Life Update

Spring is here and all I want to do is clean. Seriously. Well, OK...and play outside. Part of spring cleaning is picking up all of the disparate pieces of my life and packaging them neatly into a nice, pocket-sized blog entry. I'm not really a "blogger," but this, I figure, is the easiest way to reach everyone at once.

First... I'm published! This winter, a colleague of mine, Wendy Wagner, and I published three articles in a fairly small, quarterly, backcountry skiing magazine called "Off-Piste." They have now been posted online in pdf format at http://www.offpistemag.com/themag/backissues.asp. The articles are "Demystifying ENSO" (Oct 2008 Issue), "An Idiot's Guide to Weather Station Data" (Dec 2008 Issue) and "Cloud Microphysics" (Jan 2009 Issue). We had to decline the 4th article since we were both swamped with work by springtime!

Which brings me to the next point... I just finished my Master's thesis!!! I'm turning it in Tuesday. The title is "Assessing the Sensitivity of Wasatch Snowfall to Temperature Variations." I present at a conference in Alberta next week, and my defense is the following week (29th). Mom, Dad, Nick and Elizabeth are coming out for it. Thanks so much, guys!

So...what happens next?? Ha. Good question. Short-term, I got a job fighting wildland fire for the summer. It's a Type II-Inital Attack handcrew based out of Salt Lake. Although it's a county crew, it's totally legit, and apparently is run more like a hotshot crew and has a really good reputation. So...I'm going to be digging fire line all summer :) from Arizona to Idaho and any other place that needs firefighters. I've already started beefing up my training for the crew. I'm the only female...! They keep a blog, so you can keep up with me and the guys this summer: www.ufawildland.blogspot.com. This is something I've always wanted to do, and what better time!

After that, I'll likely be working on a publication with my advisor and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of going on for a PhD or going into the working world...

Otherwise, the skiing and snowboarding ministry (SFC) that a couple friends and I run is going fabulously. We totally exploded this season and we have a really excited, dedicated and servant-hearted community of young adults.

I've got a random assortment of pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/LeighPender/. You'll notice that I have a few snowpack pictures, most of which you can ignore, unless you're a snow geek (like me). I got hired by the Utah Avalanche Center this year to be a backcountry observer (which is another fun update), and a picasa account is the easiest way to get pictures to them.

(As an aside: if you DO want to geek out on snow stuff, check out the "Monitor Avalanches" gallery where we intentionally set-off some slides. There's a couple of videos, too!--don't worry, Greg was attached to a rope when he was doing that. Mom and Dad, I PROMISE we're safe. This is an excellent and safe way to get a sense of what the snowpack is doing so that you don't get caught unawares and can send in some much needed info to the avalanche forecasters! :)

As always, my thoughts and prayers are with you all that are so dear to me but are so far away. Thanks for reading!