Snow

Buffalo is supposed to get a significant amount of snow tomorrow. A lot of schools pre-emptively closed, including UB. I can't say that I mind because I haven't had a snow day since high school. I also have a considerable amount of stuff to catch up on. Other than the weather, things are going well here. Mike is working at Luvata, a copper/brass production company. He is currently a lab tech but hopes to learn more with time and move up. He is crazy, as usually, and generally rides his bike to work. He probably won't tomorrow. He is thinking about going back to school, but hasn't decided yet.
As for me, I got back from 3 weeks of field work in Chile on 24 January. Talk about epic travels. Getting from our field area to Buffalo took 2 days: overnight bus ride, 8 hour flight to Miami, customs, waiting, 3 hour flight to LaGuardia, waiting, 1.5 hour flight to Toronto, waiting, 2 hour drive to Buffalo. At the US/Canada border, our van was x-rayed because we brought samples back. I've never experienced that before. I've just been trying to catch up since getting back. I am a grader for the large intro geology class. That means I get to read ~300 homework assignments every week. Oddly enough, this is better than interacting with students right now. I'm not teaching a lab, which is good because I need my day time hours to commit toward two classes I am taking and moving forward with my research. The research...ugh. It has been off and on because of very limited funding. Only when I got the fellowship with the Smithsonian last summer was I able to collect the data I need to test my hypothesis. It turns out I need to collect more precise data with a more expensive instrument. Go figure. My friends and I are considering playing the lottery to fund our advanced degrees :P. While I was very lucky to go back to the field and collect more sample and generally visit an awesome country, I have no money to do the analysis at this point. Any ideas? Who wants to do a bake sale?
As you know, my paternal grandfather died about two weeks ago. I was lucky to see him at the wedding. I was also very fortunate to meet an entire branch of family that I only knew of vaguely. The tough part will be to develop meaningful relationships with them. I have a hard time with that, even with people I keep in relatively good touch with.
By the way, this is a great idea!