From Alberta to Virginia

I'm home from Alberta. It was an interesting trip - I'm glad I went.

On the work side of things: it was successful. The goal was to sample boreal fire plumes and we got them. (Holy moly! There are a lot of stories about this mission out there on the internet! I knew Jim and Daniel seemed to be called away for a lot of interviews, but jeez. Funny side-story on that note. Daniel is a Hvd professor and he had a couple of his grad students there. One of them came into work all freaked out one day because her radio alarm went off right during the middle of an interview with Daniel, her advisor. Can you imagine being woken from sleep with the voice of your advisor? She thought she was in the middle of a nightmare. Daniel had a good laugh out of it.)
There were some frantic days out there - some low-on-fuel-driven last-minute flight planning sessions, extra (unplanned) days in Thule, Greenland for the instrument guys, a broken DC-8 windshield, and some close calls weather-wise. But overall, we got what we needed to.

Other side of things: I learned that nice things happen when instrumentalists and theoreticians are essentially held prisoner together at an isolated military base in the middle of nowhere. They begin to talk. And play pool. And snooker. And shuffleboard. And foozball and crud and darts. (and drink- errr- network, too).

Here's a photo of our loverly pool hall, which closed at 8 pm UNLESS there were 10 people there, in which case she kept it open until around midnight. The bartender hated us. She obviously did not like her job and was anxious to leave. We had several tight moments of pulling unsuspecting scientists who were simply strolling along the sidewalk into the pool hall at 7:59 in order to meet the quorum. Invariably, we'd have huge numbers of folks there at 9:30 or 10. 8:00 was just slightly too early to get the 10 quota. We gave her big tips, but she was still grumpy. Oh well.


I like this photo mainly because you can't see any faces so I don't have to worry about folks getting mad at me for putting them on the internet. We really had a nice time hanging out. More than one scientist commented to me that it was like being back in grad school, but better (no one ever articulated why, but I'm thinking that we're just all older and that's why it's better). I had some nice bike rides down to Cold Lake, through fragrant clover and prairiedog towns. Don't romanticize it, though. It really isn't very pretty out there - though the lake was nice.



Here I am playing shuffleboard. Who knew I'd actually be pretty OK at it? And at darts, too? I guess I shouldn't have given up on "sports" when I realized I sucked at softball and basketball.












Here's a rainbow I saw on the bus ride back to Edmonton yesterday. Texas family/friends - see what I mean? It's Texas up there!!!!
(Actually, I had a Canadian friend tell me that that part of Alberta is called "Texas north" so I wasn't making it up. They even have oil wells out there.


Anyway - all done. I'm back home with my hubby and kids (heart, heart, heart). We went and picked blueberries today, grilled chicken and eggplant and onions for dinner, and are watching the Red Sox play tonight. Life is good. Abundance.