The Frogurt Is Also Cursed

Photos from my trip to Colorado last week are posted here.

Just got home from 7 full days out there. Too brain dead for a long write-up, so here are some bullet points:

• I got a good mountain fix, but the more I see them (particularly the Flatirons), the more I want to see them regularly. I got a couple of nice prints of the Flatirons at an arts co-op on Pearl Street, because I have yet to be satisfied with any of my own shots of them. The best lighting was this morning, and of course the camera was packed and I was on my way to the airport.
  
• On every trip to Pearl Street Mall, I encountered at least one street musician doing a rendition of "Big Yellow Taxi". Not surprised.
  
• Speaking of music, I found a decent Denver radio station I could leave on in the rental car: KIMN "Mix 100". Pretty funny morning show duo ("Dom and Jane"), and a decent mix of older stuff I like and not annoying new stuff. There may have been even better stations, but I didn't search after landing on KIMN.
  
• Speaking of radio, the time- and space-varying electromagnetic interference in the area drove me crazy with cell phone service interruptions. At first I thought it was the interior of the NCAR building my class was in, but I started having intermittent trouble with service all around town. It's not like the mountains were blocking me during most of the trouble times. Then yesterday, I remembered that not only were NCAR and NOAA there, but so is NIST. And I drove by the Table Mountain Field Site and Radio Quiet Zone. That and the presence of NIST could account for cell phone weirdness.
  
• Found a good beginner didgeridoo with a CD of instructional videos from a couple that plays on Pearl Street Mall. lightning_rose introduced me to them when I was out there 2 years ago, but I hadn't decided to pick it up then. Still didn't buy it, though, because I had enough stuff to hassle getting home on my flight today. Price was $30, but I'm also going to look around online to see if I can't find something similar.
  
• One hopefully positive effect of this visit was a less than subtle kick in my own ass about getting back in shape, at least to bike ride. Getting a chance to see how well the community provides for bicyclists and the beautiful areas in which to ride was inspirational. Tomorrow, between catch-up chores, must get on exercise bike.
  
• Last Sunday, I went down to the Colorado Irish Festival in Littleton, to catch a show by Eileen Ivers. She was awesome as usual. Got a CD signed and a pic with her.
  
• Learned more than I expected at the WRF model users Basic Tutorial at NCAR. I'll need to make changes to the software for my Ph.D. work. This may involve working closely with some of the folks at NCAR that I met during class.
  
• Toni and I have talked about Boulder being an area high on our possible relocation list. There's a major NOAA lab and several spin-off weather-related corporations all in the area. Getting on at NCAR is tough, but they do have a program that might just make it easier. To do some of the close-knit work with folks out there, I can try to get a long-term visitation grant (anywhere from 3 to 12 months). Actually, the way it works is that I would have my advisor contact the appropriate NCAR staff person to submit an application.
  
• Just over a week quasi-alone (I was out there for class with my office mate and 80 other attendees) was nice in a way, but I missed Toni more than I expected. Probably because it had been so long since I'd been away for any significant length of time without her. This doesn't mean we couldn't make an extended NCAR visit work. She could come out and even work from my residence there.
  
• I have pics from Boulder (and 2 previous trips, Massachusetts and Minnesota) still to post. I hope to work on those starting tomorrow.

I thought I'd share a bit about Toni's and my recent trip to Minnesota, including photos.

Sunday we drove up to Stillwater, MN, taking the long way through Wisconsin so we could hit Mars Cheese Castle and the Jelly Belly factory gift shop just a little over the border from Illinois. The former was okay, but I think I've been in better cheese shops. At the latter we were hoping to replace my very old Jelly Belly t-shirt, but alas, nothing was in stock that was appealing. We did get some cheese at Mars and some jelly beans at Jelly Belly, though, along with lots of stuff from nearby Pepperidge Farm and Tupperware outlet shops.

We stayed right in Stillwater at the Water Street Inn, since one of the reasons we made the trip was to see Paul & Lorraine (I'd link them, but their domain seems to be offline - they're a quasi-Celtic duo. Lorraine plays fiddle, Paul plays acoustic guitar, and they both sing) play for 9 hours on St. Patrick's Day in Charlie's Pub downstairs and in the Inn ballroom.

Monday, we drove over to south Minneapolis and hit Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore. I'd been there back in the early '90s when visiting a friend who lived and worked in Rochester, MN at the time, and it was pretty much how I remembered: disorganized, dusty, but what an awesome selection. We spent too much money, of course. Afterward, we hit a Borders so I could get an updated map/atlas of the area (my previous ones dated from the last time I was there), and had lunch at Big Bowl, a great Singapore Thai/Chinese fusion place that makes their own awesome ginger ale. And I had salmon pad thai. Then we headed back to Stillwater, hit Valley Bookseller in town, and I took some photos around the (frozen but cracking thanks to 60-degree temps) river's edge. For dinner we went to Freight House, which was yummy.

Tuesday we headed back over to south Minneapolis, this time to hit DreamHaven Books, Neil Gaiman's favorite local bookstore. They didn't open until Noon, so we took our time, also looking for a sign we saw Monday along the way. A tool renter's shop was advertising (that they) "Dump Bodies". I'm tempted to submit that to Fail Blog. :-) Next, we stopped at Uncle Hugo's again and got more stuff there (of course). Then we went to DreamHaven. They had a different variety than Uncle Hugo's, were a lot cleaner, and seemed to venture more into the comics market. They had the obligatory Gaiman shrine rack in the middle of the store, where I picked up a few things we didn't have, and it was difficult not to get signed copies. After shopping trip number two, we went back to the Inn in Stillwater where Toni napped for a little while, and then we headed downstairs to the concert at Charlie's Pub. Paul & Lorraine played there from 3:00pm until 5:30pm, then relocated to the Inn ballroom where they continued from 6:00pm to Midnight.

The concert was a lot of fun. We met several folks Toni had been getting to know online through Lorraine's blog ("Fiends"). She and Paul are great musicians and know how to entertain a crowd. And IMHO, Lorraine could give Eileen Ivers a run for her money on the fiddle. Toni and I stayed until Midnight CDT, which was way past my usual bedtime. :-) Drove home brain dead yesterday, around Chicago at rush hour (blech), getting back about 7:30pm.

Photos are here.

Traditional logic (and likely my advisor) says I shouldn't have gone since I'm working on my M.S. thesis for hopeful defense in late April, but Toni convinced me, and I'm very glad. I needed a break, and I don't think I'm all that behind in my school work because of it, and Toni and I hadn't been anywhere together on a longer trip since I think before I went back to school.

Came back to work/school today. First time making the drive from the new place.

Slept an hour later, got here at the same time I did when coming from 75 miles away, even diverting for breakfast and caffeine.

IIRC, it's the first time I've lived and worked somewhere that the combination resulted in a commute in the direction of the sun. I think I'll manage. :-)

Still have a metric frak-ton of unpacking and arranging to do at the new place, and cleaning and picking up a few things at the old, but we'll get there.

Note to self: Look up the Purdue home football schedule and put it on the calendar, so we know when to avoid going near campus. [Edit: 2008-2009 Purdue Football Schedule]

Well, ICCP 2008 is now over. Tomorrow I have to be in the lobby by 7:15am for a long bus ride to Chichen Itza. I have no idea how long the tour is supposed to be or what time it's expected to get back to my hotel.

I noticed something this week that my advisor had talked about before, that I'm sure is present in any field. There's an Old Guard that runs the ICCP (International Commission on Clouds and Precipitation, a division of some other body which is itself a division of the World Meteorological Organization, which in itself is a United Nations body) - a handful of elderly cloud physicists who, with the exception of the committee president, have been pretty grumpy during presentation question and answer periods all week. Despite their pressing of the younger crowds to keep open minds, they have built up a lot of cynicism with age. There is a lot of age striation in the field as well - apart from the Old Guard, there are people around my and my advisor's age, and then post-docs and grad students in their 20s like my lab mate.

On the actual ICCP sits the Old Guard and a just couple of people in my age group who were voted on at the last meeting four years ago in Bologna. Apparently there was another opening that they voted on in private last night, and my advisor is now on the ICCP. Considering how she got grilled after her talk Tuesday morning, by some of the Old Guard, one of whom flat out told her he didn't like her modeling framework at all and she should do something else, I think that's pretty cool.

Loud Cellphone Users


ION, I was highly amused while checking in for tomorrow morning's flights at Delta's web site, when I clicked on a link to go to a TSA page to verify the liquids in carry-ons regulations, and IE returned this:

This website does not have a valid security certificate.

We got little over a dusting at home. About the same up here at school, less in-between.

Took the wagon just in case I hit any rough spots. It didn't take me any longer actually to drive to school, but it did take longer to get here this morning, because I stopped at two different exits on I-65 to scrape off my windshield and clean the wiper blades. The defroster on full-blast couldn't keep up with the light freezing rain. It didn't seem to be making the roads bad, but it was hell on the windshield.

"They" are still saying 1-2 more inches up here in the Lafayette area, at least, throughout today. We'll see...

Check out my recent Boulder trip galleries.

Anyone want to see me for a long weekend this summer?

Le Tour de France opens with the Prologue and Stage 1 in London and Kent this year.

Cool. Can't afford to go watch any of it in person, though. And I can just imagine the crowds, anyway.