Trapped at the Fred Meyer gas station

Today Rachel accidentally locked Ingrid in the car at the gas station. She'd just given Ingrid a snack so our little girl sat there unperturbed in the carseat eating craisins and goldfish as the windows slowly frosted over (it was -30F).

There wasn't a phone in the gas-shack so Rachel told the gas attendant to watch the car while she ran into Fred Meyer. The police department told her they could come, but their only mode of entry was to break the window. "Call a taxi, they always have door opening equipment," the dispatcher said (when I heard this I was deeply disappointed in the Fairbanks PD, though the bright side of their complacency is that I don't know anyone who has gotten a traffic ticket in Fairbanks).

Ten minutes later a cabby came, wearing short sleeves and no gloves (no joke). By this time Ingrid's breath had thoroughly encrusted the inside of all the windows so the grumpy man couldn't see the lock controls. After ten minutes of scrambling, prying, and poking the door swung open.

"Here's your daughter back. That'll be 35 bucks."

Here's Ingrid with her imaginary friend Jailey. Rachel didn't tell the cab driver Jailey was also in the car for fear he'd charge her more.

You've reached Ben Abbott at 907-45. . .

Why do people restate their number in their voice-mail messages? There are plenty of useful things we could be including in our messages. A few years ago my brother turned his message into a weekly trivia quiz:

"This is Sam. How many Nieuport 17 fighter planes were made during WWII? Last week's answer: Rene Descartes." 

But your phone number? That's the one piece of information you can be sure every caller already has..

I wonder how many minutes are spent annually listening to the restatement of phone numbers. I wonder how much AT&T made on that last year.

If any of you are number-restaters, or have insight into number-stater psychology, please phone me up. My voice-mail greeting will let you know the number to call.

Currivulum Vitae

This morning I opened up my C.V. to update a few things and correct a misplaced comma. By chance I scrolled to the top of the page and noticed the first word on the document was "Currivulum." 

"That's weird, I thought C.V. stood for Curriculum Vitae, Latin for 'the course of one's life'." A quick Google search revealed that I was right, which meant that I was wrong (and had been for a long time). I quickly opened several old C.V.s and, sure enough, since 2007, I've been sending out my Currivulum Vitae. At least it makes me less self conscious about the comma.

AGU talk titles

It's the final day of the American Geophysical Union fall meeting. Every year 20,000 scientists get together to exchange new research. Here are some of my favorite titles from the past few days:

• Soil Chemical Weathering and Nutrient Budgets along an Earthworm Invasion Chronosequence in a Northern Minnesota Forest

• Acupunctural Afforestation for Desertification Mitigation over Semi-Arid Regions in East Asia

• Decomposition is always temperature dependent, except when its not

• Feeding the World While Sustaining the Planet: Building Sustainable Agriculture Within the Earth System

• Translating Watersheds Into Trustworthy Hydrological Models

• Four Billion Years of Marine Nitrogen Cycling

• Reduced Nitrous Oxide Emissions in Tomato Cropping Systems under Drip Irrigation and Fertigation