Xmas shopping done!

Still stuck

Stuck on an airplane in a storm...

The beauty of it all

Jólasnjór

Conference call

I'm going to a BIG conference on Sunday, all the way over in San Francisco. That's one of my favorite cities, so I'm duly excited.

More importantly, though, I'm all excited about my poster presentation. As always I'm preparing the poster pretty much last minute and it's so exciting!! I'm presenting the data from Philippine streams I acquired in Boston earlier this fall and as I am writing this, the first Sr isotope value is coming in on the TIMS. I hope to have at least 8 of those before printing the poster and heading for the airport. Those will be the first river water Sr isotope values to come out of the Philippines for over 20 years, that's longer than my sister Lara has existed!!! All this is rendered even more exciting by the fact that a big name in my field just wrapped up her own fieldwork in the Philippines and given how fast she works (she must have an army of gnomes working for her...) I'll need to really push hard to get my stuff published before she publishes hers! Maybe that's why I've been putting in 10 to 12-hour days recently.

Another impetus to get work done is my fellow student Jacob. He and I both started our PhD's in fall 2003 and he is defending today. Starting in about 10 minutes. That leaves Louise and I as the two ABD (all but dissertation) from our PhD-cohort of five. One threw in the towel after getting a masters, one defended about a year ago and today it's Jacob's turn. Gotta go see it now!

Staying warm

Kreppa, here I come!

Update: I got that award ticket!! Am flying home to Iceland on the 23rd, arriving in Iceland early on aðfangadagur, the 24th. The earliest available flight back is on the 8th, so that's when I'm going back. Luvely, I have to say.

áhugaverð langloka

Ég rakst á þennan tengil á bloggi Steinunnar Ólínu og set hann inn hér líka. Skemmtileg lesning í skammdeginu og allt annar vinkill á Björgólfsfeðga en ég hef séð annars staðar.

Award points, finally good for something!

I totally lost it in the toy store today and bought some awesome Christmas gifts for the twins, i.e. my niece and nephew.

After which I started thinking about, hey, how the h3ll am I gonna get these things to Iceland? They're big, and oddly shaped, and the poor postman would maybe poke his eye out (what does that tell you about my choice of a gift for two 5-year olds?? I shudder to think...).

So, I checked my award points balance on Icelandair and lo and behold, I have 50763 points, 12 thousand of which expire on December 31st of this year. As it were, it's exactly 50,000 points to fly from USA1 (where I live) to Iceland! So, although I realize there probably aren't many seats left and I'm at a conference until December 20th, I sent in a request for award flight booking. Who knows, I might get lucky and get to give Lilja and Tómas their gifts in person!

Oh, and feel free to scold me for not checking the award point status before. I knew it was getting close to a ticket, I just didn't realize HOW close.

And if the flight falls through, I can at least use the 12,000 points set to expire at the local Hertz car rental, cruising around for a day. Or donate them all to the Children's Travel Fund. But I really do hope I'll just get on that plane!

T-day

Holy cow, I had SUCH a good time at the Thanksgiving dinner last night! What a fantastic holiday!

Turkey time!

Well, there won't be a turkey for me since my Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow is hosted by and primarily attended by vegetarians and/or non-'Mercans who don't particularly like turkey anyway. In anticipation of a day off I went to the library and stocked up on Icelandic novels to read during the holiday: Karítas án titils and Rokland from the modern lit section and Atómstöðin and Guðsgjafarþula from the Laxness section. Good thing they don't want the books back for half a year here!

Also, you might want to check out the Gotan project.

Dásamlegt!

This is an absolute möst sí, especially if you're an Icelander! Thanks, dad, for the link!

That time of year

Fast food nation

The PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) publishes an interesting article today about the fast food industry in the USA. The article is Open Access, meaning that one doesn't have to have a subscription to the journal to access it. Take a look here.

In Pittsburgh, and I've become a

Technomad.

Talk tomorrow. Today's been dedicated to both travel and reading up on the literature. I found out, among other things, that the Tuffen, JGR 2007, paper is absolutely brilliant. And "my" volcano fits the proposed model. Awesome!

Can't tell you how happy I am with the president elect. Yippi!!!

Big day today

Snow!!

It's snowing. Very gently, no accumulation. Luvely.

On Mt. Giant

What kind of wannabe??

I just signed up for a class in management at the business school here at Cornell, hoping it'll come in handy in the "Holy-shit-I'm-running-a-lab-with-5-people-on-my-staff" stage of my career. Should be fun, and hopefully save someone (me??) from a mental breakdown later on.

Batnandi fólki...

a trifle embarrassed

Our local volcanology guru just stopped by to ask me about historic silicic eruptions in Iceland. I couldn't think of any except for the 1875 Askja eruption. I'm sure there have been more and I'm a little embarrassed not to remember...

Such are the joys and travails of over-educated folks.

Overpaid taxes

I just learned that I overpaid about 850 dollars in state income taxes this year. That's a welcome surprise, given who incredibly wealthy I am. Or not. The real tragedy of the situation is that the 850-dollar-too-high check I just sent the NYS Tax folks hasn't even been cashed yet. But it has been sent off and as far as I am aware, there's no way in hell I can stop it from being delivered and cashed.

Coming up: The struggle to pry my hard-earned and much-needed 850 dollars back from the grips of The Establishment.

The money spent on getting disappointed could have generously funded my entire career as a research scientist, including funds for field work, conference travel, chemicals, some analytical equipment and a Ph.D. student or two. So, a career's worth of science versus CAMPAIGNING FOR a few years on the UN security council. If only they'd given that money to me, they'd have been generously rewarded ;)

Fall and 80 degrees

The Great Schlep

of Sarah Silverman: http://thegreatschlep.com/

The 'Dacks

Am heading out the door as we speak (well, after lunching on the leftovers of the whole-wheat linguine with basil pesto I had for dinner yesterday) for an overnight trip to the department cabin in the Adirondack mountains. As probably not many of you know (no blame here), the Adirondacks are heaven for metamorphic petrologists (i.e., people who look at rocks (petrologists) that have been heated and subjected to high pressures deep in the Earth's crust(metamorphism)) and we're taking an invited guest of the department, a metamorphic petrologist, there to show him the goods. Should be nice, especially now that that the fall foliage is in full splendor.

The Boston Experience

1. The geochemistry labs at Boston University rock my socks and make my days. What wondrous things, these instruments that actually work!
2. Yoga in the Back Bay is really quite something. Diluvian rain kept me from trying their Yin Yoga today but the Vinyasa class I took there last Wednesday was wonderful. I'm planning to head back tomorrow for some more. And on Sunday. And on Monday. Luvely.
3. My co-Cornellian and friend Chris, who is hosting me here and whose trooper Carla I unfortunately fried in Hawaii back in 2005 is simply the sweetest, most generous guy around. Thanks for all your help and generosity, Chris!
4. Boston rain is really impressive. Persistent as hell.
5. I now have my first invited talk on my CV and under my belt.
6. Months, nay, years, of frustration and trying are now over. I can move on with my life, having put the cations behind me. I can't tell you how relieved I am.

Finally!

Greece

Folks, please find the pictures from my recent trip to Greece here.

Some Tuesday science for you all:

From today's NYTimes. I especially recommend the interactive feature.

At the laundromat

Moi and the Parthenon:



Photo courtesy of J. Lennon (no, not THAT J. Lennon!)

Trying...

... to put together an abstract for the AGU ('Mercan Geophysical Union) Fall Meeting in San Fran in December. Not sure I'll go but I want to keep the option open. But it's hard writing an abstract when there is no data interpretation ready. And the graphs I've been making, they look funny. I have no idea what's going on in them! Which of course is exciting, but I don't know if they'll accept an abstract that says: "So, I have this awesome data set from a place where no one has worked before and the data look cool but I have no friggin' clue what they're telling me. I promise to find out by December".

My head is spinning, which is no wonder considering I've been at work (and actually working!) for 14 hours. I'm gonna go home, eat the rest of my favorite Ben and Jerry's ice cream and go to bed. Maybe watch one episode of Boston Legal, my favorite waste of time these days. Then get up early again (I was up at 6 am today...), go to the laundromat, think more about abstract, go pick up my new travel backpack from EMS, go home and pack, go to work and pick up stuff, maybe discuss abstract with adviser, then head for the airport. Sweet :)

Lastly, since I know I won't have time for this tomorrow: Happy birthday, dad!

Leaving on Thursday!

Yep, the ticket has been bought and all. Am leaving Ithaca on Thursday afternoon, returning on the 10th. On the way back I have a 14 hour overnight layover in Athens followed by a 10hr flight... so, should I stay up and explore the nightlife??

Nice! This will be SO nice! And a fitting tribute to my dad's b-day, which is on the 4th. I can't wait!!

Ithaca... er, no, Crete, here I come!

Funny how fast time flies when you're having fun. The time in Iceland flew by and I'm back in Ithaca. Nevertheless, it feels like I've been gone forever. And, thereby, that I was almost for-ev-er in Iceland. Gee, I got there even before we became the biggestest country in the world and won that coveted Olympic silver. Yep, I saw history happen.

The conference went reasonably well (note to self: NEVER again go to a conference without your poster ready and printed!!!), considering I missed all the talks the first two days (see note to self) and in the morning of the third day (darn printshop!). The talks I DID see were awesome (some of them even cited my 2006 paper and while they were at it I felt all self-conscious and didn't know what to do with myself, until I decided it was pretty darn cool and became all pleased with myself :)). The poster session went about as well as was to be expected, given that my topic was somewhat marginal and the poster session itself located quite am Arsch der Welt in the conference frame of reference. The fourth and last day of the conference I can't say too much about either, since I spent it sick in bed, kept company by aching bones and a headful of snot. Charming.

I'm getting a second chance to be present at conferences though, since I finally* got an invitation to attend a workshop for (odd) people interested in soils, to be held in Crete (that's right, Crete) next weekend (that's right, next weekend!!). My credit card is too maxed out after the Iceland trip to accommodate the plane ticket to Crete (2100 dollars minimum with this short notice) so I'm hoping either my department or some benevolent millionaire will step in for me and lend me their credit. Any takers??

One thing I entirely forgot this time around in Iceland: Go to the swimming pools! Shame on me. I did not forget to go to the 'Mercan Embassy and had a surprisingly non-confrontational time there. Quite luvely, actually. Although I couldn't stop myself from audibly laughing when the guy ahead of me in the interview queue answered the first question, "Why do you want to go to the United States" with an eager-to-please "Because I love the US!".

* They somehow managed to lose my application. After suffering some email harassment from me, they extended the invite last Friday. That is, a week before the hulabbaloo begins. Nice!

Iceland, here I come!

Íþaka til Sýrakusu, Sýrakusa-JFK, JFK-Keflavík, ETA 23:40 annað kvöld. Og svo saman allir nú: Húrra! Húrra! Húrra!

Embassy drama - again

Does ANYBODY know how to bypass the receptionist-on-a-power-trip in the 'Mercan Embassy in Reykjavik? As always, all the interview slots are full for when I'm in the country and my honest attempt to get past this woman and talk to someone human over there was in vain (I tried emailing the address they give for consular affairs on the embassy website and apparently, it's power-hungry woman's email). Last year I actually rerouted my travels b/c "there are no interview spots open", only to find out that there were in fact plenty of spots available during the time period I had originally intended to be at home. So, I simply don't believe that all the slots are taken this time. All she had to say in reply to my request for consideration was "I could perhaps put you on the waiting list".

Keep in mind that last year I spent an approximate 1000 dollars on rerouting my travels. Then, please read the post I link to above. Then, let me tell you that when I did in fact get to the embassy I did yell at the receptionist, I did tell her that because of her incompetence and unhelpfulness I had incurred massive expenses and that I would highly recommend to her superiors they have her fired. So, I guess it's no wonder she has no desire to help this time. But it still stinks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!!!!

The sun room

At the bus stop

The wrench

Hey, did any of you guys borrow the 13 mm wrench? I need it!

Stupid error

Gawd! I just discovered a VERY stupid mistake in my calculations. If I'd thought of this earlier I would have saved myself a LOT of agonizing over weird-looking data.

Do you remember the space mission that was a fiasco b/c of engineers forgetting to convert from one system of measurement to another? Well, this was on a similar scale (albeit not in political and financial consequences ;) )

Oh well. I found it and fixing it (now that I know what was wrong the whole time) is fortunately not a big deal.

Yoga goes biodegradable

My old yoga mat became musty-smelling after the moldy-bed ordeal of a few weeks ago so I invested in a new mat which arrived today. It smells funny, not your average plastic-foam smell, though, because it is entirely biodegradable. Yep, I gotta take care it won't get wet because it will quite literally break down! This beauty comes from Manduka yoga gear (the eKo) and is apparently the first yoga mat ever made that will break down completely into natural components at the end of its life. Which is supposed to be very long, as long as I make sure to keep it dry. I can't wait to try it at home tonight, as it is supposed to be completely slide-proof as well!

Library

I just went to the library. In my computer. I needed to verify some equations that I found on Wikipedia (once I didn't and suffered...), so I looked up the whereabouts of the particular reference books cited on Wikipedia to see in what library they were kept. Turns out both of them are kept in the library next door to Snee Hall but are also available online. Of course I just looked at the books online instead of actually raising my a$$ from the seat and walking 30 m in the wonderful weather to the library. No wonder people (myself included) are growing huge butts nowadays!

Friday evening

and I'm in the lab. I just took a 40 minute break and went to the local Starbucks for some hot chocolate and non-work-related reading (Pan by Knut Hamsun, in Norwegian), but even so I wasn't really taking a break since I was just waiting for the machine to warm up the next sample...

The TIMS (thermal ionization mass spectrometer) is working and I'm running samples. They take about 4 hours each and I have about 40 to do before going to Iceland in 13 days so... I better spend every waking hour in the lab! But, it's kinda fun so I don't mind it too much. In fact it feels good to know that I'm making large strides forward with my work.

Speaking of which. As some of you may remember, we've had eternal issues with equipment here and this has caused me a lot of delays in getting my samples processed (i.e., squeezing data out of them). Now I've gotten the go-ahead to go to a well-functioning lab at Boston University in Sept/Oct. I'll be able to hopefully analyze the entire backlog of ~150 samples that I have accumulated. My host is a former Ph.D. student of my own Ph.D. adviser who now is a professor at BU. I can't wait to spend a month or two in Boston! How awesome is that??? Lot's of people to talk science with and ... ratatata... the birthplace of Ravelry!!!

Venting

Note: To head off bad karma, I'm including the update at the start of the post, to avoid unnecessary bad vibrations in the universe (can you tell I've been reading Eckhart Tolle and Yoga Journal a lot lately?? ;Þ)

Update 10 minutes later: Mrs. Sugarcoat just called to let me know that The Superintendent had decided to give me a full refund. It'll take 4-6 weeks. I'm already looking forward to mid-September and the arrival of a check from the Division of State Parks!!

And here, FYI, the original post:

I just came off the phone with the Division of State Parks (DSP)in Hilo, Hawaii. Back in January I applied , via mail, for a permit to use a State Park cabin for three nights and bled 165 dollars for it. I also included a stamped, self-addressed envelope for the SP staff to send the permit to a contact on the Big Island because I was arriving at a time when the DSP office was closed. Furthermore, I included my email and my cell phone nr so that they could contact me in case there were any issues.

The day comes that the use of the cabin is to start and alas, no permit has arrived in the mail. It's on a weekend and the DSP office is closed. I make other arrangements, pretty sure that the office simply didn't have time to process the permit application, and plan to go there any day now to reclaim my check.

On the following Monday I got a hold of the DSP office and hear that they did indeed process the application, cashing my check in the process. When I asked where on Earth the permit is and why they didn't do anything to contact me, knowing that I would be arriving on the weekend and not able to contact the office myself, they had no idea. After some back and forth it transpired that they had faxed the permit to the park and not thought it necessary to let me know, even if I never once alluded to the delivery method of faxing in my previous correspondence.

At that point I drove up to the state park, sorta to see what I'd been missing out on, and ran into two staffers who told me that the fax machine had been out of ink for months and that the folks down in Hilo should know that by now. Well, so much for faxing as a sensible delivery method. They also told me that no one is around on the weekend to tend to the fax machine anyway. Another reason not to consider faxing a good delivery option.

Why am I telling you all this? Because finally, after nearly half a year of trying to recover those measly 165 dollars of mine, I got a hold of someone at the DSP office who didn't say "no, I have no idea what you're talking about" or "no, he's not in" or "no, I'm not here and I'm not on the phone with you having this conversation". She listened, remembered and with a sugary smile in her voice said "yes, I understand" too many times. She then ended the conversation saying that "the superintendent would like to ask you to be so gracious as to call again tomorrow, when the superintendent plans to have made his decision". "Wait", said a bewildered I, "what decision?" I honestly didn't know there was a decision to be made, I thought there was an action to perform. "Well, he needs to decide the amount of the refund and how it will be reimbursed". If I hadn't been left gaping and speechless at these words, I would have asked if the superintendent planned to have me pay his staff by the hour for all the time they spent avoiding my inquiries, and subtract that from the amount his office owes me (although I guess in that case, I already owe him more money than I can hope to earn in a while...).

So, I called them again when I regained my composure (another 20 minutes of busy line, which is the staple over there) and left my number (you'd think they have it by now, given the three letters and fax that I've sent them) with the sugarcoated lady. Hopefully the superintendent is gracious enough to give me a call back soon, or I will have to go out in the hall and bite somebody's head off.

Toxic perfumes

I'm sure you all knew, or at least suspected, that labeling of ingredients in comsumer products isn't really up to snuff. Check out this article to find out how right you were. The US really needs to get its act together, I dare say (and not only on the poisoning-the-citizens front).

Bed woes (hopefully) over:

Let's hope Overstock.com is all that it's cranked up to be.

Ok, rant explained

So, I'm pissed off.

Last Friday I bought a bed at a moving sale. Looking down a couple of posts you'll see that since I moved into my new apartment I've been sleeping on an air mattress because the airhead woman who lived there before me didn't leave her bed behind as she had promised to do. That was piss-off no. 1.

On Friday evening I moved the new used bed to my place, with the help of a friend from my department (side note: Ask for help, that way you won't have to feel sorry for yourself thinking that no one wants to help you...) and the two dudes that sold me the bed. No sooner was the bed in my bedroom and the two dudes had driven away that I noticed this disgusting, moldy odor and moisture stains on the bottom of the mattress and the top of the box spring. I tried to play Pollyanna and slept on the mattress that night, with the fan running on high to blow the musty smell out of my nostrils.

When I woke up smelling of mold myself it was clear that this thing needed to get out of my house asap. I called the guy I bought the bed from and he flat out refused to take the bed back and repay. I asked for a, partial repayment that he seemed not to rule out. He did however claim to be in the middle of something and asked if he could call me back in a little while. Stupid me said ok and hasn't heard from him since. That includes my gazillion un-answered phone calls to him. What a freakin' bastard! Piss off no. 2, and 3, and 4, and 5. And 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

My neighbors helped me to take the bed to the curb last night and I'm back on my air mattress. I hope some of Ithaca's (in-)famous scavengers will serve themselves a generous helping of musty bedroom furniture from my curb.

As for a real bed (which I'm craving, by now), I went to the IKEA site to take a look. I created a decent mattress-and-spring combo for 350 bucks, not bad at all. Tell them that I need it shipped to Ithaca, NY and voila, the price goes up to... are you all sitting?... 680 dollars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Taxes and, most important, shipping double the price! Why, oh why, do I live in the middle of friggin' nowhere where overpriced and stuffy vs. thin and uncomfortable are the the only mattress choices available?? Piss off no. 11-20.

Updated @ 5 pm: A thunderstorm with torrential rain just started. Gee, I hope someone has already taken that bastard bed off the curb already!

Updated @ 7 pm: Well, a message in my email inbox tells me the bed is gone off the curb. Thank heavens. That way I won't be reminded of Mr. skíthæll í fúlum pytt anymore.

Affluent society in debt

Excerpt from the headline news in The New York Times today:

“Today the focus for lenders is not so much on consumer loans being repaid, but on the loan as a perpetual earning asset,” said Julie L. Williams, chief counsel of the Comptroller of the Currency, in a March 2005 speech that received little notice at the time.

The first part of this quote says it all: People have become virtual slaves to the financial companies, supplying them with a steady flow of cash, struggling to pay the combined sum of essential daily expenses and the minimum payments on the credit cards/mortgage/consumer loans. It's amazing that lenders have been given such latitude to help Americans (well, and Icelanders too, for that matter) get in debt way over their heads. As the article points out,

Ms. McLeod, who is 47, readily admits her money problems are largely of her own making. But as surely as it takes two to tango, she had partners in her financial demise. In recent years, those partners, including the financial giants Citigroup, Capital One and GE Capital, were collecting interest payments totaling more than 40 percent of her pretax income and thousands more in fees.

Where is the sense in allowing these companies to extend credit to individuals who are already in debt they're unable to repay? Why are these companies allowed to toy with the national economy like this? Because ultimately, it's not just the indebted people who suffer, or the lenders, but the economy in general. Granted, I'm not an economist, but it boggles my mind that individual companies are given latitude to nearly collapse a strong economy with what can really only be described as unethical business practices.

For more on the lucrative business of credit cards, check out this Frontline show (I think this only works in the US, not sure though).

The joy!

My plumeria is blooming and seems to be putting down some roots too. WTG!!

Funding

I was told today that I'm getting a department fellowship for the fall. This is fantastic news! One more semester of not having to spend too much time on grading, office hours, labs and the like. Awesome!!

In luuuuuvvve

I LOVE my new apartment!! OMG, it's SO good to be in a place that feels like home. I've found a lot of furniture already (Shan was very generous and craigslist's been quite the treasure trove) so it's definitely looking like a home already, although most of the stuff is still in boxes and I don't even have a working trash can yet! But it's clean, beautiful and comfy and I couldn't be happier that I made the move!

Really not good

Ok, I don't understand people.

First of all: I'm moving tomorrow. I'm not shouting it from the rooftops but I do tell people about it, people in my department that I see and work with every day. Not a single person has offered to help. How can it be that people who I consider my friends, who I've known for years, who know that I live alone, don't offer any assistance? Is it me? Is it them? My adviser gave me a ride to pick up the moving truck today and Shan is helping me tomorrow, so I'll be fine. I'm just a little bumfuzzled over this all.

Second, and that's the part that's making me feel so crappy about the first part: The woman who lived in my new apartment before me promised to leave her furniture behind. That included a dining table, some bookcases, a couch and a sofa table and, most definitely, a bed. Most definitely, I say, because when she called me to ask what of her stuff I wanted, she explicitly asked if I had my own bed and when she heard that I didn't, she said she'd then not sell hers, as she had intended to do, but leave it behind for me. I asked her how much I could pay her for the bed but she insisted on giving it to me. She wanted, in this manner, to repay the kindness strangers had shown her when she first moved to Ithaca. Well, I don't know what those strangers did to her back then but when I went to the apartment today it was totally empty, except for the couch and the sofa table. No dining table, no bookcases, no bed. There goes the kindness of strangers, let me tell you.

So, I guess I'll sit here for a while feeling abjectly sorry for myself. Then, I should probably start packing.

Repetitive strain injury

I can't get my workspace to fit me right. The keyboard tray is too low compared to the desk. If I lower the seat to make it compatible with the keyboard tray, the mouse is way out of whack. And no matter what I do, the armrests on my office chair (which I bought myself, since my department doesn't think that good ergonomics are part of a healthy work environment) bump into everything. I love the armrests for, hmmm, resting my arms? but when they get into the way all the time, some love gets lost.

This all leads to pain in my shoulders, neck and right hand. Right now I have such an uncomfortable feeling in my hand, it feels like it will cramp up any moment. All this makes working at the computer, which I need to do 8 hours a day now a days, such a pain. Any suggestions from my valued reader(-s)?

Long before blog time

I stayed for a week at the famous Shakespeare and Co. bookstore in Paris. Now I can visit them on the web, although the smell of musty books is conspicuously absent.

I wanna go to Paris.

"It's the best I can do"

There's nothing like ABBA to keep oneself going through a long evening at work :)

This week has been incredibly productive. My adviser is on vacation and while he's gone, his two undergrad research assistants are mine! I'm putting them to good use, trust me! Last week I speed-trained them on all the procedures in the clean lab (I think I mentioned this briefly last week), and this week they've been fantastic keeping the lab running. They come in in the morning and start processing the day's samples and go through the protocol as the day wears on, in addition to doing all the "support activities", such as washing labware, making acid, preparing tomorrow's samples, neutralizing acid etc. When they leave work I continue the sample protocol, seeing the samples to a finish which results in them being reduced to ~ half a milligram of a metal called Strontium. That half a milligram is later analyzed in a mass spectrometer, to give us the isotopic composition of the material (i.e. a very very very very precise weighing of the atoms of the metal). Lots of fun, sem sagt!

Back to the Stone Age

Some of the email servers at Cornell are down. I personally haven't been able to send or receive Cornell email for two days now. I feel like I've gone back to the Stone Age (which I guess is only appropriate for a geologist *hahahahhahaa* ROFL) (ok, pardon my sense of humour...)...

Las llaves

My keys are back with their rightful owner, me. Yay!!

I can't wait to move out of here!!

There are four (these days, three) of us in this apartment where I live. We share one bathroom (gasp!). Every single time I attempt a visit to the water closet, no matter what time of day or what day of the week, it's busy. This is beyond bizarre.

A normal person (not that any of us is normal but for the sake of argument we'll pretend we are) sleeps 8 hours a day. That leaves 16 hours for other activities, such as going to the loo. I do know for a fact that I don't spend more than ~0.5 hours in that ghastly chamber pr. day, which leaves 15.5 hours for my three room mates. By my calculations that means that the rest of them spend on average over 5 hours pr. day on the pot. WTF?!?!!?

Me wants

one (or two, or many) of these. They're just gorgeous!

OH, and I retrieved my keys. Turns out I left them in one of the common spaces in the building that I work in and someone saw them and kept them safe over the weekend, leaving a note with his telephone number. I'm infinitely relieved.

Not without incidence

My evening was not without incidence. I left work relatively early and walked home only to find that I had forgotten my keys at work. After taking a few deep breaths and cursing myself silently I called my office mate to borrow her keys. Then I walked to her place and accepted her offer for a ride up to campus (it takes a superhuman effort on my behalf to ask for help so of course I couldn't ask for that ride, see?). Once we were in the office I realized I had left the keys in the LAB, not the office, and my friend doesn't have the keys to the lab. So, we drove back and I called my landlord, whose answering machine directed me to the maintenance guy, who thought about this long and hard and finally asked: "Do you have 20 bucks?". Twenty minutes later the guy arrives to open the door to my room, only to find that he had brought the wrong set of keys (hysterical laughter may start here). I guess he really wanted those 20 bucks pretty badly b/c next thing I know, the guy is on the roof, making his way to the window of my room. So I finally got in; a stinking old guy with long fingernails opened the door for me FROM WITHIN!

After this horrendously hysterical evening, I'm finally getting ready to dissolve into my lovely IKEA reclining chair and (hopefully) laugh my pants off with Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Brain fried

Work is going like a speed train these days. Two undergrads are helping me in the lab and practically overnight a massive sample processing and lab maintenance campaign has been kicked off. Yesterday moi and her adviser had a meeting with a hydrologist on campus about watershed modeling and I left the meeting (well, they left the meeting and I was left sitting on my office chair) with my head full of ideas that I'm really hopeful about. So, today I've been working for 14 hours and I am absolutely fried. In a good way, though, since lots of work is getting done.

Well, I'm probably exaggerating about those 14 hours. Today I neflilega met my friend Leticia for lunch and we took almost one and a half hours to catch up (and we were by no means done!). That leaves just 12 hours at work. Oh well, worse things have happened ;)

Severe thunderstorms, tornados and 50 degrees!!

Sheesh, the weather does keep you excited around here! Right now there are severe thunderstorm warnings in effect for Ithaca, as well as a tornado watch. Yep, that's right, a TORNADO watch! Mind you, tornadoes are most definitely not supposed to happen in these parts.

And the forecast says that tonight's temperatures will be in the 50s. That's ~ 10 centigrades, for the unit-challenged out there. Wow!

Something funny to brighten your day

I had no idea about this site, until I read the Iceland Weather Report this morning. This one had me in stitches:


moar funny pictures

Thanks, AK, for sharing! And now, enjoy the day, all y'all!

It's HOT and HUMID!

Gee whiz, Ithaca weather changes fast! It was pretty nice all week, you know, you could wear a t-shirt and shorts and be quite comfortable. Yesterday town got transformed into a gigantic sauna, with over 70% humidity and temps shooting up to 37 centigrades. Thirty-friggin'-seven-degrees!!!! And it's still like that!

To cool myself down I'm putting in a picture from last February:

Still here,

...just not posting very often.

A couple of weeks ago my friend Erna graduated with a distinguished Ph.D. from Columbia. I made the trip to NYC to hang out and admire the outfit:



Cornell's graduation was the following weekend and there were some costumes involved there as well. Here's my former field assistant Tim, with the yellow ribbon signifying the award he got for being the best student in the department this year:



The weather here in Ithaca over graduation weekend was supremely superb, as this photo I took of Beebe lake proves:



There was a party at a professor's house for our dear Pete Nester, who got his Ph.D. that day, and his family. They all live in Houston now, taking care of the future's energy needs, and we miss them a lot. They kept running around so I couldn't get a decent picture of them. Art and Terry were much more cooperative:



and so was my friend and office mate Tiffany:



Next year, I'll get to show you all pics of her in the red Cornell Ph.D. gown :) !!

On productivity

Just like the cows, I'm much! more productive at work with Mozart's music in my headphones. Too bad it doesn't make me (or the cows) smarter too.

Life moves on

My lab mate Steve is leaving town for a Ph.D. program in Arizona. He's such a great person to have around and I'll miss him sooooooooooo much. Good lab mates tend to be hard to come by, for some reason. Best of luck, Steve!

Oh well. Life goes on and maður kemur í manns stað as they say. Here's to my new lab mate who's starting his Ph.D. program this fall! I know it'll be good to have him around too :)

... and Paul was alone in the world*

It somehow feels like I'm alone in the world today. I went into work briefly this morning to start up a batch of samples that needed to be analyzed on the IC and while in the lab I had a little chat with a fellow student. Back at home I haven't seen a soul, except for the cable guy who stopped by to exchange my old broken cable box for a new functional one. The online grad student community that I participate in is eerily quiet, no one has responed to my task list there. Which is very odd.

I'm glad I have my knitting class tonight. Otherwise I would really start thinking I was alone in the world... or nearly so.

On second thought, the fact that I'm able to walk through a university campus full of people and still feel like I'm alone in the world probably doesn't imply that I'm very good at being in the moment. Or have I already become so attuned to the impermanence of existence that even if I see it all around me it simply doesn't register? ;)



* It seems that all Icelanders have read the story of little Palli (Icelandic nickname for Paul) who woke up one day to find his town completely empty of people. You can think of it like waking up in a candy store, only to find out later that eating all that candy only gives you toothache and stomach problems you'd rather not have to talk about!

On homemade chocolate cookies and unexpected happiness

For a while now I've been practicing to make do with what I have. Instead of rushing to the store when I need something, I take a long hard look around me and try to find something that I can use in my stuff. When I'm hungry I don't head straight for the bagel place but go into the kitchen and figure out how to turn what's there into something good to eat. Anticipating this, I did some major grocery shopping two weeks ago and now I'm not allowed to buy anything ready-made. The other day I had an immense craving for something sweet and short of eating brown sugar straight from the jar, I didn't have anything. Or so I thought. I then saw I had cake mix, frosting and crackers. Instead of baking the cake and topping it with the frosting, I took the frosting and put it on the crackers. Thus were born my favorite homemade chocolate cookies to date :)

This practice of mine is in part born from my readings over the past few months. While I was in Houston my friend Paula gave my Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth and I've been slowly reading my way through it. It's a little like yoga (and, for that matter everything else): take what you need, leave the rest behind. And on the whole I really like it. I also read some of Thich Nhat Hanh's The Miracle of Mindfulness and I'm currently listening to his latest book, The Art of Power, on my iPod. All these different readings, paired with some concerted effort on my side to be more involved in my own life and affairs, are helping me to be more present in the everyday. That's something pretty new to me, who usually inhabits the past and future more easily than the present moment. I like the change.

Who'da thought...

... that I was most like her!

Squishy squashy

Photo from Wikipedia.

Here's a question from the culinarily challenged part of me: How do I prepare squash??

Yesterday I bought one like the bottom one (I think it's called winter squash) and another one like the dark one to the right and above the winter squash and I'd love to cook them before they go bad. I learned to love squash in the Philippines; in fact, squash-based dishes are my favorite Filipino food, along with a good Bicol express (oh and I mustn't forget taro leaves rolled up and boiled in coconut milk, that's amazing!). But honestly, I have no idea how the Filipinos prepare the squash. Boil? Fry? Saute and then boil?

I know I can probably look the answer up on the omniscient Internet. Frankly, I prefer my (two) readers' wisdom. I hope to hear from (both of) you!

Science nerdism of the day: Hearing test

Speakers: Bose Noise Cancelling headphones.

Without my hearing aids:

You are about 20 years old

The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 16.7kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

And with my hearing aids:

You are a dog

Or maybe you are a mosquito, you certainly can't be human. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 21.1kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

When I wear the hearing aids, I hear 8 through 12 kHz fine, I don't hear 14.1 and 14.9 kHz, I hear 15.8 kHz just fine, 16.7 kHz I can't hear, I hear 17.7, 18.8, 19.9 and 21.1 very well but they definitely don't sound ultrasonic! The highest frequency I don't hear at all.

This is weird. I don't think that the hearing aids are meant to amplify sounds in the ultrasonic range... but they seem to do so for frequencies between 17.7 and 21.1 kHz, but the tone changes. Dramatically. Any idea why, anyone??

Last day of classes

and the madness has begun:

slope day!!

Being almost a senior citizen here on campus, I plan to enjoy the day at a Earth Sciences grad students' BBQ and then maybe go back to work (gasp!) in the afternoon.

Brrrr....

There you go. It's freezing in Ithaca right now. Just after I posted about how warm and cozy it has become in the last two weeks. Serves me right, right?!?

Gone for a while...

... at least from the blog scene!

Summer came to Ithaca overnight a couple of weeks ago and we went from woolen coats to flip-flops (or slippahs, as they're called in Hawaii) just like that. Me like! The humidity of summer will kick in any day now and that's when I'll start wishing it were winter again. But that's just me :)

I've been toiling away in the lab during all this time, working on my rather impressive collection of water taken from Hawaiian and Philippine streams this spring (as you all know). I have made less than stellar progress, caused by both machines not working and me being less than enthusiastic about finding ones that work or could work. The eternal issue, I guess, working where I work.

There's also been some traveling, as in going to Santa Cruz, CA, to meet my sister and her boyfriend, both of whom are touring the USA these days. Since both Lara and Kari, as well as Santa Cruz, are all awesome, it was an awesome trip!

Here in Ithaca the semester is three days from being over. I had planned to have a full draft of a paper ready by now... and it isn't happening. Oh well.

Monterey Bay

Buffalo in suspension

From my field notes taken during my recent trip to the Philippines:

"Water buffalo in water upstream from sampling site. Water full of very fine suspended brown gunk, maybe organics or water buffalo".

The debut

Memory lane

Some time ago I was driving somewhere around Ithaca when I heard a song by the 70's disco band Dr. Hook on the radio. The song is called "A little bit more" and was one of my mom's favorite songs when I was a kid. I love to sing and as a kid, I picked up lyrics to songs in foreign languages almost as easily as I did to songs in Icelandic, the only difference being that I had no idea what I was singing about as I performed along with ABBA and Barry Manilow.

As I heard that old Dr. Hook song again, after not hearing it for decades, I was surprised to find that I still knew almost the entire lyrics, they just jumped into my head as the song progressed. I also realized something that I most definitely didn't realize when I was seven and learned the song, that it is about a couple making love the whole night through, and the guy planning to just blow his ladyfriend away by his astounding prowess in bed:




Today I finally made good on my promise to myself to buy Dr. Hook's music on iTunes. While I was there I suddenly got a Bolivia-flashback, and to an artist no less than Myriam Hernandez:



She was the diva of overdone soppy ballads back in 1991 and her music, tied as it is in my memory to my year in Bolivia, holds a place in my heart not usually reserved for any performers of such music (well, except for Jose Luis Perales (watch this one for a good chuckle and, to witness a remarkable change, this one too), but that's only because he also accompanied me through my year in Bolivia). And now, I have more Myriam Hernandez on my iTunes than I'll ever listen to. Aye, memories...

The new one

... and this one is for the office:

My old trooper

Trankaso

I am developing a headache. I wonder if it's all the philanthropy and my good moods?

Sine qua non

Matters in our own hands

Check this out. Neat! This approach to development aid really makes sense to me, what do you all think?

Update, an hour later: I am totally fascinated by this! Have already lent a whoopin' 75 bucks (!) to entrepreneurs in Samoa and Bolivia (of course). This is way more fun than shopping!!

From the lab

The IC that abandoned me for another lab. Right now it's making its way through some of my samples, patiently putting in weeks of work for me analyzing the anion contents of the samples I collected this year. This is hands down the best behaved instrument on Earth, and for that I love it:



Isn't it lovely??



I just wish all instruments were as docile and cooperative as this little beauty!

A small laumu-linguist hides inside

and it was most happy (and a little bit sad, too) reading this book:

I think those were tulips,

these precious blooms decorating the view from my window. A gift from my aunt Margrét in Cologne. I love it to pieces!

Apres skiing

The best coffee

Lunch II

Lunch

Busy

There's just so much to DO these days! I've lost count of how often my latte has become cold before I got a spare minute to drink it, or how often I've intended to call someone back in the homeland only to find that... oops... it's past midnight there!

So, don't worry/feel left out/shunned/orphaned if I haven't been in contact much. I'm basically swamped with work and stuff to do here. It's good, though, I'm learning a lot and having fun :)

Moved out

Well, now it's very officially over: I moved out from Shan's place today. My new place is a nice little room in an apartment that I share with 3 other people, one of whom is my friend Louise. It's actually thanks to her that I now rent the room! Thanks, Louise :)

During the week that has passed since I came back several things have happened. I regained my capacity to tolerate cold. I looked for a place to live and found one. I got my samples organized. And (I hope you are sitting) I tricked my adviser into cleaning out the lab with me. This is a historical event that should be duly celebrated, since nothing comparable has (to the best of my knowledge, acquired both through talking with eyewitnesses and keen observation of the layers of trash) happened for at least ten years. Old samples from grad students and undergrad research assistants, defunct lab equipment and loads of other stuff have been piled on top of the counters in my lab, making it hard to carve out even a small clear patch to work on. In three or four historical hours last week about 7 trash bags' worth of this junk was shoveled off the shelves and counters and sent to the dumpster. Now I have ONE WHOLE workbench completely free for my work. There's not even a speck of DUST on it. I should get the Order of Merit for precipitating this change, I so swear.

Ok, gotta go to get some laundry quarters and then go see a movie with my ex. See, even if we're exes we still get along splendidly. Of which I am most proud :)

Back in Ithaca, missing Hawaii

After a day of traveling I'm back in Ithaca. It's cold but friendly - the taxi operators didn't answer the phone but a fellow traveler secured a ride for me and all my stuff from the airport into town.

My little vacation in Hawaii was fantastic. I didn't do as much as I had planned - no hike out to Kaena Point, no visiting old stone temples or heritage sites, no Bishop Museum. What I did do was a lot of relaxing, meeting fellow travelers at the hostel and hanging out on Waikiki beach.

The absolute highlight of my stay on O'ahu was the surfing lesson I took on Wednesday. I joined two other ladies for a group lesson at a surf school next door to the hostel and boy, did we get lucky! A ridiculously handsome and broad shouldered tanned blond guy took us out to the Queen's Surf and had us riding waves in no time (well, the other two were riding waves in no time). For some reason it didn't come as easily to me as two years ago... but with my usual stubbornness I finally made it :)

The good thing about taking a lesson (apart from actually learning how to do this stuff - and (in this instance) the eye candy factor ;) is that the instructor gives you a push so that you can catch the wave. Try as I might on Friday, when I rented a board and went out by myself on Waikiki to fight for space with the other novice surfers, I could hardly paddle fast enough to catch the wave by myself. My arms were already impossibly sore after Wednesday's surfing, and so were my knees, the tops of my toes, the insides of my arms and (of all places) my pubic bone. Yep, it's a hard life :) But even if I didn't manage to ride a wave it was fun and as beautiful as can be, with Diamond Head in the distance and the white-sand beach stretching for miles.

Thursday was supposed to be all about snorkeling and cultural exploration on O'ahu's west (leeward) coast. As I was driving to the town of Wai'anae, where the snorkeling boat trip was to happen, I heard on the radio that the season's biggest swells were headed for Oahu's North Shore and that the waves might reach 20 to 30 feet. Being the surfer wannabe that I am I instantly decided to speed over there after the boat trip and watch, ditching all other plans.

The boat trip was fine. The heavy swell/surf had stirred the coastal waters up a lot so that the choice of snorkeling sites had become limited, meaning that all the boats doing this operation let their guests out in the same place. Thus, congestion and collisions were the order of the day during the snorkeling session itself. In the end we managed to put in about 20 minutes of hanging out in the water with all kinds of rainbow-colored fish. I was also lucky enough to spot a sea turtle hurrying away from the 50 or so tourists crowding her living quarters. At another point we saw schools of dolphins in the water and tried to get into the water with them, but they swam away as fast as they could when we started splashing in the water. Another attraction during the trip was a small pod of humpback whales. Very nice indeed although honestly, snorkeling is not really for me. Not enough action, you see.

Getting back to shore I couldn't get to the North Shore fast enough. When I finally made it up there, through the pineapple plantations of Central O'ahu, the traffic jam strung out for several kilometers - I obviously wasn't the only one who'd thought of going north for the day. It was pretty obvious where the action was at: people had parked their cars along the highway in Waimea Bay for the best views, almost reducing the road to one lane. I camped out in Waimea for a while, watching the incredible surf and incredible surfing (check this video to see what was going on), I drove up and down the coast to check out other famous surf spots and finally ended the day by watching the sunset in Waimea Bay.

And now it's back to the everyday life. Do my tax return. Find a place to live. Pay the credit card. Order more lab supplies. And life goes on.

Úff dagsins

Swell in Waimea Bay

The lounge @ the waikiki hostel

Pictures - by popular demand

Stina asked for more pics. Let me show you what the fieldwork looks like:

First we do the discharge measurements:



Then we take care of the water sampling:



Some of the streams we sample double as the local sewer/trash disposal area, see above, and the local washing machine, see below:



The local kids are always endlessly curious and flock around us to see what we're up to. The drivers, here Titan, are really good with explaining to them what's going on. Usually the grown-ups are around as well but they keep a little more distance than the kids:



Kids, kids, kids:



and more kids: