A little color

During the summer the living space at our house doubles because of the deck. Justin and I (well more Justin than me, but I helped too) spent a lot of time over the last year making the deck and surrounding backyard an enjoyable place to spend time. And now it's starting to pay off, because the weather is nice the deck is inviting! But....it needed a little color.

Start by staining bases, find some mismatched pots & some colorful flowers.

And I get a little more color on the deck!

Sticky, Messy, Cottony

Our beloved cottonwood tree is making it's way through the spring cycle. First the sticky, sappy seed things,

then the cotton,

then the droping of the cotton pods (which Willy loves to clean off the extra cotton left on them).

And now we get to enjoy the shade it provides all summer long...the only reason we can handle not having air conditioning!

Old man Willy...

...all wrapped up in his "robe".

Reno Aces

Reno now has a minor league baseball team in their first season. Justin, Mark, Kelly and I rode up to Reno on the Harley's last night to watch a Memorial Day game.

It was a lot of fun, complete with fireworks after the bottom of the 9th Aces win!

Family motiviation

Sunday, Justin's brother Trevor was in Reno to visit his daughter, Kelcie, who is going to UNR. We rode up to see Kelcie's new house (super sweet!) and have dinner.

Justin decided the potential to run into his niece on campus was good motivation to finish his PhD!

New publication

I'm the 5th author, but whatever, it's still a publication. You can see the entire fact sheet by clicking HERE.

Stuck

What a week! I was back out doing fieldwork in Dixie Valley this past week and it ended up getting rather "exciting" on Thursday. My co-project chief and I had things moving quite smoothly all week, except for the fact we were working our butts off, (i.e. 13-15 hours days) and had finished up all of our monthly servicing in addition to some extra quarterly sampling, etc. So we checked out of the hotel Thursday morning, hit Starbucks and headed out to do one last day of measurments before heading home.

We drove 2 hours across highway and dirt roads to our parking spot near a thermal spring. We unloaded our ATVs, packed them up, hooked up the trailer with a HUGE wooden box holding our evaporation measurement dome and then picked out way down through the desert vegetation to the flat playa. I was following behind to keep an eye on the trailer that was in front of me when I noticed the playa was getting rather wet and had developed a really thick salt crust. Well, making this shorter, she buried her ATV to the axles, and I wheeled mine around a bit behind her hoping to keep my ATV safe. We dug down through the thickest, wettest, blackest, densest, most suctiony clay I've ever seen to unhook the trailer. After returning to my ATV, I tried to move forward and buried my back end to the axles...
A few satellite phone calls back to the office, several hikes back and forth across the 3/4 of a mile stretch of playa carrying all our gear, an attempt to insert collected pieces of wood under the tires, a near nervous breakdown because I was more tired and fatigued than I ever remember being, and then a 2 hour wait under the shade of the large ATV trailer later, help arrived. The tires were aired down and dug out, wood inserted beneath and many more strong backs pushing, both ATVs sprung free. Sheesh! Let's not do that again! And thank God for satellite phone, because there is no cell service in Dixie!

And that concludes the most physically challenging week I've had in my career...yup, this overtook geology field camp in Wyoming.

Active in Carson

The weather was beautiful this weekend and my friend, Sarah, and I took advantage of it. Carson is so awesome because you can do all kinds of outdoor things right from your house. Saturday we went on a mountain bike ride (which says something, because in a general sense, moutain bike riding scares me). Willy and I road down the street, met Sarah and her dog, Hank, and we just went up into the hills. I only took one picture (1st shoot in the slideshow below) of when we fixed Sarah's bike chain in the trail. I was really proud of us!

And then Sunday we hiked up C-Hill in Carson before church! Nice view from up there.

Grandma Collen

Justin's sweet Grandma Collen passed away this morning. She was the nicest, most sincere, honest, loving, strong, and even spunky woman. Unfortunatly I did not get to know her as well as I would have liked. Justin was down in Vegas with her all weekend with much of the family gathered around her. Grandma Collen was very special and loved. She is now with God resting peacefully looking down upon us every day. We love you, Grandma Collen!

Shake, rattle & squirrel?

Earlier today I was sitting at my desk addressing comments to a paper I wrote...the day was dragging on and it was only 10:00am. So I decided to do a different task to perk me up before I sat back down at my desk. I needed to get a box to fill with bottles for some sampling, so I walked out into the warehouse to make my selection from the 2-story high pile of boxes people have thrown out. As I approached the pile I heard some rustling around to my right. I looked down and saw a white garbage bag full of crushed aluminum cans from the breakroom. The bag was moving, shaking, rattling. Leaning over I nudged the bag with a box I had picked up from the pile and the bag shook violently. Then two little furry eyes looked up at me from a hole in the bottom of the bag.
Stinking squirrel.
And there's my excitement for the day.
Happy Thursday.

May showers?

It rained quite a bit here last weekend (amazing!)...I know it wasn't quite April, but it still brought May flowers to my front flower bed.

These eyes

Justin's Mom, is one very talented momma.

(Did you notice the flowers and decorations at the wedding?)

When we were in Vegas a few weeks ago Sharon told me about an art/drawing class she is currently taking. I got to see several of her "assignments" (wow) and also her current project, which had to do with people's eyes. She had a cut-out of most every one's eyes in the family, including yours truly. We didn't get to see the finished product before we left, but check out the hand-made birthday card I got in the mail!!!

Aero Dawg

A little over a week ago Justin was out in Dixie Valley doing a bit of field work with a consultant who owns a small plane. Both Justin and Willy got to fly on an areal photo flight.

Fly, Willy, Fly!

Justin said Willy enjoyed the ride so much soon after take-off he was fast asleep...