Accountable Infinity However (Letters to Myself)
22 ene 2009
i've been having issues getting internet lately, so even though i got to walk past the building that TWIS is broadcast from, i haven't been able to listen to it in a month.
Which is dire for me.
KVMR out of Nevada City is almost a replacement, though for some reason i can only get in in my car--not at work and not at the hotel, but everywhere else i've driven in between. Grr, mountains, grr. ¶ 14:32 0 comments
Which is dire for me.
KVMR out of Nevada City is almost a replacement, though for some reason i can only get in in my car--not at work and not at the hotel, but everywhere else i've driven in between. Grr, mountains, grr. ¶ 14:32 0 comments
21 ene 2009
18 ene 2009
halo
i'm near Colusa, CA, right now, living at a Casino (which is bizarre: it sounds like glitter but everyone is a zombie) and working gas wells on the foothills of the smallest mountain range in the world (Sutter Buttes). i'm liking this area quite a lot so far--it's north of Sacramento, and is wonderful--it
has drive-through coffee stands like the pacific northwest, friendly
locals like the midwest, and nice weather like California should
have. Everyone else has had natural disasters in my absense--flooding in Bellingham, extreme cold in Wisconsin, and i'm walking around in short sleeves.
i'm beginning to think i only have stuff to write about when everything sucks. That's not good, but that's only thing i have to complain about.
zero it to three ¶ 10:52 0 comments
i'm near Colusa, CA, right now, living at a Casino (which is bizarre: it sounds like glitter but everyone is a zombie) and working gas wells on the foothills of the smallest mountain range in the world (Sutter Buttes). i'm liking this area quite a lot so far--it's north of Sacramento, and is wonderful--it
has drive-through coffee stands like the pacific northwest, friendly
locals like the midwest, and nice weather like California should
have. Everyone else has had natural disasters in my absense--flooding in Bellingham, extreme cold in Wisconsin, and i'm walking around in short sleeves.
i'm beginning to think i only have stuff to write about when everything sucks. That's not good, but that's only thing i have to complain about.
zero it to three ¶ 10:52 0 comments
5 ene 2009
100 (geologic) things meme
A meme from the the geoblogosphere.
(Things I've done are in bold; my comments are in italics.)
1. See an erupting volcano
2. See a glacier Mt. Baker! from afar, yes, but i'll get closer next time i'm up there!
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland Yellowstone!!
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta.
(Though i must mention i've touched a core from the type locality, so that has to at least 1/3 count, yes?)
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage.
Chippewa River flood 1993! Though not from a particularly safe distance...
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia)
i've been to Carlsbad, Mammoth, and several in WI, including Crystal Cave
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile.
8. Explore a subsurface mine. Missouri! Geo 515!
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus (if on a budget, try the Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains of California).
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger (there's some anorthosite in southern California too).
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw. - Lots of these in various places out West.
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere.
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada.
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland.
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate i feel quite well-traveled now
16. A ginkgo tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic.
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites, while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones) OMFG have i?! i think we all know that seeing them alive at Lee Stocking Island Bahamas is pretty much my favorite geo story ever; some quarry in WI for dead ones!
18. A field of glacial erratics i am from Wisconsin.
19. A caldera Yellowstone!
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high
21. A fjord
22. A recently formed fault scarp San Andreas
23. A megabreccia Kilbourn Hole
24. An actively accreting river delta
25. A natural bridge in undergrad, and it's going to bother me all day that i don't remember precisely where
26. A large sinkhole
27. A glacial outwash plain again, from Wisconsin
28. A sea stack this one is debatable... are they still sea stacks after the sea that formed them is gone?
29. A house-sized glacial erratic
30. An underground lake or river
31. The continental divide totally checked a map before i headed West the first time for this one
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals both at the museum back in the day and at my job!
33. Petrified trees Petrified Forest National Park--and Gail's backyard!
34. Lava tubes somewhere in New Mexico i even slept in one!! (probably my other favorite geo story of all time!)
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. i've been there, but not actually hiked too much... next time!
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible (and it is quite BIG)
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe. accidentally on camping trip extradinaire with the father!
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing
45. The Alps.
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley - 11,330 feet below.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders. my next travel goal!!
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck Phil had to sweet talk someone to get us that day there and everything!
52. Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism. grrrr, not yet, uggggggggggg
55. The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn".
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington way to briefly to really count
66. Bryce Canyon
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone RGE may have thought about pushing me into it that day i was so excited
68. Monument Valley
69. The San Andreas fault at Carrizo Plain!!
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
72. The Pyrennees Mountains
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches)
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0.
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil) across the river from my sister's house even!
85. Find gold, however small the flake
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall
88. Experience a sandstorm
89. See a tsunami
90. Witness a total solar eclipse
91. Witness a tornado firsthand
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights.
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century Hale-Bopp, 1997, dad drove us out of town to see it
96. See a lunar eclipse
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope
98. Experience a hurricane
99. See noctilucent clouds
100. See the green flash
33/100... that's really good considering i'm not all that old, and several of the things on the list are on continents i've not been to. And it gives a travel list!
--------------------------------------------------------
In the real news department, i'm currently in Eau Claire: i got to come home for Christmas! Things have been bizarre and wonderful in many, many ways, and i've seen a lot of my friends and family (probably too much of some family, but that's okay, the father-person in question did buy me a Nuvi so i can geocache without him, thus perfecting my vagabond life).
Let's see... RGE & i threw a New Year's party, attended by Ratty, Jason, Sa'ivy, her friend from Portland, RGE, her boy Dan, Donna, her boy Tom, Bethany, Kirk, and Eric. i also saw Heidi twice while our time her overlapped, and have had a few completely random impromtu parties and such. RGE had the last two weeks off from work, so we've had a lot time to hang out (and mostly play Sims). i also drove to the cities 3 times in 4 days, a feat i was quite proud of last week... and if i'm still here Friday, i may be doing that whole she'bang again (EC needs a more fully functional airport, yo!). A lot of my time here has been discussing Ratty/Jason's wedding plans (and shopping for decorations!) and a little on Megan/Arian's wedding plans, which are both really exciting and probably represent the next couple of times i'll be home for any length of time like this.
i'll hopefully know tomorrow when i'm heading back to CA (soon, yes, but when??) and where exactly i'm going next (Salton Sea! pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!) As for now, how did that meme take an hour to do? SLEEP!
emergency skeletons! ¶ 00:30 0 comments
A meme from the the geoblogosphere.
(Things I've done are in bold; my comments are in italics.)
1. See an erupting volcano
2. See a glacier Mt. Baker! from afar, yes, but i'll get closer next time i'm up there!
3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland Yellowstone!!
4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley near Drumheller, Alberta.
(Though i must mention i've touched a core from the type locality, so that has to at least 1/3 count, yes?)
5. Observe (from a safe distance) a river whose discharge is above bankful stage.
Chippewa River flood 1993! Though not from a particularly safe distance...
6. Explore a limestone cave. Try Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, Lehman Caves in Great Basin National Park, or the caves of Kentucky or TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia)
i've been to Carlsbad, Mammoth, and several in WI, including Crystal Cave
7. Tour an open pit mine, such as those in Butte, Montana, Bingham Canyon, Utah, Summitville, Colorado, Globe or Morenci, Arizona, or Chuquicamata, Chile.
8. Explore a subsurface mine. Missouri! Geo 515!
9. See an ophiolite, such as the ophiolite complex in Oman or the Troodos complex on the Island Cyprus (if on a budget, try the Coast Ranges or Klamath Mountains of California).
10. An anorthosite complex, such as those in Labrador, the Adirondacks, and Niger (there's some anorthosite in southern California too).
11. A slot canyon. Many of these amazing canyons are less than 3 feet wide and over 100 feet deep. They reside on the Colorado Plateau. Among the best are Antelope Canyon, Brimstone Canyon, Spooky Gulch and the Round Valley Draw. - Lots of these in various places out West.
12. Varves, whether you see the type section in Sweden or examples elsewhere.
13. An exfoliation dome, such as those in the Sierra Nevada.
14. A layered igneous intrusion, such as the Stillwater complex in Montana or the Skaergaard Complex in Eastern Greenland.
15. Coastlines along the leading and trailing edge of a tectonic plate i feel quite well-traveled now
16. A ginkgo tree, which is the lone survivor of an ancient group of softwoods that covered much of the Northern Hemisphere in the Mesozoic.
17. Living and fossilized stromatolites (Glacier National Park is a great place to see fossil stromatolites, while Shark Bay in Australia is the place to see living ones) OMFG have i?! i think we all know that seeing them alive at Lee Stocking Island Bahamas is pretty much my favorite geo story ever; some quarry in WI for dead ones!
18. A field of glacial erratics i am from Wisconsin.
19. A caldera Yellowstone!
20. A sand dune more than 200 feet high
21. A fjord
22. A recently formed fault scarp San Andreas
23. A megabreccia Kilbourn Hole
24. An actively accreting river delta
25. A natural bridge in undergrad, and it's going to bother me all day that i don't remember precisely where
26. A large sinkhole
27. A glacial outwash plain again, from Wisconsin
28. A sea stack this one is debatable... are they still sea stacks after the sea that formed them is gone?
29. A house-sized glacial erratic
30. An underground lake or river
31. The continental divide totally checked a map before i headed West the first time for this one
32. Fluorescent and phosphorescent minerals both at the museum back in the day and at my job!
33. Petrified trees Petrified Forest National Park--and Gail's backyard!
34. Lava tubes somewhere in New Mexico i even slept in one!! (probably my other favorite geo story of all time!)
35. The Grand Canyon. All the way down. And back. i've been there, but not actually hiked too much... next time!
36. Meteor Crater, Arizona, also known as the Barringer Crater, to see an impact crater on a scale that is comprehensible (and it is quite BIG)
37. The Great Barrier Reef, northeastern Australia, to see the largest coral reef in the world.
38. The Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see the highest tides in the world (up to 16m)
39. The Waterpocket Fold, Utah, to see well exposed folds on a massive scale.
40. The Banded Iron Formation, Michigan, to better appreciate the air you breathe. accidentally on camping trip extradinaire with the father!
41. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
42. Lake Baikal, Siberia, to see the deepest lake in the world (1,620 m) with 20 percent of the Earth's fresh water.
43. Ayers Rock (known now by the Aboriginal name of Uluru), Australia. This inselberg of nearly vertical Precambrian strata is about 2.5 kilometers long and more than 350 meters high
44. Devil's Tower, northeastern Wyoming, to see a classic example of columnar jointing
45. The Alps.
46. Telescope Peak, in Death Valley National Park. From this spectacular summit you can look down onto the floor of Death Valley - 11,330 feet below.
47. The Li River, China, to see the fantastic tower karst that appears in much Chinese art
48. The Dalmation Coast of Croatia, to see the original Karst.
49. The Gorge of Bhagirathi, one of the sacred headwaters of the Ganges, in the Indian Himalayas, where the river flows from an ice tunnel beneath the Gangatori Glacier into a deep gorge.
50. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River, Utah, an impressive series of entrenched meanders. my next travel goal!!
51. Shiprock, New Mexico, to see a large volcanic neck Phil had to sweet talk someone to get us that day there and everything!
52. Land's End, Cornwall, Great Britain, for fractured granites that have feldspar crystals bigger than your fist.
53. Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Argentina, to see the Straights of Magellan and the southernmost tip of South America.
54. Mount St. Helens, Washington, to see the results of recent explosive volcanism. grrrr, not yet, uggggggggggg
55. The Giant's Causeway and the Antrim Plateau, Northern Ireland, to see polygonally fractured basaltic flows.
56. The Great Rift Valley in Africa.
57. The Matterhorn, along the Swiss/Italian border, to see the classic "horn".
58. The Carolina Bays, along the Carolinian and Georgian coastal plain
59. The Mima Mounds near Olympia, Washington
60. Siccar Point, Berwickshire, Scotland, where James Hutton (the "father" of modern geology) observed the classic unconformity
61. The moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley
62. Yosemite Valley
63. Landscape Arch (or Delicate Arch) in Utah
64. The Burgess Shale in British Columbia
65. The Channeled Scablands of central Washington way to briefly to really count
66. Bryce Canyon
67. Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone RGE may have thought about pushing me into it that day i was so excited
68. Monument Valley
69. The San Andreas fault at Carrizo Plain!!
70. The dinosaur footprints in La Rioja, Spain
71. The volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands
72. The Pyrennees Mountains
73. The Lime Caves at Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand
74. Denali (an orogeny in progress)
75. A catastrophic mass wasting event
76. The giant crossbeds visible at Zion National Park
77. The black sand beaches in Hawaii (or the green sand-olivine beaches)
78. Barton Springs in Texas
79. Hells Canyon in Idaho
80. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado
81. The Tunguska Impact site in Siberia
82. Feel an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5.0.
83. Find dinosaur footprints in situ
84. Find a trilobite (or a dinosaur bone or any other fossil) across the river from my sister's house even!
85. Find gold, however small the flake
86. Find a meteorite fragment
87. Experience a volcanic ashfall
88. Experience a sandstorm
89. See a tsunami
90. Witness a total solar eclipse
91. Witness a tornado firsthand
92. Witness a meteor storm, a term used to describe a particularly intense (1000+ per minute) meteor shower
93. View Saturn and its moons through a respectable telescope.
94. See the Aurora borealis, otherwise known as the northern lights.
95. View a great naked-eye comet, an opportunity which occurs only a few times per century Hale-Bopp, 1997, dad drove us out of town to see it
96. See a lunar eclipse
97. View a distant galaxy through a large telescope
98. Experience a hurricane
99. See noctilucent clouds
100. See the green flash
33/100... that's really good considering i'm not all that old, and several of the things on the list are on continents i've not been to. And it gives a travel list!
--------------------------------------------------------
In the real news department, i'm currently in Eau Claire: i got to come home for Christmas! Things have been bizarre and wonderful in many, many ways, and i've seen a lot of my friends and family (probably too much of some family, but that's okay, the father-person in question did buy me a Nuvi so i can geocache without him, thus perfecting my vagabond life).
Let's see... RGE & i threw a New Year's party, attended by Ratty, Jason, Sa'ivy, her friend from Portland, RGE, her boy Dan, Donna, her boy Tom, Bethany, Kirk, and Eric. i also saw Heidi twice while our time her overlapped, and have had a few completely random impromtu parties and such. RGE had the last two weeks off from work, so we've had a lot time to hang out (and mostly play Sims). i also drove to the cities 3 times in 4 days, a feat i was quite proud of last week... and if i'm still here Friday, i may be doing that whole she'bang again (EC needs a more fully functional airport, yo!). A lot of my time here has been discussing Ratty/Jason's wedding plans (and shopping for decorations!) and a little on Megan/Arian's wedding plans, which are both really exciting and probably represent the next couple of times i'll be home for any length of time like this.
i'll hopefully know tomorrow when i'm heading back to CA (soon, yes, but when??) and where exactly i'm going next (Salton Sea! pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!) As for now, how did that meme take an hour to do? SLEEP!
emergency skeletons! ¶ 00:30 0 comments
