Houston, Texas and the unreasonably long playlist.

That’s where I am. But not really, because I got placed in the super-suburb of The Woodlands, located about 35 miles north of downtown. The office I’m working at is in Greenspoint, about halfway into town. My daily commute takes anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes one-way. This is quite a shock after living in downtown Columbia, MO last year, where my daily commute was a 4 minute walk. I miss that.

I’m not sure how well I’m adjusting to my summer job.  One advantage of living so far from work is I get to listen to music everyday during the drive. The same plus applies to sitting at a desk all day. Since I uploaded my entire mp3 collection to Google Play a few months ago (a process that took a few weeks on my painfully slow connection) I have access to everything that I’ve ever bothered to buy, download, rip, or allowed a friend to forcefully thrust into my hard drive. My summer goal is to listen to every track I have at least once.

Unfortunately, this is actually a completely unrealistic goal. I have over 9000 songs uploaded that would play for over 25 days straight. If I eat lunch in my office I will be at my desk for 10 hours a day. Adding up all the workdays I have left, I conceivably have 40 days*10 hours=400 hours of total listening time. That’s under 17 days total, and I’ve only made it to the letter C. Granted, Google Play took an unexplained detour to the letter S, but the goal isn’t to go alphabetically, it was just the obvious way.

Listening to my music alphabetically by song title has some quirks. The most ridiculous sequence I’ve experienced to far was Boom by Flight of The Conchords, followed by Boom!, the classic rap jam by Shaquille O’Neal, followed by Boombox, the Lonely Island/Julian Casablancas collaboration. More recently, I listened to very appropriate collection of tracks starting with “Summer” (12 tracks) and “Sun” (25 tracks). While listening to all my songs starting with the word Black I wondered if my collection of music was racist. I’m not sure what to make of the results [White (25 tracks) vs. Black (50 tracks).] Some of my friends might be aware that one of my recent favorite songs is That Old Black Hole by Dr. Dog. But did you know Ella Fitzgerald has a song called That Old Black Magic?

I’ve listened to almost all of my music at least once in the past, but I tend to gravitate toward a few albums and artists that I keep returning to. I think it’s a fruitful exercise forcing myself to listen to all these other tunes I’ve accumulated over the past 10 years. I have to exercise all of my will power to stop myself from skipping past some tracks, though. Commoners: Canada Goose, American Crow, Blue Jay, House Sparrow, Red-winged Blackbird, Common Grackle, Song Sparrow, a 10 minutes track that’s supposed to train you to recognize the named bird calls, comes to mind.

In other music-related news, I caught the always great Bad Veins, Portugal, The Man, and Flaming Lips at a music festival in Houston a couple weekends ago. In just a few days I’m going with some other interns to see Coldplay. Well, they will be there to see Coldplay. I’ll mostly be there to see the opener Robyn, then marvel at all the pretty lights Coldplay brought.

Final Royal Gardens home destroyed in Hawaii

This photo might as well be the surface of Venus… if it weren’t for the parallel lines cutting across, anyway (it would be quite a discovery if it was). No, this is an aerial photo of the Royal Gardens subdivision on the big island of Hawaii. The photo was taken in 1990. The story of Royal Gardens is both fascinating and tragic. Construction began at Royal Gardens in the late 1970s. 1500 lots were supposedly sold. Just a few years later, however, the eruption at the Puʻu ʻŌʻō vent began. That eruption has continued almost non-stop for 29 years now.

During that time, almost all of the 75 houses actually built in Royal Gardens have been overrun by lava. This figure from the USGS shows the extent of various lava flow events, as well as the outline of the Royal Gardens subdivision.

Miraculously, year after year, one house was spared from the incessant flows. The distinctive red-roofed house belonging to Jack Thompson evaded destruction. The view from the house was surreal. Forested land surrounded by kilometers of stark black lava, all with an unobstructed view of the Pacific Ocean. Lava came within just 300 feet of the house last December. Well, the house’s luck finally ran out this weekend. It was destroyed by a characteristically slow moving basaltic lava flow.

I went on a helicopter ride with my family back in 2005 to get a look at the Puʻu ʻŌʻō vent and surrounding area. This was a few years before I started taking geology classes, but the entire experience still fascinated me. The vent was of course shrouded in dense clouds (not surprising), but we got an excellent look at the lava entering the sea.

I remember being surprised at two things. First, I was amazed that lava could flow the 4 or 5 miles from Puʻu ʻŌʻō without solidifying. It was impossible to follow a line of lava all the way back to the vent, so as far as I could tell it might as well had been erupting just meters from the sea (lava can flow underground inside lava tubes). The other thing that struck me was the lush green island of what remained of Royal Gardens. It seemed against all odds that anything should survive the constant eruptions. Even more incredible was seeing this one red house among the green trees… Jack Thompson’s house. All the other remaining buildings I remember looking a lot like this one I managed to snap a picture of:

Photographer Leigh Hilbert was with Jack Thompson this weekend and posted some amazing footage.

In the video, you can see how reluctant Jack is to evacuate his house. After all, the house has survived dozens of scares. He holds out hope until the lava starts creeping into his backyard (literally). You can see more photos from Leigh at his website here. This one photo in particular helped me understand why Jack was so adamant about staying in his isolated paradise… what a view!

This is another reminder of how, despite how resilient or stubborn humans can be, nature is a relentless force. Unfortunately nature doesn’t always creep along as lazily as on Hawaii. Take this or this for example. Hopefully not this, but only a fool would deny the eventuality of a disaster given enough time.

Experts baffled by strange events on campus

Columbia, MO – A series of bizarre events has left campus experts scratching their heads. “This really defies explanation,” said Kurtis Wellington, emeritus professor of applied mythology at the University of Missouri. “It’s unlike anything I’ve seen outside of my dreams.”

Early yesterday morning, an unidentified substance began falling from the sky. MU chemists have identified the material as having the exact same molecular composition as water. Professor of Chemistry Wu Liu was reluctant to provide details, however. “There’s no question that this material seems to be very similar or identical to H₂O, but it is obviously not water. The results are only preliminary and I’d rather not discuss the ongoing research.”

Wellington was more than happy to discuss his theories, however. He recognizes parallels with regularly reported irregularities in rural communities in the western USA. “It reminds me of ball lightning. What we have is something common, rearranged into something uncommon. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this white material was water. Ultraterrestrials prefer to work with what’s already on our planet when they attempt to communicate.”

“I’m positive we will be able to explain yesterday’s events in a purely scientific fashion,” said Liu, “but I can’t completely rule out ultraterrestials at this point.”

Even more disturbing was the large anthropomorphic icon that suddenly appeared overnight. The segmented appearance of the icon created a buzz among gawking students.

“It’s not human. I’m actually a little afraid of it,” said MU freshman Shirley Cunnings.

“I would postulate that the icon in the quad is a mixture of the ultraterrestrial and human forms. The segmented appearance indicates to me that the closest morphological analog would be an insect, such as an ant or other arthropod,” said Wellington.

“The face is the worst part. It’s like it’s smiling, but it’s not quite right. It looks totally sinister,” said Cunnings.

The events of the past two days have left the city of Columbia both excited and nervous. Some, like Wellington, are bracing for more, “I imagine this is only the beginning. This is truly a watershed moment in our lifetime.”

Don’t look, stop, sloth time!

Apparently Kristen Bell loves sloths. And is sort of emotionally unstable, but mostly in an endearing way. These are the questions I ask myself at this point:

1. Who is Kristen Bell? (oooh yeah, Sarah Marshall. She’s a cutie)

2. Why am I making a blog post about Kristen Bell at 1:48 am? (because I’m not too bright)

3. If I’m amazed Kristen Bell can have a breakdown about a sloth and charm the world, am I the strange one? (I think were both weird, so we would have been a good couple. And count me among the idolators, so a better question would ask why is our society so strange)

4. Kristen Bell says she is a serial monogamist (feels the need to always have a mate). If I’m the opposite, what does that make me? (Apathetic? Awkward? Lazy? Foreveralone? Maybe all the above).

I’ve known girls that I would describe as serial monogamists. As soon as their previous relationship ends, they start a new one almost instantaneously. I tend to go months or even years before starting anything new. I think my situation stems from what I’ll call an expectation of emotional privacy. I carefully guard my emotions and assume others would prefer the same.

I think the end result is I come off as a prick, or at best, uninterested. All ye lovely bitches know, should know I’m tryin to correct this.

Pushing the columns.

These past couple months have been a blur. I spent a week at the University of Maryland finishing up my thesis work (see photo above). These next few months will be spent writing up the findings. I also spent a few days in Laramie, WY meeting with recruiters and socializing with other geologists. I’ll be spending the summer in Houston (hot!), but next fall is still a question mark. Maybe more school. Maybe I’ll final enter the real world. Maybe.

It’s good to be back home for a breather. I’ll be mucking around town for a few weeks before heading back to school. Maybe I’ll find something productive to do. No promises.

Dictated but not read.

Sometimes I think I prefer to be alone because I would be ashamed if someone else were to see the things I do when nobody is around.

Wasting time, needless reflection, singing, overeating, unnecessary over-analysis, falling asleep reading a paper…