Well pals, I just spent a lot of money on an airplane ticket to China. After I clicked the button, I lay on my floor, thinking, "That was a lot of money I just spent," and hoping that I picked the correct dates since my ticket is non-refundable. It should be a great time, and I'll get to finally see some yardangs in person, which is obviously a life-long dream. Ever since I figured out what yardangs were, of course. So more like a 1/4th of a life's dream.

My summer is shaping up to be pretty crazy:

May 1st-29th: Field work in Hawaii, finish writing novel
May 30th-31st: Climb Mount Quandary
June 1st-30th: Explore Colorado/New Mexico, finish writing grants, hang out w/the fam, climb some more mountains
July 8th-13th: Road Trip across the American West from Pasadena to Denver
July 13th-19th: Mars 8 Conference, Pasadena
July 19th-August 3: China
August 4th-August 6th: Drive back across the American West
August 9th-August 23rd: Ocean City, Maryland
September 1: Start job????

The hardest part is keeping it all organized.
And knowing what to pack.

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I made a reservation in a Chinese hotel.

Now I just need to finish my abstract and conference registration, and buy my ticket to China. And get my Chinese visa, of course. All before July 19th, when I get on a plane at LAX and fly off to the vast western deserts of China!

The Chinese hotel is a four star hotel, but it only costs 35 USD a night. For those kind of prices, I could stay for a while!

Yardang National Park, here I come:

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I just got a ticket to Hawaii.

I'm going to be there for the entire month of May, studying volcanoes and sand dunes and hanging out. My mind is pretty much blown.

Geology rocks.

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This email from my Russian friend Victor to all of the people in our former office in Paris (who were Spanish, Catalan, Chilean, Italian, French, and Chinese) was too hilarious not to share here:

Hi! �Hola! Ciao! Salut! 你好! Valencia!

How you doing and where are you now? I hope everything is fine with you!
Ana�s, how is your PhD?

My country is slowly increasing, but not fast enough! Anyway I suggest to everybody start training to drink vodka and play balalaika and learning all these crazy Russian songs.
Me and my comrades will go to Vienna to check whether Austria is ready to join us.
I'll be there from 26 April to 3 May. Are any of you going to go on EGU?

I miss you all, my friends!
Victor

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I found some pretty sweet wind models online. You download them and then you can pick where you are in the world and they'll give you high resolution terrain topography, roughness constants, and general regional boundary winds to feed into your model. Microscale (10s of meters) wind modeling is big these days because everyone wants to be able to site their wind turbines. The models have their highest resolution in Europe, of course, because all of those Danish people just go nuts over a good wind turbine. I just want a microscale wind model so that I can characterize wind in Beacon Valley, the coldest and driest of the Antarctic Dry Valleys. Being there is practically like being on Mars.



Who are we kidding-- I want to site a wind turbine just as much as the rest of them.

I love studying wind over complex surfaces. I did a project one time where we had to model wind flowing around some buildings in a square-- we were supposed to make a fountain whose flux was linked with the reading from an anemometer (wind measurement device) on a nearby rooftop so that the fountain could be large and spectacular when the wind was low, and small and conservative when the wind was high, to keep the people in the square from getting wet. It required us to model how the wind would change between the rooftop of the building and the fountain. It was pretty complicated: nature abhors a square. We had an econ major in our group who decided to mathematically model the mental trade-off that the people in the square would make, assuming that they would assent to a certain statistical amount of getting wet in return for a more spectacular fountain. In practice I think I would have just linked the anemometer readings with the fountain regulation device using a simple conversion, and then fiddled with it for a while until it seemed to work in a satisfactory way.

That's why theorists just don't get along with experimentalists.

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My Dear Nephew Jacob,

To begin your life with the beginning of your life, I record that you were born on a Tuesday, sometime after seven o'clock at night.

That day I was preparing an application for post-doc in Germany. I had to print out numerous copies of papers and lists, attach them all with a binder clip, and send them physically in an envelope to the country of Germany. This will seem amusingly archaic to you, and indeed, even in the year 2014 it is something which is almost never done anymore. That day I was also arranging to renew my passport, as I am intending to travel to China in July. The woman told me in the Walgreens that I was permitted to smile, but not with my teeth. Having practiced only two possible picture-taking modes (smiling and unsmiling) and having never truly smiled without my teeth, the expression upon my face in the picture is a bit strange and confused. It is the last picture taken of me before I became an aunt. By the time I will have to replace it, you will be ten years old.

That day I made two large batches of brownies for your grandmother, who, of course, I had never thought of as a grandmother before that day. They are the most delicious brownies in the world, Jacob, and you will surely taste them by and by when you have the requisite teeth required to eat them. She needed them for work, and she wasn't sure she would have time to make them later, because we had no idea how long it would take for you to make your way into the world. Grandpa and Grandma were on tenterhooks all day, waiting for you, worrying about their baby who is your mother, hoping at any moment to hear that you were born and that you were healthy and alive.

Aunt Katherine and I weren't worried about you or your mother at all. This was probably more due to our ignorance of the whole process than our steely calm dispositions. I was mostly returning emails and learning to play "The Entertainer" on the piano. You should ask me if I still know how to play it and Grandpa and I will teach you how. You should convince your mother to relearn how to play the "Tarantella" which we all loved to hear her play when she was a child.

Aunt Katherine was at work at the library in Castle Rock. Grandma was working at the library in Highlands Ranch, where she the manager. Grandpa was hard at work at the warehouse, worrying about his baby-girl. He went out to buy the newspaper so that we would know what was going on in the world when you were born. Last I heard, Russia was invading Ukraine. I was at home, being unemployed. You kindly stayed in your mother's womb for long enough for me to get back from my job interview in California.

At last we got the call that you were getting serious about joining us in the world (around 3 pm). Grandma couldn't take it anymore, and dashed off to Fort Collins. I went to the post office to mail the aforementioned post-doc and passport applications, and chatted with the man at the counter who had also been in California last week. He had been at the horse track, and all he could talk about was one famous horse-trainer that I didn't know. I mentioned to him (as I had been mentioning to everyone) that my nephew was being born that day, but all he cared to talk about was the horsetrack, so I gave him my packages and bid him farewell. It was a beautiful day for errands.

We had to wait until well after five for Aunt Katherine to get home from work so that we could go up and join Grandma in the waiting room. Grandpa was as worried as could be, but I was placidly content to play The Entertainer, pay my last French cell phone bill, and join the International Society for Aeolian Research. Membership comes with a magazine, and if you wish to be a member, I will certainly sponsor you, my dear nephew. If you should know anything it about the world, it should be that Aeolian Science is one of the most interesting sciences that exists.

At last Aunt Katherine arrived home and was surprised to learn that we were driving immediately up to Fort Collins. She rather thought that we would wait a while and come to see you on the weekend when you'd had several days to process the world on your own. But NAY! Up we went. By this time it had begun raining, and the closer we got to Fort Collins, the more it rained. We stopped at McDonald's where a regular cheeseburger costs $1.50 and most of the other burgers cost $1. It's almost St. Patrick's day, so they have a special mint shake for sale, which apparently delicious but over 600 calories. We tried to guess what your name would be. We guessed Jacob. Your mother has always wanted to call you Jacob, since before you even started to think about existing. You weren't named Jacob Christopher-- too bad, because we could have called you JC, just like your mother's favorite member of the boyband NSYNC. Grandpa said that if your name was Jacob he would call you Big Jake, after the movie with John Wayne. We don't really know how big you're going to be, but you'll be Big Jake no matter what.

At last a text from your dad!!!!! Baby and mother, doing well!!! Grandpa visibly relaxed. He had been even more worried than we had thought. We listened to the Black Eyed Peas and a CD of Republican jams as we drove along in Grandpa's big new black truck.
Finally we arrived at the hospital, in the dark, in the rain. They directed us to the maternity ward where we found Grandma, still waiting. They let us go in to see you and your parents, and the room was like a palace!!! It looked more like a hotel room than a hospital room, but there it was! The place that you were born! Your mama looked so adorable under her little blanket. She was still my big sister, you may be assured, but she seemed now somehow so much older, in terms of life experiences, happily sitting there under that blanket having baked a perfect little tiny body inside of her own for all of those months. I wanted to give her a big ol' hug for being such a hero, but she was lying down. It was worth all of these weeks of uncertain unemployment so that I could be there in that moment. And you! You, my nephew Jacob! You were so tiny! Your little perfect red face and your little perfect purple hands, with little perfect fingernails. The nurse said that you were a beautiful baby. She said that she definitely did not say that to everyone. Grandma was buzzing around the room, trying to be as helpful as possible and taking pictures. Your mama was sipping water out of her favorite water bottle and getting ready to eat a well-deserved supper (a hamburger). Your papa was beaming. Aunt Katherine has spent a lot of time the last couple of years taking care of babies, and you could tell, the way she expertly picked you up and cradled you in her arms. I didn't have very much experience with babies. I felt like someone was going to tell me to sit down in a chair so that they'd be sure I wouldn't drop you or break you in half. But I got the hang of it. You were so cute, with your little button nose and your almost non-existent golden eyebrows. Sometimes you would crack your eyes open to get a look at me. All of us are sure that you will grow up to be a handsome saintly genius. It will be hard to get out of the habit of calling you "Splinter". Jacob. Jacob. Big Jake. It was a big day, Big Jake. You did well.

On the way home, the rain turned to snow and the snow was outrageous. It was some of the worst driving conditions I have ever been in in my life. I was driving one car and Grandpa was driving the other, I-25. I thought we all might die only having met you once, but I kept my steely calm. The big giant flakes flew into the windshield. I couldn't see any of the lines. I drove by the light reflected in the tire indentations of the cars that had gone before. And I wrote this little poem for you, my nephew:

On the night that you were born, the whole family was praying
Well, starting at 4 am that morning, cause it took a while (just saying)
On the night that you were born, you were bathed in a loving glow
And the skies themselves celebrated with a confetti made of snow
On the night that you were born, I thought Grandma and I would end up in a ditch
Because on the night that you were born, boy, it was snowing like a bitch
On the night that you were born, you were calm and did not cry
And the dancing coyotes in the yard sang you a coyote lullaby
On the night that you were born, we made brownies- we didn't need much persuasion
Welcome to the family, boy, brownies for every occasion!
On the night that you were born, every face was ringed with mirth
Happy to have you, to see you, to love you, and to welcome you to Earth!

Sincerely,

Aunt Laura

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I was never really attracted to older guys-- except Mike, that is.

Mike was a youth leader for our church camp.

He was in college.

He played the guitar, of course. It has to be some kind of requirement for hot, college youth leaders to play the guitar. But none of those where the reasons that I liked Mike.

Nah, I liked Mike because Mike was always dancing. Mike was never still, he was always in his groove. He danced all the time, even when there wasn't any music playing. Especially when there wasn't any music playing. Mike grooved through the 12 hours that we spent on the bus from Denver to Minnesota. Mike grooved through the five hours that we spent broken down in some random gas station in some place like Deer Point, South Dakota. When other people were exhausted, or irritated, or gossiping, or flirting, Youth Leader Mike just had his groove on. He was imperturbable.

As soon as my time at church camp came to an end, my schoolgirl crush on Mike faded, but the impression that he left on my life was everlasting.

Thanks, erstwhile Mike, for your contagious groove.

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