Grandma, Thanksgiving, desserts

Another Thanksgiving. This is my 30th Thanksgiving.  I've lived through a month of Thanksgivings.  Putting it like that, it doesn't seem like that many...

Since I was in Davis, I figured I'd try to do the double dinner thing.  Which in practice, didn't really work out, since I ate the first one at 3pm and the second was around 5:30. I couldn't eat anymore, so I just watch the second dinner diners eat.  I couldn't even have another glass of wine.  I'd had wine with Emily the day before, and 2 days in a row with wine is too much.

The hit of the party dessert-wise was the pomegranate chocolate meringue tart.  It was also the most labor intensive, because I made the pomegranate curd twice, because the first batch didn't set.  The pate sucre crust recipe was good, as was the spicy ganache (which I doubled) and meringue. It made one 10" tart and three 4" tartlets. I took the tart over to Emily's and the tartlets to Bjorn's.  I have no photos, but they were lovely. I also made a lemon cream tart with a spiced nut crust (sort of like a linzer sable), an amaretto pumpkin pie (which I wouldn't make again), and a chocolate bourbon pecan pie (from the Baked cookbook). I didn't actually taste the lemon tart or the pecan pie.  More and more I don't eat what I make.  I don't know why.  Probably because so much sugar makes me feel sick.  Others seem to enjoy it though, so that keeps me inspired.

I had a conversation with my Grandma on Wednesday.  Every now and again she calls and we chat.  She's 92 now.  I still haven't gone back to the ranch since my grandfather died, which is an endless source of guilt. I don't know why I'm so reluctant to go. It's weird. Sometimes I have this gut reaction that prevents me from doing things that it seems I "should" do, and I need to be dragged into doing them. Grandma understands...she says "there's really nothing here for you."  Which of course makes me feel more guilty.

Anyway, I don't know why but I asked grandma if she was scared of dying, and she said she wasn't.  Then she went into talking about how grandpa died and how she watched the undertakers put him in a body bag, load him into the car, and then watched the car go down the driveway.  She said that's how she wants to go. Of course I'm in tears at that point, but trying to hold my voice together so she doesn't know.  I don't want to depress her by bringing it up. I guess I just want to know that maybe I won't always be afraid of dying myself or having people around me die.  There's little point in fearing the inevitable.

Not one to let an opportunity to depress myself go by, I then asked her if she was happy, and she said "um....I don't really know how to answer that question". I said "well, I mean, are you happy?" And then she started talking about how she got new carpeting in the house, and what else she was planning on doing.  I dropped it.

Dicey winter drive

Driving through the Great Basin was a bit dicey yesterday, but it went ok until I got to Truckee where everything went to shit.  Chain control, tons of traffic, blowing snow, lanes that weren't entirely plowed.  I'm glad I got through because they closed I-80 overnight.

Nevada was beautiful though. Everything was freshly white. I'm not a snow lover, but a fresh dusting of snow with scattered clouds at dawn is something special. So beautiful you could never take it all in, so you just take lame dashboard photos and hope for something decent:

A few days ago I hiked around the Fisher towers. I'd never been there before. I can't believe that Roop aid soloed two of them.  Crazy.

In other news, I'm talking with a guy at CU Boulder about potentially...potentially (that's a double potential..which means I'm not getting my hopes up) doing a post-doc there.  He does interesting research, and Boulder is on the list of places to check out, so it's an option.

For all of the things I think about on my drive, and all of the things I think I'd write about, this is all I've got. When it comes to sitting down and banging it out and getting the words on the blog, most of it doesn't happen.

Utah beer

Right now I'm really happy that Utah beer is only 3.2%. That is all.

Salt Lake is cool. Moab is built on salt.

I'm in Moab now, after spending two nights in SLC with Brad and Katie.  At this point I really like SLC and it's a viable option for a place to live after I finish.  I can't decide if it's the location or because Brad and Katie are so nice and hospitable.  SLC just seems less formal and superficial than Boulder.  All I'm going on is my gut at this point, since I haven't spent very much time in either place. And we all know my gut has led me astray before, so I'm trying to take it with a grain of salt.

At any rate, I really liked the gym there.  Of course I liked the gym in Boulder too. I really just don't know. I'll be looking for jobs in both locations, and then I've also got the post-doc proposals floating around for me to stay in Davis. One thing I can be grateful for is that I can do whatever the hell I want, and I don't need to compromise with anybody.  It's freedom. I relish it.

Other fun things that happened in SLC: I'm all caught up on Weeds (Brad has season 6), and a free CPR class at the BD headquarters (randomly, Brad's parents, brother and sister in law were putting on a course for employees the second night I was in SLC).  The BD HQ makes the federal cubicles look like shit. I won't lie. That's a pretty nice building. It's almost enough to make me stop trying to save the world...or at least a few species that nobody gives a shit about.

Now I am in Moab and it's looking like I might only climb for a day, with Joe et al. These conferences can be pretty fun - especially now that I've gone to several over the years and I know a bunch of people. It's good to catch up and talk about fish and science. I had dinner with one of the Utah division of Wildlife folks who was on my Silver King Creek trip, as well as some navy biologists who I sampled Mohave tui chub with in Zzyzx several years go.

Side story: the internet wasn't working for my computer, so I called Jeff and he taught me how to hack into their system using a bunch of numbers and other random shit and reset their router. It was fucking badass. I couldn't believe it!

The IT guys had set their user name and password as admin. Suckers. Always gotta have a tech guy in reserve. And a tall guy who can reach stuff...and a big guy who can carry stuff.

Tomorrow lots of talks...and I should probably try to finish the talk that I'm giving on Saturday. I've never procrastinated this long before giving a talk. Hopefully it's under control and I don't embarrass myself.

Another side story: Moab is a collapsed salt anticline. It's cool. Salt moves a lot like a liquid under pressure, and will dome up through faults.

I give up (I don't even pretend to be a geologist): here's text cut and pasted from the Utah Geological Survey Website:

"During the Pennsylvanian Period (about 300 million years ago), most of Utah was covered by an ancient sea. The Moab area was located in an enormous depression called the Paradox Basin. As sea levels fluctuated over millions of years, multiple cycles of flooding and evaporating occurred in the basin, leaving thousands of feet of salt behind. The resulting Paradox Formation is 65 to 85 percent salt and is interbedded with layers of gypsum and anhydrite.

These salt beds eventually became buried by other rock layers. Because salt deposits are less dense than overlying rock deposits, they behave buoyantly and rise toward the surface. The salt squeezes upward and intrudes into the overlying rocks through zones of weakness such as fractures and faults. As the salt moves, it bends and penetrates the overlying rock. The intruding “salt bubbles” are called salt diapirs."

Here's more:

"Salt movement beneath the Canyonlands region contributed to the creation of many features peculiar to the region, including collapsed anticlines, grabens, fins, and arches.  The weight of overlying rock layers squeezed the salt into areas of lower pressure, which were linear belts along deep buried faults.  In these areas, the salt thickened and formed linear salt tracts.  Later, horizontal compression in the earth’s crust bulged the salt belts and overlying rocks upward to form anticlines.  The brittle, overlying rocks broke along faults and joints in and parallel to the anticlines’ crests, which enabled water to reach the underlying salt in some anticlines.  As the salt dissolved, the overlying rock layers collapsed hundreds of feet (called collapsed salt anticlines), leaving valleys such as Salt Valley in Arches National Park and Moab Valley.  Other anticlines, such as the Cane Creek anticline, have not collapsed."

Phew. That's enough for now. There will be musings on fish in the future.

Are you a word lover?

I am.  If you are too, then you might like this site. The sound effects are a little annoying, but so many cool words!

Yesterday I went to Gold Wall after a series of partner bail-ures. Ha I just made that up. I got on a route I'd gotten on last year that had felt pretty hard and I felt SO good.  Crazy. I wonder if it's the cross training class, or if I'm just super psyched right now.  I don't know, but I'm going to go with it.

Now I'm headed to Salt Lake City to stay for a night or two before I go to Moab to not climb attend a conference. And raft 10 miles down the Colorado River.

Saturday I went to a bbq and made a pie that was super good. Here is the recipe from the NYTimes. I'd never actually made a pie with a squash that wasn't from a can before (pumpkin) so I'm glad it turned out.  One time Sunshine tried to make a pie from fresh pumpkin and it was SCARY! Frazier's dad tried to make us eat it, but I'm pretty sure that's because he couldn't see anymore at his old age.

I should mention I didn't use Kabocha squash, but Musquee de Provence instead.  You know, for those who care. I also made the ginger butterscotch sauce to go with it and some whipped cream. If you make the sauce, halve the recipe. The pie was gone at the end of the night. I was lucky to get the last piece.

The bbq was at Ron's house in Davis, and all the sac climbers came: Rick, Denise, Shaghig and Jonathan, Larry and Nunley. It was weird to see my climbing community intersect with Davis life, but very cool.

Driving. At least it's through Nevada! I'm going through BATTLE MOUNTAIN!  How cool does that sound?

And this crazy google maps version of bendover Wendover, NV. Psyched!


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Update:

check this out. It's pretty funny. Mostly this is for you Shannon.

Best Day Ever!

Okay I hope it's not the best day ever, because then what would I have to look forward to?

But it's not so bad. My garden is going ape shit, except for the slugs.  I've had some great conversations with friends, I baked some maple-walnut shortbread, I got to show a friend the frogs and the garden (woo!) and now I'm watching snail sex on television.  Wow, it's intense.

Jailhouse on Sunday? I think maybe.  I feel really strong right now. It was cool to climb with Dan and hear from him that I look stronger than he's ever seen me.  We'll see what I can get done during this (I'm sure) brief period of non-suck.  Hopefully I can have some fun with it.

Here are some photos of the garden.  It never gets old:

It's comforting to know that people don't change

I went to Jailhouse for the first time in a while yesterday. I had a pretty good day, considering I hadn't been there in a year.  I did the warmup, went up Whipping Boy, then Electric Chair twice, followed by Soap.  Granted I only did the warmup clean, but shit I don't know the moves on Whipping boy, I was learning electric chair, and I'd never expect to do Soap clean at the end of the day.  All in all it was pretty productive and I was able to maintain psych.

I'd like to start going again. I had a great time with Dan, who is one of the most positive people I know.  He does a way better job of getting me and spinning the negative in a positive light than I do.  For that I'm grateful. Sometimes it can feel pretty lonely out here.

I tend towards nihilism, because all of the time I see douchebags who have good things happen to them, and really good people who have bad things happen to them. I don't believe there's any greater purpose to this disparity, simply chance and luck. So I try to be a "good" person only so I can sleep better at night. And maybe a tiny part of me hopes that it will pay off and good things will happen. Okay maybe a big part.

Some news came my way of a person in my past repeating mistakes.  In a way it's somewhat comforting to know that people don't miraculously change, in another way it's depressing. The best thing to do seems to be to vet people on the front end before you let them get close. Of course this is an unsustainable policy. But it's better than bouncing around like a douchebag and dragging people with you because you don't stop to think about how your actions affect other people. In my experience, and from what I've observed, this is how most people operate; I don't blame them, because it's way easier that way. I'm not sure I'd wish this acute consciousness on my worst enemy.

One of the biggest reasons for all the strife in the world has got to be that people can't understand what it's like to not be themselves.  I'm guilty of this: I tend to imbue others with some of my traits (especially thoughtfulness) and "fill in the blanks" so to speak.  I just assume that people think the way that I think, or need what I need, etc. Then I end up delusional and thinking people are different than how they really are. For better or worse.

Bjorn had a good suggestion: find people who are better to self-delude yourself about.