Can I get an Amen!?

Honestly I thought this week was going to suck. I was dreading the start of the school year. I feel like I am taking on a lot - I want to defend my thesis (which is nowhere near done) by the end of October, I am taking a class that is so difficult that one of my very intelligent coworker's wife half-jokingly threatened divorce if he ever took another class like it, I am working about 10 hours a week on writing website content for the department, and I am still volunteering as editor of the AGU newsletter. So I literally thought my life was about to end last Sunday as I prepared to begin the semester.
But ... this has been a really great week! For one thing, I decided to take it easy while I still have the chance and before my class gets really busy. But also, a lot of really great things have happened this week. Most importantly, Chris got a job!! We are both so relieved - him more than me, I am sure. He was tired of being unemployed. He got laid off in January, but I have really been amazed by how well we have gotten along since then. I think it has tested our faith, but sometimes that was the only thing that kept me from completely stressing out. I feel very blessed - we have been okay financially, we have been able to go to Hawaii(!!) and Moab, and now Chris' new job is a step up from the old. So, thank you God!!
Another wonderful thing happened today (knock on wood) - my model is running! I have been very frustrated by it. Every week, I get myself psyched up to work hard and start getting results, but so far all I've gotten is a month's worth of -infinity for my simulated climate (temperature, rainfall, humidity, radiation, all of it crap!!). But this afternoon, as of 3:00 when I left school, the model was humming along quite happily. How wonderful!!!! I have been waiting for this moment all summer, and I think my frustration with the model has tainted my view of everything else - making things seem frustrating and overwhelming. Oh, please, let my results be reasonable so I can finally start doing earth science research and leave all this miserable computer science behind me!!
It has been a fun week for other reasons. On Saturday, Chris and I hiked up 13,911 ft. Mt Meeker with some of my friends from the department - Nick, Levi, and Matt. It was the hardest mountain I've climbed!! A mile of it was about as steep as you can get without needing ropes and climbing gear. It was tough, but the view at the top was amazing!! I also have had a few fun rides. On Tuesday, I competed in my first cyclocross race. This is kind of a mix between mountain and road ride (leaning toward more of the mountain side). I was the only one in my division and it was really hard and hot (96!), but I had a good time and would like to do it again. I even got tips from Georgia Gould, who won the women's pro national mountain bike series this year and came in 1st in every race in the series!! I also rode yesterday and had a great time. It is so nice to ride when I don't feel like I have to do anything for anyone other than myself.
Well ... I am encouraged by how well the last few days have gone. I hope I can continue to be productive without overdoing it.
I think I should go to sleep now. Chris and I went to a party tonight. It was at the house of some of my fellow grad students - in the class below mine. It was entertaining. Lots of drinking. We don't go to parties where people do keg stands, but I guess it's fun every now and then (we didn't of course, yuck!). Well, of course I did enjoy a few drinks ... which is why I would now like to go to sleep. Drinking used to make me want to act crazy, now it just makes me want to sleep! :) Goodnight!

Flash Flood!

It doesn't rain very often here in the Fort. So 3-5 inches in 2 hours seems like quite a lot! I'll start at the beginning ... I stayed at work until 7:00 tonight and was going to ride my bike home. It was sprinkling a little when it was time to go, but I talked to Chris and he said it was pouring at home - just 3.5 miles away. When I went outside, I saw basically a wall of rain and lightening about 2 miles from my department.
Luckily, my husband loves me and came to pick me up. We enjoyed dinner with our whole house shaking every time it thundered as the storm moved right over us. It is just kind of rare for us to get severe storms on the west side of Fort Collins, so we were kind of excited. We decided to drive around and look at the effects of what the NWS called a 100 year flood.
Mainly we saw the Spring Creek, it went way beyond its banks in several spots. There is a trail that follows the creek and I have no idea how deep below the water that trail was but there was no sign of it. There were a few places where the water was about mid-calf level in the roads. Chris got out and helped a girl push her broken-down car out of one flooded area.
Oh, in the picture notice my 2nd favorite bagel place in the background. I was planning on going there tomorrow morning, should be interesting!
It is still raining at our house but very lightly. Our yard is very soggy and there is a pond in the green space behind our house, but we are safe from any flooding. Apparently our house is on a 1000 year flood plain, phew! I probably would not find all of this so interesting if it rained more often here, or if I were not a weather geek.
Anywho, time for bed. Goodnight!

Triathlon for a cause and other events

I shouldn't write for too long because I am waking up at 5 AM!!! Rachel and I are doing a practice run of a triathlon, in training for the Tri for a Cure race in about 10 days. It should be fun as long as I actually wake up. And hopefully I can still get some work done tomorrow, I'll have to not go too hard.
I am pretty excited about this race because we are raising money for breast cancer research and support for women with breast cancer. It's nice to be doing a race that means something. I think it will be a powerful experience. There are 3,000 women participating, so it will by far be my largest triathlon. If you want to donate, visit http://www.active.com/donate/triforthecure07/atmos.

On Monday, we sent an email to some friends and family, as well as to the atmos department. Our goal was $500 and we surpassed it in 6 hours!!! I was so amazed, but I guess it just goes to show you how many people have been affected by breast cancer. My grandmother lost her battle on Sept. 13, 2001 (an unfortunately easy date to remember), about 2 years after being diagnosed. I have been and will be thinking of her a lot during the next few weeks.
Anyway ... on the brighter side I have great news! I got my model to run for a day! Results!!! Yes!!!! Well, they are not very exciting results because I ultimately want to run it for several years, but this is a big step.
And the bad news ... drugs in cycling. Three of the top 10 have now been dismissed from the Tour de France because of doping allegations. Plus my favorite before the race began, Alexander Vinokorouv. It's so disappointing because I admire these guys so much. They really capture my heart with their courage and determination, but then I feel cheated just as much as their competitors when I learn they did drugs. When I'm racing, I work my ass of to ride like I do (which isn't very good) and would never consider putting drugs or someone else's blood in my body (it just doesn't seem smart/healthy for one thing) ... why can't they do the same? I hate it. I hope the sport cleans up. This tour has been exciting but now ... grrr.

I am excited about this weekend. I am going to Georgia and Tennessee for several big events. The main reason is to see my one of my best friends, Kristi, as she makes her first profession of vows to become a nun. She is through 2 out of 7 years in the process. It is an amazing process, I can't believe she's already been there for two years. Sometimes it seems a little strange to me but I think she's very happy with her life, and I admire the commitment she has made. I just don't completely understand it, I am so happy being married, but giving your life to God can't be a bad thing (as long as you're not a freaking suicidal zealot). Oh yeah, I'm rambling ... the other things I'll be doing this weekend are: seeing my cousin, Patrick, and his two year old daughter (it's her birthday), seeing my other cousin, Crissie, and her newborn son (due today, I need to call!), attending another good friend's bridal shower, and seeing a lot of other wonderful friends and family. It will be busy, as all trips back to Georgia are, but I am excited about it.

Ok I should go to sleep now for sure. 6 hours of sleep is about the bare minimum I can get. Good night!

Montgomery Pass

Ah ... TGIF. A lot has happened since my last entry! My mom and stepdad, Jim, came to visit us last week. We had a good time exploring Colorado. I was very impressed with both of them - we had a busy, active week. Jim had a small heart attack last year, and it is great to see him being active. He arrived on Tuesday night, on by Thursday afternoon was hiking 6.5 miles at 10,000 feet in Rocky Mtn. NP. My mom completed a tough hike up the west side of Montgomery Pass earlier in the week. Good stuff!

The hike with my mom was part of an overnight trip to the Upper Montgomery Pass yurt (operated by Never Summer Nordic). We stayed there Monday night. On the way up, we ventured along Long Draw Road, on the eastern side of Camerron Pass. We saw 8 moose!!! The coolest sighting was our first - 3 males hanging out in Trap Lake. We also saw a baby, probably just a few months old. It was so cute! We arrived at the yurt around 6 PM and it was literally 110 degrees in the Yurt! So we hung out on the porch overlooking a valley and the Mt. Zirkel range to the west. The 12,000+ foot mountains that rise from Montgomery Pass were to our right. It was a great view. The sunset was phenomenal, we could actually see the sun go all the way down, as it sank slowly behind the far off mountains.

The hike to Montgomery Pass is kind of hard because it's on a 4 wheel drive road, which tends to have less switchbacks than a trail. But it was well worth the ascent to see the glory of the meadows at the pass. The air was fragrant from the abundant wildflowers. It was amazing. Chris and I daydreamed of hiking along the ridgeline that goes from Camerron Pass to where we were and then on and on for miles into Wyoming and beyond. It will be a good trip sometime (soon, hopefully!).

That is probably enough writing for now. It is about 12:25 AM and I am waking up at 6:00 to ride with Christine (I'm getting up early so I can eat breakfast and have coffee, we aren't riding until 7:30). But there is more to come ... 4th of July party and watching fireworks in 4 different cities at once ... a good, wet hike in RMNP ... the Black Canyon of the Gunnison and hanging our feet off a 2300 foot cliff ... rafting on the Arkansas ... etc etc. I feel so fortunate that for Chris and I, the vacation in Colorado never ends. :)

Anatomy and Physiology 101

In today's class, we'll discuss the patella. This little bone that floats around magically around your knee is connected to tibia via the Patellar Tendon. This tendon is pretty sturdy, but doesn't really like being hit by a road sign at speeds in excess of, say, 5 miles per hour. If you were to hit said sign at something like 30 miles per hour in an acrobatic move that would make Sasha Cohen jealous, you would probably suffer post-traumatic patellar tendinitis. You also might invent a new olympic sport that is some combination of gymnastics and cycling.
...
Anyway, this is what my diagnosis is for my knee. It sounds bad (especially because it has 4 words), but apparently it will heal with time. Ironically, the doctor I saw today recommended cycling as a way to strengthen the muscles and ligaments etc around my knee. Super!! The swelling below my knee is from trauma to the lateral collateral ligament. He said it may take up to 3 months for the swelling to go down. But basically, I am okay, and I can keep riding and hiking and swimming (maybe avoiding breast stroke) at a not too intense pace.

:)

Backcountry Bliss - Sawmill Trail, Rawah's, CO

Chris and I had a nice weekend in the mountains. We needed a weekend for just the two of us, away from the house (if I had spent the weekend at home, relaxing would have been out of the question. I would have ridden my bike, worked in the yard, cleaned, worked on the newsletter, etc etc). We had very vague goals for this backpacking trip - 1. to be outside and 2. to not be in Ft Collins, where the highs were in the high 90's. We didn't really care where we were going, except I didn't want to too far from a trailhead because of my knee, just in case it gave me any problems.

So we decided on Sawmill Trail, just east of Cameron Pass, in the popular Rawah mountains. On our crappy map, the trail split about 2 miles in and then both branches ended. But it also seemed to get close to treeline, promising great views. We parked at the Blue Lake trailhead, there were close to 10 cars there already, but our trail started farther west on Hwy. 14. That worked in our favor - there was only one car parked there and we only saw 2 other people the whole time we were out there.

The trail was actually an old logging road. It was nice to be on a wide trail where Chris and I could walk side by side. We wound through a lodgepole pine forest, with a mix of old trees, young saplings, and bare stumps from the logging days. It was kind of sad to see all the trees that had been cut down, but it was also neat to witness the regrowth of a forest. The trail was in some spots covered in wildflowers. I tried to give some flowers names so I could identify them with my wildflower book that I left at home. I gave them names like 'rocky mountain honeysuckle' and 'buttercups', Chris opted for names like 'stardrops of death' and 'pixie farts'. In any case, they were beautiful and there were also an abundance of orange and black butterflies. We also saw a ton of moose and elk tracks, and a couple mountain lion tracks!

We had to cross a stream along the way that was FREEZING!!! I think it was the coldest water I've ever been in. It got above my knees and seemed to take forever to wade across. But it was a bit of a thrill, too, especially coming back across the stream early this morning when there was still a bit of a chill in the air. Our campsite last night was right next to Sawmill Creek. There were a lot of mosquitoes so we built a fire and relaxed for several hours with nothing to do. It was perfect. As we ate dinner, a young male moose wandered into the brush across the creek from us. It was very cool but made us both a bit nervous after our encounter with some aggressive moose last July. My sleep last night was interrupted by numerous nightmares involving charging moose.

We wandered around some more today and were rewarded with stupendous views of the 12,000+ feet mountains to our west and the towering peaks in North Park (literally the northern part of Rocky Mtn National Park) to our south. It was a lovely day.

The drive back through the Poudre Canyon was tortuously hot in Chris' non-AC'ed truck. Finally it got to be too much, so we pulled over and jumped in the river. It was fun and so refreshing. We had to drive home in wet clothes, but that actually felt really good!

This weekend was good for me. Hopefully I can refocus and work hard this week without feeling burnt out by the end of it. That's how last week went, I was exhausted by Thursday evening and didn't want to do anything but sit on the couch. Tonight Chris and I have done some cleaning and grocery shopping, and we made a delicious meal - salad, onion rings (yum!), and green chile/monteray jack cheese buffalo burgers, and I made a coffee cheesecake type concoction that is still chilling ... guess we'll eat it tomorrow.

Oh yeah, my knee felt pretty good this weekend. Chris was very kind and carried almost all of our stuff in his backpack, so I just had my clothes in a daypack. I have an appointment with an orthopedic doctor on Tuesday, just to get it checked out. It's not the joint that hurts as much as the bone right below my knee (tibia?), it still has a bump on it.

Well, seeing as how I am now rambling, I'll sign out for the night. Thanks for reading!
:)

I have a case of the Mondays ...

Good morning. I'm sitting here eating my delicious oatmeal (aka - overly-thick slop). It's not too bad, but I got sick yesterday so I want to take my time eating it to make sure it all stays in my belly. Nice way to start the week ... I'll tell that story at the end - if you want a good laugh at my expense you can just skip to the last few paragraphs.

We're in the dog days of summer out here (whatever that means). The weeks are flying by - June is already half way through! Last week was just another week, nothing too special. We bought life insurance on Friday, that was an important but not very thrilling step in our lives. The newsletter I edit for AGU's (the American Geophysical Union) atmospheric science section came out after about 6 months of editing and waiting for the bureaucratic tape to clear. That provided me with some satisfaction.

Thursday and Friday evenings we cleaned the rocks we had moved to the front yard - they had a lot of dirt on them and dirt = weeds. Although we have moved and cleaned close to 20 wheelbarrow's full of dirt, I think we still need about 4 more. Boo. But it looks much better!

Saturday we went with Jeramy and a friend of mine from the cycling team, Beth, to Lory State Park, which is right outside of the Fort. There is a new dirt jump park there for bikers. I'm not into that personally, but it's fun to watch. It was the grand opening so there were demos and give-aways. We also did some riding, I rode for a couple hours, mostly with Beth. We rode up a service road that is infamous for it's relentlessly steep pitch. It was kind of (REALLY) hot - Beth started getting the chills - so we stopped a lot and turned off onto a side trail early instead of forcing ourselves to go to the top.

The rest of the day was spent vegetating inside, and cleaning and mowing the lawn. But it was a good day for Chris and I, pretty much a perfect combination of fun, relaxation, and productivity.

Sunday we slept in and then rode our bikes to church. It was getting hot and the high ended up at 99!! We worked in the yard for a couple of hours and then rode our bikes over to Jeramy and Christine's for a cookout. There was a good group there - Victor and Marcy (their friends), Dave (also their friend but now ours via Steamboat), Matt, Beth, Rob, and Mollie (from our Bible study group). I had been looking forward to it. Good food with good friends, and I had a growler of beer in my bag (basically a jug of beer you can get filled up at the breweries in town, it's about the equivalent of a 6 pack but cheaper and fresher).

I was kind of grouchy by the time we got there because of the heat. Then I felt tired and thought a coke would do the trick. Then, after munching on some broccoli, I started feeling nauseous. Christine gave me an alkaselzer, which was so gross I almost threw up right there. So I laid down on their couch for a while, feeling gross and wiped out. Finally I decided to go to the bathroom and just see what happened. I hung out in there for a while with no effect. I flushed the toilet and it was kind of slow. I just wanted to go lay down again - but then the toilet overflowed!! Great. I quickly opened the top and grabbed the little stopper thing. Now I was stuck, standing in toilet water, feeling like I was going to be sick, and yelling for someone to come help. It was stupid. Why do things like this seem to happen to me? Finally Chris came in and Jeramy found a plunger and we fixed everything and cleaned up. Geez. I think people may have gotten the impression that something that came out of me had clogged the toilet, but it was just my bad luck. But I was too tired to set the record straight. Like I said, they're good friends and were being understanding and sympathetic, but it's still a little embarrassing. I told Chris that I wanted to go home, and he borrowed Dave's truck to drive me (so much for saving the environment with our bike ride).

I spent the rest of the evening on the couch, and I finally threw up, which helped a bit. It sucked. Oh yeah, and we were supposed to have a doctor's appointment this morning to show how healthy we are so we can get the life insurance. I had to cancel that.

The only thing I can figure is I got overheated, which is weird because I've done more intense things in the heat before. But I didn't eat much Sunday, so I doubt it was something I ate. Who knows. At least now I feel better and in the past 30 minutes I've eaten half my oatmeal. Way to go me!

Well, time to go to work. Joy! I really like summer, I don't mind that days pass with nothing eventful happening. I like the long days and extra hours of sunlight to play outside. I like the laid-back attitude that's bound to infect a college town when the deadlines and class schedules cease and 30,000 of it's most rambunctious inhabitants take a temporary leave of absence. And I even like what I do for "work" ... it's just that one thing stays pretty much the same regardless of season - Mondays suck!

Hope yours isn't too bad. Thanks for reading and have a good week! :)