Pine Creek

Sadly our camera died when we did Keyhole but we did have the opportunity to finally do Pine Creek this past weekend. A friend took some pictures but unfortunately most of the shots look like these. We weren't in a cave but the slot canyon was so deep that very little light got down there at times. The best part was a 100 foot free rappel where you just lower yourself down without touching anything. Once I figured out that I couldn't die doing it, it was great fun. These photos also prove that I do go on these hikes with Marius despite all prior photographic evidence to the contrary.

Slot canyons

Two weeks ago we got permits to do both Keyhole and Pine Creek in Zion. Keyhole is a short beginner rappelling canyon and a great way to get your feet wet before Pine Creek which is a bit hairier. Although we live in the desert, flash floods were predicted for the afternoon so we had to be satisfied with just Keyhole. This is maybe only a mile or two in length but with a short but steep uphill hike in to the slot and a series of rappels to get through it took us nearly the whole morning.

Here I am on my very first canyon rappel ever. The inner tube is for a friend's eleven year old daughter who came along for the fun.

Confessions

So many of you know that I really like my food and I tend to like it to be high quality. I've been introduced as a tea snob or food snob or [insert your favorite here] snob not infrequently in spite of my protestations. So I figure it's about time to disillusion some of you with a series of confessions.

Until recently I would develop month long cravings for Cheetos. It's only gone now because I think I really overdid it right before the summer.

I still have cravings for fast food burgers with the exception of McDonald's.

I HATE truffles and stinky cheese. I have that "OMG it smells/tastes rotten and I think I'm going to gag" response to those flavors.

I am happy to drink 2-buck chuck and Trader Joe's brand teas (in tea bags even!) but I can't stand poor quality coffee and I have no idea why except that the taste of bad coffee bothers me much more.

I have frozen pizza and t.v. dinners in my freezer as I type.

One of my favorite comfort foods is grilled cheese and not no stinkin' gourmet version either. We're talking Wonder bread and processed yellow cheese here folks. Grilled cheese served with a bowl of condensed cream of tomato soup is like being five again.

Okay, this is getting old and you've probably lost all respect for me so it's time to quit while I'm behind. Hope your week has been more worth writing about than mine.

pseudoscience homework

I asked my students in my non-majors biology class to find examples of pseudoscience and explain why they are pseudoscience as a homework assignment.

This is what I got from one student, verbatim:

"Global warming"

"Recent year's people have witnessed a series of over the top pseudo-scientific methods. Few scientists would dispute the fact that climate is changing on a huge scale. There are good reasons to believe that some of the changing features are not part of a natural variation, but consequences of man made pollution. What many scientist will dispute, is whether this is a on going change. Scientist believe that one, there's an upward change in the atmosphere's mean global temperature. Two, whether the mechanism is responsible for the CO2 fossil fuel combustion. Today climatology is vulnerable to these kinds of faddist dogmas. They are pushed forward to the political and media driven agenda. Because it lacks a functional, broad, orderly and unified understanding of the nonlinear system formed by the atmosphere. The oceans, the land mass and the biosphere, provide inroads towards developing such an understanding. Starting with the sun and the solar radiation in the weather patterns over short and long term scales."

For those uncertain about this, I have no clue as to what they were trying to say here and now that I've met with them to go over it, it's clear they didn't either.

I have great new neighbors

I'm still catching up on posts.

A few weeks ago I lost sight of Sam (our cat) long enough that he left the yard. He didn't come home. That night we had a big thunder storm and I was in a complete panic.

The next morning I reported him missing to all of the local shelters and we posted signs. Our neighbors called to let us know that they had seen him in their yard but that he had left in the direction of home (they didn't know we were neighbors yet as they also just moved in). They very kindly promised to keep an eye out for him and grab him if they did see him.

It rained again that night and the water ruined the signs. We replaced them and got our neighbors hopes up that he had been found. I was spending most free moments walking around our subdivision and a few neighboring ones. I even found a lost dog in the process and met more of our neighbors as well as many of the construction workers working in the area. Everyone I met promised to keep an eye out for Sam.

So he went missing on a Monday. By Wednesday I was losing hope. We figured he must have been eaten by a coyote or something up in the tortoise reserve (not far from our house).

Amazingly enough, on Thursday evening I got a call around 9:30pm. A family that lived up the street from us had gone on a hike in the reserve and had seen Sam!

I surprised them a bit by running up the street to meet them at the gate into the reserve from our subdivision and they explained where they had seen him and that they tried to catch him but he kept running away from them. I started to climb up a cliff to where they had indicated and suddenly I was flooded in light. This lovely family and moved their car into an empty lot where they could shine their brights up on the cliff to help me.

I found him in just fifteen minutes hiding in the rocks within ten feet of a young couple (who seemed awfully relieved to discover that the person running toward them with a flashlight wasn't one of their parents). I managed to grab Sam and walk home with him. Sam, of course, was not thrilled to be leaving the reserve. Apparently it is the equivalent of Disneyland for cats. He cried and fussed the whole way home and, to this day, he still bolts for any open door in the house.

It turns out that the family who found Sam had the same thing happen with one of their cats. Their Rocky stayed in the reserve for three months! I am so glad our ordeal lasted less than a week. I don't know what I would have done had Sam walked up to our house after another three months.

So thanks to many of my neighbors, Sam is safe and sound at home and appears to be only slightly grumpy that we won't let him go back to the tortoise reserve.

What I would love to play for my classes...

I teach biology. This means that within the first day or two of any introductory class, I cover the basics of evolution. This is because the only way to understand life is through the process of evolution by natural selection. Now mainstream Mormons are all in support of evolution so I don't often have to get into debates with creationist students. However, the are fundamentalists in any movement and I've been told that there are even some Mormons who think the world and everything in it was created by a deity in seven days.

I would really love to be able to just play this clip in class and move on but, of course, it would be inappropriate I suppose. So instead, I'll subject you all to this great piece by Lewis Black. I should warn those of you who are not familiar with Lewis Black that his language makes this clip inappropriate for kids (and perhaps some adults).

Here's a direct link for folks who can't see it on this page.

Ways to put a smile on a teacher's face

In the hallway today I was approached by a young student who asked:

"Um... so like, um... are you a teacher here?"

I didn't say it was a nice or friendly smile did I?





(for the record I did manage a straight face and then went running to our department secretary's office so I could share and laugh appropriately)

Road trip!!!!

I've been a bit absent but life has been interesting.

Two weeks ago I realized that the entire week before school started was filled with meetings. So I quickly contacted folks in California and drove out there to catch-up, plan future work, return equipment and just hang out. The trip was busy but good. I got to see everyone I needed (and even some I didn't expect to see!), stocked up on all of the things that are hard to come by in Utah (wine, good olive oil, lemon tree, you get the idea) and headed back with a full car. I left in plenty of time to get back in time to get a decent night's sleep before my week of meetings the following morning.

Around Zzyyxx (if you've ever driven this stretch of the I-15, you know where I mean, for the rest of you, this is the middle of nowhere), my temperature light came on. I pulled over and waited a few minutes and it went off. I started up again. Less than twenty minutes later, it came on again. Fortunately I was approaching Primm, NV and pulled off there.

I eventually reached my long distance mechanic/honorary brother-in-law on the phone. I had a leak in my coolant system. We were hoping it was small. It wasn't.

For future reference, if your temperature light comes on but the temperature gauge hasn't budged above normal, one of two things has happened. 1. Your temperature gauge is broken. 2. You're leaking coolant. The tank that holds the coolant apparently has a sensor in it that triggers the temperature light to go on if there isn't enough liquid in the tank. To find out if it is due to a big or small leak (or a busted fan), get some bottled water and fill up the tank. Turn on the car and look underneath for any leaks. If you don't see anything obvious and the temperature light stays off, you probably have a slow leak and as long as you immediately top off the coolant tank with clean water whenever the temperature light comes on, you can probably drive to the nearest mechanic. If there is so much water leaking out that you can hear it splash over the sound of your motor, this would be a BIG-a** leak and you are screwed if you are far away from a mechanic. Oh, and if there is no leak and the water levels holds but the light stays on, you are seriously screwed because you need a new part that costs much more than a simple hose.

It was pretty dark by the time I had figured out that I was dealing with a serious leak. While Primm has no mechanic, it does have three casinos so I was able to get a room easily and relatively cheaply. I say relatively cheaply because this same car had problems in Vegas when I moved out to California and the hotel cost nearly $200/night.

The next morning I found out that I was pretty lucky. The leak was in a short molded hose that I could easily see and reach. This meant that I should be able to patch the leak with duct tape. Did I have any? Of course not. Did any shop I visited have any? Of course not. Did the neighboring outlet mall have a shop that could sell me some? (all together now) Of course not.

However, the outlet mall did have a helpful guy who sent me to the other side of the highway where the gas station convenience mart actually sold convenient things (like duct tape). They even had a heater hose emergency repair kit so I got that too since Paul told me that, if it worked, I could drive all the way home. Did it work? (one last time....) Of course not. Did I mention the big-ass leak before? Yes, well, my leak was so big that if I had cut out the damaged part, there wouldn't have been enough to stretch back together to attach to the emergency patch. So I went all McGuyver and duct taped that sucker until it was nearly doubled in diameter. Since this probably wasn't going to completely block the leak, I also picked up an extra four gallons of water and started off toward Vegas.

A friend's father and stepmother, who live in Vegas but were out of town (hi Deb!), had helped me locate a VW dealer in a town next to Vegas and presumably the closest to my location. Was it? (okay, okay, dead horse, beaten, I get it) However, I did such an impressive job with the duct tape that it held without any problem the entire 60+ miles to the dealer.

I got a case worker (I don't know what else to call them since they don't work on the cars -you all know the people I mean) who was wonderful (at Findlay VW in Henderson for anyone else prone to getting stuck near Vegas) and he even had someone bring all three cases of wine, the olive oil and the lemon tree, that would have all been ruined in the heat, into the air conditioning. After looking around for a real replacement part (it did turn out to be a molded hose part instead of a basic heater hose), they found a hose that did the job just fine and I was on my way after about five hours, just about the time my first day of meetings was coming to a close.

Let me just say that my car will never see Vegas again if I have any control over it.

Anyone in need of a large quantity of bottled water?

A break in the heat wave

It finally dropped below 100 this week. Perfect timing really, as I was in Chicago last week visiting friends and getting a little work done. They were in the middle of a major cold period with highs only in the 70s and 80s for my entire stay.

Don't tell my PhD advisor but the main reason I went was to meet this little person:



She arrived in the U.S. early this spring and while I have a ton of photos, it's not the same as being in the same room. Here she is with her Mommy at Brookfield Zoo. She doesn't look too happy here but we got dippin' dots before we left and I now have a new friend (ice cream covered hands precluded any photos).

I was only gone a week and flew back into Vegas. While I was waiting for the St. George shuttle I hit the small Borders inside and found the new Thursday Next novel nearly a full week before it's official release date. Woo-hoo! If you haven't picked up a Jasper Fforde book yet, do so.

Unpacking

Happy 4th everyone!

I've finally emptied every possible box that we could unpack (there are always a few that just need to stay packed oddly enough). Of course we moved during an unusually warm June. Normally June doesn't get much hotter than the mid 90's but for some reason we didn't even have a week of days with a high below 100. Murphy's Law and all I suppose.

To escape we went to Cedar Breaks National Monument and Bryce Canyon. We ended up camping at Bryce but Cedar Breaks is really nice right now. It's the peak of the wildflower season there (peak being relative since southern Utah is in a 13 year drought) and it doesn't get much warmer than the 80s while Bryce is a bit warmer and crowded with summer tourists. I won't have my laptop connected to the internet until Friday so you'll have to wait until then to see photos.

We don't start teaching until the end of August so in the meantime, I'm exploring our new town, cooking and knitting (again photos will have to wait) when I haven't been unpacking. Marius brought home a roast the other day so, in spite of the heat, I actually made a pot roast. You know you're in a small town when the cashier at the supermarket picks up your turnips and exclaims "Turnips!" Apparently no one buys them hear even in the winter. Odd since they taste so good in a pot roast. I guess I should be happy that the store even carries them. Fortunately I have discovered that we have the equivalent of a corporate milkman and so we are getting decent milk, juice and organic produce delivered weekly now and Jeanette discovered that there is a local cattle rancher who produces grass fed beef and delivers for free in our county so I can't say I'm hurting for good food.

I love jam too!

Most of you have probably never heard of jam. No, not jam, jam. Jam is made by Eric and Phineas who have a single Blenheim apricot tree in their yard in Santa Clara, CA. The Blenheim is listed as endangered by Slow Food USA because the land where it has traditionally been grown was more valuable as subdivisions during the dot-com boom. Fortunately their neighbor also has some Blenheim trees and agreed to let them use the fruit this year so the run should actually be larger than the usual 100 jars/year. This is great news for you since they would have been down to just 96 as of last night.

99 jars of jam on the wall... (okay, I'll stop there).

They opened pre-orders yesterday to their waiting list and sell on a first come, first served basis from that list. If you think you might need some jam, go to their site (www.welovejam.com) and get on their waiting list asap before it's too late!

The below review is from Food and Wine Magazine this past February.
Yes, I've already ordered and it's highly unlikely that I'll share (they limit you to just 32oz., hence the whole 96 thing up above).

I'll be away for a few days while we close on the house and lug our stuff to Utah but I should be ranting about how awful it is to move by next weekend.

hmmm....

As Jeanette said, this person has too much time on their hands. Then again, I'd probably have done it myself when I was in college and if I were to walk past it on the street (before it got gunked up), I'd definitely smile.

Apparently this person lives in Stockholm and has littered that city with knitting "graffiti" and has recently started a world tour.

Knitta please has some serious competition in the world.

Knitting challenge

Thuy issued a knitting challenge last week to replicate some cute baby booties she found. There is an apostrophe in the address so blogger doesn't want to link to it properly. To view them go here: http://www.papastour.com/products/children's-gifts/baby-booties/

She likes the blue, yellow, green and brown pair since they don't appear to require any sewing.

So I emailed her a pattern and started knitting a test version. Here's the result (almost finished). They're cute but they will only stay on a baby for a fraction of a second. I think they would be much improved if they had an i-cord tie.


If you can't tell from the photos, you start out by casting on the number of stitches required for the final circumference of the bootie. You work it for about three rows in stockinette stitch and then start a short-row heel.

Once you have increased back to the full set of stitches you join to work in the round. After two rows of all k, you start with a single yo right at the same location as the join and then for every row after that you k2tog, yo, k (however many needed), yo, ssk so that you have an increasing set of yo's forming the cute triangle over the toes.


Here's a close-up of the yo's:

They just need to be kitchener stitched (see, I always thought it was "kitchner" but I jfgi'd and knitty.com says it's kitchener) at the end and you have a bootie. You could easily finish a pair in an evening if you were going for the newborn-6 month size listed on that site. Or you could drop 25 pounds (!!!!) on a pair and wait for them to be shipped to you. Yeah, right.

more house pics

M uploaded some photos of the house today so we don't have to rely on the ones from the listing.

This is the subdivision:


And here is a nice view of the front gate:



And lastly, a photo of the biggest selling point for this subdivision, the massive desert tortoise reserve that is just a 2 minute walk from our front door with hiking trails that stretch for miles:



Gee, do you think I'm excited?

And for those who are getting bored with all of this talk about houses, M went on a hike that ended at the Narrows of Zion NP the day I had to leave Utah. It included slot canyons. I'm kicking myself for having to return to California and missing this hike now.

We got it!

The appraisal came in over our final price so we can actually buy the house. I'm still waiting for something to go wrong but I think we may finally be out of things that can.

(Erin begins breathing again for the first time in days...)

the house

Perhaps I'm jinxing things but here are some photos of what we hope will be our new house. They are from the official listing so they are small. I deleted all that I had when negotiations fell through.


This is the dreaded front door that will soon be replaced by something that won't warp. It doesn't look 4'x8' in this shot but it is. The vines to the left are all jasmine so the entry courtyard smells great right now.


I'll limit the inside to one shot. The fireplace is double sided so you have a similar view of it when you enter the foyer. It's one of the more charming features of the place.

The Subway

I'm still playing catch up. During all of the house hunting insanity we had a chance to join some folks hiking The Subway in Zion. We had amazing weather and a great time. Because you have to swim through pools that never warm up, wet (or dry) suits are necessary and M and I ended up being the only two with dry suits. Unfortunately I haven't received copies of the photos taken of us prior to putting on the protective cover-alls but I will try my best to find them. We only needed red pyramid hats to be in a Devo video. They were truly crimes against fashion and just good taste in general.

The only real excitement (in a bad way) was when one person slipped and fell backwards several feet. It was not nice and I'm sure she had a more than impressive bruise the next day, but fortunately she wasn't seriously hurt. The rest of the day was just full of amazing scenery.

The hike in:



Our group before the truly macho took off and left the rest of us in the dust:



Here is our fearless leader, Kurt, hitting one of the last pools on the route:



Kurt's lovely wife, Janet prior to losing that very nice walking stick:



And finally the famous subway:



Along the way we regularly saw these cute little canyon tree frogs. I'm not sure if these white ones are the Hyla arenicolor species since we also saw brown ones (which H. arenicolor is supposed to be) but they appear to be close relatives given the many physical similarities. One even sat on my hand for a while. I suspect it was wondering why I hadn't eaten it yet as opposed to the Snow White moment most people imagine (yes there is a story here involving me, a hungry squirrel, some friends and my hip) but they really are pretty.



The hike through the "slot" canyon (it's a VERY wide slot for most of the hike) ends after a series of short falls:



At the very end, you get to climb back out of the canyon so that everyone who isn't in the best of shape comes out looking like they had their butts kicked in spite of the fact that it a very reasonable hike for most of the 9 miles.

Could it get any crazier?

We had an appointment to sign an offer on a new house today at 3pm. We show up and our agents sit us down and say they have something to discuss. Apparently someone went and talked some sense into the sellers of the first house and they are willing to give us everything we want.

Our agents were very smart and gave us lots of room to run away screaming which immediately required that we think about it all logically (even though emotionally I wanted to run away screaming). I have no idea how they know these things because my parents would have run away screaming whereas this was the perfect way to approach us.

We agreed, the sellers agreed and as of a few hours ago all of the paperwork was signed. We are still waiting on the lender's appraisal and we have promised to run away screaming if the appraisal is less than the purchase price. In the meantime though, we are somewhat hopeful that this could all be over soon and that we could have a new house in just two weeks.

Everyone warns you that buying a new house is an exercise in insanity but most of the horror stories we hear are about money grubbing agents and demanding lenders. Our agent couldn't have been nicer or a better advocate and the mortgage broker all but signed our names to make the process as easy (and as competitive price-wise) as possible. The sellers were our hurdle. They apparently have other issues beyond selling their home and had an agent who bought into all of their issues so that no one on that side was seeing quite right for a while. Supposedly that's all fixed now and we can all only hope that the lenders see it that way as well.

I do feel badly for the owners of the house we would have bought though. We met them both times we went to see the place and so they know that a couple was seriously interested in the house. Now, they will wonder what happened to us. I don't feel badly enough to turn down the deal we were looking for originally, but badly none the less.

The moral of this story is that, even in a buyers' market, buying a house is an exercise in insanity and you should always be prepared to run away screaming.

So...

So, I just realized that I appear to need to start my recent posts with "so." I just wanted to let you know that I've noticed and I should have it under control soon.

so much for extra time

So, like a fool, I went back to the online databases of homes for sale. We've now found another house that M has seen in person and likes enough that I need to drive back out there today so I can see it tomorrow and decide if it's worth the extra money it will cost us. By the time we finish this house buying nonsense, my car will be ready to fall apart I suspect.

So I won't be posting any more pics today and I won't make knitting tonight. However, this should be my last trip to Utah before the move so I should be more reliable in the next few weeks.