real time simpson lab blog 14:46

near real time blog today at 14:46 11/29/07. i am a nerd. working on the IC, DOAS.

another fun night of knitting. i tried out my new web cam on my laptop for this shot! my friends are so talented at all these crafts and i am starting to learn. the face is a little puffy, i guess my good friend dialysis didn't remove all the fluid today. i am so grateful for all these Alaskan girls showing me their stuff. though grad school is a big part of my life, it is not everything. there is way more to living in Fairbanks then UAF. that is about as deep as it gets for me, but if you want to really dive in..check out ben's photo blog entry.

skijor with caz and sky side by side. i don't know, i think this year caz will be faster.

Lisa and Trevor's Bday party

happy birthday to Lisa and Trevor!
we headed out to Lisa and Dan's to celebrate Lisa and Trevor's birthday. these are the sweet cold ski mittens Lisa received as a present. the hole on the bottom is to fit your ski pole into, perfect for those 40 below hut trips.

Lisa introduced us to this New Zealand game of cutting the chocolate. every time you roll a six you have to dress up in this winter gear and try and cut the chocolate, very strange and fun. here is Ben really getting into it.

i started out making Trevor these sophisticated lime raspberry martinis, but as always with this crowd things headed south. i believe it was Lisa who invented this "toilet 'tini", before you get too grossed out it, it is only fondue chocolate. i think you had to be there, but this was the funniest thing. i have not laughed so hard in a long time. i have to thank Trevor and Lisa for such a memorable night. yuck.

thanksgiving

ben and i on our now annual thanksgiving day ski on the dog musher hall trails behind creamers.
we headed to Rebecca and Malcom's thanksgiving party and it was a great time. typical Fairbanks cabin party; out in the middle of nowwhere, dogs running wild inside and out, game meat and a big fire. we left early, but it was pretty wild when we left and i am sure the night was crazy. this is Rebecca belting out Gillian Welch. we had to drag pella out of there after she was fed deer and salmon, this was her favorite party this year. Malcom is a chef so the food was top notch, all that cooking and no running water, it is pretty impressive.

finishing up the field work....for now

this is part of the dirt road out to the site, Fairbanks winter can be so beautiful. this is sunrise around 10am, not too bad yet.
and sunset a few hours later. today was our last day/night running at the field site. so this is maybe the last blog picture of all this excitement. though our science hut on skis is pretty cool, we are tearing it down tomorrow....maybe my blog posts will get more exciting?
julie and i were able to get on the goldstream valley trails and took the dogs out. it was very warm night for this time of year.
pella was having a good old time being drug around by these two.

tis the preseason party

julie made this excellent torte for a pre- season party since she will be in Anarctica soon. we also did a taste test with this box wine, because i swore i could tell the difference and would not like box wine. both ben and i, with conviction, choose the box wine thinking it was the nice bottle we bought. ha ha! who would of known?
some of the party goers enjoying the torte. my close friends have also been very supportive as we ride this crazy roller coaster trying to have a transplant. now the numbers are good, but Mayo still may not do the transplant! some more complicated stuff. for now, more waiting.
just a random great sunset out at the Quist farm the other night.

way to go, way cool husband!

we just found out ben received the Rasmuson Grant, a highly regarded artist grant! this is to pursue his work on the Dalton project, way up north. this is so exciting, it is a lot of money to do what he loves...how cool is that? check out the link and the other winners. this is sooo big for ben's photography and i am so happy for him. here he is back in the cabin days of 40 below and going to the outhouse. he also had a 16x20 print going up in a New York gallery, what a month for ben!

bloggover

i have not had too much time to get out with our field research going on. we bundled up in our warm ski clothes and headed out for a classic ski late tonight at creamers. patrick and i sent in blood samples this morning to mayo and we should hear something by the end of the week.

also check out Ed's post on their trip into the now infamous "into the wild" bus. one crazy adventure after another, this coming weekend ben and i will join them on a tamer trip into Tolovana hot springs.

at only -3 we have inversions here in Fairbanks and they trap all the pollution near the ground. by the time is -20 the CO levels from cold starting vehicles is really high and we violate clean air levels. time to start plugging in the car. still working all weekend at our field site, we are collecting data and that is good.

We are finally up and running at our field site!

stacia stopped by out on a ride with her dogs yesterday. I was surprised to see someone riding up to the site. there are great trails in the cripple creek area, we hope to meet up for a ski soon.

knit 1

i have this little nervous/anxious new habit, i pull my hair at the end of dialysis! Yuck. So, Audrey taught me how to knit this weekend so both of my hands are busy. so far, so good.
the rest of the weekend i spent at the field site. i am closer to getting this met tower logging correctly. ben rode his bike to pioneer park last night and met up with friends to watch" gates of the arctic". i don't have the link handy, but he said it was a great film.

on my way home from our field site last night i stopped by julie's place for hot buttered rum halloween drinks. notice i am wearing my big down parka inside because she ran out of fuel!

luckily we had plenty of warm clothes from audrey's patagonia sponsorship, we all got some nice stuff. this picture is supposed to be of the "EE" on the old monitor heater in julie's cabin. she will have to get even more used to the cold, she is headed to Antarctica in a few weeks!

Arctic Yo-Yo Brunch and Hut07

we wrapped up the weekend at Martin and Tawna's for brunch. there was great food, from eggs and salmon to french toast and berries. lots of good food this weekend that started at Kristen and Ned's for moose spaghetti. this picture is Martin showing us how the arctic yo-yo is played.

i gave it a try, but i was only good for a laugh.
i spent the weekend out at the field site. here is the met tower ben helped me install. only this was the wrong one, we took it down and installed another one that has two different wind speed and temp levels. ben says he wants on the payroll as an assistant to the Simpson lab, but participating in all this science should be payment enough :-)

ben and i carved a pumpkin at trevor and ed's pumpkin carving party.
i left my camera at ed's. of course i had lots of interesting pictures. this is ed.

a great ski weekend

The snow fell all Friday night. Julie and I went to Creamer's with the dogs and had a great ski. This snow is awesome.


We got up early and headed to Roasters before the ski swap, turns out the entire town had the same idea. Skiing is on the brain.


We all headed to Birch Hill for skate skiing, all the trails are groomed. Tower, White Bear, Roller Coaster, can you believe it? How you can live here and not love to ski is beyond me. Touring, Skate and maybe a tele turn or two at the Moose tonight...the weekend doesn't get much better. I am glad I am feeling good and able to get out there every day. My new classic set up will be ready Wednesday from Fred at Raven's Cross Country, who's up for the backcountry?. He has good deals on all that is xc and threw in the marks and wax for free. Ben is missing all this his, but his last call he was in Coldfoot and shooting photos so his weekend is excellent as well.

field site

Randy and I moved our instruments out into the field to sample air. It is literally in the middle of a hay field 20 miles outside of town on unmarked dirt roads. These are the shelves that carry our instruments and the computer hut, on huge skis in the background(double click image). This is last night and you can see the ground is mostly grass, our goal was to gather data before snow.
.....and today, ooops. it is snowing big time. at least i have my new 40 below boots, they are not the standard military issue white bunny boots, but they will do. It is pretty warm right now, only 19F, but being outside all night sitting around it feels much colder.

potato, pie and turkey fry

2nd annual potato, pie and turkey fry at the Trainor house. We definitely exceeded the max number of people you can fit in one room to eat. no one can miss the great food that comes to this event. This year Sara Petitio won both categories for her sweet potato pie and mushroom potato dish! most interesting was Tom Clausen's moose kidney pie.Later in the night we headed to another famous party house, trevor's for game night. Lisa and I finally were able to hang out after being fairbanks blog friends(dorks, really), she and Dan are a hoot. We made it just in time for midnight round of balderdash.

Chena Dome Trail

We hiked part of the the Chena Dome Trail today. The first 3 miles take you up to the ridge where the views are awesome. A snow storm came in soon after this for our hike back down. The loop is 30 miles and we have not back packed the entire route yet, but soon.
Ben carried his 4x5 camera up to the ridge, we stopped in this blowing grass area so he could shoot a portrait. Pella of course ran around like nuts. Ben has 4 framed photos currently showing in a Detroit Art Gallery, pretty cool.

Anchorage, again.

It was a lonely drive down the Parks on Wednesday night, as the stops are boarded up now that tourist season is over. I think Ben can do this drive with his eyes closed, this is the 4th surgery this year.
We stayed at the usual bed and breakfast, Glen knows us now so we get a good discount. The Copper Whale is right downtown walking distance to all the hip Anchorage spots. Glen also serves up a great breakfast here in the main lounge area with views of the ocean inlet.We still have no good news on the blood tests and we are still playing this waiting game. I am hoping at least with the new tubes I will have a few months of feeling better and no infections.

we decided it would be a good experiment to collect data from another site other than the IARC before going into the field. so i took one of our instruments home to run outside the window and collect aerosols. i would have collected more, but what you can't tell from this picture is the vacuum pump is just obnoxious. trying to get ahead before we leave for anchorage on wednesday.

finally it is snowing!

The temps are in the 20's now and the snow is finally falling. We went for a walk on the UAF trails this morning. I have not been out to do anything exciting for a few weeks now, I have not been feeling well. We are headed to Anchorage week next for a another catheter replacement surgery.

first fridays

We headed out to all the local hotspot galleries in Fairbanks this evening. Patrick had some photos hanging at the Annex outside of town.
Patrick with his photos of the northern lights in the background.
Wells Street Gallery was just packed. We saw a ton of people out tonight and some great art. This is where Ben is having his solo show in February, very exciting. Tonight was a juried show and all the top prize winners received raw meat. You gotta love Fairbanks.

up the dalton

ben and i drove up the dalton towards the arctic circle on sat. ben has another amazing camera, the linhof 4x5 that he borrowed from dennis. this is a nicer camera than we will ever own in our lifetime, the body alone is over 6 grand. ben was excited to shoot portraits of the crazy moose hunters coming off the Yukon River. it was a cold brown day, snow over the hills, but not down at the river. this is dave, he was down river 25omiles toward the bering sea with his family for 3 weeks at their moose camp. everyone is interested in the this camera and all the portraits ben shot, the people were totally into standing there for awhile.
pella and i hiked way down the banks of the Yukon River. we saw grizzly tracks, but no bears.

4 years!

today was our 4 year anniversary. here we are taking pella for a walk before our big night out and modeling our woolly rhino wear(me-royal robbins,/patagucci and ben-horny toad/arcteryx)

we went to Lavelle's for dinner and here is ben cruising the downtown streets of the 'Banks.we spent the evening at the grand opening for woolly rhino. our 2nd store to shop at in Fairbanks. our friend cheryl left Beaver Sports to open her own store. we modeled clothes and helped people. in return we got a great discount on the clothes and new puffy coats for the 40 below weather. here i am "helping". ben was a sales rock star and i think he met half the town tonight the place was packed.on a more serious note, it is has now been over a year waiting for a kidney transplant and being on dialysis 3 days a week. i still have a positive attitude and i know things will work out someday, but i could not have done it with out ben. thanks best husband. love , dea