First off, I got to visit a state I'd never been to: Arizona. I had never seen the Southwest, really, other than a brief stop outside of Vegas, so I was stoked. Tom's girlfriend Jessi had clandestinely invited some of Tom's best friends down to celebrate his birthday, and we kept our mouths carefully shut about the plan. The whole gang flew in to Tucson:
We arrived about an hour ahead of the birthday boy, hid in the laundry closet (a little cramped!) and jumped out right in his face when he walked in the door. I swear, I have never before seen a man so close to a heart attack, and the look on his face was priceless. He literally reeled with shock for half an hour afterwards, and it took a number of stiff drinks before reality finally set in. Totally worth the effort. We then proceeded to the Dragoon Mountains and Cochise Stronghold to go climbing and partying for the weekend. We did pretty okay with the drinking, but our plans for climbing somehow offended the ghost of Chief Cochise:
Seeing the cholla cactus and yucca palms covered in two inches of snow was particularly surreal in light of the fact that the reknowned Western town of Tombstone was not two miles away - in other words, we were in the middle of a bone-dry desert. So, we retreated back to town and sought out friendlier climes for the remainder of the trip:
On another climbing note, I finally visited the nearby and world-famous-in-America Eldorado Canyon. It's got thousands of routes, and is quite warm in winter, but I was slightly underwhelmed by the experience. The routes are good, no doubt, but it's definitely not my type of climbing (balancy, runout) and the rock is on the loose side. Nice-looking spot, though:
This winter I've also had the privilege and pleasure (which I "treasure without measure", as Gilbert and Sullivan put it) to see my friends Corey and Emily get married. This was my second court-house wedding, and substantially less formal than the first one: we barely made it there before closing time! I got to sign the papers as a witness, though, and I'll be damned if the practically-minded couple didn't look just a little dazed, confused and happy afterwards. We then proceeded to have a hell of a wedding party, complete with live lobsters, rivers of champagne, $15 cigars and a fantastic cake. There are pictures somewhere, but I'm fairly sure that they're better left unpublished.
And while we're on a happy note, I'm pleased to announce that there's finally a peer-reviewed paper out with my name on it. Since the only result of getting a PhD - other than a piece of paper and a stupid hat - is a publication record of some kind, this was a Pretty Big Deal for me. It can be seen in its full and incomprehensible glory at the BMC Genomics journal, although I suspect you'd have to pay money to read the whole thing. While I'm bragging, I'll mention that we had the "Most Viewed" title in that journal for a couple of weeks. Hopefully it wasn't solely the result of me looking at it over and over...
Finally, I leave you with the European and American views of their counterparts across the Atlantic:
