Thoughts From Dennis

2015-10-29 12:55:06.000 – Dennis Vienneau, Summit Museum Attendant

Another shift nears its end as I compose this comment. I have been a member of the Observatory for many years and have worn many hats during that tenure: teacher extern, summit volunteer, museum docent and most recently as the museum attendant. Each role has offered many rewarding experiences, from “crunching” achieved cloud altitude data for a UNH research scientist, to learning how to cook and bake successfully at altitude, to interacting with many of the Observatory’s fans and weather fanatics.

Most of my time on the summit has been as a volunteer, with the primary duty of preparing the evening meal and I have a standard set of meals that I like to prepare when I’m up here. Now as a museum attendant benefiting from other volunteers preparing our evening meals, I’ve been taking notes of which meals and desserts have been showered with many favorable comments. Thank-you volunteers, I’ll be adding many ideas to my meal preparation options when I return as a volunteer. One definite addition will be crepes.

It’s always interesting to hear how the many people associated with the Observatory, from staff to volunteers, made their initial connection to the Observatory. Many of our meal discussions reveal our weather fanaticism often stems from experiencing a significant weather event in our youth to trying to better understand the weather so we might better prepare for our pursuit of outdoor passions. As serious as our dinner meteorological conversations might start out, they often devolve into laughing fits as we take on less serious topics or antics. Take for instance our dinner on Sunday night, it ended with a contest of whether we could balance spoons on our noses. I’m sure you’ll agree after looking at the photos attached to this comment that Mike and Kaitlyn are the summit spoon balancing masters.

 

Dennis Vienneau, Summit Museum Attendant