Vortex Streets

I found this moth-eaten cashmere sweater at Goodwill (a thrift store). It was too nice to trash so I decided to refashion it with an asymmetric scarf collar a la Norah's Cabled Cardigan from the Fall 2006 Issue of Vogue Knitting.  Some may recognize the cabled panel as the center panel for the Vortex Street Pullover in Norah Gaughan's book, Knitting Nature.

I plan to cut off the ribbed portions and hem up the bottom and sleeves. Of course, a portion of the center front and the V-neck ribbing will be trimmed away, but I may need to add some clear elastic to stabilize the back neck.

A little bit of darning will be required. I don't have the right color wool and may tea-dye the ecru wools auditioning in the above photograph.

While I was at it, I darned the 20 year old fuchsia wool sweater below, in holey state. I didn't have any wool the right color, so I took one ply of Encore (100% acrylic, sacrilege!) and darned away. You can't tell from a galloping horse.

I became melancholy while repairing this sweater because my stepmother bought it for me when I was in college. She used to moonlight as a bookkeeper for several Benetton stores. When stuff I might like was about to be marked down, she would sometimes set it aside and buy it with her employee discount.

It was supposed to be a one day a week job, which it was initially. Math and bookkeeping was not the store owner's forte and he had given her the books in quite a state. After she straightened out the mess she inherited, it took her only 3 hours a month to maintain the books. When the owner found out, he wasn't miffed at all. He told her that she was saving him more than one day a week so she could keep the same pay and leave whenever she was done.

The part that makes me cry is that she was an artist that worked as a bookkeeper. She would get back to her painting "someday", in retirement. Her someday never came. She died of complications of cancer when she was 60.

Aside about Vortex Streets

One of the things I love about my job is walking into lab in the morning to see that morning's satellite overpass. In Los Angeles, the most recent overpass often flew over Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Baja California. When the cloud deck and wind speed and direction are just right, we see a double von Karman vortex street on the lee side of Guadalupe Island.

This image of a vortex street near Guadalupe island (as does the next two after it) comes courtesy of Earth Science World Image Bank. Go visit their site for more images of Vortex Streets.

Vortex streets form near the Canary islands off the coast of Africa.

And near the Kuril islands.


NASA's visible earth site also has vortex street imagery.


Don't miss the CIMSS Satellite Blog's entry about vortex streets near Guadalupe island. Follow this link and watch the GOES imagery vortex street video!

Space.com on von Karman Vortex Streets

Beware of the off-ramp

WaPost published After a Baby, Full Time or Part? It is subtitled, When Family and Career Collide, Working Mothers Struggle With Their Answers. Fathers, presumably, experience no such conflict.

I say, beware of the off-ramp. How do you know you will find an on-ramp when you are ready? In science, there is no on-ramp. Well, NSF (National Science Foundation) ran a one-time call for proposals for women who experienced career hardship due to family obligations. 7 years ago. I haven't seen anything else since. Until I see on-going programs with all the science funding agencies, until I see national labs allowing part-timers to act as P-Is (principal investigators) of projects, I would warn women to steer clear of the off-ramps. Don't even mention conflicted feelings about leaving your child.

Doubtful Sound Trip Pix

Cloud over at Wandering Scientist says that the thing she misses the most about pre-Pumpkin days is the annual international trip she and her hubby usually took. Iris was born in November 2000. In October 2003, we spent 3 weeks in Australia. In October 2005, we spent 3 weeks in France and Italy. In December 2007-January 2008, we spent 3 weeks in New Zealand. Do you notice a pattern?

She laments that it is difficult to save up vacation days when they are also used for taking care of ill children. That is very true, but we found that it is possible to take a no pay (unpaid leave) day here and there to take care of ill children or for a long weekend trip. At my workplace, 10 days (2 weeks!) of no pay a year are allowed without a hassle. If you document that you are taking care of a sick family member, they will often allow even more days of no pay. (I just love the family leave act and California labor law.) Add that to the 3-4 weeks of paid vacation, and it is possible for us to go on a long trip every other year.

Check with your HR department and your manager for the rules in your workplace. I am fortunate to have a manager that understands my urgency to travel. In our discussion of my diagnosis and the minor accommodations that I need to continue working, he was smart enough to realize that I can't take it for granted that I will be able to travel "someday" (in retirement). Truthfully, none of us should take it for granted that we will live till "someday".

That takes care of time. As for money, we lived on graduate student and postdoc salaries for so long, we really spend very little money outside of housing, childcare and medical expenses. (And my medical expenses have gone down dramatically in recent years. Yay!)

I always wanted to kayak in a fjord and Mark always wanted to visit New Zealand. Here we are, cruising in Doubtful Sound, in New Zealand's Fjordland.

We took an overnight cruise with Real Journeys that involved taking a catamaran across a lake, then a bus ride to the port where we embarked on the cruise ship.

Right after we were shown to our rooms and given an orientation aboard the ship, they got out the kayaks. There were 30 kayaks and about 100 passengers on board. 28 of them were with the Tandems East tour. Competition for the kayaks was fierce and we weren't fast enough to make the first group. They kayaked into the sound during slack tide, with the wind at their backs.

After about an hour, the first kayakers returned to the ship and the second group set out in the reverse direction. (The ship stayed behind the kayakers, like a sag wagon.) They tied Iris' kayak to the back of Mark's. They looked so adorable, in their matching yellow kayaks--a baby duck swimming after her father. I went separately in a red kayak. I didn't have my camera handy (not waterproof) so here's a picture from the Tandems East website.

After kayaking and a hot shower, we went back up on the observation deck to see the seals at the mouth of Doubtful Sound.

The water got really choppy here. I wonder if this qualifies as a cataract?

Sailing back into the sound, the captain unfurled the three sails.

After dinner, a powerboat boat came up and docked at the rear of our ship. The cook traded a few slices of leftover cheesecake with a fisherman for a large crayfish, caught in one of the pots dotting the sound. (The cook says lobsters and crayfish differ in the size of their claws. Doubtful Sound has only crayfish.)

I was glad we splurged for the overnight cruise. We were the only boat that spent the night on the sound. Sunset was amazingly peaceful.

As was the sunrise.

Another waterfall. Ho-hum. We lost count of how many we saw. Notice that the water is so fresh, that the vegetation grows right down to the water line. Most of the world's fjords contain brackish water with a dead zone above the water line due to the salt.

Then it was time for brunch and the crayfish and the reverse bus and catamaran ride back to Te Anau.

Links:
I previously posted Multimedia of Milford Sound, including the tour bus that caught fire and exploded.

When I Phinally Phinished my thesis, we took a 3.5 week trip to Argentina and Chile with short excursions into Uraguay, Paraguay and Brazil. 1997 was a strong El Nino year with the rainfall to prove it. ;-) We spent 3 days in Puerto Varas and never caught a glimpse of Osorno volcano. Don't miss Yarn Crawl's pictures of Osorno. Actually, read the whole vacation series. It sounds like they had a great trip.

Asides:
Despite its name, Doubtful Sound is a fjord, not a sound.

Iris is so devilishly clever. While Mark paddled furiously, she sat back and enjoyed the scenery. When he asked her if she was paddling, she would splash a few strokes and report in the affirmative. He asked her if it was tiring. She replied that it was sooo exhausting. I was so amused, I kept her secret until now.