Purple Sweet Potato Latkes and Other Random Musings

First off, a disclaimer. I have had both a glass of sweet vermouth and a glass of sherry which has given me exactly the correct amount of drive to write some random things.

I managed to pull off a 12 mile run today...albeit about 30 seconds slower per mile than my usual long run, but some days you just have to be thankful you made it out there at all. The paved trail I run has an entry a mile away from my apartment, so I run 6 miles out, turn around and run 6 miles back. Which means when I get off the trail and back onto the street I have one mile left to go. This logic failed me at mile 11.1.

It all started when I took a little turn off to find a bathroom. I calculated I had ran an extra .1 to .2 miles in order to do so and had to take that into account. So I ran out 6.1 and figured that would do it. Somehow, just after mile 10 I started to do the math again, because what else can you do with all that free time on your hands? I figured I would hit mile 11 as I hit the street, and have one more mile to go, making it 12. So far so good.

Just before I hit the street I looked at my GPS. 11.1. What? Man, I don't know what I did back there but I screwed up. I'll just stay on the trail for an extra half mile, run a half mile back to the street and then have the final mile home....making it 12 miles. 11 plus 1 plus that last 1 equals 12. Bummer. Ok, no big deal.

So I kept running. I looked at my GPS...11.2. Ok, so if I run .4 miles, that makes it 11.6, and then .4 back, making it 12...then one more mile...wait. Wait a minute. I'm running 12 today. That makes....13, what? Geezo.

I turned around and headed home. Some days you just keep running simply because you are not home yet. That's how my whole run felt today. Until my watch beeped at 12. I just stopped running. I wasn't home. At least a half mile away, but I didn't care. I just didn't want to run anymore. Just one of those days.

I managed to put up my blackout curtains in my bedroom finally. I'm excited to see how that goes.

I also made purple sweet potato latkes for dinner.

The sweet vermouth and purple sweet potatoes:

 Making it into a batter with green onions, cilantro, egg, whole wheat flour, salt (not enough), pepper, garlic and cayenne.

Fried it in some coconut oil.

Yep, there they are.

Ran out of vermouth, so onto sherry. Topped the purple latkes with ash covered goat cheese. Not eating enough ash these days, so I have to buy my cheese coated with it. I don't know.

After I finished eating and checking the surf reports (swell coming in!!!) I was craving Moose Tracks ice cream. I supposed I could walk to 7-Eleven just two blocks away, but I'd have to get dressed first. I turned to hot chocolate instead. Not a valid replacement but I suppose it will have to do.

So about this swell.....overhead to double overhead!! What? What's funny is that it seems "overhead" is quantified by over 5 feet. Haha....anyway. Maybe that's only funny to me.

Really wish I had that Moose Tracks.

Oh yeah, the swell. Well I did a whole lot better with the smaller waves on Friday than I did with the slightly larger ones on Wednesday. Seems my ideal surf size at the moment is "ankle to knee high". How sad is that? Maybe I just had to brush off some of the rust. Maybe overhead will be nice.

It's been awhile. Overhead is going to feel absolutely HUGE to me.

Hum. Mooooose Traaacks...... Nope. Not getting dressed just to stagger out into the dark streets to 7-Eleven just to get ice cream that I don't need. Could you see me getting gunned down, and you all would be saying at my funeral..."all she wanted was some Moose Tracks..."

Too morbid? Ok, signing off.

First night at the lab!

Onto the real reason I'm here (ok, not really... the real reason I'm here is because there's a pool on campus a 3 minute walk from my lab). I'm now officially employed by San Jose State University Research Foundation. It's like I'm a scientist, but not because I'm a student with not a whole lot of science/math background. We'll get there. 

I'll post more pics of campus when things are actually open. School is on winter break right now, so it's pretty empty and these pics were taken in the late afternoon when everything was closed.

Here's the building my lab is in.

Hall of Science. Sounds scientific. That's because it is. So, otherwise known as Duncan Hall. The Meteorology Department (and the grad room where my desk resides) is on the 6th floor.

Yes, I do believe that is a cheeseburger in paradise.

This is my desk. 

Haven't really moved much of my stuff into it yet, but I figure that will happen as I sit there and study and suddenly realize I wish I had _________ and kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. You'll notice that I do already have a coffee cup there, because at least I have my priorities straight. Not only is it ceramic and therefore microwavable, but it also has a lid. Winning.

I guess I study here, and live here. Maybe sleep under my desk when it gets too late to drive home. I'll fancy it up more once classes get started (next Thursday!). Maybe put a plant in there that thrives off artificial lighting. Couple of pictures. Bottle of wine. Snacks. Clean underwear. I don't know, the options are endless.

Our little forecasting room for the department. I suppose I could've turned on a light.

 The view from the 6th floor.

My lab is located on the 8th floor in what used to be a storage room. I'll get better pics of all that at a later time. We've also got a rooftop lab (where I will do a lot of my studying while soaking up the rays) that I'll get pics of as well. Our lab's website can be found HERE.

The reason I was at the lab the other night was because a group of local 6th grade students were presenting their project to us and getting a tour of the lab. By the time they got there it was too dark to take them out to the roof, but they got to see a little bit of what we do. I'll try to get a link to the kid's project and will update it here.

First of all, let me just say, I do not remember being this smart in 6th grade. These kids were given a project to research a natural disaster, come up with a solution (using legos and robotics and stuff) and present it to relevant groups in the communities in order to get feedback on their project, and improve it. 

This group chose wildfires and decided to enhance early detection methods by putting a blimp in the sky equipped with an infrared camera. When a new start is detected, they will transmit the coordinates via satellite to the nearest fire station. They are also toying with the idea of some sort of retardant capabilities in the event that suppression resources are delayed.

The whole set-up. A community complete with fire station, the blimp and it's satellite.

Demonstrating the use of the infrared camera. 

This was pretty funny as it led to a discussion on the best settings to use for the IR camera. This kid and my professor started discussing the range, in microns of the wavelengths of these things. I got the gist of it but I mean, who really knows what a micron is? It's small is all that I understand. Anyway, so my professor said we generally have it at 3.9 microns, or well, 4. And this kid came back with- actually, I did some calculations and yadda, yadda, averaged out these measurements and came up with 4.3 microns. He handed my professor his notebook that displayed his calculations. Goodness! This kid is smarter than I am! I bet I can do more pull-ups though.

Upstairs in the lab, my professor demonstrates a small unmanned aircraft the lab used to do an IR flight around a prescribed burn.

And my professor and I posing with the kids.

We had a big question and answer time where we provided feedback and suggestions for their project. They asked us questions about fire and fire weather, and we bounced some ideas back and forth about retardant, detection issues and typical fire behavior. It was super cool, and I was definitely impressed with how well these kids did the research, visited fire stations for feedback, adjusted according to suggestions and were still striving to make improvements. Mostly, I left there thinking I had gotten myself into a pretty cool new life situation.

Apartment updates

After reaching a fairly comfortable living point, I stalled on getting my apartment together. I think I just got over it, moving is rough. After all the packing, loading, cleaning, unloading, unpacking, organizing and re-organizing, it gets to be a little much. One of the things I've been putting off is putting up the blackout curtains, but only because I actually have to trim them and hem them (using the cheat method of hemming tape).

Living in Montague spoiled me on how dark my room would get at night- completely dark really. And I totally understand that living in the city means lights on all the time, but I apparently live on the Vegas strip because my apartment complex is so incredibly illuminated that it is daylight 24 hours a day. The pictures hardly do it justice being as the exposure time on my camera adjusts itself to the light, but all of these pictures were taken without a flash.

This is my apartment complex as seen during the day.

This is my apartment complex at night.

Every single one of those lights stays on all night until the sun is well past coming up in the sky. There are some obvious benefits to this. If someone is sneaking around my window...well ok, forget it, no one can sneak around in that sort of spot light.

Some of you might say, that's how it is living in the city. No, this is how it is living in the city:

By the way, that daylight glow coming from the left of the photo is from my complex. The remainder is the street is significantly darker.

My front door...and my windows. Just your average horizontal window blinds on those babies.

Looking from my front door out into the courtyard. You could get a tan down there. 

So obviously it would benefit me to get my blackout curtains up. I made a bit of improvements to the kitchen, being as storage and room are hard to find around here. 

 I got the bars, hooks and pots from Ikea. Hanging these above the stove freed up space in the drawer for spices and space in the cabinet for small appliances.

You don't get to see all of the living room because I've still got some clutter around there that I'm pretending to be dealing with, but here's some storage solutions I've implemented for the larger things.

My bikes hang vertically from the ceiling next to the futon in the living room. I live right next to the San Andreas fault line by the way. This should be fun. I wanted to hang them both the same way but I was having some issues with the tires blocking the light switch for the kitchen. I knew if I did that it would drive me absolutely nuts, so I went with just hanging them how they sat best. Road bike in front, mountain bike behind.

And yes, that is my swim gear sitting on the futon. Because I swim now. I'm back.

My surfboard hangs on the other wall in the living room, above the furnace I may never use. It's the middle of January and I have not turned on my heat once in the two weeks I have lived here. The small box under my jacket is actually currently being used as a door stop, because the real door stop lacks the 2 additional inches I would need to keep the door from hitting my surfboard. Gotta have my priorities straight.

Here's my bedroom. Still a work in progress but it's coming along.

Not a whole lot has changed in the bathroom since I posted pics of it except that I got an over-the-toilet shelving thing for help with storage. I would show you a pic of that but currently there are wetsuits, swimsuits, towels and surf booties strewn all over the place in there. 

I've put some pictures up but I'm still working on that as well. It's been on my to-list for over a week. I finally just threw out my to-do list. It kept growing instead of shrinking. I'm over it.

Surfing and redwoods!

Well it was another beautiful, sunny day in San Jose. It's been pretty warm here- chilly in the morning (in the 40's) but warming up to mid-70's. I just got my camera back from getting debris cleaned out from inside the lens, so I figured I'd have an early morning surf session, followed by a stroll through the redwood grove and still make it back in time to run some errands (like getting my high speed internet set up-YAY!).

I got up early and drove out to Santa Cruz right before the sun came up. I just got a new, warmer wetsuit since my old one just wasn't cutting it. I pulled into the parking lot at the end of 41st St. and hopped out to check the waves. It was pretty chilly out (mid-40's) so I was not chomping at the bit to pull my warm clothes off quite yet.

Here's my new surf spot.

There was a funny group of mostly older guys out in the line-up this morning, and due to the lack of any significant swell, it wasn't crowded at all. The water however, was absolutely frigid. It got especially cold when the sun came up and the wind picked up. Brrr!

Wednesday had been my first day back surfing in about 5-6 years which left me incredibly rusty and I was not able to ride a single wave. Today I rode quite a few. I also saw a few sea otters and more dolphins. One of the spectators up on the cliff was pointing out a leopard shark to a guy in the water. As the tide came in, it messed up the waves quite a bit and I was getting cold anyway, so I decided it was time to hop out.

Here's some pics of the spot from after I got out.

I shivered like crazy as I got out of my wetsuit and into warm, dry clothes. I hopped in the car, blasted the heater and drove out to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. It was still pretty chilly and the redwood trees provide quite a bit of shade, so I blanced my coffee in freezing hands while trying to take pictures. There's a path that circles the grove that's just under a mile long.

I found a warm sliver of sun, so I stood in it for awhile with my eyes closed, warming my body.

I made it back to the start of the loop and decided to check out the gift store. I knew better, but couldn't help myself. They had a lot of cool things. I bought a little gift for a friend, a giant redwood seed growing kit for myself, and then spotted an ice cream bin. It's way too cold for ice cream, I thought as I peered into the case. You really don't need ice cream.

No, I don't. But I do need a chocolate dipped cheesecake! As I walked along the road back to my car, I ate my chocolate covered cheesecake and the sun warmed my back. I was one happy girl.

I got home and decided I better get to work on germinating those seeds! 

The kit comes with seeds, soil, little white pebbles, and it's own little "greenhouse". I got it all set up, anxious to see some sprouts within a few days...then got to step 7.

I don't even get to set them in the sun for 20 days! I gotta trick them into coming out of dormancy. Lame. So here they are in their temporary home, wedged between the Sherry and Ezekiel bread. 

To be continued....in 20 days.