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.