It May Be Arbitrary, But A New Year Nonetheless

I like the turning over of a new year. If the previous year was crappy, it's a good chance to say "the hell with all that, this next year will be different." If the previous year was good, it's a great time to remember all of the grand adventures of the past year. I like burning things or having things be washed away in the sand or rain or snow on New Year's Eve. I like making collages of my hopes and dreams for the coming year. I like drinking champaign with friends, meditating on the past and picturing the future. And, of course, I like making lists.

Top Five of 2009:

Personal:

1. Camping in Joshua Tree with Lucy, Mitch, Josie, Allie, Tom, Brian and Alba.
2. Cama Beach. Peter and Nathalie’s wedding, berry picking, swimming, shell collecting.
3. Mississippi. Tiffany and Jason, free range bacon, meeting their friends, seeing Clarksburg and other sites.
4. Disneyland! I don’t know how many times we went, maybe as many as seven or eight. 2009 was definitely the year of Disneyland and I loved every moment of it. Even waiting in line for the Princesses every time. Ray, Sandy, Becca, Rob, Rick, Sarah….
5. So many fantastic holidays – Christmas in Colorado, Turkey Day in the mountains, New Years Eve in San Diego. Good friends, good family, good times.

Professional:

1. Working Together Against Weeds seminars at Joshua Tree, Death Valley, and Olympic National Parks.
2. Finally getting the diversity ecosystem function paper resubmitted.
3. Giving so many academic seminars to promote research in the national parks all over California.
4. California Invasive Plant Council Symposium, two posters and two talks, and tons of fun.
5. Finally getting the Guide to the Invasive Plants of the Santa Monica Mountains written and published thanks to the major efforts of Irina Irvine.
6. The science strategy working group!

Aspirations for 2010:

Personal:
1. Adopt a dog that will be happy and fit into our crazy family.
2. Re-do the back yard so it is pleasant to look at and functional.
3. Keep up the pilates and run more.
4. Get a group of friends and family to go on a short Mexico cruise out of Long Beach.
5. More camping!! Mount Pinos, the east side of the Sierra, the beach, and more.

Professional:

1. Keep working on paper submissions – submitting and resubmitting until at least the three current papers are published.
2. G.A.D.J. I’ll explain that in 2011 (c.s.p.)
3. Get the weed management plan to the public comment phase.
4. Keep learning new things.
5. Get the carbon offset project done.

Remembering the Holiday Season 2009

The girls with Santa at the YMCA.

Lucy on her first time out on cross-country skis at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Look at that smile!


She tried to ski off into the sunset but I had to go get her when she got to the bottom of the hill. Look at how deep the snow is...

She did have a few falls but was still smiling. The next day she skied a 1/4 mile loop up on the mesa.

Bye Luce, see you back at the house...

Here we are at Santa and Mrs. Claus tiki hut at the Harbor. Note Lucy's cool fluffy pink boots - thrift store score!

The polar bears and their palm fronds helped us welcome in the new year in San Diego style!


We had a great Christmas season this year and I was too busy enjoying it to do any blogging. So here is what I can remember of this year's Christmas. This was the first year that Lucy understood Christmas well enough to be excited about Christmas long before it came. I have fond memories of all the buildup to Christmas from my childhood including advent calendars, cutting our tree, decorating the tree, and playing lots of I spy to find
Christmas ornaments on the tree.

This year Lucy and Josie shared an advent calendar from Trader Joe's. It includes a piece of chocolate for each day which they shared and were delighted with. We didn't go out and purchase or cut down a tree but instead re-used the small artificial tree that Grandma Jo brought out for last year's California Christmas. It fits in our tiny house perfectly and the girls loved decorating it.

Early in December Mitch went to San Diego with his brother Stu for a weekend. The girls and I baked Christmas cookies while he was gone including a Brigham classic, cookie press cookies. The cookie press cookies were their favorite because they involved SPRINKLES!! The first ones I let the girls decorate were solid sprinkles. They weren't a ton of help with the molasses or the rosemary lemon shortbreads because, you guessed it, they didn't involve sprinkles.

While Mitch was gone we also went the YMCA for breakfast with Santa. (pictured above) We brought unwrapped gifts for needy families and were treated to pancakes, bacon and orange juice with Santa. The girls loved it.

A couple weeks after Mitch came back, my brother arrived and we all went to the harbor for the parade of lights. We rode bikes down and Seth and Elise came too. The parade was hit or miss as usual but it was fun to be out at night and they had fake snow which Lucy and Josie loved.

Soon after it was off to Colorado for a blissful ten days of snow, snow, snow. We did lots of sledding, helped decorate the big, beautiful, real tree and ate way too many Christmas cookies. My brother was a perfect guest and did lots of cooking and niece-watching. It was great fun to have him with us for Christmas. The girls had a blast opening their presents and even got a second visit from Santa on Christmas Eve night. Lucy went cross-country skiing for the first time and she did great! I got to go for a half hour ski by myself in the quiet of the snow and had a great time.

After a lovely Christmas then we went to San Diego for New Years and had a great time visiting Caitlin, Tim, Tom, Allie and the bunny. The bunny that Caitlin and Tim were house sitting was a big hit with the girls. It is always great to visit the SD crowd - they are all so hospitable, fun to be around, and in general most excellent people. We went to the zoo twice this visit.

That about brings us up to date. Sorry that I am leaving out all the details like how we got the van stuck in the snow approx. 4 times (depending on how you count), seeing all of our cousins and Aunt Judy and Uncle Jerry, and on and on. Maybe I'll remember to write during Christmas next year, but I doubt it.

Candy and Carrots

One of the joys of the Christmas season for Josie and Lucy is... double desserts. I got them an advent calendar from Trader Joe's that has a small piece of chocolate with some Christmas image on it behind every door. So every night the girls get to open a door, split a piece of chocolate, and have their regular dessert (if they ate a good dinner). Lucy is pleased as punch at this arrangement. I don't know how she will ever go back to single dessert again.

Lucy is holding up her lolly pop which on this night was her "regular" dessert (in addition to the advent calendar chocolate). Note that in this picture Jo Jo is holding up her carrot which she is very pleased about. She just recently started eating carrots. I say, hey, whatever makes you happy as long as you're not hurting anyone. Happy Holidays!

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells

Mitch is forming his new rock band but all of the participants aren't sure whether they want to be in the band. Everyone was a fan of Mitch's rockin' rendition of Jingle Bells, however. The silver guitar may not be as pretty as the blue sparkly guitar to the untrained eye, but it is Mitch's current favorite. Say hello to the G and L ASAT.

Bed Time

This is what I found a couple of nights ago when I went to get in our bed. The dolls are better than the truck loads of sand that we frequently find between our sheets that has fallen out of the girls pants cuffs. When your house is only 900 square feet and it is dark and raining, it is hard to make any of the house that is safe for playing, "off limits". Thus we often find trucks, dolls, sand, and fake food in between our sheets.

Avocado and Khaki

After a month of replacing the fascia boards and two months of debating paint colors, we finally had a contract crew here for a week painting our house. When it was all said and done, a miracle occurred and all of the residents of 613/619 were pleased with the result. Lucy was a particularly difficult audience since she wanted the house painted rainbow colors. It really does look sharp. Now we just have to get the front yard in shape, finish the little house, and get the back yard fixed up... But not until after Christmas.

Offset This Baby!

I'm trying to figure out the best way to calculate the carbon offset values for all the plants we plant every year at our park. We typically plant between 10,000 and 15,000 coastal sage scrub plants (California sagebrush, purple sage, buckwheat, etc.) into degraded annual grassland. Our average acreage per year is pretty small, between 2 and 3 acres I would estimate. The park service is climate change obsessed these days and one of its obsessions is getting all its parks to be climate friendly (I say, "Howdy climate! How you doin?"). One of the goals of climate friendliness is to get to zero net carbon gain per park by some absurd year like 2016 (right around the corner people, right around the corner...).

So I thought I would try to do my part by coming up with some back of the envelope calculation for the carbon sequestration value of all of these lovely little plants that I plant each year. The complicated part is that it turns out that it is pretty darn tricky and somewhat controversial to calculate these types of values. Since people are going to pay for carbon offsets in many areas of the world (including ours) scientists and policy makers want these carbon sequestration estimates to be rigorous and not just b.s. Which is all fine and good except that all of the fully developed models are based on TREES (How many times do I have to tell you people that I don't live in a forest, SHRUBLAND I tell you, SHRUBLAND).

So anyway, I'm going to sit in my office for a few hours over the next couple of weeks and try to figure this all out or at least take a good stab at it without actually going into the field with a gas exchange analyzer. Wish me luck, and if you have any genius ideas (Sarah Otterstrom, I know you do this kind of thing for a living...), let me know. Right now what I have is some published dry weight data for coastal sage scrub and annual grasslands, some published soil respiration rates for coastal sage scrub and annual grassland, and a bunch of data on number of plants of what type that I have planted. I could also actually measure plants of different ages in the field since I know when I planted all my plants.

I know this is really exciting for all you non-scientists out there but I just had to share.