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.