I had another defining moment for my career yesterday.  They let me go up and do some ariel photography.  Most people would find the subject matter of dams to be somewhat boring but I don't care what I am taking pictures of as long as I am taking pictures.  This is a little narrative about my day.

This is the little cessna we commissioned to fly us over, intially 4, but ended up to be 7 or 8 features.  

This is semi-retired Larry Caldwell.  He is the "Old Dam Man".  He told us he was going to retire but his office is still open for business nearly every day.  He's the biggest so we stuffed him in the back seat.  Actually, you can't shoot good pictures from back there since only the front window opens while you are flying.  (That's right, open window picture shooting at 5000 feet.)

Naturally we had to have a pilot.  This man was an excellent pilot.  If I hadn't been wearing the seat belt I would have only fell out of the plane twice.  He was impressed that I didn't ralph.  Most people who shoot out of planes get queasy even when they normally wouldn't.  Has to do with the limited information your eye gets from your surroundings when you close one and force the other into the viewfinder.

This is part of the reason we do what we do at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).  It is hard to get a good idea of the true scope of erosion unless you can see this.  Water is a powerful earth mover.  People underestimate this power all the time.

In the end we landed with over 1000 pictures, many of them just versions of others.  I had my camera set to rapid fire to make sure I got the shots we needed.  Next time we take off I will have a better idea of what I need to do.  I will probably take fewer pictures but I don't think I am quite up to eliminating the rapid fire just yet.  That will come with experience.  I may get lots of practice as everyone agrees we should do this more often.

Drummond Flat Wetland Area

Cimarron River

How excited am I?

I am excited enough to post a photograph of pee on my blog that's how excited I am.  Maybe this is a little out of the ordinary.  I am sure Xyla will be angry with me when she grows up for posting this but . . . 

Considering the fact I thought it would be a major effort to get her to be ok with the concept of pee in the potty this is huge.  She has made it to the pot 4 times already and it isn't even noon yet.  I suppose I can start investing in pull-ups so that she will understand the mechanics of underpants.  I can see being able to save $50 a month in my close future.  I am beyond excited.

Her favorite hat . . .

This is a short post.  It's just to show  you her favorite hat.

On the death of my grandfather. . .

I was going to write this post so long ago.  It's been quite a while since my grandfather died.  He was the last living grandfather and none of us had seen him since I was about thirteen.  It is hard to know what to tell about him.  I remember the fall and a large wheelbarrow but that was about it.  We got a call from him when we lived in Pinedale that goes like this:

Brandy: (answering the phone) hello?  I don't know let me ask my mom.  Mom, there is a man on the phone who wants to know if I am old enough to pay taxes.

Mom:  It's your grandfather.

Brandy:  No, it's a man who wants to know if . . . 

Mom: It's your grandfather, give me the phone.

The one time he did call and just ask to speak to mom, we were all a little dumbfounded. I was 6.  I don't think we really heard from him again, that I recall, until he showed up when I was around 13.  He had been there a couple of days and baked a cake.  I don't know if it was someone's birthday, but I remember wanting to taste the icing.  I swiped a fingerful of it.  Clearly, the cake had been violated so I evened it up a bit and ran my finger in a straight line around the bottom of the cake to make it uniform.  And, no . . . I hadn't considered getting a butter knife to 'replace' the missing frosting.  

My grandfather saw it and was furious.  At first he was so angry, I was scared to tell him I had done it.  He decided that all of us kids would go to bed without supper if someone didn't fess up.  I finally did.  I went to bed without food - over some icing.  It was weird.  I know that he and my mom had a discussion about it and he was gone the next day.  Even though quite a bit has been revealed to me about who he was, that event still sits oddly with me.  I don't know what to think of the man.  I see his features that were passed through my mom, handed down to me.  

His death was really hard on my mom.  We hadn't heard from him at all since that incident.  We had heard a limited amount about him.  My mom saw him just before he passed away.  I don't know if she got to say everything that she needed to say to him.  It is weird because, though he was my grandfather, I didn't really know him.  It is hard to mourn for someone you don't know. It is hard for me to grieve for him, because I never had more than a weird feeling about him.  Perhaps this is all I can do to remember him.

  I have these few pictures of me when I was a kid.  We must have had fun at some point.  I don't remember it.  To give some perspective, I do remember that chair in the background.

But that isn't what I stopped by to write about today.  What I am writing about today is this little gem right here.

We may not look alike but I'll be darned if she isn't her mother's daughter.  I caught her doing this . . . that's right.  She refused to eat the piece I put on her plate but she had to lick the pizza in the box.  I did not send her to her room without dinner.  I made her take the piece she licked and tried to get her to eat it.  Funny thing is, once it was out of the box - she didn't want it anymore.  I love this girl.  She makes me laugh.  I want her to remember these good times when she tells her kids about me.

Anatomy of an Oklahoma Snow Day

6:00am  Wake up.

7:00am Received a phone call canceling work.  Instructed to call in the following day to find out if work will be cancelled that day as well.

7:30 am Finally find my keys. We head outside, while it is cold there is no snow/ice forecasts have been calling for since Saturday previous.  Travel to WalMart to pick up some Oreos and a couple of new $5 movies from the movie bin.  Tv stations have already started their extended coverage that takes precedent over all other shows but not quite wall to wall where it preempts the commercials as well.

8:00  Get word that OSU is closing offices at 1 p.m.  This doesn't matter much since my class for this evening was cancelled two days ago.  Back from Wally World.  Stillwater Public Schools seems to be the only one's who haven't received the message since there are cars still in their parking lot.  Wonder how long they will be in class until the are let out for the day.  The temperature has dropped significantly in the last two hours.  Car is in the garage because, who wants to scrape windows if you don't have to?  We settle in for the long haul.  Still no rain or snow.

1:00 pm  TV stations are reporting the storm has begun.  Of course those stations are an hour south but all that I am really seeing from the live shots is rain so far.

4:00 pm  Finally start seeing some rain.

4:10 pm  False start.

6:00 pm  Starts raining in earnest.  Although its not heavy and not as chaotic as one would think from the wall to wall coverage.

6:30  It is time for the baby to learn what a free day off is all about.  That is Oreo cookie on her face.  She only ate one but wouldn't let me wash off the crumbs.

6:45  Still this is it.  Some of what is falling is freezing but not much.  It just seems odd that we have spent all day not at work and so far nothing has really caused major problems.   

7:30  It is cold enough we needed to bring the dog inside for the night.  The sleet is starting to turn to ice and it is building up a little more now.  Xyla decides to help Munch eat his food one piece at a time.  He likes it right up until she tries to feed him with a spoon.

As you can see even though there is some ice it's still not the catastophe it has been touted as.

8:00pm What would a snow day be if you can't try something new.  These are a little indulgent but they have spinach and artichoke in them.  We shall see if the baby eats them.

8:30  She ate three of them.  Color me surprised.  There is finally some snow falling outside.

From here they get out of order:

She was cool with the snow until she had to put her hand down to steady herself and realized how cold it was.  I put on her hat and her gloves and touched her hand to the snow to show her why we wear gloves.  All was right again with the world.

If you look close to her right, there is a small dot on the fence.  She was running over to check out the birds who were visiting our yard for the convenience of the bird feeder.

This is at the start of the snow around 8:30 pm.  I thought she might like to see it fall.  Like bubbles, she thinks snowflakes are awesome.

We had to wait all night to see this.  It's nice that it isn't piled in the 3 ft. drift in front of the door like last time.  This can be easily dealt with.  We have the whole weekend now.  I had to go in to work (two hours delay) for a couple of hours but they sent us home at noon.  The best part of that is not having to use my leave (of which I have little at this point) which means I am one day closer to coming home for a visit.

For those back home this is just a couple of inches.  Sorry it was so dramatic.

Snow . . . I'm not crazy, but I play it on tv.

As I sit here typing this my baby is tucked safely in my bed with her little footy pjs and a blanket she will only let me place over her mid-section.  She has been sleeping soundly for hours.  I am sure somewhere in this town someone is up right now worried.  Worried about the "winter storm" that is 100% going to happen.  Somewhere in this town a mom is up tonight worried that if it does snow tomorrow she won't be able to pick up eggs at the store.  Somewhere in this town a few managers are regretting their decisions to close their businesses tomorrow but since they already told their employees to stay home they have to take the loss.  In this economy . . . well that's why he is up.  Somewhere in this town tonight there is a small child forming plans to make snowmen with the less than an inch of snow that is forecast, since his school called the station and gave the magic password that gets them on the closures list.  Somewhere someone is decrying the evidence of global warming because the temperature just suddenly dropped about 20 degrees.

It just occured to me today why IT was calling to confirm everyone's extension in their office.  It is so that our state con can cancel work for us using the phone message system.  It's nice to know I'll be getting that message, if there is one.  

Why am I up so late?  Why am I up so late?  Honestly I have been trying to make up for what I don't know about climate change.  I have been trying to make something of the hours of class I will miss this week thanks to overzealousness.  But why am I up so late?  Why?

There is something in the silence tonight.  Something I promised a friend.  Something I will probably never get to do.  I can't really talk about it.  I don't know why I am up.  I am not contemplating the singularness of life nor the pluralities of it.  I am not delving into realms of information I haven't fully committed to.  I am seeking though.   I am not sure what.  I want the answer to be in this silence.  Is it there?  Am I listening hard enough?

Where do I go from here?  Is there a blizzard a head in my life?  A season in my life has changed and I am grateful.  I have felt like I was in the same season for way too long.  What did I learn there?  Am I stealing from my experience?  

Who am I?  I ask myself that question everyday.  I wrote it in the steam on my bathroom mirror so that I wouldn't loose myself again.  "Who do you see here?"  But then did I ever understand who I was to begin with?  Is that why no one can seem to connect with me, because I can't connect with myself.  Who am I?  Am I too much, too little or just right?  I have always known there was something different about me but I have never known what that is.  Others have mentioned it too.  The something different.  No one can describe it.

I need some rest.  Not sleep.  Rest.  Where do I go for that?

As many of you know, the week before Christmas the entirety of Oklahoma lost it's mind when just over a foot of snow fell in the state.  It shut down the inter-state highways in and out of OK for two days.  People abandoning their cars that got stuck in snow drifts.  At least 25 cars worth of people slid into each other making a huge mess and the evening news.  I knew they'd go nuts.  They always do.  This kind of weather is so infrequently (12 white Christamases in 100 years and this one made 13) they just aren't prepared for what I know to be a minor inconvenience in Star Valley.  

I made a new bird feeder out of a soda bottle because for some reason Cardinals and Bluejays like to eat dog food and then bathe in Munch's water dish, a process that includes depositing "litter" in his dish just before they take off.  It worked in the city and it works here, too.

This picture is just at the storm was kicking up.  The wind, which is what caused 14 inches to drift into three foot death traps, was blowing hard.  Please notice in the picture below the lump that took up residence in my bird feeder for about 20 minutes.

All I can say is I really hope this cardinal made it through the storm.