Scientistnado

It's tornado season in Denver. We had two tornado warnings this week and there was apparently one touch down. Both times, I was at work in my window less basement dungeon. I wouldn't know there was a tornado out there if not all the other scientist came to my office for shelter. There could be a zombie apocalypse out there and I wouldn't know in my office. And the other scientist? They changed their attitude from feeling pity for me in the dungeon to envy of my office where you even can work in the worst of times.

Day of Past Failure

Folks, I haven't blogged for a long time and I'm sorry for that. I was busy and I didn't have any good ideas for a new post. My girlfriend furiously demanded "lovingly asked" for a new post.

It all started about a month ago, when my friend asked me to help her move. All of the heavy furniture had already been moved, with the exception of one heavy dresser. That dresser was the beginning of the day where everything went wrong.  Being the late comer, I was asked to move the dresser. In the new house, we had to take it downstairs. My friend went to the front and I was pulling it on the other side where the trolley handles were. While I was taking the dresser down I saw that my hand can be squashed between the dresser and the trolley. I started to pull my hand as fast as possible from the danger zone. Unfortunately, it was not fast enough. I saw it coming like in slow motion. As the dresser went down a step, it pulled the trolley closer to itself and in between the trolley and the dresser was my poor little thumb. It started bleeding profusely a little bit. But that was enough to make me light headed. After getting a band-aid, I was off the hook. The others could finish the moving without me.

Later that day my beautiful girlfriend and I went down a highway that had a lot of construction. The road became bumpy and the car started to rattle. Suddenly, we hit a fairly large pot hole and then the car started to shake. We had a flat tire. We started looking for a place to pull off the road. But we had just passed the last exit before merging onto a highway and because of the construction the shoulder lane was closed. We started freaking out. Fortunately, we found an abandoned entrance ramp right before the big highway merge. Now, all we had to do was to change the tire. Except we never changed a tire before. We went to the trunk and grabbed what we could, which included: one spare tire, a lug wrench, and a lifty thingy. Yep, the lifty thingy. That is what they call it in the car mechanics shop. We decided to divide and conquer to get some extra assistance to change the flat tire. Jennifer went off to find help, while I sat by the car and cried "waited for help".  A few moments later, a young man accompanied by his dad started to work on the flat tire. That's when we found out that the lug wrench we had wasn't the right size for our tire. The only fortunate thing was that the dad had a truck full of tools. I mean full of tools.

That evening after dinner, my thumb started to swell up. By the morning it was clearly bigger than the good thumb. But at least the day where everything went wrong was over and we survived. I acknowledged it with a thumb up- a big thumb up. Part of the reason why I didn't blog for so long was because I was injured. I couldn't hit the spacebar with my thumb and using the other one is just wrong.

PS: Extra credit for Jennifer, who gave me the idea for this post, contributed to it, and edited it.

Stacheky & Mutch

I finished No Shave November with a full beard. After having for two years a goatee and throughout November a full beard I wanted t try something new and grow a mustache and since the beginning of December I am mustached. Before Thanksgiving someone was telling me his experience with his mustache that he grew in Movember. He said people reacted mostly negative.  I have now also been through the same experience.

When I was on a video call with my mom and my new mustache I was waiting for her to comment on it. But she didn't mentioned it at all. Maybe she didn't see it or she didn't had to say anything good and therefore decided to say nothing at all. Later that day I had a video call with my brother Sina. It took him just a second to start to laugh and a minute to tell me to shave it off.
The first time my girlfriend saw my mustache she didn't say anything for a long time. After some time she said I should shave it off. This reaction surprised me. She generally loves mustaches. I even have some pictures of her with fake staches. She talks all the time about how awesome they are and they are awesome. I mean are not all our heroes from Movie and TV mustached, like Ned Flanders, Bob from Bob's Burger and the Artist from the Artist? And all the Ron's - the Anchorman Ron Burgundy, Ron Swanson from Parks and Reck- it's only a matter of time till Ron Weasley will enchant a mustache.
At work people either didn't say anything, probably because they didn't had anything good to say, or they said that they like it. Myself I have still to laugh each time I see myself in the mirror.
I also posted a picture of me and mustache in the internet. My brother Soheil commented that I look awful while my other brother Kamal was writing Freddie Mercury songs as comment, like: "Soroosh wants to live forever",  "Soroosh wants it all", "Soroosh wants to ride his bicycle", and "Soroosh is going slightly mad". But he didn't write "Soroosh is the invisible man" because I'm not- not with that stache!

Bierstadt

Adventure time. Let me to tell you now about my attempts to climb Mount Bierstadt. Mount Bierstadt in the Rocky Mountains is what people here call a 14er, i.e., a mountain with at least 14,000 feet above sea level. Bierstadt is the name of an American of German descent. The translation of the name Bierstadt is "Beer City".
My first attempt was my birthday hike. It was at a stormy time and although we were early at the mountain, we were afraid that a thunderstorm would prevent us to hike all the way up. And sure enough, on our way up a thunderstorm started. But since the storm was not where we were, we decided to continue. After a few steps a hail started and the hailstones were hurting my legs. But I was determined to hike up my first 14er and so we continued... continued for 100 to 200 steps. When we saw how lightning hit the peak which we wanted to climb, we decided to turn around and call it a day.

First attempt, and only minutes away from the thunderstorm

End of August we went for our second attempt. And although there were a lot of obstacles (rapid stream, over stretched muscles, and a constant fear of getting hit by lightning) that made me feel we will not make it again, we succeeded. 14,065 ft or 4,287 m. Suddenly, Germanys highest mountain "Zugspitze" with only 2,962 m looks like a cakewalk.

Second attempt

Let's get science-y now. At the summit the air pressure was according to my cell phone only 620 mbar. Compared to the sea level pressure of  1013 mbar and the typical air pressure in Denver of 830 mbar that's very low. At that pressure water should boil already at 85 ºC (186 ºF) instead of 100 ºC (212 ºF) at sea level or 94 ºC (202 ºF) in Denver. Unfortunately, I didn't have my stove to verify.

At the summit

Bicycle Seat Thieves

I haven't posted for a long time. The usual summer break. But now I want to blog about a good and a bad news. the good news is that I started a new blog. It's a professional blog. I mean a blog about my professional life. The bad news is that my bicycle seat got stollen. Again. That reminds me on the old saying: "Steal my seat once, shame on you; steal my seat twice, darn it, stop doing that".

I posted a note on the board in my building just in case the thieve is in our building. The note says: "To the thieve who stole my bicycle seat, bring my seat back and no questions will be asked!".  I am writing this here just in case the thieve reads my blog!