So now I'm home in Oklahoma. My time here will be spent doing grad school apps and hopefully GRE prep and some exercise. I went running yesterday and felt slow, though my time wasn't too bad. I'm sore today though, but maybe I'll go play some basketball.
Speaking of Grad School, odds are I will be in one of the following places for the next 6 years of my life starting in the fall:
Corvallis, OR: Oregon State
Eugene, OR: U of Oregon
Seattle, WA: U of Washington
Fairbanks, AK: U of Alaska
Kingston, RI: Rhode Island Grad School of Oceanography
Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona
Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin
and maybe one of these:
Tampa, FL: South Florida
Albuquerque, NM: U of New Mexico
Yup, now back to watching football.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Ski Tahoe.. sort of
After the conference ended my dad flew in and we drove to Kings Beach for 4 days of skiing at Lake Tahoe. Or least that was plan, the weather didn't really cooperate. For our first day at Squaw Valley there were effectively 2 lifts open with a couple trails each on about a 12 inch base. Fortunately the stuff that was open was pretty interesting, with lots of slaloming through small tree and rocks sticking up through the snow. I practiced jumping 3 to 5 ft. cliffs and learned that's its not smart to follow the Squaw Freestyle Team when they ski off into the trees. I ended up getting cliffed out and had to hike back uphill for a bit.
The second day was at Alpine Meadows, which is right next to Squaw, and we luckily had about 8 inches of new snow. That gave us one pretty nice powder run before it all got skiied out. The rest of that run didn't go all that great for me. I got one of my poles stuck in a tree and snapped it in half, and then also ended up stuck in a creek for about 5 minutes. The rest of day went better. Or, since that's not saying much, the rest of the day went well.
The third day was at Heavenly, and it reminded me of eastern skiing. Heavenly was much more restrictive in opening their terrain, so while there was enough cover on some trails for them to be open at Squaw, the ski patrol at Heavenly had pulled 130 tickets in one day off of people poaching closed trails. So the only trails open where groomers on man-made snow. Quite a few lifts were open, but each lift only had one trail open, and it was really crowded. And windy. And icy. The views were nice though, and there was one steep trail open, which was fun to ski. For me at least, it was decidedly not fun for the person I saw fall about 2000 feet down the slope because it was so icy he couldn't stop.
Fed up with the lack of open terrain and wanting to give our poor ripped-up skis a break, we went snowshoeing on the 4th day. I knew a place near Emerald Bay where I had been on the stretch, and it was very scenic and snowy, definitely a nice change of pace.
On the trip home we stopped in San Fran for a while to eat and Christmas shop in the Ghiradeli square/Fisherman's warf area, so I finally got to see the golden gate bridge.
Highlight of the trip home: Winning $20 in a slot machine at the Las Vegas airport.
Lowlight of the trip home: Not getting home until 3:30am! That sucked.
The second day was at Alpine Meadows, which is right next to Squaw, and we luckily had about 8 inches of new snow. That gave us one pretty nice powder run before it all got skiied out. The rest of that run didn't go all that great for me. I got one of my poles stuck in a tree and snapped it in half, and then also ended up stuck in a creek for about 5 minutes. The rest of day went better. Or, since that's not saying much, the rest of the day went well.
The third day was at Heavenly, and it reminded me of eastern skiing. Heavenly was much more restrictive in opening their terrain, so while there was enough cover on some trails for them to be open at Squaw, the ski patrol at Heavenly had pulled 130 tickets in one day off of people poaching closed trails. So the only trails open where groomers on man-made snow. Quite a few lifts were open, but each lift only had one trail open, and it was really crowded. And windy. And icy. The views were nice though, and there was one steep trail open, which was fun to ski. For me at least, it was decidedly not fun for the person I saw fall about 2000 feet down the slope because it was so icy he couldn't stop.
Fed up with the lack of open terrain and wanting to give our poor ripped-up skis a break, we went snowshoeing on the 4th day. I knew a place near Emerald Bay where I had been on the stretch, and it was very scenic and snowy, definitely a nice change of pace.
On the trip home we stopped in San Fran for a while to eat and Christmas shop in the Ghiradeli square/Fisherman's warf area, so I finally got to see the golden gate bridge.
Highlight of the trip home: Winning $20 in a slot machine at the Las Vegas airport.
Lowlight of the trip home: Not getting home until 3:30am! That sucked.
AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco
The conference was definitely a very cool experience. I spent most of my time perusing the Volcanology posters, and I think I learned a lot. I also managed to talk to numerous potential grad school advisors from different schools. A postdoc at the menlo park USGS office (and a member of the Volcano Hazrds Team, my dream job), took me under her wing and introduced me to every prominent volcanologist she could find. It was awesome. Have you ever seen that documentary about the geologists who go to the Phillipenes and predict the Pinatubo eruption in 1991? No? Well fine, but I met those guys, including the current director of the National Volcanic Disaster Assistance team. How cool of a job title is that? I think I may have gushed a little bit to this guy though, saying how that sounded a group of super heroes or something, you know, like... Volcano Team! Assemble! ha ha... yeah, that led to an awkward silence.
I also hung out with some Dartmouth people, ate Chipotle for lunch, and presented a poster of my REU research. My poster presentation went well, it wasn't well attended, but I was able to answer the questions a couple people asked me, and no one questioned my intelligence, so I walked away happy. In addition, thanks to the expo of geology related stuff going on during the conference, I now have lots of useless, cool-looking free stuff, including a foam rock I can throw at people.
Finally, I have continued to notice in cities that as bluetooth technology gets better and smaller it gets harder and harder to tell whether the person waving their arms wildly and yelling on a street corner is crazy or a stock broker.
I also hung out with some Dartmouth people, ate Chipotle for lunch, and presented a poster of my REU research. My poster presentation went well, it wasn't well attended, but I was able to answer the questions a couple people asked me, and no one questioned my intelligence, so I walked away happy. In addition, thanks to the expo of geology related stuff going on during the conference, I now have lots of useless, cool-looking free stuff, including a foam rock I can throw at people.
Finally, I have continued to notice in cities that as bluetooth technology gets better and smaller it gets harder and harder to tell whether the person waving their arms wildly and yelling on a street corner is crazy or a stock broker.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
So about the Black Hole
that was the last 4 months or so with out posts. That would be REU work picking up, a nomadic month of August, and fall term at Dartmouth. All went well.
Speaking of the REU though, I am currently in San Francisco at the Annual Americal Geophysical Union Conference to present my results. This would be a lot more exciting if my results were: "Dominica's gonna explode!" as opposed to "inconclusive", which is the truth. Oh well, my poster is pretty at least. Tomorrow will be my first day to tour the poster sessions and see if I can't introduce myself to any potential grad school advisors. More on how that goes in the next couple of days.
So, a couple highlights from today:
-Emily having to drive 3 loops around the Logan Airport departure terminals because America West wasn't a listed airline and we had to keep asking where it was
-Me failing at gambling in the Las Vegas airport because even the nickle slots didn't accept coins. Who lays down even a buck to play nickle slots when you're on an hour layover?
-Me, in the thralls of starvation, buying a $12 sandwich in the San Fran airport as I was walking to get my bags.
As for the future of this blog, I hope to update every week or so, now more with rants and random things that happen as opposed to what I'm up to, since most of the people who might read this will likely be seeing me regularilly and therefore will know what I'm up to. So, look forward to such things as: the hotornot.com experiement write-up, me bitching about the club sports system at Dartmouth, me skiing Tahoe, a rant on injuries in ultimate, and other random stuff likely related to ultimate or skiing.
Speaking of the REU though, I am currently in San Francisco at the Annual Americal Geophysical Union Conference to present my results. This would be a lot more exciting if my results were: "Dominica's gonna explode!" as opposed to "inconclusive", which is the truth. Oh well, my poster is pretty at least. Tomorrow will be my first day to tour the poster sessions and see if I can't introduce myself to any potential grad school advisors. More on how that goes in the next couple of days.
So, a couple highlights from today:
-Emily having to drive 3 loops around the Logan Airport departure terminals because America West wasn't a listed airline and we had to keep asking where it was
-Me failing at gambling in the Las Vegas airport because even the nickle slots didn't accept coins. Who lays down even a buck to play nickle slots when you're on an hour layover?
-Me, in the thralls of starvation, buying a $12 sandwich in the San Fran airport as I was walking to get my bags.
As for the future of this blog, I hope to update every week or so, now more with rants and random things that happen as opposed to what I'm up to, since most of the people who might read this will likely be seeing me regularilly and therefore will know what I'm up to. So, look forward to such things as: the hotornot.com experiement write-up, me bitching about the club sports system at Dartmouth, me skiing Tahoe, a rant on injuries in ultimate, and other random stuff likely related to ultimate or skiing.
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