snow weekend

I woke up on Saturday to find myself living in a cozy snowcave!

[view out my lowerlevel window]

We got lucky here in town and only received 14" of snow...although since we were on the edge of the blizzard it varied a lot in the area, some neighboring towns got a lot more.

It's been gorgeously sunny every day since though, so the roads are already clear and dry.  Ready and waiting for the next dumping that comes tomorrow! Ridiculous.

[snow campus]

I really like winter sunsets, the colors are so delicate and thin but the snow makes the world glow

p.s. Ben is having fun in Baltimore; it is basically a

(fun) natural disaster zone because they have no real snow removal infrastructure in the city and got twice as much snow as we did up here! It's a good time to be a teacher...snowdays indefinitely???

[Ben's car-yeah...obviously we didn't see each other this weekend!]

hydrangeas in the snow

When I arrived home today there was a little red box waiting outside my door in the snow...

and it had my camera cord in it!  And other fun things made of fuzzy yarn and lacy paper and sparkles. Thanks Mama and Grammy :)

So being newly reunited with my cord, I extracted the pictures that were waiting for me in my camera and found these snowy hydrangeas from my front step in Illinois .

[Did I mention the snow? We are getting hit by the epic Northeast Blizzard of 2010 as I type.]

Have a lovely weekend, whether you are snowbound or not.

My plans include some baking, attacking my backed-up laundry situation, a baby shower, superbowl party, and of course many hours of reading and writing for school.

Hopefully I can put a dent in my expectations; I usually plan too many things to do on weekends and end up disappointing myself when I can't accomplish them all! Alas.

Well I'm off to make another humongous mug of tea.

Today I realized I am a tea junkie. 

My mountain of boxes is getting outta control.

repeat photography

Happy almost-Friday everyone! Oh my goodness, where is the week going?  I've been pairing up some repeat photos of Lassen Volcanic National Park in CA in the lab and I think it's really cool...so I am going to teach you about it!

Repeat photography is one of the tools we use to visualize vegetation change in a specific location.  It's exactly what it sounds like; we take an old picture of a national park taken in the 20's, 30's or 40's back when the parks were being established and advertised, then go back out and find the EXACT SAME SPOT where the photographer took the picture and take the exact picture again.  Almost as soon as national parks were established, an enormous fire suppression policy took effect because wildfires are bad and we should put them out, right? (wronnnng) We are now realizing that fires were an important part of lots of forests and ecosystems because they cleared out underbrush and allowed big trees to grow without competition for resources, among gazillions of other reasons.  Fire suppression has resulted in the growth of LOTS of little trees that would have been wiped out otherwise.  Fast forward 80 years and these little trees are getting pretty big, which creates MORE fuel for future fires to burn, thus creating a bigger risk for high intensity fires that aren't natural (aka BAD). 

Comparing photographs of the same site reveals how forests have changed from fewer bigger trees to many smaller trees, which also blocks the dramatic vistas that characterize the national parks. 

Here's an example of my favorite from Yosemite. The picture on the top is from the early 1900's and the one on the bottom is from the 1990s. 

{original}

{today}

WAAAA! If you go there today, you would have no clue that what you're seeing is not natural at all! 

Forest and park managers are working to restore natural conditions by using prescribed fire, and researchers help by determining what "natural" or reference conditions were.  And that is part of what I do at grad school!

  

Groundhog's Day Eve Birthdays

Today is Groundhog's Day Eve, aka my mommy's BIRTHDAY!

She is a super amazing mom, and even though you are probably not reading this today Mama, I just wanted to give a little post for you.  :)

It is also Ben's mom's birthday, so if YOU are by chance reading this Pat, happy birthday to you too :)

And happy new job!

i am related to Annie Oakley

You know what really happens when you "grow up" and move out of the house??

Your parents decide to take amazing vacations with your younger siblings,

to places like this

...but the point of this post is to showcase perhaps the funniest picture of my little sister. ever.

love it.

weird movie weekend

Ben came up to visit this weekend, and because it was so cold out we ended up spending a lot of time nesting up as cozy as possible and watching movies.

I am just realizing how weird the selection was...

#1 The Maiden Heist

With names like Morgan Freeman and Christopher Walken, it was assumed that this wouldn't be a complete bust...and it wasn't. It was kind of funny, but more just weird. About these three old art museum guards who are each in love with random quirky works of art that are in a display being moved to Denmark, and who plan an elaborate heist to steal them so they can each be forever united with their respective paintings/naked sculpture. 

Weird, mildly entertaining.

#2 The Men Who Stare at Goats

We saw this at the dollar theater by my house, and it was even WEIRDER than the first movie, but also funnier. A new-age paranormal military program from the 70's gets a new "mission" and the climax is when the main characters end up sort of accidentally spiking the water of an army base in Iraq with LSD and releasing a shed of lab goats and prisoners into the desert.  Quirky but sometimes you wonder if you should really be laughing??

#3 What's Eating Gilbert Grape

A 1993 film starring Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio....very very 1993.  Leo does an amazing job portraying a mentally handicapped boy, and Johnny is his older brother. They live in podunk IA with their 500 pound mother and a couple sisters and it is a bit Lifetime-esque.

One of those movies that Ben vaguely remembered seeing ten years ago and thought it was good at the time....it's not bad but there are multiple parts where you go "wait...really????" and "why are we still watching this??" but then keep watching anyway.

p.s. my mom has saved my camera cord from the void of lost things and it will be on its way soon! so prepare to see yum recipes and nature pictures :)

winter has hit

Well after a couple weeks of practically balmy weather in the 30's and 40's and lots of pouring rain, winter has come to central PA.  With wind. 

It's still not as bad as the midwest though...the good thing about growing up in the bipolar climate of the Great Lakes states is that you will be prepared to survive ANYWHERE else.  Blazing humidity and 100+ degrees? check.  Ten below and an inch of ice everywhere? it sucks, but I have seen it happen. 

A very strange thing about living in the mountains is that they don't really have thunderstorms here.  It is so weird. There was one thunderstorm last fall that lasted about 10 minutes and the next day everyone was freaking out. [wimps.]

All this being said, I still can't wait until I can go out and run in the sunshine in the morning.  I'm starting to feel a little cooped up and sun-deprived.

But if it's going to be winter, I would rather have it feel like winter, and not this weird nebulous half-springish stuff that messes with my brain and makes me feel that spring is on the way.