Jessicas Clouds

Jessica, who was in Grand Junction with us for Rosie's wedding, sent me some kick ass lenticular cloud pics the other day. She said:

Just thinking about you and thought you and dave might enjoy a few pics I took in CO... the clouds were amazing. This was not the GJ trip, but 2 weeks ago after a Denver conference. I met a friend near Boulder and we hiked up a mountain that overlooked Estes Park... with these clouds inbetween. Bee-autiful! The last picture is one of me and The Diamond... a well known climbing area.

Earthquake Lights?

Huh? Has anyone heard of this? I was just reading about the Kalapana EQ in 1975, and it mentioned earthquake lights..

So I googled it and found a wikipedia (of course) on it...

Records of earthquakes that were accompanied by sky lights can be found in 373 BC in ancient Greek writings, that "immense columns of flame" foretold the earthquake that destroyed the cities of Helike and Bura.

However, even in the early 20th century they were still considered a myth, until photographs of actual lights were taken in Japan in the 1960s.

The lights are most evident in the middle of the quake, although there are reports of lights that occurred after or even before the earthquake. They usually have shapes similar to those of the auroras and are white to bluish in hue, but occasionally they have been reported to have a wider color spectrum. The luminosity is typically visible for several seconds, but there have been cases in which they lasted tens of minutes.

There have been also cases in which electromagnetic waves caused by the earthquake interfered with radio transmissions, such as during the Great Chilean Earthquake of 1960.

The cause of this phenomenon is unknown, but several explanations have been suggested:

• Sparks or gas ionisation due to a piezoelectric effect in quartz-bearing rock
• Frictional heating
• Exoelectron emissions
• Sonoluminescence
• Triboluminescence
• Generation and ignition of flammable gases either from pockets of natural gas or from rocks under enormous stress.
• Gas ionisation or electrical effects due to electrokinetics
• Separation of positive hole charge carriers that turn rocks momentarily into p-type semiconductors

An alternate theory, espoused by proponents of the Electric Universe model, states that some earthquakes may have electrical characteristics and/or causation, including auroral phenomena, radio or VLF noise, etc. 1

Weirdweirdweird... So keep your eyes peeled in case we have any more!

blogger won't let me stop underlining so you just have to deal with it.

Thanksgiving

As of anyone won't have seen Dave's post... We had our usual Imu at Billy's for Thanksgiving. It was even more awesome than last year (I didn't think it was possible)! The turkey came out more delicious, as did my onion soup, the mimosas all day, and the new pumpkin pie addition of mine. Other newcomers included Sheila and her corn puddin (yum!) and Erin, Aren, and Tanner. Tanner added a new dimension of sillyness which was definitely welcome, and Erin made some potatoes that were deliciously smothered in heavy cream amongst other goodies. I'm already excited for next year!!
We missed Sean, but that serves him right for leaving all the time.

Dave and I slept in the newly screened in tree house and it was awesome!! *sigh* I just want to keep eating...

New Job

So I got a new job last week. I am now an official beautifier. For a selected number of hotels, I now beautify plants and foliage for a living. This includes watering, pruning, picking off dead flowers and leaves, and (my favorite and yours!) picking up all the trash all the stupid tourists and locals throw in the plants.

Actually I like the pruning the best. It tickles my budding feng shui self, and my perfectionist artsy side.

I'm not getting paid nearly as much, but right now it's worth it not to have to deal with the amount of bullshit MFA was constantly soaking in. I bought an ipod yesterday (I feel like such a sell out with a car AND an ipod... yuk) with the intention of finding an voice recorder and carting it along to school with me. Then, I can be studious at work! I'm actually extremely excited about this!! I hope I can pull it off!

Herbs and Tea

Yesterday we had our first herbal intensive class and Tea Ceremony #2. It went much better than Tea Ceremony #1! We were all suprised to find out that it was 1pm when we gathered to eat lunch.


Of course the food was awesome (yumyumyum), Bowen here was a big contributer to the Jai and keeps everyone from getting to serious.

This was one of the plants we learned. It smelled like oregano, but the leaves were about 5+ times bigger than ANY oregano plant I've ever seen! I don't think she ever told us the english name so I'll have to look it up..

Here's Shifu explaining how to this plant. Good times!