I’m sure most people have heard about the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck yesterday in the Indian Ocean. Upwards of 12,000 dead at the moment, mainly from tsunamis. I’ve been reading news reports throughout the day and this is only getting worse. I donated some money to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, who are appealing for roughly 6.5 million dollars to assist victims of the earthquake. Definitely donate if you get a chance.

Second order of news relates to the asteroid 2004 MN4 that was discovered this summer. Based on observations carried out over the past 6 months, astronomers concluded that there was a small probability of impact with Earth when it passed by in 2029. Initially estimates placed this at a 1/233 chance of happening. Further observations on Thursday required astronomers to revise their estimates to a 1/63 chance of impact and observations on Friday brought that number down to a 1/45 chance! That is still a 98% probability of it completely missing earth, but is still “low” enough to warrant quite a bit of interest. It will be interesting to see what further observations conclude in the next week.

However, using the Earth Impact Effects Calculator that was created by researchers at the University of Arizona, one can plug in some info based on what we know about this asteroid. While this asteroid is dangerous on a regional scale, it isn’t big enough to create global extinctions. That is somewhat reasssuring, though if 2004 MN4 were to hit, it would still leave a crater nearly 3 miles in diameter.

Third order of news: I saw The Phantom of the Opera tonight with my sister, aunt, cousin and my parents. While I haven’t seen the play yet (due to circumstances not working out every time it’s in town), I decided to go anyway! The movie was absolutely phenomenal! At the moment, it probably ranks as one of my favorite movies of all time. If you have any interest in the musical, check this thing out.

Lastly, in a bit of a geek fest earlier today (and taking time out from reading earthquake news), I coded up a neat little search page with the help of this website. I also added a search box. This allows you to search for any sort of subject matter in my blog and it will bring up a list of all posts that contain that word or phrase. Pretty nifty in my opinion. For example: How many posts do I talk about guitars? 🙂 Just a small example of what’s possible.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great weekend whether they celebrate Christmas or not. It was definitely great to see a lot of family that I haven’t seen in awhile. Plus… my reunion with pumpkin pie!

Papers turned in! That means that this semester is officially over.

Now it’s time to begin packing in earnest. It looks like I’ll be able to leave tonight at some point.

Point Lobos State Reserve – Wave hitting rocks at Whaler’s Cove. Dec. 18, 2004.

So allow me to setup this story:

Because of busting my ankle a few months ago, I missed an important field trip for one of my classes. My professor believed it was prudent that I should go and make it up. The free time I would have to make it up before I planned to head home was this weekend. The location? Point Lobos State Reserve, just south of Monterey, which is roughly 2 hours away.

I tell my roommate Bre about this last week and she tells me about a friend of hers that lives in Monterey. She said she’d go down with me on Friday night, and we could stay at her friend’s place. Excellent! That means I get to wake up on Saturday, drive about 15 minutes to check out all the geology I need to see and head home!

It turns out, the last substantial meal I had eaten was right before we left our house to drive down there. Once in Monterey, we went out for a few drinks with some of her friends and then came home. At about 9AM on Saturday, I woke up, packed everything up and hit the road! Bre was going to hitch a ride back with her friend that afternoon. That worked out fine, since I don’t think she’d want to tag along while I looked at rocks for a few hours.

I did notice that I was quite hungry and figured I’d just grab a bite to eat at some food place on the way there. The problem was that I didn’t find any food places! Oh well. Time for some geology! After spending roughly 3 and a half hours there (Beautiful place! More on that later!), I decided to head back towards San Francisco. The only problem? How do I get home? I didn’t feel like spending the whole day driving up highway 1, which winds all over the place. So I took the first major highway I saw that headed east. I figured it would eventually have to cross the 101. Besides, I’ve never been to Salinas, time to check it out! (Unbeknownst to me at the time, Highway 101 crosses right through Salinas. Score!)

The whole time I’m driving, I start to realize just how hunry I am. It’s now about 3pm, and I hadn’t eaten anything in nearly 15 hours! Some of you might be wondering how I’m still alive by this point.

I started thinking about my favorite place to eat in the world: In ‘N Out! Unfortunately, the closest one I was aware of was in San Francisco. No problem! I’d just hold out for another 2 hours or so and eat there. It would be like a celebration of sorts!

Finally, the highway I am taking winds through Salinas. I was passing all sorts of fast food restaraunts, but nothing tickled my fancy. It was all about In ‘N Out. I briefly wondered if Salinas had an In ‘N Out, but figured that they were way to cool for this city. Driving a little further, I came upon a sign that pointed to an entrance for highway 101! Excellent! I figured that I should get gas before I leave though.

As I am filling the car up with gas, I take a second to lean back, relax and take in the scenery. I look up to find that right across the street, there was an In ‘N Out burger! I nearly came to tears! It was like it was meant to be. It is for that reason alone that I now know for a fact that God exists. Oh yes!

Anyway, Point Lobos was a pretty awesome place. While hiking on a trail and looking down at my map, I turn a corner to stumble across a young deer munching on some grass. That was pretty awesome to see. I had passed up some parents hiking with their kids a few minutes earlier. So I just sat down and waited for them to catch up, that way they could see the deer as well. I have to say that definitely made my day! Awesome.

I have one last thing to do for school before I can head home. We collected 36 minerals this semester in out mineralogy class, and we have to write out some detailed information on each mineral that we collected. Not too difficult, but quite time consuming. As soon as that is done, I plan to drive back down to Southern California. The current plan looks like I may be driving down sometime tomorrow evening/night. Depending on how I feel though, I might delay it one more day and drive down on Tuesday morning.

I’m coming back up around January 13th I believe (I was leaning towards the 10th, but it looks like I have an orthodontist appointment to do on the 12th. Doh!). School doesn’t start for us until January 31, so that leaves a whole lot of time to do something. I was personally contemplating a road trip to check out Crater Lake (if we can get up there? It might involve snow showing… hmm) and then perhaps driving up into southern Washington to check out Mt. Saint Helens! Yes, a road trip of geology/volcanology. It really will depend on weather conditions though. Evidentially, my friend Phil was having a similiar plan for a road trip in January and wants to drive up to Seattle! We will definitely have to collaborate.

Anyway, time to go write up a few more minerals before going to bed. All most there, I just need to sprint to the finish!

2 more weeks of school left, 1 of which is finals. However, I only have 2 finals in 1 class (mineralogy), so that eliminates a lot of stress. This is a good thing since this stress is again added back because this next week is another insane week! It’s pointless to even describe it at this point. But I’ve lived through the rest of this semester, no reason why I won’t live through this one…

In other interesting news, I found out something extraordinarily funny and somewhat depressing at the same time. For example, navigate to Google and enter the following phrase: horrible faces. Then notice the first link. Click on it if you wish, for it takes you to a rather unflattering picture of my sister and I! It’s actually pretty funny that we’re ranked number 1 on Google for such a generic term. Who knows how long that will work for, since they update their index fairly often. For posterity:

Anyway, it looks like I have a whole weekend of writing papers and studying ahead of me (and I’m not even procrastinating!)