The Amazing Flufferflies

I have a couple topics in mind that I could write about but I’m feeling lazy and also  feel as though it would be a good idea to vacuum and maybe do the dishes (aka put them in the dishwasher), sooo I’m not going to write about those things tonight.

But I really wanted to make a post about this because I think it is one of the most beautiful amazing things I have seen in a while.  It’s an episode of NOVA about the 2 month migration of monarch butterflies from Canada and the northern U.S. down to Mexico.  It’s really cool, and you should watch it.  You will cry with tears of joy.

That is all.

Backyard Adventures in Geology: Test Post

Being a geologist/soil scientist/terrestrial ecologist/whatever, I like to spend a lot of time outside.  And the weather has been unnaturally nice here in New Mexico lately (though I think that might be about to change?) so I’ve been going outside a lot.  Therefore, I thought, why not share my awesome adventures and extensive (haha) knowledge of all things geoscience with the world wide web?

For those of you familiar with the roadside geology series, this is going to be nothing like it.  (And for those of you who aren’t, it’s EVEN BETTER!)  Eventually I want to start putting in some real science but that takes research so it won’t be happening right now.

I’m going to start off with a video I made yesterday on a hike along the Pino Trail at the Elena Gallegos picnic area.  Because videos are fun.  As it turns out, I’m kinda ADD with the camera and not really all that great at making videos. Plus Matt said something to distract me so I sound a little retarded at the beginning.  And it got pixelly when it uploaded.  But it should be entertaining anyway, I hope…

And what the hey, I’ll put this one on too.  Matt said I moved the camera around too fast so I tried to go extra slow for him.  But apparently he did not like that and took over.  Boys.

At Work with a Soil Scientist

One nice thing about my job is paid holidays.  They are fantastical.  I had one such day yesterday on MLK day, which gave me a nice long weekend to enjoy with the BF (yay!); however, today, I had to go back to work (boo!).

Now, I really can’t complain, because, the way the economy is right now, and looking at Matt and my brother’s (and many others’) current situation, I’ve got it made.  Seriously, I have job security up the wazoo (well, at least I do right now).  I could be the girl with the Master’s Degree working at McDonald’s (scary).  I could be unemployed and living with my parents (even more scary).

And honestly, there’s nothing actually wrong with my job.  I don’t necessarily hate it.  It’s (essentially) what I went to school for (yes, I know, bad ending with a preposition. bad bad!).  My fellow employees are nice enough.  My boss is perfectly fine to work with (minus the hillbilly banjo music for 4 HOURS on the way to the Gila–that’s kinda painful).  I’m just…bored.  I wake up and dread going into work and sitting there all day.  I watch the clock constantly.  I play around on the internet for a good part of the day.  And I enter countless amounts of data into a GIS file.  This is what I am supposed to be doing.

I also keep a blog at work.  My boss is making me.  I call it my work log.  It’s terribly fascinating.  My entries generally go something like this: 20 sites entered into NRIS database. Read map unit section of Soil Survey Handbook (Oh, yes, I also read things to break up my day a little bit, add a little spice to my life — haha).  So I handed in my little work log with my time sheet last week (as per boss’ orders), and he came back to my cubicle and asked me if next time I could try to keep track of how many sites I enter per hour, so he would know how many I could get through in a day if I worked on it non-stop, with no interruptions.  Oh joy.

I want to like my job.  I want to be excited to go to work.  Whenever I tell someone what I do, they think it’s really cool.  I’m not really sure what is wrong with me.  Hopefully this next field season will be good.  That is really what I went to school for, but that was hard for me last year too (mostly just the driving and being away from home for so long), so who knows?

On the other hand, some days are really great, but those are few and far between.  Perhaps once I learn more and feel more confident I will have more responsibility and will be happier in my chosen career.  It’s only been, what, six months?  But for now… I think my inner English major is bored and needs something to do.  So, I’m going to try to write more in my free time.  In this journal (I’ve got some what I hope will be fun and entertaining ideas), and also, I’ve been thinking about writing stories again, possibly a novel.  I’d like to, anyway.  We’ll see how that goes.

The Other Half

And now we will take a look at the other side of the coin, in which having a boyfriend is fantastically amazingly wonderful.

After Matt calmed down from the Federico’s fiasco, we ended up having a very nice, productive weekend.  In reality, it was more productive for me, but that just goes to show how awesome Matt is.  I took my car to the dealer on Saturday because it was making weirdo squeaky noises and Matt drove in his car as well so I wouldn’t have to sit around for three hours.  During that time we proceeded to eat breakfast burritos at Golden Pride (yum!) and then walked around Nob Hill.  I’m not really sure how to describe Nob Hill.  It’s sorta like downtown, except it’s separate from downtown Albuquerque.  It’s close to campus so a lot of students hang out there, I guess.  It has a lot of nontraditional/artsy-type stores, and of course, a Flying Star (mmmmmm!!!).  Anyway, so the car guy called and said I needed my front brake pads replaced ($$$$$).  But brakes are pretty important, so I said yes, they could replace my brake pads.

After it was fixed, Matt went to get a haircut and I went to Target to buy a shoe rack because before this weekend my shoes ended up wherever I took them off my feet.  Since Matt is having some difficult times financially I have agreed to pay for (many of –not all, I’m not that much of a pushover) the things we do together in return for him doing nice things for me, like setting up my shoe rack, which he was more than willing to do.  He even helped me decide where to put which shoes.

my new shoe rack, so very organized!

He also helped me with choosing a reasonably priced, yet good water filter for my sink.  This was desperately needed as the water that came out of my faucet was disgusting and smelled/tasted like chlorine and grossness.  When it arrived, he helped me set it up and then drove me to Home Depot to help me pick out an adapter to attach it to the faucet because the one that came with it apparently did not fit on sinks made in the 1980s.  I now have fabulous, non-icky water.

new water filter! (please pardon the dirty dishes)

Isn’t that nice?  He also cooks dinner for me (and cleans up after himself!), goes grocery shopping with me, “helps” with my laundry and household cleaning, and takes out the trash and recycling.  He’s like my own little personal assistant, with benefits.  And for some reason he thinks I’m the most wonderful girl in the world.  Everyone should have one of him.  He is fantastic!

But enough blabbing about the boy.  I have to go to the drugstore to pick up some essentials.  I will leave you with this amusing conversation I had over Christmas dinner in which my cousin Stacy was asking me questions about Matt.  The conversation also involves my brother, Michael, and my sister, Cara.

Stacy: How did you meet?

Me: At a party.

Michael: Oh, those relationships never work out.

Cara: Mom and Dad met at a Christmas party.

Stacy: What was your dad doing at a Christmas party? (fyi my dad is Jewish)

Cara: I don’t know…picking up chicks?

Weekend Setbacks, Successes and Shenanigans

Weekend planning is definitely different now that I am in a relationship.  It can have its benefits, but also involves some compromise that I’m not used to.  Every month, The New Mexico Natural History and Science Museum has a Geoscience collection tour that just so happened to be last Friday.  I really wanted to go but since it was a nice day I agreed with Matt to go for a hike with his two friends Adam and Tina on the Sandia Crest.

I left work early and on the way to Matt’s house I decided to get some gas.  While the gas was pumping, being the idiot I am, I decided to try to shift my keys around in my hands even though I was still holding the gas nozzle, and it flew out and splashed all over me.  Then I said “Fuck!”  really loud and people probably heard me, and I continued to fill my gas tank.  But the damage was done.  I smelled like gasoline so bad.

Since I was already on my way to Matt’s I just went over there and the first thing Matt noticed was the smell.  As it turns out Adam had “something” to do so he and Tina couldn’t go out with us after all, and then for some reason it got really windy all of a sudden so Matt told me to just go home and he’d come over in a little bit to help me do my laundry so my clothes wouldn’t smell.

We were both in a pretty bad mood considering the disappointing turn of events that afternoon and Matt decided that the thing that would make him happy was going to Federico’s (one of his favorite Mexican restaurants) for rolled tacos and enchiladas.  Unfortunately, the girl who took our order was not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer and apparently didn’t understand what we wanted so she only rang us up for one of our orders and we didn’t notice until we were about half way home with the food.  True, perhaps we should have paid more attention to what we got but the moral of the story is… Matt. was. pissed.  He wouldn’t even eat any of the food we got.  I told him we could share but he said he wanted me to have it and made pasta for himself.  He would only eat one of the rolled tacos I didn’t eat because I was full and he didn’t want it to go to waste.

So Friday ended on a poor note but lots more happened this weekend.  To be continued…

Old Year Mishaps and New Year Resolutions

It was a bit of a bumpy ride coming into the New Year. Literally.

We should probably start at the beginning. Saturday before I left for Christmas break. I decided it would be a good idea to eat Taco Sal (yummy!) for lunch that day and macaroni and cheese for dinner. Mind you, weekend lunch and dinner for me are generally around 2 pm and 9 pm, respectively. The next morning, the day I left for the A-2, I really had to poop. So I did. And then went off to do…something else for a while. Later I went back into the bathroom to take a shower and the whole bathroom was FLOODED. Yep. My toilet overflowed. Luckily, Matt was over to drive me to the airport and he knew enough to turn the toilet off (because I sure wouldn’t have thought to do that) and then we proceeded to soak poop water up off the bathroom floor and hallway carpet. It was a really fabulous way to start the vacation.

I was hoping for a nice, easy plane ride to MI, and really for the most part it was. Minus a few annoyances. First of all, Albuquerque has direct flights to pretty much nowhere, so I had to make a connection in Minnesota. As did pretty much everyone else on my flight. The day I left it was very cold in Minnesota so the plane was icy or something and the flight got delayed. When we finally got into Minnesota many people had missed their connecting flights. Fortunately I did not because I had a three hour layover anyway. So I got on the second plane and ended up in the very back of the plane, window side. Except there was no window there because I was right over the engine, which was LOUD. I had to cover my ears and could barely hear my ipod. I could also barely hear anything the pilot or flight attendants said over the intercom. It pretty much just sounded like wahwahwah to me. When we got into Detroit, it was so cold the ground crew could not go outside for more than a couple minutes so we had to wait for half an hour just sitting there waiting for someone to come out and park us. When I finally got out my mom informed me that checked luggage might take up to 2 hours to come in (by the way I absolutely HATE that they make you check luggage because of the whole liquid thing and then charge $15 to check it). Luckily it did not take 2 hours and I went out into the coldness and finally home.

Being home for the holidays was really nice and relaxing.  I spent all of Monday lounging around in my pajamas and it was fabulous.  Tuesday I got my haircut and then my sister and I went out into the craziness to finish up some last minute holiday shopping.  Christmas Eve was a  brunch party at the next door neighbors’ and then church where we listened to Fr. Borier Snorier (as my brother calls him).  Christmas day was lots of fun with family and food.  We tried out this new thing where we played the white elephant gift exchange game, but used gift cards instead of crappy gifts.  It worked out ok.  I ended up with Kohl’s, which was pretty good.  I’m just glad I did not get Tim Horton’s or Lowe’s.  Or Wal Mart.  Blah.  The rest of the time was just more relaxing and hanging out.  All in all, a very good time.

On Monday I flew back home, which took a while due to the non-direct flight thing.  But I made it back and went into work on Tuesday and Wednesday and have been off ever since.  New Year’s Eve was pretty quiet and uneventful.  Matt and I had a nice dinner at Il Vicino, a yummy (though somewhat pricey) Italian restaurant, and then went home to make fun of Ryan Seacrest and watch the ball drop on tv.  So, no wild parties this year, which is ok.  New Year’s day we didn’t do a whole lot but on Friday it was really nice outside so we went to Petroglyph National Monument, which was pretty and cool.  I also saw one of my co-workers there with his wife and twin sons.  So I hope he doesn’t tell my boss on me (hehe   Saturday was pretty nice too so we ate lunch on my balcony and then were going to go for a hike but it got windy and cold all of a sudden so we spent the rest of the afternoon at Matt’s house, where he just got in a new shipment of model airplanes (he loooooves airplanes) so we looked at those for a while and then went back to my place to make dinner Trader Joe’s style.  Sunday we went to the most fantastic Indian buffet which was really really good but did cause me to have a few small regrets in the Borders’ bathroom, where we went next.  We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at books, magazines, etc.

I’m back at work now so that’s really exciting (not really).  I’ve actually taken a few days to write this post– write a little, get distracted, come back, you know how it goes.  So in the meantime I’ve thought of some more things to talk about but at this point it would be going off on a tangent and take for-ev-er so we’ll save that for later.  I’ve just been thinking a lot about my life as it stands now, both personally and professionally and it seems I’ve got a lot of decisions to make within the next couple years.  But those will come later.  For now my new year’s resolution will be to get organized and prioritized in my life in both big and small ways so that I will be in a better position to make some of those big decisions in the future. 

And that’s about it.  If you made it to the end of this post, good for you, you win!