Christmas

Left: Cooking a traditional Christmas dinner. Note tinsel on tent :-)

We had a really good Christmas in Utah. Nothing went to plan though. I'll talk about the bad things first, because apparently it is better to finish on a high (or a song, but that isn't really applicable in this case). We ended up setting off a day late because Andy was ill, then having to leave a day early because I was ill. On the way back, we had the now customary car failure, when one of the back tires blew out. We spent around 4 hours sitting at the side of the road, mainly due to the incompetnace of the people manning the emergency phone line - apparently being broken down in Utah but being closest to a city in Colerado is mind-numbingly confusing. Andy had to explain so may times where we were, I don't know how he kept his patience. At the very least he should have tried a range of silly voices for variety.

We couldn't ski or snowshoe because the snow was too thin, and we weren't very sucessful climbing, mostly because of me having a big girly wimp attack. I had my first lead fall, something I have been dreading for about two years. I was very frightened because I had made some bad decisions (which was an educational experience). The fear went away as soon as I fell off, since that removed any element of control I had over the situation. I did have a moment of relief then panic when my puny size one nut briefly cammed into the crack and stopped my fall momentarily, before pinging out. I was finally stopped by the rope coming tight on a bolt, and some first class belaying by Andy. I ended up rather ungracefully suspended in a spikey bush, with a few bruises and dented confidence. I didn't feel like leading anything else that day and we didn't get to go back as it was Christmas the next day. I am out of practise, but I'll get better and nail it next year :-)

Left: Delicate arch at sunset

So positive stuff... We had a good laugh, the Arches national park is beautiful, and barbecued turkey sausages make an excelent Christmas dinner. We also learend some lessons from our trip to Yellowstone, and managed to not freeze to death camping.

We opened some presents there, but we have just opened our presents from Andy's family, so we got to have a second Christmas day. Thanks if you read this, more personal thanks will be dispatched forwith (oops slipped into 19th centuary mode by mistake there).





Below left: Andy in Turret Arch, Arches NP. Below Right: Sunset at Delicate Arch #2

Oh... and Merry Christmas!

We are probably going on holiday on Wednesday, so to anyone I don't speak to before then, have a good one :-)

Harry Potter and isn't that the guy out of only fools and horses?

So the new Harry Potter film ticks a lot of boxes: it's exciting, funny, and someone taught Daniel Radcliff how to act... BUT I spent most of the time trying to work out which British sitcoms the supporting cast were from (Only fools and horses, Drop the dead donkey, Rising Damp, Auf Wiedesain (excuse the spelling) Pet)..did I miss any out? Very distracting.

Tips on cross country skiing

Andy maintains some grace and style...


...while I give some tips on how not to do it:

#1) Relax


#2) Stay up right


#3) Most importantly, don't ski off the trail and bury yourelf in a big snowdrift
>

Nordic skiing..

Skiing + downhill = normal
skiing + uphill = crazy norwegian idea

Nordic skiing rocks. On the flat, it feels like running on the moon; you push off like normal running, but then glide gracefully (well, some people do) forward. Downhill is fun because gravity is my friend. Uphil is a bit wierd though. Since when did trying to move slippery planks of wood against a gradient make any sense as an efficient mode of winter transport?

We went out with the uni ski team, and it was awesome. I spent quite a lot of time sliding down hills on my bottom screaming, and I still have no idea how to stop or turn, but it is really good fun.. apart from the uphill bits, obviously.

The friendly American...

.. I found him! He was in the post office all along! I went to post my Christmas cards, and was frightened by this unfamiliar building, full of strange metal cabinets. It looked like no UK post office I'd ever seen- nothing was painted red, there were no queues of old ladies and doleites, and there wasn't that air of frustration and stale cigarettes. I was starting to go into fear overload, when the guy at the counter noticed me. He was kind and chatty, and helped me put stamps on my cards. Unlike the supermarket experiences, I didn't leave with a strong feeling of failure and annoyance, wondering why simple every day tasks are beyond me.. Instead I left feeling confident enough to try other new things, like buying presents and renting nordic skis.. is this sounding like a lipton ice tea commercial yet?

Leaving the house....

I finally made myself put my running gear on and head out to the park. I did what I laughably called a 'warm up' jog (not sure my body temperature ever got above necrotic), then did 5 circuits of the 1 km track, alternating running and walking. I'm hoping to build up to 10, then reduce the amount of walking. It was crazy because the south side of the track was warm and pleasent, with a bright blue sky lighting the snowed in pond, which is pock marked with the feet of overly optemistic ducks.. The north side, though, was bitterly cold, with granular snow blasting its way across the tarmac. On every circuit, the sun would get a little lower and another layer of ice crystals would accrete on the colder sections of the path. I didn't like having the low sun behind me as it gave me a pear shapped shadow. The water in the cap of my bottle froze, blocking the spout. Walking was in some ways tougher than running- my lungs might not have been complaining but the rest of my body was missing the extra heat generated on the runs.

I had Andy's iPod for company, Kosheen to be precise- one of the few albums we can actually agree on. I feel a million times better for the exercise, so even if I pay for it later it was worth doing. I am bone chilled and stiff, and would like nothing better than a hot shower.. pitty Mr Mucous appears to have cut our water supply off. Nice of him to warn me huh?

No more miss grumpy boots...

...I am trying, anyway. I'm going to go for a run and do some work, not spend the whole day reading/ asleep. I don't feel miserable, I just don't feel well. The glands are up in my throat, my head feels wooly and I have that horrible drained feeling. I feel like I just keep moaning on about my health, but it's hard to ignore it when it influences my life so much. I'll go see my GP when I get back to the UK.. but he will no doubt fail to find anything wrong with me and assume I am either crazy or a hypochondriac.. very frustrating. So I'm going to force myself to go for a run, do some work and think happy thoughts.. What else can I do?

:-(

I'm pretty sad today. I've been applying for UK jobs, but I really want to be able to come back here to be with Andy. The US claims to be warm and welcoming, but I've drawn a blank trying to find a way to get a visa... legally, anyway. Apparently I can try inventing my own national security number, or go buy a green card from some guy called Rodriguez if I hang around by the Mexican border, but I don't really want to risk being held for an unspecified length of time under some dark and shady 'anti terror' laws. It's not like I want much, just the opportunity to get a short term, crappily paid job so I have a small amount of available cash and self esteem.

The other option is to get Andy back in the UK.... there are a few lectureships going here and there, but he doesn't seem overly keen...

So I'm back to the fundamental problem... no money, no job etc... What fun!

Bloody Tranmere...

....they dominated most of the match but conceeded 2 late goals, one of which was a penalty. Deja vu anyone?

I want to go for a run. I couldn't go yesterday because there was that kind of evil wind that strips the skin of your extremities. I waited until today... The wind is still here and has been joined by a steady light but persistent snow. Damn. Should have gone yesterday; I might have lost an ear or two but at least I would feel a wee bit fitter.

Arrgggh!

I've applied for maybe 10 jobs today, so I'm REALLY sick of this computer. In a last ditch attempt to cheer myself up, I looked for jokes on t'internet.

I think I've found the worst joke ever... not even bad in a punny, groan-making 'dad joke' kindof way... just bad:
__________________________________________________________________

Lightbulb joke

Q: How many cabbage patch dolls does it take to change a light bulb?
A: The question is irrelevant since you couldn't find the dolls even if you knew how many.

Note: Topical to 1983 and the difficulty of obtaining cabbage patch dolls

_________________________________________________________________________________
Topical to 1983?!! For god's sake!!!!

If anyone knows of any jokes lamer than this one let me know.. On second thoughts, don't. Please.

No Andy....

he's at the AGU Fall meet in San Fransisco this week. Why is Autumn Fall, but winter isn't 'cold' and spring isn't called 'things go green now?'... it's a bit like a toddler pointing at things and naming them.. anyway slightly off topic. I miss Andy. He's only away for a week, but it's made me realise how short my time left here is. Soon I have to go back to England and the reality of no job, no money, no thesis and no idea of when I can live with, or even see, Andy again.

George Forman grill....

...the 'fat reducing grill' my a&se. How can any device that gives you easy acess to bacon sandwiches be 'fat reducing'?

Question for Americans...

...what is the correct response to the question 'hi, how're you today?'? I get asked everytime I go into a shop, but I have a sneaking suspision that the asker couldn't give a rat's toss how the askee is today, yesterday or tomorrow. I generally reply 'good thanks, how are you?', and rarely get an answer. Andy thinks non-commital grunting is the way forward, but I don't like to appear rude. What is the point in asking how someone is if you don't want to hear the answer? Just saying 'hi' would be fine, failing that (safeways cashiers take note) just not throwing my %&*£ing groceries at me like you are on Supermarket Sweep then complaining when I haven't bagged them one nanosecond after you have scanned them would be fine. Have a nice day y'all.

Suggestion for Americans: try curry, it's really nice.
Suggestion for American supermarkets: try stocking curry paste. See above.

Running...

Funny how fickle fitness is (oo, nice alliteration!). I haven't been running much in Laramie, and I had a three week total layoff due to illness and laziness. I've started up again, but right now I'm struggling to do a mile or 2. I've gone from slow but determined long distance plodder to runner up in the zimmer frame race in a matter of months. I am planning a dramatic comeback though... health-dependant of course; why do I have to get ill so often *sulk*? I'm going to use my remaining time in Laramie to rebuild an ok base level of fitness. When I'm back in the UK I am going to start training for the blackpool 10k- I'll have a couple of months to try and improve my speed (PB so far is just under an hour, would be great to get that down to 50 mins). After that I start training for my 'holiday'- a 90 mile epic of running, camping and dirty socks :-). Assuming I survive that, I can either look for another half marathon to torture myself with, or try and nail a decent (sub 25 min) 5k... and of course there's the race for life this summer- not a great chance for a good time, but an excellent chance to have a laugh with 10000 women dressed at least partially in pink :-).

One other thing- to any runners out there: when I'm unfit/ it's very cold/ very dry I get yucky stickiness in the back of my throat. How does one sucessfully eject said stickiness without ending up looking like a snail has crawled all over one's running gear? ;-)

Things to do (near) Denver when you're (not quite) dead..

#1: Build cars and race them. We used crayola model magic, which is the spongiest, bizarrest model mateial ever. Tough to work with but colourful!

Vroommm...! This is Andy's sporty creation

Black Hawk and coldness

We went to Black Hawk on Friday as a post-thanksgiving trip. It's an old victorian mining town that has been converted to a casino town. It's nice, but there really isn't anything there except casinos and a church! They have 'strict' building regs to try and preserve the Victorian feel of the town.. but strict regs can be loosley applied- I saw an old building that had been completely trashed appart from it's facade, which was being held up by an impressive ammount of steel.
Andy played poker with his boss (he won $140) while I explored the town, amused myself on the vidio machines and drank as much free coke as I could :-). There were some scary people there, feeding token after token into slot machines like robots- it was just like an episode of the Simpsons where marge gets addicted to the slots. I don't see the appeal- they look really dull to play... but the machines are linked together and there is an ever
increasing 'progressive jackpot' of thousands of dollars that I guess they are chasing after.

We were going to stay near Denver and go out there the next day, but Andy wasn't feeling too great so we came home. We made it to Fort Collins instead- and didn't get a flat tire this time.. The road was swamped with blowing snow. The wind pulled the loose powder into the air and sent it drifting accross the road like steam rising from damp tarmac. Whole fields were drowned in snow, like heavy mist. It was eerie. We survived the road and went for Christmas presents and burritos in Fort Collins. Only in America would you drive 70 miles to go to a shopping center...

How to keep a man in the kitchen...

Frigit = marble racing = fun :-) 

...the invaded..

... are not too happy about the situation :-( 

Yay global domination!

And I didn't even want to play the silly game in the first place :-) 

mmm.. festive

And here is another attempt to make the flat festive. I hope Andy can live without his helicopter for the season; the take off might be a bit precarious what with two xmas stockings attached to it's landing gear. This is what I did after I rested and got some strength back. I think the bows on the ipod dock are a nice touch :-) 

Ohhh talenbaum....

Yes I know it's too early..but we have a christmas tree, yay! It's actually more of a Christmas potted plant, but I've never had a real xmas tree before, and I've always thought that it's a shame to brutally murder a tree, drag it inside and leave it to die wearing tacky shiney pat bucher stylee earings... So this tree gets to look silly and (hopefully) survive the ordeal :-) 

good n bad

tranmere won :-)
we bought a potted pine tree to decorate for xmas :-)

i still feel crap :-{

Crunchy underfoot

I finally left the house! I am feeling a little better, and I had the motivation of a spanish class to help me. The snow has subtly altered the light,so everything looks a little different. The moon was full and very bright, even though the sky still held onto a little blueness. It looked like it should have a howling wolf silhoetted against it. Everything was softened by the light. Even the butt- ugly methodist church shone with the moonlight reflected back up from the snow, like a foil umberella in a photographers studio softening a portrait. Crunching through fresh snow is such a pure, fun feeling, spolied only by the patches of unnoticed ice. I stomped, dragging my foot a little to stir up flurries of soft powder. It was sharp cold, and there was only my rediculously enourmous nike padded jacket to keep out the bighting teeth. I took a thermal mug filled with tea, which was almost cold by the time I got to the class. The class was ok, but my head was hurting and I found concentrating tough. It's not easy to get your head around grammer at the best of times. After thinking 'espero que mi novio es en la cochina ahora, prepare cena por nosotros' (apologies to anyone spanish who reads that!), I found that my wish had come true: mi novio was indeed in the kitchen making dinner...yum! But my head still hurts and I am going to play a little poker then sleep it of...

Hurray somthing meaningful!

 


This is the nuts.. noone else in the world will care, but I think I can show that sea floor spreading at the Laxmi Ridge margin started around chron 29 in Gop Rift, then got bored and relocated south of the Ridge after the Deccan stop feeding it. Basically, offshore india isn't all oceanic crust, there are these stretched bits of continental crust, then a bit of oceanic crust from where the continental crust got stretched a bit too much and split. Futher south it split so bad that it made a proper ocean basin. I rock. Now I have to rewrite the above in dull geofizz language and stick it in my thesis :-(

Wyo ice hockey

The cowboys won 5-1. It was very exciting, and a nice mix of grace, sport and ultra violence. We were leaning on the screens, and every now and again a couple of bodies would hurtle into them, causing the girls next to us to cheer. The PA played the kind of teen angst college rock that I should have grown out of by now but still love. I pointed out 'one step closer' by linking park as one of my favorites, causign Andy to sarcastically say'oh we should play that at our wedding'.. so now it's officially in writing and I'll remember that!

Oh, note to annoying, ill-informed, oppinionated college lecturer type sports fans. There's this thing called an internal monalouge. It's a really good place to store some of the stream of crap that goes through your brain. That way, you don't have to inssesently commentate on the game and splurge a constant stream of garbage out of your mouth. This can really help avoid pissing off all the people around you.

Hearty soup....

'the soup that eats like a meal'... Nooooooo America, soup doesn't have a digestive system. WE eat it. It doesn't eat anything.

But I must admit the chicken and sausage gumbo is mighty fine

easy cheese....

for f*cks sake, america... cheese is NOT difficult

lessons and stuff...

I've not done a great deal of work the last few days. I seem to have messed up my body clock, so I am exhausted all day but can't sleep at night. I have a bit of a cold and I'm achy and sneezy. What I'd really like is to get out and go for a run if I can find the energy.

Tuesday was my first Spanish lesson. I spent half of it worried becasue it seemd like the level was way to high, but I began to enjoy it. The teacher is lovely and crazy, and I think that always helps. The lesson was in beta house, at the junction of frat and soriety row. Walking there made me nervous because I had to walk past all the frat houses with their names in greek letters on the wall.. I wonder if they are abything like in crappy american college films; all stupid pranks, brain washing and trying to trash the nerdy frat house next door.

Sanskrit wasn't so good. The teacher hadn't really prepared anything and just jumped around. Fortunately, there is a women in the ckass who knows a lot, so maybe we will get together with her one night for a revision session. I have a book that teahces the very basics, so I came home and taght myself the first of the 13 (yes 13!) vowels.

Between catching up with Spanish (I'm doing part 2 of a 2 semester course) and learning the deverngali alphabet I have a lot to do... better make some time for my thesis too!

My cold is pretty icky today so I habe to try and find some motivation from somewhere

Weekend

We went for a walk to happy jack, which was kinda annoying because I kept getting the Who song circling my head.. happy jack wasn't tall but he wasn't small, or some such nonsence. It is pretty up there, the area is part of the Medcine Bow forest. In winter it is used for off road skiing, but right now the trails are lightly dusted with powder and good for walking. I was feeling very weak so walking a couple of miles was tough. I propelled myself forward by following the dog paw prints in the soft mud. In places the snow had infilled cycle tracks, leaving parallel lines of pale powder against the dark mud. It reminded of me of when I hurt my knee on the Darwin, and the skin split in fine lines and then made thin silvery scars.

After happy jack we went to Cheyenne, which is the biggest town in Wyo, but is still smaller than Birkenhead. We ate well there, so obviously I was happy. We also took a wlak around n outdoor shop, which made me a little grumpy due to my current non-impuse purchase rule.

I worked yesterday and was drained all day. I intended to go to bed early but ended up playing yatzee and poker with Andy. I think I'm destined to never win against him as being able to add up is a distinct advantage that he has over me.

Antisocial

Andy said 'we are going out for dinner' so of course I didn't go.. I wasn't actually being stubborn, I was trying to work out what the hell this figure might mean.. And I hate going out with people I don't know well. I'm ok with Andy or Jac or Kate.. but other than that, going out fills me with dread. Social phobia I think they call it. You have to drag me out, even if I want to go. I know it's stupid, but knowing that doesn't really help. But staying in isn't so bad... have a chapter of my thesis written now... yay! Only another hundred or so pages to write :-(..  

Feel better now...

...the healing properties of a hot bath and a good book are legendary :-)

Open letter to the f*cker that is ripping me and andy off

Yeah you c*** whoever you are that has my halifax account details and is ripping me off. Thanks to you my halifax account has accrued almost a grand of fradulant purchases and overdraft charges. I'm already up to my neck in financial sh*t. If you hadn't robbed me of any last vestiges of religious hope and belief, I'd say that I hope you burn in hell you f*cking selfish c*nt. You won't destroy me.

And it's still diwali, so as Lawrence Fishburn once said, 'fate, it seems, is not without a sence of irony'

How hard does Sanskrit look?! 

I am supposed to be learning basic Sanskrit, but from the excerpt above I'm not sure there is any such thing! Actually that except isn't Sanskrit it's just an English sentence transliterated into Sanskrit text. I found an online translation tool to help with my homework!!

Yay! 

Great North Run  

I know it was a while ago, but Andy just scanned this picture for me and I thought it should have a home. I like it because it reminds me of everything that is awsome and beautiful about running, like the freedom and the peace and the sense of achivement.

Throught he generosity of my friends, £464.40 was raised for Macmillan Cancer Relief. This is the thank-you message that went on my fund raising website:

Your support, and the cheering of the lovely Macmillan people, helped me get through a long distance on a very hot day with a smile on my face. Well, I stopped smiling when I got to the hill at mile 11, obviously. I'm not THAT crazy. So now I have a warm glow (sunburn?), a shiny medal, and an intimate rash to remind me of an amazing day.

The people made it special- from the fun runners' costumes (special mention to the woman in a nylon sumo suit in 19 degree heat. Nice.) to the locals who gave us biscuits and ice pops, sprayed us with hose pipes and led the way in a chant of 'if you're knackered and you know it clap your hands.' I was also particularly fond of the old dears near the end singing 'Knees up mother brown' at us.

Altogether, it was an amazing day, made all the more amazing for your support

All together now:
OGGY OGGY OGYY, OY OY OY!!!!

Name Race Number Time Position
Chris Lane 48368 02:24:39 22129

Mr Mucous

Mr Mucous downstairs was playing his 1 cd again last night. I swear, he only has 1 cd and it's some atrocious 80s compilation. It really bugs me because I half recognise some of the songs. There's that 'every time yo go a way, you take a piece of me with you' one, somehting that sounds like it should be on the sega Road Rash soundtrack, and one thats something like 'I can see you, shining in the sun, after the rain and the something has gone...'. He only ever plays it after midnight. That's the problem with quaint American wooden houses- when they get devided up into appartemtns thery aren't exactly soundproof. I hear the guy doing other unplesant things too, like shouting at his family and farting loudly. The worst though is when he starts with his flemmy cough and is hawking up loads of phlegm. He sounds like he is dying of chronic bronchitis and I'd like to be sympathetic, but actually he just makes me want to retch. Andy told me off last night for joining in loudly with the Paul Young number, but I just thought it was funny. Maybe the guy'll take the hint and buy a new cd!

Just keep running

It was tough. Last time I ran maybe a mile and a half at a fast pace and was rightfully pleased, but today sucked. It was beautifully hot and sunny, so I went out in my beloved Team Macmillan running vest, breasts underneath forced into a matronly state of immobility by a new sports bra. I ran up Harney, which is my favorite route, because it looks like you could run right out of town into the yellow-brown planes beyond, and just keep on going forever. I haven't been for over a week and my fitness has really suffered. The altitude makes the air thin, so running takes a lot of getting used to. My rythmn was terrible, not helped by all the busy intersections that I had to stop at. I had to keep using my fruit juice to force down the tinny stickness in my throat that threatened to choke me, and my lungs burned. I had hoped for a gentle five miles, but I managed just over one. It's not all bad though- I left the house, my legs feel like they've been used and I have a bacon sandwich waiting for me :-)

Piss off, we don't want you:

From Monarch recruitment:

Thank you for your CV/Application. I regret to inform you we do not
currently have any positions that match your requirements and/or skills. I
can therefore confirm your details will not be stored or processed. Thank
you for your interest.

Translation:
Thankyou for your CV, we were kinda short on toilet roll anyway. This is the brief standard reply we send out to losers like you who would be barely qualified to make tea for our clients. Go now. I hear McDonalds has a very good graduate managment package. hahahaha. LOSER :-P

I'm not bitter really. It's not exactly my heart's desire to work on foundation design and contaminated land studies anyway.

Oh, nice Mr. Redshaw at BP is trying to stop their finance department screwing me so hard, so fingers crossed.

I've not been up long and it's mid day, but I'm sooooo tired. I'm about to go for a run- something I haven't done for an age. I miss it, but it's so hard to get motivated to go. I've also got my first Sanskrit lesson tonight, so I get to leave the house twice in one day, woohoo!

Setting sun backlighting the steam near fountain paint pots 

Grand Fountain Geyser 

Old Faithful 

Grand Teton National Park 

Happy halloween... and may your pumpkins be moulder free :-) 

Terror in the corn... funny, Andy doesn't look too frightened 

Supporting the superwhites in Yellowstone... no Andy you can't write 'rubbish' on my shirt 

Happy Diwali!

Today I lit candles and incense to welcome Lakshmi into our home; bringer of prosperity, happyness and a general snuggly warm feeling. So much for prosperity- BP have overpaid me by more than 700 quid and, unsurprisingly, they want it back. I am truely screwed financially now- so the Alps trip is definatley out. More importantly, that's my savings pretty much wiped out. On the plus side, a job I want in Southampton is being advertised. I don't have much chance of getting it, but it does give me a bit of hope that it was advertised the same day I got screwed- like closing one door opening another. I'm just gonna keep my candeles burning for a bit longer- everyone needs some light in there life.

Terror in the corn

So what do Americans do for fun at Haloween? They drive out into the middle of a corn fields and have people scare the living sh*t out of them by running at them going 'yarrrghh' while brandishing chain saws. We went to a haunted corn maze with a bunch of international students. It was fun, but I think Andy had more fun laughing at the way I screamed and cowered. We had to walk through dark buildings where people lurked in the shadows. My least favorite was walking through narrow lanes with strobe lights flashing, being horribly disorientated then having the ubiquetous chainsaw people leap out. We went through a brightly lit 'autopsy room' with more than it's fair share of guts and gore. Everytime someone approached us, I'd push Andy in front for protection. This made me feel guilty, but aren't boys supposed to be the protectors?

So Haloween is here, but my pumpkin lantern is going mouldy :-(

Yellowstone

You can only spend so long stuck indoors, writing a thesis and eating your boyfriends secret stash of sweet food before you need to get out. So we got out. We headed to Yellowstone for a long weekend (ok dad, Jellystone if you prefer). We had an amazing time- it's just beautiful, ethereal even. I saw a black bear, deer and baby bison (Andy wouldn't let me have one, how unfair).

The hydrothermal features are just awsome. In the morning, the steam condenses and drapes the roads with a heavy mist. We drive through it and the skeletons of trees emerge as silhouttes. The dead trees are everywhere, victims of the 1988 fires but still resolutely refusing to obey gravity. In places, the slopes are carpeted with trees a few feet high, and the bare dead poles of the fire victims poke up between them, dwarfing them. We went to Old Faithful, and I laughed at the tourists who expected it to go off on time, like some orchestrated Disney attraction. I wondered if they even realised that there were walking around in the caldera of an active volcano. Old Faithful is impressive, but it seems bizarre to have a bunch of tourists sitting around in a 'viewing area', RVs parked in a tarmacced parking area, watching the guts of an active volcanic system spewing out steam.

The mudpots are hypnotic. I wanted a bunch for ages, just captivated by the hands of clay pushing up from beneath the ground. The plumbing gurgled like a hungry tummy the whole time, and misbehaved by flinging lumps of pale clay out of the small crators. The whole park is captivating, amde more so by the stark unpredictability and violence that produces these surface effets. Andy and I would stand for ages in clouds of sulphuric steam trying to capture the image we could see in our mind's eye, and emerge with drippin hair, nausea and hopefully a few good photos.

My favorite geyser (sounds like a big-up for a cockeny bloke) is called Grand Fountain. Layers of ejecta have been sculpted by the acidic water to form flat platforms that fill with water. The effect is stacked mirrors that capture the white clouds of steam thrown out by the cone. It's stunning. Similar features form in the north of the park, where the hot waters erode the limestone into something like an overimaginative geologist's description of a karstic landscape. The platforms that build up from the dissolved minerals are coloured in red, purple, blue, green- a combination of dissolved minerals reprecipitating, and the mats of crazy thermophile bacteria. This is the most active part of the park, and so the most stinky, even though it's outside of the caldera.

We camped, and I've never been so cold in my life. My sleeping bag is four season but I'd had to leave my thermarest at home because my case was full (of scientific papers, grr!). I don't know if it would have made much differnece. The days were hot, but as soon as the sun went down it began to get cold. Lying on my sleeping mt it felt like someone hat turned on a tap and was steadily draining the heat and life out of my body. At least it forced Andy to learn how to build a fire. We settled into a routine on getting back for the day of him building a fire, and me starting to boil water and prepare things for dinner. This routine was broken on sunday when, several miles from the campsite, the car stopped making it's 'I'm going to die at any moment' noises, started to run smoothly, and then promptly died. The fan belt had snapped, and the water pump given up it's long and vocal life. We ended up stranded, and a friendly park ranger took us out of the park to spend the night in Gardiner, Montana. The next day I bought books to read while Andy arranged to have the car towed. The garage was busy, so we ended up shipping out to Livingston since they could fix it sooner. All in all, it was a bit of a strange end to a trip, but it seemed like an adventure. Hopefully we will go to Utah for Christmas; we are hoping to go climbing but Andy's ankle is still a problem. Whatever, there seems to be plenty o help me get through writing up. America definately has it's good points :-)

Laramie...

...so much more than the cigarettes smoked by Marge Simpson's sisters. I like it here; last visit I was in some wierd culture shock, but now I'm used to it it feels like home. I spend a lot of time inside, sat at the desk (I built it, yay flatpack!) trying to squeeze sensible words into my thesis, but it's when I leave that I'm happiest. The roads are wide and quiet, and running on them feels like freedom (slightly dangerous freedom- the pavements seem to have been constructed by someone who wanted the town to be an extensive skate park). The people are friendly, and the language is mostly understandable with a few minor exceptions. I still get confused, like when the tills at the supermarket put your change in a litlle cup instead of trusting a human to count it out, and when people ask how you are but don't expect an answer. But generally it's nice. We have the luxuary of a car (when it works- there is a large dent from Andy's 'deerstrike' incident, and the small catalogue of worying noises is ever varying), and there are lots of places we can get to reasonably quickly. By American standards anyway: we drove over 1000 miles in our Yellowstone trip, and most of the time we were still in Wyoming. As well as Yellowstone, we have been into Fort Collins and to Vedawoo, 'fat crack county' (stop sniggering at the back). I'm hoping that we can go skiing at some point too; it's a great place to enjoy the outdoors. Americans sure do open spaces well... But then my priority while I'm here has to be the thesis... talking of which, tenuous arguments for the provenance of magmatic underplate don't write themselves... back to it!

Back once more...

Well it's sure been a while... I guess life just took over and I got busy. I'm STILL busy but it's funny how important little things suddenly become when you have a thesis to write. Ahh the thesis, it's going ok, thanks for asking. I'll get there eventually. And in the meantime I'm not getting paid and I'm trying to work out if ice climbing in the Alps is a sensible use of half my savings. Of course it is :-). It's something I've dreamed of for years.. but now the reality is here, and it's kinda expensive.

So what has happened since my last post? Well I haven't quit my phd, and I ran a half marathon, and a few friends got married. Thats my brief history!

Anyway the purpose of blogging is to keep a journal for my use, but I'll point some friends here too so they can see what I've been up to. Take it easy one and all xxx

Hobbling goblins

Not posted for a while for several reasons- I've had my head reasonable straight, so I've not needed the therapy, I've been really busy.. and,well.. I couldn't be arsed. I think I'm the only person who reads my blog anyway, which is probably a good thing. I'm off to Costa Rica tomorrow :). I can't believe I'm actually going to see Andy. It feels like he's been away for forever, but in reality its only a month I guess. It will be nice to be able to share that kind of normality we have again. It's funny how wehn you love someone, doing exciting stuff becomes less of a priority, and you just want to share the normal simple things. It gives me hope for the future, because I don't think you can really know if you want someone around in the long-term unbless you have lived with them. You have to learn the anoying things they do, so you can either reprogram them, or learn to be a wonderful, tolerant human being :o>.

Waffling on about nothing in particular- must be knackered.. I am, and I have to get up at 4.. .

My main reason for posting is to have a bitch about my knee. I've developed something nasty called illiotibial band syndrom, casue by my spaky running, and running on pavements ratehr than nice, squishy grass. It bloody hurts, and google wisdome suggests that rest and physio are required, and running on it will only excabate things. Yes I know I just made that word up, but I think it's close to a real one. So I'm resting.. well, apart from a teeny 5k race today. Oops. I ran 8 and a bit minutes of it, then gave up and walked the rest. It hurt like hell, but after a hot bath it's calmed down. It was incerdible frustrating to be walking when I had bags of energy and plenty of strength left, appart from this annoying niggle. It gave me a chance to look around though, and it was stunning- we were in Arundel, running through the wildlife and wetlands trust grounds. The race was a nice course, appart from abloody big hiss near the start. I have to be honest- I probably would have walked a bit of it anyway cos it was knackering! The wether was perfect- blue skies but chilly... until we started running, at which point it began to piss icy rain all over us, then hail. The snow held off until we started up the hill. Nice. I always overheat if I wear too much to un in, but I was coveting jac's lovely florescent ron hill gloves- I don't think I've had so much pain in my hands before! We had a well deserved cake and hot drink afterwards, so it was all good- apart from the limping and complaining bviously. I'll go see a physio whne I get back- that won't be cheap. I'm still quietly optimistic about the totton 10 in april, but I might have to face the reality that trining is going to make me worse. I'm not sure how I'll handle climbing either- I certainly can't support my body weight on my right leg and push up, it's too weak- so I don't think I'll managed climbing. That sucks- I was supposed o be climbing last weekend, but I pulled out- too busy. But then it's not every day you get the chance to go to Costa Rica :o)