For Labor Day weekend, Shawn and I took a jaunt down to LA to visit her grandma, primarily.

First stop was an In-N-Out run with my dad and his new pup, Queenie.  Cute, though I think I miss Lulu even more now.

We got in, and LA decided to throw us a little fire.  This blaze started less than an hour after we got there, and included super-scouper planes, raining ash, and everything!  We lucked out, because the entire street system was shut down.

Shawn’s grandma’s house was, ummm, really, REALLY nice.  Not only was it xeriscaped (check it out, Liz!), but it was massive, and had collections inside that would make Antiques Roadshow blush.  I felt out of my league, but it was great to stay there.  When she said “Crenshaw”, that’s not was I was expecting, though she did mention PV.

The good thing is, their loyalties are in the right place.  This is a needlepoint Shawn’s aunt did.

This is what we mainly did, and it was great.

Saturday was the game.  No pics of the debochery, but I did have this evidence the next day:

Yeah, it still hurts.  For next week’s game in Knoxville, I’m wearing an undershirt with my jersey, no matter how hot it is.

Sunday was a walk around UCLA.  Shawn had never seen it before, so we had to do the tour.

After that, we had the big lunch at BJ’s (w/ Pizookie), with Diddy Riese after.  It was great to see you all!

All and all, another great trip to LA, minus the traffic and heat and smoke.  Now, I get to try to work, not thinking about the game this Saturday…  Fern, see ya in Memphis Friday evening!

One more time, then I’ll stop…

THE PICKS

It is the FIFTEENTH year of the picks. 15! That’s a long way from writing things down in class on a newspaper clipping. In case you don’t know, the picks is and NFL pick’em league where you pick all the games in a season (with confidence points) and the winner at the end wins lots of respect. In 15 years, I have won twice, and never picked against the Dolphins (yes, even in the 1-15 season). I hope those facts are not related….

The ID is 2878 and the password is “sylmar”. Click here to join!

You can also join my Survival Pick’em league, (three strikes) ID=1131 or College Pick’em league (no spread) ID=1453. The password for those is also “sylmar.” Please sign up, it’ll be fun!

So, in a pre birthday coincidence, Shawn’s aunt had a luxurious room in Snowbird available Friday night. Shawn and I could not pass that up!

Can’t beat that view…

The coolest part was this folded transgressive Cambrian (?) sequence, with a nice Marbleized carbonate (Miss.?) faulted on top. The hotel/condo in in the foreground.

Not much else to say now… job search is sucking, but then again, who’s isn’t? Just looking forward to fun times in LA… and football…

P.S. Just did the Wiki page for Live Noise… check it out!

P.P.S. Another great student answer, courtesy of Steph:

This kid needs to settle down in a committed relationship already… I’m mean, we all want a lot of ass…

Not much going on, just planning my future trips to LA and Knoxville. Again, if you wanna hang in LA, it might be tough. The trip is mainly a trip to see Shawn’s grandmother, so it will mostly be with HER family. If you wanna see us, the best bet is the UCLA vs. SDSU game.

Did some REAL field work recently. I helped build a concrete pad around one of our spring-gradient wellsites.

The more exciting part was seeing some of the rare, endangered Colombian Spotted Frogs. These are some of the species that could be in big trouble if these springs and marshes dry up, and springs and marshes are the first things to go when groundwater starts to be withdrawn at significant quantities.

So I am mere days away from my 29th. Here is an AWESOME present my dad sent me: A mat for Matt. This is, I hate to admit, my first birthday that has gotten me to think about my age… it’s one year from the big three-oh, I can feel my health slipping from my personal zenith… Do I here a third-life crisis approaching? Is this why I’ve been spending money on computers, TV, hard drives, and soon a car-audio input jack? We’ll see…

One more thing: for you iPoders/iPhoners out there, check out the Terraphone app. It’s a resource to all local things geologic. You get your location, and it tells you all local stratigraphic dates, fossil locations, and mineral locations. Plus, it comes with a robust geologic dictionary. And (if you can believe it), I was THE beta tester for 1st-gen iPods!

I’ve been board lately, and doing some internet searching.  I’ve noticed there are some things that I know that are not there.

For the geology things, I have added them to Wikipedia.  This includes a page on: QFL diagrams, rock fragments, lithic fragments (they are different), Gazzi-Dickinson method, pseudomatrix, with adds to the pages on provenance and greywacke.  Let me know what you think and/or dispute.

I also want to put out two rule variants to popular games that me and others have come up with.

First, Apples to Apples varient (which if you’ve never played is a fun game), called Bad Apples to Apples.

We came up with this on a drunken night of geobonding, and it works best in a similar atmosphere.

In Bad Apples to Apples, you play the same game with the ‘green’ cards with adjetives and what-not, but the trick is, you get everyone a pad/scraps of paper and a pen.  Instead of putting down a red noun card, you write in an answer.  This (usually) will quickly decend into the depths of human vulgarity, which is the main source of fun.

Second, a rule varient to Risk, which I call Quick Risk or Matt’s Version of Risk.

A common (faster) way to play, called the French style, is to pass out the Risk cards with the idea that you get to place men on those locations (instead of alternating turns on claiming land).  Literally in a dream I had, in which I was playing this game while doing dishes at my dads house… really, no joke, this idea came to me.  It starts off the same: pass out the Risk cards to all players.  Instead of being able to determine where your armies are, you get the number (1, 5, or 10) of armies, based on the figure on the card, on that land.  In other words, you don’t get to pool your armies UNTIL the game has started AND some armies are larger than others, by dumn luck.  This speeds up the game dramatically because some armies are lost IN THE PROCESS of even conquoring one continent, even Australia.  The best part of this varient is the unpredictability of it.  Most of the time, the method of the game, or at least, the main battle points, can be seen and predicted before the first dice is rolled.  In this style, the battle fronts do not develop until much later, making it more fun and stratigic.

On another note, my last fill-up of Carl was painfully short on mileage… almost 100 miles less than usual.  As a stats nerd, I wanted to know: is this normal?  So, I have been keeping my mileage for the two-year life of my truck, so I decided to plot up my MPGs.

Here is the chart… not a big trend of worse mileage lately or seasonally.  This also makes me happy that if I had splerged for the 4×4 Tacoma, this data would be shifted down by about 5 MPG and I would have never broken the 30 MPG barrier.

P.S. Shawn and I just started watching Dexter and wrapped up season one last night after midnight…. So good!  Really am digging that show…

This weekend, along with some relax time, I went to another Warped Tour.  This was at least my fifth in the last 10 years, with most of those misses due to field work.

As usual, my third favorite band and favorite band that is still active, NOFX, was the highlight.  After a profanity-filled, crowd-supported rant on Utahns’ and the Mormon influence on California’s Prop 8, they did something very special.

They decided to play the entire album Punk in Drublic!  I was thrilled!  It is my favorite album by NOFX, and they even played it our of order to mix things up. 

The only diversion from the album in NOFX’s set was a song for El Hefe’s birthday, a remixed edition of “Happy Birthday, you’re not special” and a happy song, with stops for racially-insensitive jokes.  They were great.  The other best parts of the show was Fat Mike singing on The Bouncing Soul’s “True Believers” and Bad Religion’s “21st Century Digital Boy.”  At the end of the show, Fat Mike said, ” I don’t really hate you, I really hate your parents.”

My other favorite part of these types of mega concerts with a hundred bands is the new bands you get to see, including (above) Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band.  Now, as a goatee conoseur (though I’m beard-o right now), I am put to shame by Rev. Peyton.  He plays steel guitar with lots of sliding.  His wife plays washboard, and his brother plays drums, so the band is not that big.  The best way to describe what they play is Mississippi Delta Blues mixed with Punk.  They even signed my CD!  The funny thing is I might not have heard them if not some guy that works for them saw my Flogging Molly shirt. He says I might like this band, put some earphones on me, and convinced me to hear them.  The funny thing is, I found out about Flogging Molly, as a band I had never heard of, 8 years ago at a Warped Tour from Jeremy (former UCLA TA, not FIU).  Funny how life comes full circle.

I also liked Big D and the Kids Table, a modern (third-wave) Ska band.  So, all in all, a great show, like always.

P.S.  A reminder (until more people sign up, I’ll keep posting this!):

THE PICKS

It is the FIFTEENTH year of the picks. 15! That’s a long way from writing things down in class on a newspaper clipping. In case you don’t know, the picks
is and NFL pick’em league where you pick all the games in a season
(with confidence points) and the winner at the end wins lots of
respect. In 15 years, I have won twice, and never picked against the
Dolphins (yes, even in the 1-15 season). I hope those facts are not
related….

The ID is 2878 and the password is “sylmar”. Click here to join!

You can also join my Survival Pick’em league, (three strikes) ID=1131 or College Pick’em league (no spread) ID=1453. The password for those is also “sylmar.” Please sign up, it’ll be fun!

First things first:

THE PICKS

It is the FIFTEENTH year of the picks. 15! That’s a long way from writing things down in class on a newspaper clipping. In case you don’t know, the picks is and NFL pick’em league where you pick all the games in a season (with confidence points) and the winner at the end wins lots of respect. In 15 years, I have won twice, and never picked against the Dolphins (yes, even in the 1-15 season). I hope those facts are not related….

The ID is 2878 and the password is “sylmar”. Click here to join!

You can also join my Survival Pick’em league, (three strikes) ID=1131 or College Pick’em league (no spread) ID=1453. The password for those is also “sylmar.” Please sign up, it’ll be fun!

In some sad news, my ex has decided that I can never see Lulu again. I am not satisfied with this, and I not happy with this. I will not let the threats of her current boyfriend toward my safety deter me. I don’t know what to do about this, so I will continue to do the only thing I have been doing: missing her dearly.

In some good news, I am planning some great fall trips. For my birthday weekend, I am going to LA with my girlfriend Shawn to see her grandma and see UCLA play SDSU on Sept 5th. The only thing we are trying to decide is flying vs. driving. Either way, the travel days are my birthday (the third) and my birthday observed (Labor Day), which is unfortunate but.

Oh, Shawn and I are doing great! The pic above is the dog and cat we housesat in July… The dog loved to playfully nibble on the cat, and the cat was kinda OK with it. If you wanna meet her, the best chance is at the UCLA game in LA… she co-owns a business, so travel is always complicated. I’ll have pics of her eventually, but we haven’t done photogenic things yet, so no real opportunities yet.

The weekend after LA, I’ll be traveling to Tennessee to see UCLA play UT at good ol’ Rocky Top. We are planning a quick trip to Great Smokey NP too, so stay tuned for pics of that!

So, life is good. Lulu is a bummer, but other than that, life is very good, and I am quite happy.

Well, not for the state…. Just had another hearing about my driving record… gave all my evidence that the rollover was NOT my fault, but no luck. I am not optimistic, but I get a letter on Monday about the result. The good news is my job is not in jeopardy and my field work is winding down (last trip for a while this past week), so no big deal either way.

I’ve been driving a lot lately…. about 80 hours and 4,000 miles worth.

After the National Park tour with Anthony, and a quick day in Ridgecrest, and a dinner with Fernando, I met up (last weekend) with fellow Xangans Kelly (and Pat and Meghan), Sheila, Andy, and Chris in Kings Canyon National Park.

We had to be prepared, like any good geologist… hey, what else are Bruntons for?

First, we did some hikes around the big trees. Meghan loved it….

This is our album cover… yeah, we don’t care…

This is thew General Grant tree, the second largest living thing on earth (noted as third in many places, but #2 fell).

Next, we went to Kings Canyon proper.

It was such a pretty place!

The drive to and back was great. This pick shows a block of grey rock next to two darker blocks. The guesses we cam up for it was 1) alternating pelagic sediments, interbedded mudstones and limestones, that have since been metamorphosed, the now marble standing out more or 2) a thrust klippa of a less metamorphosed platform carbonate. Any other thoughts?

This canyon was great, and if you have not been, I would go. Here, you get tall trees, and a granitic canyon as a bonus.

The drive back, I saw many things

It was a short, but great weekend. Now, I just have to talk everyone into a Utah trip…. I’m thinking Moab….

As for this weekend, minimal driving. I got Rev Horton Heat w/ Nekromantix tonight and Tool Sunday…. yeah!

First things first: Where is this?

It is Navajo Sandstone…. partially bleached….. Navajo is found in Zion, or Capitol Reef, or Canyonlands, or Bryce….

Check for answer later….

Mesa and Washer-Woman Arches, Canyonlands NP, thanks to Shawn for the photoshop!

This past week, I had one of my most epic trips ever, and I know that’s saying something.  Anthony (friend from SHS and UCLA) did his first camping and National Park Tour.  On Sunday the 28th of June, we met at my home away from home, the Border Inn, and readied for the days ahead.

Monday

In the morning, we did Great Basin NP.

I did my second Lehman Cave tour, and this time I brought my camera.  You can not believe how hard it is to take a good picture in there…

Here is Anthony modeling a flowing spring on the Bristlecone Pine trail.  It was fun, but we left early to get to Cedar City and hang with Andrew.

Tuesday

On Tuesday morning, we headed to Zion, the middle step in the Grand Staircase.

We had a quick look at Kolob Canyons, which, as I’ve said before, is worth the stop if you are there.

We also did the Watchman trail, which was quite nice if you want a great view of the valley, down the valley.

I think this is the Watchman, but whatever it’s called, it’s an awesome mountain.

The best thing about this trip is I did so many more things that I had never done before, like the hike to Emerald Pools.

On the way out, we drove through the tunnel and out the eastern high country.  I had never noticed the Carmel above the Navajo here before.  In Capitol Reef, yeah, but not here.

Kanab was our next stop, and a place like this has gotta be crazy…

We were put at ease, though, by the Hitler cop mannequins.  If you can believe it, we saw this in two cities along the way.

Wednesday

After camping in the Kaibab band of Paiute Indians’ Reservation, and checking out Pipe Springs NM, we headed to the latest add to the itinerary: The Grand Canyon.

After stopping at some viewpoints to see, the Grand Staircase itself, we headed to the park.

It was a little hazy, but still great.  This picture is cool because you can see how fault-controlled (i.e. straight) Bright Angel Canyon is.

We actually got there right when a geology talk was going on!  During the talk, there were the usual oversimplifications that caused minor incorrect assumptions by the laymen, but this guy said some terrible things.  He said “all the cliffs are from deep sea” and then would refer to the (eolian) Coconino sandstone in the same sentence…. huh?  He skipped the Tappets sandstone all together, and he kept calling the Vishnu Schist igneous!  He (and many diagrams/people in most of the parks) said uplift had occurred in the last 70 Ma, not emphasizing the main, significant, and really important 6 Ma to present pulse.  Worst of all, by far, he said, “there are lots of faults here (relatively, no), and some people think that the faults have ‘opened up’ to form the main canyon itself and the side canyons”  WHAT!!?!?!?  What, no reference to California falling into the ocean?  it would be so easy to say “the faults have weakened the rocks so that they get washed away easier and the canyon thus forms there.”  Is that so hard?  Now, am I such an asshole, or am I right to be mad?  He did point out the cool (above) 1991 landslide.

We did the main things, but then we went to the far northeast part of the main drive, and it was worth it.  It’s not the famous part, but it might be a better view, with more spires and fins.

It’s also great because of the rare North-Rim view of the river, AND the proterozoic section!  Hard to see in this pic, but it’s behind the triangular knob.

These strange but beautiful flowers,

And a fancy new window chip were the best ways I could think to wrap the day.  We stayed that night in Bryce…. nice and chilly.

Thursday

We did the main drag in Bryce… it was cloudy so it was a different look to it, probably better.

We had a very common theme that started this day: Ravens.  They were everywhere, nevermore leaving us alone, but Anthony didn’t care; he couldn’t get enough of them. This is in the Grand Staircase-Escalante NM.

GSENM also had a very-hugable lizard statue.  That evening, we stayed and got the last spot in the Capitol Reef campground.

Friday

In Capitol Reef, we woke early to do the Capitol Gorge drive.  It had been a while at this point since a good hike, so we sought one out.

Morning makes for interesting lighting here…

By the way, the sandstone tablets for signs here are great!

We did a hike at the end of the drive to these potholes, full of tadpoles.

If you don’t know why it’s called capitol reef, then look at these great rounded domes of Navajo sandstone!

By the way, ‘reef’ is a geographic barrier that is cliffy, and the slight dip from this 100-mile-long monocline is the source of the cliffs.  A little tectonism in the Colorado Plateau goes a long, long way.

Though, you have to think a better name could have been chosen…

Too bad Grand Teton is taken….

We then traveled toward Moab, passing through Glen Canyon.  Look at this awesome stratigraphy: bulbous tan Navajo, thin-bedded red Kayenta, cliffy brighter/lighter red Wingate, slope-forming mixed oxidized (red) and reduced (grey/blue) Chinle, and red Moenkopi in the foreground.

We also did the tour at Natural Bridges.  Did you know that Teddy made this the first federally-protected land in the state!  Before all the current National Parks and Monuments, how ’bout that!

Saturday

Even though we were tired and beat, we still filled our last day with the most stuff: the Moab pair of Parks.

We started out with Wall Street, a place in Arches I’d never been… very cool!

The a trip to various rocks and arches around the park, including Double Arch above.

Then we did the famous arches, like Landscape (by the way… in the visitor center, they have a video of a section of this arch falling on video…. holy shit!  It is so cool!)

and Delicate.

The end of the day was Canyonlands.

It was rainy and lightning-y!  It made some of the pics better, some worse, as you shall see.

After failed attempts of taking a lightning strike picture, we saw a rainbow!  We chased it as we walked toward Mesa Arch.  Any hiking before that was rain-shortened.

The sun did eventually break through…

This is Mesa Arch, with Washer-Woman Arch in the background.

If you don’t see the reason it is called that, here I am modeling.

This was such a great spot… and only a 0.5 mile hike… You gotta go!

Oh, and bring your fish-eye lens!  The only time in my life when I needed one…

So, back to the quiz:

Again, here it is.  Some hints: it is Navajo sandstone, capped with a little Carmel marl…

Here’s the wide shot….

Any guesses?

Well…

It is Canyonlands, my favorite park in Utah.

This was quite the trip, though I am still not recovered.  I have another few hours before my next trip starts, SFWIII in Sequoia, with a side trip to my Dad’s in Ridgecrest and Fernando at an AV In-N-Out.  And let me restate: this is an open invite to do this with you, that’s right, you!  If there’s a place you wanna go, and you need a geologic guide, let me know!  Even though I had been to each of these parks, I still saw so much new and still have so much left to see.

P.S. Bad news…. no Lulu for the summer…. I miss her so much!

Well, I’m a Xanga lifer now. Thanks, Kelly….

I want to encourage everyone to vote on my campaign to give the option to turn off auto-play music.  I HATE it, and with your help, we can get rid of it.

My main thing I’m working on at work is the Snake Valley data website.  Check it out!  It’s not done yet, but it’s coming along.  Tthe main thing I am doing is the data page and a really cool interactive Google Earth file (not done yet).  When it’s all done, I’ll let you know.  I wish I knew HTML so I could do it all myself…

Starting Sunday is a big trip with Anthony… if things go right, we’ll hit Great Basin, Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Natural Bridges, Arches, and Canyonlands in about 7 days (with major music exchange mixed in).  BIG blog to come!  And the week after that, SFWIII, Ridgecrest, and Sequoia!

And seriously, thanks, Kelly.  You made me start this, and as much as I resisted at first, I’m so glad now that I did!

So, I was a starry-eyed senior at UCLA when I bought my first computer by myself. It was the most expensive thing I had ever bought at the time… almost 2 grand for a top of the line computer with, get this…. 60 GB of hard drive space (Wow!!!) and an actual DVD burner! What a fantastic world that was…

Fast-forward 8 years, and my G4 swivel lampshade iMac is really showing it’s age. The disk drive is sketchy, the video card can’t handle most video (online or off), and the hard drive is perpetually near the precipice of filling.

Also, I don’t have cable, and my lack of Daily Show and the like, because I can’t watch it online, is tortuous. So, I either start getting cable or….

Get a brand new iMac! Pretty fancy, eh? 24″ screen, an order of magnitude of hard drive upgrade, a video card that can handle anything, and actually a few hundred dollars cheaper! The hardest part of the purchase was my insistence to walk the 0.5 miles to and from the apple store… I’m still quite sore…

My old iMac has already found a home with Ian. Will my new computer last 8 years? I doubt it, but I am ecstatic to have it now!

So, don’t be sad… think of the good times…