welcome to bat country

Woo-hoo! Brian's site is back up. Let the online stalking resume. :)

Today is creeping along pathetically slowly. I'm waiting for a guy at work to send me some necessary inputs to my code, and I've done just about as much of the editing / commenting / cleanup as I can without actually changing any of the math, so I am now quite bored. My homework is (mostly) done, so the only productive thing left to do is read for my classes. Oh, the excitement.

Is it Wednesday yet??

Black and white

Carlos and I went to the Ansel Adams exhibit at the MFA last week, and I was inspired to poke through some old photos I've taken that I photoshopped into black and white.

Snow Lake, Washington

Smith Tower, Seattle, WA

I like turning some of my pictures into black & whites because, for one, I don't think my camera captures colors as well as it used to (or maybe I've just gotten pickier), and also because it somehow makes my pictures seem more like "real photographs" instead of just snapshots. I don't think I have the eye or the energy to ever become a serious amateur photographer, but I like being pleasantly surprised every now and then when I get one that turns out okay.

Today has been a lesson in "how to procrastinate from doing homework." Step 1? Stay out way too late the night before, and consequently, wake up at noon. Shower, eat breakfast, laugh with roommates and out of town houseguests about the previous night's barcrawl, talk on the phone for a couple hours, go out shopping for a friend's birthday gift, then come home and prolong eating dinner/watching TV until the only choices left are Entertainment Tonight or reruns of Friends that you've already seen four times. Then, think about doing homework, but convince yourself that you won't really get anything accomplished between now and aforementioned friend's birthday party, so it's really not worth it to get started.

~sigh~

I think writing about this has made me feel guilty, so I guess it's time to get started.

Sunday blues

Yet again, I've been facing the Sunday blues today... I don't want to go back to work tomorrow, I'm not smart enough to finish my homework by myself, I don't feel prepared for my test this week (which I really need to pull up my grade in that class), and there's been some other personal stuff going on this weekend that's been on my mind.

I wasn't really looking forward to go to the Tech meeting tonight because I still don't really know many people there, so socializing is still an effort, and I don't feel like I have much time this week to dedicate to photo assignments. At the beginning of every meeting, we go through the "mocks" (the previous week's issues of the paper) and critique the photos, and I wasn't really looking forward to that because I wasn't very happy with my most recent photo in the paper (it was posed, not very exciting composition, etc.), so I was extremely surprised to get some nice comments from the other photographers there. It was a very well-timed ego boost. :)

The earlier part of the weekend was a lot more fun - I saw Jarhead on Friday night with the regular collection of roommates and their significant others, and then last night I saw The Squid and the Whale with a friend of mine from high school (plus roommate) who's currently living in Boston, working on her master's degree in children's literature. We hung out for a while at her place after the movie, just catching up on the high school gossip that we knew. The only problem was that we both have the same gossip source, so I'm not sure that either of us really learned anything new... It came up that another girl from our graduating class is trying to put together an informal five-year reunion this Thanksgiving though, and neither of us are really interested in going. We want to know about all of the crazy things that people from our class are up to (which, at this point, mostly means getting married to other people from high school and having kids, although not necessarily in that order), but we don't really want to actually talk to them... A newsletter would be much better!

It's interesting for me to remember who I thought I would keep in touch with after graduation and then compare that list to who I actually keep in touch with now. The number is about the same as what I thought it would be, but the people aren't. It's a little unsettling to realize that the same thing will inevitably happen with some of my current friendships.

TV and Veteran's Day

Last night I watched 3.5 hours of TV. Three and a half! It started out gloriously, but by the time I went to bed, I felt sort of disoriented and had a bit of a headache. Oh well... In case you did not watch TV until your eyeballs fell out last night, here's how it went: teen angst on the OC continues as usual, more people got fired on The Apprentice, and more people died on ER. At least I got some emails written and other miscellaneous things accomplished while I was parked in front of the tube... having a laptop is nice.

I'm mildly annoyed that I had to come to work today. It seems everyone in the world has Veteran's Day off, except us. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but it's a federal holiday! I guess this is one of those reasons that people work for the government...

At the gym

After work this afternoon, I went to the Z Center for some much-needed running and lifting. As I was walking into the main part of the gym, a couple of guys stopped me to pitch their "Bike for Charity" program. All I had to do as a volunteer was bike for 10 minutes, and for every mile I biked, they would donate $1 to the charity and pay me $1. It seemed like a reasonable offer (although I couldn't imagine I could bike a respectable number of miles in only 10 minutes), except when I asked about the charities that would receive the money. The guy told me he would roll a 4-sided die (do these exist?) and the number that came up would dictate which charity would get the money. I was still on board at this point, until he showed me the list and I saw that the last charity was the NRA. I am not interested in raising money for Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Association. However, I also wasn't interested in confronting this guy about it, so I begged off by explaining that I had just signed up for a treadmill slot. It's a very handy excuse actually - I used it to get out of filling out some sophomore's survey a couple weeks ago. I dunno... I'm not opposed to raising money for charitable causes or participating in a survey that could improve the athletic facilities at MIT, but whatever happened to just being able to go to the gym to work out?

Rate My Life

Inspired by Becca and some passing boredom at work, I took a quiz to rate my life:

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.4
Mind:	6.2
Body:	6.8
Spirit:	5.9
Friends/Family:	6.8
Love:	7.7
Finance:	7.7
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Apparently my spiritual life is lacking.

Saturday

Yesterday I was supposed to shoot photos at the MIT sailing race on the Charles River. It ended up getting cancelled because there wasn't enough wind to actually sail, but I had some fun taking random photos while waiting for the wind to pick up.





I got some other shots of womens crew practice earlier that morning, but I downloaded them at the Tech office, so I'll have to post them later.

The rest of the afternoon yesterday didn't involve anything really exciting... I finished my astrodynamics take-home test, cleaned my hamster's cage, vacuumed, Swiffered, and went grocery shopping. Later that night, I went out with the roomies (plus Kartik, plus assorted girlfriends) to Pourhouse for dinner, a bar that is well-known for really only one thing: half-off burger night on Saturdays. Their burgers are between $4 and $5, so Saturday nights mean you can get a burger and fries for less than a Coke. The food isn't fantastic, but it's hard to complain when you can pay for dinner with the change you find in the couch. Needless to say, in a college town, the line to wait for a table on Saturday nights is very long.

Afterward, Phil and I went down the street to Cactus Club. Soon after Glenn met up with us again, I left to go find the restroom, and when I came back, I found both my non-single roommates chatting with a couple of flirty girls, so after several minutes of feeling like the fifth wheel, I decided to go home. I was exhausted anyway and didn't really feel like having more to drink, so I was ready to call it a night. I felt awfully lame though when I glanced at my watch on the walk home and saw that it was only 11:00...

gobble, gobble, boggle

Got my ticket to go to Houston for Thanksgiving... is anyone staying in town?? :)

The tall and short of it

Last night I went out running for the first time in a week. I did one of my regular loops around the Charles River, and on my way across the BU Bridge, I passed a hand-holding couple that must have had at least a 30-inch difference in height. I think it was the dude who was ridiculously tall, and the girl was just regularly Asian-sized, but it was hard to tell since there weren't any other normal people around to provide a reference. But seriously, she barely made past his elbow. The logistics of how they work together are just mind-boggling, sort of like when you see extremely overweight couples together, or hear those stories on 20/20 about adult conjoined twins that share one digestive tract and are both married.

How do they do that?!?

"Never updating slacker"

Yes Sarah, I do fall into that category! Needless to say, it's been quite a while since I updated, and I'm wondering whether it's worth it at all to keep posting here. Anyway, I'll spare you the details, but don't be surprised if this site dies out after a while...

This morning I walked past the main entrance to MIT on my way to work. I passed TIM the Beaver, MIT's mascot (think: beaver = nature's engineer), and he and a few other people were handing out candy and wishing passers-by a happy Halloween. It was great! Somehow it made my morning to get a cheerful greeting and a mini Snickers bar from a complete stranger in a $7,000 furry beaver costume.

Last night after dropping Josh off at the airport, I stopped at Shaw's on my way home to pick up some groceries. I didn't really mean to, but I got on an E train going back from the airport, so I figured I may as well stop at the grocery store since I'd have to walk home from around there anyway. So I get my few things and start walking back to my apartment.... right after I turned onto my street, I heard in a low voice, "Hey, how's it going." I turned to my right to see a man standing between two parked cars on the side of the street. I mutter, "Fine," out of habit and surprise and keep walking quickly, but I noticed as I passed the guy that he had his pants open and his hands were, um... busy. I couldn't tell if he was peeing or doing something else unmentionable. I must have given him a surprised/weirded out look though, because as I turned back around and continued walking, he called out, "Don't hate me!"

I guess I'll have to work on my poker face for public urination.


P.S. My second photo was published in the Tech on Friday!

On my way home

Storrow Drive, from the Harvard Bridge

Mass Ave, a couple blocks from my apartment

A basement bar

Neighborhood stats

In searching for a weather website that would tell me when the rain in Boston will end, I stumbled upon this website that shows all sorts of details about any neighborhood in the U.S. Demographics, income level, ethnicity, education level, climate, even the "poisonous brown gases" index. Definitely useful if you're investigating a new neighborhood to move to... also fun for spying on your neighbors. :)

For more miscellaneous internet entertainment, type "failure" into google and see what comes up as the first hit.

Travel to...

...the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Africa...

Start here: http://www.photobloggies.org

:)

A happier time

On the road to Seattle, back in June.

Just reliving a good memory.

Sorority Life

A friend of mine is living with his girlfriend for a few months between when his lease ended and when he moves across the country to start a new job. His girlfriend, however, lives in a sorority house. As a former resident of that same house, I found his AIM profile particularly funny:

[sorority life]

things learned while living in a sorority:
#1: clothing is always optional.
#2: if you must wear something, pick either underwear or outerwear, never both.
#3: it's hard to win a naked pillowfight while wearing clothes.
#4: blasting songs from gwen stefani's solo album is always encouraged.
#5: if you've lost your sex and the city/orange county/friends dvds, no worries, at least 14 of your sisters own these classic collections as well.
#6: it's perfectly acceptable for 2 girls to spoon for hours on end; it is not acceptable to call this "hot girl-on-girl action."
#7: placing a "because i have a penis and you don't" sticker on your door is typically frowned upon.

Rock on.

1 down, 5 to go...

Yes, I took my first exam as a graduate student today. Astrodynamics, exam 1, actually didn't go too badly. And now that my major hurdle of the week out of the way, I can focus on more fun things: shooting the women's field hockey game tonight, watching trashy TV tomorrow night, not going to work on Friday because the building is closed, and having a fantastic four-day weekend.

Since I haven't taken any actual pictures of my own recently, I'll leave you with this one:

Published!

For better or worse, my picture from the volleyball game was printed in the Tech on Friday. The picture was the best out of a crappy bunch, so I'm not posting it here. But it was still cool to see my name printed under the photo.

Life here seems to have gotten much busier over the past couple of weeks, mainly because I actually have work to do at work now, instead of being able to just check my email and do my homework. Eventually, I'm supposed to be doing error analysis of the navigation system on a missile, but for right now, I'm just reading and becoming thoroughly confused about discrete Kalman filters. Classes are okay... astrodynamics is cool, especially since Battin is teaching it - life is never dull with an 82 year old professor. Stochastic Estimation & Control sucks, but hopefully it'll help me out a lot with the work that I'll be doing at Draper.

Yesterday LeeAnn and I went to Starbucks and worked on homework. LeeAnn is a friend of mine from undergrad who just finished a year in AmeriCorps and is now starting law school in Boston. After three and a half hours at Starbucks, we both reeked of coffee, but I got a lot of homework done. Plus, I've now learned that I don't want to go to law school, which is one more thing to cross off the list of "things to be when I grow up" ... only 1,123,874 left to go.

On Friday I went to a housewarming party for a friend of a friend. It was actually a lot of fun, considering that I knew only two people there. The hosts were a couple of Irishmen and an Incan. Ahh... accents.

Today is shaping up to be a regular ol' student Sunday: heading over to the Z Center this morning to lift, back home to shower, eat, and do homework until 6pm, when I have to be back on campus for the Tech meeting. Free dinner, photo assignment for next week, then back home to do more studying for my exam on Wednesday. But next week will be a short week because work is closed on Friday (something to do with the A/C repair...?) and it'll be a long weekend since next Monday is Columbus Day. Plus, I'm looking forward to the General visiting. :)

Photo newbie

Today I had my first assignment as a photographer for the Tech - shooting photos of the women's volleyball game. The camera that I got to use was really nice, but the lighting in the gym was pretty low and I didn't have a tripod to use, so the VAST majority of the 72 pictures I shot of the actual game turned out pretty crappy. But I had some fun playing around with the camera after the game...

The program for the volleyball game against Mount Holyoke:

A poster in the Tech office for the movie Be Cool:

A random bottle of ketchup sitting in the Tech office:

A stuffed snowman:

Roadtrip, part deux

Well, yesterday was my last day at work, and today my mom and I are beginning the roadtrip from Seattle to Saline. Wish us luck! Here's the plan:

Washington
Idaho
Montana
South Dakota
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Illinois
Indiana
Michigan

Whew!

I want to bang on the drum all day

It's been a rough week. And it's only Wednesday. My fuse at work seems to be shorter every day. There are several concrete things that I'm frustrated with, but the bigger problem is that my quarter life crisis seems to be rearing its ugly head everywhere I look. I read an interesting article over the weekend that was written by a photojournalist in New York:

If you are not passionate and love what you are doing for a living, and if you do not get any personal satisfaction out of your accomplishments, then you will lack the desire to get up in the morning to go to work. There are too many people who go to work every day and spend it watching the clock, year after year, because they can't wait to leave "that place" and get home. These are the people who spend their working life waiting for retirement. When they do retire and look back on their careers, they see only misery. It doesn't have to be that way.

---

I studied commercial photography at Syracuse University. While I was a student there, I was offered a job at the Observer-Dispatch as a part-time photographer, and even though I had no interest in photojournalism at the time, I took the job because it was the only job I could find where I could make money doing photography. My first day on the job I was driving around town with a two-way radio and a police scanner chasing fires. My whole world changed that day. I knew I was in love. It was the first time in my life that anything felt so right.

I can't say that I've ever been struck by a "brick wall" feeling like that, at least not about work. I wonder if I'll finally be happy with the kind of work I've been doing once I don't feel so dumb in it; once I have the technical knowledge to back it up. But if not, I'm not sure I know what other fields to look in to find my equivalent of falling in love with a two-way radio and a police scanner while chasing fires.

Blue Angels

I love airshows. However, they always make me want to join the military... If I could be guaranteed a spot as a Blue Angel or a Thunderbird though, I'd drop this engineering nonsense and sign up immediately!

Oops!

My friend Brian from high school just started a company called Diamondhawk Graphics, and he recently sent me this shirt that he designed:

Blue Angels practice

I heard on the radio this morning that the I-90 bridge (connects Seattle to the great void to the east... crossing Lake Washington) is going to be closed for parts of today because the Blue Angels are practicing for the airshow at SEAFAIR this weekend. I thought about that for a minute... and realized that the only reason they would do that is because our friends the Blue Angels are worried about crashing into the bridge and killing unsuspecting commuters.

My confidence in the Blue Angels just dropped significantly.

To be fair, it's apparently because one of the stunts that they do takes place only about 25 feet above the bridge. In any case, it's been neat to hear them scream by overhead all morning.

~~~~~~~

Josh and I made it out to Snoqualmie Falls over the weekend. It's advertised as 270 ft tall - higher than Niagara Falls, but it wasn't as impressive since it's so much skinnier. Anyway, it was still really cool, especially because you could hike down from the observation deck to the base of the falls, and then jump over the trail fence and climb down onto the rocks to get even closer.





The rest of my pictures are posted here.

Return to Flight

It doesn't get much cooler than this!

Satellite tracking

Passed along to me by Emmett, another intern here: http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3D.html

This is the coolest website ever! It opens up a java window that shows the Earth and over 500 satellites that are currently in orbit. You can watch it in real time or speed it up to some absurd rate so that GEO satellites zip around the Earth, and you can also click on the individual satellites to bring up a window with basic information about each satellite's orbital parameters and purpose for existing. Yay for space!



P.S. You have to accept the NASA certificate for the program to load all the satellites.

Slinkies and Mount Rainier

A funny quote from Mike, the Michigan intern who sits next to me: "Some people are like Slinkies - not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs."

I finally posted pictures from our intern trip to Spray Park and Mt. Rainier on Sunday... no editing yet, but maybe one day soon... Here's a shot of Matt and Mike standing underneath the falls:


And here's about as close as we got to Rainier at the end of the hike:

Pedometer

Another reason why Google maps are awesome:

http://www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer/

No shuttle launch today

Boo for the low-level cutoff sensors in the external tank! And can I just say, I'm a little miffed that the Shuttle is actually launching this summer. One of the (small) reasons I decided to quit my job when I did was because it didn't sound like there was any way that STS-114 would launch before November, so it didn't matter if I stuck around for the summer. Now that it looks like it's going to happen, I REALLY wish I could be there for it. So, of course, the entire U.S. space program should have consulted my schedule before they decided on launch windows.

This afternoon I went running in Seward Park. It's quite a ways south of where I live, but I had heard that it was another one of Seattle's great parks for walking, running, biking, and just generally being outside, so I thought it would be worth the trip on an otherwise dull Wednesday. It turns out they don't call that area "Rainier Beach" for nothing - as soon as I turned the corner into the park - WHAM! There, floating above Lake Washington in some hazy clouds, was Mt. Rainier. I couldn't have put the scenery together better if I had arranged it myself. I've decided that I need to start bringing my camera with me everywhere I go, because Seattle is such a beautiful city.

Speaking of pictures, this is one that I took several weeks ago down by Pioneer Square. It had rained the day before and left big puddles throughout the square, and so I took a picture of the reflection in the puddle. A friend of mine had taken a bunch of pictures of that same thing and had rotated hers to make it appear that you were actually looking at the city, and I thought it was a really neat effect. Mine didn't turn out quite as well, but you get the idea.

Lake Washington

My favorite picture from today - a dock on Lake Washington.

The pickup

On Thursday after work, my intern friends and I went to the Boeing Museum of Flight. As budding aerospace engineers, we all get totally giddy looking at SR-71's and MiG's, plus admission to the museum is free on the first Thursday of every month from 5-9pm, and we're all broke college students. Anyway, toward the end of the evening, my roommate and I were talking about how much longer we wanted to stay and which exhibits we wanted to see before we left. As he wandered upstairs to look at World War I planes, I went back to reading a poster on the wall about World War II pilots. As soon as I looked to my right to see what else there was to read, a random Indian dude appeared next to me and started asking me about the museum and how I liked it. Expecting our conversation to be short and consist of useless chitchat, I gave some lame response and a smile and went back to reading. Mr. Body Odor plowed right on to ask me where I lived and if I had a lot of friends in Seattle. "I just moved here, and I'm trying to get connected to a social network," he explained eagerly. Umm... okay. I told him I didn't really know how one met people in Seattle since I had only been here for a few weeks and the only people I really knew were the other interns I worked with. I was really hoping he wouldn't ask if he could tag along on the next intern get-together, but it turned out there was a worse question: "Well, maybe you and I could hang out sometime." Before I could object, he started asking me if I liked hiking, rafting, and other things he dubbed "adventure sports."

Me: "Uhh, yeah... I hear this area is great for that sort of thing."
Random Indian dude (RID): "Okay, so maybe we could go hiking or something some weekend."
Me: "Um, I guess so..."
RID: "Okay then, can I get your phone number so that we can make plans?"
Me: "Um, I guess so..." (As you can see, I'm very articulate)

I couldn't really tell if he really was just lonely and wanted to get to know more people in Seattle, or if he was trying to ask me out, but either way, I didn't really want to spend any more time with this guy who wasn't very well acquainted with his shower. However, I couldn't bring myself to say, "No, I don't think so," because I imagine it would have been horribly awkward. So, I gave him a fake number. I have since been told (from a guy) that the appropriate way to handle this situation is to ask for his number and not give out mine, so that way he has no way of calling me. Well, live and learn, I guess.

Anyway, so that was Thursday. Today, I was wandering around Pioneer Square looking for the Elliot Bay Book Company when this beefy blond guy sauntered up to me while I was waiting to cross the street and asked if I was from Seattle. From experience, I can tell you that answering "yes" to this question means you will inevitably be asked where some bar is located, and with my general lack of Seattle barhopping this summer, I can never answer these questions. So with an apology and a no, I turned back to waiting to cross the street. Unfazed, he introduced himself as Brad and asked where I was going. I explained that I was just out wandering around Seattle, and then he asked if I wanted company and maybe we could stop somewhere and have a drink. I said no thanks, I just wanted to walk around and take some pictures. As he started asking if I was sure, I wondered why this had to be the longest "Don't Walk" of my life. We stood there in awkward silence for a few moments, and then he asked where I was from. After telling him I was from Michigan, he exclaimed, "I'm from South Dakota!" My face must have shown my confusion about why that was so exciting, so he explained that we were from sort of the same neck of the woods. Sure... Finally the light turned green, so I gave a quick "take care" and hustled across the street.

I dunno... that sort of thing just makes me so uncomfortable. Maybe because people never ask me out, so I just never know what to say. Or because it's never the cute, nice guys who ask you out - it's always the weird, sketchy ones. Oh well... either way, I'm not looking. :)

Rain

Today it's raining. Well, you say, it's Seattle, right? Yeah... but it's drizzling, a little chilly, and Friday, so if I were still in college, I'd be skipping class to stay in bed, sip hot chocolate, and watch movies all afternoon. Well, at least that's what my senior-year roommate and I planned to do some rainy day when we could both skip class, but that day never materialized.

I wouldn't be so bummed about going to work on a day like today if I didn't hate wresting with OTIS so much. The learning curve on this program is much higher than anything else I've used. Ugh. I don't want to talk about it.

In other work news, I think I might single-handedly go through the entire stash of hot chocolate mix here, making my do-it-yourself mochas. It doesn't look like anyone else really drinks hot chocolate, so I might have to bring in a Costco-sized box at the end of the summer to replace the stuff that I've gone through. And maybe I'll leave them with the same "no sugar added" crap that they have. Why on earth would you not add sugar to hot chocolate mix? If there's no sugar, what else is left??

My first issue of Time magazine came in the mail a couple days ago. Yay! I think I'm turning into my parents, because I think the magazine really has gone downhill over the past decade or so - it's becoming more like Newsweek. I'd feel better about myself if I were getting my news from more sources like The Economist or Atlantic Monthly, but the sad fact is that I don't have the patience or attention span to read magazines like that from cover to cover. So I guess I'll have to stick with my short, 1-page articles with a very American slant.

Some pictures from Vancouver

I didn't really have my camera at a lot of the opportune moments this past weekend, but I got a couple of shots that were okay. The first one is the view from our hotel room on Burrard Street, and the second one is overlooking Lynn Canyon (the cheapie version of the Capilano Canyon, a big Vancouver attraction).

Unicycles and the USPS

My package arrived today! I love the internet - you pick out what you want without having to deal with parking, lines, or noisy children, and then a week later - poof! It arrives on your doorstep. Today, my package contained a new hands-free headset for my cell phone and the new Howie Day CD. Most of the time, you can only expect to like a couple of the songs on a particular CD, but so far I like the majority of the tracks. Collide is still my favorite though.

So I felt like I had made some significant progress at work last week, which was good because I was supposed to give a status at our group meeting today about what I've done so far. However, this morning, I discovered that I had only made faux progress last week - it turns out the program actually wasn't giving me anything near what I had thought because I was printing out the wrong output. ARRGHHHH!!!! Thankfully, one of my co-workers helped me get it straight this morning, so I spent today trying to make some actual forward progress instead of the negative progress I made last week.

I love Seattle - today I came home from running to discover a middle-aged man learning to ride a unicycle. His back porch faces the back entrance to my apartment complex, and he was clinging to the railing for dear life as he haltingly pedaled back and forth. How great is that! I hope I'm still picking up new hobbies when I'm 40.

I've been thinking about entering a road race near the end of the summer. Well, actually, I've only been thinking about it for about the past two hours or so. I've been pretty good so far about keeping myself motivated to go running every day, but it'd be nice to have some sort of tangible goal in addition to the plain goal of undoing my slothfulness. I think that something between a 10K and a half-marathon would be a good distance, because I need a decent kick in the butt to get out of my 3-4 mile rut.

Musical baton

Of course I still read everyone's blogs even though I've "moved on to a cooler place"! :) Literally - it's the end of June and the high today in Seattle was barely 65.

Anyway, since Jen has passed me the musical baton, here it goes:

Total volume of music files on my computer:
4.12 Gb. I reformatted my harddrive about a year ago and lost 1/3 - 1/2 of all my music files because I backed them up on CD's that were corrupt. Cari was kind enough to recover some of my music from the CD's, but the combination of that and removing Kazaa from my computer has caused a definite decrease in the amount of music on my computer from a year and a half ago.

Last CD I bought:
Well, this might get into some hair-splitting... Just this afternoon I bought "Stop All the World Now" by Howie Day on amazon.com (you know, gotta support the new boss). The most recent CD I bought before that was "American Idiot" by Green Day. I originally bought it for the song that everyone knows - Boulevard of Broken Dreams, but I think my favorite track is now Holiday.

Song playing right now:
Resurrection, by PPK (techno/trance that I got from Goutam)

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
"Melanie" by Toto. Freshman year in college, when everyone was spending more time downloading songs on Napster than studying for all of their tests combined, my roommate Angela searched for her name on Napster, and to all of our surprise, came up with several artists singing about one Angela or another. Not to be outdone, my other roommate Leah and I promptly searched for our names on Napster and both came up with a couple songs - I got this and another song by Weird Al Yankovic. The lyrics to the Weird Al song are much funnier, but I like the beat and the harmonies of the Toto song better.

"Everywhere I Go" by Shawn Mullins. It's just got a good beat and the lyrics are really sweet without being over-the-top cheesy.

"In da Club" by 50 Cent. I should preface this by saying that the only kind of dancing I'm not terrible at is ghetto booty dancing. However, I love dancing whenever I go out to clubs, and this is absolutely, hands-down, my favorite song to dance to.

"Learning to Fly" by Tom Petty. Somehow, this song always conjures up an image of the greatest part of any roadtrip – driving down an open road (in a convertible, preferably), clear head, no cares in the world, leaving all the bad stuff behind and heading for greater places, ready to take on the world. I dunno… I guess the lyrics don’t really say that, but that's what it reminds me of, and I love it.

"When You Say Nothing at All" by Ronan Keating. I can't remember the first time I heard this song, although it may very well have been when I saw Notting Hill, but it's my favorite song to listen to when I'm in a slow, quiet mood. The song didn’t really hit home for me though, until it was played at Katie's memorial service. To me, it describes the perfect relationship: the two of you are perfectly in sync and will stand by each other through anything, making each other happier than anyone else in the world could, and it's all expressed without any words – just a touch and a smile.

Passing the baton to:
Nick, because I can't wait to see what combination of French music and Michael Jackson he comes up with for "favorite songs";

and my little sister Laura, because she needs some motivation to update more often. :)

Internet still defunct

Phil, Glenn, and me at Whiskey's

I'm still on this "photo of the day" kick, but our wireless internet at home is still on the fritz, so I can't update at home, but all of my pictures are at home... Anyway, this is one of the few pictures that I do have here, and it's a shot of my two favorite guys - Glenn and Phil. We all met in college - I met Glenn my freshman year and Phil my sophomore year, and they're the ones who kept me sane through the hell of aero/astro, and they're probably two of the funniest people I know. This picture was taken back in April at a bar in Boston.

So yeah, the internet is still down at home. It sucks. I hate being reminded of how dependent I've become on the web for entertainment and just getting things done. Luckily (?) I had grocery shopping to keep me occupied after work yesterday instead.

I got this link from a friend a couple of days ago. Apparently Germans really do love David Hasselhoff...

Running off my craziness

Adan with some Tully's coffee

I spent most of the first weekend that I was in Seattle with Carlos, his older brother Adan, and Adan's girlfriend, Marvic. On Sunday we drove to Alki Beach to see what there was to see and get some coffee to warm up. We stopped at Tully's Coffee and ordered our respective drinks, and after you order, the waitress asks you your name so that they can call it out when your order's ready. I thought I was very clear when I said "Melanie," but apparently that had been translated into "Milligan" by the time it reached my mocha. My cup is the second one from the left.

Today I was on a track for the first time in over a year. I ran back to Seattle Pacific University again, and I didn't even have to jump the fence to get in! I got out some hurdles and did some drills, probably looking ridiculous to the handful of other people who were using the track to run. Hurdle drills involve a lot of yanking your knees up to your chest while jogging around and some strange-looking kicks over the sides of the hurdles before actually running over the them. Anyway, the trend of my sucky running continued on the track, but it still felt good to be back there.

Work is getting ridiculous. I sit at my desk for 8-9 hours a day, simply staring at manuals and going through "example" problems that are supposed to teach you how to use OTIS, and you'd think that after a week of doing this, I'd be at least marginally proficient with the program, but you'd be wrong. It's so frustrating. I think I need to talk to my mentor/boss about working on something else, at least for part of my time. I'm going insane staring at my computer screen all day, especially when I know that the other interns get to do much more exciting stuff, like taking trips to Home Depot, welding, and testing sensors. *sigh* I feel like I'm trying to keep all of my unhappiness about this work and my previous job stuffed in a box, at least for the time being, so that I can ward off a quarter-life crisis. Yeah... stay tuned to hear how that goes.

For Gavin:

Somewhere in northern Oregon, on the second-to-last day of the roadtrip to Seattle, we stopped at a Burger King for dinner and discovered that Darth Vader was deflated (asleep?) on the job. However, all was not lost because Josh and I did win a free small order of french fries in Burger King's Star Wars scratch-off giveaway.

Today has been another absolutely beautiful day in Seattle, and another day that I spent indoors. I have a co-worker who's one of those people who gets to work before I do and leaves after I do (you know, the sort that generally makes you feel like a giant slacker), but he goes for a 30 minute run before lunch or plays basketball, then often goes out to lunch instead of slurping last night's leftovers at his desk, like the rest of us. Over the years, I've met a lot of people who do some sort of exercise on their lunch hour instead of doing it after work, and being one of those who does it after work, I'm not sure I'd want to make the switch. I'd have to bring extra clothes to work to run in, plus shower stuff and a towel, and then I'd have to sit around with wet hair for the rest of the afternoon. Plus, I really don't like being at work until after 6pm every day. However, when it's 2:30 in the afternoon and I've been staring at code continuously since 9am, a two-hour lunchtime break starts to look awfully nice.

Keeping on the topic of exercise though, I think I've rediscovered why I love to run. Running in Houston was, honestly, drudgery. It was always either too hot or too dark, there were no good running areas near my apartment (i.e. sidewalks), and I so often came home from work just wanting to crawl into bed instead of doing anything productive. Here though, the summer weather is perfect, there are tons of bike & running trails all over the city, tons of people out using them, and I'm not depressed all the time. Plus, I discovered Seattle Pacific University's track this afternoon while I was out running, and it doesn't look like the fence is too high to jump over, so maybe tomorrow I'll go back and pull out some hurdles. Man, I miss being part of organized sports.

Unfortunately though, I am horribly out of shape. Horrendously. So much that I'm afraid to go downtown on Tuesday nights to run with the Niketown running club because I might pass out halfway through the run. So... maybe in a few more Tuesdays, but definitely not tomorrow.

My new home

View of downtown Seattle from GasWorks Park

GasWorks Park, as I was pleasantly surprised to discover, is only about a mile down the street from my apartment in Fremont, and it has incredible views of the city. I would like this picture more, however, if the blue-ness of the water didn't wash out the skyline so much. Ah well... I guess I'll have to go back to the park. :)

Okay, quick summary of the roadtrip:
- Houston to El Paso: boring, except for the giant windmills that are in west Texas
- El Paso to San Diego: boring
- San Diego: nice, although California absolutely sucks at providing road signs. However, the Zoo and SeaWorld were a lot of fun.
- San Diego to San Francisco: Highway 1 is the best invention ever
- San Francisco: Not really a stop, although we got some pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge
- San Francisco to Seattle: Took longer than planned, because we took Highway 101 almost the whole way.
- Oregon coast: Absolutely gorgeous. Highway 101 is the second best invention ever.

Quick summary of work so far:
Blue Origin seems like it's going to be a neat place to work, although my particular job might not be as exciting as I had hoped. Lots of trajectory analysis. Best line heard so far at work:

Mike: "Hey Mark, do you have a ruler I could borrow?"
Mark: "No, but I have some digital calipers - would those work?"

Plus, it's a college student's dream: lots of free food always sitting out on the lunch table, sometimes lunch is provided, and there's a dishwasher in the kitchen.

More later...

A couple of my favorite Niagara Falls pictures...


Water cascade

Rainbow

Zzz...

I'm tired. Tired of packing, tired of thinking about logistics, tired of running errands. I'm excited about going on my roadtrip, I'm excited about living in Seattle for the summer, and I'm excited about going back to Boston in the fall, but I'm tired of organizing my belongings. I went to the Salvation Army today to donate a bunch of clothes and a few pairs of shoes (including my Halloween cowgirl boots), and in doing some more packing tonight, I've come up with a few more things that I should get rid of, and I keep looking at all my books and furniture, wondering how much of it I could really give away and not regret later, just so that I don't have to send another box of crap home to my parents or take another box of crap over to Jen & Gavin's house.

I spent over an hour tonight talking to my mom on the phone, and I was reminded once again of what good friends we've become since I've grown up. I think there's always some crossover point you hit with mom and dad (hopefully) where they become friends instead of just parents. My mom and I reached that point pretty early, and even though there have been times along the way when either she or my dad has had to step up to the plate and play the parent trump card again, for the most part, I'm incredibly glad that I can simply consider them friends of mine. I miss being home. Yes, a long weekend is usually the maximum amount of time I can spend there before being ready to leave, but having dinner at my aunt's house a couple weekends ago while my grandparents were visiting made me realize how much I missed being surrounded by family.

I never thought I would be able to completely turn my back on Houston and all the people I've met here just because I didn't have a good experience at work, but lately I've been getting so fed up with the situation here that I've wanted to just leave and never look back. Sometimes I feel like I'm back in middle school with everything that's been going on.

Sorry about the random collection of thoughts. It's a good thing none of my high school English teachers are reading this... I swear, I picked up writing skills at one point, but it's too much work for a blog.

----------------------------------------

P.S. I posted my pictures from Niagara Falls/Jamestown, NY/Toronto, but the rest of the trip is still on Josh's camera. Coming soon...

Back from Canadia

The past two weeks have been absolute bliss. To start, I quit my job on May 13th. I spent the next seven days sleeping late, hanging out with friends, shopping, and planning my next vacation. A week ago, Josh and I left to go to New York for Laurie's wedding, stopping to see Niagara Falls on the way to all the usual wedding festivities. After the I do's, we spent about 4 days in Toronto. The last time I was in Toronto was in 6th grade for a class trip, but the only thing I remember from it was the bus ride. I dunno... what does anyone retain from a glorified field trip at 11 years old? I was more concerned about who I was going to sit next to during lunch at McDonald's than absorbing any Canadian culture. Anyway, we had a great time just wandering around the city, even if it was a little chilly for the first few days. We "celebrated" Victoria Day, which was Monday the 23rd, by taking a Toronto harbor cruise at night to see the fireworks the night before. The original cruise we wanted to go on was sold out by the time we called, so the only other option was a cruise with the Party on the Boat. It sounded totally sketchy when I called to reserve tickets, and I was even more skeptical when we got there and I had to hold the carbon paper tight over my credit card so that the Captain could rub a pen over the raised number on the card so that it would show up on my carbon-paper receipt. But it turned out to be a lot of fun, and I got some decent shots of the Toronto skyline from the harbor.

So apparently what I didn't discover in 6th grade is that Toronto is a fantastic city. I had heard it described as a smaller, cleaner New York City, which I think I would generally agree with. People walk and bike everywhere, and even though driving downtown can be frustrating, most of that is expected since it is a major city. The Toronto subway is rising to the top of my list of favorite subway systems - it was clean, we got to sit down during every ride we took except one, and the maximum amount of time between arriving trains is 5 minutes. I think the longest we waited was ~3 minutes. I suppose the whole layout could be a little bigger, but the streetcars fill in most of the subway gaps. I liked the mix of U.S. and European influence on the city and people, and there are so many different things to do - museums, theatres, the symphony, lots of bars & restaurants, the harbourfront, Chinatown, Greektown, Little Italy...

My only complaint about Toronto is that it's apparently bad luck for the Boston Red Sox - they lost to the Toronto Blue Jays in the game that we went to on Tuesday night. Otherwise, I approve.

Still homeless

My little sister found out a few days ago that I was going to Seattle for the summer and promptly announced that she had never met anyone so willing to relocate in her life. :) Well, I am willing, but so far I still have no place to live in Seattle yet. And furthermore, I have no place to live yet once I go back to Boston in the fall. No big deal, right? Yeah...

At the library yesterday, browsing through the travel section, a maybe 8-year-old boy wandered into the same row as me and asked me if he could have 65 cents. As if a close friend of mine had just asked to borrow a quarter to buy a soda, I rummaged through my wallet and gave him some change. Immediately afterward my brain returned and wondered why I had just done that. I've given my dinner leftovers to homeless people in the Boston subway a few times, but hardly ever do I give money to panhandlers on city streets, even though it makes me incredibly uncomfortable to walk past them and pretend that I didn't hear them or don't have any money on me. And I could almost guarantee you that this little boy in the library didn't need any money, but I apparently couldn't say no when he asked. I'm not sure whether this makes me a good person, a bad person, or just a huge sucker.

By the way, in case you're wondering if it's a good idea to drink hot beverages at your desk at work, it's not. I managed to get away with just a small spill this morning, but it reminded me of a time a few summers ago when I knocked over a styrafoam cup full of hot chocolate on my desk one morning as I swung around in my chair to talk to my officemate. The hot chocolate shot out of the cup and drenched my keyboard, dripped into a large puddle on the fabric seat of my chair, and even managed to soak some papers in one of the drawers as the hot chocolate cascaded down the side of the desk. Not surprisingly, my keyboard was completely useless after being soaked in something so sticky, so I had to call the IT people and ask them to replace it. Unfortunately, the only extra one they had looked like it had been saved from an Apple IIe manufactured in 1981.

Going to the chapel and we're... gonna get maaaaaaried

It's taken me five years, but I've finally found out what the point of sorority rush parties is: (drum roll please...) it's to prepare you for the eventual bridal showers that you'll attend once you leave college. For the most part, I had a great time in Sigma Kappa at MIT, but the one thing that I hated every year was rush. Everyone's in a random room in our student center that's decorated with crepe paper and balloons, trying not to spill punch they're drinking out of clear plastic cups on their cute spring dresses while they're mingling. I guess I thought I left that behind when I graduated, but it turns out that it rears its ugly head again once you start going to bridal showers. The only difference is that the conversation has changed from majors, dorms, and frat parties to weddings, babies, and flatware.

I really did have a good time, and it was fun to see Laurie again... I just didn't like revisiting the "Omigod, your dress is so cute!" era.

What did you do on Friday night?

I left work at 3:30 on Friday because I had already worked 48 hours that week, and because I needed to get a couple gifts for this weekend - something for my dad's birthday on Monday, and something for Laurie's bridal shower that I went to this afternoon. Anyway, I managed to convince Josh that he "wanted" to go to the Galleria with me, so we drove down there around 5, wandered around for a few hours, and ended up decorating a chocolate foot. Yes, a chocolate foot. Laurie's thing was an alphabet shower, so everyone had to bring a gift related to a certain letter, and I was assigned the letter F. Granted, it's not nearly as difficult as Q or Z, but I still couldn't find anything gift-worthy that involved F - until we walked into a store called Dylan's Candy Bar. Aside for being the biggest candy store I've been in, they had solid slabs of chocolate that were molded into different shapes - cats, fighter planes, feet, etc. that you could frost and decorate with other candy in their store. So, we decorated a giant chocolate foot with pink frosting - gave it a flip-flop, ankle bracelet, painted toenails, a toe ring, and a sock. I was amazed that it actually turned out halfway decent. :)

Anyway, after decorating the foot, we had dinner, stayed at the restaurant until midnight, and then wandered around the mall until 2am. (Yes, the Galleria closes before 2am... don't ask.) After that we decided to call it a night, so we walked back to the Dilliard's parking lot, and Josh's car was most definitely no longer there. Only then did I notice the giant signs warning customers that their cars would be towed if they were parked there after hours. *sigh* So we walked up to one of the tow trucks that was still in the lot and they gave us a number to call to find out where our car was. After some confusion about whether or not the car had actually made it to the lot, we walked to a nearby gas station to find an ATM. Just to go along with the theme of the evening, a huge fight broke out at the gas station while we were trying to withdraw oodles of money to get Josh's car back.

So we went back to the Galleria parking lot and caught a cab (which contained a driver who was in desparate need of a stronger presription for his glasses) to take us to the impound lot. The lot reminded me of a dog pound - there was barbed wire everywhere, the office was about a foot and a half above our heads so that we couldn't really see what was going on in there, and the guy behind the glass didn't speak through just a regular microphone - he used a loudspeaker. So by 3:30am, we were safely back in Josh's car and on our way back to Clear Lake. To summarize...

1 gift for my dad: $32.54
1 chocolate foot: $16.28
1 dinner for 2: $26.50
1 cab ride to Ronda Lane Auto Storage: $18.00
1 red Honda Civic reclaimed: $171.89

Sitting outside of Uptown Realty on the 6th floor of the Galleria at 1am, solving all the world's problems and discovering an amazing friend: priceless.

I love you so much that I... fell asleep

Tuesday night was the Yuri's Night party in Houston. Specifically, it at the Outpost, which is this totally sketchy-looking bar right down the street from work - one of those places that has regulars who have stop in every day after work for 20 years. Like many sketchy bars though, it wasn't really as sketchy as it seemed from outside. Anyway, I went to the party because several of my friends organized the whole thing, and I walked over from my apartment because I knew I didn't want to have to worry about driving home afterward. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I had a few drinks throughout the night, but I was feeling fine by the time I got home later, just a little tired. Carlos and I usually talk before I go to sleep at night, so I gave him a call after I finished getting ready for bed. I woke up later that night and rolled over my phone and earpiece in bed, wondering why I didn't put them away before going to sleep, but not really thinking any more about it. Anyway, the next morning I got an email from Carlos asking if I was okay... was I mad at him? It took me a few seconds to put everything together, but apparently I fell asleep while talking to my boyfriend on the phone. Aaagh! I am officially the worst girlfriend ever.

"... so that was my day. How was yours?"
"Zzzzzz....."

I hate my job

Absolutely, positively, hate it. I hate it so much that I can't even describe to you how much I hate it. I've been here since June 28, 2004 and the number of days that I've actually looked forward to going to work in the last 10 months would altogether add up to less than four weeks. I hate my job because I'm always someone else's bitch. I don't get to make any decisions about what I work on or what sort of analysis I do; I just have to smile and nod when anyone comes to me asking for data. I hate my job because I can't produce any useful work on my own - everything I do requires files, data, information, documents, or permission from someone else. Even if I didn't have to ask someone else for some sort of input, I don't really know how to use the analysis tools because there are so many quirks, fudge factors, and input files that have to be formatted just so, so I always have to go around bugging people about how to use programs. I hate my job because I work with people who have been here for longer than I've been alive and don't seem to understand that I haven't already learned everything there is to know here in the 10 months that I've worked here. I hate my job because I volunteer to take on new things under the assumption that someone else will take over one of my current projects to make time for the new stuff, but apparently that's a stupid assumption, because now I'm just working 10 hours a day instead. And honestly, I have no problem coming into work at 8am and leaving at 6pm, assuming that I were interested and excited about the stuff that I'm working on. I hate my job because I don't get to choose what I work on - it's just dumped in my lap and I've got all these responsibilities and then it's too late to say no. No one ever asks if it's something that I would be interested in working on or learning more about. And if you're going to tell me that I'm still "getting used to everything" and that I need to "keep the good times and bad times in perspective," save your breath. I don't care if all that's true - all I know is that when I wake up in the morning I wish to God that I were going anywhere else but to my stupid desk at work to count the hours until I can go home again. I'm wasting my life here. I haven't cried this much on a regular basis since I was still in diapers. Without a single doubt in my mind, I can say that this has been the worst year of my life.

So then, you ask, why haven't I left yet? Trust me, I'm working on it. I'm going back to school in September to start my master's degree, and until then I have another job lined up for the summer, but that's not supposed to start until the second week of June. Because of that, I don't really feel like I can leave much earlier than the middle of May, and yes, it's only a month, and yes, I've survived this long so I'll make it until then, but I still wish that I could just crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and have my mom call me in sick, like she used to do when I was in middle school. But for an entire month. And not because I'm actually sick. And I'd still like to get paid between now and then...

So then, you ask, if you're that unhappy, why don't you just give your two weeks notice and leave? Well, here's the thing - if I have to stay for another two weeks, I may as well stay for two more weeks after that. It's not like that'll save me from having to go to work tomorrow.

Musings

First of all, I would just like to point out that whistling is rude. Just like most people wouldn't normally sing songs out loud in public, people shouldn't whistle in public. We can't hear the actual tune that's playing in your head! And the rendition of the song that's coming out of your mouth definitely doesn't do the song justice, and is mainly just annoying.

All right, now that that's out of my system, let's move on. This week has been crazy - interview, possible new plans for the summer, last minute trip to Boston (leaving in less than 5 hours), and lots of new stuff to do at work. And, I went to the Astros opening day game against the Cardinals on Tuesday! But, they lost. Oh well. I think I'll miss going to baseball games in Houston. I never made it to a Red Sox game in Boston, and the only other professional baseball game I went to was during middle school or high school. It was a triple-A team - the Toledo Mud Hens. No joke. Anyway, the point is that baseball games are cool, and anyone who's still mad about the strike several years back should get over it.

Josh asked me the other day what things I'll miss about Houston once I leave, and I could only come up with two things - the people I've met here and the weather (minus the summer). Since then, I've come up with one other thing, and that's my general proximity to the space program. Yes, I don't like my specific job, but still, there are times when it hits me that there are very few people that get to see what I see on a regular basis, and the space progam, in my opinion, is still really, really cool. The random meetings with astronauts and Gene Krantz sightings haven't been bad either. :)

Just one more story...

See, Becca? I'm an updating fiend. This was my conversation with some random guy next to me at the gas station while we filled up our cars yesterday afternoon:

Random Guy: Does that have the Vtech in it?
Me: Uh, no, it's just regular gas...
RG: No, I mean your car.
Me (feeling like an enormous dork): Oh yeah. It has a Vtech engine.
RG: Whoa... dude... Have you ever thought about racing it?
Are you out of your mind? It's a Honda Civic, for crying out loud. This thing's got over 70,000 miles on it.
Me: (giggle) Um, no, I haven't.
RG: Dude, you should so totally think about racing it.
Me: Okay... sure... I'll think about it.

Not that it wouldn't be cool to drive around in a car with a supercharged engine, speed chip, low-profile tires, and nicer suspension than what I currently own, but I think I would still feel like one of those people who screws a 2x4 onto the trunk of their sedan and calls it a spoiler. Sorry dude, it's still a Civic.

Freakish bug incident

Once again, I snoozed until 8:00 this morning, but after dragging myself out of bed, showering, and getting dressed, I was ready to leave my apartment at 8:30. I opened my front door and started to turn around, when all of a sudden one of those giant daddy-longleg mosquito things flies down my shirt. AGGHHHHH!!!! I start wildly flapping around and yanking at my shirt, trying to remove the bug that's now stuck between my shirt and my chest because it has such freakishly long legs. It falls down a bit so I jerk my shirt up and slap at my torso to get the bug to come out the bottom, but then it decides to go back up. By this point, I'm completely sure that I flashed any neighbors that happened to be watching me flail around, so after much wild scraping at my chest and shirt, the bug finally disintigrated into a chunk on my finger and miscellaneous legs scattered around the inside front of my shirt. Thoroughly exhausted and freaked out, I go back inside and peel off my clothes as I run up the stairs. After dumping my tainted clothes in a pile on my bathroom floor and scrubbing my finger clean of the bug guts, I spent another 15 minutes putting on nearly everything left in my closet, which doesn't take long because I haven't done laundry in a while, and quickly decide that everything is unsuitable. I finally picked out another shirt and walk out the front door, all while covering my chest with both hands to prevent another freakish bug incident.

National Geographic

All right, I just called a guy in Seattle that I was supposed to have a pseudo phone interview with, and the number he gave me for his cell phone was some old guy who had no idea who I was. I checked the number a zillion times, and I know that I dialed the same number in his email, so I don't know what's going on. *sigh* I guess I'll have to call him at work tomorrow... discretely...?

Anyway, after coming back from the gym, I was making dinner (well, not really, but I always call pouring myself a bowl of cereal, toasting a bagel and spreading on some cream cheese, or making macaroni & cheese out of a box "dinner," so we'll just move on) and I flipped on the TV. Of course, nothing was on since there was no OC this week, but I turned to the National Geographic channel in the middle of a special on the Orgasmatron. I only saw the second half of the show where three women met the doctor who discovered this whole thing and were going to participate in a 1 week trial. After getting the electrodes inserted into their spine and turning on the handheld device that could vary the frequency and intensity of the signals sent to their bodies, the women were told to go back to their hotel rooms with their husbands and basically "experiment" for the rest of the week. The outcome was actually really interesting - one of the women had fantastic results, one of them had a few orgasms over the course of the week, and the last women didn't see any changes at all. It was neat to see how the doctor discovered all this stuff, but it was really sad to hear from the woman who didn't really get anything out of it. I dunno... I guess it was just cool to see how these women spoke so candidly about the problems that they were having and what length they were going to in order to fix it.

I also thought it was amusing how some of the other people that were interviewed on the show talked all about their concerns about the "trend" that the Orgasmatron is setting. Ranging from "this is just like plastic surgery - we're encouraging women to chase after the ideal and they're losing sight of what's really normal" to "the female orgasm isn't really a necessary part of reproduction anyway, so why bother trying to recreate it?" First of all, the second argument is completely bogus since doctors are prescribing Viagra and Cialis to men who have already had vasectomies and are married to post-menopausal women. There's no reproduction going on. So now the message is that men can still enjoy sex but women can't? That's stupid. The plastic surgery argument is a little weak as well - if a woman is bothered enough by her looks and has the money to afford plastic surgery, who's to say that she shouldn't do it? Likewise, if a woman is unhappy enough with her sex life and has the money to pay for something like the Orgasmatron, why should people care that she's getting it? I'll bet it's making her happier. As long as the FDA says it won't hurt you, I say rock on.

Things about living in Texas that no longer seem weird to me

• flipping through at least 5 Spanish TV stations while looking for NBC
• traffic lights flipped on their sides
• losing count of the number of Corvettes and pimped-out 1984 Nissan Sentras I see on the road
• feeder roads for the highways
• walking into work every day and seeing "Mission Control Center" written on the wall
• telling people I work for NASA, because everyone works for NASA
• continuously using Unix commands by mistake in Windows applications
• not being interested in watching HBO's From the Earth to the Moon series on DVD because I already get too much of it at work
  
• living among palm trees
• having people ask me if I'm married
• having people ask me if I have kids
• turning on the A/C in March

Extended weekend

Carlos left this afternoon after a great long weekend. I think the highlight was eating ice cream for breakfast on Saturday and then going to Galveston to rollerblade along the seawall. Going to church the next morning on Easter Sunday fell by the wayside in favor of sleeping in and watching the USA-Mexico World Cup qualifier game. I think this makes my last appearance at a church on Easter over five years ago... but that's a story for another day.

I tried to vacuum my apartment this weekend because it's getting filthy (as in, I found a random bird feather underneath the living room rug, and I think my hamster pooped on the stairs the last time she was out there), but I discovered that the belt in the vacuum was broken, so my plan was foiled. I would ask my roommate if she knew where to get a new belt, but i think she's in India. I haven't seen her in about two weeks, which isn't really out of the ordinary since she spends so much time at her boyfriend's apartment, but I remember her saying something about having plans to go to India a few months ago. Our living situation hasn't turned out the way I thought it would at all, but it's been kind of nice to have this big apartment all to myself. The only weird part is when she actually does come home, because we sort of upset each other's rhythm.

Ugh, this post was useless. I'm not sure I'm really into this whole blog thing. It's fun to recount the funny stuff I see or random things that happen to me, but those events are sometimes few and far between. The other stuff that's been on my mind a lot lately isn't really appropriate for this sort of venue, so then I end up writing about nothing. *shrug*

In the bathrooms at work

Okay, I know you’re thinking, “No good stories start with a title like that,” but just hang on a second. In the bathrooms at work, a safety sheet is posted inside the stall door about a different topic every month. During the summer it was West Nile Virus; we’ve also had microwave safety, office safety, and some other less-memorable topics. Anyway, this month is “Driver Fatigue and Road Trance.” It starts out by scaring you with statistics about how many people die from drowsiness while driving and then goes on to list the symptoms of driver fatigue. Later on, there are some helpful suggestions on how to prevent driver fatigue and “road trance,” and while reading them, I couldn’t help thinking about the numerous times that G. and I drove between MIT and our respective homes near Detroit, MI. We always drove through Canada since it was shorter than going through Pennsylvania and Ohio, but it was still about 13 hours, give or take. Here’s the two of us not following the safety suggestions:

- Plan a healthy, well-balanced diet (okay - show me one person you know that’s ever had a well-balanced diet in college)
- Aim for seven or eight hours sleep (maybe if you added up the sleep that each of us got during the night, it would add up to seven or eight…)
- Start out as early in the day as possible (sorry, most of our trips started around 9pm the night before we planned to arrive at home. If you’re driving home for Thanksgiving, wasting an entire day on the road makes the trip pointless. Driving during the night means you have more time at home.)
- Avoid driving alone whenever possible (well, we accomplished that, but I’m not sure if it counts when the other person, usually me, snored the entire way home)
- Keep trips to reasonable distances (what defines “reasonable”?)
- Try to avoid long night drives (see #3)
- Keep the driver’s area cool and well ventilated (does this include rolling down both windows all the way and sticking your head out in the middle of December while going 70 miles an hour to keep yourself awake?)
- Talk to passengers without being distracted (again - me, asleep)
- Take breaks every two hours or 100 miles (hmm… how about every 350 miles when we stopped for gas?)
- On break, get out of the vehicle and walk, jog, or stretch (does stumbling into the rest-stop bathroom count?)
- If it is essential, pull over and take a nap of no more than 20 minutes. Any longer will make you feel groggy. (maybe it was sometimes more like 2 hours…)

Funny, those trips always went differently when I drove home with my parents…

Okay, so we didn’t meet all of the bathroom safety tips. But watching Andy eat chocolate-covered espresso beans the entire way home once, stopping at 5am for Tim Horton’s in BFE, Canada, detouring through Niagara Falls, and the general hilarity that resulted from being cooped up in a car for an entire night made it all worth it.

So much has happened...

...since I last wrote! Things have been pretty busy, and it never seems like I have enough time to sit down and actually post anything, and today (at work, at least) is no different, so I should be quick. I just got home yesterday from a weekend in Boston - MIT's open house for its recently-admitted aero/astro graduate students. It probably wasn't the most productive use of my time, since I already know the department pretty well, but it was an opportunity to visit Draper Labs, so I would at least know a little more about what sort of work I would be doing next year before I decide to accept the fellowship offer. During the Draper tour, I bumped into a girl that did her undergrad at Georgia Tech with Josh, and she was surprised to hear that he was now my officemate at work. Random small world experience...

The trip also made me realize how much I missed the Burton 2 crowd. We went out for dinner (Chili's, of course) and drinks (Whiskey's, of course), so I got a chance to meet everyone's new girlfriend and catch up on Angela's new relationship too. I also managed to monopolize the rest of Carlos's weekend, since this coming week is his spring break and he doesn't have any homework due for a while. I'm definitely sold on going back to Boston. I just wish it could happen sooner than August. Everyone I talk to that doesn't know anything specific about my situation at work tells me that I should stick around here until the beginning of August - save up some more money, I don't need to start classes or work at Draper that early, etc. But on the other hand, everyone who knows the real story about my life in Houston says, "Leave now! You're too unhappy here to stay for another four months." When I was younger, I couldn't understand why anyone would stay at a job or in a relationship that they weren't completely happy with, but at my now-wise age of 23, I can appreciate that nothing in life is ever that black and white.

Around the country in a bus

Ehren has finally posted all his pictures from our Vegas trip, and as I looked through them this morning, I had a chance to peruse his entire website for his trip around the country in a converted school bus. Here's how it starts out:

This page, temporarily, is the story of the conversion of a school bus into a motorhome. The deeper question of why will be answered eventually, so be patient.

On Friday July 23rd, I quit my job. I didn't enjoy it at all. There's an entire mental tome of reflection on this subject too, but again it's outside the scope of the bus conversion. Be patient.

A couple of posts later, Ehren explains a little about why he's excited for the trip:

It was tonight that the trip really began. My mind is clear of all doubt. In the past week and a half, even though it's been fun, and smooth, and unbelievably close to our vocalized goals for distance and experience, I've still been mulling over The Big Choices. We've stayed at the appointed apartments of friends who are going on to do their great things, having ensured their success along the paths that have been labeled out for all of us with bright signage and MapQuest. Yesterday, even, I balanced remote and lucrative-enough work, an afternoon at museums, an evening out and comfortable return home, which is all I had asked of myself on the days of this trip.

But tonight out my bedroom window I can see 270 degrees of the Shenandoah mountains. We're in a wide cup of hills, and all across the sky are cloudless stars and a vivid milky way. For dinner we had a roast chicken, and bread and cheese, and Dr. Pepper, finding our way around the kitchen by flashlight because main batteries still aren't connected.

It's hard, but not impossible, to describe why -- at least temporarily -- I've given up on doubt despite the fact that so much, the remaining entirety, is still unknown. This view, this composition of a day's events, this mix of travel and homes, this everything, is what I want. From now on, all the time.

There are a few reasons why I'm enormously impressed by Ehren's undertaking:
1) He's managing to work from the road/bus enough so that he's got money in the bank to support his travels, but not so much that it interferes with the real purpose of the trip.
2) Instead of buying an RV or equivalent vehicle, he bought a school bus, and converted it into a liveable space with only the help of his traveling partner Miro.
3) He's chucked the whole idea of a standard life: 9-5 job, apartment, etc. I'm embarrassed to say that I'm not sure I have the balls (for lack of a better term) to quit my job and move out of my cushy apartment to pursue a dream like that.

Top ten

In my effort to waste time this evening, I did a lot of web-surfing and ended up stumbling across a Forbes website that ranks the top ten blogs in twelve categories. I guess I'm really only interested in the travel and photo categories, but I could definitely spend some serious time reading all these entries. Hmm... things to do at work tomorrow? :)

It's been a slow couple of days since getting back to Houston... I've been really tired lately, which I first attributed to just readjusting to my regular work schedule, but now I think it's more than that, because I've developed a sore throat, watery eyes, and the sniffles over the past 24 hours. This is always one of those times where I think about whether or not I really want to go to work tomorrow if I'm sick... please, let me be sick! It's always a fine line though - sick enough so that I would infect my coworkers, but not so sick that I couldn't at least drink hot chocolate and watch movies all day. You at least should get a little mileage out of a sick day. But I'm supposed to go downtown to see Les Miserables tomorrow night with two of my coworkers, so I guess it would be poor form to skip work and still go to the show.

All right, I guess that means it's bedtime.