Early Winter Garden Update

Our outdoor garden behind the driveway of our little house is completely covered with snow right now. Before the snow came, the chocolate mint plants were looking a little dry, so I decided to chop off parts of two plants and bring them inside. That was in late November. One plant survived the transfer. I don't know how the mints outside are doing: they are under snow in the area where we pile all snow shoveled from our driveway. The snow may protect their roots, so maybe they'll make a come back in the spring.
This is how the one surviving indoor plant looked last week.
And here it is this week: the leaves are larger, the two tallest shoots are taller, a third one is coming along, and two tiny new shoots are growing from the roots. The two baby shoots are hard to see, but visible at the base of Shoot Number Two on the right.

Photos taken 15Dec09 and 20Dec09.

Our Little House: Cabin Fever

I'm sure I've mentioned that we live in a very small house, the place I call "our little house." I've used that phrase with fondness for more than two years, but it seems that the fondness is wearing thin more often than not anymore. Or is it just that winter is here and I have a case of cabin fever?

Notice our recently inherited (found in front of the house) yellow rubber duckie, with walkie talkie and captain's hat. It's sitting mixed in with typical geo stuff, like cupriferous rocks, core, and cholla bones.

Whatever the case may be, in regard to cabin fever, the house is less than 500 square feet - MOH say it's 450 square feet - and that includes an arctic entryway heated only by boot warmers and lit only by a small lamp. Electricity is run into the entryway by way of one or two extension cords.
Besides using the entryway as a place to take off wet, muddy, snowy, or icy boots in winter, we use it as an impromptu, semi-organized, and variably crowded storage area - for stuff like tools and parts, extra towels and blankets, several tarps, boxes of camping miscellany, extra boxes and boxes about to be thrown away, extra house supplies, car and truck maintenance stuff like window de-icer, hiking stuff including fanny packs and hiking sticks, large tools like shovels for ice and snow, salt for large ice masses that accumulate right outside the door, small appliances not currently in use like a crock pot, a few field items like my stash of field teas and my small ice chest, and a folding chair for taking boots on and off. We don't use the room to store much in the way of extra food: daytime temperatures anytime the sun shines (especially in spring, summer, and fall) can be too warm for some things, and nighttime temperatures (in fall, winter, and spring) can be below freezing.

I'm not convinced that there is one ounce of insulation anywhere in this small house. Certainly there isn't any under the floor or on the outer walls of the crawlway beneath the house, where our water lines run unprotected by the winter cold; hence the small space heater we have in the bathroom, designed to protect the pipes, and also designed to protect our feet from the near freezing floors. Likewise, our seven windows are old-style wooden-framed single-pane windows. They don't provide much insulation in summer or winter, and are leaky overall. We could insulate four windows from the inside using the shrink-plastic method. A fifth is quite large and not very accessible from the inside, but could possibly be insulated from the outside. I want to be able to open the remaining two when the house overheats from solar heating (which happens all year long) and when the indoor air gets stale in winter.

This little house has been a good field house - or field office, perhaps - but as permanent living quarters it seems to get smaller and smaller with every passing week. Adding shelves on already crowded walls can add to the already cluttered look, but I've done that in a few places.

The wall above the stove in the kitchen with some miscellaneous items including a small pressure cooker and our brand new, very tiny tea kettle. (Yay!) It boils four cups of water, whistles - although don't go too far away or you won't hear it - and it sometimes needs a potholder because the handle overheats on a gas stove. You can't buy a square potholder in this town - oh, wait, I forgot to check the *other* hardware store - so I use a dish cloth. Just like camping!

The place is crowded because we aren't using it as just a field location anymore; we are living here. We, therefore, seem to want to have on hand (and sometimes need) more things than if this were just a field house or office. I have all of my Nevada publications and maps, lots of my non-digital photos (not all of them), some of my ongoing writing projects, most of my art supplies and some of my paintings, and most of our current and recent financial and tax papers. I won't keep the photo prints or art stuff in our separately rented storage unit for fear of hot and cold temperatures.

We also have quite a bit of seasonal clothing, for use in high summer through deep winter. Some of the extra clothes are in the storage unit, some clothes are in bins under beds, and some clothes get taken back and forth, to and from the lake - though the back and forth happens less often now that we live here. We also have quite a number of books, and more magazines than I like to contemplate. These all get sorted and re-sorted, stacked and re-stacked, with many going back to the lake when the opportunity arises. I'm seriously considering canceling almost all print magazines.

I was saying earlier that I doubt there is much of any insulation in this house. Was any new insulation put into the walls whenever the walls were re-paneled? I don't know. Maybe. The wall paneling could be several decades old but is much younger than the house, which would be a 1940's house at the youngest, and possibly much, much older. Maybe any original insulation - newspapers or other cellulose - was taken out when the "new" paneling was put in, or maybe it has just settled very badly.
And don't get me started about the wiring! At some point, receptacles were changed from the old-style two-prong receptacles to the newer three-prong in a few places: on some interior walls and in the kitchen and bathroom. I don't know if these are grounded circuits, or if they just look that way. And as far as I can tell, none of these three prongers have built-in GFI or GFCI circuit breakers, so we have added a plug-in GFCI breaker in the bathroom.

NOTE: Originally written in early November.

Geology Dream: Some Beers at a Meeting

This is a geology related dream from two nights ago (morning of 19Dec09). Looks like I've been affected by all the recent online talk of #AGU09 and Wired's beer-meeting article.

I'm at a GSA meeting, sitting near the back of a large room, my pack full of stuff. The room is raised like a small auditorium, with the central speaking area toward the southeast. As I stand there (and sometimes sit on the floor), with people occasionally crowding around, I'm thinking it's a pretty boring meeting - these meetings aren't as interesting as they used to be. At some point, I tell some people, including a younger woman, that they need to move because they've kind of piled themselves around my stuff, blocking what I think is my area. They move, but are a little rude about it, like I shouldn't have my own space, or shouldn't care about people crowding it.

Then I'm getting some stuff out of my pack, or am putting something like a notebook or wallet back in, and I have a hard time getting it all to fit. Several small personal electronic items fall out, including more than one cell phone and my digital camera. I get it all back in place, and then it's time to leave via indoor stairs exiting on the northeast side of the large room. The stairs go down and mostly to the east.

The meeting has beer at the end of the day, and I get in a fairly long line behind two guys who are geologists. The line goes past a lower bar tucked away in a corner on the north wall, where they have Pacific Rim beer. The line for that bar area comes up the stairs in front of us, the stairs we are going down. By the time we get to the Pacific Rim area, we've been in line for a long enough time that we don't want to switch lines; besides, we can't see the end of the Pacific Rim line below us. We descend the stairs on the right, while the people in the Pacific Rim line, mostly guys, ascend the stairs on the left. Their line is moving fairly quickly; ours is moving at an average pace. The entire stair well in front of us is at times taken up by people in the Pacific Rim line; they move aside as I step forward, and I think, in the dream, that it's because I'm a woman.

We get to the bottom of the stairs and arrive at a small counter where the beer for our line is awaiting us. It's draft, of an unrecognizable name or brand, in unusually shaped and fairly brightly colored containers (possibly only the labels are brightly colored, including a bright blue and bright yellow). The beer is marked 0.0 or 0.00 on the bottom, and we realize it's 100% free, unlike the Pacific Rim beer, which would have cost us money. Our beer is a deep golden brown. It tastes pretty good for a free draft beer, so although the Pacific Rim might have been better (maybe), the three of us agree it's good we stayed in our line and got the free beer. We then turn around and go back up the stairs.

At about this point, I realize that the guy in front of me looks like a geologist I know - someone who was mapping with me on a job I had a little more than a year ago. I don't remember if I really know him in the dream, or if he just looks like someone, the way people do at so many meetings. Starting back up the stairs, MOH is behind me; he also has one of the unusual-container, free draft beers. (He apparently just appears in the dream at this point, but it's not out-of-place in the dream, just one of those dream weirdities.)

The guy ahead of me, the one who looks like someone I know, now has a whole raft of draft beers that he's somehow holding in encircling, widespread arms (maybe there is a tray underneath the beers?). These beers are all dark, and they are in regular clear plastic beer glasses. He's taking them up the stairs to some friends of his that weren't in line. He says that the Pacific Rim line - which is now gone and not blocking the stairs, maybe because they ran out of beer* - was as long as it was because other people were also getting beer for their friends. (Maybe he said the line was gone because everyone in it was getting beer for a friend, and so the line was shorter by half than it would have been if everyone getting beer had been in line.) He goes up ahead with his raft of beers.

I follow and come to a place in the stairs where two to four stairsteps are made wider by a large, horizontal metal plate that one has to step across to get from a lower step to the next upper step. I manage this in the dream, something that wouldn't be possible IRL. I ask MOH behind me if he can make it, then say, "Well of course, if I can make it you can, too." [I have short legs compared to his long legs.] Then he starts coughing in a way that wakes me up.

*Pacific Rim Brewery closed in 2007; Big Al's opened in the same building in 2008. Pacific Rim Mining Corporation is alive and well - although some of it's opponents aren't.

My Year of Traveling Meme

This traveling meme was started by Alice at Sciencewomen, passed to Magma Cum Laude, then to NOVA Geoblog, and on to Geotripper Part 1 and Part 2, and then on to Geology Happens.

January: The famous (or infamous?) International Hotel in Austin, Nevada. This is currently the last recorded visit to this establishment. The beer is okay.
I don't recommend the food.UPDATE 17Jan10: The food on Christmas day was excellent!
February: Great Basin National Park and environs twice (and at least one trip through central Nevada).
March: Alaska, for the Iditarod and beers (and more than two trips through central Nevada).
April: Middlegate Station, Nevada - a good place to eat, has above average beer, and you can have wi-fi in your room. The Carlin Canyon Unconformity (or fault, depending on who you talk to) - and at least two trips through central Nevada.
May: Titus Canyon - the largest breccia fragments are truck sized. Death Valley. The Mojave Desert - granite at Teutonia Peak, part of Cima Dome. Some mines and properties in western Nevada as part of the GSN spring field trip (and two or three trips across central Nevada, depending on how you define "central.").
June: Wheeler Peak in springtime (would you believe late winter?).
July: Back to Wheeler Peak, more than once, where it was looking like spring. San Francisco, where I didn't get pictures of any famous bridges but did have some good beer. (Also in July, at least two trips through central Nevada.)
August: I made one short trip and completed most of a second trip to Caliente, Nevada, and environs (and made two trips through central Nevada).
September: Reno - that's Slide Mountain on the left and Mt. Rose on the right. Our lake house (we have to drive for this view). Lassen Volcanic National Park. (And two drives through central Nevada.)
October: I went to Crater Lake and other points north on the way to the GSA meeting in Portland. Then, after going here and there, I went to Jarbidge, Nevada, a first for me. (And made only one trip through central NV.)
November: I hiked in the southern Egan Range, where I had a great view of Wheeler Peak. Later in the month, I went to Reno for a GSN meeting, but took zero photos. (Drove across central Nevada twice.)
December: I went to Reno for the NWMA convention, where I once again took zero photos. I drove to our lake house and drove back through snow. I've been across central Nevada twice so far this month and don't have any big plans for the rest of the month. I've taken care of business, shoveled snow, and watched birds at our little house in eastern Nevada.

Yeah, It Snowed. So What?

It's winter! It snowed a whole bunch last night, almost a foot of heavy, concrete-like snow. When MOH got up this morning to go to a mandatory overtime day at work - a day that was in the middle of his regular 7 off but at least wasn't a night shift - he decided to take my truck to work after determining that the Prius was snowed in. It turned out that he only had to serve 4 hours on his overtime day and then was sent home - because (guess what?) there was too much snow!

Getting home meant driving up the usual steep hill to our street, which turned out to be impossible for my truck, even in 4WD. So he walked home from part way up the hill - not a long way, about one and a half blocks.

Later, we went out and around town to buy a new snow shovel, to look at snow blowers (good ones were sold out), and to wish for an ATV with snow plow attached to the front end. Coming home with one plastic snow shovel and some egg nog, we made it up the less steep hill to our street and managed to back downhill into the driveway without getting stuck crossways in the road, an option which became a distinct possibility at one point. We both then proceeded to shovel like crazy, despite my incomplete recovery from whatever bug is going around.

We created a huge snow pile (well, five feet high) in front of the house, while managing to keep the pile away from the lower alley road as much as possible in hopes that my truck will make it up the steep road sometime soon. It's easier to back into the driveway if coming in from the steep road, thence onto the lower part of our split-in-two street.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to a little holiday cheer this evening, and am hoping the snow will not continue to pile higher and higher. It's fine to have a lot of snow, but when it all comes in the middle of the night, it's hard to keep up with the shoveling. Now, if only the city would plow our street! Or even one or two of the streets leading to our street!