General

Wed - July 23, 2008

New Blog and Web site

Please visit our new site! Our new web site, blog, and photo albums are here, finally. Things are still under construction, but at least there is some content over there now and you know where to go to see it.

Posted at 10:25 PM

Fri - March 21, 2008

Press

In the news...

Last month I participated in a day of all-women commanding of the "Spirit" rover on Mars. There was some minor press coverage of the event at the time. For example:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/12mar_spiritday.htm
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001344/

A reporter at the Arizona State University paper became interested in the story this week after reading about it in a blog and called me up for comments. My only problem with the nature of this article is that I would far prefer to get an interview about what I do rather than an interview over the fact that I am a woman and this is what I do. Oh well, we have to change the world slowly. Here is the State Press article. Please note that my friend Alice doesn't study "glowing trains" on Mars. However the putative salt-rich deposits have been dubbed "glowing terrain" due to the pretty blue colors they create in a stretched false color image.

http://asuwebdevil.com/issues/2008/03/21/news/704254

Posted at 10:10 AM

Wed - October 10, 2007

Visiting the grandparents

This last weekend we had a lovely visit with my parents in Corvallis. It is amazing how much Nina has changed in the 6 weeks we've been in Seattle. My mom had come up and helped us settle in and get Nina into daycare so they had spent some good time together. She was amazed at the changes in Nina. We had a very relaxing weekend and bought some furniture. Funny how that works...
We also got to see my sister on the way down and on the way back up. It was really nice to see her, but too short!

Posted at 11:23 AM

Thu - September 27, 2007

The internet has gone to the dog

So here I am, finally managing to write two consecutive sentences due to a looming, scary deadline coupled with a slight rebound in my mood this week, and what happens? The internet goes down, hard. I can’t do anything in any application on any machine in the house. When I finally check, the cable modem doesn’t even have signal! I stamp around muttering curses at COMCAST, then decide to calm down for at least half an hour before calling. Lucky for me that I did so because when I finally could see any color but red I realized that the router lights were all out too. All out? Shouldn’t the power light be on?

Tikka had turned off the internet, perhaps trying to save me from my frustrated fixation with the computer today, or, perhaps, because it was the place where her head felt most comfortable.

Posted at 11:23 AM

Wed - September 26, 2007

The Puyallup Fair, Visiting the Bellingers

Pasted Graphic 11.pdf

We took Nina to the Puyallup Fair, which was interesting, but she wasn’t as enthralled with the animals as we thought she would be, and she wasn’t old enough for the rides. Overall it was a bit of a letdown and a really crowded, noisy, and overwhelming place to spend a few hours. I prefer my memories of the Oregon State Fair, but to be “fair” I was at the prime age to enjoy everything as a teen.

So, to cap off the day, we drove the rest of the way down to Vancouver, WA to see my sister T. We set up a fun crawl maze of tunnels for Nina to play in, and went to the park. We had a lovely dinner at a local Thai place, and then thought about going home. Teresa sewed a new turtleneck for Nina out of an old shirt while we bathed the heck out of the girl. We were not going to see Uncle Cris, as he was arriving fairly late at the airport, but he called just as we were about to leave. We couldn’t miss seeing him then! So we picked him up, surprised him with Nina-in-the-face at the baggage claim, and thoroughly enjoyed our half hour with him before we took off.

What the story of this day illustrates is the power of living within driving distance of family. I have hope that we will really get to know T&C some more and get to hang out with them occasionally. I am still bummed we aren’t in Portland, which would be a lovely middle ground for our families, but I am certainly getting used to the idea of being in Seattle for the long run.

Posted at 11:23 AM

Fri - February 16, 2007

2006

The year's most memorable.

A very late personal reflection on the year 2006.

Here is a list of the things I found most memorable from 2006.

Moment and memory:
The birth of my daughter, Nina Jean. How could anything else compare?

Worst moment:
We euthanized our beloved dog Rudy for a number of reasons. I know it was the right thing to do, but I still feel pain in my chest when I think about her.

Favorite found object (on the web)
video link

Posted at 07:40 PM

Thu - November 30, 2006

Let it snow!

Real weather comes to our town.

It has snowed! We are enjoying the lovely scene, and I skipped down the hallway today seeing the snow come down outside. I know that my office mates thought I was nuts (ok , this just confirmed it). Anyway, I am enjoying my Subaru all wheel drive and my wool sweaters and socks. Unfortunately, our fireplace doesn't work, or we'd be enjoying a roaring fire in the snow storm. I'll just go out and walk Tikka and enjoy catching snowflakes on my tongue....

In other news, I found a video link on Neil Gaiman's blog, where he mentioned that it was stuck in his head. I was a little unsure of the song for the first half, but the randomness made me smile and now I am enjoying having it in my head for awhile.

Posted at 09:17 PM

Thu - November 2, 2006

Frosty

Jack Frost visits us for the first time in years

Everywhere I have lived, it seems like Halloween is a seasonal turning point. In Oregon it was the start of the rainy season, in Providence it was the beginning of the clear, cold days, in Phoenix it was when the nights really started to cool off and the highs were reliably below 100. So. It is the day after Halloween. In Saint Louis it appears that Jack Frost waits until Halloween and then starts to have his winter fun. I walked Nina and Tikka this morning and saw the beauty of frost, something I haven't witnessed in a very long time. I had forgotten how pretty the sparkle of sunlight on frost is.

Now that the trees have felt the frost the leaves are falling almost continuously. I had to walk through a veritable shower of leaves under some trees today. No wind was necessary, they are just in a hurry to hibernate now that they've felt a little cold. In one yard there were only two trees that had kept their leaves pretty intact until today. Now it looks like they are in a stripping contest. I can't tell which one is winning. Circles of leaves carpet the ground around the trees like little christmas tree skirts. I don't remember noticing that trees could hurry before.

Now I can't wait until the soil freezes. I love the pillars of ice crystals that grow in the interstices and form beautiful little worlds under the top layer of dirt. They are fun to step on and crunch. Now if we could just find our gloves....

Posted at 07:50 PM

Tue - September 26, 2006

Rudy

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.

Our hearts are heavy tonight. We have suffered the loss of part of our family. Our dog Rudy was with us from her puppyhood in 1998 to 2006. She had spunk and verve. She had spark. She had a good heart. We miss her.

Posted at 08:32 PM

Sun - September 17, 2006

Balloons!

We went to watch balloons launching at the St. Louis balloon race.

The Great St. Louis Forest Park Balloon Race is an event with a name that is just too long. Evidently, the lead "bunny" balloon (supposed to be the energizer bunny - but we never saw an energizer bunny balloon) flys off somewhere and the rest of the balloon "hounds" follow and try to drop a bag of birdseed closest to the hare. However, it still isn't clear to me if the bunny balloon lands somewhere, or what. Anyway, we went to go see some pretty balloons and thought Nina would appreciate big pretty things flying in the sky. We missed the Balloon Glow part of the event on Friday night, but we wandered through Forest Park on Saturday afternoon. The balloons were late to take off, due to high winds, but soon we started to see them rise over the hills. We made it to the launch site before they were all off the ground. It was interesting to watch them try to get the balloons ready to go in the wind, they were held up with lines in many directions to keep them from blowing into one another. They also didn't inflate them until they were ready to go. I was imagining a field full of inflated balloons all ready to pop up into the air. I was particularly tickled by the Mayflower balloon, as my grandparents ran a Mayflower moving company in South Dakota for many years.

Posted at 04:50 PM

Thu - September 14, 2006

Back on-line

After a month's hiatus, this Blog is back.

My home computer was packed up in a box for 2 of those weeks, and the monitor cable was hiding in a box for the other two. Finally, all those Bloggable ideas can come out into the air. I am considering switching to a web hosted Blog product so I don't have to depend on my own hardware in order to blog. Additionally, I would like to have the ability to receive comments. But those thoughts are outweighed by the trouble it would take to archive and transfer all the stuff I've already posted. If anyone has any experience with blog transfer though, please let me know your thoughts. Anyone have good things to say about their blog host/software? Let me know those thoughts too. Now back to the brain dumping...

Oh, one more thing. Since this is partly a memory book for Nina I'm trying to post items on the days they happened, even though I'm writing about them now. If you're interested, check out all the August entries that will appear over the next few days. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Posted at 07:02 PM

Tue - September 12, 2006

My first meme

I've heard that bleme is the new term for a blog meme.

This meme appeared on lablemming's blog and caught my attention. I like it because it is a weird snapshot of your focus at one moment, through my favorite medium, the book. I actually did this meme on the 11th of August while I was (procrastinating, obviously) putting together my defense talk.

"In most cordierites the octahedrally coordinated positions in the structure are occupied predominantly by magnesium, and cordierites containing more than one Fe2+ atom per formula unit are rare and tend to be restricted to pegmatitic occurrences. Compared with associated ferromagnesian minerals, such as biotite, garnet, orthopyroxene and spinel, cordierites are preferentially enriched in magnesium relative to iron.
The Si:Al ratio does not vary much from 5:4, corresponding with an apparent structural requirement of 4Si plus 2Al within the six-membered rings and 1 Si plus 2 Al outside them."

The meme:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag zero people.

The book was:

Posted at 09:50 PM

Rationalizing the passion for tea

We drink so much of it, there must be something good about it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5281046.stm

Posted at 09:28 PM

Sat - August 26, 2006

Movers arrive!

After living in an almost empty house, we find out that we have WAAAAAY too much crap.

Will the boxes ever be gone? Who knows?

Posted at 08:02 PM

Sat - August 12, 2006

We have wonderful friends!

Friends from L. A. come to visit us.

Woot! Friends! They are such good friends that they drove waaaay too long through bad L. A. traffic to come and see us. Over the last two weekends we had visits from Alicia and Greg, Tim and Deanne, and Ayanna, Tom, and Duncan. How did we ever find such wonderful friends? We had a great time both weekends. The only bad part was the brevity of the visits. Duncan is the most amazing little guy I have ever met. He is definitely his very own person. Influenced by his parents for sure, but his very own being. Thank you all for coming!