This starts off, off topic, then goes partly on topic...
A foot of snow...which includes 2 sleet layers...so will be great cross-country skiing for the next week..will go bird sanctuary next door for an hour, then tomorrow may drive to a larger park...maybe Rockbridge state park which has lots of karst....sinkholes and caves. Heartland daughter will be happy because 2nd day no school, and this allowed her to meet the University of California deadline late last night.

OK...just finished a team-written NSF proposal. We think it is good...well, excellent. It will not be funded if it is not viewed as excellent and important. Sometimes proposals are excruciating to write...full of logistics, and you don't learn much exciting writing them, and when they are rejected 5 months later you will have just completely wasted 2 weeks. This one was NOT like that...I was able to do enough interpretation leadinging into the writing, and even last Sunday and Monday morning in a break from writing, that we discovered some exciting stuff...like a single seismic reflection profile that records the evolution of the thrust fault of the mega-thrust beneath Los Angeles over the last 2 million years.
OK...long post Chris