Poll: Which dress do you like the best?

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Sweet Home Chicago

We are going to Chicago today, so that means finals are over! I am so excited and I think we are both looking forward to a break. Only one more year of this and we are done. We will have commencement on Rusty's birthday next year, so we will have a lot to celebrate. The good thing about school being done (well sort of, I am taking two classes this summer and Rusty is taking one) is I get to start making actual wedding plans.

Waiting

Here is a list of things I am currently waiting for:
-Work to be over for today
-Finals to be over for this term
-Our trip to Chicago
-Rusty's birthday
-My tooth to get fixed so we can have engagement photos taken
-To choose a venue for our wedding
-The sun to come out in Portland - It has been a dark, cold Spring!


I am sure there are many more, but at least now I am waiting a little less longer than I was when I began this post.

Back off man, I'm a scientist.

So yesterday at dinner Collette and I were talking about the flood at Lake Delton in Wisconsin. If you don't know about it yet here is a brief synopsis: After receiving copious amounts of rain in a relatively short time span a reservoir overran its banks spilling water around the dam eventually causing the dam to collapse. As you can imagine, a lot of water was released and a few homes were destroyed and carried away. There was quite a bit of video footage of the erosional forces at work and it was pretty spectacular how quickly the soil was removed undermining the footings of these summer homes and eventually destroying them completely.


As a budding scientist interested in fluvial processes, and especially erosional forces of rivers I reflected on the the engineering and geo-technical research that would have been necessary to build the dam that eventually burst. Surely the geologist and engineers knew the limits of the dam (especially when the height of the water was higher than the dam itself). You don't have to be an engineer to realize that your dam isn't high enough when water is pouring over the top. Anyway, since Collette is taking an in depth statistics course we talked about the probability associated with these types of storm events. You may or may not know this but all engineering decisions are based not only on the science of what has happened in the past but the probability of things that are going to happen. When the Lake Delton dam was built (or the New Orleans dikes for that matter) the engineers most likely designed multiple bridge strengths for different rain events. These rain events were then assigned some number relating how likely such a large storm would be. Of course building a stronger dam, or dike, or bridge costs more money. The cost would then be weighed against the probability of catastrophe, and then some non-scientist or engineer would decide which dam to build. That's right some politician or lobbyist or whatever (probably a know nothing lawyer) would decide how much money there was to spend and choose the cheapest dam. Now I understand that over engineering our infrastructure would not be a good thing to do, but I feel that too much of our infrastructure here in the U.S. was built by the lowest bidder with minimal safety in mind. No way should the dikes of New Orleans have failed during a category four hurricane. The area routinely gets category three hurricanes... didn't you think a four was just around the corner?

Now I know you all think I am going to go off on another capitalist rant here but I am not. I will not bring up the fact that capitalism ruins everything. (ha ha too late) What I will say however is that building permanent cities is dangerous business. Just think of all the environmental alterations necessary to make a permanent settlement. For example rivers are supposed to flood. That is what they do. Problem is a flooding river is hard to build houses next to. So we build a dam. Is your harbor filling up with sand and you are worried about getting your fishing boat out to sea? Worry no longer as the Corp of Engineers is here to dredge the bottom of the bay so your boat can still get in and out. For thousands of years the Mississippi River has meandered freely back and forth creating the Louisiana delta. It no longer has this ability as it is dredged and concreted into place. Why? To keep a steady flow of ships, and ultimately money coming into the south. Are you living in a desert? Where is your water coming from? Reservoirs, depleting of ground water? Either way stressing water supplies has caused droughts all over the U.S. and the world. I could go on and on. So where should humans live? In what type of setting could man exist that wouldn't completely screw up the surrounding ecosystems yet support a few million of us? You guessed it...man should exist nomadically. Hey it worked for thousands of years, why not now? Think about it. No more problems with water - just wander where it is raining. Too much rain? Walk a few degrees south in latitude and blamooo... sunshine. Need food? Just follow the bison west during the spring and summertime and we are all living like fat cats. Humans are hunter/gathers and it seems we have forgotten who we are with all this city building. So...what say you men? Who is with me? Who will gather their tepee, saddle their horse and throw off the bonds of civilization?
No one?
I figured as much. I just hope that the probability of disaster is low enough and the inexpensive infrastructure survives until Madden09 comes out. It will be so sick. Good Luck.

Parrallel Universe

Have you ever executed a google search of your own name? It is pretty creepy. Also depressing. Maybe if you actually got a return of yourself it would be exhilarating. Unfortunately when you google Rusty Griffin you get a huge list of people with my name that are not me. For instance, did you know that some guy named Rusty Griffin is a sheriff in Texas? Or how about this Rusty Griffin in Colorado who has a wife named Holly and just got back from Mount Rushmore? He seems like a typical American. I found people with my name that were writers, politicians, advertising executives and some guy who owns a chain of lakes. A freaking chain of lakes? I hope to one day own a chain of ponds myself so I felt some sort of connection to this particular Rusty Griffin.

After googling myself I decided to check out a few more things. My home network here is called GrifWorks and if I were to ever start up some sort of business that would be the preferred name. So just for fun I typed www.grifworks.com. Guess what? Some dude back east who has a computer degree in HTML programming already has my address. Does that mean I will have to be a dot net or a dot org? This is crap. So I read on and the guy's name is Ryan Griffith and all of his email addresses begin with rgriff@! So this the guy that steals my username. I knew it wasn't Randy or Rick. So it must be this Ryan clown. Hmmm. Pretty lame.

Collette always complains that her name is so long and hates spelling it for everyone. Type her name into google and the first return is this blog. I have searched for most of my friends and family on google here are some results:


Randy - boxer penalized for a low blow, suspended in 2003. Searching with UT found the real Randy's phone number and insurance info.
Jenni - photographer of some sort. Searching with UT found real Jenni's phone number and links to different blogs.
Rick - artist, actually a really good artist. Also a professor at UVSC (didn't the real Rick graduate from there) Couldn't find the real Rick on google.
Mom - Google wanted me to change the spelling to Jerry. Couldn't find the real mom.
Dad - first return real estate in Blanding. Nice job Griff. You exist.


Strange that someone else could have your name. I wonder if they were called Crusty Rusty like I was. Hopefully they all are named Russell and I am the only true Rusty. One thing for sure, I am the best looking of the group.


Have fun wasting the next two hours googling yourself. Late.

Wedding

This weekend we went to Chicago for the wedding of my friends Jami and Mike. Jami planned an extravagant wedding down to each perfectly monogrammed detail. I think it was good for us to see how a wedding can be done and decide how we want to do things.


This is Rusty and I before the rehearsal dinner, which of course was amazing!


Here is a picture from their ceremony. Yes, Mike is 6'8" and Jami is 5'4", which made it difficult to get a good picture with both of them.


This is Rusty and I at the dinner reception! It was in a lovely botanical garden called Crystal Gardens at Navy Pier. It was magnificent and the greenery really set a fantastic ambiance.



This was their first dance. It was sung by the most amazing opera singer who was blind. I do not think there was a dry eye in the place, including ours. It gave me chills up and down my spine. The phenomenal music continued all night with a 10 person band who sang every genre of music perfectly! We had so much fun dancing!


Here is a picture of the maid and matron of honor. Notice the lush greenery all around.

We are both exhausted from our trip, but it was so much fun. We got to eat some fantastic food at the wedding, but most of all in my old neighborhood! I forgot how much I miss Italian food! I feel so lucky that we get to return to the Windy City in 10 days! It is always nice to visit Mom, Jimmy, Adam and Terese.