Cold Spring!

I heard on the morning news today that the past five weeks were the coldest in Fairbanks in haole history. And that hitting 50 degrees F yesterday for the first time in 215 days made the fifth longest streak of below 50 F since 1904.

In other news, here are photos of behbehelephants, courtesy of the Save Elephant Foundation.

This is Dok Mai:

"Hello, I'm a behbehelephant. And you?"

This is Navann:


I wanna behbehelephant!

Spring is here in earnest, and I have a weapon!

New signs:

1) Bare roads

2) I swapped out my tires.

3) I quit craving bacon.

4) Linden is starting to shed (though not Autumn, yet).

I spotted this outside my window frame last night:


Isn't it awesome? Soon I'll have my own army of mosquito-munching spiders! Alaska, where no spiders are venomous and mosquitoes are the state bird, is the sure cure for arachnophobia! I hope I am home when they hatch! I'd LOVE to see them take off like Charlotte's babies. I don't know if they'll do that though. Charlotte's an orb weaver, and Alaskan spiders are... generally not.

The last? Ski? Of the season?

The snow is rotting, and it's warm and sunny out, soooo.... well, I just don't know. Who knows? The weather gods, they are fickle.

Autumn dashing through the snow!


Linden looking paradoxically dignified:


After we got back, I attacked my woodpile. I must say, I am a huge fan of my New splitting maul. It's a good weight and balance for me.

And that is all I've got for today. Happy spring, everyone! Warmth or no warmth, we still have all of the beautiful daylight!

The winter that will not end

Last night, I retrieved my skis from "summer storage", and today I skied.

I'm not sure how I feel about that. Skiing in general is awesome. Skiing in May is... a little weird.

I hear that this is happening all over Alaska. Anchorage last week was brisk. Several feet of snow dumped on Denali. And now I hear that the fortymile region is in for a winter storm. Hum.

My environs last night:




Calypso Farm is eeeeeven colder than I am, because they are another thousand or two feet higher:




But I went to visit the critters, including a set of two week old behbehgoats!:






The sheep would normally have been sheared by now, but this year... nope.







I sure love me some behbehgoats! Funny, the first photo of me with the kid is almost the same as this one from three years ago!

Why I love our grant manager

This is the first job I've had where my salary comes from multiple sources, and I'm expected to be on top of it. We also have a person whose full time job it is to manage all of our grants and funding and where it all comes from and where it all goes to. Today I will tell you why she is awesome. Every now and then, when something bureaucratic Happens that I was supposed to stay on top of, but did not, she comes over to my desk and this occurs:




































(Background image courtesy of Daniel B. Holeman)



And that is why I love LW.

My first talk as Dr. Arvay!

My colleague DP, who is a personal as well as professional friend, beamed and introduced me with, "I believe I have the honor of being the first person--ever--to introduce Dr. Arvay Henson! The crowd burst into polite, restrained, engineer-applause. After I gave my talk, which had nothing whatsoever to do with my PhD research, several attendees congratulated me.





I've decided that, after seven years of fantasizing about it, I don't, after all, like the sound of "Dr. Henson".

Dr. Henson sounds serious and intimidating and unapproachable (my real last name is ethnically Chinese and sounds even more serious and intimidating than "Henson"). Dr. Henson sounds like someone who wears tailored suits and would raise an eyebrow at me when I approach her with peanut butter on my scarf and dog hair on my sweater. Dr. Henson sounds like she'd lose respect for me for peppering my speech with California "likes".

I don't want to be Dr. Henson.

So I'm still going to go by "Arvay". Maybe Arvay, PhD, but still Arvay. :)

Edited to add: There's still snow in May! I'ma go skiing this weekend! :)

My favorite acquisitions from the Rural Energy Conference

I usually revel in conference schwag--fancy pens! Notepads! Mini screwdriver/USB memory stick combos! Refrigerator magnets!--but at this one, my two favorite acquisitions were this:


And this:


The former I observed in creation out of the corner of my eye during one of the talks. The guy sitting next to me was doodling... that... and when he was done, I admired it, and he gave it to me. I love how it's so unmistakably Alaskan, with the permafrost-stunted black spruce clinging to the creek bed.

The latter, I picked up from among the sundry brochures on gardening and home canning--how to protect your tomatoes against aphids, how to discourage moose from stealing your cabbage, how and when is best to fertilize carrots, etc, etc--offered by UAF's Cooperative Extension Service. Like the cooperative extension services of many land grant universities, UAF's is friendly, accessible, and always ready to foist literature upon you. I must say, this one is the most... oddly specific (pint jars!) and Alaskan (walrus!) of any I had ever seen.

Edited to add: Unseasonable brrrrrrr continues throughout the state.