field clothing closet

I have recently moved to a new place, and now I finally have adequate closet space for all of my clothing (fieldwork, office, casual, fancy)! I also inherited closet organization systems that I have no interest in changing or upgrading.

So here's how I've organized it:

Full-size closet #1 (field gear):

1. top shelf: field sweaters, hats, and non-bib style coveralls
2. 2nd shelf: bandanas, lightweight pants
3. 3rd shelf: bras, socks, mid-weight pants (like regular carhartts)
4. hangers underneath 3rd shelf: all the shirts. So many shirts. long-sleeve tees acceptable as outerwear, long-sleeved underlayers, short-sleeve tees acceptable as outerwear, short-sleeve tees only acceptable as undershirts...
5. hangers with more space beneath: all outerwear (pants, tops) and jacket-like items (vests, fleeces)
6. floor: everything else that I don't really use and bib-style coveralls on top of/in field duffel bags

Hall closet

Non field coats, hats, gloves, miscellaneous sporting items (snowshoes, trekking poles, skates, etc) 

Little closet (regular clothing):

I took this one over so I could get ready for work without disturbing my sweetie. It has almost all of my standard office and hanging around stuff, including underwear, socks, etc, with a few exceptions that are in...

Full-size closet #2 (formal stuff and miscellany):

Jeans (because I ran out of room in the little bedroom closet), pajamas, all the shoes that aren't in the pile close to the front door, suits, skirts, dresses, and my sweetie's entire wardrobe.

I remember squashing most of this stuff into a single closet and under the bed when I was in grad school, and I am so glad I don't have to do that any more.

hatchback elegy

As I mentioned before, my hatchback was a great model for a field/life car – it was quick, relatively cheap, fit a bunch of stuff, could fit into most any parking space/make excellent u-turns, and had terrific mileage. But after close to 15 years and 200,000 miles of trouble-free use, it had started to become Unreliable. Various systems started to go, state inspections had started to become hairy, and the rust from years of fieldwork and driving around East Coast Big City had started to become unsightly and, um, structural.

When I had first started out in environmental consulting, I was a traditional young staff scientist. I spent all my time on the road, working 60-plus hours and coming home to do laundry and decompress. I had no food expenses during the week, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to go shopping when I got home. After a few years, my original car (a family legacy that I was told later wasn’t expected to last 6 months) died of rust everywhere/major system collapse and I was able to buy that hatchback: the first big “adult” purchase that was new and all mine. I named it immediately: Jane.*

Jane took me to field sites all over the region, made the long haul back and forth when my sweetie and I were separated during grad school, went off-roading to get to hiking trails and interesting vistas, and survived the daily commuting grind in two separate metropolitan areas not known for, um, easy going drivers. Thanks to my precision driving and a healthy dose of luck, Jane survived with no more damage than the occasional door ding and a mangled license plate from when someone rolled backward into me in traffic (it was that sort of commute).

So, it was a bittersweet moment when I turned Jane in. But then, I got the keys to a faster, more gas-efficient, and way more technologically advanced hatchback! Future adventures await with Jane II.**

*not the car’s real name, which was both distinctive and in the same language as the manufacturer.
**Also not the car's real name.

Small SUV, please

I occasionally go to remote sites that have bad access roads, and for those I need something with all-wheel drive and clearance to get all the way to where I need to go (otherwise, it's a loong hike). The rental company's default appears to be a giant-ass SUV and/or extended-cab pickup truck (and sometimes those inexplicably don't have the all-wheel drive that I specifically requested, but I digress).

Here's the problem: a huge SUV is not only heavy (as I complained about a long time ago), but it's decidedly less maneuverable than a smaller vehicle. If you have a bunch of remote locations to check, that's a huge number of 78-point turns as you attempt to turn around in tiny clearings and wide spots in logging roads.

The other thing about a huge SUV, often with out of state plates, is that it's a big old flashing light saying "I'm associated with big government/big business and I'm not from around here" and that can be downright dangerous in many areas. At the very least, it makes things awkward when you're residential sampling or trying to find something you need in the only store within 30 miles.

I once ended up with a Kia Sportage while I was on a drilling job in the mountains. The drillers thought it was the most ridiculous thing they'd ever seen, and then it turned out that they couldn't get their pickup truck up to the drilling site after a rainstorm and I became the primary crew transport because my silly little Korean box could.*

I have zero ego bound up with my choice of vehicles (unlike certain coworkers), so I'm always happy to take the runt of the lot.

*Point to the pickup truck, it was carrying a full water tank and had bald tires. Point to the Kia, I wasn't nearly as willing to hit the hill at maximum speed to try and get over a particular steep/slippery spot.

bloom county and the EPA, part 2

This is the 2nd day of my week of old Bloom County comic strips from the early 1980s. See my last post for the first installment.

Reading these old strips, its amazing how little has changed. Final installment later this week...

Bloom County and the EPA

I happen to be a huge fan of Berkeley Breathed's... whatever cartoon series he's working on.

I was going through an Bloom County book (publication year: 1984) that I've had forever, and I found a series that I thought you'd appreciate. This is a scanned copy of my old book, and the picture is lousy (sorry). Rather than add everything at once, I figured that I would make this the week of Bloom County's EPA circa 1982-ish.

the hawaiian shirt crew

I haven't told a random school story in a long time...

I mentioned before that I didn't really fit into my undergrad geology department. Part of the problem was possibly my own class-based awareness/resentment. The whole thing came to a head right at the end of my senior year.

The geology department had a field study course requirement. The department would alternate between a "cheap" (a couple hundred dollars extra) field course and a "fun" (sky was the limit) field course annually. They were pretty damn breezy about how one was to pay for the "fun" field course, and so I did the cheap one. Fine.

So one year the fun field course was in Hawaii. All the "cool kids" who made up the core of the "real geology students" went and they had a great time, all sorts of bonding, etc. They all came back with Hawaiian shirts, and the shirts became a sort of symbol of the department.

I went to a small liberal arts school (SLAC) which was inundated with long-running, somewhat quirky traditions. One of those traditions was that the president of the school held a series of dinner parties with the seniors, organized by department or group of departments. It was considered a breach of etiquette not to attend, but I had no interest in mingling with people who'd made it clear I didn't fit in, so I skipped it. As it turned out, the other students who were also on the outs with the department mostly skipped it as well.

Word had gone around to "the cool kids" that all the geology department folks (including the professors) were to wear Hawaiian shirts to the dinner party. Nobody told me; I heard about all this later from students in other departments. So most of the department, including all the professors, came to the dinner party wearing Hawaiian shirts. And the few who didn't, because they weren't told about the arrangement, got teased mercilessly by all the other students for not matching the rest of the department. Fun party.

Those damn Hawaiian shirts precipitated my complete break with the rest of the geology department. But that's ok; I persevered without any institutional or educational support. And I'm still out here, poking at rocks, doing cool science even if I never did become one of the cool kids.

liquid waste storage

This is the natural follow-up to my previous post on solid waste storage.

We tend to keep our liquid investigation-derived waste (IDW) in either 55-gallon drums, poly tanks, or gigantic frac tanks.

Drums for liquids are the same as drums for solids, as discussed earlier. They're easy to drive around and pump off if needed, but troublesome if you're dealing with more than a couple hundred gallons.

I usually prefer poly (plastic) tanks, which range up in size from 150 gallons or so (about the maximum that you can put in a full-size pickup) up to a couple thousand gallons. The poly tanks tend to be much easier to open/close (which you may do often if you're just filling them a couple of buckets at a time) but still hold enough water to be useful for larger jobs. Also, if you have mildly corrosive water or treatment chemicals, these hold up better than the steel drums. About my preferred size (225 gallon) example here from ebay:

If I have a very large water sampling job, or an intermediate-sized drilling job, I may go with a much larger poly tank (this from rain for rent):

I've used these quite a bit - they vary in size (this one is almost 5,000 gallons, so on the larger end). The taller ones get a bit precarious to climb up. They have a top cap you can easily spin to open/close, and they have discharge connections at the bottom so that they don't need to be entered to be cleaned - you just need to aim a power washer or steam cleaner at the sides and empty from the bottom. Staff who are doing heavy-duty water handling can also directly connect to the bottom rather than dragging a hose to the top.

But sometimes, you find yourself handling lots of water. After a certain point, you'll need a frac tank. The biggest standard tank is 21,000 gallons, and if you're going to be doing a lot of deep drilling or potentially exciting drilling (karst? faults?) and need to containerize the water for disposal, you may get a couple of these (from Adler):

Oh boy. Frac tanks. I have strong opinions about these. If you need them, you need them. But what a pain. They need, like, acres of space to be dropped off. You need to perform confined-space entry to clean them. And I'm always paranoid that some local troublemaker is going to go ahead and open the front porthole (halfway up the face on the right in the photo) when the thing is mostly full and we'll have A Big Problem. Although I will admit that if I need a nice "quasi-aerial" photograph of a busy environmental investigation, the top of a 21,000-gallon tank is the perfect place to stand.

I'm sure that my counterparts in the oil and gas biz think that my frac tanks are hilariously small (they think the same of the drill rigs I use), compared to the manmade lagoons that they might make for a fracking project. But this is as big as it gets for me, thank goodness. I have a hard enough time keeping them properly sealed and secured.

volcanoes and space photos

The Big Picture has two recent sets of photos of geological interest: volcanic activity and images of the earth and space from NASA. You should check out both sets - the volcano pictures, especially, are terrific.

Here's a sampling:

A June 27 lava flow from Kilauea volcano in Pahoa, Hawaii (provided by USGS):

A September 10 solar flare captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:

business cards

Ask a manager has a recent post up regarding business cards, and the discussion reminded me of my own business cards.

I have always received business cards in giant packs of 500 or so. And I've been known to use that many cards. I treat them just like I treat headache pills and feminine products: you never know when they'll come in handy, and they're easy to add, so I have a few tucked into my field bag, my purse, my laptop bag, the center console in my car...

I use business cards for everything. Meet a new subcontractor manager, regulator, or other stakeholder in the field? Hand them a card. Have a site visitor? Giving them a card is a good way to prompt them to hand over theirs, so you have their contact info. Start a new logbook? Tape in a business card in case it's lost (or you forgot your fax number and someone important wants to know). Need to coordinate/get something from a local resident, business, or municipal office? Drop off a card. Meet someone at a conference? Exchange cards. Have a brilliant idea for a blog post or remember some critical task to add to the to-do list and don't have something to write on? Instant, back pocket-sized scratch paper.

Two things I don't have on my business cards: a photo of me, and my cell phone number. The first is just not used in the environmental biz, and the second is only given out (scribbled on the back of the card) to people who may actually need it to contact me in the field. Vendors, miscellaneous people who want to know what I'm doing, and random conference attendees just get the business card sans cell phone.

Now all I need are cards that stay looking nice after they've spent an extended period in the bottom of my bag or been dropped in a puddle, or have been shuffled through with my grubby hands prior to handing them off...

One minute of work

Last month, Athene Donald was asked to describe a minute of her job.

Most of the minutes of my job would not be all that exciting to watch. Watch Short Geologist scowl at her in-box! Type furiously away! Scribble notes while shuffling between several extra-large pieces of paper!

Even in the field, at any given time I'm likely to be on the phone or taking notes of some sort. Or dragging awkward/heavy objects around. But I do have exciting minutes. For example, when the driller cuts open an acetate liner and there's all sorts of cool layers of soil and bits of unidentifiable metal. Or he shakes out the rock core and there's a vug with giant crystals inside. Sometimes I don't have the joy of discovery, but instead the joy of bushwhacking through thickets or mashing mud around. Sometimes I'm doing boring stuff but there's a territorial grouse or squirrel chattering at me for entertainment. And watching a drill rig in action can be cool if you really stop to look at how all the pieces work together.

When I'm in the field, usually I'm juggling a bunch of stuff at once, and if nothing's going wrong at that minute, I'm probably preparing for the next thing that will need to be fixed. But it's worth taking some time out to appreciate those minutes which are terrific.

more shoe trouble

I've complained before (here and here) about finding steel-toe boots that actually fit. Part of the problem is that my feet are not only small, but difficult. So here's a long explanation of why, exactly, I have such a hard time finding shoes that fit:

1. High arches: I have super high arches. My footprint has just the tiniest side connecting heel and toe. I like my high arches - I think they make my feet look elegant. But. Because my arches are so high, my instep is also very high. So I can't wear most pull-on shoes, and especially not clogs. Also, if I'm half asleep and I streeeetch and point my toes, a tendon or something gets dislocated and my toes get stuck over-curled. It's incredibly painful, and the only way to fix it is to physically grab my foot and wrench my toes around the right way. I don't know anyone else with this problem.

2. Wide feet: Because I was a little hippie heathen growing up, I spent every possible second barefoot as long as the ground wasn't still frozen. I did a lot of running around outside, on asphalt, barefoot. So the pads of my feet and my toes are splayed out. I have an especially hard time with sandals and fancy strappy shoes.

3. Stubby toes: When I was a kid, we used to say that someone with a second toe longer than their big toe had "Jesus feet". I have anti-Jesus feet. I've got normal big toes and then a line of stubby little toes. No pointy or peep-toe shoes for me.

4. Upturned toes: Some people have feet that continue straight downward at the toes. My toes sort of stick up at the tips. Combined with a decent bend in my nail beds, this means that I need some serious room in the toe box of my shoes. Otherwise, the top of the nails on my big toes press up against the inside of my shoes. And that is how I got a horrific infection from a long week wearing cheap steel-toe boots in lousy weather and had to have all sorts of icky stuff removed and was threatened with having the toenail removed entirely (permanently).

5. Sensitive toes: I hate thongs/flip flops. Sigh.

So how do I deal with these trials and tribulations? Dr. Martens for steel toe boots for the field, Dr. Martens for mary janes for the office. And Fluevogs for casual Fridays and whenever. Because when you have funny feet, it's worth paying extra for shoes that actually work and will hold up over time.

the new camera

A while back, I mentioned that I needed a replacement camera.

My dad did arrange for an awesome camera, after discussion with a few other photographers. It's a Panasonic LUMIX with an 60X optical zoom. I had asked for something reasonably light, with good optics and a big zoom. So I decided to test it out on objects close and far. This is a penny, with no zoom:

And here's a scarf, no zoom:

Once I secured the scarf, I treked back across a snowy field (unfortunately, the snow was much deeper than I'd expected) and took this picture:

The scarf is attached to the low tree just to the left of the post, pretty much dead center in the front of the treeline. Can't see it? Here's the zoomed in photo from the same spot:

I believe in using a dedicated camera, not a smartphone, for taking pictures for a couple reasons. First, a digital camera is ergonomically designed for taking pictures, so you don't have to worry about poking a screen to take a picture. Second, you generally have more options for taking good pictures (like a super optical zoom!). Third, there's no possibility of getting embedded location or other info, so I can put my pictures on the web without revealing anything other than the time the picture was taken.

I admit that my photography skills are not as developed as they could be. These pictures were all taken on "automatic" settings. I'll have to fiddle around with semi-automatic settings to see how things turn out with different shutter speeds etc. I can't wait until it warms up enough that I can take outdoor pictures without standing knee deep in snow...

travel serendipity

I was on my own for dinner in the middle of nowhere. The only option that wasn't fast food (or one fine-dining restaurant that was a little too fancy for the post fieldwork clothing I brought) was a dive - a basement tavern.

I was clearly the only person who didn't know everyone else in the room, and I felt like I'd need more tattoos (preferably on my neck) to really fit in. But, the food was good, and I had managed to get there during "$1 pint nite" and they had 2 local beers on tap that I had not tried before. And then a local blues band showed up and proved to have a surprisingly good slide guitar player.

I never write off the places where I do my fieldwork. Even if the primary landscape feature is a junkyard, there's often a hidden gem nearby...even if it's just dinner.

Skyrim!

I have an admission to make.

I play video games. I've thoroughly enjoyed a few platform games (Bastion, Lego Star Wars) and strategy games (Civilization Revolution), but my favorites are role-player games (RPGs), especially the ones where you get to explore a vast wilderness, run errands for the locals, and generally ignore the "plot" bits. So I spent an ungodly amount of time playing Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, where I could pick flowers (it's for potions!) and chase after mammoths and scale mountains. 

So, how did I miss this post and its follow-up on the geology of Skyrim?

The really nice thing to see is that the game developer did some research, so the landscape of Skyrim actually follows basic geological principles (volcanics, a rift zone, characteristic ores). I have no ability to write game mods (or program anything else, for that matter), but I'd be happy to pay for something that would allow me to interact with the geology in more depth - mapping? Prospecting?

I'm definitely going to be spending more time with Skyrim this weekend to check out the local landscape again.

presents!

I was recently told that I am "hard to shop for." Au contraire! I'm a cinch to shop for. Anything food-related works, whether it's cookies or chocolate or kahlua-soaked brownies or gourmet cheese or jams. Good books are always appreciated, but I guess that depends on taste and trying to find something I haven't read yet. So here are some other ideas:

Scientific office toys, like those from think geek:

Nifty rock samples, like these meteorite chunks from here:

Geeky t-shirts, like those from yellow ibis:

And last but not least, I can always use something practical. Say, the basic textbooks that didn't follow me out of college - something I'm not likely to buy for myself.

Or, you know, some local edibles...

quasi-permanent

About half of my fieldwork has involved rinky-dink little sites. The sort of thing where you work out of your pickup truck/van/box truck during the day, pack your samples in the hotel parking lot at night, and have a porta-potty arranged if you're lucky.

So when I'm working at a site that's a little more permanent - access to running water and real bathrooms, electricity - I really do appreciate the amenities. Also, it's nice to be able to leave your steel-toe boots in a warm, dry alcove for your return.

snow day

The topic for the accretionary wedge for this month is fun field trip/camp moments.

There is something about a fresh coat of snow... a lot of snow, that brings out the kid in me. I don't know if I can distinguish between "most fun moments" in the field.

 Maybe it was the time that I hiked out to my field site in the snow all alone (and was scared on the way by an extremely large, non-domesticated... canine) and came across a huge, pristine open field with at least 3 feet of snow and made a chain of snow angels all the way across it.

Or it was when we took the sleds intended for hauling gear, snuck into a local park after dark, and spent hours illegally sledding on a massive hill. 

Yeah, working in the snow gets miserable fast. But when it's fresh and deep, it can be awesome.

happy hour

I am not much of a drinker. I think my average alcohol consumption is about a drink per month.

However, there is nothing better than sitting down with a glass of (mediocre, in this case) red wine and lazily web browsing after a long day in the field. I've gotten all of my post-fieldwork e-mails taken care of, there are no obvious issues to stress out about on the horizon, I've showered, and for the first time since the weekend, I'm starting to feel human.

It's not on my list of necessary hotel amenities, but hotel happy hour is pretty sweet when I get it.

graduate office space

FSP posted recently about offices for grad students. In your academic institutions, how many grad students generally fit in one room?

In my department, we had every configuration imaginable, from one student tucked into a closet space to a big "party room" of about 25 students. I was in a converted lab with all functioning spigots and sinks, (it was "converted by throwing desks and a few random bookcases in there) and we squashed five students in an area that stretched from the hallway to the outer wall and was about 5 feet wide.

Other than the annoying ladies next door, my office was an ideal space for me: we had one window all the way at the end that could actually be opened (and climbed out of in case of emergency) for climate control, we had water for coffee/tea, and it had the perfect number of people: you generally had at least one person around to talk to, but it wasn't a zoo. I came in early in the morning and worked at least one day on the weekend, so I had a mix of time when I was alone and time when I knew there would be a crowd.

Our nasty old lab was a bit of a joke - my buddies in other departments were horrified by my digs. Yes, it was oddly noisy. Yes, we had a designated water tap for drinking because we had let it run for ages before the water ran clear. Yes, there was a problem with the former fume hood that caused bits of stuff to blow the wrong way (out into our office) on occasion. But I had room for all my books, a desk big enough to spread out maps, a lock for my laptop, and friends to bounce ideas off; and as a grad student, that was all I needed.

semi-resolution

I promised last year that I was done with making resolutions. But some time after January, I did end up making resolutions of a sort. Both came about because of a decision that I've spent enough of my life spinning my wheels - that I want to take risks and do what will make me happy, not just keep going in the same direction because it's the next logical step. And I've figured out the actual steps to make them happen.

1. I will go on more adventures. Maybe I don't have enough time or money to have an annual epic 2-week adventure like this one, but I can block out 1 week this year to replenish the kitty (road-tripping on the cheap in the southwest) and next year, I'll have the big adventure.

2. Sweetie and I have fallen in love with a place that is not here. We want to buy a house there, something we can truly call home, even if it means a dramatic drop from our current standard of living. And we're going once either one of us finds something, even if it's not a professional ideal. Target date: when our current lease is up (a couple of months).