Talus and Heavner Blog

Behind The Weather: Strongest El Nino In A Decade This is good news for Los Alamos, bad news from Juneau. Five degrees (F) makes all the difference..

From Weather

It was a great whirlwind weekend. On Saturday, we hung out with Jonathan (Torsten’s new neighborhood friend) all day, and we went down to Santa Fe at the Santa Fe Children’s Museum–unfortunately, no pictures of Jonathan made it out. I only had my cell/camera, and even then, most of the pictures were corrupted on import. UG, but I guess we’ll just have to go again! The boys had a great time. Only this one picture of Torsten in the mirrored tunnel survived:

From Santa Fe Children's Museum

we finally dug out the ski boot box. 16 minutes from driveway to Pajarito parking lot/lodge!

torsten says this is day number one

We are two weeks into the new job and new Kindergarten, all our stuff (minus the car) has arrived. We miss our friends and community in Juneau horribly. Carrie has finally succumbed to the cold that Torsten has been sniffling and coughing from (and of course it is worse for adults!). So we are letting Carrie “sleep in” a bit (we were up at 3am and ~5:30am with Aven, so somehow it doesn’t seem like sleeping in!). I’m preparing some omelets for breakfast. While I do this, I’m catching up on the last few weeks of magazines. Physics Today has a review of the book “Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers” by Joseph C. Hermanowicz.

An excerpt from the review:

“n the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) assessment of graduate physics departments, two of the universities (“elites”) were ranked near the top; one(“pluralist”), near the middle; and three (“communitarians”), near the bottom.

The pluralists express the most satisfaction. Many, after some initia discontent, have found a comfortable mix of teaching and research and realize that internal as well as external sources of recognition are important for their sense of personal satisfaction. The communitarians, at universities where teaching dominates over research, feel they have become disconnected from professional science as their careers have evolved. By midcareer their expectations have adjusted to meet the low research expectations and meager resources of their universities. Many of the communitarians state that they dislike their universities and would not choose an academic career if they could begin again. They look forward to a retirement in which they can pursue interests outside of science.”

Did we make a good decision? Can we find a community? Will the forecast “winter storm warning” measure up? We hope so on all three, and we’ll see.. sooner or later. Hopefully this is not a broken egg (or at least no shell!) in the omelet of life.

I’m excited about the apple and brie omelets. And of course, to perfectly complement the subtext of this post, Torsten wants scrambled eggs…

Meanwhile, the view from the sunroom:

From Stuff

From Stuff

We’re almost used to our no-stuff monk-like existence, but we are giddy (and a bit fearful) when all our stuff is supposed to arrive Tuesday (will it fit? I’m calling storage places today!). It is hard to believe all that has happened since October 1, but we’ll catch up with ourselves soon. This picture shows that we mostly manage to keep our smiles and roll with the craziness

From December 2009

It is also one more test of facebook/wordpress (blog) integration. It might just work. It appears that embedded picasa slide shows don’t work, embedded bikely maps don’t work, but hopefully picasa pictures do make it through to facebook.

A Friday afternoon run, but Suka and I just couldn’t turn around, so it was a Quemazon loop, with a little perimeter/pipeline/scramble to find the way home.

And check the altitude profile (the descent at mile 6 was post-holing in snow–major workout and I’m glad my ankles survived!)

From Suka Delight Altitude

Jan 2, run with Suka: Down into the canyon below the bridge, by the ice rink. Then a run up the canyon to the Los Alamos reservoir. It looked like a great trail to skijor, and very possibly dog mush. On the way back we saw a skier.

(test of bikely, my favorite trail mapping app)

(And also a test of Word Press/Facebook integration.. No joy with the LinkAlpha/Network Publisher, so I’m trying WPbook.)

The Los Alamos trail system is something I never got to take advantage of last time we lived here (we were up in the Jemez mountains, and I definitely used the trails up there!). Exploring those with Suka has been a great start to trying to settle in. One Jan 1, we went up Quemazon trail a good way. Here are pictures:

(This blog post is my first test of trying to cross-post to facebook at the same time.. We’ll see..)

We’re in our new place, and we’re enjoying having survived the move. The dogs have already figured out the doggy door into the backyard (wooohoo!) and we are making do with borrowed furniture and coffee maker (thanks Eric/Kristen and Lauren!!) and Dave Smith facilitated some xmas gift delivery (thanks!). We’re enjoying spicy food, and camping at coffee shops for internet–ours is supposed to be installed tomorrow. But entertainment? We’ve got plenty:

Packers, inspectors, dump runs, last days of school, flights, holiday break. And in the middle of it Aven sleeps the whole night through for the first time last night (9pm-8am!!). And she woke with a big smile for Carrie.