COOKIES

This is silly, but I am going to post the website for some really good cookies that I plan to make tonight for the Thursday coffee crew. I need to do this so I can have the recipe at home, but also now you can make them. It is pretty easy and the cookies are REALLY good. They were a big hit with the Nigerian airport security officers, apparently, because I gave Chris about 4 dozen before he left for Nigeria and he actually has video of some guys saying, "Anna, we love your cookies!". It is pretty awesome.


http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Molasses-Cookies/Detail.aspx

Oh yeah, they are a little flat. I wish I could make them puffier. I wonder if it is the altitude, and maybe adding flour would help. (I only know to add flour because of the Rockies commercial last year, when they all tried to bake a cake and the coach, Clint Hurdle, yelled at them: "High altitude men, more flour!" Haha.)

What is wrong with me

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Today I got to work and saw that my model is not running. Then I realized that it has problems that I need to fix. Then I got discouraged. Then I decided I should drive to Georgia this summer. Then I decided I should plan my dream route - here it is:

Day 1: Leave Fort Collins early, stop at Sunflower Mtn in western Kansas. This is in the middle of nowhere and the state's high point. Stop in Kansas City for BBQ, and arrive in Steelville, Missouri around midnight. Camp.

Day 2: Wake up early and ride the 24 mile Berryman mtn bike trail. According to singletracks.com, "In 1998 Bike Magazine did an article and called it the best singletrack East of the Rockies and West of the Appalachians." Leave around noon, and then get to Lexington, Kentucky by 7 or 8 PM. Stay with friends Jennifer and Kenneth.

Day 3: Spend the day with Jennifer. Since this is my ideal trip (AKA my imaginary world), she of course will be able to take the day off to spend with me.

Day 4: Leave Lexington and arrive around noon at the trailhead for Black Mountain, Kentucky's highest point. Spend the rest of the day hiking, and spend the night at a backcountry site.

Day 5: Hike until about noon, then head to Asheville, NC. Arrive around 3:00 and hang out with my friend Paul.

Day 6: Hike up Mt Mitchell (NC's highest point) with Paul (again, of course he will be available. Who needs to work??). Leave Asheville around 3:00, stop in Athens for dinner (possibly w/ friends Darrel, Anna, Tricia, Jeremy), and get to my mom's house in Atlanta late.

Days 7-11: Spend time in Atlanta with friends and family.

Day 12: Leave Atlanta, arrive in the Ozarks in Arkansas by 8 PM. Camp.

Day 13, 14: Backpack in the Ozarks, for some reason an area I've always wanted to explore. Hopefully have time for Mt Magazine, Arkansas' highest point (there is a pattern here).

Day 15: Finish hiking around noon. Drive 4 hours to Edmond, OK and stay with my step brother and his family.

Day 16: Leave around 8 Am and get to the Guadalupe Mtns in western Texas by 7 PM. In my imaginary world, Chris is able to meet me at some point in the last few days of my trip, because hiking and biking are much more fun with him. Of course then we have two cars ...

Days 17, 18: Backpacking trip including Guadalupe Mtn, Tx's highest point!

Day 19: Hike in the morning, leave around 1:00. Arrive in Taos, NM by 8 PM

Day 20: Mountain bike around Taos in the morning, leave by 1 PM, get home by 7:00 :(

OK ... that is a 3 week trip. Pretty unlikely, but much more interesting than my research which never seems to go anywhere.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Here is my week in review:

The Good
1. Went to the Rockies/Braves game on Tuesday night. It was $1 hot dog night. We were right near left field and a guy sitting near us serenaded Matt Holliday with "Wing Beneath my Wings". Later that inning Holliday threw a ball right to the guy. Guess he liked the singing! Then a guy two rows behind me tried to catch a high pop-up foul ball, but it went through his hands and hit his face with a loud pop!! Somehow the guy escaped with only a knot on his forehead. The Rockies won 4-3.
2. Met with my mentee on Monday and had a good time. Found out today that she got two jobs this week - wow I am impressed and happy for her!
3. Sunday Rachel and Holly (who went to Nigeria w/ Chris) came over and helped me cook some African dishes. It was fun and the food was great! The cookbook is done, although I still have to print some and bind them.
4. Helped Erika stuff 750 envelopes for the 'Heart of the Father in Africa' campaign this afternoon. Although I am short on time this week, it has been nice to do things to help others.
5. Maike's cats made it safely to England!

The Bad
1. My SCM results look terrible. I have supposedly new and improved driver data, but I can't write a thesis based on these results!! I don't know what's wrong, and I'm afraid I'll be spending the weekend trying to figure that out.
2. Tiger hasn't been eating. He went from 12 pounds to 8.7. He pukes anywhere from 0 to 3 times a day (usually with at least one of those occurring in the middle of the night). So today I took him to the vet. When the vet called me, her first words were, "tiger, he's a pistol!" He did not cooperate with them, so they couldn't run some of the tests. He was nice enough to pee all over the place, so they didn't have to sedate him to get a urine analysis (saved me some dough). I am very happy to find out he doesn't have anything serious wrong with him, but am still mystified as to why he won't eat, and my bank account is now $260 lighter.
3. Melissa and I have been working a lot on a presentation we're giving next Friday at the Colorado Global Climate Conference. We're giving 3 talks to high schoolers about careers in climate change. I think it will be a lot of fun but working on the presentation has cut into what little time I have this week.

The Ugly
1. I've been eating like crap this week, between hot dogs at the baseball game, to beers last night, to a sinfully delicious cookies'n'cream milkshake I just polished off.
2. I bonked hard-core on my ride last Sunday. I made it up Rist Canyon in about 1 hour 20 minutes, which is one of my slowest times ever. My average speed was less than 10 mph. The rest of the ride was nice b/c I returned home via the Poudre Canyon, which is mostly downhill. I don't know what's wrong with me. I've taken the week off and I hope it helps.

Progress??

I met with my advisor last Friday. He said I should stop messing around with the model and start writing my thesis. Luckily I've already done a bit of writing. He also said that my thesis shouldn't be more than 50 pages! What?? Ok, that is more than fine with me! So I'm approaching it as two separate papers, each less than 20 pages, plus an intro and conclusion. So my goal is two weeks per 'paper', and then I should have my thesis finished in a month!

Of course, I haven't stopped running the models. Things just don't look right and I'm not ready to call it quits yet. But I can write all the non-results sections while I run stuff in the background.

So maybe I'll graduate one day this year!

Manaus Here I Come!

Yep I got the funding to go to Brazil in July!! Wow, I am so excited! It will be so cool to ... go to South America, be in the Southern Hemisphere, see the rainforest!!! However, my excitement to show off my results has somewhat transformed to slight stress about actually having decent results to show. I have half of my model runs done and they are not quite what I was expecting. I wanted these results to really suck, so that in comparison the 'new and improved' model would look incredible. But my 'control' run of results are actually OK. Oh well, I am anxious to see the other results, which should be done around Saturday.

Other than that it's been a good, but busy week. Tuesday night I had a softball game (my team is the Snow Eaters and we are all atmos nerds (and one atmos nerd's wife)). It's a lot of fun. We won our game 23-4! I was terrible offensively - only 1 for 5 and one inning I even got out twice. Now that takes skill! Oh well. Rachel had a really good game, she has improved a lot since we first started playing 3 years ago.

Chris and I have been trying to squeeze in working on our respective Africa projects. My cookbook is coming along, I've put together about 20 recipes! Now I just have to make it all look nice, and I also want to try a few of the recipes to make sure I'm explaining the directions correctly. It's a big sacrifice for me to have to cook and eat new and interesting dishes, but I guess I can handle it. ;)

Today however has been extremely unproductive, yet enjoyable. I overslept until 8:00 and didn't get to work until 9:30. Then at 11:00 we had our coffee group. Then at 1:00 I went to the Matthews House. I am about to go to a seminar from 3:30-4:30, and then I'm going to Happy Hour with some friends (Rachel's idea - another big sacrifice for me, I am so generous). Haha. Oh well, there's always tomorrow to get work done! BYE.