Ripples

It is interesting to see the results, the fallout, if you will, of events that you hear about in the States but don't necessarily appreciate in magnitude.

For example, the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. Immediately there was a massive increase in the number of uniformed police everywhere in the Netherlands. Especially around the airports and train stations, but even wandering around you see group of 4-6 police officers. Even more telling, there was the occasional armed policeman (most cops here don't carry firearms. Some do, but not all.)

It was a bit shocking to see police with AKs.

Another example: when we were working on getting Ev's residence permit, we were told that the big reason the Netherlands immigration department has a self-set deadline is because of the influx of refugees that has historically resulted in multi-year processing times. The Netherlands is pretty open to refugees (although not to the same extent as Sweden), but the number of applications that results from foreign crisis overwhelms the system.

This is part of the reason it took so long to process Ev's residence permit (definitely not the whole reason. Them being slow was definitely a thing): when we applied, the civil war in Syria was flaring up again and there were lots of people fleeing.


Lesson of Europe #2:
The time between "far off" events and witnessing some of their impacts firsthand is short.


Another example: an increase in Missing Person signs posted on lamp posts. Primarily young (18-30) people, often from what appear to be Muslim communities (Rotterdam has a thriving Middle-Eastern, especially Turkish, community. They make really fantastic bread, btw), often with a note on the sign along the lines of "may have run away to (Syria, Iran, whatever)."

Maybe people are worried that their youth are leaving to go fight for a rebel group or, god forbid, IS.

Obviously, I am hypothesizing. I don't know the particular circumstances, dynamics, details, or anything that could lead to something other than my anecdotal interpretation. But it seems that people are becoming more aware of how they may be perceived. The number of people in our neighborhood (we live adjacent to a big Turkish community) wearing traditional clothes (beyond a headscarf, which is really common here) is increasing. Everyone is traveling in groups.


The Netherlands is incredibly tolerant and accepting. I haven't seen or heard anything that makes me think there is mistrust or resentment towards the Muslim community. But there are signs that the conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Iraq are affecting people here.

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Not much of a life update this week. Lots of classes, lots of homework, lots of work for my research assistantship. Ev is going to start hating me for doing school or work every day.

A weekend excursion to mountains is probably in order soon.

Not Just Coffee

Signs I've Been Living in Europe #1:
I have developed moderately strong opinions about coffee. These include:
- Drinking coffee out of a paper cup is not great.
- Getting coffee to go is seriously not great.
- Even crappy, free coffee is best enjoyed over a leisurely conversation.
- The best way to drink coffee is out of a real cup, unhurried (or at least not caring if you're going to be late), and sitting down. Even if you're by yourself.


It's actually kind of amazing how long it takes to drink a small cappuccino when you're locked in conversation or people watching. In fact, it's probably best to allocate at least 45 minutes to enjoy your coffee.

Coffee culture is a thing, and people will get surprisingly passionate about it. Apparently, Italy and Greece know what's up as far as coffee drinking, but I heard that from an Italian guy and a couple Greeks, so there's some bias to be considered. As best I can tell, coffee culture is all about social atmosphere. And if you talk to people over here about it, apparently the American tendency to take our coffee to go or work (rather than socialize) in coffee shops is an abomination that totally misses the point.

Although, as Ev has pointed out, that doesn't mean it's not coffee culture. It's just a different coffee culture. That, admittedly, is not quite as enjoyable.


Lessons of the Netherlands # 9:
The Dutch have the highest per-capita coffee consumption in the world, around 2.5 cups per person per day (sorry, America, but we don't even break the top 10 list with a per capita coffee consumption of only 0.91 cups per day. The rest of the top 10 is filled out by Scandinavia and northern Europe). If you think about it for very long, you realize that that is a LOT of coffee, especially when you consider that the whole "per capita" thing includes all the kids (to be clear, I am only talking about per capita consumption. If we're talking volume, the U.S. is king).


Although there is a solid chance that most people here don't actually drink that much coffee and most of the coffee consumption is by engineering professors and grad students with free coffee cards.

As a matter of fact, that's probably true everywhere.

Regardless, my caffeine tolerance is getting pretty high again, but I choose to believe that I can quit any time I want.

I'm probably lying to myself again.





On another note, my kid sister decided she wanted to run a half marathon. Because I wholeheartedly support encouraging everyone around me run, I agreed to run it with her. Well, also I kind of tricked Rach into running a half a couple years ago and figure it's only fair to run one with each sister. Cuz I'm cool like that.

Anyways, the end result is that we're signed up for the Rocky Mountains Half Marathon in Estes Park, Colorado.

I'm slightly concerned about the elevation. The race starts at 7,500ft and goes up to 8,000ft. The Netherlands is around -3ft -3m.

Elevation sickness isn't real, right?

I figure the best way to not die during the race is to get back into full marathon shape. Probably won't stop me from feeling like absolute crap, but at least it increases the chances of a half-way decent time.

Maybe.



Oh yes, and Valentines Day. That's a thing. That I kind of spaced and spent doing homework. Luckily, we had some super fancy French chocolates from Lyon and a really nice bottle of champagne on hand (apparently we remembered Valentines Day when we were in France and prepared accordingly), so we spent the evening eating the best chocolates I have ever had (not kidding. They. Were. Amazing. The champagne was pretty good, too), and alternating between enjoying them and being kind of shocked that we're in freaking Europe.

And here's a picture that pretty much sums up our relationship.

Also a random picture of Ev near Rotterdam City Hall. Because seriously, he has to climb on everything.

Like, literally everything. We got yelled at in Machu Picchu for climbing on the ruins. In fact, here are a few photos of Ev climbing on stuff that's not actually supposed to be climbed.

Chamonix

Machu Picchu

Yes, that IS an avalanche chute. 

Spring break? More like SKI break!

TU Delft isn't a fan of spring break. They put it right after exams in the first week of February. Not exactly spring. So, according to my fellow students, we have "ski break" instead.


Ski break is awesome.


On Friday we flew to Geneva to meet our friend Eric. Or at least that was the plan. What actually happened was our flight got cancelled 15 minutes before it was supposed to board because it was "snowing" and Schipol didn't have enough de-icing fluid.

At least we got the Seattle experience. A little taste of home.

Luckily, European law requires Airlines to put you up in a hotel and feed you if your flight is canceled. Ev and I talked about catching the train back to Rotterdam and coming back for our (new) 6:30am flight, but decided that that would SUCK, plus we'd have to leave our bikes at Central Station for a week and that just seems like a really bad idea.



So Ev and I got less than 4.5 hours of sleep, got on a plane and met Eric and his friend Marie in Geneva. We were supposed t arrive Friday night, drive to Grenoble, and ski all day Saturday. Because of our unexpected travel changes, we drove to a ski resort between Geneva and Grenoble and skied a half day.

Well, everyone else skied. I was too tired to function, so I found a cafe, had a coffee and read.

It was nice.

A little bit of night skiing made for some amazing photos

Sunday we packed up early and hit the slopes again. I haven't skied since breaking my ankle, so I'm a tad out of practice. Not like I was any good to begin with, but still... I got to watch the show as the boys put the chains on the rental car to get up the mountain road to the ski resort. Totally worth it, especially since the powder was AMAZING.

Putting on chains was kind of an adventure the first time. The second, third and fourth were much faster.

It turns out that my ankle is very not ok with being weighted on the outside for prolonged periods. This translated to turning right being pretty awful, and my skiing abilities being, well, not great. Eventually it loosened up a bit (and I popped some ibuprofen) and was tolerable to ski on. I suspect it will continue to improve (the ligaments have only had 23 months to knit back together) and become stronger and more flexible. Which means skiing won't hurt at all. And maybe I'll be able to actually climb cracks again.




Ev, Eric, and friend Marie headed off for some big-boy skiing while I stuck to my "I'm a total beginner" slopes (aka blue).

Ev has crazy big powder skis. He was very, very pleased with himself for bringing them to Europe.

After a wonderful day of skiing, we returned to Grenoble for some traditional French cuisine.

And by that, I mean fondu.

Seriously, a giant pot of melted cheese to dip bread (and whatever) in is kind of brilliant. And delicious.

En route to scrumptious cheesy goodness (that probably took a year off my life), we noticed that "Je suis Charlie" slogans and graffiti can be found everywhere. A bookshop had a bunch of Charles Hebdo drawings in their window, so we took a look and appreciated some pretty entertaining political cartoons.

The middle one is recent. Apparently the French president got pooped on by a pigeon while giving a speech to Holocaust survivors. They got a good laugh at his expense.

We also found the most European thing I've seen in ages: super miniature, electric rental cars. Rental as in put some money in the slot and drive away.

For shizzle.

After a short rest day of wandering around Grenoble, Ev sucked it up and drove the rental car (with me and skis, obviously) to another ski resort.

He was not super pleased about the city driving.

Or the fact that, as far as we can tell, driving in France is freaking terrifying. Basically, you do whatever you want because the rules of the road don't really seem to be much of a thing (our France-driving terror was confirmed by a French friend. Apparently, you can park anywhere if you put your hazards on. Even in the middle of the oncoming lane. 

I really couldn't make this stuff up.)

But we made it to the resort and had another amazing day of mountains, snow, and skiing. It was lovely.

Wednesday we decided to check out Lyon and hopped on the train. An hour and fifteen minutes of beautiful countryside later, we arrived and proceeded to wander. 

Apparently it's unconventional, but Ev and I really enjoy wandering. You get to see parts of the city you wouldn't normally, can go (or stop) wherever you want at whatever pace you want (I absolutely love having no time pressure. It's magical), and can stop and take pictures of random structural components at will. We may miss the museums and tourist attractions, but I feel like we get a feeling for the actual city we're in, rather than the shiny part presented to the world.

I gotta say, I'm not super in to the structural photos bit, but it's kind of Ev's thing, so I'll be supportive. Make fun of him some, but be supportive. 

Lyon (and France, from what I've seen) has some absolutely stunning architecture. Even the engineer in me has to stop and take in the beauty of it. Maybe not the practicality, but it's old and pretty and it's not like anyone would build something like that anymore, which makes these buildings worth appreciating. 

Our immediate reaction to this castle was "oh, whoa, looks like something from Disney!"

Lyon city hall. Every city hall building we've seen in Europe has been really cool. Probably has something to do with being the center of town government (or something), but still...

Seriously. I highly recommend going to the city hall in whatever city you happen to be in when in Europe. It's nifty.

Two things happened returning to Grenoble from Lyon: first, something happened to the train (tracks?),  and we pulled out of Lyon and then stopped. For 2.5 hours. Five minutes outside the station. Then Ev developed a fever. He was feeling a bit under the weather already, but apparently sitting on the train with a ton of other people being cold (it's not like the trains are heated or anything) for literally hours isn't great for your health. By the time we got back to Grenoble, he was a mess with a serious fever.

So we took another rest day in a furious attempt to fend off the sickness. It didn't work, but he felt good enough on Friday for another day of skiing.


And then we went back to the mountains.


When we arrived at the resort the visibility was terrible. We basically went "well, we're here and want to ski, screw it" and hopped on the lift, fully prepared for awful white-out conditions all day.

Most of the way up the first lift, we broke through the clouds and were greeted by a spectacular view.

The last time I had a view of the mountains above the clouds this spectacular was in Bison Gulch a couple winters back when we camped on Mount Healy. 

Bison Gulch October 2012. A memorable view. Man, I miss Alaska sometimes...

Once again, Ev, Eric and co. struck off for some awesome, badass skiing while I wandered up to a cluster of blue and red routes.

Ev stayed home on Saturday and Eric and I went to ski again. I attempted to follow the map and do a long blue route down the mountain. I tried a couple times but couldn't seem to find the turn to the second section of the run, so kept taking the lift up to the start and trying again. Eventually I "figured out" where to turn and followed the blue marker posts. Then the trail got narrow and was no longer groomed. And the blue posts vanished and were replaced by black posts.

Then the trail stopped being a trail and started being an extremely steep, tracked up, mogul-y black route with no alternative way down.

I stared at it for a few minutes, went "oh shit," then took a deep breath and started down.


Needless to say, that route was well beyond my abilities, let alone comfort level. It took me a solid 20 minutes to get down, but I did manage to actually ski parts of it. Ish. By the time I reached the bottom my legs where trashed and I was drenched in sweat. It's been a very long time since I've been that scared. Not a shut down, blind fear, but more of an "ok, this is bad. Very bad. Time to deal with it. I'm pretty sure I won't die" fear.


It's safe to say that skiing that route was a type II fun Jannsen.



After my legs stopped shaking and I stopped being completely freaked out, I skied to the bottom of the mountain and had a beer.

I definitely have become a better skier over the past week. And it was great to see Eric and watch Ev doing the whole crazy skiing thing. He's really, really good and it makes him so happy.

Note the satisfied smile and crazy ski hair.

As seems to be the trend every time we've traveled lately, being in the mountains made me really homesick and a little lonely. I never thought I would get so sentimental about Alaska and being near mountains to climb and ski on with good friends. I feel a little silly about it, honestly. I knew moving to Europe was going to be a massive change, planned on culture shock and stress from school, and keep in pretty steady contact with family and friends. But it's not the same as actually being with the people you care about (obviously) and sometimes that contact just emphasizes the distance between you. It does help that two of our friends have bought tickets to come visit (Jesse for a month at the end of March, Adam for a week over Thanksgiving). I suppose that means we should probably plan some sick climbing adventures in Spain.

It's nice to have things to look forward to.

It's spring break (ish)...

My laptop is in Rotterdam, I am in mountains.


Real update next week.

Can someone make the exams stop?

Since Ev works from home and finding study space on campus around exams is impossible, I've been setting up shop in a couple coffee shops. Amazing, it works pretty well. I have definitely inherited the family trait of expanding on to all available counter space.

I think I took a lot of notes for this class... and study notes, and practice exams... I'm going to be so pissed if I don't pass this class.

So far I am done with 2 out of 3 exams. The first (Climate Change Science and Ethics) was nice and easy. Those are always good for the ego and confidence.


Grad School Revelations #1

Read the exam questions. Seriously. Read them. You might get a gift, like the one on this old exam:

Unfortunately, the actual exam had no gift and it kicked my ass. Which was sad.


To soothe my pain at studying really hard for an exam and doing really badly, Ev and I wandered into Rotterdam Centraal Station on Saturday, looked at each other, and went "want to get out of Rotterdam?" We then got on the next train out and ended up in Eindhoven.

There are some cool buildings near Eindhoven Central Station.

Anyways, I think we'll be buying tickets home for the summer tomorrow.

Maybe I'll do some of that exam studying stuff, too.

Skiing is going to be really awesome.

Mondays.... about that

It's Monday.

Not like I'd know. I haven't taken a day off school/studying since January 2nd. As I may have mentioned earlier, having exams after the holiday break is evil and cruel.

On the plus side, apparently I write good reports.

On the negative side, I have to memorize three derivations for the Modified Cam Clay soil model that I won't have sufficient time to actually derive so basically (and I quote the professor) I just have to do them a few times and memorize them. Don't try to derive all of it, because some of the relationships that need to be substituted in are experimentally derived, which makes it all but impossible.

I am really bad at memorizing stuff.

Ack!

So obviously, exams are kicking my butt and I haven't even taken one yet.



On a completely and wonderfully unrelated note, Ev and I saw The Imitation Game last night and it was pretty great. I really enjoy movies that are a little intellectual and biographic. I think I appreciated the film even more because Alan Turing has been in the news recently (something about his death probably not being a suicide but accidental inhalation of cyanide). Regardless, the guy was a genius and The Imitation Game does a pretty good job of capturing both his brilliance, personality (or at least how you hear about his personality.... apparently he was a bit arrogant and awkward) and the persecution for his sexuality.

It's also possible I have a huge thing for Benedict Cumberbatch. After all, he did play Stephan Hawking in a BBC movie a few years back that was pretty damn good.

Aaaaaaaand I think I just confessed to being a massive nerd. Oh well.



Anyways, there really hasn't been much thrilling or exhilarating stuff in my life right now. I suspect the blog update after spring break will be more along the lines of what you've all come to expect. Or I'm delusional. That's also a possibility.

And because I have no pictures for you, here's one of my sister's cats.

He was NOT pleased about being dressed up...

An Ode (ish) to Adobe

I suppose it's time again for a blog post. And, once again, I'm going into finals, which means my life is pretty far from exciting.

The big news is that Ev's residence permit was approved!

Finally!

Which is kind of awesome, especially since it means he now has no excuse to leave me. Mwahahaha!
Anyway, he did his biometrics (photo and fingerprints) and is now waiting for the physical residence card to show up. Good times.

Now that Ev gets to stay, I need to get us plane tickets to Grenoble, France for spring break (first week of February) to go skiing. My friend Eric (remember Eric from a few posts back?) lives there and we're going to crash at his place and be ski bums for a week. It's going to be magical.


We're also starting to plan out our summer travels. After our amazing experience in Mallorca, we're going to go to Kalymnos, Greece for a couple weeks after my classes finish to do a bunch of climbing and hiking. Naturally, the climbing in Kalymnos has a lot of overhangs, caves, and some slabs. In short, I should probably improve my upper body strength to the point I can do a pull-up. Heh. So we have started "training" for our summer climbing adventures, with way more bouldering than I would like (but then again, I am not a fan of bouldering... because I have crappy upper body strength).

It's nice to have things to look forward to.


The "what will our travel schedule be like when we go back to the States this summer" planning has also started. Kinda. Things are pretty uncertain right now, but we'll firm them up and start getting tickets here soon. Ish.



For my Behavior of Soils and Rocks class, we're using a geotechnical modeling program called Plaxis for the final assignment. It's a really nifty program and pretty much all the processes are coupled, which means you can build the models and use multiple variables rather than having to plug in variables separately and do multiple simulation runs. The graphs generated can be customized and plotted to, well, whatever.

I am a fan.

A large part of the assignment is annotating the graphs to show how different parameters are derived and basically prove that you understand how to interpret them. I plot everything to a pdf and annotate it directly in Adobe, since it can look pretty and is really easy to change. Last night (yes, I was doing schoolwork on a Friday night. Surprise surprise) I showed a bunch of my classmates how to annotate in Adobe. Because it's waaaaaaay faster than drawing in the lines in Excel. Seriously. Screw Excel.

Did I mention it comes out pretty?


I felt kind of smart. Ish.

Or at least like I got to apply some of the magical skills I acquired working. I love Adobe.


On that note, my laptop is at 9% battery life and I'm running a Plaxis simulation remotely through a VPN (modern technology is the best). Which means everything is probably going to die soon.


So that's it for this week. Thrilling, I know. Such is the life of a grad student.

European Holidays (a really picture-heavy post)

I suppose I should post that blog update I promised last week... it's been a wonderful break from school and reality, and I'm not sure I'm ready to go back. After all, I have one more week of classes, then exams. It really is cruel and inhumane. Rose and Pete left yesterday (Friday) morning, so I started back on the school stuff. Gotta ease my way back into it, I guess. Or something.

So, as was probably made obvious by my totally half-assed post last week, we went to Mallorca over Christmas with a set of Ev's parents. We were both getting really homesick, especially since we kept getting asked if we were going home for Christmas and hearing everyone talk about getting to see their families, so it was incredibly nice to see Rose and Pete. There really is no substitute for family.

Our first day (Christmas Eve) we set out to find a beach. To be fair, there is no shortage of beaches in Mallorca. We found ourselves in the northern part of the island in a town called Alcuida. It should be noted that the beautiful, sunny weather in the photos is deceiving: it was actually a bit chilly. But once again, my theory that the best time to go places is during the off-season was confirmed; we had the entire beach (and most of the town) to ourselves (although this was probably partially due to the whole holidays thing).

There was a pretty sweet church near the center of Alcuida that we wandered around. It was very pretty and there are some silly photos of us pretending to shoot things out of the narrow window slits in the walls (the church was obviously a fortress at one point), but I've decided to attempt to limit the length of this post. Although that's probably not going to turn out that well...

To celebrate Christmas day, Ev and I decided to check out the climbing on the island. The grades on Mallorca are famously hard and we spent hours before (and during) the trip trying to pick out crags within our abilities. For our first forey onto the beautiful Mallorcan limestone, we chose Puig St. Marti, a small wall with only a few routes (but all within our abilities). 

As is the case with many, many crags, the view was spectacular. While Ev and I put up all but 1 route on the wall, Rose and Pete hiked along the ridge and took a couple pictures. 

Climbing at Puig St. Marti was an amazing experience (at least for me) for several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I had no trouble with any of the routes. Well, except my last lead. That was a 6a (5.10a/b) line that went up next to a bees nest. In the defense of the climbing guide, the bees nest was indicated on the crag with an arrow, but I figured there was probably a decent amount of space between the holds and the nest, plus it was chilly and winter and the bees were probably dormant.

I'm an idiot.

Right about the time my shoulders were level with the bees nest (and my hand was about 1.5 ft away) I heard the buzzing. And saw a couple bees start coming out.

I should probably mention that the crux of the route is over a bulge by the bees nest.

And my darling belayer has a pathological terror of bees.

I'm proud (?) to say that I pulled the crux, finished the last 3m of the route and bailed the hell off it. I'm mildly disgusted to admit that that was not my first climb adjacent/through a bees nest. There is now an annotation in our guidebook on that route: BEES!!!

Ev decided to channel his artsy side when we wandered around to the back of the wall to check out the view (and some climbs out of caves). Obviously, the view was amazing, as is the picture.

To celebrate a wonderful day of climbing, the beautiful view, and the joy of having family around (and an actual vacation), we took another traditional backpack picture.

We were in Mallorca for a week and went hiking/climbing/wandering every day. It was lovely. Adventures included a trip to Cap de Formentor, a beautiful outlook by a bay. The access catch was the long drive to the lookout, which involved long, sharp switchbacks up a steep mountain. The drive kind of freaked Rose and Pete out a bit, so our intended destination of a beach cove was modified to the Cap de Formentor.

Since apparently Ev and I are unable to not go to the highest point around, we cut straight up the remaining side of the mountain to check out the ruins at the top. There were some what appeared to be WWII bunkers, a lookout tower, and on our way back down (via the road this time) we discovered a long tunnel into the mountain that led to a big cavern. Unfortunately, we didn't have headlamps so our exploration into that was brief.

View from the top of the lookout tower. I am a master of the flattering selfie. Kinda.

Did I mention that the tunnel we found was loooooooong? It was really cool.

Apparently Rose and Pete enjoy wandering around crags and mountains and strongly encouraged us to have another day of climbing. Obviously, we didn't require much convincing. Because of how comfortable we were on the 5.8's and 5.9's on Christmas, we decided to check out one of the main areas in Mallorca: Puig de Garrafa. We never actually made it to the wall we were planning to. Instead, we picked random routes as we walked towards the wall and climbed those.

We have definitely gotten much better at climbing since moving to Europe. Every route we climbed at Puig de Garrafa was a 6a or higher (5.10a/b) (with one 6b slab. Which rocked. Hard.)

Povleron (6a). Like all routes that make me want to cry, the crux was the first move. Seriously, that is kind of terrifying. I actually took a fall on it (I failed to stand up on top of the minuscule ledge above the crux). That was first and only lead fall I've taken where I was fully prepared to deck. Ev managed an amazing catch and I swung under the adjacent overhang. My boyfriend kind of rocks. (I did it clean my second attempt)

The second crux on Povleron

Shaking it out, baby.

The weather wasn't particularly good the last couple days of our trip, so we spent a day checking out some of the caves on the island. We went to two: Drach and Campanet, but only have pics from Drach. Which came out way better than I thought they would.

The day before we left (Dec. 29) we decided to hike up to Castillo de Alaro. The hike took us along the main wall of the Alaro climbing area, which made Ev and I start drooling. The desire to get on that rock is going to serve as a primary motivator to come back to Mallorca to climb. F'real. 

The Alaro main wall. We are so coming back to climb this. Seriously. Tufa city.

Mission "Become a Boss at Climbing Tufas" has now commenced.

The approach to the castle ruins was spectacular, especially after it stopped raining on us.

And obviously, the view from the top was worth the hike.

After returning to the Netherlands, we took Rose and Pete to Den Haag on New Years Eve to check out the beach, then enjoyed a short run, medium-length walk, and the amazing Dutch-version of fireworks from our balcony.

It gets dark about 5:30pm. Fireworks started going off around 5:31pm. 

And continued non-stop until 11:59pm (most of the fireworks were privately launched).

As the clock flipped over to 2015, downtown Rotterdam lit up with a, frankly, spectacular fireworks display. Not to be outdone, the entire skyline basically blew up with an insane amount of fireworks and pyrotechnics that continued unabated until about 2am. 

Seriously. 

Non-stop fireworks from 5:30pm to 2am.

It was absolutely incredible, and I seriously doubt I'll ever see anything quite like it again. We stood on the balcony and watched the displays for hours. 

After taking Rose and Pete to Amsterdam on New Years Day and mildly traumatizing them by taking a quick walk through the red light district, we put them on a plane back to Alaska on Jan. 2. It was hard to see them go. I know I had a hard time coming up to the holiday season with some home-sickness and missing my family. This was the first year where I missed a Christmas (or early-Christmas,  since I tend to travel on Christmas day for money reasons) with my family, made even harder by the fact that for the first time in years both sisters were home for the holidays. 

I suppose this is part of growing up?

I dunno.... but having pseudo-family (and Ev) around helped immensely. 

Anyway, Happy New Year, everyone. I hope it is amazing and full of adventures, whatever kind they may be.