The end of it all.

Hey everybody, thought I would end this blog with the update that I just took my first hot shower since coming back to NH!  I'm clean again already!!  I have been managing quite well; not wearing my coat to the bathroom, throwing my toilet paper in the trash, forgetting to flush, or forgetting to rinse the soap off of my hands.  I feel like I should take this final opportunity to apologize to Pat for giving him a hard time for not keeping me company at the airport; I thought his flight was 24 hours earlier than it actually was and I don't think they will even let you check in that early.

I'll also take this chance to promote my new blog which I'm hoping will acheive the "average" of 1 reader (if I can only remember to reread it from time to time): 

http://sarahexnihilo.blogspot.com

Maybe some of you would like to peruse it looking for inappropriate pictures; sorry guys, I did not choose the 18-and-up rating, this blog will be appropriate for general audiences. 

Misery in Portland.

So that was crazy, for the first half of the flight from Anchorage to Portland I thought the lady next to me in the middle seat had no lower legs.  Then she asked to get up for the bathroom and walked there all by herself.

That flight somehow made me feel about 500 times worse than I did in Anchorage.  I managed to find some cold medicine - not sure what it will do for me - and coffee which I figure I may as well be drinking since I won't be sleeping anyway.  Whine whine whine...

Anchorage.

So here I am sitting on the floor at Anchorage airport which is super busy today probably because of the flight cancelations yesterday.  No, I'm not crying, just a little bit worse for wear because of this cold.  Symptoms include tingly, watery everything.  And I thought germs couldn't survive the coldness of Alaska.

Going home! I think.

Yay! It looks like I'm going to get out of here, Alaska Air has resumed the flights that were cancelled yesterday because of the volcano. I will be VERY happy to get back to NH--no offense to Glenn who won't get to hang out with me and Pat who won't get another chance to not hang out with me--because I'm starting to get sick. One of these people I've been around should be a little bit less liberal with their germs in the future.  Meghan (who's also sick) and I think it was Hickman based on his face-rubbing performance of what NOT to do to avoid spreading germs.

When Kristina and I were looking at optical data last night we noticed that I made an appearance in our UNH camera footage at around T-2 minutes when I went to open the dome box.  At least I was quick about it!

Trapped by a volcano.

So I'm finally updating the blog now that it has been long enough that nobody is reading it anymore and nobody cares.

Today Kristina and I spent a good part of the day at the Geophysical Institute at UAF burning data to DVDs and shipping equipment and whatnot.  About midday we got the exciting news that our flight was cancelled due to the 5 volcanic eruptions which happened throughout the last night.  I have reschedule my flight for 10pm on Tuesday so we'll see if I ever get to leave Fairbanks (*fingers crossed*).

Pat won't hang out with me anymore because I'm too much of a girly-girl or something but Toolik Glenn is working on getting to Fairbanks (after being stuck at TFS for a couple days he says "if it's not avalanches it's ash....welcome to Alaska...") and might just be able to socialize at some point tomorrow (or the next day if I get trapped again).  Well, we'll see.  Tonight was a napping night and hopefully is an early bedtime night if I can muster the strength to get there.

Volcanic eruption count for Fairbanks night2: 5 eruptions

Church, mushers, belly dancers, and dinner.

Sunday morning I was way more tired than I had hoped considering all I did the day before was sit in a car dozing off for 9 hours and then go out to eat and drink.  Although I must have been pretty tired that night because I crawled into bed with all of my clothes on and a cell phone in my back pocket!  But I woke up like a good girl and went to mass with Meghan which, in addition to some ibuprofen and 16oz of coffee, helped to ease my killer headache.  After eating a cookie we went out to see the dog mushers finishing a race in town and then to the local craft sale where I got Fritos and more coffee while watching the entertainment including an irish folk musician and some belly dancers--not performing together.  (They wouldn't stop moving so they're kind of blurry.)

Jay and Hickman ended up there too and let me tell you, they take their crafts seriously.  Later on the five of us (including us 3 Wedgewood girls) got together for some Thai food; I think I tapped my remaining energy reserves just eating that food so I sat on the couch not moving for a few hours before managing to drag myself to bed at an unreasonably late hour.  Meghan left us late Sunday night so now I guess I'm not a sidekick anymore because there can't be a sidekick in a party of one.

Back to Fairbanks.

So Saturday was the return to Fairbanks.  The plan was to get an early start and be back in time for dinner but it took >3 hours to start the truck so we ended up getting back closer to 10pm after stopping at the Silver Gulch for dinner.  This meant that I did not get to go to the after launch party but at least was able to get cell phone reception early enough to text Meghan a question for Hans.  Thankfully he gave the go ahead for leaving the hundreds-of-pounds heated box in the Toolik truck for the weekend.

On the way we saw a ptarmigan and four moose.  Gus and his wife, who drove me back, dropped me off at the Wedgewood and I took a 3 minute shower, spent about 20 minutes looking for Pat's phone #, and then got him to come meet some of the gang at a local bar.  At least I didn't miss out on all of the fun!  We have some pictures but I'm not sure that I want them in the public domain.

However, please check out this link; Pat is now a Youtube star:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DIUkBrOKN0