Month: November 2008

After a great Thanksgiving, it is time for the biggest weekend of the year for Talus Tiles–Public Market in Juneau.  Carrie and Abbey have a table together again:

Carrie got a great selection of tiles and other ceramics together for this year.  Here is a bunch of 6″ x 6″ tiles:

New this year are sushi plates:

And here’s the whole 2008 Talus Tiles Slideshow:

Brian’s Birthday was last week.  We took over a six pack of beer, but not just any beer.  A 1996, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 Alaskan Smoked Porter!  That emptied out the beer cellar.  But there are rumors that the Alaskan Brewery is selling some of the older smoked porters every now and then–Torsten and I stopped by yesterday with no luck, but we’ll keep trying.  Brian let us share the 1996 and compare it with the 2004.  I really was impressed with the 1996.  No hop at all, but really complex, delicious, good smoked, earthy, yummy taste!

Scanning a few old photos.  Here we are: Sept 22, 2001.  If you were there, you were lucky.  Memories….

 

That big black lovable Newfie is Baby Jesus.  Just walking through the Fairadise woods, calling for Baby Jesus is a great memory in and of itself.  We’ll miss you Baby Jesus.   Our thoughts are with ya, Bevin!

This tune is for you (and all of us): With a Little Help from My Friends

Playing catchup, we all went to Houston for the Geologic Society of America meeting.  Cathy Connor and Rob Fatland were there as well, and lots of good scientific presentations went on.  In the “Global Warming Science: Implications for Geoscientists, Educators and Policy Makers” Matt made an afternoon presentation.  James Hansen was the special featured one hour lunch lecturer.  One of the biggest impressions I got from his great talk (“Target Atmospheric CO₂: Where Should Humanity Aim?”) was that a major challenge in understanding climate change is the difference between knowing and understanding.  We can “know” about gigatons of carbon dioxide, but can we understand it?  Anyway, enough of the good science, and on to the cute pictures!

Downtown Houston was very nice–the rail, Icon Hotel, and conference center were great.  We got into town after a long and crazy flight (with an overnight in Seattle, Carrie and Torsten going through Dallas, while Matt waited in SeaTac for a direct to Houston flight).  We caught up at Grandma and Grandpa Talus’ house.  We were all time-zoned and jet-lagged.  We walked in the sun down to the playground, and checked out the hurricane damage in the neighborhood.

We went downtown, and Torsten was in heaven:

   

It was a great visit with Mike and Ellen.  We went down to NASA, enjoyed the tour of shuttle and ISS training facilities, the Apollo Mission Control, and a Saturn V rocket.

   

Matt had to give his presentation, then head back to Juneautopia to teach some classes.  Carrie and Torsten hung down in the sun for a big dose of Vitamin D.  They went to visit Nana and Grandpa Bob, enjoying pool time in the backyard, go cart racing at the awesome pizza place (including a first place ribbon for Torsten in the go cart race!), catching up with the Buckis, and a fantastic trip to the renaissance fair.  Here are a few photo highlights:

        

And, you can enjoy the full gallery of photos:

 

We are getting an idea of where to look for Torsten for the next 15 or so years.  He loves going to the skate park in Juneau.  Three days in a row so far!  We like to go early in the morning, before it gets too crowded.  Torsten wakes up and asks about going!  He is getting brave!

T at the Skate Park