slow goings

After all the excitement of vacation and traveling to MI, we've not been inspired to update the ole blog. Day to day life pretty much goes on as per usual. However, there are a couple longer term items of note.

First is that we are marching through the process of becoming foster parents. We turned in about 20 pages of personal info last week, and we'll be interviewed in person next week at our home. So if you have a kid and live in NM and are thinking of doing something really foolish, consider that your kid could be under our care soon. Beware!

Second, my ambition of moving to another group in the lab is looking promising. The first phase will likely involve me working half-time in my current group and the rest in the new group. What's the new group? Analyzing the prospects of biofuels, with particular emphasis on fuels from algae. What's my current group? To be honest, I'm not sure. Can you see why I want to move?

Here's the family in MI. Ricky is SO cool!

on the leading edge of fashion

You might have incorrectly assumed that I am not hip to current fashion trends. While riding home from work, I happened to notice a young man wearing an NBA jersey in a trendy new way. His jersey was on backwards! That's right, as he was walking towards me, I was confronted with the word 'Iverson', rather than '76ers' (this is an old jersey -- is retro coming back again? I say no.).

Well, in my mind, this requires a response. If I were a follower of trends, I would have immediately turned my shirt around. Instead, I claim to be the first to counter this trend by wearing my shirt normalwise.

Staying on this leading edge is challenging, even for me. During the meteoric gasoline price rise, I was growing rather concerned about the increasing number of fellow bicycle commuters. Thankfully, with gasoline essentially being given away, this trend will be cut off before it really gains momentum. I'd hate to join the bus riders, and our roads are too rough for dorky roller-blading.

I conclude with two trendy tips. Jill says, 'tea is the new coffee.' She also says, 'ride road bikes offroad.'

One Week in Utah

C: Someday I'd like to take a two-week vacation.

J: Sounds great. Where d'ya wanna go?

C: Uh . . . here.

... and we're back

We're back from our 1 1/2 week vacation. Did we miss anything?

We saw a moose. More to come.

epicification

Is it just me, or do most people try to increase the 'epicness' of all outdoor activities? As an example, I was talking to a small group of friends recently that don't ride bikes often (some at all). We agreed that we should all do a ride together. Then someone says lets do a century (100 miles) or says let's climb the Crest (5500 feet of climbing in 13 miles). Um, those rides are really hard! How about let's ride to an ice cream shop? Then we can think about doing something more challenging.

Certainly, we've done our share of pushing ourselves to the limit with some long, hard bike rides and some long hikes. But how's this for epic? Ride with 4 friends to a softball game,





then ride to a restaurant for dinner, and then watch a movie in 3D. A brief review: Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D was a good time. As buddy Luke says, Brendan Fraser is the new king of the B movies. And guess what? It was dark after the movie, and it rained just as we got to the restaurant. No problem, we have fenders and just turned on our lights for the ride home. Our de-epicification: let's do normal fun stuff but without a car!

Bandelier day trip

This week the Polkadot family invited me to go along with them to Bandelier, an old stomping ground of mine. I always love exploring the cliff dwellings with people who haven't seen them yet.

A couple of things I've learned visiting Bandelier:

1. These settlements were built by the ancient Pueblo Peoples. Their descendants still live in pueblos around New Mexico. They prefer that we don't call their ancestors "Anasazi," since Anasazi is a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemies."

2. The buildings and access trails at Bandelier were built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. One of the requirements for joining the Bandelier work team was that the applicant posses at least three natural teeth.

ocho

On July 8th we celebrated our 8th anniversary. We like being married to each other.

In the tradition shared by all cultures for all kinds of festivals, we celebrated with food. I took a picnic lunch to Chad: kimbap, strawberries, blueberry scones with lemon cream and iced tropical green tea. Kimbap is a pretty and tasty Korean picnic food. It's usually made with kim -- dried seaweed -- and looks like this:

I didn't have any kim on hand, but in Korea once I'd eaten kimbap wrapped with a really thin egg omelet, so I thought I'd try that. The rice is pre-soaked and cooked with extra water for super-stickyness, then flavored with a little honey, sesame oil and sesame seeds. I put carrots, celery and ham on the inside. I meant to make a dipping sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, a little red wine vinegar and crushed red pepper -- but I forgot as I was hurrying to load the picnic on my bike.

For dinner we walked to a nearby uppity bar and grill, where we sat on the patio and ate things like grilled peach and arugula salad with bleu cheese and red pepper croutons, spinach and hazelnut cannelloni, and salmon served on a cedar plank. Chad wanted to ask if they'd box up the plank for him.

A delicious day.