happened to find myself in the applesauce section, which is not normal, but it made me remember how you can replace the oil in recipes with applesauce, so I got some. Then I got home and realized I had some bland yogurt that I was not intending to eat, and I remembered how you can replace the oil in recipes with plain yogurt. So I ended up making two loaves of this bread, one with the applesauce substitution, and one with the yogurt substitution. They both turned out well, which I was happy about. So far the reviews of which bread was better are pretty mixed. The yogurt one was definitely more moist and also kept its moisture longer. By day three it is practically like sticky buns or something, where the applesauce one kind of dried out.

The End.

hockey!

2010-02-15T06:58:00.000-08:00

This year the physics department gathered up enough interest to get our very own intramural hockey team! In previous years I have played with the debate team, because they would sign up in the co-ed league, which required at least two girls to be on the ice at all times, and for some reason they just didn't always have enough girls show up to their games.
This is a video from two years ago. I am on the yellow team, wearing green pants, and I'm pretty sure I got an assist, which is about the only good thing I ever did while playing with that team. Luckily Tim, who was filming, took note of this amazing feat by yelling MY name and not the name of the one who got the goal:)

This year our team is much less shaky, as there seems to be quite a bit of hockey talent in the physics/astronomy department.
Below is a picture of six of our guys and just one opponent. I swear it was during actual gametime... not my fault if the other teams gave up on playing offense. My favorite is how we have one player in figure skates. It just makes everything so much more like Mighty Ducks.

This kid is about to get clobbered by the astro professor who plays with us. He is not a small man to start with, but wearing full hockey gear makes him look downright intimidating. Also, please note that we have one fan in the audience!! woohoo!!

Aside from playing a few late night Monday games (one was after 11pm, so pretty much I was asleep on the ice), we have been playing out on the pond as well. Yesterday Greg, Dustin, and I were challenged to a game by a group consisting of a dad/uncle and a bunch of cousins/brothers between the ages of maybe 8 and 14. I was slightly intimidated, because pond hockey can get kind of out of control sometimes. At any rate, I agreed to play, knowing that I could just leave at any time. We took the youngest brother Paul on our team, and played 4 on 5. We had tons of fun, and eventually, with enough passes to Paul, he got us our last goal, which he was pretty pleased about, considering he was playing against his older brothers. We ended up skating for two hours and today I am quite tired and sore. All in all a good time, and I am SO glad I'm not stuck in Alaska and missing the entire skating season like last year!

Next time you look back, I think you should look again.

2010-01-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

Today I am in a blogging mood. Prepare for what could possibly be a lengthy post of my adventures from the past few months or so. I think I will follow along with what few photos I have, and see where that takes me.

There was a bonfire.

This is Dustin, keeping warm and entertaining us with his impressive glowstick-collecting skills. The bonfire is always a pretty cool thing, but it was cold and raining, which was not so great. I think that happens every year.

There was the Dartmouth Underground Tour.

This is a photo taken while we were under the Dartmouth green. These tunnels are very lengthy and carry steam.

There was a snake.

Jo and I saw it one time when we were talking a walk around the pond.

There was a fall hike up Gile.

This is the fire tower and me at the top of the fire tower with Sarah and Lisa. I was playing dress-up, wearing an amazing outfit inspired by some french teenagers I saw hiking once.

There was halloween.

Some people came over to the barn. This is a photo I took of Julie with some odd settings on my camera. I like it.

There was a hike up Cardigan.

On the way down the mountain some people asked us if we had a rope, which sadly I did not. Apparently they found this sweet little dog whose owners were further down the mountain looking for her. This is a picture of Greg carrying Gardenia back to her owners.

There was a conference in San Francisco.

I flew on Virgin Air, which is the hippest airline ever. Check out these neon lights and futuristic seats. They also had free wireless (thank you Google) and also electrical outlets.

There was the Ferry Building and a pier.

Here are Brian and Bethany on the pier in San Francisco. My back hurt a lot because I spent the day walking around carrying my computer in my backpack.

There was some cool artwork at SFO.

Enough said.

There was a trip to Wisconsin, where I got to see my younger brother's new house and my older brother's and sister-in-law's slightly less new house.

Here is a picture of the fat bunny who lives in the backyard of Andrew's house. My dad lined up some carrots for him, which he is clearly not going for.

There was a visit with my grandma.

Here she is with my dad. She has macular degeneration and is legally blind, but she said that if I was going to take pictures I needed to send them to her too, because people always take pictures and never give her any of them. :)

There was family time.

Here is Adam with a wine charm in his nose.

There was a trip to the botanical gardens.

Here is a caterpillar of lights! Also, I'm really proud of myself for spelling caterpillar correctly on my first try.

There was a trip to Madison.

We had a great lunch at the Java Cat, which I will fondly remember as the Lava Cat.

So there you have it, a photo tour of the past few months. I guess most of that was concentrated in December, but certainly not all of it. I might try to do a better job of taking more photos, but lately I need to feel really inspired to actually pull out my camera. We shall see. We shall see.

Boring

2009-12-06T09:27:00.000-08:00

Recently I was thinking about how it has been a long time since I felt bored. There is always Something that needs to be done or that I want to be doing. So I almost started this post with the title "Bored" but that is just not at all true. Right now I am suffering from a boring life, but certainly not a life of boredom.

I almost started using twitter to give short updates of my current states of Boring. This is what the sequence for the past day/days would have looked like:

-sensory overload at *** *** (censored to avoid ruining Christmas surprises) but was happy with the results.

-had a really hard time with that last update, as I forgot the word "censor".

-falling asleep reading textbooks, but when I finally get in bed my thoughts will keep me awake for hours.

-every time I re-tune the radio to VPR it manages to un-tune itself. In the evening it is radio, in the morning the alarm goes off and it is a quiet fuzzy noise.

-mmmmmm Isabell's muffin

-going for a run around Hanover, first must load up on caffeine.

-It started snowing while we were running!!

-I should NOT be feeling this tired while under the influence of So Much Caffeine (SMC).

-alone in the office, good thing, because I'm reading text books out loud. Science words are aesthetically pleasing.

-I just managed to spill oily salad dressing all over my desk (don't worry, just the desk, not important things like paper/books/compy). Luckily we've got tons of ethanol in the lab, so cleaning was a breeze.

-soo late, soo tired, soo ready for a pretty, snow-covered drive home.

-back at Wilder... I left this parking space less than 9 hours ago.

-currently reading textbooks out loud to avoid falling asleep.

-Note to self: Stop blogging and start studying for at least one hour, then you can have a coffee-reward.

Customer Service Win!

2009-11-18T08:07:00.000-08:00

Last weekend my friend Malory had her housewarming party at the new house she just bought in Denver. Clearly, I was not able to attend, as I am oh-so-far-away in the East. So, knowing Malory's love for flowers, I figured I would send some her way. And here my first experience ordering flowers online begins.

First, what flowers to send? I certainly have my favorites, but I'm not sure if they are Malory's favorites. And anyone who has seen You've Got Mail knows the value of daisies, but in my mind those are a springtime flower. So I decided to go with sunflowers, because they seemed seasonally appropriate, but equally friendly.

Next, what website do I use? Google: order flowers online. Options: 1800flowers.com, ftd.com, or proflowers.com. 1800flowers is a phone number, so I'm not really in favor of that. FTD.com sounds interesting, but they don't have sunflowers, not to mention the fact that I still don't know what FTD stands for. Proflowers.com! OH I know someone who LOVES Proflowers!

Proflowers.com it is! Thanks for the recommendation, Ro!

So I manage to successfully order flowers, scheduled to arrive the day before the party. Perfect. That day arrives and I now have a tracking number to see the shipping status. I check it out. The flowers are in Canada! And the status is: Incorrect Routing at UPS Facility. Uh oh. This is bad. New delivery date: 3 days later than it is supposed to be! I am pretty sure that if you keep flowers out of water for 3 days they are likely to not be living, which is just no good. So I decide it would be a good idea to get in touch with customer service, which I do, via email:

-----------------------------
Customer Comments: Hi,

This is my first time ordering flowers online, and I had heard good things about proflowers.com, so I decided to give it a try. I ordered flowers to be delivered to a friend today, since I cannot attend her housewarming party. I went to the tracking page to make sure everything looked alright, and it says that the delivery date was rescheduled due to an incorrect routing at the UPS facility. The new delivery date is listed as 11/16. I am really disappointed that she will not be getting her flowers today, and I am also concerned that when she gets her flowers on Monday that they will be dead. Is there any way to make sure she gets her flowers today? Or do I just have to wait and see if she gets dead flowers on Monday? I feel that sending dead flowers to a friend will have the opposite effect on the friendship than I was hoping for. Please let me know if there is anything that can be done.

Thanks,
Meghan

-----------------------------

And I get this very nice and quick response!

-----------------------------

Dear Meghan, Order Number: xxxxxxxxx

Thank you for contacting ProFlowers. Please accept our most sincere apologies for the delivery delay of your gift as this is not typical of our service. We definitely don't want your first experience with us to be negative.

We realize the importance of timely deliveries and have refunded your delivery charge of $9.99 to help make this up to you. Please allow 5-7 business days for this refund to fully process.

In addition, we want to make sure your recipient receives a fresh bouquet. For this reason we have ordered a replacement with a delivery date as reflected below. If the selected date is not satisfactory, please contact us and we will be happy to modify it to a more convenient date. Please note we can schedule deliveries for Tuesday through Friday if we receive notification and process the change by noon Pacific Standard Time the business day before the desired delivery date.

Please know that you will NOT be charged for this replacement order. However, we want to keep you informed regarding your order status, so you WILL receive automatic confirmation, shipping, and delivery emails.

ORDER INFORMATION:

Order Number: xxxxxxxxxxxx

Delivery Date: Saturday, November 14, 2009 (unfortunately we cannot do same day delivery on a replacement)

If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Once again, please accept our sincere apologies. We greatly appreciate both your trust and business and hope to serve you again in the future.

Best Regards,

HB Mike
Customer Care
ProFlowers
Send love, not like. Send ProFlowers.

------------------------------

A replacement bouquet? I like the sound of this. This leaves me to wonder, does this mean Malory will be getting two sets of sunflowers? It certainly does, and apparently neither of them were dead and they both managed to arrive on Saturday morning, still before the party! So we close my first experience ordering flowers online with:

------------------------------

Dear HB Mike,
Thank you for being so prompt in addressing my issue with a delay in the delivery of the flower order I placed last week. I really appreciate the effort that was made to have the flowers delivered as soon as possible, once the delivery routing error was realized. My friend has received her flowers and says they are beautiful.
Sincerely,
Meghan

------------------------------

so much contra dancing

2009-11-11T09:07:00.000-08:00

Lately it seems that my only activity during waking hours that is not work is contra dancing. I like it a lot. In October I got to go to one of the twelve hour long dances. And since it was so long, we took a break in the middle to check out the pumpkin festival. And since it was so long, I also did not attempt to dance every dance, and as a result I have a few pictures and videos. The dance was the Fall Ball in the Peterborough town hall, which has a balcony that overlooks the dance floor, which is where these shots are taken from.

Never Refrigerate

2009-11-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

To whom it may concern,

I have just purchased 1 U.S. dry pint of Santa Sweets Grape Tomatoes. I noticed that the container specifies, "NEVER REFRIGERATE." Is this true? I am quite accustomed to refrigerating any tomatoes I purchase, so without even realizing it, this package was automatically put in the refrigerator. Should I be concerned about eating these tomatoes that have now been refrigerated? Why is it important to never refrigerate your grape tomatoes?

Thank you,
Meghan

---------------------------------

Meghan,

Thanks for the email! The "NEVER REFRIGERATE" is on the label because tomatoes (in general) begin to loose thier flavor profile at temperatures below 50 degrees. Also, once they get below 50 when you take the tomatoes out and return them to "room temperature" they will have a reduced shelf life.
Ironically the Santa Sweets will have an excellent shelf life when kept in the 'fridge and the change in flavor profile is very sublte over the first 10 days.
You're ok keeping them in the fridge as long as you're aware of the reduced shelf life after they come out of the fridge.

Feel free to contact us with any further questions.

Thanks,

Chris Cunnane
National Sales Director
Santa Sweets

--------------------------------------

Good Morning Meghan,
Thank you for your email. It is safe to eat your tomatoes. The reason why our container has “never refrigerate” is when grape tomatoes are kept at temperatures below 50°F the natural sugars break down and the tomatoes will not be as sweet. We recommend the tomatoes be stored in an open container at room temperature out of direct sunlight. Although refrigeration will extend the shelf life it will never have the same flavor profile as if you were to leave them at room temperature. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank you,
Heather Wladyka
Sales Associate
Santa Sweets, Inc.
Tel: 813-759-0765 ext 1166
Cell: 813-786-0381
Fax: 813-759-8372
Email: hwladyka@santasweets.com

My Favorite Smell

2009-09-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

I feel like I am one of those people who never has a good answer for any question about my all-time favorite anything (e.g. all time favorite food, all time favorite other thing). Okay, so trying to give examples, makes me think that maybe I am good at having all time favorite things. Like tuesday, for example.
Anyhow.
Today I realized my all-time favorite smell! It is the smell of what I think is a Katsura tree, in the fall when it starts to lose its leaves. It is a Most amazing smell, reminiscent of cotton candy. We are very fortunate to have two directly in front of the physics building. Perhaps I will update this post with a photo soon.

Peanut Butter Apple Pie

2009-09-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

So here I sit, eating a most delicious apple with some most delicious peanut butter.* This most delicious peanut butter:

It occurs to me that the only way this could possibly be more delicious is if it is in a pie. After a slight moment of disappointment that it took me 25 years to discover this. I quickly did some research. Recipes for pies that are potentially the most delicious sort are abundant on the internet. However, I believe there are none of the White Chocolate Peanut Butter Apple Pie variety, so there you go, I just invented something new.

*This statement is a non-truth, as I was unable to stop eating my delicious snack for long enough to do any blogging.

Great Wide Somewhere

2009-08-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got to go on a field trip for school, and it turned out to be an amazingly great adventure! I still plan to do some blogging about my Boston adventure, but the lab adventure is fresh in my mind so we are going with that one. I'll add some photos at the end of the post.

On Monday I got invited to join the recovery team since they needed two people with ham radio licenses and had only one (KB1RAD at your services). Tuesday morning I left my house at 5:30am in order to meet up with the team, pack up the cars, and hit the road by 6:30. The launch team was delayed with their departure by an hour, due to some equipment failure. So the six of us on the recovery team headed out to Conway and had time for a nice breakfast. Our discussion eventually landed upon the fact that we would be sitting around for several hours before they even launched, so that is when I started playing 20 Questions, which actually was more like Infinite Questions. Then we heard that the launch team's main computer was broken and their backup computer was only capable of tracking and receiving data from one of the two balloons that they planned to launch. So the new plan involved sending three of the recovery team guys to Mt Washington to track and receive data from the balloons. In the meantime I got to hang out with the other two guys in Conway, playing tourister, visiting museums, drinking lemonade.. you know.

So we finally get a call saying they are about to launch. Then they launch and everything is looking good. In the meantime, they had Kristina drive another computer to the airport so that they could track both balloons from the launch site. So all in all things are looking good. The only problem is that there was too much interference at the top of Mt Washington due to all the radio towers, so that team had to quickly rush down the mountain, because it was important for them to track the balloons during the descent so that we would be able to locate and recover them. Now is when things finally started to pick up.

The other half of the recovery team was tracking the balloons as they were driving, so when they came driving by we just pulled out and started following them. Eventually they got the last GPS position for each payload, one at a fairly high altitude and one at a lower altitude. Since they had a better idea of where the lower altitude one was, we headed toward that, and once we got near we were lucky enough to receive one more transmission so we had the GPS coordinates of where it was. It turned out to be less than half a mile from the road, and when we drove up we could see it, two orange spots (one the payload, the other the parachute) in the distance. The balloon did a fine job of landing in a farm where they grow sod, so basically it was in the middle of the biggest lawn ever. Very easy to get to, and very easy to find. So we cut apart the payloads and balloon and parachute (sidenote: none of the guys had a knife on them, but luckily they had a girl along with a pink pocket knife and they were all thankful for that) and packed it away. At this point it was starting to get later in the day and we didn't want to run out of sunlight before we located the other payload.

For the other payload we could not hear the ELT (emergency locator trasmitting) on our radios, and the last GPS point was near a lake, so we suspected it might be in the lake and not functioning, so we headed that way (don't worry we had a kayak along). However, once we got closer, we started to pick up the ELT, and after driving around awhile and trying the direction antenna several times (mostly unsuccessful) we got another GPS position, so once again we had a mostly exact location. At this point it was nearly sunset, so we took a road that got us to 0.6 miles from the payload. It was very buggy and pretty thick brush, so we put on long sleeves, pants, and tons of bug spray and headed in. It turned out we were hiking through a swamp. Soon enough, most of the 6 of us were quite wet (don't worry, my hiking boots were great and kept me dry, since I never stepped in water deeper than my ankle!). It took a long time to hike the short distance in, but once we got to within the uncertainty of the handheld GPS, we brought out the directional antenna, and that time it did actually serve its purpose. Let me just explain here what the directional antenna is: a PVC pipe, with three strips of tape measure of various lengths sticking off of it, hooked up to a small handheld radio receiver. Now imagine me walking around with this thing, pointing it in various directions, listening for my balloon payload. Pretty much it is the nerdiest image of "science" one could come up with. So, there I stand, in the middle of the swamp, being eaten by mosquitos (through my clothes, and two applications of bugspray), waving this antenna around. Luckily it worked and we got the general direction and "fanned" out to the best of our abilities in the swamp. Tim managed to find it up a tree, and by the time I traversed the 20 feet to get to them they pretty much had the tree down (note to self: buy a hatchet). At this point the daylight was fading pretty quickly, so we packed away the payloads, parachute, and balloon, got out our headlamps and headed back toward the cars. We decided that due to the fading light we would take the direct path, which meant walking through the swamp without hesitation. I still managed to have dry feet by the time we got to the car, but we were all quite lucky we didn't fall down due to the thick brush and slippery footing.

All in all it was a most awesome adventure! I wish I could do things like this more often, especially since I never felt like I was holding the group back (which I was worried about), and I managed to be a helpful contributor to the goals.

The recovery team, about to go separate ways.

At the train station in Conway.

Blue train at the round house.

Old railcar.

Model train museum.

The men trying to figure out where our payloads could be. Shortly after this a woman drove by (remember this is on very back roads in Maine) and said to the guys in a mocking voice, "Are you gentlemen lost?" but was quickly corrected and then impressed by our project.

Phil frolicking in the field.

The guys approaching the payload.

A cute cemetery in the backwoods of Maine.

These two photos were taken by Tim, showing the payload stuck in a tree in the swamp in the fading daylight.

Blood Letting

2009-08-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I donated blood for the first time in a long time, possibly over a year. Brett went through the initial tests and questions with me, and according to him my temperature (although below 98.6F) was acceptable (luckily, because I didn't really feel like doing jumping jacks to warm myself up), my hemoglobin was good (rare for me, since I don't generally eat a ton of meat or other iron-packed foods), and my blood pressure was just fine. Then he took me to a chair where I sat patiently waiting for Blake to stick me, but while I was waiting Angelina came over and said she could take care of me. So I moved to a different section and had a GREAT blood donating experience. Angelina found my vein right away with no "fishing around" which I hate. And I don't have a bruise today or anything. Also, it was my fastest blood letting ever: 7 minutes and 14 seconds. I am fairly sure it was due to the fact that, on my way over to the donation center, I remembered that drinking a lot of water is supposed to make your blood flow faster, so I stopped by the bubbler and had an EXTRA big drink of water.

Old Ladies!

2009-07-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

So it has been awhile since I did any blogging, and I'm not quite ready to be in work-mode so I figured blogging would be a good post-lunch exercise. I just got back from CO, where I spent a week at a conference and a long weekend hanging out with Malory and others.

Here are some of the highlights. Maybe I'll add photos too if I am feeling generous.
-I gave my first talk at a conference. It was only two slides, but I think it was a pretty good time. No one asked questions but one of the legitimate scientists (male, white hair, has tons of papers published) commented on how unique and great my data set is.
-I saw a Lazuli Bunting.
-Free gondola rides from the conference center to almost where the condos we lived in were located.
-Listening to the white-nerd version of "For he's a jolly good fellow" when there was a birthday at the conference.
-Double line slacklining! This was SO cool. We found three trees and set up two lines in a V-shape so that we could walk from one to the next, which was tons of fun. There was also juggling on the slackline and much improvement all around.
-The drive from Aspen to Denver was very scenic. Everything is SO green because there has been SO much rain this year.
-On Saturday morning I ran my first 5k with Malory. Originally my goal was to run it in under 30 minutes, but I soon realized that it was way too hot and I either had to slow down or pass out, so I slowed down and changed my goal to continual running with no walking, which I achieved. The 5k was the Undy5000 to raise awareness for colon cancer. There was a giant inflatable colon that you could walk through. Also there were quite a few people running in only underpants.
-Later on Saturday we drove up to Greeley to visit some friends and also to see Big&Rich at the Greeley Stampede. It was the most white trash thing I have seen in awhile but we had tons of fun. And (bonus) the tickets were free since we helped with the clean-up crew.
-Malory was doing some house-sitting in Parker for the week, so we stayed there at night. One night I slept on a trundle bed (which any 4 year old would know how to get excited about) and the cat and dog were chasing each other around all night and the cat shoved a cactus over, right onto my face! Evil cat! I woke up in the morning with a little cactus spike sticking out of my forehead.
-I learned all about how corgis are so great.
-When Malory and I were leaving church these two old ladies were crossing the road slowly in front of us and Malory quietly made a comment about old ladies, and then she said quite loudly "Old Ladies!" I was panicking and laughing all at the same time, because apparently she didn't realize her window was open, but we don't think the old ladies heard. Luckily.

Here is a photo of this old cool building we saw while hiking in the mountains.

Sore Muscles

2009-06-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday morning with very sore back and leg muscles. I am guessing this was due to my gardening experience on saturday. Apparently I decided it would be a good idea to lift these huge bags of wet dirt that weighed about 8 tons each. I know they say "lift with your legs!" but apparently I lift with my legs and my back a little too. Oops!

This morning I woke up and my muscles were possibly MORE sore than the day before. I don't know how this is possible. Unless I am the world's most extreme cleaner/baker. (That was a shameless plug for my domestic skillz.)

Caffeine

2009-05-05T09:44:00.001-07:00

Caffeine Key:
1 cup coffee...........................120mg
1 shot espresso......................100mg
1 cup tea................................70mg
coffee beans...........................1.2-4% (of what, who knows)
Coke.......................................46mg
lethal dose..............................9g

Extreme Coffee Shop

2009-04-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

This morning I was just waiting for my coffee, basking in the glory of having purchased new lead for my pencils, when into the coffee shop walks this girl wearing cowboy boots, a suuuper short denim skirt, and a pink polo with the collar POPped. I thought to myself "I guess if I'm going to wear the same sweater day after day I should not judge people's outfit choices."

Then Another one walked in!! Then, I realized that the first one was with Another one! And then Another one walked in!

These sentences don't make sense, so let me just do a quick re-cap.
Four girls.
Four pairs of cowboy boots.
Four scandalously short denim skirts.
Four pink polos with the collars popped.

It just didn't seem appropriate given the time of day and location. Not that I know a time of day or location that would be more appropriate though.

My Life's Ultimate Passion

2009-04-19T12:06:00.000-07:00

Contra dancing is the thing in life that I am most passionate about. I don't know if I have ever loved a thing so much. Last night Brandon and I drove up to Montpelier for their regular contra dance. The caller was Nils Fredlund (who is possibly one of the best callers ever and sometimes plays his trombone with the band) and the band was Atlantic Crossing (who played phenomenally). Apparently Atlantic Crossing got their name because one of the fiddle players lived in New England, and one of the fiddle players lived in England, so when they played together one of them had to cross the Atlantic. Then they got married, and he moved here, so the name is not quite so accurate anymore.

In comparison to the Norwich contra dances, the Montpelier dance is in a smaller hall and has more people show up. Also, I think the average age is much younger, and they are more lively and energetic and not as much about traditional New England folk dance, like Norwich can tend to be. Don't get me wrong, I love my local Norwich dance, but I just love the Montpelier dance in a different way. It is fun to see a lot of the same faces in both places too. And despite the fact that I have not been sleeping enough lately, my tiredness will never keep me from dancing every dance. Contra makes me feel alive to the point of keeping me awake for hours after the dance has ended. Perhaps it has something to do with the sense of community established in a contra dance.

Plus the other highlight of the Montpelier dance was seeing some of my old favorites who I hadn't yet run into since my return from the North. One is Miss Bailey, who is my 5 year old little contra buddy. At the break we sat on the floor and talked about Pirate Booty and this pirate movie she really likes. When we were sitting there chatting this other little girl came up and started chatting with us too. Her name was Maya and she is 9, but she will be turning 10 soon. We share the same birthday. Also her skirt was from Bangladesh, where her stepfather has built homes for poor children where they can get food, shelter, clothing, and education. He has built homes in Nepal and two other places also, and Maya has visited each of the places once, except for Bangladesh where she went twice. Also, she is home schooled, so missing school to travel to these places is not even an issue. Even the kids I meet at contra are some of the most fascinating people around.

Then I danced a dance with Bailey, which was a little challenging, but tons of fun. She has been contra dancing for longer than I have, so she knows what all the moves mean, but she just needs you to remind her what to do and when, and to make sure she is in the right place. The great thing about contra is that it just repeats, so by the end of it I would say, "it's your turn to do a star!" and she would come back and say "now its YOUR turn to do a star!" which was really cute. Plus most people get a kick out of dancing with her, so she inspires a lot of smiles. Unfortunately, I think some people thought she was my daughter because she usually only dances with her dad (who is one of the men who prefers dancing in a skirt). It was worth it though, because I just never see any kids these days, so it was good to get my kid-fix and my contra-fix all at the same time.

All-in-all it was a spectacular time, and I don't know why but I always manage to have way more fun than I ever thought was possible. Plus on the way home I learned about the musical highway which I think is amazing.

Any good day is made better with good socks.

2009-04-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Targeted Ads Know What I'm Thinking

2009-04-10T07:37:00.001-07:00

So the google targeted ads are highly skilled. Often I find myself clicking the links, when I have never before clicked the links for ads. Like when Nicole and I were emailing about starting gardens for the summer I got a lot of good ads that I just couldn't stop clicking. Also, I get some good ads for outdoor gear. One time I found myself playing on the Timbuk2 website where you can design your own bag. It is amazing. Then I thought to myself, "Self how did you get to this website? And why are you not doing real work on a Tuesday morning?"
Today the targeted ads have gone one step further. They gave me the ad for www.cleaningproductsworld.com and the little bit of info said, "Buy a case of 48 rolls of Charmin Big Roll toilet paper and save." It was like Google knew that within the past hour I had a conversation with Julie about how we needed to buy toilet paper. I didn't send any emails about that!

The Barn!

2009-03-24T03:00:00.001-07:00

Luckily enough we have one photo of our rocket launch.

This was taken by Robert Michell who was Kristina's graduate student that worked on Cascades1. In this photo you can see the four motor burns, which did not happen for C1. On that rocket the third stage motor did not light so the entire mission was a failure.

Anyhow, so now I am back home! I got out of Alaska just in time, as Mt Redoubt is now erupting and they are canceling many flights due to the large ash cloud drifting over much of the state. My flight actually left about a half hour early, because we were scheduled to go three hours after the first eruption, and they didn't want to risk us not getting out. So I had a little extra time on my layover in Seattle, but it was still quite short. Three of the NASA dudez were also on that flight out of Fairbanks, but they had 3 hour layovers, so they brought me to my gate and saw me off, which was fun. Usually I am that lone traveller in airports. Also, one of my NASA buddies had the privilege of sitting next to Kevin Barry in first class. I must admit I never would have known who this guy was if I didn't have that inside connection. He was a HUGE guy though. Nice, but HUGE.

My next flight got into Minneapolis a little late, so I got off one plane, booked it through the airport, and got right back on another plane. I guess it was the perfect amount of time, except for that whole not eating thing, but such a short connection makes me very nervous, particularly since I don't want a repeat of my last Minneapolis airport stranding. Luckily enough I made it just fine, as did my luggage. Then I got to ride a completely full Dartmouth Coach home.

I got to Hanover and my car started with no trouble, and Lisa and Laura were home to greet me at the barn with flowers and freshly washed sheets on my bed. All in all it was a great return.

At the barn I am starting to realize I have forgotten a few things. I smacked my elbow on the toilet paper dispenser, so I'm quite convinced someone moved it around or something. Also, the bathroom mirror makes my face look tan (is that even possible??), so I think there is something wrong with the mirror or the lighting. Almost all of the snow is melted around here, and tomorrow the high will be a balmy 47F. Not so bad..

Launch.

2009-03-21T00:36:00.000-07:00

Finally we launched our rocket! And it seems to be a great success. The whole night seemed to be pretty surreal, and I'd give a play by play of the events leading up to the launch, but I don't think I could accurately portray what was going on. What I can tell you is that our data looks amazing. So far we just have the strip charts with the real time data from the flight, and nothing we can play around with but it really is great stuff. We have data from all five payloads, and four out of five of my detectors worked. The one that didn't work failed because it somehow deployed too early and the high voltage came on when the rocket was still in the atmosphere, so the high voltage board fried. I am just so so happy about the results of this rocket, as is everyone on the team.

It has been almost 24 hours since the launch, and I am just now realizing that I am finally through with this stage of it, and I get to move on with life. I finally get to go home and am so happy about that I could cry.

Life's so good. (apparently the former state slogan of Wisconsin, which, just four days ago, was replaced by "Live like you mean it.")

Aurora: with photos (finally) from yours truly.

2009-03-19T04:16:00.000-07:00

Last night there was a fairly stable arc far to the north. I took my camera out and borrowed Steve's tripod.

These are the photos I was able to get with my little point and shoot camera. Pretty good eh?!

Learning to use my camera, among other things

2009-03-17T02:31:00.000-07:00

Today Steve and I had a big shopping adventure, which was great. We even took some time to get coffee from the coffee shop where my card is filed away.

We also stopped in at the Fairbanks Museum which includes the dog mushing museum. I learned a little bit about dog mushing. This sign showed the different ways to harness the dogs.

One of our stops was at a local photography shop. For some reason I picked up the camera that I have and was going to show Steve how I could only choose a mode and add 2 seconds to the exposure time, so I never really knew what the longest exposure time was that I could get. As I was doing this I managed to get it to 15 seconds, which is good enough for bright aurora. I tested out the long exposure, as well as two ISO settings by taking photos of the launch pad from the telemetry building up the hill.

This is with the ISO set to 1600.

And this is with the ISO set to 800.

I don't really know anything about cameras, but I like to pretend to. It is particularly fun to use my point and shoot camera in such ways. The best part was that I borrowed Steve's mini portable tripod and jammed it in a snowbank for stability. Right now we are "in for winds" so if there is good aurora I need to be inside in case we pick up the count, so no more photographer business for the time being.

More Fairbanks Excitement

2009-03-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

For some reason I can't get photos to upload easily, so I'm just starting a new post for the two additional photos I have.

At the Outhouse Races this man came up to me and said, "Did you run in the race today?" I said, "ha are you kidding me? no." He said, "Are you related to anyone who ran?" "ah nooo." "Okay can you tell me which outhouse is the best?" "You mean which one is the prettiest?" "Yeah. Sure. Which outhouse do you think is the prettiest?"

The Prettiest Outhouse. This team won a prize because of me.

On Wednesday I went to the Chena Hot Springs with Hanna, Torbjorn, Anna, Jeff, and Sam. It was a really great trip, and the water was amazingly warm. We were a bit like Snow Monkeys perched on rocks around the water when we got too warm. It was very nice.

This was the one photo I took on the trip. Torbjorn just loves that moose hat. He pretty much looks just like a local wearing that hat.

The March Window

2009-03-15T18:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight is the first night of the March launch window. The science conditions are not looking terribly promising and neither is the weather. For the past three nights there has been amazing aurora, but it is pretty much dead by now. Also, it is so windy here that the building is shaking and the water in the toilets is sloshing around a little bit.

I am realizing I haven't put too many photos in my blog lately, so I'm going to try to fix that. These pictures are in no particular order. They are just the ones I like from the past two or three weeks.

This is an ice sculpture at the World Ice Art Championship.

Today on the way to the range we were just in time for Chatanika Days. They have been doing this winter carnival of sorts for many years and apparently thousands of people come out (from where, who knows..) to attend. They have outhouse races, in which people build an outhouse on skis and then race it down the street. The finish line is actually in the parking lot, so it was very amusing when the teams would be running at the crowd of people yelling "turn! turn!" The teams consisted of four people pushing and one person sitting on the seat.

Notice the old man in the center with the cane. He was one of the people riding on the seat. It looks like this guy only moves that quickly once a year, in the outhouse races. He is on his way inside to find his wheelchair.

Here are two of the teams in action.

This is a sock I knitted during the PET conference. I really like knitting. I really like that anything I can draw onto graph paper I can knit onto a sock.

I like this ice art a lot. They are stacked muskox if you can't tell.

My week off

2009-03-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Today marks the seventh week of my stay in Fairbanks.
I went to the little coffee shop downtown and they have a little box at the counter where you can file away your coffee card. I had considered just picking out any random card and earning the person an extra stamp on their card, but today I got my very own card. I filed it away and feel pretty good about that. I'm not sure if it will be more tricky trying to find it on my person or to try to find it in that file of cards.
Also, I recognized one of the old men from contra today when I was at the grocery store.
Perhaps I've been here too long?

Making the Most of Fairbanks

2009-03-06T19:45:00.001-08:00

Okay, so here is a quick update of what has been going on here. Our last night of the February launch window was March 4, and we were out for winds the entire night, and were not able to launch into the amazing aurora we were seeing.

Here is a super awesome photo of me in front of some aurora taken by Mike Nicolls. That was not March 4, but the level of amazing was comparable.

So now we have to wait until the March launch window. This does not start until March 15. The main reason we have to have some days in between windows is to avoid the moon. Right now the moon is very bright so we lose all of our ground optics.

I had big plans to take a short vacation in Denver, for the purpose of visiting friends and getting out of Fairbanks. Well that didn't work out so well, because the University of Alaska Fairbanks has spring break this week and every single flight out of this state is oversold and ridiculously expensive.

Now my plan is to just stay in Fairbanks during this break. It works out really conveniently that there is this Plasma Entry and Transport workshop going on next week. So basically I can go listen to some bigshots in my field of study talk about what they do, and that should be really beneficial for me.

Today and yesterday I have spent my time realizing just how introverted I actually am. I have had two days all to myself and I am feeling completely re-energized, which is great. I have this plan to check out the coffee shops in Fairbanks to find the best one for sitting and reading. Usually we just go to a drive through coffee hut, because we didn't have time for the luxury of sitting and reading. Today I went to the Alaska Coffee Roasting Co, and I finally feel at home in Fairbanks. Not only do they sell my favorite coffee (only the beans, they won't brew it for me) but they also make the most delicious vanilla latte. Sidenote: I had been doing really well with just drinking coffee and avoiding fancy specialty coffee beverages, but it seems that Fairbanks does not support that type of behavior. Every single coffee place only makes good espresso beverages and has really horrible brewed coffee. It is strange, but that is how it is.

Also, yesterday I saved $.50 per gallon on gas because of all the groceries we have purchased from the Safeway. I bet you guys are glad I shared that one huh? I heard this statistic that on average, every blog has just one reader. I know that at least my mom and my aunt are reading this, so I am totally beating the odds.

Second to lastly, it snowed maybe ten inches yesterday so Fairbanks is beautiful and snow covered! It is really quite lovely!

And lastly, there is a contra dance tonight, and I am definitely going. Should be fun!

:(

2009-03-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

No launch I'm afraid. We have a week off and then we are back for a March launch window.

The end.

not so grim

2009-02-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

That last blog post may have been a bit on the grim side. It caused my mom to send me a special sympathy email so I am writing again to assure you that I am doing quite well. Granted it would be better to be at home and doing quite well, but this is not so bad. I did a calculation and realized that I have been at home for a total of one month in the past four months. Maybe Harjit will give me an extra discount on my rent. At least I am away from The Barn when heating costs so much so we can save that money.

Yesterday Steve was feeling the need to go to the Salvation Army thrift store. Unfortunately he wasn't able to come across any great deals. Erik got a book which he insists will be good. I bought a shirt, which we all agreed was very good. Plus it was a yellow tag so I got 50% off. So I am wearing my new clothes today, and most people don't even realize that I am dressed in the most ridiculous fashion. That is the part that probably makes me laugh the most.

Also, yesterday, I wrote a little haiku. I will post it here.
A Haiku
by Meghan Mella
A dull solar wind.
No dynamic aurora.
Waiting, eat cheesecake.

This was inspired by the lack of aurora or space weather lately, and also by the fact that we have all become cheesecake connoisseurs. So far the best one is a raspberry white chocolate cheesecake.

Alaska Life

2009-02-25T14:59:00.001-08:00

My life in Alaska is turning more and more into normal routine and less into an adventure apart from my regular life. I think I am even fitting the stereotypical role of "grad student" much better while I'm here due to my odd working schedule, massive intake of coffee, not really having any friends, etc. Also, I've started referring to my hotel as 'home' without even thinking twice about it, except for right now when I write about it, of course.
Here is an outline of my standard average day:
Wake up somewhere between 11am and 2pm. Eat breakfast. This usually is actual breakfast food but sometimes it is a more nontraditional breakfast, like a cheeseburger. Also, I get a good chuckle when a waitress gives us a drinks menu for "breakfast". Sometimes if I wake up early enough I can go grocery shopping. Today I went grocery shopping AND got new ink cartridges from Office Max. Also, the man at the bank gave me a sucker. Sometimes we go to the range early to get some sledding in. The newest development is to go down the footpath on one of the little sleds which is essentially like a toboggan run which is tons of fun. Then at around 6pm we do vertical checks. This takes about an hour. Then I go up to the science center. Then we wait. And wait. And get stressed out when things almost start looking good, but are never good enough. The other day we picked up the count twice. Normally when we are waiting we sit at T-10 minutes. It only takes 10 minutes to get everything ready to launch the rocket. In vertical checks every night we run through this 10 minutes to make sure everything goes smoothly. Well we can pick up the count if things are looking really good and hold at T-2 minutes. At this point we are still powering the payload externally (not yet using the batteries so that we can save them for flight), but the transmitter is on, and starts heating up, so we can only sit there for about an hour. When we are doing this I have to be down in the telemetry building, so I am totally cut off from the science discussion among my advisor and her co-investigators. This is Incredibly nerve-wrecking because I don't know if we are stopping at T-2 or actually launching until the clock actually gets there. And we did this twice the other day.
Last night we had aurora again but we also had clouds so we could not see it. That was really too bad. We are heavily dependent on clear skies in order to use ground optics to call the launch. We are getting to the point in our launch window where people are starting to consider what happens if we don't launch and if it is possible to get another launch window in march. Some of these guys have been here since the beginning of January to support the other rocket launches in January too, so stress levels are running high.
Here are some gratuitous aurora photos taken by Mike Nicolls.