Second...I come home in 16 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you tell I'm excited? If not, hey, you, reader..I'm excited! I debated adding a few more exclamation points, but I didn't want to go overboard :) My longing for home has been months in the making, and it's finally only days in the coming. And just in the nick of time too...we've experienced a weather drop in the past week. I know you Californians have been shivering in your 50F weather...and some mornings were 36ish! Holy cow! My mornings average around -30F. Did you notice that negative sign out front there? Yeah...66 degrees below your above freezing temperatures. I can feel each and every single degree of difference :P I thought -5F was bad...but wow the difference feels exponential for each degree colder. Which, seeing as temperature is not a value that is considered in normal terms of doubling and such, it very well may be an exponential difference. The "nights" get even colder, dropping to the -40s or more. I say "night" because it goes from 3:30pm to 10am...the sun has become something I vaguely recall and rarely see anymore as I'm always in class when it's out. I've been extra grumpy lately, and a friend pointed out that its most likely due to lack of solar exposure. She told me I'd better get a "Happy Light" for everyone's sake (a happy light is a UV light that is supposed to keep the evils of grumpiness at bay). I am skeptical of it's claimed powers...
Anywho, grumpiness doesn't stick around too long since I have so much happy for coming home :D
My life, as always has been the case for the last semester, is centered around school. Grades are still rockin in every class. Most of my papers are done, and I've only one large assignment left for the year (10 page research paper on environmental issues for English). Everything else that was big was all due in the beginning of this week, so my brain now has permission to turn off for the next few days. It's ever so happy to have that allowance.
The Thanksgiving holiday turned out to be super awesome fantastic, and not the lonely pathetic experience it could have been. Classes got cancelled for the entire week due to a wickedly nasty ice storm that blew through town. We had a warm/moist air flow come up to Alaska, super unusual for late November, that brought temperatures up from sub-zero to hover just above freezing. So instead of snow, we got ice-rain. This led to super slick roads. The rain came down in liquidish form, but as soon as it touched the ground, it froze. This made the snow less snow-y and more slush-y. And the roads had an inch to two inch thick layer of ice form over them, which made driving impossible. It's the first time classes have ever been closed for three days in a row in Fairbanks, especially in November. It just doesn't get icy slushy here. It was lovely to have a whole week of nothing (mostly). I was invited to a party put on by a fellow student, Margaret. She and her fellow roomies (she lives in an apartment on campus, I am filled with envy) decided to make their own dinner instead of going to their various homes for the holiday, and invited me to be part of the experience. I was in charge of stuffing and a dessert. We spent all day Wednesday cooking together, and our food turned out so incredibly delicious. We were so proud we took pictures (and no, I won't post them, thats silly :P) I had a most wonderful time.
My bird from several weeks ago (Coopers Hawk) turned out AMAZING once I was done with her. Every little feather was washed and dried and fluffed/placed just so. Super awesome experience, I just wish I had more time on my hands to be able to volunteer to continue have fun with the birdies. Mayhaps next semester. I had fun also with my thrum knitting mitten experience. When its turned inside out it looks kinda like a catctus, kinda like a noddly monster thats gonna eat you. Still not finished with them (again that whole time thing...silly school absorbing my whole life! *shakes fist at it*).
Classes have now officially ceased to do anything cool as of Tuesday this past week. All is winding down towards finals, and all the profs are hurriedly trying to cover all that was missed from the cancelled classes. Tuesday was my last ecology lab, and it was an easy fun one. We went to a permafrost tunnel that chillaxes just outside of town. It was originally dug in the 1960s (I think) by the Army Corps of Engineers to test out the best methods for digging through frosty bits of ground. And then, they just kinda left it. Because of the loose type of dirt in there, it does no good as a bunker (their original thought) as its super weak. Thus we all wore hardhats. Since the tunnel has just been left alone, it's amazing to walk through. No archaeological or palentological work has been done, so theres all sorts of random plant and animal remains just chillin. Literally chillin' as the tunnel is maintained throughout the year to stay at 30F for optimum preservation of said organic remains as well as the ice sheets/anvils. This meant that it was 50 degrees warmer inside the tunnel than it was outside. And it still felt coldie. Brr, I say, BRRRRR. Despite the cold, I had a fantabulous time crawling around, getting filthy, and touching actual mammoth bones. So. Freakin. Awesome. The next coolest part was that the preservation was so comeplete in some parts of the tunnel that there were plant remains of sedges around 40,000 years old that were still kinda green. It was amazing to behold! Below are some pictures, that I admit are kinda bleh, as the lighting in there was complicated for my amateur photography skills.
