Still Playing Catch Up

The theme for this blog entry is "Playing Catch Up". On the one hand, I've been catching up with my own work for school since everything got crazy earlier in the month. On the other hand, Matt and I got to catch up with people we hadn't seen in a while.We've had visitors coming and going from our apartment for the past couple weeks. Sadly, my work and class schedule makes me a terrible host who isn't around much. But it was nice having visitors, none the less. Matt's parents were here Feb. 5th-12th. The O'Donnell clan did a lot of birding while I was at school, and we had several good meals together. Matt's mom is also almost always willing to play a board game in the evenings, and having three people tends to work out better than just Matt and me.


On Sunday, there was a major Southwestern reunion of geologists from Penn State. Lev and Fabia were in town from Phoenix. Dan was also here from DC, and was staying with us for a few days. We all met up with Mouse and Dave, and had a day of gallivanting through Albuquerque. We went to lunch where we all were exposed to New Mexican chili. Then we went to the zoo, but we went kind of late and didn't get to see everything. Lev and Fabia had to leave us around dinner time, but afterward the rest of us went to a local bar for trivia night.

Matt, Dan, and I went down to Socorro to visit with Mouse and Dave again on Tuesday evening. Dan brought all the minerals he had bought on his recent trip to the Tuscon Mineral Show, and proudly went through many of them with us. We also went out for dinner where we exposed Dan to green chilies again. I think his final verdict on New Mexican cuisine was that it was right at the threshold of spiciness that he could tolerate. My impression is that he is just as happy with generic American Tex Mex. Ah well. I still think New Mexican food in amazing, but you can't convert everyone.