Two days in the Valles

This week I spent Wednesday and Thursday up in the Valles Caldera with my advisor. We deployed a few more temperature probes and did some sampling. Mostly we got to hike up a streambed in 1-2 feet of snow with snowshoes strapped to our feet!


I have discovered that my old gaiters do not work all that well. The backs did not stay on my boots, instead resting on my socks, which allowed snow to get into my boots. My feet were therefore damn cold by the end of the first day. Eventually I thawed out. Check out the windblown snow we saw about halfway up:


The second day we hurried up the catchment and did some more sampling up at the top. It was a productive couple of days, and we brainstormed some good ideas for furthering my research. Hopefully things really get moving this winter! I'll hopefully be spending much of the spring (post-snowmelt) up in the Valles.

Welcome, winter weather.

I got up at 6:12 this morning to get myself down to my vanpool. I usually try to get up at 5:40 (my alarm goes off at 5:30) so I can shower and maybe even eat breakfast. This morning I had to sacrifice both to laziness. I left the house at 6:30, and arrived at the parking lot just a little before 6:40. The van is supposed to pick us up at 6:45, but that time came and went with no sign of a van. This happened once recently, and that time there was only one person at the north stop (I board the van at the second, south stop), and he apparently didn't want to drive because he sat there and waited for a long time before deciding to drive down. He also almost ran us off the road, leading to my first experience driving the vanpool van. But that's another story.
The van never showed up, but a car of usual van-riders did arrive around 6:50 to 6:55. Four of them piled out of a fairly small car. There were two of us waiting at the south stop for the van. Hmm. I decided not to go down to Socorro today because of that, and am instead working from Albuquerque. This fact has allowed me to observe the winter weather happening down here near the Rio Grande this fine day.

7:00 a.m.: When I started biking home, it was overcast and nothing was going on. Right around 7, we started getting an extremely light snow. Very exciting; I haven't been snowed on since last year. That snow steadily increased as I got home and walked Alison back to her bus stop for her trip to work. By the time I got home, a little bit had actually accumulated.

8:30 a.m.: By this time, the snow had stopped completely. We had probably about a tenth of an inch or so of accumulation. I took this picture:


10:00 a.m.: Most of the snow has sublimated or melted away. I figure this is the last of our winter weather today.

11:30 a.m.: The sun is out and shining in through the skylight above me.

12:02 p.m.: Graupel starts, up to pea-sized. At first I thought it was hail because it was hitting the skylight pretty hard. But no, it was just graupel. Large graupel lasts only a few minutes, and turns into very small grains of the stuff.

12:15 p.m.: Graupel stops. Within five minutes, much of the clouds have gone away and the sun is shining again. It looks pretty clear to the west, which is where our weather tends to come from this time of year. Out east looks damn ugly. That's where Alison works. I can't see the mountains at all, so they are probably getting hammered. I hope she can make it home today.

13:37 p.m.: The sky has clouded up again, and there is the lightest little bit of snow falling. Pretty much everything that had collected previously has melted. There was a cat in the yard, but he didn't want to be my friend.

13:53 p.m.: The light snow has stopped again, and the sky is once again clearing up fairly quickly.

14:31 p.m.: Extremely light snow, but the sky is clearing up already.

After that, it cleared, darkened, and cleared one more time. What strange weather. This morning it was 8 degrees in the Valles Caldera, and snowing heavily. We will not be making a trip up there this weekend.

Is there an Arachnologist in the house?

So about four days ago I was sitting at my desk (yes, this very desk) when my lower right leg started itching a lot. I am terrible at leaving itchy spots well enough alone, so I scratched at it, then discovering that I had four nickel-sized lumps on my leg. They looked and felt like big spider bites. Now, four days later, the lumps have been replaced by angry red circles, and a blister has formed in the middle of each bite. To see a picture, go visit the wife's blog about this subject. If you know anything about spider bites, or know somebody who knows something about spider bites, I would like some free consultation on what might have bitten me. That is all.

Life Calderic

This is what happens when you watch The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and then spend the next day hiking in the Valles Caldera:

I am substantially uncool.

Good news and bad news

Let's start with the bad. Pervez Musharraf has declared a state of emergency in Pakistan, and suspended the constitution, as well as taken all non-government stations off of television. Sound like some sort of Military Dictatorship? Wikipedia agrees. Now, our government has an expressed interest in turning dictatorships into democracies, yet we are staunch allies of Pakistan. Sounds awfully two-faced. Some of our other allies: India, Thailand, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Russia, and Morocco. Some other spots that are not free: Sudan, Chad, China, Vietnam, Russia, and others. We don't do much about situations about these other countries. I assume this is because they are either too large, or they don't have any oil.

The good news is that I got all around Albuquerque yesterday without using a vehicle. Alison went to work, and I decided to take the bus to lunch. I took my $1 and my LG Chocolate and hopped on the #5 that runs from Downtown to the east side of town. It takes just about an hour to get out there, so I did some reading on evaporation and stable isotopes. Once I got off the bus (finally) I stopped at the Subway to get myself lunch, and the Pizza Hut to get some for Alison. We ate lunch outside of her office, then I headed back down to Montgomery to get back on the bus. This time the ride was pretty short. Also, the bus was very quiet because it's one of the new CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) buses. Go Abq! Importantly, the Target and the Wild Oats are both along the route, so I can do pretty much all of my shopping and wife-visiting on this single bus route. The drop off is probably about half a mile from our house, so it will be kind of an annoying slog carrying groceries home, but oh well. These are the sacrifices we have to make to live with minimal impact. Later last night, Alison and I walked downtown to the theater (a 3-mile roundtrip walk) to see The Darjeeling Limited, a Wes Anderson movie. It was a pretty good movie, and I liked the fact that there were no truly likable characters. Go see it and decide for yourself. Another nice thing is that all of the previews before the movie consisted of seemingly intelligent movies; no Fred Claus, or Saw IV, or Spongebob movies, etc. People didn't talk much during the movie either (except for me - I have this annoying habit of having to whisper something to Alison every like 10 minutes).

Why are people so terrible?

Let's start out with this: I am against the war in Iraq, and I always have been. It is a politically motivated exercise that seeks to secure our access to Middle Eastern oil in the future. Now I believe that the $465 BILLION that we've spent on the war could have been better applied to improve security and, gosh, I don't know, research some alternative energy sources. I thought there would be a big uproar back in September of 2006 when the death toll in Iraq passed that of the number that died on September 11, 2001 (not sure how CNN calculated the 9/11 casualties (Iraq is now up to 3,157 combat casualties), whether it includes people who have developed health problems due to rescue work, and their likely early deaths). That came and went fairly quietly, with few holding it up as an example of the uselessness of our time there (sorry, friends of mine who have been there).

I realize that my personal opinion has no weight on what will happen, but I surely hope that the opinion of over half of America should count for something, and that we should get out ASAP (it is depressing to note that, according to that poll, while almost half of Americans want our troops out in less than a year, only 10% believe that they actually will be out that quickly; the largest bin is 2 to 5 years).

Having ranted that, I am not against our troops. Except the bad eggs, which I hope are the exceptions. They're doing the job they are told to do, and I would certainly be afraid in their situation. Nearly everybody supports the troops, except for a few whackjobs. And those whackjobs are all super leftist liberals, right? Wrong.

In case you missed the news today, a federal jury awarded a Maryland man $10.9 million in damages in his suit against the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. This group protests outside of soldiers' funerals. Their reasoning? Not disgust at the concept of war, or the futility of the exercise, or anything that actually has anything to do with Iraq, our military, the War on Terrah®, or our general security policies. No, they're protesting a completely unrelated (to anybody sane) governmental stance. Not our slipping liberties; our worsening human rights record; this administration's terrible environmental record; the unsatisfactory response to Hurricane Katrina; etc.

No, the group is protesting at funerals because it believes that the war is punishment for this country's supposedly lax treatment of homosexuals. This being the same country where gay people are obviously held in disdain by most of the populace. The same country where gay people can't get married because it destroys the idea of a family (I think our 50% divorce rate does a fine job of that, thanks). The same country that voted with Iran on an anti-LGBT bill in the U.N. (at least we have a starting point for negotiations with Iran now - hatin' queers!). How much less lax can it get? Worse than treating these people as second-class citizens? Didn't we learn our lesson with black people (and don't give me the "you can't choose to be black, you can choose to be gay" claptrap, Michael Jackson proves you wrong)? I wonder if it is comforting to gay people everywhere that they can rest assured that, one day, they will be accepted by our society, or if it is terrifying that it took black people pretty much an entire century from the abolishment of slavery to an actual governmental approach to make them equals, and that the same may very well apply to the LGBT community.

In any event, the news today was refreshing. I hope that this suit bankrupts the church and their apparent ability to travel around the country at will to disrupt one of three events that should never, ever be interrupted (the other being births and weddings) by undue scrutiny. I just tried to get on their website (www.godhatesfags.com), but it seems to be down. I hope it got flamed. Hate is a terribly strong word to throw around, and my personal conception of God provides no room for it. Nor should a purportedly Christian heart.

To: wife.

Another post bringing to your attention something someone else did!

"Look!"
"What?"
"Look!"
"Whoa...what is it?"
"It's..."

Another post bringing to your attention something someone else did!

From the genius webcomic, Overcompensating by Jeffrey Rowland (whom I have met, oh lucky me...I've even seen his brown recluse scar):

Enjoy!

Note: I changed my blog layout because it was too skinny for my liking before. Hope it is not now more annoying than before.

OMG Guys

OK. I haven't blogged in almost a month for a variety of reasons. I have an opus in the works, and I was going to not blog again until it was finished, but then I saw this:

One would think. If you haven't been introduced to the wonder of I Can Has Cheezburger, consider yourself introduced. Hizzah.

The in-laws visit!

So this weekend Alison's parents came to Albuquerque from Phoenix to visit us. They arrived at lunchtime on Saturday and stayed until after lunch on Sunday. Lots of driving for little old us. We started out by going to the Plaza for lunch, eating at La Placita Restaurant, where we took my parents when they visited a couple weeks ago. I went with the Enchiladas Ranchera, which translates to three enchiladas of varying ingredients (ground beef, chicken, and cheese). It was OK, but not my favorite thing I've had there. The salsa was spicy today.
After that we went back to the house and decided to go visit the Sandia Peak Tramway, which we had never taken before. It is very expensive ($17.50 per person), but pretty neat. Most of the pictures below are of the tram ride.
Tram car at the base. You can see that the off-duty operators get to ride strapped to the top of the tram car. This is what we in the business call "bat-shit insane."

Picture out the west side of the tram. It was getting on toward late afternoon so the sun is in a bad spot for pictures. There were probably about 20 of us in the car, so we were far less cattle-car-packed-in than we had been in the Funicular in Switzerland.
Picture taken off the east side of the mountains. You're looking down one of the chair lift runs toward apparently a southern tip of the Santa Fe Mountains.
This is one of the chairs on that very chair lift. Alison said that she would never take this lift due to the extreme apparent age of the chairs. For safety there is a chain that you can put across your lap.
A picture of another chair on a different lift from below. We came to the conclusion that these chairs are not meant for discomfort, but rather that they are likely padded in the winter when they're running.
Please leave the flowers! There were very few flowers up here to leave. We did not take this path.
A picture of the Williams family (minus one) above the chair lift. Smiles all 'round.
Another photo down the chair lift run toward the east.
Now if you can't beat Ned to this point, you should really give up.
A photo of a hang glider up on top of the crest. There were about 4 of these up there and they had a big crowd gathered around them.
A photo toward the south from the tramcar on the way back down. This is looking down the west face of the Sandia Mountains. After we came down off the mountains, we drove over to the Chama River Brewing Company just off I-25. We have been here for lunch a couple times before, and it's excellent food. I had a burger and Alison had hummus and sweet potato fries. I also had a beer that I am pretty sure was different from the one I ordered, but it was still quite good. After that we went bowling, which was great fun. I bowled a 152 in my first game, which I'm pretty sure was my best game ever. It would have been even better had I not tossed two gutter balls after my initial strike in the tenth frame. The second game was not so good (115).
Alison bowling. The sweatshirt was quickly removed. After bowling we went home and had a little bit of the peach pie I had made on Friday. That was it for Saturday! On Sunday morning we got up and went over to take a walk on the Rio Grande, going from the parking area on Central down to Tingley Beach and back. After that we went out to eastern Albuquerque to eat lunch at the Olive Garden. This was our second visit there this week, but there's nothing wrong with that. Breadsticks have made a bit of a comeback there, although the ends are still kind of dry and hard. After lunch the in-laws headed out of town and we got back to normal life.

OK, the post was far more boring than the actual weekend. Also, this is my 100th post! But only on blogspot; apparently I have missed 5 posts on myspace...if you still only look at my Myspace blog, this is probably a good reason to switch.

Pie! (Phase One)

Last night I endeavored to make a pie. This was only the second time I have tried pie making in my life; the first was a pumpkin pie that I made from scratch (as in, I cut up a pumpkin for it - the crust was premade). This time I made the entire thing from scratch, including the crust.

My pie story began yesterday morning when I needed to go to the grocery store. I headed up Rio Grande to La Montanita Co-op Food Market, our local natural grocery store. It's about 2 miles from the house. So I strapped on my backpacking backpack and biked up there with list in hand. When I got there, I discovered that their coolers had all broken overnight, and that everything that should have been frozen was around 70 degrees when workers got there in the morning (except, I assume, the meat and cheese cooler, since they didn't balk when I bought two bricks of cheese). This was hugely disappointing because I was devoid of milk and had been for like a week, and also because these guys were actually cheap for the first time ever.

Thwarted at the cooler, I made some bonus finds in the produce section. At the co-op they have $0.99 bags of produce that they've decided they can't sell in the normal section; things that are too ripe, or slightly damaged, or what have you. I picked up two bags: one that held like five organic red bell peppers (Wild Oats sells these for like $6-$7 a pound) and a couple of yellow squash, which I love. The other bag was full of peaches, red plums, and pluots. The pluots and red plums were not too ripe, but the peaches were (they were leakin' just a tiny bit). But who out there can resist ripe peaches?!

And then there were the bins full of apples. Like major big bins. They were all hail-damaged and going for $0.79 per pound. That would be pretty good for normal apples, but these were local! Sadly, they had a picture of the farmers on the bin, and it was this older couple...I couldn't help but think of how much money they were losing because their crop was damaged; of course, they probably had crop insurance. So with a bag full of gala apples and another bag full of peaches etc. I decided it would be a grand idea to make them into pies.

For our wedding KS and PS gave us the New Best Recipe cookbook, which is a mammoth tome detailing the best way to cook all of the American classics, incorporating science! I relied on this to make my pies. The crust dough, it turns out, is easy to make but it is a pain in the ass to actually turn it into crust. I couldn't get it to work and got really frustrated, but in the end we had a crust that was filled with peach pie filling. I tried some last night and it was actually pretty good! I don't know if it's worth the effort of making the pie crust; the filling was easy. Next time, store-bought crust for me. Next time being when I make the apple pie, which should be awesome.

See below for a couple pictures of the wife making some cinnamon twists out of the extra dough!

Take THAT, nerds!

I received an e-mail from the old HWR announce list. Those of you who are got-damn nerds will maybe appreciate this as much as I did.

1. Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi

2. 2000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton

3. 1 millionth of a mouthwash = 1 microscope

4. Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond

5. Weight an evangelist carries with God = 1 billigram

6. Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour = knotfurlong

7. 16.5 feet of silver in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Sterling

8. Half of a large intestine = 1 semicolon

9. 1,000,000 aches = 1 megahurtz

10. Basic unit of laryngitis = 1 hoarsepower

11. Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line

12. 453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake

13. 1 million microphones = 1 megaphone

14. 2 million bicycles = 2 megacycles

15. 365.25 days = 1 unicycle

16. 2000 mockingbirds = 2 kilomockingbird

17. 52 cards = 1 decacards

18. 1 kilogram of falling figs = 1 FigNewton

19. 1000 milliliters of wet socks = 1 literhosen

20. 1 millionth of a fish = 1 microfiche

21. 1 trillion pins = 1 terrapin

22. 10 rations = 1 decoration

23. 100 rations = 1 C-ration

24. 2 monograms = 1 diagram

25. 4 nickels = 2 paradigms

26. 4 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University
Hospital = 1 IV League

Those of you who are got-damn nerds and graduates of the HWR might get an extra little kick out of it to know that The Shut is who sent this out to everybody. So when you read it, the voice in your head should have a stodgy english accent.

Replies and NEWS

OK so I've been really slack about blogging due to my reunion with my better half and my general lack of free time due to my return to school. But here's a short one. I got two comments on my last post that I'd like to reply to:

lady of leisure said...

could you videotape one of the classes you teach? i would like to see it.

10 September, 2007 06:35

This isn't the kind of school that records lectures. They may have one recorder on campus somewhere. The focus at this school is way not on good teaching.

BernieFondue said...

For someone who is a full-time doctorate student, a TA and baseballholic, when do you find time to read? You have quite a long current reading list...

11 September, 2007 10:07

Oh, I never have time to read; that's why I have such a long reading list! I've gotten through about 40 pages of The Origin of Species in the past week or so that I've been reading it, in two sittings. I wish I had scads of time to read books for fun instead of articles for research. Too bad I wasn't smart enough to study literature.

OK that was fun. This morning I happened across a bit of news out of Russia. Seems they have tested the most powerful ever non-nuclear weapon in the history of ever. Bigger than anything we've created. If people are not concerned about our imminent resumption of cold war-era hostilities, they should start paying attention. Note in the article where it basically tells you that Russia can build up their military technology because oil prices are high. If you did not believe before that alternative energies were just about the most important thing for us to be focusing on, please believe it now. The real reason I linked to that story is because there is a hilarious paraphrase of a quote from a Russian official in it:

Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn’t hurt the environment.

If that's not crazy, nobody has any hope for the future.

In other news, I'm thinking of starting another blog so I can feel even more high-and-mighty. I just wish I had time for it.

Breaking the silence

Wow, it's been awhile since I blogged. Ever since Alison got home I've found myself much less bored, and therefore less apt to look around on the internet trying to find things about which I could feel high and mighty. I am, however, still alive.
We went to Santa Fe (twice!) this past weekend. My parents came to town on Saturday and left Monday morning. They claim that they came to visit me for a certain event; I'm pretty sure it was an excuse to see Santa Fe. We went to a baseball game on Friday with BT and friends, then another on Saturday with my Dad. The Saturday game didn't start out so well, with the Isotopes quickly falling way behind. And it started raining; we left our berm seats to get under some cover. When it got up to 14-4 (Isotopes losing) the game was postponed due to lightning. Not rain, mind, just that the lightning was so close to the stadium that they couldn't have people out on the field. At that point, the rain was still not strong. We drove home through quite a deluge. The game was resumed the next day and the Isotopes ended up losing something like 20-6. By losing the regularly scheduled Saturday game as well, they dropped themselves out of playoff contention. I think they ended up third in their own division after being in first like two weeks ago.

On Monday we went back up to Santa Fe to go hiking with K&PS, which was neat except that I was so exhausted afterward that Alison had to drive back to ABQ. These folks make a mean picnic though. I hucked a 6-pack of beer all the way up the Santa Fe Ski Area. I also got to see my old buddy Monkey, which is always a treat.

So now I am entrenched on the commuter van to Socorro. I went down four times last week, and will probably have to do the same this week. This means that I'm gone from the house for 12 hours a day. I never see my wife. It's bogus. Hopefully the semester will calm down a bit and I'll only have to go thrice a week. However, I am theoretically actually going to be going out to the field this month to do fieldwork for myself! What a rush. This semester I am only taking on class and it shouldn't be a backbreaker, but I am also the T.A. for another class of 21 students. This class has never been taught before, and I am responsible for teaching the lab; this includes creating the lab, writing up a lesson plan, writing up the lab materials, teaching the lab, and grading everything. This turns out to be more work than it sounds like. Yesterday I got to take my class around campus so they could learn how to use a GPS, which like half of them already knew. Good stuff. Next week we might deploy over 50 rain gauges somewhere and then do a rain dance and hope.

Last night I finally finished my book that I was reading, Picture This by Joseph Heller. I've now read Catch-22, Something Happened, Good As Gold, and God Knows by Heller, and enjoyed all of them. Catch-22 is Alison's favorite book ever, and probably my favorite by Heller, although there's something about Something Happened too; if anybody reads this who has only read Catch-22, I would highly recommend Something Happened. Anyway, Picture This, unlike his earlier books, seems to me to have a little less depth of feeling to it; in previous books he could take you from hilarity to the depths of tragedy in mere moments. There isn't the tragedy in this book up until you get to the end. But still it was a good read. Now I'm on to the Origin of Species by Darwin. This one will likely be less easy to read.

Oh boy!

Alison is scheduled to be home in the next hour. The house is cleanish. Here's a quote from the book I'm reading.

In earlier days Socrates owned enough to do military service as a hoplite, a rank requiring the member to provide his own armor and weapons. In his last days he had little more than a wife and three children. To a friend he estimated that if he found a good purchaser, he thought he could get for all of his property, including his house, about five minae.
“You are living a life,” he once was told, “that would drive even a slave to desert his master. Your meat and your drink are the poorest. The cloak you wear is not only a poor thing but is never changed, summer or winter. And you never wear shoes or tunic.”
“But you must try to see,” explained Socrates, “my belief is that to have no wants is divine.”
He said he felt wealthy when he walked through the marketplace and took count of all of the things he saw there that he knew he could live without.
His attitude toward property is more easily admired than shared.
About the wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, you will find it reported, unreliably (in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers and Xenophon’s Memories of Socraties), that she was ill humored and would search him out in the marketplace where he idled with friends, to pull the robe from his back and harangue him in public because there was nothing at home, not even him. A modest freeborn Athenian woman never set foot outside the house if she could avoid doing so, and it was a signal of the extremity of the want of the wife of Socrates that she did not own a slave to go to the marketplace and do this for her.

Weekend fun

This weekend I am in the Valles Caldera. Right now I'm in the town of Jemez Springs, but I'm spending my nights in the Valles. SB and BT and many others will be up tomorrow night working on a service project, so I'll get to have fun too.
Any day in the Valles is a good day.

No-kill shelters: worse for animals?

I think that this news makes it official: everything sucks. MSNBC had an article today that talked about the possibility of no-kill shetlers actually being worse for the animals in them than would be the normal (or "kill shetlers" as I like to call them, starting right now) shelters. Go here to read the article.
The basic problem is that no-kill shelters do not euthanize any of their animals; however, if they continue taking animals they quickly fill up. In some cases they just keep adding more animals until they are overfull, overcrowded, and the animals are living in unhealthy conditions. Can you believe that there are 6-8 million dogs and cats sent to shelters in the US every year? That's ridiculous. If only people would pay attention, they would come to the conclusion that there is a solution whereby we don't have to continue killing defenseless animals:
Get your pets spayed and neutered; if you do not do this, you should not be allowed to have a pet.
Don't buy dogs out of puppy mills; that dog you have could have been a stray that you spared from death.
Better yet, don't buy dogs from breeders at all; would you love your dog less if you didn't know its background?

As the supposedly dominant species on earth it would be nice if we could make an effort to be better stewards of everything.

The...end? (XV, XVI, XVII)

Or is it the beginning? Alison has had three (!) articles published in the past three days, two of them on Saturday.
The first (XV) is about soot levels in Greenland ice cores from back in the Industrial Revolution. The heightened soot, a product of industrial work in the northeastern US, likely had a warming impact that has long been assumed to be part of a natural warming cycle. Soot warms us up by lowering cloud and surface albedo, causing more absorption of solar energy and less reflectance.
The second article (XVI) is about a small town in northeastern San Diego County that is having severe water shortage issues. If only people nationwide paid more attention to news stories like this they could think "why the hell are we devoting 90% of the water use in a desert to agriculture and golf courses?" Then maybe there would be some water-related reform. Ah, pipe dreams. I love the quote toward the end about the ultraconservative Californians.
The third (XVII) is about how short courses in CPR are just as effective as are long courses. I don't know whether I've ever taken a standalone CPR course, but I've been trained several times in the course of getting safety certifications back in the old consulting days. I guess we always had kind of a shortish course in that case; all I have trouble with is the number of compressions and number of breaths. But I think I remember hearing that the number isn't as important as the correct technique.
This may be Alison's last spurt of articles; she's currently in DC getting debriefed or something on the program, hanging out with her fellowship buddies for the last time (at least for awhile), and doing other things as well! I'm super glad she got the opportunity to do this for the summer, although I've been super unglad that she was gone.

This morning, on the way to Socorro, I finished reading my last Madeleine L'Engle book, Many Waters. This one was somewhat enjoyable, although again I've been vaguely disappointed in this series this time around. Not as good as I had remembered. I talked to SB a little bit about it this weekend on a service project up to Red River (which is a scary scary place, and is literally populated almost entirely by transplanted Texans), and he said that he remembers having read the first three books as a child and really wanting to enjoy the books, but not really being able to. Oh well, the next book is going to be Picture This by one of my favoritest ever authors, Joseph Heller. This book is about the Rembrandt painting Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer; as the painting is created, Aristotle becomes cognizant of his surroundings. As his ear is painted, he can hear, etc. It sounds interesting and I hope I enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed most of his other work so far (which is to say, a lot).

I'm at a tipping point now. I don't know which way I'm going to go but it will have implications on the entire rest of my life. I'm scared of making a decision, and not in my usual way of being scared to make decisions. There's going to either be a continuation or an ending and a new beginning.

Article XIIII + Your Food

OK, Alison had an article out yesterday afternoon or evening about the endangered Black-Footed Ferret, the only ferret native to North America. Go here to read the article. These guys were one of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act, and this article deals with one of their last populations. This group was put out into the wild in an effort to reintroduce them to the area, but they decreased in population to 5 in 1997, after which they were given up on. Now there's 220 of the prolific little buggers. What a success! Unfortunately it suggests that species do better when we're not paying attention to them (this is not true).
Also, I am currently listening to Talk of the Nation, and they are having a discussion about the farm bill, and what it does to what we eat, including subsidizing the least healthy calories available; this is why junk food is so cheap, and why poor people tend to be overweight. Way to go gummint! Go here to check it out; you should be able to listen to the discussion soon.

Article XIII + book

Another new article out today! This one is about how polluted the beaches of southern California are; it discusses the results of the annual beach report. Go here to read the article. Only three days of work left for her. Guess I'd better get on my horse with cleaning the house! Hooray!
Also, I finished A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Only one more book until it's back to some Heller!

Edit (8/9): This article is now also in the travel section. Go here.

Article XII

Alison has yet another article out today! This one is about increased risk of birth defects among obese mothers. How cheery! Go here to read the article. Alison needs to get together a list of her best articles to send out with job applications. I say all of them are awesome, but she wants to be more selective than that; which ones do y'all think are her best?
Also, I just heard on NPR that the government charges organic farmers more for "farm insurance" because they don't use pesticides. Way to go, gummint! Of course, this one is not necessarily the fault of this administration; organic's been around since before 2001, right?

Article XI

Look at this! Alison has another article out today. She's had some other articles bumped that are finished, so there should be more soon. Go here to read the article. It is about scientists' findings regarding the cause of the skin disorder Rosacea. Hooray science! Hooray wife!

Best movie EVER?

OK, maybe not. But still the Simpsons Movie was pretty good. And there were many things that would not be shown on broadcast, which was nice. Went with SB and BT. I tried to bike downtown to not use any gas, but I couldn't locate my bike lights! I am very disappointed and will have to work on that. See below for the Simpsons me. I couldn't find one with the hat forward, but I thought maybe the backward hat was more appropriate than no hat at all!

Important research!

OK, I was just listening to Whad'ya Know on NPR as I try to every week. They did a segment on a very important new study released by some researchers at the University of Texas on the reasons why people have sex. The list reaches 237 (!) different reasons, from "I was attracted to the person" (most popular) to "I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease (e.g., herpes, AIDS)" (least popular). Take the survey! How fun!

Article X

Alison had yet another article released today! This one is on oil dispersants (used to clean up oil spills on water) being more harmful to coral reefs than is the oil itself. Interesting stuff! Go here to read it.

If you ain't catholic, you ain't nuthin.

So this is now a fairly old story, but I kept forgetting to post about it. The Popah declared that Jesus only formed one church and that was the Catholic one. Funny, I don't remember anything about Catholicism in the bible...
Here's a quote:

It restates key sections of a 2000 document the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which set off a firestorm of criticism among Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."

Here's this blog's very first bible quote! (Romans 10:13):

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved

Funny, nothing about the Catholic church there. As the wife says, the Catholic church is trying awfully hard to decrease their membership right now.

Weekend update

OK. Here's what went down this past weekend.

Friday: KG took me to the airport and dropped me off to get on my flight. It was very nice not to have to take a bus, but of course was very expensive. To cover it I am going to sell my bass. The flight took an hour, a huge improvement over the like 10 hours it took by bus; however, I was sitting next to a definite spreader, who decided that the armrest was not a real dividing line between the seats, and put his knee on my side. He also used the armrest. Even though I was there first.
I got to L.A. and got myself on the Flyaway bus to Union Station to meet the wife. Every indication on the internet is that this bus costs $3. Alison said that all advertisements indicate that it is $3. So I had $3 in my pocket. When I finally got there, I discovered that it is actually $4. But then if you don't have luggage in the stowage area, apparently you don't get hassled to pay. So for me, it was free.
Having no idea where I was, I had to then discover where Alison was waiting, but it turned into a big debacle because it turns out that Union Station consists of a main station and an east station. Alison was at the main station; I was at the east. Neither of us had any idea. It took a great deal of walking around and consternation before we found each other in a tunnel somewhere. All was forgiven.
We walked to Little Tokyo for an excellent dinner. If I worked near this place like Alison does, I think I would be poor. Poor and fat. After dinner we met up with Alison's friend J at the jazz bar for some drinks. I tried some not-so-local beer (brewed in Paso Robles in central California - somewhere I have actually been!) from the Firestone Walker Brewery, having both the Double Barrel Ale and the Pale Ale. I was fairly ambivalent toward them, especially at 6 bucks a bottle. We also played some darts (real metal-tipped) and some weird short-table shufflepuck that actually had the real shuffleboard triangle design at the ends. After the bar we went to J's house and slept in somebody's bed.

Saturday: We got up in the morning and drove J to her car, then went to Altadena to go on a hike, one that Alison had been to already (to Echo Mountain and Inspiration Point). The hike was 10 miles long, going from Altadena to Echo Mountain to Inspiration Point via the Castle Canyon trail, then back along a different trail. The hike was in the Angeles National Forest. It was very pretty, and for most of the way up we could actually see all the way to downtown, several miles away!
After that we were all hot and sweaty and gross, so we went to the In-n-Out for lunch. This was a drive-through only place, and cars were backed up onto the main road, even though it was past 1:30. What a crazy place. Alison accidentally ordered a veggie burger instead of a grilled cheese, so it was just a burger bun with some vegetables and weird sauce on it. My burger was good though, and for once I actually loved the fries; I think they salted them a lot more than usual.
With full bellies we drove back to Alison's house to shower, then did some searching for a hotel. We located the Glen Capri Motel in Burbank, which was like $65 a night, about the best we could do for a 2-star hotel. We booked online over Orbitz, then immediately headed down to the motel to check in (having nothing really better to do). When we got there, and rang the bell, the dude at the desk was a total ass to us and said that we didn't have a reservation. So we left and I spent the next like 30 minutes on the phone with Orbitz, having the customer service guy recite to me every detail of my reservation for some reason before finally letting me tell him that the hotel did not have our reservation. He called them and sorted it out, and we headed back to check in. Once again, pretty much an ass to us. We got up to our room, and it was not a non-smoking room, which was really annoying. The room itself was pretty OK though, and we didn't want to deal with the desk jerk again, so I just turned on the vent full blast to try to get some fresh air in.
We headed out to Citywalk at Universal Studios to check it out and have dinner. We ate at Panda Inn, which was tasty and had very competent servers. Alison was upset to find out that it turns out that Panda Inn is basically the fancy-schmancy offshoot of Panda Express. Following dinner we walked around for awhile, and did some shopping at Sparky's, a big candy store. Bought some sugary sweets and a rockin' Grumpy Bear alarm clock. It was some good times. After this we went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Sunday: Today we slept in and took it easy. There was a restaurant right next to the motel that looked pretty nice (Cafe Patrick, I believe), so we decided to try it out for brunch. I had the "Carnivore Sandwich" which was a roast beef, along with fresh fruit. The sandwich was okay, but I absolutely loved, loved, the fresh fruit. I want to live somewhere that has fruit. It was awesome.
After brunch we decided to head down to Malibu just for some grins, to drive through the mountains there. The mountains were pretty, although they were regularly marred by mega-mansions that are probably second or third houses for people. We got through the mountains and drove down highway 1 for awhile until we located a beach access spot that wasn't crazy busy and got down to the beach! We walked for a little while until Alison accidentally stepped on a bee and got stung on the bottom of her foot. It was very sad. We hobbled back toward where we had come down to the beach, then sat down for awhile so she could recover.
When we eventually got back up to the car, we drove toward Anaheim to see the Angels-Tigers game. Getting there a little early, we stopped at a Del Taco near the stadium for dinner (to avoid spending the money at the game). This was my first Del Taco experience, and while I appreciated the idea of getting a burrito and fries at the same meal, I was pretty ambivalent about it. Alison likes it so I will be happy to go again some time for her benefit. :) We headed over to the stadium and parked (at $8 it was $7 less than we were charged to park near Dodger Stadium a couple weeks ago), then limped the like half mile to the stadium. Our tickets were the very very topmost row in the stadium, but it still had a good view of the action. The stadium was pretty full, and there were a lot of Tigers fans there, which was pretty exciting. We were also in the shade for most of the game, which was nice (interestingly, we started in the shade, then were in the sun for awhile, then we were back in the shade due to the vagaries of the construction).
My excitement about finally seeing a Tigers game was pretty quickly dashed as they gave up 4 runs in the first, 2 in the 2nd, and 6 in the 3rd to build a 12-0 hole. When we left it was like 12-3 or 12-4. I don't like to leave baseball games early, but I had to get on a bus again. The final score was 13-4 as the Tigers got swept by the Angels. So sad. After watching some Family Guy in the Greyhound station I boarded the bus by 10pm, and got into like the 4th row with a seat to myself once again. The trip from Los Angeles to Phoenix is SO much nicer than the trip in the other direction.

Monday: I slept so poorly on the trip back again, but had breakfast with MD and KG, then went back to my sister's apartment and had a 3-hour nap. Then I headed out to east mesa to have lunch with KG (highly disappointing; the pizza place had changed hands since the last time we ate there) then got the hell out of town. I drove the 60 all the way out to Socorro; if you've never taken this drive you should. It's so much nicer than taking the interstates. Back in Albuquerque around 11pm and exhausted.

That's it, that was my weekend. Since my last book update I have finished two books: The Federal Landscape by Gerald D. Nash and A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle. The first was an interesting book about how the federal government affected the western U.S., both through the ownership of federal lands and the buildup of the military-industrial complex to support the Pacific fleet. Interesting stuff.
The second was the book after A Wrinkle in Time. I read these books many many years ago on my own, and enjoyed them back then. I enjoyed this book much less this time for some reason. I guess that's what comes with getting old. Two more of these books, then I get to start The Origin of Species which I'm sure will be highly stimulating.
I've also decided that (for no real reason whatsoever) I am going to keep track of my media experiences for the next year: all the listings under my "Latest" from beer to movies. Should be completely uninteresting!

Articles VIII and VIIII

Hello everybody. Alison got an article out today. Go here to read the story; it's on increased abuse rates among women whose husbands are deployed (Army). You may note that this is not an "environmental" article per se. Well Alison's editor has left the Times, so there is not really an operating Environment desk any more, so she's been shunted off to the Health and Science editor for the rest of the summer. This means a marked increase in story volume, as she'll have several more coming out in the near future!
Also, I appear to have missed one that was released back on the 20th. Go here to read it. This one is about complaints on a high-voltage power line that will be carrying green energy in California.

Updates: Soon.

So I spent last week in the big SV and the weekend in Los Angeles. Lots of driving, many miles on the 'sploder. I'll tell you all about the big weekend at some point in the future. I'm working on decluttering the house, lots of stuff to sell, give away, trade, etc. I worked on books a little bit today. I have a number of books that I have never read, so I have updated my diminishing reading list to add a bunch of things I have owned for a long time, but never bothered getting through (or tried and failed). Had it down to 9 books left, now it's back up to 24. Should be fun.

Aaaaand...done.

It took me just under 2 days to read a 759-page book, which the wife can tell you is absurd. I will hold back everything until KC has finished the book, and anybody else who asks. Weird to think that there won't ever be another one of these books.
I read this thing so fast that I probably missed a lot. Therefore, I am going to reread the whole series front-to-back, all seven, once I'm through my current reading list. So it's back to the old grind.
Coming Friday: Los Angeles!

Outdoors movie watchin'

So last night I got together with Arun, BT, and friend R out at the Albuquerque Civic Plaza downtown for the first of five Civic Cinema events this summer. The City is putting on free movies downtown, which is pretty exciting! Did I mention it's free?
The movie last night was the classic Casablanca starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. I had seen this movie once before, when we had a weeklong substitute teacher in high school. What a great movie, I think I enjoyed it more this time around. There will be four more movies this summer: Lonely are the Brave, Some Like it Hot, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The last is the only one I've seen. I will be gone next weekend one way or another, but otherwise I hope to get to all of these.
Today I got the book and I am running a desperate campaign to avoid spoilers. I have had it for like 1.5 hours and have not yet opened it! Trying to get through another, fairly long article first.

Does anybody else think this is a terrible idea?

So dubya is going to undergo a colonoscopy tomorrow; I hope it goes well and that he's ok. What I am pretty sure is not going to go well is the temporary promotion of our erstwhile, shotgun-wielding (and not in a rugged, Teddy Roosevelt kind of way) veep, who will be taking over while dubya is under. Now, one thing that I admire about the Republican party is that they have set it up so that there could never be a really serious push to get Bush impeached; they did so by putting somebody in the vice president's office that is so bat shit crazy that he actually believes (and states publicly!) that his office is not part of the executive branch. (Note: this article restores the tiniest bit of my confidence in the current Democrat-run house...but still I am wildly disappointed) What could be worse for American than Bush being president? Bush not being president.
Now, while Dubya is under, he is going to hand over presidential powers to Cheney. How can this not go wrong? This man is the single most power-hungry person in the history of persons, and we're going to suddenly have him in power. With the precedent sent by Bush's use of signing statements, I predict that Cheney will issue some sort of proclamation once he's officially in office that nullifies the section of the Constitution that puts Bush back into office when he is able. A year and a half of Cheney might actually be worse than 6.5 years of Bush. Get ready for the executive branch not being part of the executive branch, a total abolishment of checks and balances, replacement of the Supreme Court justices with various demons and devils (although the Court will no longer have any power), pogroms against the legislative branch, death penalties for any crime except fraud and extortion, the use of gay people as cannon fodder, and sending of atheists into the sea. Just see if it doesn't all happen.
Note: I'm kidding about all of this. Bush had the same procedure done in 2002, and handed power over to Cheney temporarily. Presumably, nothing terrible happened.

Beer + baseball = tonight

Tonight I continued Social Week by going to TWO different activities.
1) Arun and I headed up to Rio Rancho (and met SB there), which is much further away than should be expected, to attend the 2007 IPA Challenge, put on by the New Mexico Brewers' Guild and hosted here at Turtle Mountain Brewing Company taproom. It was an event where you pay $15 admission and get 3-ounce samples of 8 different beers, then when you cast your vote for your favorite you get a commemorative glass filled with that beer. I would have been more excited if I liked IPAs, but it was still fun. I found out just now that my vote went for the Santa Fe Pale Ale produced by the Santa Fe Brewing Company. Of course, it was a blind taste test, so I only know due to the polling results up on the Brewers' Guild website.
2) After the beer challenge, Arun and I headed down to the Isotopes-Royals game, the last of a four-game set. We were super late unfortunately, for which I feel badly. We met BT and friend there when we finally arrived around the 6th inning. To be fair, of course, this game moved pretty fast; when Arun and I went to the game on Monday, it took a whole hour to get through the first two innings. If that'd happened last night, we would have probably arrived in the fourth inning.
The Isotopes ended up winning 5-1, although the Royals loaded the bases and got the tying run to the plate in the top of the ninth before the game ended. It was exciting (what of it we saw), and I'm very glad that I got to a whopping three of the four games in this set. I never get to see my hometown team so it was a nice time, even though the Royals lost three of the four. No more baseball and money-spending for some time to come, hopefully.

Note: In case you're keeping track, the relations now stand at:
0.5*Awesome - 0.5*Stupid = Tonight - Beer
Stupid + 2*Tonight - 2*Beer = Awesome
Beer = Stupid
I am not sure how I feel about this any more.

Media gamut

Last night the Wahi came over for some beer, pizza, and a movie. Pizza from Golden Crown Panaderia across the street. The following beers were consumed:
- Industrial Pale Ale by Electric Brewing Company of Bisbee, AZ
- Dave's Electric by Electric Brewing Company of Bisbee, AZ
- Dirty Guera (Blonde) by Nimbus Brewing Company of Tucson, AZ (two of these were drunk)
- Blue Moon by Coors Brewing of Golden, CO
The movie was entitled Pom Poko, an anime from Studio Ghibli. I have wanted to see this for a long time, and opted to stick it down toward the end of my Netflix queue, so that Alison would not be subjected. Glad I did. The movie was pretty OK, but the huge draw was the role that the Tanukis' testicles play in the movie. I don't know how to explain it; read the wikipedia article above about it. It was not funny enough to be a straight-up comedy, but contained far too much Tanuki ball to be a children's movie in the States.

Also last night I finished Oliver Twist. Despite its length (466 pages), I was able to stay interested and engaged in the story the whole time. My first Dickens book, and I reckon I will read more in the future. Now my current book is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which will arrive on my doorstep in two days! I am opting not to start the next book, since I doubt I could get through it in that time, and I don't want to take a break partway through.

Stupid logic

The bored, nerdy, and/or logically-oriented of you may have noticed that you can combine the titles of the last two posts to come up with the following relationships:

Stupid + awesome = 2*tonight
Awesome - stupid = 2*baseball

I think the hidden meanings there are thoroughly accurate.

Baseball + tonight = awesome

Tonight a friend and I attended game 2 of the 4-game Isotopes-ORoyals series. This time we avoided the berm, sitting down in the reserved seats on the first base (visitors' dugout) side. We thought it would be intolerably sunny and hot (it hit 101 in the Burque today), but the seats were shaded by the time we got there. The chairs themselves were hot, but it was OK.
So after the weirdness of last night, I was ready for things to possibly be worse (in relation to my rooting for the visiting team). But things went really smoothly; I still clapped when the Royals did good things, and was silent when the Isotopes did. One guy sitting in the row in front of me turned around at one point and asked if we were Royals fans, and I affirmed that I was, and that I had grown up near Omaha. He was not at all upset. If the circle-running guy from the previous night is reading this, this guy's reaction to me rooting for the Royals was the correct one.
The Isotopes were winning 5-3 going into the 9th inning, when they put two Royals on base. I said to my friend that the go-ahead run was at the plate. This guy then proceeded to crank a home run to left-center, putting the Royals up 6-5. The game would end that way, which was pretty exciting for me. So that's two nights, two one-run games, one going to each team. Exciting series, and I can't be upset with the results, even though Omaha lost the first game.
Now I'm in Socorro. Bleh.

Stupid + baseball = tonight

Tonight the Wahi and I attended the first of a four-game set between the visiting Omaha Royals and the hometown Albuquerque Isotopes. I was pretty excited about this series because I grew up watching the Royals play back when I lived in a suburb of Omaha. The Royals represent a lot to me in terms of my childhood, as does their stadium, Rosenblatt. Even though I don't like the major league Royals, I will always root for Omaha.
The game started at 7:05, so Arun headed over after work and we drove down to the UNM area to eat at Saggios, an Albuquerque pizza institution. It's tasty, as long as you get some extra toppings on your pizza; the plain cheese is a bit cardboardy.
After that we headed to the game and got our seats out on the berm ($5 each, can't beat it). At this time of year, for a standard 7:05 start, the sun is annoying for a little while, but after that it gets just beautiful. Sitting on the grass can wear on you after a few hours, especially if you have a boney butt.
The game started out real slow, with a total of 10 runs scoring in the first two innings; these two innings lasted just a few minutes under an hour. After that the game moved on more quickly, and included a nice, although not stunning sunset.
Now, being a fan of the visiting team, I cheered when the Royals did good things. I would clap when they scored a run, and I raised my voice twice through the 10-inning game to say "Let's go Royals!" I would classify my rooting as wholly unintrusive. And if the Royals had blown out the Isotopes, I would certainly not have rubbed it in, as I have known others to do at games. I try to be fair and nice, things that I know, I know, are not really part of being a sports fan. Apparently my low-level cheering rankled at least one person on the berm.
Toward the end of the game (the bottom of the seventh, to be exact), one of the Isotopes players hit a home run out to left field. This guy sitting near me, who was there with his wife (I presume) and their two young sons (I presume) jumped up, started going crazy with cheering. Nothing too weird there, except that it put them up from 7-5 to 8-5, rather than being, for example, a game-winning home run. However, after that (and this seemed to happen in slow-motion), this guy ran over toward Arun and myself, and actually hustled a circuit around us, ran out from right to left in front of us, then left to right behind us. He then ran back over to his spot with his family (I presume), sat down, and said "Take THAT, Nebraska fans!" I mentioned quietly to Arun that maybe I should disabuse this guy of the idea that they are the Nebraska Royals rather than the Omaha Royals, but decided that would not really accomplish anything. He didn't say anything else to us before or after that throughout the game.
After this point it started sprinkling a little (monsoon season IS upon us), and I must say that it was the single most pleasant and refreshing rain I have ever sat in. So gentle that you don't get wet because the drops that have hit you evaporate away. Cool enough that it is refreshing, but not so cold that it is uncomfortable. Not intense enough to create runoff on the hillside upon which we were sitting. It was so nice, and so beautiful. Of course, this being the Southwest, this gentle rain also caused a mass exodus of a great majority of the 6,700+ people who attended the game.
Now, the Royals scored three runs to tie up the game in the top of the ninth inning to introduce some tension into the contest, and it went into extra innings. Of course, most everybody had left, so not a lot of people got to see the excitement. I was hoping for a home run in extra innings, since nobody else was out there to retrieve it. But alas, no such luck. Instead, the Isotopes won it in the bottom of the 10th by hitting a gapper with a man on 2nd and no outs (or one, I don't remember). The Omaha center fielder did something strange that I don't think I have ever seen in a baseball game before: he didn't bother getting the ball, and instead left it sitting on the warning track where it stopped. No reason to pick it up and throw it in, since the run was in easily.
So as the players all left the field, a fan from a group that had stayed up on the berm decided that, ooh, ball left unprotected, me want. This guy went up to the fence (the right field fence is surely at least 10 feet high, including the chain link fence above the berm), removed his flip-flops, and jumped down into the field. Now, I have seen a number of people enter the field during a baseball game, but never one afterward. This guy jumped down and started running toward the ball. If you've never seen this, you should know that stadium security gets really upset when anybody enters the field of play who is not allowed. So there was a security guard running an intercept course for this guy, and another staffer standing down at the berm fence. The runner got to the ball, picked it up, and started sprinting back toward us. I guess he realized he was in trouble (or maybe he planned this out with his likely-just-as-inebriated friend beforehand), because he skipped climbing the wall to get back to where he had started, and instead chucked the ball up onto the berm, somewhat near us. We didn't at all want to get involved, so we stayed put as the friend and the staffer both ran toward the ball. The friend fell down, and the staffer sort of then slide-tackled the ball, which was a very strange thing to do. The friend recovered the baseball, and the staffer tried to take it back from him, but the friend just kind of ignored him; I guess staffers have no power.
Meanwhile, the first guy had been tackled by security, handcuffed, and turned over to the police. I don't approve of people running onto the field and the encouragement they get from the crowd, but I do like how excited people get when security tackles these guys. And they always pretty much overreact in terms of physicality, but in this case I really, really don't mind. The staffer, still up on the berm, picked up the first guy's flip-flops, and asked us if they belonged to him; I confirmed that they were, indeed, the runner's, my own little "up yours" to that guy. The staffer took them, and I genuinely hope he tossed them in the trash; if you leave something sitting around the stadium, I think it fair to consider it garbage.
Now, this extended family (I assume) was pretty upset, aside from the guy who got the ball, since their kinsman was being hauled off the field in police custody. One lady was throwing up her hands, although to be fair she could have been pissed off at the guy who ran onto the field; somehow I doubt it. Another guy was trying to get into a confrontation with the staffer, basically asking him why it was necessary for security to take down the runner.
I don't like to tell people that they are stupid, because who am I to say? But these folks were stupid. As if it needed to, the team reminds the crowd that they are, in fact, not allowed on the field unless told so. If you break the rules for something as stupid as retrieving a baseball, you deserve to be punished, and I have zero sympathy for you, even if you are hauled to jail. I don't think he was, since I think that I observed the police uncuffing the guy on the field. Doing something that is so likely to end in your being under a pile of law enforcement officers in front of your kids, when you are supposed to be your children's moral educator, is just plain dumb. Next time, think, don't drink.

Best article ever (VI, VII)

Alison had an article out on Sunday that was the centerpiece of the California section. First, I'll point you toward another article that she helped out with, that was released back on the 5th. I never got to posting about it here.
Go here for the text of the article. It talks about the status of endangered species and the efforts of the administration to gut protections. A few choice quotes:

"The Bush administration has added 58 species to the endangered list, 54 of those in response to litigation. . . By comparison, 231 mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects and plants were protected by the president's father, George H.W. Bush, during his four years in office."

"Julie A. MacDonald, a deputy assistant secretary of the Interior who oversaw the endangered-species program, resigned last month after the inspector general found that she had ordered scientists to change their findings, and shared internal documents with lobbyists for agricultural and energy interests."

"To date, the Bush administration has taken 15 species off the endangered list — more than any other administration."

America, how is this OK? I am pissed off at you for voting for this man. A-GODDAMN-GAIN. Where is your righteous indignation? Why do so few cry foul when power over the protection of species is given to those who would rather not have those species protected? If you are interested in this issue (you should be), read Bush versus the Environment by Robert S. Devine. Then get angry and do something!

The new article (the aforementioned best article ever) can be found here. The subject is deaths in the All-American Canal, which runs close to and roughly parallel to the U.S.-Mexico border from the Colorado River west into California's Imperial Valley. Basically, what it boils down to is that the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the canal system delivering water to various sprawling desert metropoli (rather than allowing it to go to the ocean - you may not know that the Colorado River now barely - or doesn't - flows in in Mexico; quote from the Wikipedia article - "The lower course of the river, which forms the border between Baja California and Sonora, is essentially a trickle or a dry stream today due to use of the river as Imperial Valley's irrigation source. Prior to the mid 20th century, the Colorado River Delta provided a rich estuarine marshland that is now essentially desiccated, but nonetheless is an important ecological resource.") doesn't want to bother with making the canal slightly safer. Read it and, if you live in California, write your Congressperson. Rock the Vote, 41.3% of Americans!

Our house

Check it out. I Google-Earthed our house last night. Anybody notice anything strange? I think I might do some exploring.

Sorry about the white borders; I wasn't interested enough to get rid of them.

This is what's it's like when it all comes full circle

I recently wrote about the Bush commuting the prison term of Lewis Libby. Today our erstwhile president gave a press conference, during which he actually called his commutation "a fair and balanced decision". If that's not a shout-out to the administration's favorite "news" service, I don't know what is. See, it all comes full-circle. That is, if you could make a circle by connecting two points.

A fiesta of all-starrish proportions

Tonight I was treated to the 2007 Triple-A All-Star Fiesta here in Albuquerque. I received a free ticket from good friend the Wahi, who received free tickets to said game via his participation in the trombone group Ambush Brass. See below for an action shot.


After they were done, we went into the game complete with smuggled contraband pocket burrito. Oh Baja. Mmmmmmmm. After introductions of all the players we stood for the playing of the anthems of Canada and the U.S. by that other brass ensemble. A group from the local AFB carried out the most incredibly gigantic flag onto the field, and stretched it out for our anthem. See below.


In case you're wondering (you aren't), we had the Canadian anthem because there is still one team in Canada. Also had the flag up next to the berm. You can just see in the picture below the hill in center field at Isotopes Park.


Now, if you're a casual sports fan (I being likely the most rabid sports fan that ever reads this stuff), you may not understand the joy that is Minor League Baseball. I started out going to Omaha Royals games in beautiful Rosenblatt Stadium, also home of the College World Series. Anyway, being a minor league baseball team, the Isotopes have to do all kinds of weird stuff to draw in an audience. One of the things they do in every game, aside from Orbit's dancing, is the Chili Race. Red chili vs. green chili vs. taco. I always cheer for red. Red is behind in the year's race, of course. See below for an action shot from tonight's race.


Now the isotopes apparently thought it would be a good idea to give away terrible noisemakers to the entire crowd. I first knew of these things a few years ago, when the Angels beat the Giants in the world series (2002); they also caused worldwide anguish with their damn rally monkey. See below for a shot of the Wahi with the Bam Bams.


Isotopes park is quite beautiful. Not as nice as Rosenblatt, but this one is hard to beat. We usually try to sit out on the berm in right field, but the view from the lines is quite nice. A great view of the Sandia mountains past the right field fence. See below.


Finally, in case chili races and a specially ambiguous mascot aren't enough for you, they decided that they would bring in BirdZerk, apparently a group that is trying to fill the void left by the Famous Chicken not being there. Rather than being entertaining, they achieve some sort of impressionistic mascotism, which floats in a vague realm between interpretive dance and modern art. Included in the group was a character called "Harry Canary", a take-off on broadcasting personality and noted drunkard Harry Caray. He led us all in the singing of Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th Inning Stretch, then came out and danced. See below for an action shot.


All-in-all, a great time. The Pacific Coast League lost the game 7-5, which is unfortunate because the Isotopes and the O-Royals are both in the PCL. At least the Mud Hens are in the IL and helped with the wind (netting the MVP trophy). Glad I got to go, and special thanks to the Wahi and Ambush Brass for paving the way.
Coming soon: More.