Right, so I was trying to go backwards in the last post? Goodness.
Well according to Google Calendar, which rules my life, I left off on the 17th of July. Going backwards from that, and following my quick update post...
Thur. July 15 - I think this is when the interns were told we had to do presentations about what we've done this summer. It's supposed to be 15 minutes long, we'll be presenting to everyone who wants to watch us, the dry run was on July 28th, and the real deal will be on August 4th. More on that later.
Wed. July 14 - Potluck at work. Lots of delicious food. Christi, my boss, loved the bean and corn salad. Hooray!
At some point around this point I found out the MSE department gave me another scholarship for next year. woot.
Sat. July 10 - I actually went to the Carlsbad Farmers Market, despite the rainy weather and the early hour. Why? Well, I wanted to find some fresh ingredients for the bean and corn salad for the potluck. All I found in that department were some massive green onions. However, the same guy was selling aloe vera plants, and I just couldn't resist. Now I've got a pot with 1 main aloe vera plant and 3 baby aloe vera plants sprouting up around it. It's currently sitting outside, because I figure that's where it'll get the most sun. I'm hoping to take it home with me, and then maybe my mom can help me re-pot the baby plants so they can eventually grow big enough to gift to people. I also tried something called an agua fresca, which a quick Google search told me is basically pureed fruit diluted with water and served over ice. I had cantaloupe flavor. It was absolutely delicious.
Thur. July 8 - Snowcone Thursday. Okay, I'm not sure if I've explained this before, but this is one of our weird office things. Every Thursday, at least in the summer, we have some sort of dessert. It alternates between sundaes and snowcones. On snowcone Thursdays, the interns all cram into the small kitchen and start shredding ice and packing it into cups. After about 10 cups are made, someone announces the start of "Snowcone Thursday" and people start showing up. We take turns making snowcones, drizzling flavored syrup over the shaved ice, inevitably spilling some of it on the floor and probably making the janitor lady sigh the next day when she has to mop. But it's all good fun. Delicious good sugary fun.
Wed. July 7 - Kickball with the office peeps. I think I've explained this before. Every Wednesday at 6pm several office peeps gather with their friends, family, neighbors, whoever they can round up it seems, at the field behind one of the middle schools. Somebody brings the bases and at least one kickball, and we split up into two teams and have a fun time.
Sun. July 4 - Slept through both parades. (Yes, there were 2 parades in the same small city.) Went to Cassie's aunt's house in the evening to eat food and watch fireworks with her family.
Okay, this one I will explain more. Apparently the parade planners had a disagreement and split into two groups, resulting in two parades at different times going on different routes. One parade was at like 8am, the other was at 10am. I slept until noon, having spent the previous day wandering around Roswell and dodging weird people of all sorts and getting sunburned thanks to the sun defying the weather forecast. Personally, I'm not sure I missed much, since the only reason I usually go to parades are the bands and the candy, and these days I feel too old for the candy. :( So, no Fourth of July parade for me. But that was okay. In the evening, Cassie and her younger sister picked me up at my apartment and we all went to her aunt's house. There I met her family, who were all quite friendly, and some were quite goofy, but that's fine, cuz I like people with a sense of humor. There was lots of delicious food and the fireworks were pretty exciting, especially the illegal ones going off right over our heads from nearby yards. And Cassie's grandfather kept teasing me and trying to teach me Spanish, and calling me Mexico since I was wearing my M hat ("M for Mexico, right?").
July 3 - Roswell UFO festival! Goodness. It was quite fun - for a good walkthrough of my day I recommend looking at the pictures in the "Independence Weekend Adventures" album (link in the box at the top right). I got up, got money, grabbed a chocolate shake from Sonic, and drove about an hour and then some to Roswell. Dodging into a side street just before they blocked it off for the parade, I found a parking spot away from the madness in a lot that was mostly empty for some strange reason. I wandered over to what appeared to be a Michigan family and sat down some distance away to wait for the parade. Eventually it came, about 15-30 minutes late, and with no candy, which disappointed every child there. After the parade, some guy started shouting stuff about Jesus saving people, and some fabulous people that appeared to be from San Francisco started shouting mockeries at him. Made me miss Ann Arbor... Walking quickly past the shouting Jesus guy, I began my wanderings around Roswell. After determining that the line for the UFO museum was way too crazy, I managed to find my way to the vendors, who were all camped out in the visitors center. There I spent most of my time, moving from table to table and looking at all of the stuff. I ended up buying a mini-loaf of apple walnut bread (long gone now), a little bendable cloth alien dude (named Mr. Alien Dude), a purple Roswell UFO Festival t-shirt, and a really nice amethyst crystal. I then moved out to the food vendors, bought a late lunch and some kettle corn, and headed back to my car. I drove back to Carlsbad and took a scenic route, stopping to take some pictures along the way. Later, I went to Walgreens and got some aloe goo (that aloe vera gel that makes sunburns less painful), because of course despite the forecast claiming it would be mostly cloudy all day, it had been a perfect clear day with the sun shining down on my pale unprotected skin - unprotected, because, of course, why would I bring sunblock if it was going to be cloudy? I wouldn't want to be carrying it around all day! (You see? You see what happens when I try to pack light and sensibly?)
So, there, I've gotten you caught up with what I didn't tell you before, and now all I have left is everything that's happened since then. Which is...ah yes. Separation paperwork, presentations, and the WIPP tour. And those shall be the topics of my next post.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Yes, I Know, It's Been A While
I know, I know. I haven't updated in forever. And my last update like a week ago wasn't even a real update, just a listing of stuff I did. And lately life has just been getting busier, and that trend will likely continue up until at least the end of the fall semester. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to start with today, and then go BACKWARDS! Then we're going to get a brief glimpse of the future when I run through upcoming events. Think you can handle that? Awesome. Let's go.
Today: nothing much happened. I worked on my presentation (more on that later), ground a sample (grinding samples has been an ongoing task for the past week or so), talked to Christi about said presentation, started making a more visual and more extended version of the itinerary Dad made for the trip back home, and filled out some paperwork for my separation from Sandia (they just LOVE their paperwork...). Now I'm eating Monday's leftovers for dinner.
Yesterday: The most exciting thing was kickball, honestly. I'm a regular for the office peeps' weekly game of kickball now. It's a ton of fun. I got some pics from this week's game, too, which I'll post on Facebook later.
Sunday thru Tuesday: Nothing of note.
July 17: Perhaps some of you peeps were enjoying the Saline Celtic Festival, but I bet I was still up before you. I woke up at 3am, got ready, and headed out at 4am headed for Carlsbad Caverns National Park for the 53rd annual Bat Flight Breakfast, which runs from 5am to 7am. It was really cool, seeing the bats zip in and watching the sky lighten gradually as the sun rose. It was also cool seeing the transition from bats to birds - it's difficult to see the difference when both are so small and moving fairly quickly, so you can't tell unless you look to see which direction they're going. Bats dived down into the cave; birds flew up and out of the bushes all around. Also, there was a tricky little raccoon near the picnic tables trying to get people's food, but the rangers were keeping him back by stomping at him. It made for an amusing show.
Some people brought their little kids there, but honestly I'm not sure it's worth the effort getting them up and out there that early (and the trouble of keeping them quiet while watching the bats) when they're not going to remember it, either because they're asleep, or just because people don't usually remember much of their early years. I have nothing against people bringing kids to the event, and most of the kids behaved quite well, but it just doesn't seem practical. Most of the families with kids arrived after most of the bats had already flown in for the day. All that effort and they miss the show. :P Also, if you ever go to this, I would highly recommend bringing your own breakfast, because every minute you stand in line waiting for an overpriced egg-and-sausage burrito is a minute not watching the bats. Luckily, I still had granola bars in my backpack, so I just ate a couple of those and sipped my thermos full of double-strong chocolate chai (you think I'm naturally awake this early???) before heading down to the amphitheater.
After it seemed the bats had trickled down to the point where it was several minutes between one bat and another, I headed to the gift shop, where I meandered around and after much deliberating purchased two t-shirts and a small stuffed bat. The shirts are still in the bag but the bat, named Batty McBatterson, is hanging from my rearview mirror. :) It was only after all of this that I purchased my overpriced egg-and-sausage burrito so that I would survive until the shishkabobs at the intern cookout. I ate half of it with some spicy salsa and saved the other half for later.
I then drove back along the long and windy road - okay so I want to talk about this. If you have never driven in the boonies at night, practice doing that before driving to a national park in the middle of the desert at four in the morning. Luckily, I've lived in the boonies and driven to and from various friends' houses in other boonies late at night including driving across the Upper Peninsula after dark, so it didn't really freak me out that I was driving in pitch black darkness with only a few signs to guide me. It didn't even freak me out when I was driving in pitch black darkness along tightly winding roads where I couldn't see that there was a drop-off on one or both sides, but I figured there probably was. I was damn well not going above the speed limit in unfamiliar boonies when I couldn't see very far, that's just stupid. But I wasn't freaking out, because I'm used to night in the boonies. Other people, tho, might freak out when leaving Carlsbad at 4am and going directly from streetlights on both sides around the airport to pure darkness. Oh and by the way the stars, when I looked up waiting in line to get into the park while sipping my tea to keep me awake, were amazing out there. You could actually see a bit of the Milky Way. I love looking at stars in the middle of nowhere. It's so cool how you can see everything. :) What was I talking about? Oh yeah, so I headed back along the winding road that before I had only driven in pure darkness. Now I was driving along it in the early morning hours, and my god, I was probably more likely to drive off the edge of the road just because of the scenery. I kept stopping at every pullout (they have little places on the road where you can pull off and take pictures) and taking pictures of the view. It was amazing. Eventually I had to keep going though, because I had to leave the park by 8am to get back to Carlsbad by 9am.
I got back with a few minutes to spare, just enough time to grab my cooler of veggies, hummus, and water; the bag of cookies; and the bag with my swimsuit, towel and change of clothes (bug spray and sunscreen were already in my little backpack). I dumped the gift shop bag on the floor, tossed my half a burrito in the fridge, and about a minute later I was in the mall parking lot with the rest of the interns as we dithered about who should go in which car. After we figured that out (I rode in Mat's car with him and Cassie), it was off to Sitting Bull Falls! Another long scenic trip that brought us just a little way from where I just came from on the map, lol. (Due to the lack of roads I probably only wasted 30-45 minutes by going all the way back to Carlsbad, but going back to Carlsbad also meant that someone else could drive, a good thing when I was ready for a nap at that point.)
Sitting Bull Falls is kind of this rocky canyon/lagoon thing in the middle of a desert, which is really cool. You can walk down a paved path to the main (bottom) part, which has several small ponds all linked together as well as lots of wet rocky areas to explore. Or, you can hike up a trail (bring tennis or hiking shoes if you plan on doing this) to the top of the falls, which has a couple of very small but fairly deep ponds. At first everyone just chilled out in the shaded pavilion (we got the last one), waiting for the food to be ready. The guys grilled up some shishkabobs and corn on the cob. Soon enough we had a feast ready - tons of shishkabobs, several ears of corn, about 5 bags of chips with 3 different dips, my veggies and hummus, someone else's veggie and dip tray, Cassie's pork and beans, pasta salad, apple slices and caramel dip, cheesecake, and several kinds of cookies. And I'm probably forgetting something. But everything I tried was delicious. The shishkabobs were great. We told the park rangers (who were really nice and brought us trash bags - together we had brought tons of food and about 7 types of sunblock, but no trash bags) that they could eat some of our food whenever they liked, since we had so much, and they took us up on the offer.
After eating, a short nap, and changing into my swimsuit, I spent most of the day with Caitlin, the grad intern, and her boyfriend. Caitlin is yet another one of those quirky, intelligent, former marching band nerd, continuing music dork people that I always seem to end up hanging out with. We exchanged geeky jokes about band stuff and instantly burning in the sun while exploring the various lagoon areas, both at the top and bottom of the falls. We paused before making the hike up to the top to grab another shishkabob, rehydrate, and re-sunblock ourselves.
At the end of the day, around maybe 4ish-pm, people were pretty much tired out and already napping if they could, so that's when we packed up and headed home. I crashed in Matt's car on the way back, snoozing practically until we got back into town. After I got back to my apartment, I basically just made sure everything that needed to be refrigerated was in the fridge, and crawled into bed, with the exception of eating something at some point.
Arg, that's enough for one post, but I will continue this post in a little bit, okay? Okay.
Today: nothing much happened. I worked on my presentation (more on that later), ground a sample (grinding samples has been an ongoing task for the past week or so), talked to Christi about said presentation, started making a more visual and more extended version of the itinerary Dad made for the trip back home, and filled out some paperwork for my separation from Sandia (they just LOVE their paperwork...). Now I'm eating Monday's leftovers for dinner.
Yesterday: The most exciting thing was kickball, honestly. I'm a regular for the office peeps' weekly game of kickball now. It's a ton of fun. I got some pics from this week's game, too, which I'll post on Facebook later.
Sunday thru Tuesday: Nothing of note.
July 17: Perhaps some of you peeps were enjoying the Saline Celtic Festival, but I bet I was still up before you. I woke up at 3am, got ready, and headed out at 4am headed for Carlsbad Caverns National Park for the 53rd annual Bat Flight Breakfast, which runs from 5am to 7am. It was really cool, seeing the bats zip in and watching the sky lighten gradually as the sun rose. It was also cool seeing the transition from bats to birds - it's difficult to see the difference when both are so small and moving fairly quickly, so you can't tell unless you look to see which direction they're going. Bats dived down into the cave; birds flew up and out of the bushes all around. Also, there was a tricky little raccoon near the picnic tables trying to get people's food, but the rangers were keeping him back by stomping at him. It made for an amusing show.
Some people brought their little kids there, but honestly I'm not sure it's worth the effort getting them up and out there that early (and the trouble of keeping them quiet while watching the bats) when they're not going to remember it, either because they're asleep, or just because people don't usually remember much of their early years. I have nothing against people bringing kids to the event, and most of the kids behaved quite well, but it just doesn't seem practical. Most of the families with kids arrived after most of the bats had already flown in for the day. All that effort and they miss the show. :P Also, if you ever go to this, I would highly recommend bringing your own breakfast, because every minute you stand in line waiting for an overpriced egg-and-sausage burrito is a minute not watching the bats. Luckily, I still had granola bars in my backpack, so I just ate a couple of those and sipped my thermos full of double-strong chocolate chai (you think I'm naturally awake this early???) before heading down to the amphitheater.
After it seemed the bats had trickled down to the point where it was several minutes between one bat and another, I headed to the gift shop, where I meandered around and after much deliberating purchased two t-shirts and a small stuffed bat. The shirts are still in the bag but the bat, named Batty McBatterson, is hanging from my rearview mirror. :) It was only after all of this that I purchased my overpriced egg-and-sausage burrito so that I would survive until the shishkabobs at the intern cookout. I ate half of it with some spicy salsa and saved the other half for later.
I then drove back along the long and windy road - okay so I want to talk about this. If you have never driven in the boonies at night, practice doing that before driving to a national park in the middle of the desert at four in the morning. Luckily, I've lived in the boonies and driven to and from various friends' houses in other boonies late at night including driving across the Upper Peninsula after dark, so it didn't really freak me out that I was driving in pitch black darkness with only a few signs to guide me. It didn't even freak me out when I was driving in pitch black darkness along tightly winding roads where I couldn't see that there was a drop-off on one or both sides, but I figured there probably was. I was damn well not going above the speed limit in unfamiliar boonies when I couldn't see very far, that's just stupid. But I wasn't freaking out, because I'm used to night in the boonies. Other people, tho, might freak out when leaving Carlsbad at 4am and going directly from streetlights on both sides around the airport to pure darkness. Oh and by the way the stars, when I looked up waiting in line to get into the park while sipping my tea to keep me awake, were amazing out there. You could actually see a bit of the Milky Way. I love looking at stars in the middle of nowhere. It's so cool how you can see everything. :) What was I talking about? Oh yeah, so I headed back along the winding road that before I had only driven in pure darkness. Now I was driving along it in the early morning hours, and my god, I was probably more likely to drive off the edge of the road just because of the scenery. I kept stopping at every pullout (they have little places on the road where you can pull off and take pictures) and taking pictures of the view. It was amazing. Eventually I had to keep going though, because I had to leave the park by 8am to get back to Carlsbad by 9am.
I got back with a few minutes to spare, just enough time to grab my cooler of veggies, hummus, and water; the bag of cookies; and the bag with my swimsuit, towel and change of clothes (bug spray and sunscreen were already in my little backpack). I dumped the gift shop bag on the floor, tossed my half a burrito in the fridge, and about a minute later I was in the mall parking lot with the rest of the interns as we dithered about who should go in which car. After we figured that out (I rode in Mat's car with him and Cassie), it was off to Sitting Bull Falls! Another long scenic trip that brought us just a little way from where I just came from on the map, lol. (Due to the lack of roads I probably only wasted 30-45 minutes by going all the way back to Carlsbad, but going back to Carlsbad also meant that someone else could drive, a good thing when I was ready for a nap at that point.)
Sitting Bull Falls is kind of this rocky canyon/lagoon thing in the middle of a desert, which is really cool. You can walk down a paved path to the main (bottom) part, which has several small ponds all linked together as well as lots of wet rocky areas to explore. Or, you can hike up a trail (bring tennis or hiking shoes if you plan on doing this) to the top of the falls, which has a couple of very small but fairly deep ponds. At first everyone just chilled out in the shaded pavilion (we got the last one), waiting for the food to be ready. The guys grilled up some shishkabobs and corn on the cob. Soon enough we had a feast ready - tons of shishkabobs, several ears of corn, about 5 bags of chips with 3 different dips, my veggies and hummus, someone else's veggie and dip tray, Cassie's pork and beans, pasta salad, apple slices and caramel dip, cheesecake, and several kinds of cookies. And I'm probably forgetting something. But everything I tried was delicious. The shishkabobs were great. We told the park rangers (who were really nice and brought us trash bags - together we had brought tons of food and about 7 types of sunblock, but no trash bags) that they could eat some of our food whenever they liked, since we had so much, and they took us up on the offer.
After eating, a short nap, and changing into my swimsuit, I spent most of the day with Caitlin, the grad intern, and her boyfriend. Caitlin is yet another one of those quirky, intelligent, former marching band nerd, continuing music dork people that I always seem to end up hanging out with. We exchanged geeky jokes about band stuff and instantly burning in the sun while exploring the various lagoon areas, both at the top and bottom of the falls. We paused before making the hike up to the top to grab another shishkabob, rehydrate, and re-sunblock ourselves.
At the end of the day, around maybe 4ish-pm, people were pretty much tired out and already napping if they could, so that's when we packed up and headed home. I crashed in Matt's car on the way back, snoozing practically until we got back into town. After I got back to my apartment, I basically just made sure everything that needed to be refrigerated was in the fridge, and crawled into bed, with the exception of eating something at some point.
Arg, that's enough for one post, but I will continue this post in a little bit, okay? Okay.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Very Quick Update, Details Later
So...Apparently I suck at keeping my blog updated. Go me.
Quick summary of stuff that's happened since the last update:
Sat. July 3: Went to the Roswell UFO festival.
Sun. July 4: Slept through both parades. (Yes, there were 2 parades in the same small city.) Went to Cassie's aunt's house in the evening to eat food and watch fireworks with her family.
Wed. July 7: Kickball with the office peeps.
Thu. July 8: Snowcone Thursday at the office.
Sat. July 10: Went to Carlsbad Farmers Market, bought aloe vera plant, tried and enjoyed agua fresca drink.
Tue. July 13: Made bean and corn salad for potluck.
Wed. July 14: Potluck at work. Also, kickball after work.
Oh, and I got a scholarship.
I don't really feel like doing a huge long detailed post now but I swear I will later. I also have to talk about the office at some point and give you a rundown of people, events, and stuff like that. :P Sorry, I know this is bleh but I will return with a better post later. Again, sorry.
Quick summary of stuff that's happened since the last update:
Sat. July 3: Went to the Roswell UFO festival.
Sun. July 4: Slept through both parades. (Yes, there were 2 parades in the same small city.) Went to Cassie's aunt's house in the evening to eat food and watch fireworks with her family.
Wed. July 7: Kickball with the office peeps.
Thu. July 8: Snowcone Thursday at the office.
Sat. July 10: Went to Carlsbad Farmers Market, bought aloe vera plant, tried and enjoyed agua fresca drink.
Tue. July 13: Made bean and corn salad for potluck.
Wed. July 14: Potluck at work. Also, kickball after work.
Oh, and I got a scholarship.
I don't really feel like doing a huge long detailed post now but I swear I will later. I also have to talk about the office at some point and give you a rundown of people, events, and stuff like that. :P Sorry, I know this is bleh but I will return with a better post later. Again, sorry.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Big Long Update on Everything
Well, it's been a while, so I suppose I should update, eh? Let's see, what have I been up to in this little city? Not much, to be honest. Last Saturday night, about a week ago, the state park just down the road, Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park, had a "Full Moon Walk", as they do every month the night of the full moon, or the Saturday night closest to it. There's a paved trail that leads you around the park, and there's rangers stationed along the way, one at each group of pens and one at each fork in the path, so that you always know where to go. In the daytime, I assume, visitors are free to wander around in whatever direction they like, but at night, they probably want a one-way trail so that no one gets lost and people are easily shooed out as closing time approaches. The trail seems to alternate between "gardens" and "zoo" parts. You start off wandering through desert plants for a while before coming to the first set of pens, which are mostly birds. Then desert plants for another while, then more animals, and so on. At one point you come out at the edge of a hill overlooking the city - which looks amazing at night. I tried to get some pictures, but they kinda sucked. Once on the hill, you do a giant loop around a pond, passing pens for various antlered things, then on the other side of the loop after a bit more walking you find the predators, bobcats and wolves and mountain lions. After that the self-guided tour was basically done, except for more plants and finally a fish pond.
I have to say, it was quite interesting, enough to make me want to go back at some point in the daytime so that I can actually see the park properly. I'd also like to go again on that moon walk on a night that's not so overcast. Unfortunately there were so many clouds that the moon was covered and so it was difficult to see many of the animals hiding in the back of their pen. I didn't think to bring a flashlight, but luckily I have good enough night vision to find my way along trails that were basically unlit, making my way from ranger to ranger (who had flashlights, making them easy to spot in the dark).
Although several of the animals were either asleep or hiding, I did manage to see a burrowing owl, a peccary (kind of a desert hog), a black bear named Maggie who apparently likes to paint, some eagles, a mountain lion up close, some tortoises, some snakes, a lizard, a badger who liked to show off for visitors, and a giant bug called a vinegaroon. The vinegaroon was actually wild and wandering around the path near the mountain lion pen, and the ranger pointed it out with his flashlight. Apparently there were wolves but somehow I missed them sadly. I didn't see the bobcats, either - the rangers were warning people to stay away from those pens since one of the males was trying to pee on people.
In the lab, we interns have basically been doing the same stuff over and over. Taking samples from various solubility experiments and making several different dilutions for different machines to analyze for different chemical components. Running one of these machines, the coulometer, every day to analyze some samples we took the first week in the lab for carbonate. The coulometer is very finicky, but I think now we are almost done with that set. Setting up more solubility experiments. Making solutions to set up said solubility experiments. Making standards each week for the coulometer. Doing dishes - most of which is washing out 10 mL volumetric flasks, which we are constantly using for the dilutions, and 100 mL volumetric flasks, which we often use for making the standards as well as measuring out solutions to set up the solubility experiments, and also several beakers, which are used for pretty much everything.
The past couple of days we terminated this experiment that has apparently sitting in a cupboard for YEARS, and we don't even really know what's in the bottles, which is kind of scary. There were maybe 50 bottles total. Each bottle had some powder in the bottom, some plastic things with metal or powder in them, and liquid on top. A lot of the bottles also had some nasty-looking gel formation. For each bottle, we needed to measure the pH, take 3 10-mL samples of the liquid and put them in these other little bottles, then take out the plastic things, filter out the solid in the bottom, and let EVERYTHING dry. The next step is (for each bottle) grind everything that's grindable for (I'm assuming) XRD analysis. erm...X-ray diffraction...it's, um, a machine that tells us what materials are present and in what phases.
Also, random thing for any materials people that are reading this: I found a copy of Callister in the hydrology lab! (next to the geochem lab, the lab I usually work in) It's the 3rd edition but it looks EXACTLY the same as the 7th on the inside, lol. Made me happy. (For those of you who are confused, "Callister" refers to the introductory MSE book written by a dude named Callister. It is the book required by U-M's Intro to MSE class, and it is THE book on MSE that pros always go back to for reference. I had heard that it was THE book and that people have it everywhere, but it made my day to actually see it stuffed on a bookshelf in a lab next to a bunch of other MSE and MechEng textbooks.) And I am now convinced that the motto of the U-M Alumni Association should be something like "Resistance is futile. We are everywhere." Middle of nowhere, small city, remote site, and yet of course there's a truck in the parking lot with a Mathematica sticker like I see on some of U-M professor office doors on one side of the back window and a battered U-M Alumni Association sticker on the other. No idea who it is, though. When I first got here, someone mentioned "oh, you should talk to so-and-so, they're from Michigan" but I think I was slightly fried from reading and corporate training at the time so I don't recall the name.
As to the weather, some people were slightly alarmed when I posted on facebook about my car negotiating the flooding streets of Carlsbad. Well, I did mention in one of my previous posts on here that the main street has no drainage system and that resulted in some fairly large puddles. That was after a light rain. The past 2-3 days have been pretty much just wet, from light spitting to complete deluges. And when I say deluge, we're talking Ann Arbor in October, knock out the satellite TV in the boonies, soak you to the bone if you were caught in it, despite wearing a coat, having an umbrella, and wearing waterproof shoes - that's how heavy we're talking. On the way to work Wednesday, I was driving along under a gloomy cloud when I spotted what looked to be a random patch of fog. It wasn't fog - it was the rebound and splashes of the water drops hitting the road because that was where the downpour was. It was on the way back to my apartment that the effects of downpours all day were truly evident, as several small ponds had sprung up all along my route. I just took my time and slowed down for each one, ever so glad that my parents had bought me a good car with all-wheel drive from a company currently encouraging its customers to not be afraid of the dirt. HOORAY SUBARUS!
What else? Oh, so Thursday was Canada Day, and with all of the flooding (again, but not quite so bad, though there was a traffic jam due to construction people randomly closing a lane during rush hour without advanced warning on the road) I forgot about going on a hunt for Aero bars in WalMart, though I did play "Canadian, Please" on repeat the entire way to work and part of the way home. For those of you who are unfamiliar with "Canadian, Please", I shall post the video made 1 year ago that now has over a million views:
Awesome, eh? Anyway, later that day I wandered around what I thought would be a local patriotic festival - it was, after all, called Uncle Sam's Spectacular Downtown Event - but it was really just a few tables, some live music that wasn't that great, and some girls selling ice cream. Really quite disappointing. But, it's not all bad. Tomorrow, if I can get myself out of bed at all, I'm going to drive up to Roswell, which is a little over an hour away. Why? Well, I just discovered that they are currently having their Annual UFO Festival. Which at the minimum will be entertaining just for seeing all the goofy weirdos and nerds and all that crazy stuff. I might even enjoy myself. Then Sunday there's the fireworks, which most people go down to the "beach" for (the locals call the waterfront and park on the Pecos River the beach), but I think I might take the advice of a coworker and go up on C hill. C hill, something else I have to figure out, is a big hill that Living Desert is on. From the top of it you can see the fireworks quite well without having them rain down on you and deafen you. It is called C hill because (a) it is a hill in Carlsbad, and (b) the high school is up there, and there is apparently a big "C" on the hill for the Carlsbad Cavemen, their mascots.
Also, I've been using Google Chrome recently, after having issues with Firefox and Flash and the internet...basically Firefox kept freezing up completely every time I tried to watch a video or play a game. I think it's fixed now, but Chrome seems faster and it's certainly behaving more, so I'll probably use Chrome for a while until something goes wrong with it.
One question - do people want me to post pictures in with this blog text? One of my oSTEM (formerly SAGE) peeps is doing that in his blog posts about his study abroad in France, so I know it can be done, if my readers would prefer that. At the moment, I just have the facebook album public links in a box off to the side so people can peruse the pics at their leisure. Let me know in comments!
For now, that's all. I will try to update more often, two weeks of updates in one go is ridiculous, especially when I'm going to start doing stuff on the weekends now.
I have to say, it was quite interesting, enough to make me want to go back at some point in the daytime so that I can actually see the park properly. I'd also like to go again on that moon walk on a night that's not so overcast. Unfortunately there were so many clouds that the moon was covered and so it was difficult to see many of the animals hiding in the back of their pen. I didn't think to bring a flashlight, but luckily I have good enough night vision to find my way along trails that were basically unlit, making my way from ranger to ranger (who had flashlights, making them easy to spot in the dark).
Although several of the animals were either asleep or hiding, I did manage to see a burrowing owl, a peccary (kind of a desert hog), a black bear named Maggie who apparently likes to paint, some eagles, a mountain lion up close, some tortoises, some snakes, a lizard, a badger who liked to show off for visitors, and a giant bug called a vinegaroon. The vinegaroon was actually wild and wandering around the path near the mountain lion pen, and the ranger pointed it out with his flashlight. Apparently there were wolves but somehow I missed them sadly. I didn't see the bobcats, either - the rangers were warning people to stay away from those pens since one of the males was trying to pee on people.
In the lab, we interns have basically been doing the same stuff over and over. Taking samples from various solubility experiments and making several different dilutions for different machines to analyze for different chemical components. Running one of these machines, the coulometer, every day to analyze some samples we took the first week in the lab for carbonate. The coulometer is very finicky, but I think now we are almost done with that set. Setting up more solubility experiments. Making solutions to set up said solubility experiments. Making standards each week for the coulometer. Doing dishes - most of which is washing out 10 mL volumetric flasks, which we are constantly using for the dilutions, and 100 mL volumetric flasks, which we often use for making the standards as well as measuring out solutions to set up the solubility experiments, and also several beakers, which are used for pretty much everything.
The past couple of days we terminated this experiment that has apparently sitting in a cupboard for YEARS, and we don't even really know what's in the bottles, which is kind of scary. There were maybe 50 bottles total. Each bottle had some powder in the bottom, some plastic things with metal or powder in them, and liquid on top. A lot of the bottles also had some nasty-looking gel formation. For each bottle, we needed to measure the pH, take 3 10-mL samples of the liquid and put them in these other little bottles, then take out the plastic things, filter out the solid in the bottom, and let EVERYTHING dry. The next step is (for each bottle) grind everything that's grindable for (I'm assuming) XRD analysis. erm...X-ray diffraction...it's, um, a machine that tells us what materials are present and in what phases.
Also, random thing for any materials people that are reading this: I found a copy of Callister in the hydrology lab! (next to the geochem lab, the lab I usually work in) It's the 3rd edition but it looks EXACTLY the same as the 7th on the inside, lol. Made me happy. (For those of you who are confused, "Callister" refers to the introductory MSE book written by a dude named Callister. It is the book required by U-M's Intro to MSE class, and it is THE book on MSE that pros always go back to for reference. I had heard that it was THE book and that people have it everywhere, but it made my day to actually see it stuffed on a bookshelf in a lab next to a bunch of other MSE and MechEng textbooks.) And I am now convinced that the motto of the U-M Alumni Association should be something like "Resistance is futile. We are everywhere." Middle of nowhere, small city, remote site, and yet of course there's a truck in the parking lot with a Mathematica sticker like I see on some of U-M professor office doors on one side of the back window and a battered U-M Alumni Association sticker on the other. No idea who it is, though. When I first got here, someone mentioned "oh, you should talk to so-and-so, they're from Michigan" but I think I was slightly fried from reading and corporate training at the time so I don't recall the name.
As to the weather, some people were slightly alarmed when I posted on facebook about my car negotiating the flooding streets of Carlsbad. Well, I did mention in one of my previous posts on here that the main street has no drainage system and that resulted in some fairly large puddles. That was after a light rain. The past 2-3 days have been pretty much just wet, from light spitting to complete deluges. And when I say deluge, we're talking Ann Arbor in October, knock out the satellite TV in the boonies, soak you to the bone if you were caught in it, despite wearing a coat, having an umbrella, and wearing waterproof shoes - that's how heavy we're talking. On the way to work Wednesday, I was driving along under a gloomy cloud when I spotted what looked to be a random patch of fog. It wasn't fog - it was the rebound and splashes of the water drops hitting the road because that was where the downpour was. It was on the way back to my apartment that the effects of downpours all day were truly evident, as several small ponds had sprung up all along my route. I just took my time and slowed down for each one, ever so glad that my parents had bought me a good car with all-wheel drive from a company currently encouraging its customers to not be afraid of the dirt. HOORAY SUBARUS!
What else? Oh, so Thursday was Canada Day, and with all of the flooding (again, but not quite so bad, though there was a traffic jam due to construction people randomly closing a lane during rush hour without advanced warning on the road) I forgot about going on a hunt for Aero bars in WalMart, though I did play "Canadian, Please" on repeat the entire way to work and part of the way home. For those of you who are unfamiliar with "Canadian, Please", I shall post the video made 1 year ago that now has over a million views:
Awesome, eh? Anyway, later that day I wandered around what I thought would be a local patriotic festival - it was, after all, called Uncle Sam's Spectacular Downtown Event - but it was really just a few tables, some live music that wasn't that great, and some girls selling ice cream. Really quite disappointing. But, it's not all bad. Tomorrow, if I can get myself out of bed at all, I'm going to drive up to Roswell, which is a little over an hour away. Why? Well, I just discovered that they are currently having their Annual UFO Festival. Which at the minimum will be entertaining just for seeing all the goofy weirdos and nerds and all that crazy stuff. I might even enjoy myself. Then Sunday there's the fireworks, which most people go down to the "beach" for (the locals call the waterfront and park on the Pecos River the beach), but I think I might take the advice of a coworker and go up on C hill. C hill, something else I have to figure out, is a big hill that Living Desert is on. From the top of it you can see the fireworks quite well without having them rain down on you and deafen you. It is called C hill because (a) it is a hill in Carlsbad, and (b) the high school is up there, and there is apparently a big "C" on the hill for the Carlsbad Cavemen, their mascots.
Also, I've been using Google Chrome recently, after having issues with Firefox and Flash and the internet...basically Firefox kept freezing up completely every time I tried to watch a video or play a game. I think it's fixed now, but Chrome seems faster and it's certainly behaving more, so I'll probably use Chrome for a while until something goes wrong with it.
One question - do people want me to post pictures in with this blog text? One of my oSTEM (formerly SAGE) peeps is doing that in his blog posts about his study abroad in France, so I know it can be done, if my readers would prefer that. At the moment, I just have the facebook album public links in a box off to the side so people can peruse the pics at their leisure. Let me know in comments!
For now, that's all. I will try to update more often, two weeks of updates in one go is ridiculous, especially when I'm going to start doing stuff on the weekends now.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Interesting Times
Well, well, well. I must say, this past week was actually fun. In terms of work, the interns moved up from scrubbing corroded lead rectangles to making dilutions and using more equipment like calibrated pipettes, a pH meter, and a vacuum pump. We also started one set of samples and terminated another set. Also, Leslie (she's the one who's kind of the mini-manager of the lab interns, the one who's teaching us everything) seems confident enough in our abilities to leave us alone in the lab as long as someone knows we're in there. I'm not saying we're completely mistake-free yet, no one ever is. I personally feel like kind of a klutz sometimes, when I keep knocking over stuff or when I can't get the pipette to work, but it's okay. We're not paid to be perfect. They know we're still learning. The main concern is that we stay safe. I like that.
Wednesday evening I played kickball with a bunch of people from the office. It was great. I only got past 1st base once, but I had fun. A lot of people brought friends and family, so there were kids in the game and toddlers being watched by one or more of the parents on the sidelines. It was kinda funny, because it was a little humid, like maybe 10-20%, and people were complaining about it like crazy. I felt like Kevin with Houghton winters, it was hilarious. I felt fine, and all I could think about were all the summers that I marched around in 70+% humidity, so I was just grinning.
After kickball, I grabbed a few extra ingredients at the local grocery store just down the street from the field and rushed home to start making bean and corn salad for Thursday's potluck. It went well, except there was a ton of chopping, and I had to make an 11:30pm run to Walmart to get an extra huge bowl to mix everything together. Luckily it's summer, and the next holiday is July 4, which usually involves much grilling and salads and deliciousness, so big humongous bowls with patriotic stripes were on sale and in the front of the store.
Thursday we had a giant potluck since three people in our office are leaving soon. A bunch of the guys grilled up tons of meat out in the back of the building, and lots of people brought salads, or chips, or dessert, or crackers and cheese, and it was just tons of delicious food and it was awesome. I even saved half of my cheeseburger for dinner, since I ate too much delicious food between bites of the burger. Then people said some words, and some people got close to tears, because they really are pretty close here in the Carlsbad office.
Friday was less exciting but people took care of the leftovers pretty well - and all of my bean and corn salad got eaten! yay! And one woman even asked for the recipe. :)
Saturday was an outing with the interns. Me, Brittany, Cassie, Daisy, Ashley, and Penit - first 3 work in the lab, next 2 girls work at the front desk, and I don't know what Penit does - all met at the mall here in Carlsbad, piled into two cars, and drove to Roswell, about an hour away. Roswell is a lot bigger than Carlsbad, and actually has stores and banks I've heard of. There, we went to the movies and watched Toy Story 3 in 3D, which was great. Then we went to Applebee's for dinner, followed by a bit of shopping at a place called Rue 21. It didn't have the best quality stuff, but I managed to find a cute t-shirt. After shopping, we left to go back to Carlsbad. On the way there and back, Cassie told Brittany and I several stories - the rivalry between Artesia and Carlsbad, which sounds almost as bad as U-M and OSU; tales of her high school and college days; tales of her old car and new car and driving; past boyfriends, little sister troubles, etc. I occasionally told stories when it was relevant - driving to Mich Tech, driving to Carlsbad, some tidbits about Saline and my high school experience, a little bit of the history of my old car, etc.
Today was mostly my usual Sunday routine, with the exception that I wished my dad a Happy Father's Day when I called my parents. The other difference was that I drove over to the Gem and Mineral Show today - it was the last day, and I figured I'd check it out, since I like rocks. I bought a couple of nice amethyst crystals as well as a little pyrite cube. I felt like such a dork getting the pyrite cube. There's a much bigger pyrite cube in a case at Sandia with a bunch of other rocks, and I saw it and I was like "THAT'S SO COOL" cuz it's like a perfect cube and there's another smaller cube coming out of the main cube at an angle and I was like "OMG DISLOCATIONS" cuz I'm quickly growing into a materials dork lol.
As to the ongoing bug battle in my apartment - I still see ants occasionally, and there's been a couple little spiders in my bedroom, but it's really not so bad. It's not scary anymore, just annoying.
Also, a strange observation - the people who built the roads and the Walmart in Carlsbad seemed to assume that because it's the desert, it would never rain. Carlsbad is just the edge of a desert, though, so it does rain occasionally, though it certainly doesn't pour buckets like it does in the Midwest. Whenever there's a good amount of rain, however, like there was today (like maybe what we might call normal), there's tons of giant puddles everywhere, to the point where it almost might be considered flash flooding. Also, the ceiling of Walmart drips everywhere. Why? There's no drainage system. There's very few drainage things along the road, and I'm guessing Walmart's roof probably isn't sloped properly to let the rain drip off as it should. It just seems strange coming from a city where waterproof shoes are a must due to the giant puddles that form on the sidewalks despite the drainage systems.
That's it for now, folks. Now I just have to get my stuff out of the dryer and try to get some sleep. :)
Wednesday evening I played kickball with a bunch of people from the office. It was great. I only got past 1st base once, but I had fun. A lot of people brought friends and family, so there were kids in the game and toddlers being watched by one or more of the parents on the sidelines. It was kinda funny, because it was a little humid, like maybe 10-20%, and people were complaining about it like crazy. I felt like Kevin with Houghton winters, it was hilarious. I felt fine, and all I could think about were all the summers that I marched around in 70+% humidity, so I was just grinning.
After kickball, I grabbed a few extra ingredients at the local grocery store just down the street from the field and rushed home to start making bean and corn salad for Thursday's potluck. It went well, except there was a ton of chopping, and I had to make an 11:30pm run to Walmart to get an extra huge bowl to mix everything together. Luckily it's summer, and the next holiday is July 4, which usually involves much grilling and salads and deliciousness, so big humongous bowls with patriotic stripes were on sale and in the front of the store.
Thursday we had a giant potluck since three people in our office are leaving soon. A bunch of the guys grilled up tons of meat out in the back of the building, and lots of people brought salads, or chips, or dessert, or crackers and cheese, and it was just tons of delicious food and it was awesome. I even saved half of my cheeseburger for dinner, since I ate too much delicious food between bites of the burger. Then people said some words, and some people got close to tears, because they really are pretty close here in the Carlsbad office.
Friday was less exciting but people took care of the leftovers pretty well - and all of my bean and corn salad got eaten! yay! And one woman even asked for the recipe. :)
Saturday was an outing with the interns. Me, Brittany, Cassie, Daisy, Ashley, and Penit - first 3 work in the lab, next 2 girls work at the front desk, and I don't know what Penit does - all met at the mall here in Carlsbad, piled into two cars, and drove to Roswell, about an hour away. Roswell is a lot bigger than Carlsbad, and actually has stores and banks I've heard of. There, we went to the movies and watched Toy Story 3 in 3D, which was great. Then we went to Applebee's for dinner, followed by a bit of shopping at a place called Rue 21. It didn't have the best quality stuff, but I managed to find a cute t-shirt. After shopping, we left to go back to Carlsbad. On the way there and back, Cassie told Brittany and I several stories - the rivalry between Artesia and Carlsbad, which sounds almost as bad as U-M and OSU; tales of her high school and college days; tales of her old car and new car and driving; past boyfriends, little sister troubles, etc. I occasionally told stories when it was relevant - driving to Mich Tech, driving to Carlsbad, some tidbits about Saline and my high school experience, a little bit of the history of my old car, etc.
Today was mostly my usual Sunday routine, with the exception that I wished my dad a Happy Father's Day when I called my parents. The other difference was that I drove over to the Gem and Mineral Show today - it was the last day, and I figured I'd check it out, since I like rocks. I bought a couple of nice amethyst crystals as well as a little pyrite cube. I felt like such a dork getting the pyrite cube. There's a much bigger pyrite cube in a case at Sandia with a bunch of other rocks, and I saw it and I was like "THAT'S SO COOL" cuz it's like a perfect cube and there's another smaller cube coming out of the main cube at an angle and I was like "OMG DISLOCATIONS" cuz I'm quickly growing into a materials dork lol.
As to the ongoing bug battle in my apartment - I still see ants occasionally, and there's been a couple little spiders in my bedroom, but it's really not so bad. It's not scary anymore, just annoying.
Also, a strange observation - the people who built the roads and the Walmart in Carlsbad seemed to assume that because it's the desert, it would never rain. Carlsbad is just the edge of a desert, though, so it does rain occasionally, though it certainly doesn't pour buckets like it does in the Midwest. Whenever there's a good amount of rain, however, like there was today (like maybe what we might call normal), there's tons of giant puddles everywhere, to the point where it almost might be considered flash flooding. Also, the ceiling of Walmart drips everywhere. Why? There's no drainage system. There's very few drainage things along the road, and I'm guessing Walmart's roof probably isn't sloped properly to let the rain drip off as it should. It just seems strange coming from a city where waterproof shoes are a must due to the giant puddles that form on the sidewalks despite the drainage systems.
That's it for now, folks. Now I just have to get my stuff out of the dryer and try to get some sleep. :)
Monday, June 14, 2010
Apartment Adventures
You know, when I first came to Carlsbad, I thought to myself, "This'll be great. I'll got out walking and hiking around the caves every weekend and explore the state and national parks around here and all that. I'll make my own food and it'll be delicious and nutritious and awesome. Nothing can possibly go wrong!" Pssh. Every day I come home from work and make something easy. At first I did a bit of cooking - pork and rice, sausage onna bun, chicken fajita...now it's just limited to stuff I can microwave once again, although I did make a delicious egg and ham scramble last weekend that I ate in two "breakfast" burritos that were both eaten for non-breakfast meals. Chicken patties, instant meals - the technology has improved for frozen meals by quite a bit since I started microwaving my own meals years ago. They have steamer things now!
But I digress. Every day I come home, microwave something, sit down at the computer and attempt to watch something entertaining. The internet doesn't always oblige, but I usually manage. And then I play games and facebook and completely brainless useless crap. On the weekends, I sleep in to some ridiculous hour and then enjoy a lazy day on Saturdays, meaning I have to do all of my cleaning on Sundays.
But why pay an entrance fee to some park when I have a jungle of creatures here at home? lol. Okay it's not quite a jungle. Those who have been following my facebook statuses and picture updates may have some idea of what I've been through. First it was the moths. The moths seemed to be all over my front curtains in a matter of days, and I had no idea where they came from. Now that I don't keep the superbright front room light on at night, they're not so prevalent, but I still see them now and then. Then it was the ants. The ants are a continuing problem. It used to be just the odd ant that I'd smush as soon as I saw it, but now it seems like every morning there's a few meandering around the baseboard around the dining room and/or kitchen, which I smush on sight.
Last Wednesday night, I think, was ridiculous. First, there was a giant brown beetle-lookin' thing, probably around an inch long and a third of an inch wide, which I smashed with my shoe. Then there was a giant wolf spider in my bathtub, which I contained with a plunger while I duct-taped a flat piece of cardboard to a long narrow cardboard box. I then used my device to smash the spider until I was absolutely sure it was really quite completely dead. Then, after cowering in my bed for a while, I came out of my room only to find another big brown thing crawling around, which I also smashed with my device. For big brown things, a shoe works better.
Since then, it's only been ants, moths, and smaller beetle-lookin' things, all of which I can smush easily with a napkin or paper towel.
And I do plan on getting out and about to the parks eventually, and perhaps walking around Carlsbad in the mornings or evenings, when it's not quite so hot. And I will hopefully get into some sort of rhythm of making my own food again. I just haven't really found a good pattern yet to fall into. Once I get a routine going, I should be able to stick to it pretty well - even if I am occasionally distracted by bugs.
But I digress. Every day I come home, microwave something, sit down at the computer and attempt to watch something entertaining. The internet doesn't always oblige, but I usually manage. And then I play games and facebook and completely brainless useless crap. On the weekends, I sleep in to some ridiculous hour and then enjoy a lazy day on Saturdays, meaning I have to do all of my cleaning on Sundays.
But why pay an entrance fee to some park when I have a jungle of creatures here at home? lol. Okay it's not quite a jungle. Those who have been following my facebook statuses and picture updates may have some idea of what I've been through. First it was the moths. The moths seemed to be all over my front curtains in a matter of days, and I had no idea where they came from. Now that I don't keep the superbright front room light on at night, they're not so prevalent, but I still see them now and then. Then it was the ants. The ants are a continuing problem. It used to be just the odd ant that I'd smush as soon as I saw it, but now it seems like every morning there's a few meandering around the baseboard around the dining room and/or kitchen, which I smush on sight.
Last Wednesday night, I think, was ridiculous. First, there was a giant brown beetle-lookin' thing, probably around an inch long and a third of an inch wide, which I smashed with my shoe. Then there was a giant wolf spider in my bathtub, which I contained with a plunger while I duct-taped a flat piece of cardboard to a long narrow cardboard box. I then used my device to smash the spider until I was absolutely sure it was really quite completely dead. Then, after cowering in my bed for a while, I came out of my room only to find another big brown thing crawling around, which I also smashed with my device. For big brown things, a shoe works better.
Since then, it's only been ants, moths, and smaller beetle-lookin' things, all of which I can smush easily with a napkin or paper towel.
And I do plan on getting out and about to the parks eventually, and perhaps walking around Carlsbad in the mornings or evenings, when it's not quite so hot. And I will hopefully get into some sort of rhythm of making my own food again. I just haven't really found a good pattern yet to fall into. Once I get a routine going, I should be able to stick to it pretty well - even if I am occasionally distracted by bugs.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Tales from the First Week
Okay, technically I've only been at work for four days, since Monday was Memorial Day, so I haven't yet been through an ENTIRE work week, but I think I can safely say that I successfully survived my first week as an intern at Sandia. Now, I'm not sure how much I can actually post on this blog since by now I've been through at least 5 different corporate courses that emphasize not giving away controlled or sensitive information, so now I'm paranoid that if I say something specific the federal ninjas will come and get me. But I will try my best to give you an idea of what my job has been like.
The first day was like any first day at some company - the first step was to fill out, sign, and date about 10 different forms, and if you did anything wrong, you had to cross it out, correct it, and initial and date the correction. Then we went through a presentation that, usually, takes 8 hours, but in our case only took 2-3 hours. Then there was a tour, and meeting a bunch of people we are still struggling to remember the names of, and finally we were shown to our office where we got our passwords and discovered that we couldn't yet access the internal web with the convenient personal page summarizing everything, and learned we would have to wait for that access since the computer dude wasn't there. And then we started on what we worked on for the entire week, and are still working on: training.
In this case, since we're lab dorks, "training" consists of reading several pages of various types of procedures, plus going through a bunch of corporate presentations online, including a bunch of cheesy scenarios where there's always that one guy - and it's always the SAME GUY - who knows nothing and you have to pick the right bubble to guide him. For some reason Lockheed Martin - they own Sandia so all these presentations are made by them - decided that instead of creating a standard office set, or filming in the office during non-standard work hours, they'd just substitute all the background and furniture with sub-standard computer animation. It looks really weird, especially when you realize that the people are sitting at computer-animated desks. At this point we're just starting to get into the online stuff that actually relates to lab stuff.
Who's we? Well, at this point, it's me and another intern, Brittany, who seems to be even more quiet and shy than I am. We rarely speak to one another, saying only "Good morning" as I come in (Brittany always gets there before me) and "See ya later" as one of us leaves. Occasionally one of the many office people will wander in and check on us, ask how we're doing, verify that yes, we are still working through the training, and then wander away again. Usually the first time someone stops by, they'll try to be all friendly and chatty. This can be kind of annoying when you're in the middle of reading a tedious procedure or midway through a corporate video that can't be paused. Usually the person manages to get me to admit that I'll be a senior (that's so weird to say) at the University of Michigan, I'm majoring in Materials Science (I'm too lazy to say "and Engineering", I've noticed), and that I'm from Michigan; and they get Brittany to admit that she'll be a junior at Penn State, she's from Virginia, and she's majoring in Physics. Honestly that's about all we ever say to anyone. After that info, the person usually tells us the general direction of their office and what they work in and wanders off.
Next week another intern is starting, and apparently the third computer station in the office isn't set up yet, so that'll be interesting. Perhaps when the computer dude comes in to set that up, we can get him to add printer access to our computers so we can actually print stuff.
Now, I may have led you to believe this is a tedious boring office. It's not. The people are really nice, and are willing to answer any question. Even I feel comfortable (nervous, but not frightened into complete avoidance) approaching the manager of our entire team, Christi, with a question. Granted, it's kind of hard to feel nervous when she brings a puppy into the office. Apparently she owns purebred Briard show dogs. The puppy's name is Feelin' Groovy (or Groovy for short), and she's the pup of a dog I can't remember the name of which is currently on some show tour. Groovy is SO CUTE. She's 10 weeks old, fluffy, and likes to sleep under the legs of wheeled office chairs so that the person sitting in said chair can't move. She kinda looks like these puppies. :)
Apparently we usually have kickball on Wednesday afternoons, but we didn't this week since a lot of people are out on vacation. We did have Sundae Thursday, though. Sundae Thursday is when we gather in the large conference room for ice cream sundaes. This past Thursday there was also some blueberry cake stuff. The funny part is, the Sandians (as they like to call themselves) can count this as exercise (which maybe they can charge to some special corporate code as part of their benefits, I'm not sure) as long as someone is playing the Wii. Oh, yeah - we have a Wii, purchased with Sandia money, to promote exercise. And since I'm a pushover, I was talked into playing Wii bowling with one of the younger employees. I actually did really well. I felt kinda awkward, playing an unfamiliar video game in front of an audience, which dwindled as people finished eating and chatting and went back to work. Eventually it was just Christi and a couple other people. Christi cheered me on the entire time. :)
*yawn* Well, I'm getting kind of sleepy now. Tomorrow I'm finally going to do all the cleaning I've been meaning to do since I got here - dusting practically everywhere, de-molding my bedroom window, windexing the windows, clorox-wiping pretty much every surface, swiffering the tile, and vacuuming the carpeting. If I still have energy after that, I'll unpack the last 1.5 boxes of stuff sitting behind me and maybe put posters up on the wall so they aren't so EMPTY. Sunday will probably be laundry if I don't run it while I'm cleaning, and a trip to Walmart to restock food and find weather stripping and clear packing tape.
If you want to send me something to put up on my wall or use as some other home decoration, please do so! I have ridiculous amounts of empty space and only a few posters to cover it. If it's just a funny picture or something and you want to email it, that's fine, I can print it out here - I'll just have to find a black ink printer cartridge. But I have the key to my mailbox now so I can actually get my mail. YAY. So if you want my mailing address just email or facebook me or comment or something and I'll get it to you somehow. :)
The first day was like any first day at some company - the first step was to fill out, sign, and date about 10 different forms, and if you did anything wrong, you had to cross it out, correct it, and initial and date the correction. Then we went through a presentation that, usually, takes 8 hours, but in our case only took 2-3 hours. Then there was a tour, and meeting a bunch of people we are still struggling to remember the names of, and finally we were shown to our office where we got our passwords and discovered that we couldn't yet access the internal web with the convenient personal page summarizing everything, and learned we would have to wait for that access since the computer dude wasn't there. And then we started on what we worked on for the entire week, and are still working on: training.
In this case, since we're lab dorks, "training" consists of reading several pages of various types of procedures, plus going through a bunch of corporate presentations online, including a bunch of cheesy scenarios where there's always that one guy - and it's always the SAME GUY - who knows nothing and you have to pick the right bubble to guide him. For some reason Lockheed Martin - they own Sandia so all these presentations are made by them - decided that instead of creating a standard office set, or filming in the office during non-standard work hours, they'd just substitute all the background and furniture with sub-standard computer animation. It looks really weird, especially when you realize that the people are sitting at computer-animated desks. At this point we're just starting to get into the online stuff that actually relates to lab stuff.
Who's we? Well, at this point, it's me and another intern, Brittany, who seems to be even more quiet and shy than I am. We rarely speak to one another, saying only "Good morning" as I come in (Brittany always gets there before me) and "See ya later" as one of us leaves. Occasionally one of the many office people will wander in and check on us, ask how we're doing, verify that yes, we are still working through the training, and then wander away again. Usually the first time someone stops by, they'll try to be all friendly and chatty. This can be kind of annoying when you're in the middle of reading a tedious procedure or midway through a corporate video that can't be paused. Usually the person manages to get me to admit that I'll be a senior (that's so weird to say) at the University of Michigan, I'm majoring in Materials Science (I'm too lazy to say "and Engineering", I've noticed), and that I'm from Michigan; and they get Brittany to admit that she'll be a junior at Penn State, she's from Virginia, and she's majoring in Physics. Honestly that's about all we ever say to anyone. After that info, the person usually tells us the general direction of their office and what they work in and wanders off.
Next week another intern is starting, and apparently the third computer station in the office isn't set up yet, so that'll be interesting. Perhaps when the computer dude comes in to set that up, we can get him to add printer access to our computers so we can actually print stuff.
Now, I may have led you to believe this is a tedious boring office. It's not. The people are really nice, and are willing to answer any question. Even I feel comfortable (nervous, but not frightened into complete avoidance) approaching the manager of our entire team, Christi, with a question. Granted, it's kind of hard to feel nervous when she brings a puppy into the office. Apparently she owns purebred Briard show dogs. The puppy's name is Feelin' Groovy (or Groovy for short), and she's the pup of a dog I can't remember the name of which is currently on some show tour. Groovy is SO CUTE. She's 10 weeks old, fluffy, and likes to sleep under the legs of wheeled office chairs so that the person sitting in said chair can't move. She kinda looks like these puppies. :)
Apparently we usually have kickball on Wednesday afternoons, but we didn't this week since a lot of people are out on vacation. We did have Sundae Thursday, though. Sundae Thursday is when we gather in the large conference room for ice cream sundaes. This past Thursday there was also some blueberry cake stuff. The funny part is, the Sandians (as they like to call themselves) can count this as exercise (which maybe they can charge to some special corporate code as part of their benefits, I'm not sure) as long as someone is playing the Wii. Oh, yeah - we have a Wii, purchased with Sandia money, to promote exercise. And since I'm a pushover, I was talked into playing Wii bowling with one of the younger employees. I actually did really well. I felt kinda awkward, playing an unfamiliar video game in front of an audience, which dwindled as people finished eating and chatting and went back to work. Eventually it was just Christi and a couple other people. Christi cheered me on the entire time. :)
*yawn* Well, I'm getting kind of sleepy now. Tomorrow I'm finally going to do all the cleaning I've been meaning to do since I got here - dusting practically everywhere, de-molding my bedroom window, windexing the windows, clorox-wiping pretty much every surface, swiffering the tile, and vacuuming the carpeting. If I still have energy after that, I'll unpack the last 1.5 boxes of stuff sitting behind me and maybe put posters up on the wall so they aren't so EMPTY. Sunday will probably be laundry if I don't run it while I'm cleaning, and a trip to Walmart to restock food and find weather stripping and clear packing tape.
If you want to send me something to put up on my wall or use as some other home decoration, please do so! I have ridiculous amounts of empty space and only a few posters to cover it. If it's just a funny picture or something and you want to email it, that's fine, I can print it out here - I'll just have to find a black ink printer cartridge. But I have the key to my mailbox now so I can actually get my mail. YAY. So if you want my mailing address just email or facebook me or comment or something and I'll get it to you somehow. :)
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Things I've Noticed
So I've noticed a few things about this little city.
First, most parking here is diagonal. All street parking, and most of the big parking lots too. No idea why, although it might be because everyone trying to parallel park their giant American-made behemoths or crank them around into perfectly straight lines perpendicular to the store would be ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against American cars. I just don't get the point of buying giant behemoths if you're not lugging around a ton of stuff all the time. And most people around here seem to have giant behemoths. When I say behemoth, I mean those giant pickup trucks that they show on commercials dragging giant steel pipes around and bragging about how manly they are with their hemi, whatever that is, and some obnoxious amount of torque, or the big SUVs that they show driving through ridiculous mud puddles and up around mountains or whatever. If you do construction work, if you need to haul big trailers around, that's fine, but do you really need all that power just to get groceries? Anyway...I don't really have an issue with the diagonal parking, except that it makes getting *out* of street parking fairly dangerous (backing into oncoming traffic = not safe). I'm just not used to it, so at the moment I'm not that good at it. I'm used to judging my alignment with other cars with straight lines, but I can't do that when there's a behemoth truck on one side and a tiny old boxy car on the other and EVERYONE'S CROOKED...or so it seems to me. :P Diags are hard enough to align with just people and instruments...I don't need mismatched steel frames too... >.< Okay rant done.
Second, Carlsbad is an odd place in the case of what services and what restaurants are available. There seem to be way too many gas stations. The number of gas stations only starts to make sense when you realize that Carlsbad is a stop on a highway that, between cities, has absolutely nothing off of it except for country roads and potash mines - but it still seems excessive. There's tons of fast food places, but not many good sit-down places. There's two Sonics when I never saw a single one in all of Michigan. And the Denny's is open 24 hours. I guess if I ever have a craving at some ridiculous hour for a heart-stopping meal consisting of five eggs, two pounds of meat glistening with grease, and way too many carbs, I know where to go. There's also a lot of loan and tax places, and rental places for appliances and furniture. There's THREE dollar stores of various names that I've counted. But in this whole town, there's only one locksmith and one place that'll fix windows. Apparently this is the reason that my front windows are cracked and have been that way for several months.
Another odd thing - there's a Do It Best Hardware store next to a church. That in itself isn't odd, really - but the sign with the movable letters underneath the Do It Best sign appears to belong to the church. So, when you glance up at said sign, expecting to see something like "Summer Sale - Hoses Half-Off!" or "Buy Hammer, Get 50 Nails Free!", you instead see "Come Worship With Us", which just seems weird underneath the Do It Best sign.
I've also noticed that the dry air seems to suck the moisture out of me. I'm constantly thirsty, my lips are already chapped again even though I've been indoors most of the day, and if I don't use my Aveeno lotion fairly often, my skin gets itchy from the dryness. But don't worry about me - I have two giant bottles of fruit juice, all the tap water I could want, at least 5 tubes of chapstick/blistex/lip balm substances scattered throughout my boxes of belongings, and a large pump bottle of Aveeno that "relieves itchy, extra dry skin" and "moisturizes for 24 hours". And if I run out of anything at any time, there's a Walmart open 24/7 just 5-10 minutes away. :)
First, most parking here is diagonal. All street parking, and most of the big parking lots too. No idea why, although it might be because everyone trying to parallel park their giant American-made behemoths or crank them around into perfectly straight lines perpendicular to the store would be ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against American cars. I just don't get the point of buying giant behemoths if you're not lugging around a ton of stuff all the time. And most people around here seem to have giant behemoths. When I say behemoth, I mean those giant pickup trucks that they show on commercials dragging giant steel pipes around and bragging about how manly they are with their hemi, whatever that is, and some obnoxious amount of torque, or the big SUVs that they show driving through ridiculous mud puddles and up around mountains or whatever. If you do construction work, if you need to haul big trailers around, that's fine, but do you really need all that power just to get groceries? Anyway...I don't really have an issue with the diagonal parking, except that it makes getting *out* of street parking fairly dangerous (backing into oncoming traffic = not safe). I'm just not used to it, so at the moment I'm not that good at it. I'm used to judging my alignment with other cars with straight lines, but I can't do that when there's a behemoth truck on one side and a tiny old boxy car on the other and EVERYONE'S CROOKED...or so it seems to me. :P Diags are hard enough to align with just people and instruments...I don't need mismatched steel frames too... >.< Okay rant done.
Second, Carlsbad is an odd place in the case of what services and what restaurants are available. There seem to be way too many gas stations. The number of gas stations only starts to make sense when you realize that Carlsbad is a stop on a highway that, between cities, has absolutely nothing off of it except for country roads and potash mines - but it still seems excessive. There's tons of fast food places, but not many good sit-down places. There's two Sonics when I never saw a single one in all of Michigan. And the Denny's is open 24 hours. I guess if I ever have a craving at some ridiculous hour for a heart-stopping meal consisting of five eggs, two pounds of meat glistening with grease, and way too many carbs, I know where to go. There's also a lot of loan and tax places, and rental places for appliances and furniture. There's THREE dollar stores of various names that I've counted. But in this whole town, there's only one locksmith and one place that'll fix windows. Apparently this is the reason that my front windows are cracked and have been that way for several months.
Another odd thing - there's a Do It Best Hardware store next to a church. That in itself isn't odd, really - but the sign with the movable letters underneath the Do It Best sign appears to belong to the church. So, when you glance up at said sign, expecting to see something like "Summer Sale - Hoses Half-Off!" or "Buy Hammer, Get 50 Nails Free!", you instead see "Come Worship With Us", which just seems weird underneath the Do It Best sign.
I've also noticed that the dry air seems to suck the moisture out of me. I'm constantly thirsty, my lips are already chapped again even though I've been indoors most of the day, and if I don't use my Aveeno lotion fairly often, my skin gets itchy from the dryness. But don't worry about me - I have two giant bottles of fruit juice, all the tap water I could want, at least 5 tubes of chapstick/blistex/lip balm substances scattered throughout my boxes of belongings, and a large pump bottle of Aveeno that "relieves itchy, extra dry skin" and "moisturizes for 24 hours". And if I run out of anything at any time, there's a Walmart open 24/7 just 5-10 minutes away. :)
Exploring
Over the past few days, I've been doing a bit of what I like to call exploring. I often like to go exploring when I first come to a place or even when I've been there for a while. Basically, what I mean by exploring in this case is meandering around by your preferred mode of transportation and seeing what's around. It could be wandering around on foot to see what stores are nearby, or it could be suddenly turning down a street on a whim to see where it takes you.
Thursday and Friday my main explorations were structured, with a set destination and goal. Go to Walmart, buy these things. Go to the post office, order a key for the mailbox. Go to the accounting place to drop off your rent check... and then I found out that it closes early on Fridays. So I started walking around on that block. Not for too long, of course, since it was about 90 degrees outside, but enough to see that there was a Payless Shoe Source in town.
Anyway, my first goal today was to go out and find a garage sale that I'd seen signs for yesterday. I did that and I managed to find some sheer curtains for the front window, which now looks a lot better now that the ugly gray things are covered up. I also found an HP All-in-one printer, which appears to work except that it doesn't have a black ink cartridge. I then headed to the bookstore, hastings, where I found a good paperback supply of Jordan, Modesitt, Lackey, and Pratchett, but I didn't buy anything. I want to check out the library before I buy anything, and I haven't gotten around to that yet. I then looked around some furniture/interior decoration place, but it was all too spiffy and too highly-priced. Then I took my second trip to the local grocery store called Albertsons and bought some goodies and more fruit juice. Then I got gas and went home, and futzed with the curtains until I got them the way I wanted them, and installed the printer.
I still haven't attacked the mold on my bedroom window and I still haven't really unpacked, but those things are on the agenda. Bit by bit, I'll make this place feel a little more welcoming. :)
Thursday and Friday my main explorations were structured, with a set destination and goal. Go to Walmart, buy these things. Go to the post office, order a key for the mailbox. Go to the accounting place to drop off your rent check... and then I found out that it closes early on Fridays. So I started walking around on that block. Not for too long, of course, since it was about 90 degrees outside, but enough to see that there was a Payless Shoe Source in town.
Anyway, my first goal today was to go out and find a garage sale that I'd seen signs for yesterday. I did that and I managed to find some sheer curtains for the front window, which now looks a lot better now that the ugly gray things are covered up. I also found an HP All-in-one printer, which appears to work except that it doesn't have a black ink cartridge. I then headed to the bookstore, hastings, where I found a good paperback supply of Jordan, Modesitt, Lackey, and Pratchett, but I didn't buy anything. I want to check out the library before I buy anything, and I haven't gotten around to that yet. I then looked around some furniture/interior decoration place, but it was all too spiffy and too highly-priced. Then I took my second trip to the local grocery store called Albertsons and bought some goodies and more fruit juice. Then I got gas and went home, and futzed with the curtains until I got them the way I wanted them, and installed the printer.
I still haven't attacked the mold on my bedroom window and I still haven't really unpacked, but those things are on the agenda. Bit by bit, I'll make this place feel a little more welcoming. :)
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Settling In
At first, I wasn't too sure about my apartment here in Carlsbad. I walked in with Leslie, who'll be my coworker and kind of my boss at the lab (she manages the interns and does a bunch of chemical analysis stuff) and we saw this kinda dirty place with a wobbly bed, evil-looking mold growing on the window, and a beaten-up closet with a shower curtain hiding some machinery and plumbing stuff in the back.
Now I've gotten things cleaned up a bit, and Karl the apartment manager fixed the bed and brought me a microwave (and claims he'll kill the mold with bleach tomorrow), and pretty much everything works (except for some reason the washer won't start on the "colors" setting - but works fine on "whites" or "knits/delicates"). I traveled down to the Walmart a couple of times now, and I've got sandwich supplies and frozen chicken nuggets, which should last me for a little while before I have to learn to cook. The only major thing I have left to do today is set up my bedroom a bit - move the bed, dresser, and night table around to my liking and then put the sheets on the bed...or at the very least, move the bed so my head won't be directly under the moldy window tonight.
If you're starting to panic from my cynical descriptions and thinking "OMG Diana's living in the ghetto and she's going to DIE!" - STOP. First of all, this is not the ghetto. It might seem a little shady, but it's not the ghetto. And second, I can't beat my MSE classmate Tori who actually DID live in the ghetto of Houston or some other big Texas city, and has some interesting stories about it.
There are elements of the apartment that I might call "kinda ghetto" - the mysterious shower curtain hiding the water softener or whatever's back there, for instance - but it's actually pretty nice. There's road noise, but it's quiet enough so it's just white noise, like having a fan going in the background. There's internet, slow but functional. There's even a washer and dryer that work pretty well as long as you don't try to dry too much stuff at a time. There's a TV with a built-in DVD player, there's air conditioning that works really well, there's a fridge and microwave and sink and bathroom and shower and a really big closet. I still have a lot of cleaning and unpacking and organizing to do, but I've got tomorrow and the entire Memorial Day weekend for that. Oh, and there's also a spider living in the corner near my front door, but it doesn't seem very evil at all. I told it that if it eats the bugs I won't squish it. :)
But now, because I haven't adjusted to Mountain Time yet, and because I've had a
long day, I think I'll go fight with my bedroom now so I can go to bed eventually.
PS: If you want to send me stuff, email me or bug me on facebook and I'll give you my address. But you'll have to wait to send it until I have the key to the mailbox thing.
Now I've gotten things cleaned up a bit, and Karl the apartment manager fixed the bed and brought me a microwave (and claims he'll kill the mold with bleach tomorrow), and pretty much everything works (except for some reason the washer won't start on the "colors" setting - but works fine on "whites" or "knits/delicates"). I traveled down to the Walmart a couple of times now, and I've got sandwich supplies and frozen chicken nuggets, which should last me for a little while before I have to learn to cook. The only major thing I have left to do today is set up my bedroom a bit - move the bed, dresser, and night table around to my liking and then put the sheets on the bed...or at the very least, move the bed so my head won't be directly under the moldy window tonight.
If you're starting to panic from my cynical descriptions and thinking "OMG Diana's living in the ghetto and she's going to DIE!" - STOP. First of all, this is not the ghetto. It might seem a little shady, but it's not the ghetto. And second, I can't beat my MSE classmate Tori who actually DID live in the ghetto of Houston or some other big Texas city, and has some interesting stories about it.
There are elements of the apartment that I might call "kinda ghetto" - the mysterious shower curtain hiding the water softener or whatever's back there, for instance - but it's actually pretty nice. There's road noise, but it's quiet enough so it's just white noise, like having a fan going in the background. There's internet, slow but functional. There's even a washer and dryer that work pretty well as long as you don't try to dry too much stuff at a time. There's a TV with a built-in DVD player, there's air conditioning that works really well, there's a fridge and microwave and sink and bathroom and shower and a really big closet. I still have a lot of cleaning and unpacking and organizing to do, but I've got tomorrow and the entire Memorial Day weekend for that. Oh, and there's also a spider living in the corner near my front door, but it doesn't seem very evil at all. I told it that if it eats the bugs I won't squish it. :)
But now, because I haven't adjusted to Mountain Time yet, and because I've had a
long day, I think I'll go fight with my bedroom now so I can go to bed eventually.
PS: If you want to send me stuff, email me or bug me on facebook and I'll give you my address. But you'll have to wait to send it until I have the key to the mailbox thing.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Arrival
I'm in Carlsbad in a spiffy hotel. Yay. I also have an apartment which has all the essentials but it will take some work to make it feel like home. I'll move into the apartment tomorrow. I'll post later with more details but right now I'm just too tired. It's been a long day.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
En Route - Third Stop
Hello from Texas! My hotel room has an extra bed. There's also a bottle-opener in the bathroom. And yay for the place that does room delivery here, meaning I was able to have delicious fajitas for dinner without actually going anywhere. :)
Okay so as always I noticed some interesting things on my drive today.
Weird thing 1: Reddish-orange soil. Like, everywhere. I noticed this once I got a little west of where I stayed last night. And then it continued to be like that until some point around Texas, I think. *googles* Ah, apparently it has a ton of iron in it. That makes sense, but it's still weird to see dirt that's the color of Weasley hair.
Weird thing 2: There is a bunch of stuff in Oklahoma that claims to be Canadian. I have no idea why. There's a bunch of stuff that's "Canadian Valley _____", and I saw a sign for a plaza called Canadian Square, and there's even a minuscule village called Canadian, but I only know that last from Google searches to try to figure out what's going on.
Weird thing 3: The Top of Texas Catholic Superstore. I'm not kidding, there was a billboard advertising it. Also, there was another giant white cross thing, claiming to be the largest cross ever, but it was EXACTLY like the one I saw earlier on the road. Sorry Texas, but big things aren't very impressive when they also exist in other states.
mmmmmm I'm all sleepy. I'll probably go to bed soon. Tomorrow I'll actually get to see the city I'll be working in for the summer. yaaaaaaaay. :)
Okay so as always I noticed some interesting things on my drive today.
Weird thing 1: Reddish-orange soil. Like, everywhere. I noticed this once I got a little west of where I stayed last night. And then it continued to be like that until some point around Texas, I think. *googles* Ah, apparently it has a ton of iron in it. That makes sense, but it's still weird to see dirt that's the color of Weasley hair.
Weird thing 2: There is a bunch of stuff in Oklahoma that claims to be Canadian. I have no idea why. There's a bunch of stuff that's "Canadian Valley _____", and I saw a sign for a plaza called Canadian Square, and there's even a minuscule village called Canadian, but I only know that last from Google searches to try to figure out what's going on.
Weird thing 3: The Top of Texas Catholic Superstore. I'm not kidding, there was a billboard advertising it. Also, there was another giant white cross thing, claiming to be the largest cross ever, but it was EXACTLY like the one I saw earlier on the road. Sorry Texas, but big things aren't very impressive when they also exist in other states.
mmmmmm I'm all sleepy. I'll probably go to bed soon. Tomorrow I'll actually get to see the city I'll be working in for the summer. yaaaaaaaay. :)
Monday, May 24, 2010
En Route - Second Stop
I'm kinda tired, so this will probably be a fairly short post. I wrote some things down in my little notebook to tell you about, but I'm too lazy to go find that now.
Missouri was beautiful. It's so cool watching the landscape change. Illinois was mostly just more of the same fields and forest that I've seen all throughout the Midwest. But then in Missouri it turned into hills, wonderful wooded hills, with the rock showing through sometimes. Eventually the hills flattened out for the most part, and the trees became a bit more sparse, batches of woods interspersed with fields of long grasses. That's when I noticed that the types of trees were changing, too. After the wooded hills ended, the trees no longer looked like oak or maple or whatever I'm used to. They were more...I dunno. I'm too tired to describe them now. As I moved further southwest, the fields grew more prevalent, and I soon realized I was in major cattle country, as there were cows EVERYWHERE. Brown cows, red cows, black cows, white cows, long-horned steers. And occasionally some horses. All munching on that long grassy stuff.
Okay, so, every so often on the highway there were signs that said "DO NOT DRIVE INTO SMOKE" and I had no idea why they were there, cuz there wasn't any smoke anywhere. Is there usually smoke? Why would there be smoke? What does it mean if there's smoke? If there's a bunch of smoke ahead of me, and I'm not supposed to drive into it, what do I do, just stop dead in the highway? I can't do that, the minimum speed is 50mph. But, as always, the internet has the answer. This is literally the first link on the results page when I typed "do not drive into smoke" into Google. I love the internet.
My hotel room is a lot better than the one last night. The door is on the inside of the building, the room was air-conditioned like a refrigerator when I walked in, I have a closet and a fridge and a microwave and a random extra comfy chair - a lot of hotel rooms that I've seen have this random comfy chair as if for some reason you'd rather sit in a chair than lie on the comfy bed - and that comfy chair has a FOOTREST. I've seen a lot of random comfy chairs, but I don't think I've ever seen a matching random comfy footrest. And, as far as I can tell, there are no evil giant spiders.
Another thing. This time regarding Walmarts. Now, people have differing opinions on Walmart, but if you've ever been to the Walmart in Saline, you know that it is ridiculously unorganized. For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, I'll give you a few examples. The chips are nowhere near the crackers. One series of aisle sides goes booze, drinks that are not water but are not juice (like Sobe lifewater), water, juice, more booze. It is impossible to find anything quickly, and more often than not you either get sucked into the electronics section at the back or lost in some maze of Miley Cyrus clothing. A short while ago, I ventured out to the Walmart just down the road here in Oklahoma to get a small bottle of milk. My god, they must've been here for years. There's organization. There's sections. It makes sense. More than that, the sections BLEND. Scarily. I was like "hey, this scheme actually makes sense. I feel like I'm in a Meijer, not a Walmart. Except why did they put the beach towels next to the shoe section - OMG they start the shoes on that end with FLIP FLOPS." and then I walked down to the end of the shoe section and as it ended with sneakers and tennis shoes, all the outdoorsy stuff and exercise equipment showed up. It was amazing.
*yawn* mmm I need sleep. Remind me at some point to tell you about the redneckiest gas station I've ever seen, the conservative billboards, the music I listened to, St. Louis, the weird bird in the parking lot of this hotel, the multitude of American behemoth cars, cruise control on steep hills, and I don't know what else.
Missouri was beautiful. It's so cool watching the landscape change. Illinois was mostly just more of the same fields and forest that I've seen all throughout the Midwest. But then in Missouri it turned into hills, wonderful wooded hills, with the rock showing through sometimes. Eventually the hills flattened out for the most part, and the trees became a bit more sparse, batches of woods interspersed with fields of long grasses. That's when I noticed that the types of trees were changing, too. After the wooded hills ended, the trees no longer looked like oak or maple or whatever I'm used to. They were more...I dunno. I'm too tired to describe them now. As I moved further southwest, the fields grew more prevalent, and I soon realized I was in major cattle country, as there were cows EVERYWHERE. Brown cows, red cows, black cows, white cows, long-horned steers. And occasionally some horses. All munching on that long grassy stuff.
Okay, so, every so often on the highway there were signs that said "DO NOT DRIVE INTO SMOKE" and I had no idea why they were there, cuz there wasn't any smoke anywhere. Is there usually smoke? Why would there be smoke? What does it mean if there's smoke? If there's a bunch of smoke ahead of me, and I'm not supposed to drive into it, what do I do, just stop dead in the highway? I can't do that, the minimum speed is 50mph. But, as always, the internet has the answer. This is literally the first link on the results page when I typed "do not drive into smoke" into Google. I love the internet.
My hotel room is a lot better than the one last night. The door is on the inside of the building, the room was air-conditioned like a refrigerator when I walked in, I have a closet and a fridge and a microwave and a random extra comfy chair - a lot of hotel rooms that I've seen have this random comfy chair as if for some reason you'd rather sit in a chair than lie on the comfy bed - and that comfy chair has a FOOTREST. I've seen a lot of random comfy chairs, but I don't think I've ever seen a matching random comfy footrest. And, as far as I can tell, there are no evil giant spiders.
Another thing. This time regarding Walmarts. Now, people have differing opinions on Walmart, but if you've ever been to the Walmart in Saline, you know that it is ridiculously unorganized. For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, I'll give you a few examples. The chips are nowhere near the crackers. One series of aisle sides goes booze, drinks that are not water but are not juice (like Sobe lifewater), water, juice, more booze. It is impossible to find anything quickly, and more often than not you either get sucked into the electronics section at the back or lost in some maze of Miley Cyrus clothing. A short while ago, I ventured out to the Walmart just down the road here in Oklahoma to get a small bottle of milk. My god, they must've been here for years. There's organization. There's sections. It makes sense. More than that, the sections BLEND. Scarily. I was like "hey, this scheme actually makes sense. I feel like I'm in a Meijer, not a Walmart. Except why did they put the beach towels next to the shoe section - OMG they start the shoes on that end with FLIP FLOPS." and then I walked down to the end of the shoe section and as it ended with sneakers and tennis shoes, all the outdoorsy stuff and exercise equipment showed up. It was amazing.
*yawn* mmm I need sleep. Remind me at some point to tell you about the redneckiest gas station I've ever seen, the conservative billboards, the music I listened to, St. Louis, the weird bird in the parking lot of this hotel, the multitude of American behemoth cars, cruise control on steep hills, and I don't know what else.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
En Route - First Stop
Okay - when I got to the hotel, I kinda felt like death warmed over. Now that the Extra Strength Tylenol, vitamin pill, and Pepto Bismol are taking effect, and I've managed to eat something (half a turkey sandwich, a third of a six-inch Subway, a couple of Sun Chips, and a couple handfuls of some sort of Walmart generic version of a flavored cracker), I'm feeling a little better. Also, I braved the shady outdoors of the hotel to find the ice machine, and used the Subway bag to get extra ice, so now I have ice in my cooler and ice in the bucket thing chilling my little bottle of Subway milk. and HOLY SHIT THAT IS THE BIGGEST SPIDER hold on. *epic standoff ensues* crap now it's under the counter. as soon as it gets out from the counter it is DEAD because Kevin is not here to save it. I have shoes and I know how to use them!
Okay now that I've stuffed the useless tiny towels under the crack of the door (cuz this is one of those shady hotels that has the doors for each room open to the outside) to hopefully prevent other buggy intruders...let me tell you about my trip and my hotel. Today, I spent several hours driving through endless countryside and farmland on interstates and US roads that seemed to wind around civilization. The exception to this was when I wound around Indianapolis and suddenly EVERYTHING WAS BUSY and it was insane. *checks on spider* oh crap it disappeared. That's it, I'm sleeping with the light on. If I manage to sleep at all when there's a bloody frickin' HUMONGOUS SPIDER IN THE ROOM. O.O Anyway. There weren't many highlights. There was this random huge white cross thing off the highway at some point, though. Kinda odd.
I knew I was recovering from my road daze when I became cynical again. For example, here is a thought I had as I was ripping the plastic off the paper cups so I could use them.
Dear Days Inn, and whatever other hotels do this,
What is the point of having EarthSmart paper cups if you seal each one individually in plastic bags that will not be recycled?
Cheers,
A Crazy Liberal
Well, now Futurama's on, and I still have to pick some clothes up off the floor so the spider doesn't hide in them and plot against me, and also put the privacy thing out so the housecleaners don't bug me. And I have to look at the road ahead and the weather for tomorrow. I have to survive getting around St. Louis. O.O Wish me luck! Hopefully my hotel tomorrow night will be a bit less shady.
Okay now that I've stuffed the useless tiny towels under the crack of the door (cuz this is one of those shady hotels that has the doors for each room open to the outside) to hopefully prevent other buggy intruders...let me tell you about my trip and my hotel. Today, I spent several hours driving through endless countryside and farmland on interstates and US roads that seemed to wind around civilization. The exception to this was when I wound around Indianapolis and suddenly EVERYTHING WAS BUSY and it was insane. *checks on spider* oh crap it disappeared. That's it, I'm sleeping with the light on. If I manage to sleep at all when there's a bloody frickin' HUMONGOUS SPIDER IN THE ROOM. O.O Anyway. There weren't many highlights. There was this random huge white cross thing off the highway at some point, though. Kinda odd.
I knew I was recovering from my road daze when I became cynical again. For example, here is a thought I had as I was ripping the plastic off the paper cups so I could use them.
Dear Days Inn, and whatever other hotels do this,
What is the point of having EarthSmart paper cups if you seal each one individually in plastic bags that will not be recycled?
Cheers,
A Crazy Liberal
Well, now Futurama's on, and I still have to pick some clothes up off the floor so the spider doesn't hide in them and plot against me, and also put the privacy thing out so the housecleaners don't bug me. And I have to look at the road ahead and the weather for tomorrow. I have to survive getting around St. Louis. O.O Wish me luck! Hopefully my hotel tomorrow night will be a bit less shady.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Expotition to Carlsbad: Prologue
If you're confused as to why I'm spelling "expedition" wrong, curl up with your favorite childhood toy and click here. :)
Hello and welcome to my blog about my adventures to, in, around, and from Carlsbad! I would like to warn those of you unaccustomed to reading my writing that I often ramble and I can't really summarize well.
An explanation of the title and of this blog:
As most of you know, I'm a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, and even though I was born in sunny (and rainy and earthquakey and firey) northern California, I've lived most of my life in Michigan, and I love snow just as much as I love avocados. Crazy, eh? Well, that's just the beginning. This summer I'm moving to the hot arid climate of southeast New Mexico, to the city of Carlsbad. From what I've heard and read, it's...well, imagine Houghton, only instead of snow and cold, you've got sand and hot. Keep the wind, and keep the nothing to do, and keep the fact that you are pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Now add in the political climate of Saline, only with some actual diversity in the form of tons of Mexicans. There you go. Carlsbad in a nutshell.
Except I don't actually know how it is yet, because I'm not there yet. I can't really believe that there's nothing to do, because there's at least two big parks within a short drive, and, well, I'm kind of a nature dork who loves to explore. What I worry more about is whether my crazy liberalness will get me in trouble. ;)
I leave early this Sunday morning on what will certainly be a grand adventure. I'll take about 4 days to get down to Carlsbad, stopping in smallish cities, each a little over 400 miles from the next. I would say that it'll be the longest road trip of my life - except that 15 years ago, I rode in a carseat from Napa, CA to Paw Paw, MI in the backseat of Silver. Yes, Silver, the car I drove up until a week ago. :) Don't worry - I have a newer car now. It's so cool to have a car that moves when the engine revs, hehe.
And to those relatives who are reading this: yes, Boo Boo is coming with me. To my friends: Boo Boo is my teddy bear. Yes, I still take my old teddy bear with me when I'm away from home for a while. :P
I'll try to update this each night on my way down there, and I'll try to update regularly once I'm settled in my apartment, but I can't guarantee anything. Until next time, you can entertain yourself with this video and this video of the Bat Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Enjoy!
Hello and welcome to my blog about my adventures to, in, around, and from Carlsbad! I would like to warn those of you unaccustomed to reading my writing that I often ramble and I can't really summarize well.
An explanation of the title and of this blog:
As most of you know, I'm a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, and even though I was born in sunny (and rainy and earthquakey and firey) northern California, I've lived most of my life in Michigan, and I love snow just as much as I love avocados. Crazy, eh? Well, that's just the beginning. This summer I'm moving to the hot arid climate of southeast New Mexico, to the city of Carlsbad. From what I've heard and read, it's...well, imagine Houghton, only instead of snow and cold, you've got sand and hot. Keep the wind, and keep the nothing to do, and keep the fact that you are pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Now add in the political climate of Saline, only with some actual diversity in the form of tons of Mexicans. There you go. Carlsbad in a nutshell.
Except I don't actually know how it is yet, because I'm not there yet. I can't really believe that there's nothing to do, because there's at least two big parks within a short drive, and, well, I'm kind of a nature dork who loves to explore. What I worry more about is whether my crazy liberalness will get me in trouble. ;)
I leave early this Sunday morning on what will certainly be a grand adventure. I'll take about 4 days to get down to Carlsbad, stopping in smallish cities, each a little over 400 miles from the next. I would say that it'll be the longest road trip of my life - except that 15 years ago, I rode in a carseat from Napa, CA to Paw Paw, MI in the backseat of Silver. Yes, Silver, the car I drove up until a week ago. :) Don't worry - I have a newer car now. It's so cool to have a car that moves when the engine revs, hehe.
And to those relatives who are reading this: yes, Boo Boo is coming with me. To my friends: Boo Boo is my teddy bear. Yes, I still take my old teddy bear with me when I'm away from home for a while. :P
I'll try to update this each night on my way down there, and I'll try to update regularly once I'm settled in my apartment, but I can't guarantee anything. Until next time, you can entertain yourself with this video and this video of the Bat Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Enjoy!
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