We got a new, surprise roommate. That is, Roommate 1's friend has been hanging around our house and staying in our extra room for weeks at a time, and finally Roommate 1 just announced that he had already given up his old lease and was going to live with us from now on. Not like, "Would you guys be ok with my random friend living with us for an unspecified amount of time?" Just "my friend is now living with us. You get some money off your rent, isn't that great?" She's on the lease and we're not, which is I guess what makes her think she can just do things like that.

And what about back rent from the half of May that he lived with us? What about June's rent, which we already paid? [We're going to apparently get money back from June. Thank you, your excellency.]

Roommate 2: "Hey Roommate 1, shouldn't this utility bill you sent out go to all five of us now?"

Roommate 1: "Oh, that bill isn't that much, we can just split it between the four of us, it's not a big deal."

........?????????

Roomate 3: "But I have some company coming in June that was going to stay in that room."
Roommate 1: "They can just stay in your room."
Roommate 3: "In my double bed?"

Me: "But I have company coming in July which I already told you about who are supposed to stay in that room."
Roommate 1: "Oh, they can just stay in your room."
Me: "Both of them? In my single bed?"
Roommate 1: "Ok, whatever, they can sleep on the couch."
Me: "So... whose bathroom is he going to use? [Roommates 1 & 2 each have their own bathrooms, and roommate 3 & I share one, but the guest room is right next to ours.]"
Roommate 1: "I really think that he should use whatever bathroom is most convenient for him, you know?"



I would have strangled someone by now but for the fact that her friend is pretty nice, and his presence stops everyone from strangling each other, which is an unexpected and welcome change to the normal house dynamic.

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On Monday I'm supposed to leave for a trip to Idaho, but I'm not really ready. I was supposed to spend all week (and last week) churning through data and making a poster about it.... but.... yah know... the data isn't as great as I had hoped. It requires a lot more math to make it look nice, and it may never look nice, even after all the math. That's the thing about the Real World. It doesn't always conform to the Theoretical Predictions. That's fine, but it's not really fine when I only have one night to make a poster.

I'm going to Boise, Idaho, which sounds kind of boring, but will actually be really cool. This is because we're going to a dune field on a field trip half-way through the meeting, and because after the meeting I'm going to Craters of the Moon National Park, which most people haven't heard of, but which is totally awesome. Especially if you like volcanoes, which I totally do. From there I'm going to drive to Yellowstone National Park, which I've never visited before. The world's largest volcanic caldera, and I've never visited it. Me. A Volcanologist. Ridiculous. I'm pretty excited about that. But I haven't really had time to think about it much because I've been running around like a madwoman doing other things. And procrastinating on this data analysis.

Like I'm doing right now.

Even though it is 10 pm, and this needs to be done tomorrow so that I can print it out at work before everything closes for the weekend.

All right, all right. I'll get to the poster. Fine. Please write some entries to entertain me in the middle of the night tonight. I'm looking at you, Malaysian Nutangers. ;)

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We're trekking through the lava fields, this time at night. It's never a good idea to trek through a lava field, especially at night, but it took us hours longer than expected to set up my boundary layer wind experiment (christened "Sticky"), and by the time the 7-m mast was stable and the anemometers were happily whirring away, measuring the wind speed, the purple glow of twilight had settled across the volcano. We would never have attempted to navigate an a'a flow in the dark-- an a'a flow is like a field of razor-sharp glass shards unstably stacked on one another for hundreds of yards. This was an old tumuli field, which formed when a ropey plain of nearly cool lava was injected with fresh lava, inflating the surface and ultimately bursting through at regular junctures to make a stack like an out-of-control tube of toothpaste. This surface was old-- it had plants growing out of it and the surface was brown with oxidation. Any sharp shards that had been there at the beginning had been worn away with time and sulfuric acid. Still, each tumulus was taller than a man, and there were many hundreds between us and the parking lot, an hour's hike away. Instead of heading for the trail, we cut straight from the site of the anemometer mast towards our destination. We couldn't see the parking lot from here. It was just rolling hills covered with towering tumuli, like a desert of frozen sand dunes. We were walking between two enormous fault scarps, where the volcano had strained and buckled against its own skin and torn itself apart. It meant that we couldn't go too far off course. The moon rose overhead, round and full, bathing the terrain with a bright white light. We turned off our flashlights. The summit of the volcano glowed orange on the horizon, billowing smoke and sulfur dioxide. During the day it was a smoke signal, during the night a pillar of fire. The regular water clouds started out billowy at the top but had long, wispy tails like stretched cotton. The winds of the Pacific must be very strong up there tonight.
The stars came out. Despite the full moon they littered the sky, and the Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon. In moments like these it really hit you that you were in the middle of nowhere, all alone on a tiny island surrounded by the vast Pacific Ocean. I skitter-stepped to avoid stepping on something on the ground. I had been stepping on rocks for going on 10 hours, but this one was different. I had recognized the shape in an instant, even in the dark. It was a tiny bomb.

During World War II, they decided that they had to practice bombing basaltic islands as a way to get ready for bombing the Japanese. They had turned this part of the main island of Hawaii into a bombing range, and they littered the volcano with ordnance. Not all of the bombs had exploded on impact, however, and to this day little unexploded bombs lie scattered across the National Park. Most of them are probably duds, but you never know. We had already found three or four and dutifully flagged them and geotagged them so that the park could come and dispose of them safely.

It may be a general rule that the danger that you find is seldom the danger you expect.

We no longer take shortcuts in the dark.

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I'm not really sure how I end up on Indian Animal Care Websites, but when I do:


Manu
December 13, 2013
I have small cow in my home one year old, we take full care of her, and u can say it is one of our family member, but one of neighbour does not like it, and always threatens / argues with me regarding cow.
Pls tell me regarding laws how can I keep my cow in home, we are very serious regarding this matter.

Reply
"Jaagruti"
December 13, 2013
Sir, please read what we have written above in this article, it can be used to file complaint against neighbour harassing anyone for any animal one is looking after..

Reply
Manu R Dwivedi. 09998219401
December 13, 2013
Thanks for the quick response, but only one doubt small cow can be kept in residential area in home. Bunglows etc.

"Jaagruti"
December 13, 2013
Sir, if you have a bungalow and it is spacious enough then we don�t see a problem to it..we know people who stay in Bungalows in Civil lines area of Delhi who keep cows at home for non commercial reasons.

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So I got some puppies. My roommate found them on the side of the road and now they are part of our family. Mine is a little boy named Juan Pablo. The other one is a girl and doesn't have a name yet. My roommate has been gone for the last week and a half in Spain so I've been a single dog mom to twins, and let me tell you, it is no piece of cake. It is actually all-consuming. My roommate just got back on Monday, so I turned the full force of my attention to the work that I had been neglecting and stayed at work until past midnight. Today was equally filled with activity, followed by a meeting for the new book club that I'd been invited to, and for which I definitely hadn't read the book. Oops. I got by by having read a magazine article about the book and having read a similar book. Whew. One of the most exciting things that happened today was that I got a key to a laboratory. It belongs to one of my bosses, but he hasn't used it in a while so it's all dusty. I think I'll be the only one in there..... my own secret laboratory!!!

The other exciting thing is that I went to Jiffy Lube on Saturday for a long overdue oil change, and I don't know what they put in there, but the car has roared to life like they turned the clock back on it by ten years. Today I got to drive it around on the highway and the acceleration was positively exhilarating. Tomorrow I have a second date with an ex - Marine movie producer [??], and then Friday morning I'm leaving with Juan Pablo and a bunch of JPL engineers to spend Easter weekend in Death Valley. (But I will fear no evil.) Busy. Times.

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At last I will submit my sulfur paper tomorrow. The culmination of three years of toil and headaches. Within a few months it will likely return from review with fresh headaches.

My thinking has evolved a lot in the three years that I've been writing this paper-- I was just reading through my years of lab notes and documentation and it's crazy to remember all of the stages of this stupid paper, just for the final product of a few figures and some 10 pages of text. I MADE SO MANY GRAPHS THAT NO ONE WILL EVER SEE.

My final conclusion is that early Mars was probably covered in rivers of blood:



And by blood I mean sulfuric acid.


[Which is worse [???] Blood < Brimstone?]

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I've been making a big effort to always fly United. You know, finally get some brand loyalty. Rack up some miles.

I flew United to Baltimore.
I flew United to Argentina, to my great annoyance.
I flew Air Canada to France, but I sneakily got a ticket that was cross-booked with United, so I could get miles without actually having to fly on their airline.

Today, as I prepared for yet another adventure on United, I wondered how many miles I'd gotten so far. And whether or not they were being counted, because I couldn't find my frequent flyer number on the itinerary.

Turns out I don't have a frequent flyer number. Nope. I never joined the program. I joined every OTHER airline program, including Southwest, Delta, United Airlines, etc., but never United (HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?). On every itinerary my secretary wrote all of my frequent flyer numbers (for other companies). I had written on there that my preference was to fly on United..... I wonder if she ever wondered why I preferred to fly the ONLY AIRLINE FOR WHICH I DID NOT HAVE MILES!



At least this next trip (to Houston) will give me some miles. I asked my secretary to make the reservations so that I got in some time before noon on Saturday. I didn't look at my itinerary until now, and hey--- I'm getting in at 6:03 pm! Great! I guess I won't have to go to that pesky meeting that went from 12-6pm which was the entire reason that I wanted to FLY IN ON SATURDAY. At least I can take my dog to get his shots at 10:30 am, right? NOPE. My flight leaves at 12:45, which means that I have to leave for the airport at 10:30 am.

So that I can arrive in Houston at 6:03 pm.
So that I can hang around in the hotel doing nothing.

#firstworldproblems

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I've been getting in trouble in almost every aspect of my life this week. I accidentally got in fights with two of my three roommates. I got called on the carpet by both of my head bosses for the two different programs I work for. I teetered on the brink of pissing off two girls that I had really hoped to make my friends. I didn't do any of these things on purpose, but it meant that I spent most of the week writing long explanatory emails, having awkward conversations, and putting out fires left and right. I gave up 9gag for Lent, and I gave up Facebook for the most part, allowing myself about a minute or two on Facebook a day. This week that felt like a mistake, since Facebook always gives me good news and my email and texts were just a continuous source of bad news. The office: bad vibes. My other office: bad vibes. My home: really bad vibes. I just wanted to drive to a random part of town and sit on a corner and try to dredge up some positive energy, but I was too busy running around trying to fix all of the messes I had somehow made. This week was especially bad, but it seems like ever since I started working here I've been in trouble more times than I've been out of trouble, just from sheer inexperience and ignorance about the way things are supposed to be done.

At last, today, I gave a talk about ancient Mars to some engineers.

And it went... well. Really well. I love love love talking about Mars.
And the girls that I wanted as friends got excited about it, too.
And my boss from that part of my life realized that that I wasn't trying to do anything bad and gave me his support.


And I got some advice.

Senior Engineer Guy: Man... tough week.
Me: Yeah. Really tough.
Senior Engineer Guy: What's been tough about your week?
Me: Well, I'm kind of new here, and it seems like I learn about every rule that exists by running afoul of it.
Senior Engineer Guy: Well, if I can offer you one piece of wise advice.... don't stop doing things. Even if everything you do gets you in trouble with the rules. Never stop doing things.


Well, I guess I'm going to go do some more things.

Here's to hoping I don't get in more trouble. :S

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