Getting settled into the new house. Just bough a new Honda CR-V too. Here are some pix as we head up to spend Christmas in Breckenridge with the Calvins.

• The Comfortable Runabout Vehicle
  
• And again!
  
• Our two-car garage
  
• The Lang Christmas tree
  
• Our new Creche set
  
• Sophie the Wonder Cow
  

We've moved! Here are some pics from the last couple days.

• Our first load of laundry!
  
• Ashley's double ovens
  
• The kitties discover the place
  
• And quickly run for cover - Minette
  
• Pewter and Sunshine
  
• Sunrise from our new place
  
• Entertainment center is installed
  
• Kitchen coming together
  
• Office set up
  
• Living room sort of put together
  
• Ashley on our new bed with our new quilt!
  
• Wreath already on our door
  
• Our new table for the entryway
  

Pictures from our walkthrough yesterday. It's all done! We close tomorrow.

• House Front
  
• Powder
  
• Kitchen
  
• Master Bath
  
• Entryway
  

Thanksgiving was great! We got to see my parents and brother JR and his family, along with our friends Rob and Ali. Pictures from the trip are below. After we got back we checked on the house, which is pretty much done. They put in our fencing and added a few finishing touches to the interior. Our walkthrough is tomorrow. Not only that, but it looks like we may get a 2004 Honda CR-V EX very soon. Was able to get a great Internet/Sam's Club price through a dealership near Denver, despite the fact that it is a very hot car right now. Will buy sometime after we close on the house.

• Thanksgiving dinner
  
• Another view
  
• Frank
  
• Bette Jo
  
• Kiwi the cat - from our visit with Rob and Ali
  
• She's into ladders!
  
• Ali and Ashley on Rob and Ali's new couch - We helped them move it in!
  
• Other half of couch
  
• Rob and Ali on the couch
  
• Rob and Ashley
  
• All four of us
  
• Buck in my parent's yard
  
• Laying down on the job
  
• Ashley by my parent's new "gazebo"
  
• Inside the gazebo
  
• Gavin strikes a pose - from our visit with JR and Madonna
  
• Theo
  
• Gavin
  
• Madeleine
  
• Spinning lights
  

Have a happy Thanksgiving! We are going to visit my parents and our friends Rob and Ali Cleymaet over the holiday. We return on 1 December. On 3 December we have our house orientation, and on 5 December our closing. Going to be a busy few weeks!

We snuck in and got some more house pictures. I apologize in advance for the poor quality. Carpet is going in. Appliances, lighting, and other flooring are in, along with the painted pickets in the railings. House will probably be pretty well locked up from now on, so likely no more indoor pix until our orientation on 3 December. Ashley meets with an interior designer tomorrow to get some decorating ideas.

• Archway to dining room
  
• Stairway
  
• Laundry
  
• Study
  
• Family Room
  
• Kitchen
  
• Kitchen
  
• Family Room
  
• Upstairs Loft
  
• Laundry
  
• Powder
  
• Stairway
  
• Dining room
  
• Fridge
  
• Kitchen sink
  
• Double ovens
  
• Fireplace
  
• Kitchen
  
• Master bath
  
• Main bath
  

Here is the latest round of pictures. We went to the Breck house last weekend, so there's one pic from that. The rest are of our new house. Ashley informs me that as of today the interior is pretty much done except for the carpet. Things are closing in fast!

• Breck House - Just a bit of snow
  
• House on the 15th
  
• On the 18th - Fully painted except for door
  
• Kitchen on the 18th - Linoleum in
  
• Kitchen - Sink too
  

House pics from today. They have done a lot of interior work, from putting in cabinets and countertops to tiling and bathtub installation. They've even put in the insulation in the basement. Enjoy!

• Kitchen
  
• Fireplace
  
• Banister
  
• Den Closet
  
• Powder
  
• Laundry
  
• Entryway Tile
  
• Upstairs Hallway
  
• Main Bath
  
• Main Shower
  
• Master Tub
  
• Master Bath
  
• Master Shower
  
• Master Doors
  
• Basement
  

Here are pictures of my recent trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Besides attending a meeting, I also got to hang out at a great hotel with its own beach, and help them release baby sea turtles!

• View from my hotel room
  
• Front of my tower
  
• View of Club Tower and beach
  
• More beach
  
• Muchas tortugas
  
• !Vaya con Dios, Tortuguita!
  
• La tortuga corrio muy rapidamente.
  
• View of part of Puerto Vallarta
  
• Palms and ocean
  

More house pictures, taken Saturday. Place is locked up now, and we have to take pictures from the outside. Interior painting is done, and they are adding floor molding, doors, and trim.

• Front
  
• Living Room and Dining Room
  
• Laundry Room - Now with shelves!
  
• Den
  
• Kitchen
  
• Family Room
  

House pictures from yesterday. Got our first snow (and ice storm!) of the year, and our house continues on track. Indoor texturing and the front and back porches/landings are done!

• Front - Porch is in
  
• Entryway
  
• Looking toward dining room
  
• Stairway from outside
  
• Family room
  
• Back landing
  
• Coiffered ceiling in dining room
  
• Texture up close
  
• Front porch
  
• Back of house
  

House pictures from last Friday, when my parents were in town. Dry walling continued, with them at the taping and mudding stage at that point. We close on Dec. 5!

• Front
  
• Living room
  
• Kitchen
  
• Master
  
• Third bedroom
  

House pictures from today. They started the dry wall, and have made great progress. We should get a closing date very soon here.

• Front
  
• Porch
  
• Front walkway
  
• Living room
  
• Kitchen nook
  
• Loft from below
  
• Front entryway
  
• Master bedroom
  
• Loft
  
• Neighbors - One is getting framed, the other their foundation
  

More house pix, from Saturday. Electrical and plumbing look pretty close to being done. Next up will be insulation and drywall, we believe.

• House front
  
• Outside meter box
  
• Front entryway - Getting ready to put in porch and walkway
  
• Main bath tub in
  
• Water heater in
  
• Circuit breaker box
  

Well, the house keeps being built. Here are some pix as of Wednesday. We just got a 1% discount on total purchase price because I work for CSU!

• Ashley in front
  
• Another front view - Brick and roof in
  
• Exterior faucets added
  
• Neighbor house foundation in and backfilled - They have a walkout basement
  
• Interior wiring going in
  
• More wiring
  
• Plumbing going in too - Laundry room
  
• Furnace is in
  
• Upstairs master shower going in
  

More house pics. Interior design items have been chosen and the final price determined. Wiring should commence next week and we should have a closing date for late November/early December soon. All pictures were taken yesterday. Our garage door was added as of today.

• Master bath and powder faucets
  
• Main bath faucets
  
• Flooring and laminate
  
  
  
  • Left - Laundry and powder; Middle - Main and master baths; Right - Kitchen
    
  
  
• Carpet and entryway tile - Plus laminate for upstairs hallway cabinets
  
• House front - Windows and siding in
  
• More house front - Not painted yet
  
• Interior archways are framed
  
• Back of house
  
• Family room fireplace is in
  
• Other side of house back
  
• Neighbor house going in - Garage on our side, so close together there!
  
• Brick for garage front - A bit of a purplish hue!
  

More house pics. By now it is pretty much framed inside and out, and siding and ducting are being placed. Our neighbors have closed on their house and moved in. We've met them and they are quite friendly, close to our age with two Rottweilers and a cat, no kids. The other neighbor's house has started, with their initial hole dug out. Another house on our block was started this week as well. Some miscellaneous cat pix in here too.

• House on 9/23 - Pic 1
  
• House on 9/23 - Pic 2
  
• House on 9/23 - Pic 3
  
• House on 9/23 - Pic 4
  
• Minette is hiding ...
  
• Can you spot her?
  
• Sunshine
  
• Getting the brush
  
• Feels so good!
  
• House on 9/26 - They move fast! - rest are from 9/26 too
  
• Another front view
  
• Ducts are starting to go in - garage
  
• Ashley climbs our stairs
  
• Ashley in the master bedroom
  
• Ashley in the loft
  
• In the basement
  
• Ashley looking out our one finished window
  
• View from the formal living room
  
• Back view - siding is starting!
  
• Other back view
  
• House at sunset
  
• Sunset
  

Here are some new photos, some of Hannah Port and her dog Esther during their visit here, plus house photos from last Friday. Framing is proceeding rapidly, and Ashley and I meet with the design center person on Tuesday to pick out interior design stuff like carpet. Hannah is working at a Fort Collins practice for a couple weeks. She stayed with us for a few days, and now is staying with others. She may stay with us again sometime next week before returning to her veterinary internship in New Mexico.

• Ashley and Hannah by "White Trash Lake"
  
• Esther fetches
  
• Esther returning with her prey
  
• Esther at attention
  
• Esther's all wet!
  
• Esther retrieves another drowning stick
  
• Esther gets the shakes
  
• Minette rests on our new ottoman-style stool
  
• House from the NW
  
• From the front
  
• Another view of our front bay window
  
• Garage and driveway concrete is in
  
• From the east side
  
• Looking inside the house
  
• Basement is poured as well
  
• Ashley in her kitchen pantry
  
• Looking out the family room window at Horsetooth
  

Lot is graded, and foundation is backfilled. Our yards will be a lot bigger than previously thought. They start framing on Monday!

• Pic 1
  
• Pic 2
  
• Pic 3
  
• Pic 4
  

More house pictures, as the basement walls go up. These were taken last weekend.

• Pic 1
  
• Pic 2
  
• Pic 3
  
• Pic 4
  

Ground has been broken on our house! The hole for the basement was dug, and they started putting in the concrete for the basement. So things are moving along! Looks like our garage will be on the right as you look at the house. Our backyard definitely will be shallow, but our side yards will be decent size, judging from how the hole was dug. We think they started last Thursday, but we have some pictures from Friday. Enjoy!

• Pic 1
  
• Pic 2
  
• Pic 3
  
• Pic 4
  

I've added two new sets of pictures to our home page. One set is from my cousin Mary's wedding in Minnesota, and the second is from my recent conference trip to Seattle. They are listed toward the top of the pictures links. Things are going well on the house front. We've signed the contract and filled out the loan forms. Now they just gotta start building!

Ashley and I are going to build a new house! Read all about it here. Pictures from my cousin Mary's wedding will be posted later this weekend. Take care!

Finally got the last two rolls from the underwater cameras developed, so we've added 30 new pictures from the Great Barrier Reef snorkeling adventure to the Australia and New Zealand picture page. Ashley started her new vet job after we returned from our trip, and is enjoying it so far. She is commuting to Boulder for the summer, and will move to a Fort Collins clinic in a couple months. We're starting the house-buying process, much to Ashley's delight! We spent the 4th in Brush, Colorado, with the Browns, Kay, and Tom and Amy Murphy (plus their kids). Was a lot of fun! Brush, which is out on the eastern plains, has one of the better 4th of July celebrations around, with a big parade, a rodeo, and some great fireworks. We were so close to the fireworks that it shook our bodies!

Well, Ashley and I returned from Australia and New Zealand last week, and I finally was able to post all of our pictures. You can find the picture page, along with some description of what we did, here. The trip was fabulous, and we got to see and do quite a lot. So head on over and enjoy the pictures!

Well, Ashley's brother Mat was married last weekend in Las Vegas. You can see pictures by following this link. Was a fun time catching up with friends and family, as well as gambling and seeing the Vegas sites! Also added a few pictures courtesy of Barbara Calvin to Ashley's graduation pictures. We leave tomorrow for Australia and New Zealand, so this site won't be updated until mid-to-late June, but I promise to get pictures from the trip up right after that!

Ashley graduated from Tufts Veterinary School last Sunday. Ashley's parents and cousins, as well as my parents and Uncle John and Aunt Rosemary Lang, were all able to attend. Pictures from the festivities can be found on our main web site, just follow this link. We leave for Las Vegas and Ashley's brother's wedding this Friday. Then we're headed to Australia the first weekend in June, for a two week vacation with Ashley's parents. The traveling never stops!

Ashley left for Massachusetts today. She is very ready to graduate but hasn't resolved her job hunt yet, though she may do so soon. Stay tuned. I follow her out to MA on Thursday. Her parents and cousins and my parents will all be there. Should be quite the party!

On Thursday I give a seminar on my Nepal research to the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science. Ashley is nearing the end of her rotation schedule, with only two weeks left to go! After that, graduation is on 18 May and her brother, Mat, gets married the following weekend in Las Vegas. We'll be staying at the Bellagio for that event!

Been a while, sorry about that ... links to some interesting recent satellite photos of Baghdad can be found here. Resolution is as good as 1 meter and the oil fire smoke plumes and some bomb damage can be seen clearly. Ashley is back in town for the time being. She is studying for the vet board exam as well as interviewing at several different practices along the Front Range. Me, I'm just cruisin' along at work. :)

Well, the weather service didn't lie. We got slammed by the biggest snowfall in recent history. Bigger than the October 1997 blizzard, probably. Storm totals as of this morning can be found here. Winter Park got 5 feet! But you can't get there because Berthoud Pass is closed. Heh. Breckenridge got about 2 feet, with resorts further west getting less. Classic upslope snowstorm pattern, with the foothill regions getting really slammed. (Check out the 74 inches in Clear Creek County!) They claim 28 inches in Fort Collins, and based on my survey outside the apartment this morning, I believe them. Plus we're due another 3-6 inches today. Have a look at some digital pix I just snapped:

• Some person managed to clean off their car recently. But they ain't driving it very soon. :)
  
• The Calvin Durango's on the right. It got driven yesterday. (What fun!) Ashley's Saturn is somewhere in there.
  
• My Chevrolet's in the left foreground, not that you can see it. :)
  
• A whole suite of snowed-in vehicles
  
• The poor trees! This is really heavy snow for CO, but not quite classic Sierra Cement.
  
• Believe it or not, these actually are stairs.
  
• Even our protected deck got hit. Check out the snow "wall" made by the sliding door. Good thing Ashley brought those bikes back from MA. Heh.
  
• Sunshine checks out the snow: Pic 1 - Pic 2 - Pic 3
  

Needless to say, CSU is closed. But the CSU-CHILL radar has been running and taking observations for the last few days, and is still going strong. Check out some real-time radar images here.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Ashley is off in South Dakota at the Rosebud Indian Reservation for the week, doing rural vet medicine there. She's swamped with tons of surgeries every day (traveling service so everyone waits up to get their pets healed). Was here only for a couple days before heading to SD, but still great to see her. It was unseasonably warm here the past week, so I didn't go skiing this past weekend. But I may go either this weekend or definitely the weekend of the 29th as a friend from MA is coming into town. Rained overnight here so maybe we're getting back to regular spring weather. Guess we'll see!

No skiing this past weekend - had to do chores and the like as Ashley returns soon. She left Massasucksit yesterday and made it as far as western Pennsylvania. Short trip, but she was on call the night before and had to go in twice. Ouch! Anyway, she should be back sometime on Wednesday. Looking forward to her return!

Skiing was really good this weekend. My officemate Steve Nesbitt went along. We skied both days, at Beaver Creek and Breckenridge. Unfortunately, someone took one of my poles the first day during lunch! So I had to ski the rest of the afternoon with only one pole. Was pretty amusing since the pole was so ridiculously old and beat-up I'm not sure why anyone would even bother taking it. Had to borrow Ashley's poles the second day. Just got back from a presentation where they showed video of a firestorm-induced tornado ... pretty interesting, although you'll have a hard time viewing all the clips without a fast connection.

Ashley got to meet former president George H. W. Bush yesterday. Even had a photo op with him. So that's pretty exciting. Her hours are not as bad this week, which is great since her mother is in town. Myself, I got to see my cousin Ann Specht and her daughter Haley, as they were passing through town visiting the Browns. She is taking her brother-in-law back to Colorado Springs as he was called up for the National Guard recently and needs to join his unit to be deployed. Good luck to him. Haley's 2 now and is quite the ham. :)

Well, a bit light in the posts lately, but anyway last weekend's skiing was great. There was knee-deep powder in Vail's Back Bowls, and the face shots from turning in it got so heavy at times I couldn't see and was breathing snow. Pretty cool. This week I've been continuing to update the STEPS BAMS article, a little each day. Also, I am doing literature reviews for the radar observations of smoke research. Expect updates to both of these sites in the immediate future. Ashley's mother is visiting her in MA. They are going to a luncheon and a talk featuring former president George H. W. Bush. Looking forward to hearing how that goes. Cheers.

Headed to the mountains again this weekend. Looking at skiing Vail. Haven't done that resort since 1998. In fact, the last time I was there was the day the Denver Broncos first won the Superbowl. Looking forward to it since they've added about 1000 acres or so since I was last there. Probably only one day skiing this weekend, though. Will come back Sunday morning.

Skiing was good this past weekend. Did a day at Keystone and one at Arapahoe Basin. Still pretty low snow bases but better than last year, apparently. I wouldn't know since I didn't ski past December last season. Maybe we could use some of those feet dropped on the East Coast, in particular the 49 inches dropped in western Maryland. That would pretty much end any snowpack issues. :) Though we could do without the 20+ deaths as a result. Ashley reported at least a foot as of last night in central Massasucksit, with the worst yet to come overnight. Did a rought calculation of federal taxes this morning. We're owed over $1700 from the feds alone. Think it might be time to decrease the paycheck withholding. Heh.

Well, first of all I'd like to wish a very happy Valentine's day to all of my loved ones, especially my lovely bride. I have provided major facelifts to both my research website as well as the main site. Things should be more visually appealing now. Also, I added a fair amount of new material to the research site, so you can learn more about my present and past work. Going skiing this weekend, so I'll be at the Breck house. Toodles.

Well, the STEPS BAMS article draft web page went live today. A link to it also exists on my research web site. Check it out and see what's been done so far. The article is meant to be understood by non-researchers, so if something doesn't make sense to you, let me know. Had dinner with the Browns last night. Mike cooked and made a really mean marinated pork chop.

Got back from Massachusetts last night. The 4th-Year Banquet was a good time. Fun to see Ashley plus all her friends again. Stayed with Astrid (Ashley's classmate) and Jay in Ashland, MA. Added some digital pix from the banquet to the main site. Also, you can get some higher quality pictures of Ashley and me here and here. Traveling to Massachusetts was a bit of a pain as Boston got upwards of a foot of snow the day I was supposed to arrive, delaying my flight in by 3-4 hours. But getting to DIA is a snap anymore as they recently extended the E-470 toll road from I-25 north of Denver to DIA. Cost is $3.50 each way - a bit steep (going into Boston from Worcester on the MA Pike isn't even that much) - but overall worth it as it cuts off a lot of traffic and squirrelly backroad drive time. The toll road is absolutely deserted so it's a nice, easy cruise into the airport.

Well I'm off early tomorrow to Boston. Be back posting on Monday. Wanted to create a link to our wedding photos, which Ashley's brother put online at one point, but can't find the site anymore. For now, you'll have to content yourself with our quasi-defunct Wedding Page. It is incomplete anymore as homestead.com made us reduce the number of pages to keep it free, but it does have some good info about Ashley and me, along with a picture or two. There's also a link to it now on our main site. I'm Audi.

By request, here are some pictures of the Lang clan, as of December 2002: Pic 1 and Pic 2. These are the full versions, not the small pix on the main website. Snowed again today in Fort Collins, not much more than an inch or so though. Finally starting to be winter here! :)

The Nepal talk went well enough yesterday that my boss suggested I give a department seminar on the topic, so I may do that later this spring. That would be a first for me, doing an invited seminar for a full department. By the way, a nice overview website on the entire Nepal project can be found here. A bit technical in the information but some nice pictures of the region. Ashley informs me she is working long hours in the ICU. They definitely work her more in Massachusetts than they do here in Colorado. Looking forward to going to visit her on Friday, although it's never quiet around the house when you have Sunshine the cat vocally expressing her desire to be either brushed or chase the laser pointer beam.

Back in Fort Collins as of yesterday morning. Decided against skiing yesterday as I heard a storm was supposed blow in during the afternoon and I didn't really want to brave the driving conditions. The storm arrived on schedule, more or less, with 3-4 inches of snow here in Fort Collins. Today I give a lunch talk to my research group on the Nepal work I did at Harvard. Should be fun as lunch is on the house, apparently. So, multiple NWS NEXRAD radars tracked the debris plume from the shuttle for more than six hours on Saturday. A link to a loop is here: Space Shuttle Plume. These would have been the finer particles that would fall slowly to the ground, over a period of hours. Probably 1 mm diameter or less. You don't need too many to get appreciable radar backscatter from them. For example, part of the research I am doing now is studying smoke plumes over the Fort Collins area during August and October of last year. Research aircraft samples of the plume during one of the days showed very few large particles, yet still the CSU-CHILL radar in Greeley obtained excellent observations of the smoke layer.

OK, I think I'm satisfied with the weblog's basic layout now. Only incremental changes from now on. *knocks on wood*

Ashley leaves tomorrow morning for 5 weeks in Massasucksit, doing vet rotations at Tufts. I'll join her for a weekend starting on 7 Feb, but this weekend after I drop her off at the airport it's all about skiing. I'll be at the Calvin Breck house.

By the way, our main web site was updated recently with my latest photos from the last three months or so. Go have a look!

Right now I am working on a Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) overview article for the Severe Thunderstorm Electrification and Precipitation Study (STEPS) field campaign, which occurred in eastern Colorado and western Kansas during May-July 2000. This is an interesting task, as it involves less writing on my part and more editing of what others have written. I think it's more difficult to be the editor in this process, as it requires a lot of thought to properly balance all the disparate topics that need to be addressed in an overview article.

Go vist my Research Web Page. Or visit my wife's and my personal webpage.

Starting fresh!