T - 2 weeks

Two weeks to go in Arizona and rather than creeping up, the last few weeks are flying by. My knee is now much better after meeting the cacti bush last weekend and even the pool looks tempting for another visit sometime soon. It's now also under 2 weeks until Metallica come to Tucson the day before I fly out. Also lower on the bill for that night is a band called Apocalyptica who, bizarrely, cover most Metallica songs on the Chello! I kid you not and it sounds amazingly good, definately recommend checking them out.

This weeks been busy but pretty decent. My presentation in Structural Geology went well (I got 100%) and amongst the few comments from the instructor was "nice shirt" (a reference to my new "Do something with your life, get me a beer" t-shirt.

On Thursday, speaking to Jon, it struck me that the choice of modules for my 4th year back at Leicester University is, frankly, shocking. The 4th year should be about choosing modules similar to what you want to do as a career or PhD but theres no structural geology/tectonics modules but rather too many palaeontology, palaeobiology and climatic study (so called soft geology) modules for my liking. Infact, the choice is abysmal... so I sent an email to my tutor to see what he recommends.

And finally, some interesting news from Texas. A 21 year old walked into a bank and tried to pay in a fake cheque from his girlfriends mother. Ok, nothing suspicious provoked yet except he decided to write the check for $360,000,000, 000 ($360 billion!!!). He told the police he needed to pay off student debts - that's a lot of student debts! Also from Texas, a thief manage to talk himself out of a jail sentance for forgery by agreeing to pay a $4500 fine. The not-so-intelligent guy paid the fine with a fake cheque and subsequently got sent down for 8 years!

Laters!

Grand Canyon Weekend

Friday afternoon we travelled up to the GC for a weekend of hiking and relaxing combined with camping and drinking around an awesome camp fire. It was dark when we arrived but never mind, a short walk into the woods and I came back with a 12ft dead tree trunk and started a fire (primitive I know!). Alcohol came in the way of American beer, Nick's home brew, cheap wine and the optional rum and coke. Saturday we went on a leisurely hike into the canyon down the Kaibab Trail, about 4 miles and 2000ft ascent to a nice lunch spot half-way to the river. Nice except for the singular cacti bush which, of course, I had to have a disagreement with. Unfortunately the bush won and I end up with several 2 inch cacti needles about 3/4in into my knee. One hit the bone and the other went under the knee cap and pricked a tendant, the latter being the most painful. Still, in my usual enduring way, I got up and hiked back out of the canyon, and everything the following day with little fuss but did have some problems performing simple tasks like bending it to get in the car! As Andy said, "It's going to take more than a couple of little pricks to stop him (me)". Well, he's probably right but man, what an annoying little prick!

Saturday night we out-did ourselves with the fire, this time a 14ft tree trunk (broken into bits of course!) that really pumped out some heat. The beer was finished and a good laugh had by all. Sunday we went hiking around the rim to different vantage points and got some awesome photos, some from slightly dangerous but not completely reckless locations (like one with a 1000ft drop on 3 sides around me and Andy). Travelling back wasn't particularly boring either (except for that drab music just south of Flagstaff when I fell asleep!). I discovered Andy likes Sum 41 which suits me nicely and combined with the awesome stereo in our university Chevrolet Suburban (all of 12.9mpg!) made for an interesting journey. Amongst some random things we saw was a helicopter on a lorry on I10, 3 kids in the open back of a pickup travelling 75mph on I17 and 'that sign' at a service station in Flagstaff. All in all, great weekend, great scenery, great company!

Now its under 3 weeks til home time and things are getting interesting and keeping reasonably busy. In that time I need to fathom some cross-sections through our Utah map - made harder by the lack of knowledge of bed thickness, fault displacement and strike/dips - 3 somewhat crucial components.

S'all for now folks!
Laters

Living for the Weekend

Boy it's been a busy week. It all started Sunday night when I was up til 5am working and trying to sort things out for the F1 in Primary Schools competition. Everyday since has been busy with work but it's paying off and starting to ease up. I got an A in the second of my Active Tectonics papers, this one entitled "A structural and seismological study into the 2003 Bam boxing day earthquake and implications for Tehran". It was more interesting that the title lets on! I also got back my structural geology paper with a 100% best-in-class grade - which with no disrespects, it should be since I know most of the material and like tectonics/structural geology. Tomorrow is my big plateaus presentation - "Collision to Collapse in the Caledonides - Can we see orogenic plateaus in the geological record?". A 1 hour presentation/lecture to a group of talented and very knowledgeable individuals in what is essentially a graduate level class. Hence a lot of prep work has gone into that and I'm confident it will go well.

After a busy week which followed a busy semester and a busy life in general, I'm off to the Grand Canyon this weekend for one last hurrah before flying home in 3 weeks. It promises abit of hiking, relaxing, eating by the campfire and of course, one of the biggest hole-in-the-ground in the world. They'll be plenty of photos which i'll upload when I'm back. Hopefully someone will bring some beer for me!

I also realised this week that I have sub-conciously learned to touch-type, and damn'd quickly too! Reality is I've probably been doing it for ages but noticed it today when I was typing one thing and reading another at the same time.

S'all for now folks, Laters!

"Just fiddling around with rocks"

An article in the Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago caught the eye of my family back home and subsequently got posted out. It's only a small piece and goes as follows:

"Is it a bird, is it a crane... no, but it's possibly a geologist. The students who used to be teased at my school for 'just fidding around with rocks' are the new superheroes of the American job market. It's no longer just oil - soaring prices for copper, silver and gold have made geologists as valuable as, well, gold dust. Geology graduates in the United States are now receiving higher average starting salaries than people with Harvard MBA's. And immigration experts report that is there is any other occupation more guaranteed to speed your entry into America, they have yet to hear of it!"

We are clearly a worthwhile and highly regarded breed. The article didn't elaborate on which occupation's are least likely to guarantee entry in the the US but rumours suggest it may be dietrition or environmental studies.

Lots of work and great ideas

Such are the times when you have quite a lot of work to do but the ideas for new projects and developments are flowing thus adding to the work load. This is one of those times! 4 weeks from home and I thought this would be a nice wind-down time but there's only a few times I can recall being this busy during the course of the last year. However, that's not a bad thing! This week I have a 1 hr lecture to deliver on the Caledonian Orogeny and a orogenic plateau that doesn't really exist any more (that's Friday), I have a presentation on the Hurricane Fault to finalise, Seismic Data Processing hmwk to finish/start along with the class project. Then there's F1 in Primary Schools! Something's invigorated me this week to start thinking seriously about that again after my 8 month sabatical with very little news. During those months, the challenge pops into my head and I note down a few ideas - the list and possibilities have now become quite extensive - least of all rejuvenating the website with Tim, producing a proper demo CD and organising the race-day this June. These are exciting times for the competition and it's encouraging to have the enthusiastic support of a select group of friends back in the UK to carry on developing our brain-child. I'll be setting up this week, guys, an informal email network between us all so we can communicate efficiently as a group.

So indeed it is only 4 weeks 'til i arrive back in the UK. It's corny but there's a countdown timer at the top of my blog. Meh, why not!

And finally, some news from Austria. A thief broke into the headquaters of a leading political party and stole a number of laptops by crawling through a mail-flap! In reporting to the police, a spokesman said the thief must have been pretty small to fit through the 35cm x 35cm hole. That certainly rules out most Americans then! Ha ha, perhaps that's a little unfair - it was quite a small hole! Also briefly some news from Japan. A inter-school baseball match turned into a cricket score farce as one team concede 66 runs in 2 innings! For all those not familiar with baseball, conceeding more than 2 per-innings is considered pretty bad professionally. The coach of the losing team pleaded for the game to be abandoned and eventually the winners were awarded a more respectable 9-0 scoreline.

Laters!