Happy Holidays

I dropped off my holiday cards on my way to work today at the World's Prettiest Post Office, our very own in Ester, Alaska:


This is not my photo. It was taken by one Renee Waters. The photos I attempted this morning were nowhere near this pretty (it was too dark).

Our tiny local post office does not have one of those self-serve stations where you weigh your packages, put in your credit card, and it makes a stamp for you. But there is never any line at the actual counter, so that is no problem! I suspect that most of their duties involve receiving mail, not delivering it. The several neighborhoods surrounding it almost all have PO boxes there, as our mail delivery is not secure. (except me, I still use my campus box.) Our postmistress sends out Facebook messages on our neighborhood group, "Hey please come pick up your mail! The boxes are overflowing!" The neighbors comply. This is a veeeerrrry small community. :)

The other day, I went in to mail a few boxes and my holiday cards going outside of the U.S., as well as pick up the stamps for my U.S. cards. I had a brain fart and lost the words "domestic" and "international" and informed the Postmistress that "I need some stamps for these foreign cards. And I also need to buy several books of stamps for my 'Merican cards, which I will write this weekend." She sold me the international stamps and then informed me that the price would be increasing on them after the New Year, and asked, would I like to purchase more now?

Would I.
Like to purchase.
Stamps.
For next year.
To save.
Fifteen cents.

I told her that I Very Much appreciated her thoughtfulness, and that I was very, very, very flattered by her evident enormous faith in me to keep track of the whereabouts of three postage stamps for A YEAR. But I declined.

The other awesome thing about actual post office human contact instead of the machine is that you get to choose some cool stamps! I GOT DINOSAURS!! Holographic dinosaurs, at that!


AWESOME!!

Here are some gratuitous snuggle photos.

Look how much they love to snuggle! Awwwwwww!!


Roo sez, "Hold my paw!"


Cricket sez, "Ahhhhh, my sister's butt! It's the sooooffffest and beeeestest pillow."

Potty Plant Tour

Last week, the local chapter of ASHRAE organized a tour of the Fairbanks Potty Plant.

One summer when I was an undergrad at Berkeley, I did an internship at San Francisco's main potty plant, the Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant, known at the Department of Public works by the catchy acronym of SEWPCP (or SEP, for Southeast Plant). I was interested to see how similar the Fairbanks plant was. Turns out, quite a bit, except that the parts that are outdoors at SEP are indoors in Fairbanks, because of course they would freeze if they were outdoors. San Francisco's other potty plant, the Oceanside Plant (OSP), is in a hoity-toity neighborhood and therefore also fully enclosed (in fact, mostly underground) so no wealthy people have to smell the potty plant.

Both cities treat both point (from a pipe, like sewage from homes and businesses) and non-point (storm runoff, which includes pollution from car tailpipes and the like) sources of pollution, so there is a big difference in treatment volume between the wet and dry seasons. Both cities utilize gravity as much as they can, so the potty plants are located at low-elevation locations. San Francisco has a ridge down the middle like a spine. The western drainage from the spine is both geographically smaller (about 1/4 of the city area), and far lower in population density. The Southeast Plant therefore treats the vast majority of the sewage. Its capacity is 250 Million Gallons per Day (MGD). The Oceanside Plant is 17 MGD. The Fairbanks plant is a wee bitty 8 MGD.

Another thing I recall about potty plant life is that every day around 5:20 p.m., a flood of sewage comes in... because all of the office workers go pee before they leave their offices for the day!

Here is a schematic of the Fairbanks potty plant:


The basic operation of all three potty plants is similar. The initial treatment is purely physical: a series of screens, ever decreasing in size, to remove all solids:


Then the fluid sewage is floated very slowly down a very shallow incline:

During this slow process, the lighter turds float to the top (scum), and the heavier turds sink to the bottom (sludge).

Then anaerobic bacteria are introduced to help break down the organic material. These bacteria apparently have a learning curve, and older bacteria are very valuable (like sourdough starter). Therefore, after the bacterial portion of treatment, some of the old bacteria are introduced back to the first step. Therefore, there are two poop lines: The Waste Activated Sludge (WAS, which gets disposed), and the Return Activated Sludge (RAS, which gets reintroduced).

After the anaerobic bacteria have done their thing, and the solids are removed, the remaining liquid is aerated to kill off the anaerobic bacteria, and feed the aerobic bacteria to continue the job:


After that, chlorine is added to kill the bacteria and stop the process. The Fairbanks plant makes their own chlorine from salt:


The solids (sludge) are then dewatered using centrifuges. The Fairbanks plant has this crazy horizontal one that apparently is quite finicky:


The operator who gave us the tour was very unimpressed with it, and told us that he would have preferred one of the simpler, more robust dewatering mechanisms currently on the market. The lesson I took from him was that, when it comes to sewage handling, and when it comes to the Arctic, it is best to follow the KISS principle.

The dewatered sludge is called "cake" in both San Francisco and Fairbanks, so that must be the term!


The SEP in San Francisco releases the treated effluent into the Bay. The OSP releases its effluent to the Ocean, off Ocean Beach. The Fairbanks potty plant releases it into the Tanana. The SEP has a team of biologists who sample the water and make observations about the sea life periodically. They have caught tiny sharks in the Bay! Whoda thunk?

Here are some other photos!

Here is a map of Fairbanks from pre-1971. There is no Parks Highway, and Geist Road is not connected to Chena Pump Road:


I lovelovelove these dial readouts:




I hope you don't think that makes me a strange engineer, when engineers are supposed to love everything high-tech. To me, they provide very reliable visual recordings that you can judge at a glance without having to click anything.

Here is where the turdy air gets vented:


There was a bird next up there in the eaves. What an extremely tolerant bird family!

One of three generators for backup power:


I don't recall what exactly this situation is. Look at that crazy coiled line!


Boiler for space heating:


This is what the corridors look like:


Some comedian employee must have painted this:


Boy, I would not like to be there alone at night!

And that concludes my potty plant report.

By the way, it smells every bit as horrible as you'd imagine! But it's super interesting, and I think everyone should know what it takes to support her or his life, from knowing where food comes from to where poop goes. It's all part of being a Fully Informed Person!

Public Service Announcement

When you microchip your pet, you need to register it or else it's worthless. If your chip is a 9-digit number, it's with AVID; if your chip is a 10-digit combo of letters and numbers, it's with HomeAgain. If you already paid to have your Friend microchipped, surely you should find it worth your while to pay ($20) to make the microchip useful.

You can and should also call your local animal shelter and let them know your pets' names, descriptions, and microchip numbers, and they'll keep a record in case they ever get lost. 459-1451 is ours (Fairbanks). They even said I could send a photo.

I was shocked to find that I had never registered Starbuckeroo's, and Cricket's had never been registered either! Apparently it's very easy to overlook!

Scenes from Chez Nous

Sitting in on the porch:


Enjoying the sun:


How our neighbors plan a barbecue:

Anyone who walks or drives by is invited!

Starbuck sez, "Do you love meeeeeeeeeeeee?"


Sinkhole outside my workplace:

DL keeps calling the Facilities Services folks to fix it; all they do is pour more gravel inside each time. Within a few hours, the gravel flows inside, and voilà... the sinkhole reappears!

To some people, Fairbanks *is* the Big City

Report from a colleague visiting from Sitka, when I asked how his weekend had gone:

"Yes I had a great weekend- Fairbanks is a nice town!... In addition to both Fred Meyer stores I experienced Safeway, Barnes and Noble, and Carls Jr. hamburgers..."

From now on, whenever I go grocery shopping, I will tell people that I am going to "experience Fred Meyer". :)

What I'd grab if I had to run

Please feel free to steal and edit. If you think of other items, please let me know! We could save each other's lives!

Things that live in the car already:
Oil
IsoHEET
Antifreeze
shovel
hatchet
knife
wool blanket
lighter
matches
birch bark
warm coat
snow pants
insulated gloves
tie-down straps
jumper cables
duct tape
first aid kit
tire repair kit
general tool kit
flares
sneakers
hand warmers
flashlight
atlas
tarp
Clif bars
water (seasonal)


Things that live in my daypack that I hike with (already easy to grab and go):
(not all of these are necessary for a bug-out bag, but I'm sure as heck not going to remove things from this bag!)
water
Extra pair of socks
Sun hat
Fuzzy hat
blue windbreaker in its own sack
snot rags
snacks
dog snacks
Dr. Bronner's
sunblock stick
lip balm
extra mittens
dog booties
cup
snare wire cutter
swiss army knife or leatherman
first aid kit
paracord
pink flagging material
emergency drinking water germicidal tablets
compass/gps
emergency space blanket
matches in waterproof canister
lighter
birch bark
flashlight
mirror for signaling
whistle
old-fashioned wooden pencil
notebook
dog bowl
bug dope

Things I would need to grab at the last minute:
Dogs and any other living creatures that happen to be present
Purse and all contents
Leashes
Another blanket
Tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad
passport, cash
Axe, hatchet, knives
(lots) more food
(lots) more water
spare clothes
sturdy boots
garbage bags
toothbrush, toothpaste, floss
emergency kit from mum :)

And then I'd probably just grab my whole box of camping stuff, which contains a stove, fuel, a mess kit, tea, instant oatmeal, Tang, a steripen, more lighters, more matches, a saw, a trowel, and a bunch of other stuff that might prove useful.

It appears that I would have five first aid kits, along with about twenty boxes of matches, ten lighters, three hatchets, an axe, four knives, and a Shiseido lipstick. Ahhh... life!

To brighten your day

Well, here's a new one

People Outside generally characterize Alaska as more wild and rustic than it is, photographing bearded men in filthy Carhartts, yards piled high with junk, dirt roads that are sprinkled with potholes. None of these depictions are inaccurate, but they are definitely unbalanced. Today I've learned that Volkswagen chooses to portray Fairbanks like this:


Oooooohkay, Volkswagen. Clean, well-maintained streets; a charming, derelict-free downtown; clean, fresh-scrubbed young 'uns who sleep in makeup (?!?); giant deciduous trees; a lone caribou...? I'm told that the ad was shot in Vallejo, California, and I appreciate that they found a "Noble" street in Vallejo. I have to admit, I'm a little touched that for the first time I can recall, we are being portrayed as more civilized than we are!

Also, I sincerely hope that they left that sign, "Welcome to Fairbanks, Alaska" on some highway in California!

The Minor News, Alaska Dispatch, and the screamingly funny Mudflats also both offered commentary on this commercial:
Volkswagen takes a ride in the Land of the Midnight Somewhere Else
VW Takes Road Trip to Fake Fairbanks
Faux Fairbanks appears in new Volkswagen Beetle ad

For you

Best. Baselayer. Pants. Evar.

For wool:
66 North Iceland Basar Longs Midweight Long Underwear Bottom

For synthetic:
Arc'teryx Phase SV Bottom

Both of these come in men's versions, too. :)

So here is my pet peeve with pants (the alliteration is a bonus). I understand that it is trendy for pants to have low waists, and that's fine, if the main purpose of your pants is to keep you decent in public. However, if the main purpose of your pants is to keep you warm, well then, hello, clothing manufacturers? How about some pants that don't leave my belly exposed? It's annoying enough with jeans, but all the more so with base layers, whose sole purpose of existence is to keep you warm. Base layers aren't fashion items, so I don't understand why they are cut so dang low!

Arcteryx and 66 North, they grok me, which high waists and articulated bum areas that accommodate a woman's bum. And the materials are really top of the line and last forever. They aren't cheap, but they are worth the expense.

If your arse is frozen, get you some!

And that concludes my public service announcement. I am not paid to do this, I do it out of love.

Schadenfreude is bad. Nevertheless...

So I was on a highway off ramp, in the left lane as I approached a perpendicular street. The light was yellow and I was quite far back, so I slowed to a stop. The car in front of me slammed the accelerator, ran the red, misjudged his speed turning left, skidded off the road, plowed through a snow bank, and came to rest against a street sign. He was fine and his car was fine, and it was very amusing. I'd never seen karma work so fast!

Google Maps Cares

Google maps had a screwy version of my neighborhood a few years ago, so I availed myself of the "Report a problem" button, informed google that this street was actually called that, that that street was actually called this, and that this street here was not actually a street; it's a ski trail. Then I promptly forgot about it.

Imagine my surprise to find that they have now fixed all of the streets to their proper names and orientations. Not only that, but the latter "street" is now labelled thusly:

Yes, my friends. It is now a street called "Ski Trail". I did that. :)

A Local Necessity

The air hereabouts is so arid that I, along with quite a few other outdoorsy women I know, make our own super-rich mixtures of cosmetic oils and use them on hands, lips, face, body, hair, eyelashes (to reduce frost accumulation), on cuts to help them heal, on scars to help them fade, as eye makeup remover, as wood polish, as dog paw salve, et cetera. Of course, everyone is convinced that her own version is best, which explains why so many women foist theirs onto the public.

Mine is a mix of approximately equal parts cocoa butter, shea butter, and liquid oil. Typically, I use the canola oil that I use for cooking, but any liquid food or cosmetic grade oil will do. Then I put in a few generous shakes of any natural aromatic essential oil that has preservative properties (I like lemon, although my (male) neighbor T swears by oregano oil as the best antiseptic ever and even put it directly on one of my cuts when he dressed it for me. Reaction at the University Health Clinic when I went in there to have it cleaned and re-dressed? "Your cut smells like pasta sauce!")

I heat it gently:

and remove it from the heat as soon as the last bit of cocoa butter is about to melt.

Then I pour it into containers and let it cool:

Some of my containers are reused from goat's milk cosmetic products. I love behbeh goats!

It takes a surprisingly long time to cool down (about two hours at room temperature, or half an hour sitting in front of a cracked open window), and you have to catch it during the several-minute time window during which it goes from liquid to solid so you can stir while it is doing so so the heavier oils don't sink to the bottom. When it's all cool, it's just a chunk:


When you use it, you have to smear it out like a lip balm, but it melts easily since it's composed of tropical oils.

My neighbor D across the street, instead of mixing solid and liquid fats, uses just straight coconut oil, which already has a perfect, in-between texture. And for aromatic preservative, she cooks in lavender from her own garden. It smells heavenly!

Cool things I have sent out to the world via USPS in the past week or so

I've sent so many cool things out via USPS recently that I compiled a list:

1) A surprise to my friend SH. I will post a photo after she receives it, since she occasionally reads this blog.

2) A letter to the parents of a late friend, NG, who passed away about five years ago. She was only about my age, and had lost a hard battle to a particularly vicious cancer. I had stumbled upon an email from her, in which she shared with me the news that her cancer had metastasized to her lungs, and that, given the poor response her cancer had previously shown to chemo, she was feeling "a bit buggered" about the situation. But she claimed life and gave it her all, and it was heartening and astonishing to see. She returned to her field work in Indonesia (she had been pursuing her master's degree in wildlife biology, and spent her field work studying critters in the jungle there).

... after the obligatory period of hiding under my duvet with a bottle of vodka, I emerged bloody-minded as ever and determined to get as much out of life as possible whilst I still could. I finally dragged my parents onto a long-haul flight and went on an amazing safari in Tanzania, and then went out to work in Indonesia over the summer as planned... I got back from there in September and got in touch with the drug-trials unit at the hospital which has been treating me. They had a few possible trials I could join, but none of them are without side effects, so I decided that whilst I was healthy enough to travel I would carry on going. I went out to do a bit more work in Malaysia in November, and then went on another holiday with my mum and dad. After Tanzania they’d both got the safari bug, so I didn’t have to do much persuading to get them to go to South Africa for xmas and we spent new year’s eve on a sand dune in Namibia!

She was incredibly courageous, and funny, and kind, and unselfish. She closed her email with, "I was really thrilled to see you finally got your Masters' after all your hard work, and its great you’re on the PhD track too... Keep focused on your PhD plans and get yourself that big fuzzy doggy!"

So I printed out the email, enclosed it in a card, and told her parents how much her words had meant to me, and that I was, indeed, finishing up my PhD, and that I have not one big, but two medium-sized, fuzzy doggies. And I thanked them for creating such a rare person and a precious friend.

3) An unsolicted cover letter and resume to a tiny company that I'd like to work for and with whom I have no contacts, even after scouring LinkedIn. I had heard that there was no point in doing that, in today's world. But then thought, why not at least try?

4) My braid to Locks of Love.

5) A birthday card HL, to one of my oldest and dearest friends.

6) A New Year card to SA, an old friend from high school days with whom I hadn't been in touch since the late 90's. He found this blog, and dropped me a line! What a wonderful surprise! It's been a nonstop email conversation since, and he mentioned in passing that he sends New Year cards instead of Christmas cards. I mentioned that I did that, too, but for practical over ideological reasons--I just never get them out on time! So I sent him one of mine from past years, showing scenes in and around Fairbanks. It's a bit different from Tokyo, where he lives now!

After thinking carefully about each item on the list, and what the relationship reflected in it has meant, I feel very blessed. I am a lucky person indeed.

Final, irrelevant note: Apparently, fruit and veggie shares will deliver to Kotzebue. And Maija ate a mango. In Kotzebue. Who knew?

A few changes around here

I've added a very loose commenting policy to my sidebar, to the right of this post. Please take a moment to read it. Thank you.

I've also moved my "let me know if you see your photo here and would like me to remove it" statement from my profile to the top of the page.

Then I changed the template, because it was getting kind of crowded, so now I think it's easier to read. Blogger offered me like 17.8 bajillion options. I chose the first one on the first screen that looked neat and tidy.

Maaaaan, I can't believe that there are enough of you people now (like, fourteen at last count), that I have to manage you! ;)

What passes for news in Fairbanks

An Olive Garden is opening in Anchorage.

Thanks to TwoYaks for this earth-shattering link! It did make the front page of the Minor News, but it was lower down, so I might otherwise have missed this momentous announcement.

Tips for living in a 16x20 foot cabin

Firstly, kitchens tend to clutter easily, and I have a low tolerance for kitchen clutter, so I don't have any fancy kitchen gadgets, not even a blender or a mixer. I use wooden spoons and good, top of the line hand tools (whisks, knives, a mortar and pestle, etc). Not because I think it's amusing or quaint, but because it's very spatially efficient.

Secondly, I have a low tolerance for possessions whose only purpose is aesthetic. The adorable and otherwise useless Miss Millie is an exception! My decorations are limited to a 14x6 inch shelf above the wood stove, and flat things that hang on the wall.

Finally, I am positively ruthless when it comes to editing my personal possessions. I can do this due to two factors. First, I am quite picky about what I purchase. With e-commerce as prevalent and accessible as it is today, and with most online vendors offering free or very reasonable shipping costs, there is no reason to keep anything that is less than perfect. I'm talking that otherwise nice, warm coat whose collar doesn't quite keep the chill off your neck, or that backpack whose strap adjustor digs into your clavicle, or those beautiful shoes that squish your little toe. Do not accept such things! Send them back! The second factor is that I get rid of older things on a regular basis. This is something I either learned or inherited from my mother. I am not at all sentimental about inanimate objects. Have I used it in the past several years? No? Then out it goes. I also abhor waste, so when I find the perfect new home for my outgoing goods, that just makes my day. Here are my favorite places to rehome things, in rough order of the amount of satisfaction they give me:

1) A friend who just happens to need the exact item in question. Need is the operative word there. No fair using friends as trash dumps! It has to be a perfect fit!

2) Any of the local shelters for abuse victims or the homeless.

3) Value Village, the local thrift store. My warm fuzzy with them is slightly dampened by not knowing exactly which "local nonprofits" benefit from them.

4) Finally, the last resort is the "recycle platform" at the transfer site.

5) There are also several consignment stores, but until last year, they have all been located downtown, where I seldom go, and making a special trip downtown is just too painful for me to contemplate. Recently, one opened near me, but I've had $20 worth of credit there since the week they've opened, and have yet to find anything in there that I actually want, so... why not go for the warm fuzzy and give stuff away?

In other news, we came up to a balmy -15F/-26C yesterday. That made front page news.

Rest in Peace

We lost a professor emeritus last night, Dr. Dave Sentman. He was a very warm, funny man with a gentle, kindly face and demeanor that put me in mind of a beloved pediatrician. He loved to talk about anything and everything--the history of tulips in Holland, the beauty of Bach's violin concertos, the algorithms behind CT scanning and reconstruction, how much fun it is to climb all over the gold dredges in our environs, his life in his rural home, etc.

When I had first moved to Fairbanks, he warned me of the frightening noises a snowpack makes when it slides off a hot roof. He also told me a funny story about how he had once woken up in his home in mid-winter, and checked the clock and saw that it read a bit past 6. Thinking that a perfectly reasonable time to get up and go to work, he did so, only to arrive and find the building nearly empty. He made a pot of coffee, worked for a few hours, and wondered where everyone was, until it dawned on him that it had been a bit past 6 p.m. when he had first gotten up. "These are things that only happen to academics!" he said.

He went off on so many tangents in the middle of his lectures that I was always amazed that at the end of the semester, he was always right on schedule with the syllabus. He must have planned his digressions very carefully!

He had just retired last spring. What a shame. On the other hand, he did truly enjoy teaching, and we students were fortunate to have him.

Here is my favorite picture from his plasma physics lectures:

You know you live in a small town when...

... you dial a wrong number, and someone you know answers.

... people spot you from a distance and recognize you by your jacket.

... you can't go anywhere without being spotted and having it be mentioned later.

... everyone in town is within two degrees of separation, not six.

Oh ALSO... we are above 0F this morning for the first time in nearly a month!

Minor News headlines

Top o' the news this mornin':

The blessing of the pets took place last weekend, and I plumb forgot that it took place the weekend before St. Francis' Feast Day, and not on the day itself. :( Cute article, though, what?

Apparently, I was not alone in my power outage this morning. Far from it. "The problem affected virtually the entire GVEA coverage area from Delta to Cantwell. Only a small core area in downtown Fairbanks maintained power during the outage." I've always taken pride in knowing I'd be just fine in a power outage. I can cook proper meals on the wood stove, and I have plenty of battery-powered light sources. But it's still quite annoying, and it takes a longer time to boil a tea kettle of water on the wood stove than on the cook stove.