Category Archives: Life

So, it’s the end of the week, and you’re not doing much real work, are you? I’m happy I’m in the office today. Often on a Friday with family coming in to town, I’d usually be at home cleaning between bits of working. Today, I am reading blogs and watching videos between bits of working. I thought I would post these two South Park works of internet genius for all of you out there in the same boat as me today.

A few weeks ago I came across Matt Harding’s video, and it really made me happy. Last week, he added a new post to his blog, and it contained another video that made me happy. So, here it is. And remember, “It was a musical thing. And you were supposed to sing or to dance…”

And you can never watch one YouTube video. This one was in the side bar. South Park, you are brilliant.

In preparation for our upcoming climb of the Grand Teton (see, I told you), Mark and I are gathering and evaluating our gear and trying to streamline our climbing system. For me, one of the most important pieces of gear I carry with me is my camera. These days I shoot with a Nikon D80, often with a lightweight fixed 50mm lens, or a nice wide angle zoom (18-70mm), and almost always with a circular polarizer. But, this rig is heavy and expensive, and I could shave several pounds and a lot of space if I found myself a tiny point and shoot camera that I liked.

Mark and I bought a new car! The passat always served us well, but it’s days were numbered. When the local Toyota dealership offered us a surprisingly good deal on a brand new Prius, we had to take it!

The car is awesome, and we love playing with all of the gadgets. The bluetooth connection lets you use the cars speaker system to make phone calls. There is actually a specific cable/port thingy for my iPod. And it gets 20 more miles per gallon than the Passat. It feels a bit like driving a spaceship. Not the exciting take-off part, of course, but the floating through space part.

The slow, quiet travel of vast empty spaces because you have no real destination and no urgency of arrival. It’s the Zen-inducing side-effect of piloting a vehicle with 74 horsepower.

After our Partner Yoga class last weekend, Mark and I bought the book from the instructor. The Pleasures and Principals of Partner Yoga by Elysabeth Williamson has some really great postures and adjustments for pairs to practice. The other interesting part of the book is the way it is illustrated. They took lovely images of yogis and turned them into sketches. It gives the book a low-tech, artistic feel. Like a traditional yogic scroll, where the ancient hand was only able to sketch out the basics of the asana.

I thought I might try my hand at this effect, and the result is here. What do you think?

Our group was lucky to have Piers Sellers come out to talk and spend the day discussing his research with us this week. Apart from being an incredible, and very accomplished climate scientist (ie my current career track), he has also flown on two different shuttle missions to the International Space Station! In the course of those two mission he has logged 41 EVA hours in 6 different spacewalks.

Piers (I tried to call him “Dr. Sellers” and he made fun of me) gave a great talk about what it’s really like to go into space. I was surprised by little facts like it only takes about 3 minutes to reach orbit in the shuttle, that Russian cosmonauts are so superstitious that they all pee on the wheels of the shuttle before getting in, and that the inside of a space suit smells like bacon on an EVA.

After spending the day at the department, my adviser threw a very nice party for Piers, and Mark happily came out to meet him. We all three had a great conversation about rock climbing, and Piers said that his experiences climbing in the mountains were “miserable.” Ah well, I guess it’s not for everybody!

The weather has been mild and we got a big tax refund. Time to shop!

I’ve spent my time and money lately refurbishing Ann’s older (but very nice) road bike into the ultimate commuter bike. This is the most work I’ve ever done on a bike, by myself, and it was a heck of a learning experience.

Ok, here’s all of the cool improvements I made:
1 – Entirely new handlebars, with all new shifters, brakes and cabling. I did accidentally wire the brakes backwards, but I can fix that later.
2 – You can’t see it, but I installed a sweet LED headlight for evening rides home.
3 – A new bike computer! I need to know how far I ride and how fast! This was the first computer that I have installed and calibrated on my own.
4 – Bike lock, of course.
5 – Seat pack to hold patch kit, spare tube, and multi-tool.
6 – Handy bike pump. Don’t want to be caught with a flat on the other side of town.
7 – New chain. Installing this and then re-adjusting the deraillures was one of the biggest challenges.
8 – New tubes and tires. These have more tread for all-weather conditions.
9 – Changed out the clip-less peddles for platforms so I can ride in flip-flops this summer!

Mark also got to spend a little money, and on Sunday we went out and bought him a nice new grill. He loves it, and it made some darn tasty BBQ pork on Sunday night! With the house, grill and gardening tools we’ve collected over the last few years, we’re nearly back to the amount of stuff we had before we left Indiana. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but at least we have tasty grillin’ again.

Mark and I have agreed since the day we arrived that Colorado is one of the best places on Earth to live. There are so many reasons to love living in this state, I could not list them all here. But while living in Colorado Springs and visiting my brother living in Denver, I have had a chance to see what some of the more urban areas of Colorado are like. And they are nice. Colorado Springs has a lot of character, and certainly a lot more stuff than the Fort (like real malls, excellent Mexican food, tourist destinations galore, and people of different ethnicities).

But I did discover that I prefer Fort Collins. I prefer it to Boulder, Denver or the Springs. This town is really special, and a lot of that has to do with the rural feel that they have managed to keep, despite the exponential growth seen by all Front Range towns. In Fort Collins, you can find quiet natural areas all over the town. I can walk 15 minutes down the hill and be up to my knees in the cold, clear, rushing water of the Poudre river. We have an occasional bear in Old Town. At night, Mark and I fall asleep to the sounds of coyotes. And Liv has chased everything from prairie dogs to 8-point mule deer bucks in this town. In the summer, you can pass people on their horses riding into town in the evening. Gardens, farms, ranches, lakes, creeks, woods, and wildlife make up the backdrop of life here. It is a special place, and I am happier than ever to be home.

In the last two days, I have started to spend some time working on ways to align my life with the ecological evangelizing I performed while teaching my class on Climate Change. I’ve done some research into E85 conversion kits for the yellow car. I’m starting to make arrangements for our local farm food this summer. And I’m putting together a commuting bike I would like to use this summer.

Which is why I was so tickled when this New Belgium video showed up on another blog today. Look, that’s Fort Collins! Look, he’s riding a bike! Look, he’s being chased by Sean’s dogs! I love living in this town.

I’m co-teaching a class in Colorado Springs right now. It’s a 100-level class on Climate Change at Colorado College, a nice little liberal arts college. The school is on the “block plan,” which means the students take only one class at a time for 3 and half weeks at a go. Which is why it works out nicely for me and the other CSU graduate students who have gone down to co-teach. You don’t have to spend a whole semester away from home. But, I have to say, three and half weeks is still a long time to be away.

While I’m staying in the Springs, the school has put me up in furnished apartments set aside for “Visiting Faculty”. I think it’s really cool that I’m actually considered faculty right now! As I have spent every day of my first week either in the apartment working on lesson plans or in class in the building 100ft away, I took some pictures of the apartment and put them up in the gallery.

I’m guessing the apartment building was built ca. 1930. There are radiators in every room that I am incapable of understanding. Either they are all the way on, all the way of, or making this horribly loud racket which sounds like ghouls banging on the pipes in my bedroom. There are beautiful wood floors, and this crazy tile pattern in the bathroom that seems to move in the evening after I’ve been staring at the computer screen for 14 hours.

I really like the diggs (as the kids say), they have a lot of character. Without my Tivo, though, I seem to be forced to leave the television on the Discovery Channel, which is playing A Haunting a lot these days. Little details in the apartment give me the shivers after watching shows about ghosts and demons all evening long. The brass plates on each door have an actual keyhole that you can look through! Lights flicker on and off occasionally for no good reason. And the hot water definitely seems to be possessed. It comes and goes, spits and coughs, and sometimes, as it’s running, I hear voices saying I should make very hard test questions to torture the students with!

The teaching is going very well, and I’m learning sooo much. I think the hardest part is over, and hopefully I’ll keep learning throughout the next 2.5 weeks. It’s been a great experience, and I’m so happy to be doing it. Now, does anybody know a priest I could call just in case things start getting weird in the apartment….