What Am I Doing?

It's a beautiful Saturday; the sun is out full blast and the temperature is comfortable and some of my friends are out hiking antelope island. Yet... Here I sit in my office all afternoon, diligently programming tracers into the model I'm using. What gives? Well, earlier this week I was having dinner with Jenny and she is going to conference in Moab next week. She asked if I wanted to go and stay in her hotel room and go hiking when she's not in sessions. I told her "no way" since I was just in Orlando for a week. But then I got to thinking that if I work THIS weekend and NEXT weekend then I would totally make up for the four days I will be gone. Thus, here I sit.

I've actually been more productive today that I normally am on weekdays. I'm SO excited about Moab too. It's nice that I have a job where I can take off middle of the week and make up the time. Lately I've been getting very excited about summer and all the trips I've been planning. Here's a run down of the trips I plan to take this summer:

1) San Rafael Swell in spring
2) Return to Needles District of Canyonlands (spring)
2) Glacier National Park (July or August)
3) Teton National Park (July 4th weekend.... CROWDED, I know)
4) Uintas backpacking trip to Ottoman basin and summit of Cleveland peak (sometime in July or August)
5) Wind Rivers backpacking trip to Cirque of the Towers (on way back from CMMAP conference in August), probably a solo trip since I'll be driving back by myself
6) Uintas backpacking trip to one of the many destinations I want to go to (Deadhorse Lake, Allsop Lake, Kings Peak, and so forth... prolly August or September)
7) The Annual Wind Rivers backpacking trip over Labor day weekend (destination to be determined)
8) Wasatch backpacking trip up Thunder Mountain and Hardy Lake (prolly September when it starts to get cool)
9) And I want to make it up to the Sawtooth's in Idaho or the San Juan's in Colorado.

OMG... this is a lot and I hope to do most, if not all of it. My advisor will be traveling a lot this summer so I'm sure I'll be able to take plenty of three day weekends (but working A LOT during those four days). This list doesn't even include all the day hikes I want to do in the Wasatch and Uintas. June is going to be the red headed step child month... Because it will be too hot at that point to go to southern Utah yet still too snowy in the mountains up north to do any backpacking trips. Oh well, I'll just work a lot that month I guess.

Back in the Grind

Coming back from Florida I was instantly thrown back into the world of numerical modeling. All week I scrambled to submit my diagnostics for the SAM model so they could be ready for the super simulation we are doing soon. But hopefully all is well with that. Yay for Fortran!

But the week provided some ridiculousness as usual. The surprise twist of the week is that I adopted another cat. Yes, I have two cats now and that officially puts me in lesbian status. I'm fine with that. I'm not fine with getting a third cat though because that would put me in old maid status. Not cool. Her name is Pandora and I got her from Jen and Brian. Right now she is still getting used to things, but she has warmed up to me. Her and Nico are still a little eh with each other. There have been a couple cat fights but overall they are coexisting in the same space. Should be interesting.

Saturday I helped Trevan move his massive Sea World size fish tank from Provo to SLC. My Element officially smells like an aquarium. After that I did a short hike in the foothills then met a big group of people at Bombay House. It was SO fucking good! Sunday (today) I went up Grandeur Peak with Sebastian and Sameera. As always, hiking with those two is ridiculous with lots of laughs. Even though Grandeur Peak is a foothill, it's not an easy hike (at least the route we did... the standard route from Millcreek Canyon is quite easy), as it gains 3,300 ft in just 1.5 miles. Yes, my friend, that is freaking steep! My legs are feeling it and I'm happy about that. It's a great hike to do to get in shape for the bigger and better peaks.

Week in the Tropics

Currently I am sitting in the Orlando Airport waiting for my flight back to SLC. For the past week I've been down here for my brother's wedding. It was a really fun week. We went to a bunch of parks and relaxed and just had a lot of fun together. It's not often that our family gets everyone together so I really enjoyed it. The wedding itself was very nice; it was supposed to be an outdoor wedding and unfortunately the weather yesterday was awful here so it had to be moved indoors. Shame because the garden it was supposed to be in was beautiful. I'm so happy for John and Shelley, they make such a great couple!

I guess on the flight home I'll continue to watch Planet Earth on my Ipod and maybe nap. I'm always bummed at the end of vacations, but looking forward to getting back to Salt Lake. Always nice to get back to some normalcy.