Things I've been up to.
I'm still working for the census bureau, and deeply grateful that I'm no longer a substitute teacher. Our focus for the past month and a half has been on analyzing a series of areas that have been identified as hard-to-count, and formulating plans for how we'll address them during next year's enumeration. That's meant a welcome bit of analytical work for me--it's nice to be able to use my skills, but it's also taken a bit of diplomacy to reconcile my perceptions of how things should be done with those of my non-geographer colleagues.
On the other hand, I can't complain too much. A couple of weeks ago, the office sent me on a four-day roadtrip to check out a series of tracts in southeast Utah. I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, a free trip to the Canyon Country in August isn't quite as nice as, say, October, but so it goes. I spent most of my days doing "windshield surveys" of my tracts, but did sneak in a moonlight canyon walk outside Moab, and a sweltering mid-morining jaunt outside Escalante. I've also now managed to get the government to reiumburse me for ferry fare.
The Burr Trail from Lake Powell to Boulder is now my new most favoritest road ever. It's got everything: sweeping vistas of cliffs, mesas, and mountains, snaky bits that cross and recross washes as the redrock walls close in, precipitous switchbacks, and golden canyons drawing you toward the sunset. I only saw one other car the entire way.
That said, the Moki Dugway outside Mexican Hat is pretty cool, too.
I've taken to comparing the number of npr stations vs. the number of bible-thumper stations audible in a given place as a pretty good measure of the local political climate. (There was always a two-hour gap between leaving State College NPR and beginning to hear Pittsburgh...). NPR translators are actually a lot more prevalent in southern Utah than I'd thought.
Back home, I haven't done as much writing as I'd hoped, though I have gotten a bunch of reading done.
Found a very nice pub downtown that has an Irish session Monday nights. It's very chill---good either for hanging out, or for staking out a corner with a book, a pint, and some nice background music. On the other hand, it *does* have IRA propaganda all over the walls.
Also tasty (and absurdly cheap) Sudanese food (in Utah? Who knew?)
On the other hand, I can't complain too much. A couple of weeks ago, the office sent me on a four-day roadtrip to check out a series of tracts in southeast Utah. I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, a free trip to the Canyon Country in August isn't quite as nice as, say, October, but so it goes. I spent most of my days doing "windshield surveys" of my tracts, but did sneak in a moonlight canyon walk outside Moab, and a sweltering mid-morining jaunt outside Escalante. I've also now managed to get the government to reiumburse me for ferry fare.
The Burr Trail from Lake Powell to Boulder is now my new most favoritest road ever. It's got everything: sweeping vistas of cliffs, mesas, and mountains, snaky bits that cross and recross washes as the redrock walls close in, precipitous switchbacks, and golden canyons drawing you toward the sunset. I only saw one other car the entire way.
That said, the Moki Dugway outside Mexican Hat is pretty cool, too.
I've taken to comparing the number of npr stations vs. the number of bible-thumper stations audible in a given place as a pretty good measure of the local political climate. (There was always a two-hour gap between leaving State College NPR and beginning to hear Pittsburgh...). NPR translators are actually a lot more prevalent in southern Utah than I'd thought.
Back home, I haven't done as much writing as I'd hoped, though I have gotten a bunch of reading done.
Found a very nice pub downtown that has an Irish session Monday nights. It's very chill---good either for hanging out, or for staking out a corner with a book, a pint, and some nice background music. On the other hand, it *does* have IRA propaganda all over the walls.
Also tasty (and absurdly cheap) Sudanese food (in Utah? Who knew?)