Florida

How I know Florida is full of old people:

1.  At the Nashville airport I chose the wrong line on accident to be felt up or viewed naked, and was behind only elderly people.  I kid you not b/c I was enviously watching everyone in the otherlines speed on, it took me twice as long as it should have to get through that line.

2.  The funny smell on the plane.

3.  How long I had to wait to get my luggage.  Old people like to wait and are sloooow, so the airport doesn't have to hurry at all to get the luggage unloaded.

4.  People merge in traffic when there is clearly not enough room for a car between the two cars it's merging into.  (Though recent events have shown that I am not allowed to talk about bad merging.  I NEVER miss my exit).

5.  FANNY PACKS!  Two out of every three people on the beach boardwalk are sport'n them.

6.  The hotel food is bland.  Old people like bland food I'm sure of it.

7.  Not old but relevant to Florida, as I was walking into the hotel, there was a couple unloading their car out front saying that they were from Michigan. 

8.  Wrinkles.  Lots of them.

9.  No rock or alternative radio stations to be found.

10.  Finally....the Marriott On The Beach does not offer wireless internet.  I must plug my computer in.  This is so that I am forced to use slllloooowwwww internet.  Old people can't handle the speed and mind blowing technology of wi-fi and so the hotel caters to them by only providing plug in internet.

Calvin is exempt from all old people stereotypes.  He prefers efficiency and speed...especially when it comes to making lunches in the field.  He he he, that was the only time we ever fought.  And Calvin doesn't wear a fanny pack....  I suspect he merges poorly, but so do I.

Want to hear my merging story?  After leaving Memphis I worked on my paper for Calvin some more (I'm gonna be published!  Sphene is on it's way to making me famous!) and then took over driving the last 2 hrs.  As I was entering the freeway, I noticed Josh's lights were on in his car and thought the brights were on too (it was daylight), so I tried to turn it off.  At the same time as I was merging and I wasn't paying attention and Josh yelled "Aaagghhh" and I looked up and I was merged before we even got to the dashed lines.  Luckly no one was coming.  Josh swore we got air when I "merged".  My first reaction was to press in the clutch, which wasn't there.

I drove the rest of the way home safely.  Which was easy because I am a safe driver.

A Happy List During An Angry Time

I'm in a piss poor mood today, despite the fact that it's Wednesday before Thanksgiving and there was no traffic on the way in today, so I actually got to work on time!  No one noticed though.

I don't know why I'm so angry, but I probably wouldn't talk to me if I were you.  It's not going to be optimistic.

Ackbar lays all out on the table in the mornings, but only the mornings right before we leave.  He knows it's against the rules too, but he does it anyways.  I wonder if it's for attention so that maybe we will stay with him, or if once we leave, he lays up there anyways, and now he's just doing it earlier.

Josh weighed him yesterday, we think he weighs about 15 lbs. now.  That's a one pound increase.  I'm pretty sure it's one pound of fur that he grew in for the winter.

Oh man I'm angry.  I will try to make a picture list of stuff I like to counteract this:

I got this far and then I was distracted by a horribly boring Alumni website from my high school. It had my engagement announcement on it, but not an announcement that I graduated from Vanderbilt with a Master's in Geology.  Not that anyone in my hometown knows which state Nashville is in, let alone that Vanderbilt exists as a place.  I kid you not.  Well, my parents know...now.

Sprinkles are on there twice because I love them the most. 

This list didn't particularly make me feel better, but instead, reminded me of everything I do not have and that I am at work.  Without sprinkles or a volcano.

More Science

I'm getting a sinus headache.  I blame Vanderbilt.  I had to spend 4.5 hrs there today working on figures for the paper Calvin and I are getting published.  He was there too, with his dog, Bosco.  Josh said it perfectly the other day, when you think of the word "dog" you think of Bosco.  Bosco is just a regular dog.  He's bigger and good for hugging.  He's happy, he barks when people come over, and he generally obeys commands.  He's blond with short hair, but he's not a specific type of dog.  Bosco is my favorite dog in Nashville.  Bosco would sometimes wander from Calvin's office and visit me in the computer lab, then wander back.

On Friday I took my personal day I got for working one year to work on figures then too.  I also got to see a good speaker talk about supervolcano eruptions/formation.  That night Josh and I were invited to Calvin's for dinner with the research group and the speaker.  I ate 1 sausage and 2 pieces of lamb.  I only eat lamb with Calvin, and I only eat that much with him too.  He always overestimates how much food people (girls) can eat, and then hates to see food going to waste.  He also cooks lamb a lot...therefore, I have to eat all of my food.  I had a really great time there.  I told everyone this story/scientific fact that Josh had told me that morning.  With Josh sitting there next to me.  This was the story:

"Josh told me that when babies are born premature...before 6 months and after 4 months...doctors have a hard time inflating the baby's lungs" *Insert air pump motions* "because the baby hasn't formed lung surfactant yet, so there is too much surface area and the lungs stick together.  What they do is get some lung surfactant from the mom, put it in the baby and give it a little shake!"  Which is pretty much a quote from what Josh told me that morning.  Maybe you don't find it that amazing of a story, and I certainly didn't' that morning, but then I realized it was the perfect story to tell scientists.  It was science-y so they were learning, it involved the word "surfactant" which is apparently is amusing to scientists, and it had baby shaking.  Yeah...maybe you need to be a grad student and slightly crazy to get it.

Geologist Benefits

I love Criminal Minds.

Tonight I made delicious Lentil Soup.  Onion, carrots, celery, celery leaves, 1 c lentils, 8 c water, bay leaf.  Simmer uncovered for 50 minutes.  Add spices, garlic and salt.  Do not forget the salt.  Simmer for 10 more minutes.  Eat deliciousness.  I added frozen meatballs we bought too and a beef bullion cube.

While it cooks, drink a bottle of wine.  If you're lucky your husband won't be studying for an organic chemistry class.

Once a man who got his finger cut off at work and was stoned told me that I thought organic chemistry was hard because I was a girl and girls aren't good at chemistry.  Then he showed me some arrowheads because I'm a geologist.

Geologists find arrow heads but do not study them.  I have found one arrowhead, one cutting tool, and one necklace bead in the desert.  Being a geologist has it's benefits.  I will also never buy a house in a 500 yr flood plain.  Yeah, I'm that awesome.

Be Nice On The Internet...You Never Know Who's Going To Read It

This morning I was late to work by 12 minutes, which disappointing me.  I like to get to work earlier on a Monday...start the week out right and all.  I just lost track of time while blow drying my hair. 

Then I checked my email, and someone had commented on a picture with me tagged in it.  The picture is from 4 or 5 years ago, and I haven't talked to the girl who posted the picture since then.  She also posted it then...it's just been hanging out, forgotten on facebook for years and years.  Then someone, I don't know who, found it and left this comment, "LMFAO!  Ewwwww!"  and it was sent to me because I was tagged in it.  Granted I was in my bathing suit, and my personal reaction is ewww, but I usually just try to tell myself I only think that because everyone is overly critical of themselves. 

My fall coat I loved so much last year no longer can be buttoned up because my tummy is even larger than 5 years ago....13 lbs larger.

Anyways, I got two separate compliments today on how pretty I am, which makes up for what that other girl said, and none of them were from Josh...well, he probably complimented me before he left too.  I know I told him he was super cute despite his incredibly greasy dirty hair.

I also dreamed that tons of people from Fremont invaded Nashville and were making all the lines to my favorite places extra long and I kept on trying to avoid and not talk to anyone.  Does that mean I'm avoiding something from my past that is crowding out my life right now?  I have know idea what that could be if that's it.

What I mostly think about:
1.  My trip to Denver and visiting Will
2.  Cleaning my apartment
3.  If a new Criminal Minds will be on
4.  Driving my truck and how I could make it even more awesome
5.  Ackbar
6.  Dinner
7.  How happy I am now compared to before
8.  What it would be like if people visited me
9.  If this sometimes cough is allergies or something more serious
10.  Holiday Plans/Christmas Letter


That's a pretty short and lame list.  I should focus on thinking about better things. 

Dinner Parties

Two dinner parties in one weekend!  We sure are busy people.

The first was one of our friend's birthday celebration.  We had fondue, which was amazing, homemade pizza, and homemade cheese cake!  It was a lot of cheese.  Luckily, I love cheese.

The birthday girl chose to play Challenge The Zodiac, a game I picked up at the Goodwill for 2$.  It was made by a woman to be fun and educational at the same time.  It teaches you about the astrology and the planets.  Everything in that game is WRONG.  Josh and I played it once and had to add several rules that were left out.  They mostly involve the set up.  First, you must drink a beer. Yes, we did turn it into a drinking game, but for this one, that's necessary.  Just compare the level of fun being had between the people not drinking and the people who were drinking.  Then second, and most important,  I can't emphasize enough how important this rule is...make sure you decide when the game will end before you start it.  There is no ending to the game built in.  There is no winner.  So if you don't want to play it all night and get wasted, decide the end first.  One of the players never got off the first square, ever.  And not do to his failing at something.  There are just about 3 different squares that you land on that send you back to the first square in the first row.  If you are luckier than him, you get to answer poorly written questions about the zodiac and planets.  Sarah and I (the geologists) were outraged, OUTRAGED!, when one of the cards said that the Earth was 4.6 million years old.  Wrong.  Oh so wrong.

Then we played charades, which I haven't played I think since Easter when I was nine.  I loved it!  I totally got them to guess Shawshank Redemption b/c I was shanking imaginary people.  Josh got Bonanza, and kept on making us guess boner.

Last night we went to a Thanksgiving dinner at the leader of my Christian group's house.  Several girls in my bible study had wanted it and helped plan it.  They are new girls that I don't know very well.  They are first year education master's students at Vandy, and I know at least 2 or 3 or maybe all, of them went to Vandy for undergrad.  They are very happy, very Christian, and do not yet have their souls and love of life forcibly crushed out of them by grad school.  Since they are education students, maybe they'll get lucky and it won't happen to them.

It was a little awkward for Josh and I b/c I thought some of the people I've known for longer at the bible study would be there, or the leaders, or someone, but they weren't.  It was just super optimistic younglings with very strong hipster tendencies, and Josh and I.  One girl documented the whole thing and took pictures of all the food...she used to document all the food she ate and put in a blog.  Hipster.  I only document some of the food I make and how I make it.

We played a game called Cranium I think, where you have a song, fad, movie, or tv show and you have to either act it out, sculpt it with clay, draw it, use dice with letters, or hum it.  And depending on what you do, those are worth different points set by the opposite team.  I got the song Rocket Man, and they made humming worth the least amount of points b/c they didn't know I can't hum at all.  I acted it out.  First I did man, which involved me referencing my chest.  And they got man, then I became a rocket and took off.  They totally got it.  Referencing my chest is something I try very hard not to do when I am at a Christian Group gathering.

Next we played Pictophone, which I love!  Everyone gets a piece of paper and rights a sentence down and pass it to the right.  That person draws a picture of the sentence and folds the sentence over and passes it.  The next person as then to write down the sentence based on the drawing and fold the drawing over.  And so on.  I got one sentence, and it was "The cat is high." I wasn't quite sure what sort of high this was referencing, so I drew a bad pot leaf, a cat, a joint with smoke, and I put it all on a tall table.  The next guy was sooooo confused and thought the cat was smelling a sausage.  The host saw it and thought it was hilarious.  He totally recognized what I had drawn.  I was a little worried for a while that this was all too crass and inappropriate for a Christian gathering, but it wasn't.

Bluegrass Style

The rest of my week in Denver was also awesome.  My cousin, Will, picked me up on Friday afternoon and brought me to lunch.  There, he told me about how much he loves bacon and how he cooks it all the time, once he discovered how easy it was to make bacon.  The amazing part is that his love for bacon is pure and not contaminated by pop-internet-hipster culture.  He didn't even know about "press button, receive bacon".  This is because he hasn't had the internet for the past 5 years because he literally lives on a granite pluton. 

Oh I tried to explain to him LOLCats and how pictures of cats with funny sayings are taking over the internet, but he didn't get it.  Can you imagine life without Caturday? Or basement cat? Or ceiling cat?

Then he showed me his new house in the city he purchased and gutted.  He's going to completely redo and rebuild the inside of the house.  It's quite the project but I think it will be fun.

Then we did what I've been wanting to do all week...we went hiking!  He thought I was going to die I was breathing so heavy...but I assured him that's just me, the weakling.  We got to see an amazing view of the town he works in and the surrounding mountains. 

For dinner Will played music with a friend at a cafe while I watched, ate food, and drank the last of the Hoptober fest.  I had a gorganzola cheese linguini pasta.  At first I was a little disappointed because the sauce was kind of thin, and then I ate a cheese clump and it was amazing!  It was so salty and delicious with a great texture.  That pasta won me over!  The place we were at was in the mountains, but really full of people.  Everything was hand cooked and as healthy as they could get it (organic, local, etc.).

The next day Will made sausage biskets and gravy for breakfast.  I've never made sausage gravy before, but now I know how. :)  We then hiked around his property/on the pluton.

He lives next to what is probably miles of exposed granite pluton.  It's stereotypical granite too, pink k-spar, large plagioclase feldspars, lots of quartz, and some biotite.  It was perfect for a granite.  The foundation of his cabin and coal house were made of giant blocks of the granite.  I wish I had so much granite laying around I could build a house out of it!  He showed me a pegmatite vein, that had meter large quartz and k-spar/plag feldspar mix chunks.  I think something happened in the formation of the pegmatite that caused the potassium feldspar and the plagioclase to form as one mineral instead of separating out as two.  I think I remember learning that that can sometimes happen, but I can't remember what it's called.

In the end, we pushed boulders of pure quartz down the hillside to see the pure power and force of them rolling.  Geologists who grew up in the mountains and out west love to roll boulders down the hill like that.  Geologists from the east don't.  I think it's because they don't want to ruin anything or mess with the rocks b/c outcrops like that are rare to non-existant in the east, while western geologists take the boulders and outcrops for granite (PUN) b/c that's all they know.  That's my theory anyways.  I feel bad about rolling the rocks down the hill, but then I see them rolling and how powerful they are, and it's totally worth it.

That night we went to a bar in Denver where his band had their CD release party/Halloween show.  I dressed as a landshark.  I taped teeth to the hood of my CMU hoodie and made a fin of cardboard and duct tape.   Sometimes people thought I was dressed up as a CMU student if I let my hood down.  And I guess they were right, I hadn't showered and was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and I was drinking.  That pretty much describes me while at CMU.  I think everyone I met at the bar was from Michigan, I kid you not.

Will played until 2 in the morning with his band, Steak Trout Revival, and they rocked the bar with their bluegrass music.  They also played the ghostbuster's theme song, bluegrass style.  Awesome.