Rest and Recuperation

None of us are working full time, but for some reason we are still really busy!  Not counting pap's speech therapy and cardio rehab, mum's ever increasing number of appointments and my wedding stuff, we still had just too much to do.

Diwali (the Festival of Lights).  We were finally able to celebrate it together at home - something that hasn't happened for at least 15 years.

 Puzzles to stimulate the brain

Karva Chauth. A time when married women fast and pray for long lives for their husbands 

Dy's crochet project.  I believe she logged over 16 hours of time on that little crochet needle, making a hot water bottle cover, a throw, and then this earwarmer for my tiny little head.

My tie making project.  I can tell you from experience - do not attempt without a sewing machine and a proper template.  Luckily Dan has agreed to wear it even though there are no straight lines... 

Goodbye Seattle

Everyone knew I liked Rochester, but I thought I could stay away for more than 3 months! Anyway, I've been trying to soak up all the art and culture around here before I leave all too soon to get married and start a new job. 

Some of the important places: Columbia Center Sky View (where one can see the whole of Seattle from this Bank of America tower, including the surrounding islands),  the Chocolate Festival (two days of chocolate making, manufacturing, and tasting. We made it to one talk on how to correctly "taste" chocolate, and then promptly abandoned the program to shovel tons of free samples into our mouths).  Things like dark chocolate, milk chocolate, caramels, truffles, and chocolate with weird additives, like spirulina, ginger, or pomegranate. , Seattle Art Museum, and the Pacific Science Museum (this was a good one! There was a touch pool filled with squishy sea anemones,  moving dinosaurs, space and star stuff, interactive puzzle tables, an entire insect exhibit, and even a live butterfly room.  The King Tut exhibit was ok too).

Tibetan momos. 

Fort Lewis Army Base:  My ID was checked by a friendly soldier from...guess where...Rochester, MN! Once inside, BG let me try on his gear.  I think the vest itself was 15-20 pounds. With all the rest of the gear and a full backpack, soldiers can carry around 70 pounds. And no, that is just a toy gun and I'm holding it all wrong.

Here we are looking SE at the the Harborview Medical Center 

(the inspiration for Seattle Grace Hospital in Grey's Anatomy)

Chocolate festival: a demonstration of grinding the hand picked, sun dried cacao bean. 

Free for all gluttons 

The Burke Natural History Museum (right on UW campus, actually): I never thought about this, but obviously no one really knows what color the dinosaurs were.

Cow's Skull on Red, by Georgia O'Keefe

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Co-op Merger in Industry News

It's kind of cool to see the food co-op merger getting some more attention recently: 

http://www.cooperativegrocer.coop/articles/2012-09-25/working-together-our-mutual-benefit

An excerpt:  "Food co-ops are experts at doing things the hard way. We are grassroots organizations—it comes with the territory. People’s Food Co-op (PFC) in La Crosse, Wis., and the Rochester Good Food Co-op in Rochester, Minn., decided to take advantage of current resources by working together for our mutual benefit. We traded some old challenges for new ones along the way—but through the process we hope to gain additional insights about co-op development for others in our sector to consider."

MN Wedding

Dan and I are officially married.  

We missed the people who weren't able to be there, but we'll be married again soon. 

Mount Rose, Olympics

I recently learned that a classmate from Woodstock is in Seattle.  Actually he's based in Fort Lewis, which is a military base about 40 minutes south of Seattle. We met up for dinner one day and then, of course, planned a hike for the weekend.

We went to Mount Rose, which is part of the Olympic Mountain Range.  Its about 3.5 miles STRAIGHT UP (no kidding, there were no flat parts!) and then 3.5 miles straight down.  I didn't think it would be so bad because of the North Cascades hike Dan and I did the other weekend, but this time two soldiers and a triathlete accompanied me.  That is definitely not a recommended hiking group.  I was definitely the weakest link, huffing and puffing the whole way up while those guys seemed to just saunter up the mountain.

Begging people to stop midway. 

The view from the top.  

P.K (BG's friend, I don't know his full name), BG (or Bibek, a classmate from Woodstock), Me, Petrice (a Mayo grad school colleague)

And then back down.  That was hard on the knees!

Renewapoo

As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure.  My good college friend, Marc, and I have a recent obsession with biochar, a stable form of carbon, converted from biological sources.  In our case, we are interested in the conversion of <ahem> "poo", specifically the sludge that exits the municipal waste water treatment plant.  The thinking is that the process of making charcoal from common waste streams might be a way to a) generate energy, b) produce a beneficial soil amendment, and c) provide a way to sequester carbon in the soil.  Right now, the going rate for biochar is between $100 and $1000 per ton.  In the fledgling carbon markets, a metric ton of CO2 will cost you between $10 and $30.

Earlier in the summer, we took a tour of the Rochester Water Reclamation plant for a firsthand look at how the city processes its sludge to get a better sense of how viable it might be to process into biochar. After that, I was so excited, I decided to try to make some biochar myself.  Luckily, YouTube is a goldmine of info for do-it-yourselfers, so I basically copied someone's homemade pyrolytic biochar reactor, in this case, a so-called "top-lit updraft" or TLUD, made from paint cans and stove pipe from the hardware store. 

Water reclamation plant

And the first batch of charred wood pellets

For the next burn, I dragged the stove to St. Paul to give it a try with Marc.  Here we are for round 2 on a windy afternoon, trying to keep the smoke stack from blowing over.

Marc, examining the result of our second batch, only partially-charred batch this time.

 Bits and pieces of our growing collection of chemistry equipment, i.e. discarded kitchen implements.

For round 3, I enlisted the help of Sarah's cats, Felix and Oscar, and charred a handful of their... well, you get the idea.  Here is the result, converted to perfectly sterile lumps of charcoal.

Hidden Lake, North Cascades

Dan is in Seattle for a few days so on Saturday we went on a hike to the North Cascades, which is about 3 hours away.  Once we actually got there the hike was pretty intense! There was a narrow path that climbed up for 4.5 miles, for a total elevation change of about 3200 feet, with the high point at about 6900 feet above sea level.  In some places the trail died, in some cases we had to cross over some streams, and sometimes we even had to cross the mountain on some treacherously slushy snow.  The higher we went the more big rocky boulders we had to climb over, but we finally got to the "Hidden Lake" ridge in the late afternoon.  Then 4.5 miles back downhill - definitely not good on the knees - and 3 hours to get home again.  We were so tired by the end of it we could barely lift ourselves out of the car.

Starting fresh and happy

See that peak? We have to go somewhere around there

Those rocks up there are about a third of the way

View of Mt. Baker

 Definitely can't slip here

Looks like a hobbit shire

We thought we'd reached the ridge. Ha, no. 

Hidden Lake (seriously, it was hidden behind some boulders)

The Iranians