stupid stupid stupid!!

guess what i just did... today was my entry interview with the geology department to see whether or not i was even worthy of pursuing work that will eventually lead to my comps and then my phd. i totally spaced the time that the meeting started, and ended up being about 15 minutes late. doh, and double doh! besides starting the interview completely out of breath from running accross campus, things settled into the swing pretty well. after a while, the interviewers all stopped asking me the normal questions and just sort of started with the more interesting ones. in the end they all said i did great, and they were all impressed... just not with my ability to show up on time.

anyway, looks like i really will be here for the next 5 years or so. sweet! hopefully next time (for comps) i actually remember to come to the meeting early.

~t

strong-coffee!!

here i am, sitting at my desk at 10pm on a sunday night. i just brewed myself possibly the strongest cup of coffee i've ever had, and i'm getting ready to spend however much time it takes to grapple with a presentation on critical wedge kinematics and the structural response of a sub-critical orogenic wedge. then it's onto another presentation on plate flexure in the western taiwan basin. in the eternal words of the prophets ren and stimpy: happy happy, joy joy!

ok/ so an hour has lapsed since i began writing this. a phone conversation with a friend of mine revealed she crashed her honda vfr (a crotch-rocket for those of you who don't know) this weekend when she was run off the road by some yahoo, then managed to spend a few hours strapped to a back-board while emt's tried to give her an i.v.

in short, i am still the master of procrastination. i finished my coffee though, and am thoroughly buzzed from the half-pound of coffee grounds i used to brew the single 10 oz cup... so staying up to finish the presentations shouldn't be a problem. not much else on my mind right now... this coming week is going to be hectic to say the least. i actually dreamt about elastic plate flexure last night. hopefully i can do better than that tonight.

'lizabeth - this is for you:

mountains

hello again...

it's tuesday today, thursday on the academic schedule, and I'm finally finding time to sit and read some papers on taiwan. this morning i'm working on one titled, "origin of the west taiwan basin by orogenic loading and flexure of a rifted continental margin" (a.t.lin and a.b.watts)... sounds fascinating, i know.

this past sunday was spent climbing thatchtop mountain in the rmnp, with tim bartholomaus. long story short, our guide book was incorrect and we ended up scratching our way up a gully that was lacking any real amount of snow or ice. mostly we used placements in frozen moss and scree and a whole lot of finesse to find our way up the mountain. in the end though, we ran out of time and rapped off the way we came up, slinging a manky block of rock on a ridgeline, and then another boulder which was actually worth using. all in all we had a good time, and made it home safe and sound. i'll attach a couple of pics here. the weather was perfect and conditions generally great, just not in our little gully. ah well, now we know where the real climb is, and next time we'll be able to actually get up the stupid thing.


me just hanging out at the high point of our progess


tim standing in front of the would-be finish of the climb...

~t

beer luck madness

hey all,

the beer-luck went off without a hitch last night... a bunch of people came and everyone enjoyed a fairly large selection of cool brews. as far as i can tell, everyone had a good time (some more than others), and the damage to the apartment is minimal. im still a little fuzzy, but amazingly un-hung-over today. mostly im just watching some tv, and checking email today... i seem to be lacking the mental clarity necessary for witty banter or long recounting of stories. in lieu of those things, i offer the following images.

~t

destroyed

..................

...............duh.


I feel completely dead now. im absolutely exhausted from spending the majority of the night plugging through mechanics computations by hand. like an idiot i put off finishing an assignment until the last minute and that last minute ended up taking several hours. its finally cold now in colorado... the rockies have been getting dumped on and my first ice climb of the year is scheduled for this sunday. im supposed to go up notchtop mountain with tim which, if it works out (snow, conditions etc) could be awesome. in the meantime, there is a beer-luck which needs some last minute (sensing a trend here?) tending to before friday night. i need to sleep.

..........

................ s l ee e ep.....

~t

quickie

just a quick post this morning... finally getting back into the swing of normal life back in co. i've been sleeping an inordinate amount the last couple of days. the fall is going very fast. it's chilly this morning... about 35 degrees here. it's really nice though, walking around with cold ears and chilly hands feels great after a few days in 95 degrees. although i love visiting tropical places, i don't think i could ever live between the 35th parallels.

off to class now. double cortado coffee in hand. (geomechanics, yay!)

~t

taipei at night

more posting from taipei tonight... listening to progressive trance on my ipod, sitting in my hotel room after a walk around the neighborhood. i found a good bookstore here and spent 1600nt (bout 50 bucks) on books, including a detailed atlas of taiwan, and some gifts for friends and family. also spent a good amount of the time taking pictures while dodging the onslaught of scooters which are omnipresent here in taipei. living here will be a trip, but as ive said for years, i look forward to living in a big city. it might take a little extra effort to find all the cool places here, but i got a good feeling from the city tonight. i leave first thing tomorrow morning for denver and am really looking forward to getting back. still have to finish classes and catch up on all the stuff ive let slide over the course of my visit here. allright... i need to pack some of my stuff up now, so ill sign off here in a few minutes, but i want to post some of the cooler pics from tonight to give you guys a sense of what its like.






~t

chillin in taipei

hey all... just sitting here, its thursday night and i just got back from almost a week traveling around the island of taiwan. im in taipei now at ntu, the main university in the country, finally clean, comfortable, and slightly more mentally present. after the last several days, ive been feeling a little overloaded and on the verge of academic aneurysm. so much info in so little time and constantly surrounded by these professors and researchers who live this stuff... constantly pouring out more knowledge than i can handle. after a point i just reach the nod-and-smile threshold.

talking over the logistics of doing field work here, its becoming more evident that the summer is the worst possible time for that. it now looks like i will come back this january as planned, but then just stay here for the spring semester to do work during the best part of the year. its a little bit of a pain in the ass, because ill need to find someone to sublet my place sooner than i thought, ill have to rush to prepare and generally this requires me to go nuts for the next couple of months, but i think its worth it to beat the heat, and get a real jump on my research. i think a solid 4 months or so here would be worth about two field seasons, and the thought of spending the entire spring (and coldest part of the year in colorado) here in subtropical taiwan, bouncing between the beautiful puli basin and metropolitan taipei is not bad at all.

anyway, i think ill head to bed now.. i have a few meetings tomorrow and need to get up early. i will leave yall with a picture of one of the scenes from my recent trip, looking north along the east coast of the island into the west pacific ocean. i cant believe how cool it is that im doing research in this place.

~t