Wine Country

So Saturday morning we checked out of the Westin :(, and got picked up by Nick in our fancy, gas-guzzling Armada. Kind of ironic after spending a week talking about climate change. We were joined by Becca Mazur, who got her Master's at CSU this past year and is now training to forecast with the National Weather Center in Eureka, CA. It was nice to have her on the trip.
We drove to Napa Valley and arrived right around noon. Our first stop was Flora Springs. They had very good Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Oh yeah, I am not at all a wine snob. I am not very picky with my wines, and I can't pick up on those subtle nuances that people talk about. I just like wine, mostly red. Anyway, the first place was nice and they gave us some recommendations that came in handy later. Then we went across the street to V. Sattui, which was way more crowded and not as good. The best part about it was the people we were tasting next to were hilarious. We met up with Brad, his fiance, and their friend there, but then went our separate ways. The next stop was Ballentine, which turned out to be our favorite. It was just us and the pourer and she was really friendly and answered all of our ignorant questions about wineries and vineyards. The tastings were really generous too, and we didn't have to pay for them because we all bought wine there. Chris and I each bought a Zinfindel (?), and Nick bought a $40 port (woohoo, expensive!).
We were all feeling pretty happy after that, and next went to the Frank Family vineyard. I abstained at this stop so I could drive. The next stop was very disappointing. I don't even remember the name, but it was $10 and we got 3 very meager tastes. It sucked. We checked out one more place but didn't taste, and instead decided to go find a campsite and buy some wine at a store to drink there. Anyway, most places were closing because it was about 4:30 and getting dark. Oh yeah, the valley is really pretty, with rolling hills and vineyards everywhere. It would be cool to be there in the summer, when there are actually grapes on the vine.
So we found a campsite outside of Napa and drank the wine Chris and I had bought the night before, then headed off to dinner. We all wanted wine with dinner but didn't want to pay for it, so Chris had a brilliant idea. I had brought the coffee cups from my hotel room, and their lids, so we had "coffee" and walked around Napa. Haha. We even took our "coffee" into the restaurant. Wow, that was a lot of coffee! There was a lot of vino flowing on Saturday but never really felt drunk, so it was quite nice. And my dinner was really delicious ... I had ravioli again. Yum! Camping was nice and we were all asleep by 9:30. :)
So that is about it from our trip to San Fran, we had a great time. It was a very good group and 4 was the perfect number, I think. Nick even told Chris and I that we are his favorite couple from Georgia. Haha, how sweet.

Nerd Take-Over of San Francisco, Days 4 & 5

Well now I am back home, and it feels good! Thursday and Friday of the AGU conference were a blur because I was so drained from the poster session on Wednesday. Thursday morning Erica and I went out to breakfast at Cafe de la Presse, a delicious French cafe where my friend Stephane Fondement works. I know him from the cycling team. It was nice to see him but he was pretty busy. He works a lot, guess you pretty much have to in order to survive in San Francisco!
The best sessions I went to on Thursday were in the late afternoon, and I didn't leave the conference until 6:20, so it was a long day. They were all focused on the environmental effects of climate change and on the concept of tipping points in the climate system - at what point have we gone too far? They were all pretty interesting and the next to last talk was from another researcher at Georgia Tech and was about drought in the Amazon.
Thursday night I went to Fisherman's Warf with Nick, Brad, and Erica. I was so tired I was feeling a little delirious, and then we went to Ghiradelli's square and got pretty goofy after OD'ing on chocolate. :)
Friday was another blur and most of the people in my group had their posters, so I enjoyed browsing through the posters. I went to lunch with Ian, Marek, and Lixin (all researchers in my group) to a really cool Cantonese restaurant that serves dim sum - it is kind of like Chinese tapas. The waitresses bring the food around on carts and you pick and chose what you want to eat. It was really great because Lixin is Chinese, so she knew what is good and could ask for special things from the servers. It was really good stuff, except for the seaweed.
I was excited all day because Chris came to San Fran on Friday night. He arrived around 6:00. I gave him the tour of my spacious room and then we went out to an Italian restaurant in the alley where I ate on Monday, called Tiramisu. I guess Friday was my day for eating strange food because I had cavier on my dinner, but it wasn't too bad. My main dish was crab ravioli, yum! We had a good dinner and then had some beer at a sports bar. Then we decided we needed to practice for Saturday (when we went to Napa Valley), and so bought a bottle of wine to enjoy back at the hotel. It was really fun to have him in the city with me and live it up for a night (our dinner was pretty expensive and we would never spend that much on a date if I weren't on a per diem!).

Nerd Take-over of San Francisco - Day 3

Wed. Dec. 12
I am done with my poster presentation! Yes!! It went pretty well. But I will start from the beginning of the day first. As usual, I did not get out of bed until about 30 minutes after the alarm went off. I rode on the bike in the health club this morning and it made me realize two things: 1. I miss riding my road bike, and 2. I have strong preference toward the skinny saddle on my road bike versus the overly wide and cushy ones that are on stationary bikes.
So, anyway … I was a little later getting to the conference than I would have liked but oh well. I was pretty tired today and found myself falling asleep twice this morning (even after buying some coffee). During the morning break, Erica and Ian found me so I could show my poster to Ian. It was good to show it to him and he gave me some pointers on what I should talk about. Then I went to some talks regarding snow. One was about how snow is melting about 2 weeks earlier in the Colorado Rockies than it was 25 years ago. Another was about the retreat of glaciers in the American West. Here is something interesting – glacier melt is due to a combination of climate and local topography. For example, a small glacier that is in the shade of surrounding slopes won’t melt very much, even under global warming. But big glaciers are mostly open to sunlight and so they melt a lot each year as temperatures rise. So, large glaciers are retreating at rapid rates, but it will be a long time before all the small glaciers melt. Interesting. The last talk of the morning was about glaciers in a mountain range in Uganda, and the pictures were really cool because there are some weird plants there.
During lunch there was a special talk by Susan Solomon. She was one of the instrumental scientists involved in discovering why ozone is strongly depleted each winter over Antarctica. More recently, she was a chair of an IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) group and was in Oslo yesterday receiving part of the Nobel Peace Prize for this work (along with Al Gore). Her talk was very interesting – she talked a lot about the ozone hole and current research related to it, as well as some about climate change and policy.
After the talk it was time for my poster! I started at 1:30 and was busy until 5:45 with people coming by and asking questions and looking at it. I enjoy explaining my research, and it is even kind of fun to answer questions and to discuss with people certain aspects of the research. I got a few good ideas from people. Scott came by and said he liked the poster. He is funny because he cannot help but interrupt when I am talking about my research. He just gets so excited about it that he has to interject. He did this a couple times and kept apologizing but I don’t mind because he knows better than me what is most important about this study and is really good at communicating it. One man came by who works with a branch of NSF that awards student grants for international travel. So now I actually have a practical avenue to pursue for going to Brazil!! If I am going to continue studying the Amazon, it really makes sense for me to go there. I would love to see the rainforest, but even going to Brazil to collaborate with the people who make observations would be instrumental. So we will see, but I am pretty sure I will be applying for one of those grants. Another highlight of the session was toward the end, a woman who Scott had introduced me to and works at Rutgers walked by and said goodbye, and she said she voted for my poster as the best student poster. That is cool, because I kind of felt like the poster was inadequate because of how preliminary all of my results are. But I guess that even though the results are rough, I have put a lot of thought (1-1/2 years!) into the science behind the research. So overall it was a really good afternoon!
I was exhausted though, after being on my feet all afternoon and talking to people the whole time. So I treated myself to a frappachinno at one of the million Starbucks between the convention center and my hotel. I felt like I deserved some thing like that after all of the work I have done this semester. It felt good when I finished my project last Wed. for 604, and it felt good when I finished my poster at 9 AM Sunday, but finishing the presentation made it official that all of the work of this fall is done. I am so relieved! And, I am very happy that it ended on a high note.
I got back to my room at 6:20 and just sat on the chaise lounge (fancy) until 6:40, when I had to leave for a meeting for the LBA-MIP. Haha, lots of anacronyms! LBA is the Large-scale Biosphere experiment in Amazonia. It was a NASA-funded program that involved the establishment of a handful of observations stations throughout the Amazon River basin. The funding has run out, but there is still a lot of research following up on the project (like mine). MIP stands for Model Inter-comparison. It is common in this field for there to be several different models that all try to do the same thing. There are a lot of vegetation models like the one I use, and the MIP basically involves all these modelers running their models for certain locations in the Amazon and then comparing them all to observations and to each other. That way you can see what are the strengths and weaknesses of each model and then all of the models can be improved based on these results. That is the gist of it.
The meeting was not too interesting, except that Scott said I should go to the next LBA-MIP conference, which will be in Manaus, Brazil next July … sweet!! ☺ Now all I need to do is hire Chris as my assistant. After the meeting I went out with Nick, Brad, and Erica for a drink. I had a $15 margarita – but I earned it, dammit! Funny story – last night my research group went out for dinner but I couldn’t go because of the section dinner I went to. But Nick said that Scott brought me up and felt bad that I couldn’t be there, and also that I have been working so hard on my poster – so they toasted me … haha, it is kind of funny. At least I was missed. ☺
Ok … time for bed! It is 12:45, and tomorrow I am sleeping in until 7:00!! Woohoo! Goodnight.

Nerd Take-over of San Francisco - Day 2

Tuesday, Dec. 11 11:35 PM
Another long day! My alarm went off at 6 AM and this time I was out of the room by 6:40. I was going to run outside but was just too tired to try to find a route and deal with running in an unfamiliar city in the dark. So I caved and paid $30 for a week of working out in the cramped workout room in my hotel. Oh well, at least now I have extra motivation to work out every day.
I made it to the meeting by 8:30. There were a lot of good talks today – quite a few related to my research in the Ecohydrology and Climate Change: Observations and Predictions section. At noon, I went to the Atmospheric Sciences section Executive Committee lunch … it is funny to me that I am invited to this lunch because it sounds so official. It is actually pretty informal. I go because I am the newsletter of the section’s newsletter. It was nice to hear that people are enjoying the newsletter – although I heard from 3 people today that they didn’t know anything about it. So we need to check the e-mail list. I also go because it is a free lunch. ☺
After lunch I went to more talks regarding hydrology and biology. I went to some talks about the public’s perceptions of climate change and how scientists can better convey the truth about our research. This was interesting and is also useful for the writing I do for the CMMAP website. One guy talked about “alternative conceptions” (because “misconceptions” is not PC) that people have about global warming. People associate it with pollution and ozone loss, and sometimes associate the carbon cycle with the water cycle. These kinds of things are good to keep in mind as I write about climate change! Oh yeah, and I met a guy named James someone tonight who works for a nonprofit called Environmental Defense. He writes about climate change for the public, I should look at that website or track down his e-mail address, that could be a good resource.
Now I am done talking to myself. The last two talks I went to tonight were awesome! They were about volcanoes. One was about bursting lava bubbles in Mt Erebus in Antarctica. He had a video of a bubble exploding and it was really cool. The next talk was about a volcano 550 m beneath the Pacific Ocean near the Marianas Trench. He had a lot of videos with eruptions and they were impressive. It is cool to watch stuff blow up. ☺
After the meeting I walked down to Whole Foods to buy some food for the next couple of days. I bought 5 pounds of oranges … they are sooo good!! I usually don’t shop at Whole Foods b/c it is so expensive, but since everything is over-priced in San Fran, I don’t mind so much. At 7:00 I went to the AS section dinner. It was in China Town and the food was really good, except I was at a table with 5 vegetarians and there was not much for them to eat. I met some nice people, mostly young folks like me. Michel was there too, and afterward I went to the bar at the top of Marriott with him and two gals from Univ. of Leeds in the U.K. – Christine and … um, gosh I am so bad with names. There was a crazy singing lady at the dinner. She was pretty funny, she sang these songs about climate change, GCM’s, greenhouse gases … it was odd but entertaining, too. I have video on my phone, I wonder if I can post it somehow.
Well, tomorrow is my poster. I am un-enthused, because my results are so preliminary. Basically, my results were available at 5:30 Sat. I spent a couple hours thinking about them and then made my poster. I am nervous that what I thought was acceptable at 4 AM is not actually that great. I’m not looking at it until tomorrow morning, after working out, while I’m eating my yogurt and amazing granola and coffee. Then if it sucks I can at least take solace in the vanilla almond goodness.
So speaking of which, I should go to sleep. I should get up at 5:30 so I can prepare myself for the day and still get to the meeting by 8. Ugh!!! Oh well … I am still having fun!
Oh yeah, two things I wanted to mention: 1. Walking several miles in high heels seems to result in shin splints. 2. I get a kick out of how many people have been complaining about how cold it is. When I left Colorado, it had been in the 20’s (as a high) for several days and was snowing. Chris called this morning and said it snowed 6 inches last night. In contrast, it is a very pleasant 50 degrees here. And every other person I see is talking about how cold it is! It’s hilarious, people are walking around in fur coats with hats and scarves. It is even a big deal on the news channel. But to be fair, it will be in the 20’s in Sonoma tonight – which is pretty cold. But I am not thick-skinned, I get cold pretty easily, so for me to think these people are being wimpy is saying something.
Anyway, that is it for now. I have to get my beauty sleep … or more appropriately brain sleep. Good night!

Nerd Take-over of San Francisco - Day 1

Monday Dec. 10, 11:45 PM
Hello from San Francisco! I am pooped, but have had a good day. I overslept this morning until 7:40 … oops. I didn’t get much sleep Friday night, and I only slept 2 hours Saturday night because I was finishing my poster, so I don’t feel too bad for oversleeping. I still made it to the conference by 9:30. I was lucky enough to go to a talk by someone from Georgia Tech. Despite being a school of nerds, there is a research group there that does some work that I find very interesting. I should see if any of them has a poster this week so I could talk to them. This talk was about cloud cover trends in the Tropics. They found that, according to a particular satellite, cloud cover has been decreasing in the Tropics in the past couple of decades. I am not sure if this is because of local effects, or if it is because of large-scale forcings that may connect to the Atlantic and East Pacific Oceans.
One of the best things about AGU is that there is a wide diversity of interesting talks. For example, I went to one that was a study of the Maassai tribe in Kenya, a nomadic tribe that is very sensitive to climate change. It is kind of sad that nomads are on the brink of extinction, due to a combination of factors that include increased droughts and land-use changes (privatization of land). I also stopped by some good posters. I met a woman, Tracey, from the Univ. of Wisconsin, who has started a group for women in the Earth Sciences that I will probably join. It is kind of a networking/support/Q&A group that has 500 women from all over the world. I saw a poster comparing maternity leave in the U.S. to other nations, and saw that we have a pretty crappy deal. By law, women get no paid leave in the U.S. In Norway, they get 42 weeks at 100% pay. I also stopped by a poster by Michel Mesquita, one of the reporters for the newsletter I edit. He is an incredibly friendly and positive guy, and it was good to learn more about his research (on the effects of melting Arctic sea ice on high latitude storms).
I had lunch with Brad, a recent graduate from CSU who now works in Boulder, and Nick, from my group. I managed to only spend $5 on lunch at Whole Foods – way to go me! After lunch, I went to a few talks in the Global Change section, including one on future changes in precipitation in the Amazon due to El Nino. I skipped out of the meetings at 3:30. This afternoon was the only extended period of time when there were no talks that I really wanted to go to. I had a really nice afternoon. I took bus #71 up Haight Street (saw a hooker along the way) and took a stroll through Buena Vista park. It is located on a hill and has beautiful eucalyptus and conifer trees, and a stupendous view at the top of the bay, ocean, mountains, city, and of course the Golden Gate Bridge. I would recommend this park to anyone visiting the city. I wish I had more time to walk around, but it was getting dark and I didn’t want to be in the woods alone. After that, I walked along Haight and Ashbury and did some shopping in the myriad of thrift stores. No comment on if I bought anything. ;) It was fun, and I got back to my side of town (near Union Square) in time to meet up with Brad, Joe Munchak, and Erica for dinner. We went to an Italian seafood restaurant in a cute alley that has about 6 restaurants. I enjoyed some lobster and prawns pasta, and a $6.50 pint of Pilsner Urquell – yikes!!! I had to make sure to drink the whole thing at that price.
After dinner, we stopped by the cheesecake Factory for some take-out dessert, and then Brad, Joe, Nick, and I went to Brad’s hotel room for some wine and vegging. Now I am more than ready to go to sleep! I love being here! ☺

The Best Breakfast Ever!

Over the last few days, it has snowed almost 30 inches in the mountains (more in some places). So, even though I am still not done with my poster, Chris and I decided to go enjoy the powder today! We woke up at 5:30 (even though I was up till 2 working on the poster), struggled over whether it would be worth braving the road conditions, and then finally left the house a little after 6. Things were pretty good, I-25 had snow on it but some parts of it were pretty clear. But my windshield wipers were not getting the job done, and a block of ice was slowly spreading from the top of the windshield. We stopped for gas south of Loveland, and after listening to the traffic report (overturned truck, avalanche prevention, emergency bridge repairs, tunnel closures once an hour for hazardous material transport), we decided to turn around. We got royally screwed last year twice with traffic - one time we sat on I-70 for an hour before learning it was completely shut down - so we did not want to risk that headache, especially since I still have to finish my poster. Plus, we were planning on taking lessons, which would probably be on a groomed trail, and wouldn't even be able to enjoy the powder until after lunch.

This could have been very disappointing, but we decided to make getting up at 5:30 worth it by having breakfast at Chik-fil-A in Loveland. It was the best!! I love their chicken biscuits, they are so warm and buttery and delicious. Yum. Then we bought two $20 gift cards, which came with two free calendars. Next years have some really sweet coupons, so we are looking forward to a happy year of eating at chik-fil-A. Then, Chris brought in their newspaper and the guys behind the counter gave us 3 more coupons for free sandwiches.

So I do not regret getting up early. It was kind of an adventure with Chris, I got some gas station coffee, and we had our favorite breakfast. Now we are home and it's not even 8:30 yet, so we have the whole day ahead of us! Although I think a nap will be in order at some point. Hopefully we'll be able to enjoy the snow some day soon - but if not, at least we'll have saved some money. (I am a glass half-full kind of person).

Oh, I should also mention that my poster is coming along well and yesterday was one of the best days I've had in a while, just because it seems like maybe things are finally going my way! :) Bye!

Freedom!!

Phew, I have survived what is probably the most difficult class I have ever taken! I turned in my final project yesterday - an idealized, very simple non-divergent vorticity model. Now that I have used a few big words to make myself feel smart, I'll move on.
I am kind of too tired to appreciate the class being over. I was working at the department until 2:30 AM Monday night and stayed all night on Tuesday, so I am still catching up from the lack of sleep. I also still have some work to do the next few days so I cannot completely relax yet. I have to make a poster for the conference I am going to next week, and my model is still running! In fact, I don't expect it to finish the first year of simulation until about 4 AM Sunday, and my flight leaves 3:30 that afternoon! So I am not sure what will happen there. I can make a poster with less than a year of results, but I have not decided what to do. My adviser came by my office today to tell me it would be okay if I end up withdrawing from the conference - that everyone does it and I shouldn't be ashamed if I have to do it, especially considering it is not completely my fault (there have been 3 power outages the past 3 weeks, one of them shutting down the computers for about 5 days). It was nice to hear him say that, but I am pretty sure I can have something ready by Wed (when my presentation is).
Anyways, I am very very excited about the conference. It is in San Francisco and there are lots of interesting talks to hear and posters to see, and good food to be eaten. The hotel we stay in is top-notch, so I'm even looking forward to sleeping in that huge, comfy bed! :)
I am also very excited to have a life again! Now that the class is over I can probably "only" work 40 hours a week, like a normal person! I can come home at night and hang out with my husband! Maybe, just maybe, I can ride my bike someday, too! Yay! Actually, I have been running and swimming a few days a week, so I am not too bent out of shape about not riding recently.
Well I am going to go now. I am going to address our Christmas cards - woohoo! :) Coming soon to a mailbox near you ...
Bye!