Better living the Turducken way

Greetings from Seattle! Well, Federal Way, if you want to get technical. Here are some links that have nothing at all to do with Seattle or vacation.

• Check your wild rice
  
• The importance of building exercise into your lifestyle
  
• How to concentrate

Hiking Fiery Gizzard

Today we went for a classic Tennessee hike to Fiery Gizzard. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful hikes the state. I've seen many pretty hikes in Tennessee, but few that I would describe as breath-taking or beautiful. But this hike lived up to all the hype. Well, it did at first, anyway, and I'm sure the second half is nice when it's not pouring down rain.

The hike is close to 10 miles. It starts by following the Grundy Day Loop for .7 miles. As the day loop reaches a tangent with Fiery Gizzard Creek, we turned off onto the Fiery Gizzard Trail. The trail then follows the creek, which is at the bottom of a gorge. Now it was an incredibly humid day, and we were soaked quickly; the weather and the scenery were reminiscent of the Olympic Peninsula, except hotter. But the hemlock trees and the creek, which is just lousy with waterfalls, made up for the weather.

Eventually we began to ascend out of the creek, and at that point it rained briefly. Luckily it stopped again while we were making the arduous hike out - the first 4.4 miles of trail lose and gain 1800 feet. We finally reached Raven Point and rested for a while. Just as we left, it started raining again. It never really stopped the rest of the hike. It was hot enough that any kind of rain gear left you as wet as the rain would have made you, except with sweat. Luckily this meant no one was in danger of being chilled. From Raven Point, we turned around to return on the Dog Hole trail. (Fiery Gizzard keeps going for a total of 13 miles.) Dog Hole follows the rim of the gorge and is probably at its best in winter when the view is not obscured by leaves. As it was, it was mostly just wet. Eventually Dog Hole rejoins Fiery Gizzard for .8 miles, and we retraced our steps on the loop. Even I, with my completeness fetish, didn't argue for finishing the loop, which would be 1.3 miles instead of .7. We did stop at the last waterfall for one of us to take a dip, but I didn't really want to be any wetter. The hike ended with a whimper as we changed into dry clothes, only to feel just as wet as ever from all the humidity.

Fiery Gizzard is definitely a hike that would be worth doing again, perhaps in different seasons, or doing end-to-end with a shuttle.

What goes on

Although classes don't start for another month, the new PhD students are beginning to arrive. I ran into one the other day at the cafe outside the library; she was on campus to meet with the faculty members she will be working with. Other new students and faculty members are in various states of here-ness - some are in Nashville but not on campus, others have moved but are on vacation, and others are here but in other buildings where I am unlikely to run into them.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking down to our comprehensive exams - they begin August 15 at 9 a.m. and last for three days. At this point I just want to have the exams behind me instead of circling overhead like an albatross. I'm also working on an AERA proposal, getting a journal submission out, and post-PPI tasks. This isn't the most exciting stuff to read about, I'm sure.

Nice day for a sendoff

LPO & Ying's parents
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

Our friend Y, who defended a few months ago, is leaving town this week for a great job in institutional research. We had a send-off for her today at the Shutes Branch recreation area on Old Hickory Lake. The weather was perfect - not too humid and with a nice breeze. The only hitch was that 440 got backed up, and quite a few guests arrived much later than they intended.

Afterwards, I scrapped my plan of going to the gym since it was so nice out. Instead, I looked at the map and decided that since the Percy Priest dam was nearby, I'd go take a look at it.

I've been to several of the recreation areas created around the lake but never seen the dam itself. I discovered that the Stones River Greenway starts at the dam. The other end of the greenway will connect to the Shelby Bottoms Greenway after the connecting bridge is finished.

Desktime

This week I've been getting back into a research groove again - I have to in order for this project to be proposal-ready by the end of the month. I'm missing sharing an office with other PhD students, now. I find it helpful to bounce ideas off of other people in order to think them through. Of course, this is only helpful for me and not dreadful for them if they are doing similar things themselves; my current officemates are terrific, no question, but they don't do research. I miss being able to shout over the wall, "Hey, what do you think about differences-in-differences?" These days I have to walk over to another building to do that. It's likely that in the fall some of these folks won't even be on campus at all, what with not having desks at school.

And I'm not showing up at people's houses to discuss regression.