May in the USA

So I'm back in the land of plenty... plenty of planes, Mexican food, research grants, and free espresso. Not to mention abundant sunshine, flowers, mammals, new running trails, exuberant people, and cool experiments. After a short trip to Madison, Wisconsin for a structural geology conference (lots of arm waving, like the statue outside the state capitol):

I am happy to be settled into life in Happy Valley, the home of Penn State University. I have a really cute room in a townhouse with two postgrad girls, and it's only a short walk through charming downtown State College to the geology building.

I'll post some more pictures of the lab and views from the roof soon, but suffice it to say that I think it's nearly paradise. Today, I built my first experiment by putting pieces of Alpine Fault rocks between these blocks:

Tomorrow, we'll shear the pieces of rock under huge pressures and see what they do. We are also going to measure how fast water flows through the rocks. Hopefully, we can use these numbers to predict how the rocks will behave during an earthquake. Stay tuned for oh-so-exciting pictures of the deformation apparatus as well as some of the views from the roof and maybe even some people photos:-)