The History Behind the name Morhéa!

The story behind the naming of Morhéa starts on July 27, 2002. Many of you were there with us on that beautiful night at the Chief Hosa Lodge! A wonderful wedding spot just up the hill a ways from our house. Chief Hosa has a wonderful view of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. One of the first great views on your way out of Denver. After Kim and I got married we took a Windstar Cruise around the Tahitian Islands. First off, if you are an adult you can and should enjoy this cruise. Unfortunately, they don’t allow kids on the cruises. I think they had around 100 rooms on board, or was it 100 people? Either way it was small for a cruise ship. By the second night the entire staff had memorized our names. It was very impressive. Anyway, we got to see many of the islands around the area being on a large sail boat. On of those islands was named Moorea.

This was our favorite island ever. The island of Moorea can be seen in the background of the photo above. It is still probably the #1 place I have been. It is right up there with Hawaii and any of the Caribbean. A beautiful island with nothing much to do. They don’t have an advanced plumbing system there so every house is built at sea level. No houses on the sides of the hill! The way it should be. Kim and I got our black pearls there as well. A beautiful place for sure.

Jump forward a few years and it is just before April 24, 2005. We decided that Moorea was one of our favorite islands and it had so much history in our lives. So we thought, okay Moorea it is. Side note - My buddy Rob mentioned that the Tahitians probably pronoun it more like mo-o-rea. First thing Kim’s says is that if we name her that she will be called Moo for the rest of her life. We didn’t like that too much so we decided to play around with the words. When we were there the Moo sounded like a slightly long Mo or short Moo. So to us that was the starting point. A little different but Mo would start it off. At the time I had also just started working on the Cassini VIMS project set to reach Saturn. One of the things we mainly study there is the surface composition of the moons of Saturn. One of the moons is named Rhea.

The two images above are taken from NASA and shows Rhea. The first one shows it with the rings just above. The second image shows a false color image used to bring out differences in composition on the moons surface.

The above images were taken of Saturn. The top one was taken when the moon was behind the planet and transmitting light through the rings and around saturn. The second image shows how the VIMS team sees Saturn. If you can penetrate the top layer of clouds a little you get a better view of the very dynamic atmosphere/surface.

The moon got its name from the Greek goddess Rhea. She was the Titaness daughter of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth, in classical Greek mythology. In earlier traditions, she was strongly associated with Gaia and Cybele, the Great Goddess and later seen by the classical Greeks as the mother of the major gods and goddesses. Sister to Cronus and mother to Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon and Zeus.

Now if you were to type Rhea into the internet you get different pronunciations. In the planetary community we usually say it like we say Rhéa. Other people pronounce Rhea as you would the ia in Maria. That confused us more so we made it a little harder and added an accent aigu (é) to Rhea giving us Rhéa. Now we add the Mo back and get Morhéa. With the hopes that she becomes Morhéa or Rhéa. She is born on April 24, 2005 as Morhéa Sophie Hoefen. Sophie after a beautiful sister of Kim and Steph's who died at a very young age from SIDS.

Now we keep wanting to go back and show her the island she was named after but I think we might wait a little longer until she can remember it.

T

Widespread Panic - Red Rocks Wrap-up

Like I said before another great Widespread Panic weekend. We had a lot of fun and as usual it was great to see everyone again. It was nice to see my friends Cheryl and Michael from California as well. I was really impressed by the current WSP lineup and can't wait to see them again (hopefully on a mountain leg of the tour).
















As a side note I was looking for some photos of Red Rocks to show my Uncle in London and stumbled upon a photo of Red Rocks from the 1920' or 1930's before it became an amphitheatre. To me it is amazing to see a photo that is that old yet still looks the same. I guess I am a geologist and I am talking about geologic time here so it shouldn't shock me but I was still impressed none the less. Click on the photo for a larger image.

Widespread Panic 6/23/07 Red Rocks!

6/23/2007 - Red Rocks - Showtime 7:00 MST Set 1 - Pigeons, Better Off, All Time Low, Down > PAYMH > Blackout Blues, Pickin' Up The Pieces, Airplane > Rock
Set 2 - Pleas > Chilly Water, Thought Sausage, Aunt Avis > Second Skin > Greta > Barstools > Machine > Barstools > Dyin Man* > Red Hot Mama Jam* > Drums* > Red Hot Mama*
Encore - Take Out > Smokin Factory > Porch Song, End of the Show * w/ DJ Logic on turntables

Another smokin' show. These two shows might rank in my top 10 ever. The 6/22 show might be in my top 3! I will update this post with some pics when I get them. My 2 day run is over. I decided not to go to the Sunday show this year because I wanted to spend some of my weekend with the family. In a way I am glad because it is a day show today and the temperature is supposed to be around 97 degrees! HOT!

Widespread Panic 6/22/07

6/22/2007 - Red Rocks - Showtime 7:18 MST Set 1 - Holden Oversoul > Walk On, Give, Walkin', C Brown, Time Zones, Can't Get High, One Arm Steve, Conrad
Set 2 - Flicker, Lets Get The Show On The Road > Impossible > Money Jam > Stop Go > North > Smokestack Lightning > I Walk On Guilded Splinters > Stop Go > Love Tractor > Imitation Leather Shoes
Encore - Old Joe > Goin' Out West



Photo courtesy of Tyler Martin.

Great show last night by my favorite band. I went there with my concert partners in crime, Kym and Shannon. I think someone mentioned that this is the 9th year we have gone to the shows together!!! Many of the other crew were there as well. Our friends Cheryl and Michael flew out from California to go see the shows and after a long trip we ended up in row 53, seat 27. The addition of Jimmy Herring to the band has made me love them even more. That past few years the band has really lacked the jamming quality that made them a "jam" band. Jimmy Herring has added that back to the mix. I was really impressed. It was good to see everyone again as well. Off to do it again today!

T

Rockies playoff material?

I just got back from taking my buddy Steve to the Rockies/Yankees game. I, of coarse, love the Yankees while Steve hates the Yankees. I think I might be the only Yankee fan at the USGS. As a joke I got Steve and I Yankees tickets for his retirement present. The joke was supposed to be that the Rockies are so pathetic that the Yankees would storm into Colorado and beat them up. I ordered these tickets back in January or February. I picked the ticked up in march from the box office. Even then when I went to pick them up the ticket agent said, "Mr. Hoefen we have a problem!" "The Yankees called and said they were too scared to play the Rockies and weren't going to show up!" Good one. So here we are June 20th 2007. The Rockies have had a great month and just won 2 of 3 in Boston and are one of the hotter teams. The Yankees had a horrible start but are putting it all together and have had a good string of wins.

At the start of this series both the Rockies and Yankees had 35 wins. The Yankees began the season with a $195 million payroll while the Rockies are ranked 25th in spending with an opening day payroll of $54 million. The following stats were taken from the Denver Post. Here is the salaries of the starters in yesterdays games:

Yankees: Damon 13M, Jeter 21.6 M, Abreau 15.6 M, Rodriguez 27.7 M, Posada 12 M, Matsui 13 M, Cano 491K, Nieves 382K, Mussina 11M for a total of $114.7 Million.

Rockies: Taveras 402K, Matsui 1.5M, Halliday 4.4M, Helton 16.6M, Atkins 400K, Hawpe 403K, Tulowitzki 381K, Torrealba 1.07M, Fogg 3.6M for a total of $28.7 million.

WOW!! Needless to say the Yankees came in here and lost 3-1 last night and then tonight got shelled 6-1. What is going on here? Are the Rockies really playoff material?

Tomorrow I get to look forward to Roger Clemens. Don't get me wrong. I may go down to the game just to see him throw a few pitches because he IS Roger Clemens. This is another one of those salaries I don't understand. Again from the Denver Post, in May of 2007 Clemens signed a 1 year contract with the Yankees for $28,000,022. His prorated salary since he missed part of the year is $18 million. Based on projections and no injuries this is what he is scheduled to make:

$153,005 - Salary per Day
$792,000 - Salary per start
$12,409 - Cost per inning
$10,200 - Cost per strikeout
$705 - cost per pitch.

That is great isn't it!! Now on top of that the Yankees have a pretty bad bullpen. Clemens isn't a spring chicken here anymore so he now becomes a 5-7 inning pitcher. That leads us to the middle relief which stinks. I am not sure how Clemens is going to get those wins but it sure will cost the Yankees one way or the other.

I might go down to the game just to witness Clemens in all of his greatness. I think is supposed to be in the high 90's so I might fry in the process.

Look out for those Rockies though. I was even a little impressed.

T

Vietnamese Caramelized Pork and Rice Noodle Salad

Since this is my blog and I can write about whatever I want to I decided to add a recipe I made for our Father's Day Dinner. I got it from the June 2007 Cooking Light magazine. The recipe is for Vietnamese Caramelized Pork and Rice Noodle Salad and it was very good. Here you go:

Dressing:
3/4 cup water
4 1/2 Tbs granulated sugar
3 Tbs rice vinegar
2 Tbs fresh lime juice
1 1/2 Tbs fish sauce (usually found in the asian section of supermarkets)
2 tsp minced peeled fresh ginger
3/4 tsp Sriracha (hot chili sauce, such as Huy Fong, usually in the Asian section but not always. I had to buy some off of a local Pho restaurant.)
3 gloves garlic, minced

Salad:
1 (6-ounce) package rice vermicelli
1 pound pork tenderloin, trimmed
2 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp sriracha
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
3 Tbs brown sugar
Cooking spray
2 cups thinly sliced red leaf lettuce
1 cup matchstick cut peeled English cucumber
1 cup matchstick cut carrot
1 cup bean sprouts
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 Tbs chopped fresh mint
1/2 cup chopped dry roasted peanuts
Lime wedges (optional)

1.) To prepare dressing, combine the 1st 8 ingredients in a small saucepan; cook over medium heat 5 minutes or just until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat; cool.

2.) To prepare salad, place vermicelli in a large bowl. Cover with boiling water. Let stand 20 minutes or until tender. Drain and rinse under cold water; drain.

3.) prepare grill.

4.) Chef Todd would leave the tenderloin uncut and grill it that way. The recipe call for quartering the loin and it seemed a little too thin to me*. A.) Cut tenderloin in half lengthwise. B.) Cut each piece in half crosswise. Place each pork piece between 2 sheets of plastic wrap; pound to an even thickness using a meat mallet or small heavy skillet. Combine 2 tsp fish sauce and 1 tsp Sriracha; drizzle over pork. Sprinkle evenly with garlic powder, salt and pepper. Pat brown sugar onto pork.

5.) Place pork on a grill rack coated with cooking spray or vegetable oil (I assume to prevent the brown sugar and loin from sticking). Grill 12 minutes or until slightly pink in the center (obviously grill longer if using a full uncut loin), turning pieces occasionally to prevent burning. Place pork on cutting board; let stand 5 minutes. Cut across grain into very thin slices.

6.) Combine vermicelli, lettuce and next 6 ingredients (through mint) in a large bowl. Pour dressing over salad; toss well. Top with pork and nuts. Serve with lime wedges, if desired.

Don't be scared of the fish sauce it adds great flavor and you will never notice it. Sriracha is hot so it does add a little kick. Not that bad but if you are a total wimp use less Sriracha. I love Sriracha and would probably add a little more post cooking.

New Home Theater

Since this is a blogging site and I like to tell stories and share my life experience I figured I would add some other random stuff. Today I will talk about the new addition to my home theater. I purchased a new Panasonic TH-50PZ700U 50" plasma TV. I couldn't hold out any longer and found what I think is a great TV. It is one of the 1st plasma true 1080p TV's to arrive under $5000. I know a lot about home theater and was still shocked to find out that most plasma TV's are only 720p. I held out buying a TV for a few months until this puppy came came out and boy am I glad I did. I pretty much bought the 1st one in Denver and the first one at the Lakewood store. I talked them into price matching some mom and pop store in Cleveland that was offering the TV for some employee price and a seriously discounted price even though it was brand new.

It is a beauty! Full 1920 x 1080 pixels with all of the trimmings. The picture looks amazing. Of coarse the only thing that actually can display a true 1080p signal is a blu-ray player (the newest high definition DVD player. There is also HD-DVD but I am hoping the Blu-Ray wins.) Currently the cheapest blu-ray player just also happens to be the new Playstation 3 which I would also love. After buying all of this I noticed some promotional thing offering free cables on plasma TV's so I asked them about it and ended up getting $200 in free cables as well.

The downside to this is that I bought all of this from the sale of my beloved drums! If you have never scene my drums they were BIG! Too big for the house.











Of coarse as soon as I set them up in the garage Morhéa fell in love with them. Every night she would say "daddy, I want to play the drums!" We would go to the garage and I would play the bass drum and hi-hat and she would pound away on the drums and cymbals. She was beaking my heart for sure. I sold them in 4 days to some guy in Boulder who didn't even want to look at them. He just came down in his Lexus SUV, loaded them up, payed me in cash and was off just like that. Seven years of memories packed up and gone in 10 minutes. We worked out a great deal for me though and I got to keep all of the percussion instruments. Morhéa still loves to bang on those and if I ever wanted to play a little more I could get a smaller set that is more practical for family living. It was a bittersweet ending to my dream of being a rockstar!

Anyway, my new setup is great. I have the new plasma plus a playstation 3, XBox, digital cable , DVD player, TiVo, cd player and Infinity 5.1 surround system. I am still blown away how good a true 1080p signal looks. The difference between 720p digital cable and 1080p blu-ray is even impressive. The downside is that normal 420p cable looks pretty bad on the plasma. It is bad enough that I try not to watch anything but HD programs on the plasma and watch the rest of the TV shows on our TV upstairs. I can't wait for football season to start so I can enjoy those Bronco games. That's all for now!

T

Telluride Recap!

As you see my buddy Marc turned me on to a free blogging site that allows unlimited downloads of pics and is for free right now. It is a pretty simple yet effective site. It is based at www.blogger.com , they ask you for some e-mail address and username and that is it. So far so good.

Morhéa has been soaking up information and words like you wouldn’t believe. The other morning Kim and I were arguing about getting out of Telluride and Morhéa looked at me and said “Mom, you are driving me crazy!” Which is the words mom usually uses to describe me or Morhéa. As I mentioned before we were in Telluride for my buddy Patrick’s wedding. He married a very nice woman named Jeannie who is awesome. All weekend I only heard good things about her from everyone. Their wedding took place at the top of the Telluride ski resort. One of the best towns in Colorado and it might have the best views in all of Colorado. Staying there for 4 nights made us want to stay a lot longer. The wedding also reunited several of the School of Mines crowd (Patrick, Terry, Marc, Tom and Sheila). Hard to believe we graduated almost 9 years ago. We did a lot of catching up and had a great time. Telluride isn’t exactly close to Denver though. We left Denver at 4:30 PM and we were about 3 miles from Telluride when we were stopped because they closed the road to Telluride for construction. We got lucky and the guy in front of us was a local and took us around the construction. Lucky is an understatement! We ended up taking unmarked dirt roads through the mountains at 10:30 at night. If it wasn’t for him we would have had to wait until 1:15AM to get through. In the end it took us a little over 6 hours.

We ended up renting a condo instead of staying at a hotel. The last hotel we stayed at for one Kim’s marathons resulted in all 3 of us going to bed at 9:00 because once Morhéa went to sleep we had no other option other then to go to bed as well. That persuaded us to rent a 2 bedroom condo. We booked it at the last minute and the guy gave us a great deal. I have to admit that this is the 3^rd house/condo I have rented through www.vrbo.com (vacation rental by owner) and so far all have been awesome. If you try and rent this way make sure you do your homework and check the internet for any comments (trip advisor or fodor’s forums) and ask for references. This is a website where owners can rent their own places and thus you get rid of any middle men. The risl is that the place you rent stinks and you are stuck with this dump for the rest of your vacation. We have rented places in Hawaii, St. Marteen and Telluride and all 3 have been great but I did a ton of research on them first! If you want pointers feel free to ask me.

Friday we hit Baked in Telluride for breakfast which has some really good eats. We played around town most of the day. I got my fishing gear together and we did some shopping. That night the Newman’s threw a great party in one incredible house. I think it was a 6 bedroom house (with a side guest house) overlooking the mountains. It was a great party and gave us an opportunity to meet Jeannie’s family. Morhéa got to meet a few girls her age and did whatever they did for the next two days.

Saturday we got breakfast again at Baked in Telluride and I bumped into Marc Oettinger who mentioned that he would like to go fishing with me. We headed out mid morning and had a great time. We drove some mountain dirt road following the San Miguel River through a beautiful valley. It was gorgeous. The river was flowing pretty fast so we didn’t actually fish the river but ended up at Trout Lake which is a beautiful lake at somewhere around 10,000 feet in elevation. Just as we were getting settled in we got little visit from the game warden which cut our trip a little short. Marc “forgot” to buy his fishing license the day before. Fortunately for us we talked about such a situation on the ride up and we did a pretty good job of playing dumb. The warden was nice enough to laugh at our fairly pathetic excuse and let us off with a warning. It was time to go anyway. We headed back to town and got ready for the wedding. As I said before the wedding was at the top of a mountain and was beautiful. This was followed by another great party/reception at La Piazza del Villaggio Ristorante in the Mountain Village. We had the entire restaurant to ourselves and they had nothing but the best Italian food and drinks. We had duck pâté, sushi, these wild mushroom puff pastries, bacon wrapped scallops, fruit sticks for the little ones and a cheese tray for H’orderves. The dinner consisted of an Italian salad followed by lobster ravioli. The main coarse was, Fillet Mignon and lobster tails with a side of beans wrapped in proscuitto. I was too full to even attempt to eat desert so I didn’t. They looked really good though!

Sunday we went to another one of my favorite Colorado towns called Ouray (pronounce U-Ray according to Sheila who says that is how the locals pronounce it). A short 45 minute drive from Telluride, Ouray is more of a locals town with great views. We went made our usual rounds and went shopping, ate some ice cream and ate some lunch. We followed that up with playing in the park which also has great views. Ouray was one of the first towns I stayed in Colorado when I came out here in 1995 to do my geologic field mapping class. I was so blown away by how beautiful it was that it made my want to move here which I did 1 year later!

Monday was our travel day and it took us a lot longer to get home (7+ hours). Traffic in Delta, Colorado!!! Give me a break! Traffic, an accident which closed both lanes of I-70 and construction which also closed I-70 for 15 minute intervals. Morhéa traveled great and thought the entire trip was one long party. She got a little car sick on the way home but was a real trooper and we were proud of her as usual.

I will try and put updates here every so often. I might add other random things like band events, cooking and work related stuff here as well so check back every once and a while. I will send out an e-mail when I make large Morhéa updates.

Todd

Telluride

I am testing this site out because a friend told me to try it. So here it goes. I will keep it short until I understand it more.

Just got back from Telluride which is quickly moving its way to the top of my favorite town in Colorado. It ranks in my top 2 that is for sure and the other is around the corner. My buddy Patrick Newman got married at the top of Telluride ski resort. The view was awesome and his bride is the nicest person I have met in a long time!!

Here are a few pics to show you what I mean.

T