TKOd by my Mom

Ok, so tell me if this has ever happened to you.

I was sleeping the other night and started having a weird dream. I was kneeling near the edge of the couch where my mother was sitting and suddenly, out of nowhere, she punches me in the head.

I look at her for a minute and then ask incredulously, "Did you just hit me in the head?"

To which she responds by pinching me repeatedly on the forearm. And it hurt. And she wasn't stopping. So I finally got fed up and thought, "I'm just going to squeeze her arm until she quits." And I did.

And that's when I woke up. Because I had done this. I had jabbed my fingernails into my skin and taken out a big bunch. Only this wasn't a dream. The reality was that I had a large slice of skin underneath my fingernails.

Needless to say, I called my mom in the morning and told her to quit beating me up in my dreams.

Did my man earn the prize?

Barack Obama today was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Huh?

Did he earn the prize? Ummm. No.

If someone can tell me exactly what peace he achieved, perhaps my mind will be swayed. Until then, the value of a Nobel Prize has gone done a few notches in my mind.

I Suck

This is a night-blooming cereus. AKA Star of Bethlehem. It's in my house. It's on my plant.

This is a spectaclar flower that blooms on an otherwise ugly plant. Seriously ugly plant. The only reason anyone keeps one of these plants in their house is that the flower, no matter how infrequent the blooms may come, is spectacular to behold.

Imagine my joy at learning that I had a bloom on my plant after only four years. (Some people have to wait much, much longer.)

Only there is one problem. I discovered the blossom after the plant had flowered.

Did I mention that the flower lasts only one night?

I must be the only botanist on Earth who gets a night-blooming cereus to bloom and then MISSES THE WHOLE FREAKIN' THING. So for your benefit and mine, I'm including a time lapse video from YouTube of what a night-blooming cereus is SUPPOSED to look like and why I keep this God-awful ugly plant in my house.

Enjoy. I wish I could.

Jake at 13 14

My dog. 13 years old. Still got the puppy attitude.

Sometimes I feel sorry for you

AKA Parmesan polenta stuffed fire-roasted poblano peppers with a black bean mole accompanied by jasmine rice and a roasted finger chili salsa.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, D, why didn't you just save yourself the trouble and make a black bean ragout? Call it whimsy. And why Parmesan? (Because I can't have soft cheeses, they don't agree with me.) Rice and polenta? Yes, I think it probably was a little heavy on the starch, but...darn it...those flavors were just meant to go together.

Just a little something I threw together after a particularly productive day at the Farmer's Market.

Yeah. Sometimes I feel sorry for you guys.

The world's longest learning curve

This has been an interesting year. Usually when someone tells me they've had an interesting year, it is usually always positive. In many ways my interesting year has been positive.

I got a fellowship that will pay for my research. (FINALLY!!!)
I got a raise with said fellowship.
I got the data I need to make meaningful progress on my research.
I had a couple of dates.
I got to travel again all over the west and I got to take Jake with me.

But on the other hand, much of my interesting year has been..well...I don't want to say negative but something of the "lessons learned the hard way" variety. There was a short period of time in my life....from about the ages 24-27, that I felt I changed significantly. Around that time I felt like my thinking came into clear focus and I began to "consciously" live my life instead of just living from day to day, taking whatever came my way. I was deciding how I felt about the world and my place in it. I figured it for a normal growth pattern--part of the process of growing up.

I don't mean to imply that I thought I had it all figured out (although youth is notorious for that), I just felt like I was self-aware. Today, I realized that at no time since in my adult life have I changed that much. That was, until this year. This year feels like a second growth spurt.

I noticed quite early this year, that I had become increasingly quiet. I didn't talk as much as I used to. I didn't impress my opinions on others like I had done as a young adult. I didn't really enjoy debating EVERY LITTLE THING like I once did. I did get mad and get all "henked up" as Bek says, but usually only when I felt like I was the victim of some injustice. But recently, I haven't felt a need to comment or speak up or lead a discussion where I wanted it to go. I've relinquished leadership positions. It isn't that I don't care. I care a great deal about things and people and the world. In fact, I think I care more now than I did in my youth. I have wondered whether my education has caused me to talk less and listen more. Or maybe I realized that all that energy and hot air I expended never changed a thing. Or maybe it's a trait that comes with age. Or maybe I was just getting tired. Or apathetic. I found it curious, but certainly not so curious that I thought it abnormal.

I'm not sure whether it accentuated or exacerbated the problem, but I traveled extensively this year. I love to travel. I must have been a gypsy in a former incarnation. Most of that time D-dog Jake was my only companion. Jake doesn't say much on a trip. When you spend that kind of time alone, your bad habits begin to come into focus. Or perhaps I should say, more appropriately, your personality defects begin to emerge from that quiet place where they usually hide when you're paying attention. With no on there to distract me, the irritating things I did didn't have a haze of activity and conversation to purge them from my short-term memory. I had no one there to agree with me when I wanted to put my own spin on a situation. Eventually, I just had to deal with the facts and the fallout alone. On one of these trips, I had a conversation with a man I was dating and that conversation went badly, then went from bad to worse, and then from worse to relationship ending. I realized that I drove that conversation to its natural conclusion. It was like I couldn't help myself. It was like watching a train wreck but being impotent to stop it.

At the same time, I experienced a rather abrupt change in my primary professional relationship--and with that one I was strapped in the passenger seat. I am still unclear why this change happened and whether I contributed to the relationship's decline. I don't know what will be the ramifications of this change. All I know is that things were said to me that I found unfair, unfounded, and unforgivable. I felt betrayed. And I never saw it coming. I haven't forgotten those painful words, but neither have I have spent months analyzing what happened. Perhaps it was the severity of the comments that prevented me from taking them seriously. Like the way that deep cuts don't hurt. You just sit there and watch them bleed with some sense of awe. Somehow I managed simply to put the issue aside. To leave it alone. To not deal with it as a way of dealing with it. Yes, my relationship with this person is permanently damaged. Where before we were often friendly and shared life events with one another, now there is nary a word that passes between us that isn't work related. I have simply accepted that this person must honestly believe those hurtful things she said, and move on. I am not going to let someone else's bad opinion of me stand in the way of my goals.

I realized, in quite glaring terms this summer, that I'd do well to shut up most of the time. Not every thought in my head needs an ear. And I learned this as those thoughts piled up in the ears of people that I didn't necessarily want to push away. In the work relationship, I think I've done the right thing. I don't think about what passed between us, I simply don't think about her at all. By ignoring the offense I've managed to maintain at least a workable relationship. In the personal relationships, I did the wrong thing and both were lost.

Which brings me to today and the reason for this post. I went to a meeting today in support of my peers in a fellowship program. My peers wished to express some concerns they had about an assignment. They had questions. They felt abused. They felt the need for solidarity to have their concerns taken seriously. Whether or not I agree with their concerns (which actually, I did), I certainly agree that professional issues need to be addressed in a professional manner. They appeared dedicated to addressing their concerns in a professional manner. This I can and did support with my presence.

The group set up a meeting with "management". As is usually my habit these days, I think it is important that younger people get some experience doing the hard things in life. So when the time came to speak, I allowed them to speak. They fumbled a bit. They were apologetic but determined. They were nervous. They perhaps could have more clearly thought out how to communicate their concerns. Unpolished, yes. But they were never, ever unprofessional. I sat quietly and listened as one professional member of "management" blew a gasket and called our concerns "outrageous" and "unbelievable", and then stomped out of the room never to return to the meeting. I watched all this transpire with a sort of "wow, you don't see that every day" sort of disbelief. I didn't personalize it. I didn't internalize it. I didn't accept responsibility for it. I recognized it for what it was. Bat-shit crazy behavior. I realize that while I witnessed bat-shit crazy behavior, I didn't have to "deal"with bat-shit crazy behavior. I don't have to feel guilty just because someone else hopes I will. I don't have to smooth over ruffled feathers or speak my mind. I don't have to do jack shit. And that is probably the smartest thing I could have done. After the meeting had concluded, I told the remaining manager that our purpose was to ask questions and express concerns and discuss an issue of common concern. Our purpose was not to attack management. I felt that was the most important thing that should be communicated to the manager who stomped off. And then I stopped thinking about it.

Tomorrow is another day and I have bigger fish to fry.

I wish I'd just figured that out before I fubared two personal relationships in one year.

A year to remember

After the Lep course, I headed east in search of another one of my elusive plants. Spoiler alert: I didn't find it. I did manage to find lots of my outgroups. With any luck, they will amplify this time. But I did do something I have never done before. I spent the night in the desert in the open air.

It was one of the most remarkable nights of my life. I simply cannot explain everything that I felt and experienced. I was completely alone. I did not have the proper clothing and shelter for such a night, so about 3/4 of the way through, when the temperature dropped down below 60 degrees, I made my way back toward my car. The sun beat me back to the car. I wanted to share my experience with you in photos. This was my night on the white sands.

Hello Muddah.....

Been having great fun at nerd camp. Took some picture postcard photos today.


Stepped on this moth. Yup. It's a gift.


OK, everyone here said I was crazy, but I think this one has a design on it's body that looks like a tiki torch, so I dubbed it Manduca tiki. You see it don't you?

Nerd Camp

If you had any foolish thoughts that D might be something other than pure nerd, lay those thoughts aside as folly. I just realized today that I'm at moth camp. Any pretense I had of containing even an ounce of cool has evaporated.

Let me introduce you to the fastest tongue in the west. Hyles lineata. The white-lined sphinx moth.

Hey, it's not all moths. Here's a pretty awesome beetle.


A praying mantis eating a sphinx moth for breakfast.

Geometrid moths.


Another hawkmoth.


Lots of dirty brown jobs (Noctuidae).


I learned to pin....properly....by a real entomologist. I learned a little about butterfly and moth morphology. I have looked at diagnostic characters under scopes. I have oooohed and awwwwed over caterpillars. I have already begun my shopping list of things I need to buy to do my research the right way. I've got some great, interested classmates that I really enjoy spending time with. The food is great. I've listened to corny jokes about statisticians (and laughed), and endured endless ribbing about my accent. I am trying desperately to care about the butterflies we chase during the days. Maybe I'll collect some of those for you tomorrow. Let me leave you with this.

You haven't lived until you have examined caterpillar fracts. Just look it up.

Trip Prep

Hold your breath. I'm going on another trip. This one for a lepidopteran course in southeast Arizona. I'll be doing a little collecting after it's over. Which reminds me that I need to get in the herbarium today and do a little investigative work on site locations.

But today I am preparing for the trip. I started by cleaning out the fridge. You would think, having been gone the better part of two months this summer, that my fridge would already be empty. But noooooooooooo....

Today I threw out expired yogurt, salsa and spaghetti sauce with mold on it, a liquefied green pepper, and a carton of eggs that expired in late JUNE! I didn't buy groceries this week because...well...what would be the use? My fridge is empty. Needs a good cleaning.

Keeps my mind off the fella a la hot date, because I've convinced myself he's just not interested. Beckie says I'm crazy. He called last night, she says. But he doesn't exude enthusiasm, I said.

Sheesh. It is really hard being this crazy sometimes. But at least my fridge won't stink when I get back.

What I did with my Saturday

Click here to view this photo book larger

Well, after the farmer's market and a few errands in town. Took me about 7 hours to put it all together. It's a birthday present for D-nephew Lee. These are all pictures that he took on our trip. I think he's really got an eye for photography. However, I did notice that he deletes anything but perfect photos. Makes the decision right there in the field. Me, on the other hand, I come home and see if I can't fix some of those pics.

Since the book is for him, I sprinkled in some pictures I took of him in the field. I hope he likes it. He'll be 22 this year.

I made one of these books of D-fav Nevada just after she died. I really like these little books. I like them even better when I have a half-off coupon.

Advice for 30 year olds

If I had one bit of advice for 30-year-old men, it would be this: step away from the bottle.

D-friend Bek is 40 years old. She's expecting. Gutsy move, yes. Foolish? Hardly. But there is one part of her situation that does make her condition more difficult. She has a husband who drinks. And when I say "drinks", I don't mean 6 beers on the weekend. I mean he takes time off work to work on their house and drinks 18 beers in a single day. She suspects he's an alcoholic. She doesn't know because he doesn't drink every day. They have had week-long spats that drug in in-laws and friends and destroyed relationships with many concerned. They have separated for two-weeks at a time over the drinking. She calls me up regularly to vent about his drinking. I don't have the heart to tell her that, yes, her man is a drunk, and if his drinking bugs her that much, her marriage may be doomed.

Now don't think I'm just a negative person. Because it isn't about dooming her relationship. I am speaking from what I have seen and experienced in my years growing up, growing older, and growing wiser. Or at least having the awareness of people and things around me to have seen patterns emerge.

I believe there is a point in your early 30s when you make a decision. Perhaps I should say you have an opportunity to make a decision. You can decide to be a grown up or you can decide to string along your youth beyond its natural lifespan. People who decide to grow up make changes in their lives. They slow down on the drinking. They start to save money for the future. They invest time and energy in their careers. If they haven't started families, they may begin now. They are concerned parents. They are making positive, meaningful, adult decisions in their day-to-day lives and considering the future. They rid themselves of the stupidity of youth, they analyze their experiences and relationships, they shed the party boy/girl image, and they quit doing things counter-productive to their goals.

Or they don't.

Men, in particular, seem to have trouble turning this corner. They get caught up in a "I work hard. I deserve to relax and let loose once in a while." All the time, never realizing that once in a while comes far more often then even they are willing to admit. Never taking into consideration that all that drinking, recreational drug use, hanging out in bars is playing with fire. I have seen this attitude destroy more marriages than I care to count. In fact, there was a time in my life when I could count on one hand the men I knew who weren't alcoholics or drug addicts or daily, dedicated users of marijuana. I will be brutally honest when I say that my marriage ended long before my divorce and long before the really difficult part of making the decision to leave. My marriage ended the day I realized that my husband would never, ever, ever stop smoking pot every single day of his life. Pot was his hobby. I couldn't go anywhere with him. I couldn't take him, for instance, to a work function, because he would show up reeking of pot. He had become an embarrassment to me. I nagged. I prodded. I begged. I withheld sex. Not me, not the promise of intimate relations, not his children, not his career, nor any relationship in his life could cause him to even slow down. He had made his choice. Pot was the most important thing in his life.

Now, if I had told him this he would have called me crazy. Of course his children were important. Of course I was important. But as he was fond of saying, "actions speak louder than words". He smoked pot in the car on the way to his daughter's wedding. In his tuxedo. A wedding in which he had to walk her down the aisle in front of 500 of her closest friends and new family. Helloooooo.

He smoked pot on the way to work. On lunch breaks. On the way home. While driving the car I paid for. He smoked pot in front of the tv every night. I don't even want to think about how much money that man spent on pot. If he had spent that much on golf clubs and green fees, or fixing up a dream car, or traveling, or Bear's tickets I might not have minded so much. But to watch your husband sit in the dark in his den with nothing but a doobie and a bong day after day, week after week, year after year was more than I could take. One day it dawned on me I had married a dedicated loser. He wasn't going to change. And this was my life. Forever.

That was the day my marriage ended. Some little spark that had nearly been beat out flamed for just a minute. Some little voice whispered inside my head, "Oh, hell no." And then that flame grew stronger and that voice grew louder. I was done.

So I watch Bek struggling with that same set of circumstances. Just change the word "pot" in the paragraph above with "beer" and you've got her life. And yes, he does drink and drive. We all know how tragically that has ended in my own life. My oldest brother is serving 15 years for involuntary manslaughter. That's legalese for having killed someone while driving drunk. I watch Bek worry as her belly grows and her marriage disintegrates. I am afraid for her. She's 40. She's old enough and wise enough to know where this is going and she is struggling, not with concern for her husband, but concern for herself and her baby. She has my greatest sympathy. Because none of her nagging and even the prospect of fatherhood has given her husband the push he needs to start behaving like a grown up. He is fighting it tooth and nail. I think he is fighting it because he's addicted to alcohol. He hasn't gotten the picture yet. He's trying to fool himself with the "I don't drink everyday" mantra. " I can't be an alcoholic if I don't drink everyday."

Gentlemen, I don't know how to break it to you. But if you have had more than one argument in a year about your drinking, smoking, recreational drug use, it is interfering with the relationships in your life. If you defend yourself by any means possible, you are playing fast and loose with those relationships. If your significant other, parent, friends, and co-workers have told you its time to slow down or quit, do yourself a favor: LISTEN. You may want to be a lot of things in your life, but "a drunk" isn't one of them. Trust me. I've seen it all.

I think it's why I don't drink at home anymore. Beer will linger in my fridge for months. I never drink hard liquor unless I have friends over. Alcohol is just not a meaningful part of my life. I hope this makes me a grown up.

Empathy for an old man

This evening, I have been watching the second disc of Michael Palin's Himalayas. I'm pretty sure it's a BBC production. In the first disc, he travels through the Khyber Pass. All I can say is rent this video series (available on Netflix). I watched disc 1 on the eve of traveling out west. It was my inspiration for tackling the Golden Trout Wilderness. If a 60-something comedic actor can tackle the Himalayas, surely a 40-something botanist can tackle a few shorty mountain passes.

Luckily, I didn't watch disc 2 before leaving. I might have had second thoughts.

Palin suffers altitude sickness. He gasps for breath. He passes signs warning of "Mountain Sickness" detailing headache, loss of appetite, fatigue, and other symptoms. I know them well. I hiked 10 miles up nearly 2000 feet and I couldn't eat dinner. I didn't want breakfast the next day either. I had to make myself drink vast amounts of water. Eating the smallest amount of food felt like a full Thanksgiving dinner. The thought of the summer sausage I had brought filled me with nausea. I may never eat tuna again.

I am quite convinced that there is a thin me living at 17000 feet.

But his hike and mine were vastly different. He had packers of the human sort. He had liberal use of motorized vehicles. He even had yak to aid in his journey. Then again, he is probably close to 20 years older than me. I can cut him some slack.

Friendship Bridge at the border between Nepal and Tibet.

Mt. Everest

That aside, I desperately want to see the Himalayas. I want to spend hours taking photos in Khyber Pass. I want to camp at Everest's base camp. Is this a silly thing to want? I want to do it before I get too old. I don't know how I'll manage it, but man, wouldn't that be a fine adventure?

And unless you have a substantial block of time for travel fantasy, for God's sake, don't click here.

How I wrecked my kitchen

I found this blog. You see, I had 10 poblano peppers to deal with. I got a deal at the farmer's market last weekend. They had to be dealt with. So I went internet hopping and found a recipe that looked interesting.

I had just about everything needed except the hot peppers and red wine vinegar (which wasn't a deal breaker--though the peppers probably were). So I did a bit of quick shopping and started chopping.

I chopped onions and garlic and cilantro and spinach. Yes, spinach.

Then I blistered some peppers. 10 poblano peppers, 6 jalapenos, and two red hot finger chili peppers.
So I peeled 18 hot peppers. You know how they warn you to wear rubber gloves when handling hot peppers?

Maybe I should have listened.

The fresh salsa was made with a 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes, two cloves of chopped garlic, two diced green onions, a handful of chopped fresh cilantro, the meat of two roasted red hot finger chilies and one roasted jalapeno, a bit of olive oil and a splash of red wine vinegar. Perfection!

You kinda have to let the flavors steep a while so all the flavors are married.

The stuffing for the peppers was a mixture of pepper jack cheese and spinach. Yes, I am home alone so I can eat all the cheese I want!

I added a bit of spicy sausage to one and it did NOTHING for the flavor. Don't be tempted. These are so much better vegetarian.

I used a handy box of fish batter I had hanging about, but I think they would have been even better with a simple batter of flour, egg, and milk. But I wasn't going to risk the milk. Not after the risk I was already taking with the cheese. In any event, smothered in the most excellent salsa, I couldn't taste the flavored batter anyway.

Wow. This absolutely wrecked my kitchen. OK, so it was wrecked before but now it is REALLY wrecked. AT least now I have to deal with it. So this is the meal that helped me clean my house. Seriously.

Oh, and if anybody has any ideas for what I'm going to do with 1/3 lb. of pepper jack cheese-spinach mixture, 2 roasted jalapenos, and a pound of medium spicy cooked breakfast sausage, just let me know. I'm thinking frittata.

Out with the old.....

Remember these? Oh, so do I. Fondly.

My 6-year-old hiking boots. They went a lot of places with me. Over most of the western US. Over a good portion of southern Illinois. Served double-duty during snow storms.

Alas, all good things must come to an end.

And so today, I opened up the closet and got down the box that has held my "spare pair". Spare no more, they've been promoted.

Just take a look at these.



It's like a really bad "before and after" shot. For God's sake, they still have the tags on them.


I'm not sure what Gore-Tex does, but I think it's good. Very good.



Sheesh. The inserts don't even have footprints on them yet. Or burrs. Or grass seeds. Or any of those assorted plant cling-ons that I always manage to run into. This is going to take some getting used to.



Just ignore that chicken on the floor beside me.

On why this is my favorite travel pic

and this is not.


The difference in these two pics is the presence of my breasts. I think I look like a normal, healthy person in the first pic, but a grotesque caricature in the latter. Bug loving mama, a very dear female scientist who happens to be pregnant as I write this, wrote an insightful post on what it means to be a woman and a professional in this day and age. Her post has caused me to reflect on my own ideas about being a professional woman. I decided to post my response to her post. Yes, it can be read alone, but is better read in the context of the original post.

Daktari said...

I find this post very interesting. First, I tend to agree with you (i.e., professional equal masculine [attire]). And when I begin to examine why I agree with that, like you, what I find is very telling and more than a bit disturbing about ME.

We are quite the same, pregnant you and non-pregnant I. Where you have a pregnant belly, I have extraordinarily large breasts. And where you want to be taken seriously as a scientist who happens to be pregnant, I wish to be taken seriously as a scientist who happens to have large breasts. Unfortunately, we both know that a pregnant belly and big boobs trigger negative biases and stereotypes in both men and women on both a professional and a personal level. You are pregnant, therefore you aren't serious about your work. I have big boobs. Obviously, I've gotten where I am by capitalizing on my tits. Or worse, I must be a bubble-headed bimbo. Like you, my physical condition announces itself before I have an opportunity to demonstrate my competence, my seriousness, or my professionalism. So in virtually any interaction with a new acquaintance, I believe myself to be operating from a position of weakness (having to identify and diffuse each new person's biases and stereotypes). I do so predominantly by downplaying (to the best of my ability) my physical attributes (hiding them, if you will), seldom dressing in feminine attire, and by ignoring any reference to them (and trust me, you'd be surprised how many people are willing to say "Wow, those are some tits!"), and finally, by overwhelming people from the get-go with my intelligence, competence, and professionalism.

It's a lot to ask of every single interaction I have with every single person I meet. And it is one reason that people who only know me via the internet think that I am something of an intellectual snob. Because they haven't met me, they don't understand my need to diffuse a potentially embarrassing situation before it happens by overwhelming them with my competence.

It is sad but it is my life. Be thankful that pregnancy is only temporary. Unless and until I have money for a breast reduction, this is my life permanently.

Perhaps what is most sad is that I don't feel like a normal person. I haven't felt like a normal person since puberty. I wish more than anything that I could change that. Because that women in that top photo looks pretty and fun and interesting to me. And that woman in the second photo looks like boobs with legs.

Extra wide load

Tioga Pass, CA
Valley of the Gods, UT

Angel Peak, NM

Grand Prismatic Spring, WY

Unknown valley, UT/CO border

There's no place like home

I finally pulled into my driveway today with no where to go and no plans to get there.

Wow. What a summer I've had so far.

A short list of the places I've been isn't so short. Trip 1: Amarillo, Palmdale, Palm Springs, Los Angeles County, Morro Bay, Mojave (CA), Mesquite (NV), Hanksville (UT). Trip 2: Amarillo, San Ysidro (NM), Bluff (UT), Kanab (UT), Minersville (UT), Ely (NV), Cisco (UT), Mack (CO), Bloomfield (NM). Trip 3: Albuquerque, Flagstaff (oh God, I'm in love with Flagstaff!!), the Golden Trout Wilderness (CA), Mammoth Lakes (CA), June Lake (CA), Yosemite NP, Salt Lake City, Logan (ok, pretty fond of Logan, too, but I'm non-committal--it may have just been the company I kept), St. Anthony (ID), Yellowstone NP, Jackson (WY), Big Piney (WY) and back to Albuquerque.

That's a lot of country to cover. A whole lot. How whole lot?

Trip 1: 5318 miles
Trip 2: 5353 miles
Trip 3: 7817 miles

Total miles driven: 18488. Total travel days: 44. Miles per day? Ok, let's be real about this. I spent 5 days backpacking in the Golden Trout Wilderness. I spent two nights in Palmdale, CA. Other than that, all were driving days. So that's actually only 38 days. Average 486 miles/day. The distance from New York City to Raleigh, NC. Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon.

That's a damn lot of driving day after day after day for more than a month.

I'm done driving. I'm sitting my ass at home for a while. I want to pick weeds out of my flower beds. I want to relax in one spot.

By the way. I wouldn't have missed a one of these trips for the world.

Oh yeah. I knew I was finally home because it rained on me today. For the first time in more than 3 weeks.

One for the "Yeah, Right" category

Seems like all we've done is stand by water. Here's a few of the god-forsaken places we've had to stand and sometimes catch moths.

Life is hard on the road and research is a bitch.



(Mono Lake)








(Jenny Lake)



(Grand Prismatic Spring)


(San Francisco Bay)


(Alpine lake on Tioga Pass)


(Lake Mary)


(One of the Mammoth Lakes -- name now forgotten until looked up)

Feeling sorry for me yet?