Snail Spirals

The trip to Oregon was fun, though we’re both so tense about hearing from Dickinson that it wasn’t as much fun as it could have been. The administration at Eastern Oregon has given Shaun a deadline of Monday at noon to accept or decline the position there, and he still hasn’t heard anything from Dickinson. Can you say “stress?"

But Oregon was pretty, although like no other landscape I’ve ever been in. We ended up driving south to Portland then east to La Grande, instead of just going southeast over the Cascades from Seattle. It was really windy and stormy when we left on Saturday, and we didn’t want to risk the road conditions on Snoqualmie Pass. We’re talking hurricane-force winds, here. We weren’t even sure the ferries would be running.

Anyway, we made it off-island, and the cool thing about taking the long way around was that we got to drive through the Columbia River Gorge. Granted, we did most of it at night, but what we did see on Sunday was pretty incredible, in a stark sort of way.



This is just a little ways east of The Dalles, Oregon (where we spent Saturday night), looking north across the river into Washington. There are extremely cool cliffs made up of basalt that crystallized into columns. Actual hexagonal columns lined up in orderly ranks, naturally occurring as a function of the way the lava solidified. They’re close to the road in some places, but we didn’t stop to get a good picture (these were taken from the moving car). I’ve seen pictures of this type of formation in books, but to see it in person was really neat.



Once we left the Gorge, the land got flat. FLAT. There’s a lot of sky out there, folks. It was a bit of a relief (ha!...get it?...sorry.) to get to the Blue Mountains. This is taken from a scenic overlook on the way up the mountains:



That’s actually four pictures stitched together- aren’t I clever? Actually, kudos to Shaun for taking such a good series. The land between Pendleton and the Blue Mountains is flat, flat, flat.

The university was pretty, nestled in a tiny little town in the valley between the Blue Mountains and the Wallowa Mountains.



That’s the building Shaun would be working in if he takes the job. The peak directly behind is Mt. Emily, part of the Blue Mountains.

This is looking east across the valley toward the Wallowa Mountains.



The campus was pretty, the faculty seemed nice, and I could probably find a science-related job if we moved there. There are several state agencies that actually have offices in that same science building where Shaun would be, and it would be nice to have a job where I actually have to use my brain.

It was very strange, though, to be in a place where there are no trees. The Blue Mountains are forested, true, but the whole valley and the lower Wallowa Mountains on the other side are treeless. There’s a lot of farming and ranching, but I think that the treeless state may be natural- a shrub-steppe grassland ecosystem. Shaun and I both felt a little unsettled by how open and treeless it was, especially when we drove over to the east side of the valley. We did a loop of the valley, to check out the area, and when we got back to the west side and the forested slopes of the Blue Mountains, we felt much more at home.

We headed home on Tuesday, this time taking the more direct route over the Cascades. What a gorgeous ride, and I saw my first elk! Through the hills, up to Yakima, to Ellensburg, then into the mountains. The Cascades are beautiful, though Emma’s tummy took exception to the winding, hilly highway before Ellensburg. Ick.



So remember that project I showed a preview of at the end of January? The picture was of a sea urchin shell. Here’s what it inspired:



I’m designing a Sea Urchin Shawl! This is how it looked on Feb. 2, when it was still small enough to spread out on the needle. Here’s how it looks now:



Yep, looking like a tangled mess o’ string. You’ll just have to trust me that it looks OK when it stretches. I’m a bit more than a third of the way up my chart, and I’ll evaluate if I need to chart more when I get closer to the end. I wasn’t sure how much it would stretch, so charting 175 rows was a guesstimate. I think what I have so far will block to about 25” diameter.

The yarn is Ornaghi Filati “Merino Oro”, 100% merino, 1250 meters per 100 gram skein. It measures about 40+ wraps per inch, and is incredibly fine and soft. I got three skeins of this yarn on sale after New Year’s at my local yarn shop, (marked down 60% --score!), so even though I don’t like the color, it is dyeable, and too good a deal to pass up. Especially as I used a gift certificate to get it.

Finally, an update on my aquarium. The glowlight tetras had been doing OK for more than a week, so two weeks ago I got five black neon tetras to put in with them. Very pretty, with a black stripe and a brilliant iridescent green one.



However, I don’t think that was a good idea with the filter I had, a small Whisper internal. It seemed like it just couldn’t keep up, and it was always getting clogged. I lost three of the black neons in the first day (HOWEVER…I stupidly got these from Petco, and we know how well the guppies did. I’m never buying fish from Petco again.) and one of the glowlights two days later. That one had always looked a bit stressed and possibly the water quality dipped, because the filter wasn’t keeping up with the additional fish.

When we went away this week, I got a Penguin 100 external filter with a Bio-Wheel. I did a bit of research online, and this one got really good reviews, so I thought I’d give it a try. So far I’m extremely pleased. It’s quiet, and it cleared up the cloudy water in less than three hours. The Bio-Wheel is a very cool innovation in filter technology. It looks like a paddle wheel on a riverboat, with the “paddle” part made of accordion-pleated material.


(cover removed for blogging purposes)

This provides a large surface area for the beneficial bacteria to grow on (which remove ammonia and nitrites from the water), and because the wheel rotates and is never completely submerged, the bacteria always have plenty of oxygen. The bacterial colony on my wheel isn’t established yet (it takes a several weeks), so right now I’m still using ammonia-remover chips in the filter to supplement until the bacteria establish. We’ll see if the filter lives up to the hype, but the principle seems sound, and the science of it makes sense.

The fish look lots happier, and the tank is cleaner. They dart around now, and investigate the plants, and come to the surface to nibble the flakes when I feed them, instead of hiding on the bottom and waiting for the flakes to sink. Part of this was probably just getting over the shock of going into a new tank, but there was an almost immediate improvement after I put the Penguin filter in. I’ve also noticed that one of the black neons and one (possibly two) of the glowlights are definitely female. They have developed a bellyful of eggs, especially the black neon. It’s doubtful that I’ll get any fry to hatch in my tank, as the water isn’t soft enough, but it’s cool that they’re happy.

In addition to the glowlights and black neons, I discovered that I have three (at least) additional residents in the tank.



I have snails! These were not planned- they probably came in on the plants. I’ve seen two about ½” long, and one tiny one. No doubt there are more. If they become a problem, I’ll have to take action (a snail eating fish, perhaps?), but for now, I’m enjoying them. They are some sort of Physidae.

Whew! That was a long post!