mid-October update

I haven't updated in awhile. We have been somewhat busy with school. Here's what's happened so far:

1. Dinosaur National Monument with my fluvial geomorphology class. A fun trip - beautiful scenary. We hiked along and across the Yampa River, and it rained one night for the whole night, leaving me with a wet tent and wet sleeping bag.

This was one of our crossings, where the water came up to our chests!

2. Adrian's parents came to visit for a long weekend. We took them around to see the beautiful fall colors and it even snowed one day!

One of my favorite pictures of Lucy in a bed of colorful leaves.

Adrian's parents in the Logan Canyon.

Fall colors, while snowing!

A real pumpkin patch, where we picked two pumpkins, that still need faces.

Adrian's dad in front of the capitol in Salt Lake.

On the drive back from Salt Lake, snow on the mountain tops with fall colors on the slopes.

That is actually pretty much it. Last night, we went to a pig roast that the College of Natural Sciences holds every year in October. It was pretty fun with a huge bonfire that kept us warm through the drizzling night. Other than that, we have spent a lot of time reading (both of us), playing soccer (Adrian), and going on numerous fluvial trips and labs (me).

seasons!

We have seasons here! The leaves in the canyon have started changing color and it has been getting a little cooler in the mornings and evenings.

We have started getting into somewhat of a schedule and settling into school life. For the most part, I like it - I really like my fluvial geomorphology class where we go out every week to different rivers. We have to go into them and since I don't have waders, I wore the wetsuit that I bought at a thrift shop in San Diego today. I looked a little odd, walking to class in a wetsuit, as if I was going to school in California instead of the mountain west. But it kept me warm. :)

Other times, when I spend hours just reading, I start wondering why I am still in school, but I can't really complain.

Last week, Adrian and I volunteered with the Water Quality program, teaching 4th graders about macroinvertebrates in the Logan River at a campground in the canyon. While there, we noticed how the leaves have already started changing! We hope the colors will still be around when Adrian's parents visit us in the first week of October.

We also went to a USU soccer game on Sunday. It was pretty fun. It made me a little homesick for Aggieland with the rowdy, huge crowd, but the game at Utah State had a different kind of charm. Soccer games are free for everyone, and you can bring in coolers with food and drinks. We also saw several dogs there, and little kids would spend the time rolling down the hill, where people could sit in lawn chairs and blankets rather than the bleachers.

This weekend is actually homecoming week at Utah State, but I will have to miss the festivities since I have a weekend field trip with my geomorphology class...and I am not sure how to end my post, so it will just be an abrupt ending.

school has begun!

We are just about to finish week 2, and I feel like I have really started hitting the ground running. Overall, I am enjoying school (though I have a lot of reading to do), and I like working with my advisor. This will sound silly, but I feel more idealistic here (hopefully, this is not a temporary thing...) - I've been more exposed to stories of change and community-wide activism. There's a lot about A&M that I miss, but I'm glad that I chose to go elsewhere for my attempt at more schooling. Experiencing a different landscape, a different kind of people, and a different way of doing things has widened my perspective.

Lucy and Chico have been doing well. We discovered that there is more than just the beautiful Logan Canyon to hike in, but canyons all over the area that are a 15 minute drive away. We took the two dogs for a short hike in one of them the other day, and they had a good time. also, we found this little trail that runs parallel to the irrigation canal (which I am slowly learning more about) that is just a short walk from our house. It's a nice jogging trail, because it's away from the cars (and it's fairly flat as well. Maybe someday, I will get in shape and not huff as I walk up the hill to go to campus...).

I will end with some pictures of the pups:

school starts!

School starts tomorrow! I'm a little nervous about it...


I haven't really blogged much lately. Let's see, mostly we have been organizing, but some fun things happened: Christy came and visited us for 3 days. It was so much fun having Christy here. We went hiking and played a lot of the Settlers of Catan, a board game that Christy introduced us to. It was so nice having a great friend here - a kindred spirit in the same town, finally!



Lucy got into a little bit of trouble for barking too much - more on that later...


Nate, another Ph.D student in my department, and his dog, Chico, moved in with us for a short spell while Nate looks for a house to call his own. Chico is a Portuguese water dog, and he is so cute. He and Lucy play and wrestle together.


Today, we went into Ogden to watch the rookie team of the Dodgers, the Ogden Raptors play. Parker Dalton, of A&M, plays there now, and we got to meet him. He was so nice and so excited to see Aggies. Before we found him, a teammate of his talked to us and said that all Parker talks about is how great A&M is. :)

living in Logan!

A lot has happened since my last post, mainly moving to Logan, UT for an approximate 4-year adventure. There is nothing like stuffing a moving truck to the absolute fullest to make you realize that you have way too much stuff, but we had such wonderful friends in the two Marks and Bret to help with the stuffing. It's really the people and the great friends that we left behind in Texas that I miss the most.

So far, in Logan we have mostly been working on our house, trying to get everything fixed up before school starts (just one more week!). The latest task that we completed was painting a couple of rooms. Our bedroom is a two-toned green, the living room is russian blue with a reddish shelf as an accent, and then the room that I messed up on: the dining room - red and yellow...it is pretty bright and I am not sure that I really like it too much. But we have spent so much time painting that I refuse to paint anymore, but perhaps in a year, I will repaint if it hasn't grown on me by then.

For my birthday, we went away for a couple of days and escaped the paint fumes. We took Lucy to Wyoming. Adrian showed me around the town of Lander, WY where he did his 6-month internship and we camped at Sinks Canyon State Park. It was a great camp site, right next to the Popo Agie River. We went on a hike to a natural water slide, where water flows over a rock into a pond. We took turns riding the "slide" into the super cold water. (I might post our videos at some point.)

The next day we went to Thermopolis, where there are hot springs, and sat in them for 20 minutes in the free bathhouse (you wear swimsuits in the bathhouse...). On our way back home, we stopped at Fossil Butte National Monument, completed the senior ranger program, and hiked a nice hike around an island of aspen trees. It was a fun trip. It's exciting to realize all the incredible places that are very close to where we live. Lucy was really good throughout the trip. We tired her out on the hikes, so she went right to sleep in the tent. I will have to post pictures and a video or two of our hiking and bouldering dog. She has an adventurous heart.

hufflepuff

I've decided to retract what I said previously about Hufflepuff. I wouldn't mind being in Hufflepuff. Tonks was a Hufflepuff and we suspect that Lucy might be in Hufflepuff if she were to get sorted.

"You might belong in Hufflepuff, where they are just and loyal,
Those patient Hufflepuffs are true and unafraid of toil;" ~ the Sorting Hat

mission accomplished!

We have actually done everything on my list of things I wanted to do before we left Texas:

1. hike up Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas - completed 7/01/07
2. take some pictures in the Texas bluebonnets - this was done in the spring on 2 different occasions
3. see Nickel Creek in concert again before they disassemble - seen at the Meridian on 4/20/07
4. go to an Astros game at Minute Maid Park - went to 3 games! (2 were free. I think we may have lost all 3 of those games...)
5. explore the George Bush Museum - I'm going to say that we did this. We went to the Museum on July 4, but I forgot that the entire main exhibit is closed until November, but we did see the miniature White House and both of us had already seen the main exhibit at some point previously.
6. visit the Houston Zoo to see our old friends one more time - completed 7/14/07
7. fully appreciate Whataburger, H.E.B., and Blue Bell - we are kind of still doing this, but I consider it done. :)

"Time is making fools of us again." ~ Albus Dumbledore

we say goodbye...

It seems like we have had a lot of goodbyes lately. First to my parents two weekends ago; then to our Bible study group when we met last week for a game night (we learned how to play a card game called Nertz); then to my boss (He's heading off to law school. The College of Geosciences paid for our lunch at Abuelo's and I truly ate an amazing amount of food.); and finally to Adrian's parents.

We spent this past weekend with them in Houston and went to the zoo Saturday. It really was the perfect day for the zoo. It was overcast the entire morning we were there with a few spots of slight drizzling. It was a nice temperature, and it made some of the animals a little more active. We rented the movie, The Holiday, which I thought was kind of cute - maybe a tad long - definitely a chick flick. Occasionally, when Cameron Diaz would talk, I would think, 'She sounds like Fiona...' Then we spent the rest of the time trying hard to find a DVD/VCR player that would work with his parents' connections. 2 hours and 4 stores later, we found one!

We got home in the evening Sunday night and prepared to make another goodbye - to Adrian's old blue Malibu. We made the sale, and the Malibu drove away. We are officially a one-car family now.

"You're supposed to be the leading lady in your own life, for God's sake!" ~ Kate Winslet, as Iris, in the Holiday.

Harry Potter

We went to see Harry Potter at 12:05 this morning with Michelle and Neal. It was packed - with some people in Gryffindor outfits. If I were not a muggle, I would most want to be in either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. And then I think that I might prefer Slytherin to Hufflepuff - it just seems like Hufflepuff kind of gets all the leftover people who are not distinctive - although, it is true that Cedric was a Hufflepuff...

Anyways, I think the movie did tell the overall story, but I had just finished rereading book 5, so I noticed so many differences. They cut out a lot (I suppose they had to), but some of the deletions made me sad. They also changed some things, mostly for the sake of simplifying and shortening, but there were some changes that really bothered me. I won't say anything specific so I don't inadvertently ruin the film for someone, but I will say: Harry and Cho's kiss in the movie was way more involved than in the book...

"Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily -- weak people, in other words -- they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!" ~ Severus Snape (I really like Alan Rickman as Snape - he's cool.)

Our Corpus trip!

We went to Corpus this past weekend to see my parents for the last time before we move to Utah. It was weird and kind of sad to think that it may be awhile before I go to Corpus to their house again.

We all went to the beach together on Saturday - and Lucy swam for the first time! There was a deeper area in the water separated by a sandbar where we deposited Lucy in. Then, she swam to shore. She looked so cute swimming. I think it gave her a little of a high because after she swam to shore, she was so excited and ran around everywhere. She swam 3 times.

re-run of our Logan trip

I found this post as a draft and thought that I would post it, before I post the pictures and video (of Lucy swimming!) from our Corpus weekend.

We flew into Salt Lake on Tuesday a little after 4. By the time we picked up our rental car and drove through rush hour and construction, it was about 7 or so when we got into Logan. We ate dinner at Taco Time and settled in at Priya's house. She allowed us to stay at her house for the whole week even though she wasn't there!

Wednesday: We spent the morning walking around Logan.

Here is the Logan Temple.

Logan is on a grid system, and most of the streets have sidewalks, so it is really easy to walk everywhere. They also have these above ground irrigation canals that are interesting - some have ducks. We met with Andrea, our real estate agent, and looked at houses. We found two that we liked - we called them the little house and the big house. The little house was a bit farther away from campus and had an offer on it already by that afternoon. We decided to write an offer for the big house.

Thursday: We received a counter-offer that morning and submitted a counter-offer of our own. Then, we drove all the way through Logan Canyon to Bear Lake in Garden City. It is really a beautiful drive, with lots of hiking, climbing, and fishing opportunities along the way. We ate raspberry shakes in Garden City and hiked a short, easy hike in the Canyon - the Limber Pine trail. We went back to Priya's and learned that our counter-offer had been accepted, and we were under contract!

Friday: We went back into Logan Canyon and hiked to the Wind Cave, which was a fun, steep hike.

Wind Cave

Then we went back to our (hopefully) future house for the inspection. It is weird to think that the house is 108 years old!

For the most part, it seems in pretty good shape although there are some things about the house that aren't ideal. The good thing is that we are looking at the house as a place to live for 4-5 years, not a life-time, and that helps me not freak about things. Plus, the price we are paying is more than fair, and from what we have seen of the real-estate market in Logan, we don't think that we will have trouble selling it - unless the house falls apart... We also love the location, and we figured that our mortgage payments plus taxes and insurance would equal what it would cost to rent.

Our house! It's a little plain in the front. (incidentally, I have no idea why this is underlined...)

Half of our kitchen - look there's a dishwasher!

The living room

The backyard

Saturday: We met with Andrea again to add in more things to the addendum for the seller to fix before closing. We stopped by the Farmer's Market, which was really cute and fun. Then we headed back to the Canyon for the Mt. Naomi hike. This hike took us to Tony Grove Lake, which is beautiful. We even encountered several snow drifts on the hike!

Tony Grove Lake

Snow!

Sunday: A full day of traveling to get back to College Station at around 10 pm.

Guadalupe Peak

This past weekend, we took a short road-trip out to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The goal - hike up Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas before we move to Utah.

It was a fun, Texas-filled trip. On our trip out there on Saturday, we stopped briefly in Fredericksburg and walked down Main Street and browsed in the 10 cent store and in a fancy dog shop. We also stopped in Junction to eat Cooper's famous BBQ.

We got to the campsite at Guadalupe with plenty of time to set up our tent, eat a quick dinner of sandwiches, and make the campfire talk that night. The campfire talk was filled with children who kept interrupting the poor ranger while he tried to give his geology talk, but I suppose it is good that they are inquisitive and interested about the area - even if their questions had nothing to do with the subject on hand.

at our campsite before we put the tent up

The next day, we woke up after a strange night's sleep. It was somewhat loud in the campsite - with a group loudly discussing the merits of wedgies at 10, a group of guys barking loudly at 3 in the morning, and a car alarm incident at some point in the night (though, I actually slept through this, but it sounded amusing from Adrian's memory).

We went to the visitor's center to stamp our passports, buy a magnet, and ask a few questions about the hike. The girl working the desk was Class of '05. :)

Then we set out on the hike. It was a good hike. It is somewhat strenuous at the beginning, then gets easier, and then inclines steeply again until you get to the top. The hike climbs 2,950 feet to reach the 8,749 foot peak. It is cool, because as you climb, you can see how the vegetation changes - from desert plants, like agave and sotol, to ponderosa pines and junipers.

agave

the Texas madrone - one of my favorites

cholla!

At the top, there is this metal triangle symbol that denotes the peak (complete with the American Airlines symbol). There is also a log book where you can record your ascent to the top. :) We ate lunch at the summit and enjoyed the views for a spell. We met an SCA crew throughout the hike as well.

Here we are at the top. In the second picture, you can see El Capitan in the background.

We made it back down for a total excursion of almost 7 hours. We headed back to the visitor's center to complete our tasks for the senior ranger program. :) We earned our patches and headed back to the campsite, where we looked at the clouds, talked, and read for a spell until it was time for bed.

The next day, we left somewhat early to start on the 10 hour trip back to College Station. We stopped at a peach stand outside of Fredericksburg to buy some fresh, locally grown peaches. Then we stopped at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Site outside of Johnson City. It was very pretty there with lots of wildflowers and cute walking trails along the Pedernales River. We didn't really stay too long, but we did get another stamp in our passports, and were able to see-saw in the adjoining playground area.

It was a fun road-trip, and I am glad that we were finally able to hike up to the highest point in Texas. It was something that I have been wanting to do for a really long time, and I am glad that I was able to do it with Adrian. :)

"I'm king of the world!" ~ Jack in Titanic (although, in this case, it's really king of Texas, perhaps...?)

B-G-O!

yay, for Biggio. He's my favorite and so nice. :)

Because we are dog/house-sitting, we had access to extended cable and were able to watch: Acie Law IV get drafted AND Biggio's 2998, 2999, 3000, 3001, and 3002 hits. Hurrah, it is always gratifying to see good things happen to nice people.

“I never did say that you can't be a nice guy and win. I said that if I was playing third base and my mother rounded third with the winning run, I'd trip her up.” ~ Leo Durocher

dinner with the Gastons

Last night, we got to have Mariann and Shawn over for the first time since their wedding. :) I made a chicken pesto pasta, which actually turned out pretty good (hurrah for the food processor), and then we finally finished off the fried icecream balls. It is always fun to have Mariann and Shawn over. We will miss those two! Adrian says they are good listeners, ha. So I hope that doesn't mean we spend the entire time talking, while they are forced to listen.

Sadly, it may be one of the last if not the last time to have someone over for dinner in College Station. Our house seems to be getting messier, and my will to clean it seems to have weakened over time...

back in Texas for a month or so

We are back in Texas after a week of blue, dry skies. The continual threats of rain seem to be making the air even more humid, which results in extra frizz for me, which seems more defined as my hair adjusts from being in dry air. :(

We are dog-sitting and kind of house-sitting this week for a family that lives off of Thomas Park. Last night, we cooked a premade casserole that was left for us, played Guitar Hero, washed clothes, and watched Mighty Ducks Three at the Fogles' house. It was kind of fun, but Duke really misses his parents.

a house!

We found a house and are under contract! whew, it is a fast process here in Logan. Houses go fast. I would see houses for sell and then poof, a day later they are under contract. We were lucky with this one - it was not even listed yet, but our agent knew the man who was selling. It is super old - 1899! But has been remodeled (there is even a dishwasher!). It is only 4 blocks from campus. The yard is not nearly as big as the yard we have in College Station, but hopefully, Lucy will still like it. We are across the street from a park. The house is a bit bigger than we really know what to do with, so we hope to have people visiting us. It is beautiful here...pictures to come. :)