Evening walk

Yellowstone Revisited

I know. Another long silence... No excuses, just average busyness. My folks have been visiting, I've been traveling, and life has been trucking on. Blogging has taken a significant backseat - my Google Reader is jam-packed with over 300 blog entries, and I am seriously considering cutting out about two thirds of my feeds.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon being very domestic. In addition to vacuuming almost all the carpeting, mopping all the lineoleum and doing three loads of laundry, I made two batches of curried butternut squash soup (with Braeburn apples and shallots, about 2 gallons in total), two batches of lasagna, and a batch of chocolate chip cookies (because there should always be chocolate chip cookies.) Still on the agenda for this week are a couple pies, as well as a shopping trip to acquire the fixings for a turkey dinner. This will be the first time that our family has been together for (Canadian) Thanksgiving since we moved to the U.S. - two years ago Keith was at a wedding in Maine, and last year he and Kai went to Canada for a family reunion. So to mark the occasion, we've invited over a few other families for a turkey dinner. This will be my, uh... second time cooking a turkey. I find that amusing.

Oh - did I promise something from Yellowstone? We went... it was lovely. We saw a bunch of elk, a lot of bison, a coyote, and a few mule deer. We saw many many pronghorns on our way to the park while driving through Wyoming. We even saw a mommy black bear and two little black cubs, but the best black bear was this little guy, given to Kai by the nice lady at the Mammoth Springs gift shop. His name is somewhere between Hugger, Cuddles, Bear, Blueberry and Strawberry. We're all confused now.


Highlights, apart from the free stuffed black bear:

Seeing a rainbow at Old Faithful.


Watching a bison cross the road right in front of our van.


Seeing water squirt out of the ground.


Having toques to stay warm when the weather turned chilly.


Sharing it all with my parents.


Finally, my favourite ominous photo.

Lunch break

I'm back in the land of easily-accessible high-speed internet, taking a quick break during lunch to say that yes, indeed, I am still here.

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I spent 7 days in Acapulco for a conference. Of course, I managed to squeeze in a little pool time. I also ate some yummy tacos al pastor and had some to-die-for azteca soupa. I walked on the beach, and waded up to my knees in the not-so-attractive Pacific Ocean. I even caught a cab to the other end of town to watch the famous cliff divers demonstrate their fortitude, diving as much as 100 feet into what appeared to be a rather shallow ocean surge. Upon my return to Colorado, Keith and I celebrated our 7th anniversary, ran or walk-jogged in the Boulder BOULDER 10K race, and then hosted the second annual big ol' Memorial Day barbecue... all in all, a busy week and a busy weekend.

And today, it's upload time. My research group is in the process of getting ready to upload our instrument onto the C-130. I suppose that the countdown is on: 2 months to the day until I head to Christmas Island for three weeks...

But in the meantime, a taste of my last week and a half. To see the rest of the photos, visit my flickr page.