This morning I helped a stranded motorist by pushing her car across an intersection and into a parking space where she could safely wait for assistance (singlehandedly, of course, unlike those jerks CNN keeps talking about). Then I still got to work 20 minutes early.

Seriously, what's gotten into me?

So many things...

Sometimes I don't post anything on here for a long time because I don't have anything to write. Other times its because I actually have too much to write about. Then again, sometimes its for different reasons entirely. But recently, it's basically been the second reason.

I know I put up a picture from Beth and my wedding, but I haven't actually written a single word about the wedding itself. Or the week leading up to the wedding. Or what life as a married man is like (hint: just like my recent life as an unmarried man). I haven't mentioned going to the beach in North Carolina for a week back in early July, or going back to Canada this month for a memorial for Beth's grandparents as well as some much needed R&R. Speaking of Beth, did I mention that she and I are starting to plan our honeymoon? Nope. I didn't mention that she's changed her name, either, or any of the construction projects that she and I have worked on this summer. Also, I got a promotion at work. This makes me a 30-something married homeowning doctor with a career, none of which was true 2 years ago, which is probably worth a post in its own right but still hasn't gotten one. Lets see what else has happened.... well, there was a full season of softball in which I went from being incredibly rusty and the worst player on the team for the first couple of games to getting back in a groove and starting to rake like the old days, to making the mistake of stretching for home and sliding and losing significant chunks of skin from my arm, shin and butt. Our friend Jen moved back to town about a month ago and has been hanging out a lot, serving as a valuable consultant as I continue to try to perfect my margarita and bloody mary recipes. Meanwhile, our friend Chris is in the process of moving out of town, but he, Beth and I bought packrafts and took them out for a quicker-than-expected float down the Eagle River, just north of town....

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of things I probably should have written about, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Let me know if there's anything above that I should try to write about ASAP, otherwise I'll just see if anything grabs me in the coming days.

Tailgate Alaska (Thompson Pass)

Two weekends ago I got sent to Thompson Pass, outside of Valdez, AK, for work. This is about 140 miles from home as the crow flies, but over 300 miles as the car drives, which takes a looooooong time in an RV towing a trailer with a couple of snowmachines. The red star on the map below shows where Thompson Pass is. Thompson Pass is one of the snowiest places in Alaska, if not the world, having recorded almost 1,000" of snow in a single season at the elevation of the pass itself (~2,800') and 62" of snow in a single day, while the surrounding peaks at elevations of 5,000-8,000' receive even greater snowfalls. I was sent there to inspect the site of Tailgate Alaska, which was issued a land use permit by the State of Alaska, and to check in with several other permit holders while I was in the area. I actually got lucky to draw this duty, since the DNR employee who actually issued these permits is currently pregnant and couldn't make the trip herself. Tailgate Alaska is basically the spectator/lodging/commercial component of the World Extreme Ski Championships and the King of the Hill snowboard competition. Even though the competitions themselves were on hiatus during our visit due to low visibility, it was still pretty cool to be there. I got to go on one snowboard tour which was fun despite the low visibility and sun-baked snow, and I also got to play around a bit on a snowmachine (getting myself some "brap! brap!" in the local jargon). Anyway, here are some pictures from the trip:

Thompson Pass, near Valdez, AK, is in the High Chugach, where most of the surrounding peaks are at least 6,000 feet high (and up to 13,000 feet), as opposed to the western part of the range where peaks are generally <6,000 feet and no more than 8,000.

Main street of Tailgate Alaska was a sloppy muddy mess after about noon each day. But thats what rubber boots are for, right?

At Tailgate, there were a number of places like this where you could get yourself a cup of coffee or a snack.

Therre were also places like this, that looked a bit more permanent.

Here I am, staying out of the mud and heading down to inspect the permit at the beer garden.

Beer garden closed. NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Taking a break from some of our inspection-related travel.

Snowmachine helmets weigh like 50 pounds. My neck is still tired.

Here is me getting ready to go for a quick tour in the afternoon and looking stupid.

At the top of the tour, the light was flat and it was impossible to see any texture to the terrain. Here I am hoping for the best before starting my descent into a ravine that promised better visibility and a chance for soft snow.

Trophy Time!!!

Both of you (all three on a good day!) already know that last year at the office Christmas party I drank too much egg-nog and knocked over the tree was transfixed by one impossibly large present at the gift exchange. "It's shaped just like a trophy," I thought, "but it can't possibly be a 4-foot-high trophy. So what on Earth could it be? I must find out!" It was a trophy, and despite my best efforts to give it away (for the past year, virtually everyone who has come into the house has been declared champion of something and offered the trophy) the trophy sat in our living room.

As this winter approached, I decided to give it away at the office Christmas party, where re-gifting is a valued tradition, but nobody was going to open the giant trophy-shaped present this time around, so I had to get creative. So I took the trophy apart and rebuilt it with hinges and locks so that I could fit it into a 2-foot high box. Here's how it works:

So I wrapped it up and snuck it into work, where I hid it in an empty cubicle. Then I printed a document asking whoever found the printout to find the gift and add it to the pile. This way, nobody would know it was from me, since it was still a waaaay oversized present and people were sort of expecting me to try to regift the trophy. I guess I got away with it because somebody got fooled:

opening the mystery gift...

Everybody loves the hinge action!

Liz couldn't believe she got fooled.

But I think this picture captures her true ambivalence about the trophy. Meanwhile, over her shoulder I think I spy a plan hatching...

A gift theft! Somebody actually knew what they were getting and wanted in - he says he's got big plans for sprucing it up to re-gift next year.

What if...

...I told you I was doing research for an easement on a trail from my cubicle to the end of the internet? Would that make how I spend my time more acceptable?

It’s 9:30
Only 2 hours to lunch
If I eat an hour late
It’ll be 1:30 by the time I get back
People start leaving at 4:00
That’s only a bit over 2 hours after I’ll be back from lunch
I only leave an hour later than that
This day’s flying by
Why is it only 9:31?

Good life, but busy

With apologies to my dissertation, here are some things that have actually happened in the last several weeks:

Back in early September, Beth and I headed back to Michigan for her brother's wedding. It was a lovely ceremony and reception (pretty amazing how many people I knew there) and the hotel had a water park in it! Congratulations to Ian and Frances (and Berkley, too).

While we were there I got a call from the AK Department of Natural Resources, offering me a job. So I accepted it and started work the Monday after I got back. I work in the easements section of the Division of Mining, Land and Water, adjudicating trail applications for the Mat-Su Borough. In English, this means that while there is a large network of trails on state lands throughout the borough (county) north of Anchorage.

And what else has been happening.... oh, right! Beth and I finally closed on our house the last weekend of September. Since then life has been a whirlwind of painting, packing, unpacking, fixing, buying, power tooling, firewooding and flopping lifelessly onto the couch to zone out for a bit at the end of the day while our neighbors watch our every move (curtaining is next on the list). Things are finally starting to settle down now, and although we've still got plenty to do around here its just really nice and already feels like home. I love it (so does Beth, but she's not writing this) and its just really satisfying to live in a place thats mine. It makes it worth it to put this much effort into making the place nice.

The first snowfall of the season is supposed to start any time now - which is almost the latest ever for Anchorage (Nov 15) - and we've got a toasty fire in the fireplace. Dinner's in the oven and I actually spent several hours working on my dissertation today. Beth's almost done making the bed (literally, with wood and power tools, not just putting on sheets.) and we've got a bottle of wine open. Life's pretty good!

So much to do!

I am definitely feeling stressed out by this whole "so much to do, so little time" scenario. I'm running out of lab supplies and trying to get more ordered (end of next week?!?!) grinding sediments, decarbonating, removing organics with heat and with chemicals, sieving, centrifuging and soon dispersing, settling, separating, spiking, X-raying, fluxing and ESing. Oh crap, I forgot I gotta do some soaking, too.

It worked for the ancient Greeks....

Maybe it'll work for me. My latest data isn't useless, it just presents a somewhat muddled picture. So instead I decided to take a more constellational approach to the problem and decided it looks more like a scorpion than aging and weathering sediments and soils. I'm sure you'll agree.

(With all respect due to angry pirate monkeys, if you think I ripped off your idea here, you're dreaming. This is brilliant and original. Pbbbbbbbttt!)

Human Bowling

Here's some good wholesome fun from a recent Friday night.



Sorry about the sound. I'll have to work on that once I'm back in Boston.

Nice work today, Toine, and thanks for getting it set up so I could watch despite being over 3000 miles away. I hope I don't have to worry that you didn't get to enjoy yourself afterwards - I imagine a nice, satisfying several rounds of drinks over at the pub before dinner.

In my world, it was a (wonderfully) lazy first weekend here in AK. The first night I was out cold at about 8:15 after a delicious Thanksgiving feast prepared by my fantastic girlfriend. It turns out sleeping in is super easy, since it doesn't get light until about 10, so after 14 hours of sleep I actually felt like I'd put a dent in the last few months of sleep deprivation. We spent the rest of the weekend kicking around, starting season 2 of the Wire, watching The Dog Whisperer, buying new cross country skis, going out to dinner and to see The Nutcracker, and going over to some friendshouse to shovel their driveway for them because they were out of town (but not actually having to do any work, because somebody had beaten us to it). All in all, it was pretty successful. Now I've got to buckle down to work for the next few days, because I really want to get this thesising stuff done as soon as possible!

Bad day for a computer crash

I spent the first 45 minutes of my day today getting my computer running again so I could keep working on my proposal, or at least not lose it completely. Finally got it going, after saving some key files while in safe mode. Now as I type this I'm putting all of my PNG work onto a CD.

Job Interview

I just had an interview for a job with ExxonMobil. A couple years ago I would have felt dirty because of that, but these days it doesn't really bother me. Not that I'm looking to work in the oil industry as opposed to working as a professor, or getting a job with the USGS or NOAA or something, but here's why some of the things that might have bothered me before don't now.

1) People hate the oil industry and, by extension, its employees. Its interesting that not liking oil companies dates back pretty much to the beginning of the industry itself. These are huge corporations that make unimaginable amounts of money, and as "Reezy" Freeman puts it "people hate on you when you shinin'." Recently a lot of that hate is over high gas prices, which I find ridiculous. Oil and gas are commodities whose prices reflect demand. We as Americans have chosen to live in a way that demands enormous amounts of these products and now more and more of the world is following suit. The response of oil prices to the recent instability in global markets shows that speculation certainly plays a role in these costs, but putting that aside I heard recently that glodal oil demand was 89 million barrels a day, while production was 86 million barrels a day. Naturally, prices will rise to the point that it discourages the world from using 3 million barrels of oil a day. Unfortunately, there is so much inertia in the system regarding our consumption of oil (for example: homeowners can't decide on a weekly or monthly or even yearly basis to suddenly not live in the suburbs and commute 25 miles each way to work every day. They're stuck with a house in a crappy location for some time and can't just stop driving to work every day. Not to mention that the house itself is probably bigger than they need and thus consumes excess energy.) that it takes a substantial increase in the price of oil to change consumption patterns. Over time prices will come down as people make decisions that allow them to conserve, but at the moment it looks like it costs $68 a barrel to cut consumption by 3 million barrels a day and $68 a barrel is equal to $1.62 a gallon. The last gas station I saw was selling gasoline for about a dollar a gallon more than this, which reflects the total cost of refining the petroleum and transporting it to the station. So the prices make sense. And for the people who say "yeah, but what about when gas was almost $4 a gallon," that was when oil was trading for almost $150 a barrel, or about $3.50 a gallon. So gas was actually being sold for a price much closer to the cost of the raw material then than it is now.

Whew! That was a mouthful. I'll finish this point and get onto the rest of my reasons at some other time.

Okay, maybe you can imagine....

Well, the fun-quotient in my life is down a bit recently, to the point where those of you out there who see this blog probably could imagine how much fun I'm having. But for the record: in the past two weeks, I've been at school working past midnight 3 times, and have left school before 5 once, which was on a Saturday, so it doesn't really count. But I've been getting a ton of work done in the lab, which puts me closer and closer to getting to see my baby again. Hooray!

I've been on the road a lot recently, which is part of "hence, no posts for awhile." Anyway, here's proof...

Not sure what exactly I'm supposed to be doing at work today... not any easier given that my girlfriend is here... struggling.... struggling......

Why what I do is important (if not interesting)

Rocks do a lot of exciting things (as far as I'm concerned), but what I study isn't one of them. Sigh.

Fortunately, the way rocks dissolve is kind of important, so at least I've got that going for me. Look at the formulas to the left (1a-3a): Step 1a forms a weak acid from water and carbon dioxide. Step 2a uses that acid to dissolve a carbonate rock (limestone). This happens whenever rain mixed with CO2 falls on these rocks, and the rain eventually washes the weathering products into the ocean. Step 3a is what occurs when organisms living in the ocean use these weathering products to make their shells out of limestone. It's the exact reverse of step 2a. Now look at the carbon atoms in the equations (they're all highlighted in red): One carbon atom comes from the air, and one comes from the original limestone. In the end there is one carbon atom in the new limestone, and one has turned back into the weak acid (which is effectively the same as being returned to the air). So this process doesn't change the amount of CO2 in the air at all.

Now look at this second set of formulas. Step 1b is the same as step 1a above, except that the amounts of products and reactants are doubled, and a weak acid is created by combining carbon dioxide with rainwater. In Step 2b, the two acid molecules dissolve a single silicate rock,

producing the same weathering products as above, plus an extra water molecule and a molecule of quartz (we can ignore these last two from here on). Step 3b is again the same as step 3a above, as sea-critters make their shells out of limestone - but now look at the carbon molecules in this equation: Both carbon molecules come from the air, and although one is returned to the air at the end (okay, to the acid, but remember that they're effectively the same, as far as we're concerned), the other is now stored in rock!

So, yes, I did just use an exclamation point in a story about how rocks dissolve, but the fact that I'm a giant nerd isn't the take-home message here. The message is that the weathering of silicate minerals takes CO2 from the air and ends up storing it in rock! (another one, ha! (!)) So if you've ever wondered to yourself what controls the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (essentially what causes climate change), this is it.

Which brings us to my job: I measure the chemistry of river water, which is essentially the sum of the weathering products from everywhere upstream conveniently mixed into a single bottle, and try my darndest to figure out which of these reactions they come from, and how much CO2 is being consumed by these processes.