Hello! I apologize for the lack of posting lately. Been a little behind I suppose. I guess there is a lot to say now, to make up for the lack of updates! It's going to be hard to think back so far, but here's a try... Going to split this up into multiple posts, for each week, as I'm that behind!
OK! So, two weekends ago (I think...?) on Friday a few of us and two people I don't know went to a restaurant called Granny's Closet to have dinner and do some... KARAOKE! I had never done karaoke until this time... it sure was an experience. Teresa and I sang 'Don't Stop Believin' by Journey. We were probably the third people to go... as the night wore on, I found that people were more receptive to bad singers the more drunk they got. Next time I'm going to try and go later! Eric and I sang 'Tom Sawyer' by Rush, and the crowd didn't really get into it (Rush ain't so popular I guess...). It was really fun and quite embarrassing! The way I see it, though, I'm never going to see those people again, so I might as well make a fool out of myself. Eric lost a bet to Teresa (she ate a habanero suicide chicken wing) so the two of them sang 'Oops I Did It Again' by Britney Spears... Remind me to never lose a bet to Teresa.
The next day we went to a few thrift stores. Some random junk I scored: 3 records, 2 pairs of earrings, a cool shirt, and a psychedelic red mug. Somebody bought a really tough puzzle of a gorilla sitting on a river made of stars... it's really strange. We're still working on the puzzle!
Sunday we went to Fossil Creek Springs, where we found water in AZ!!! Who knew it existed naturally here?! It was a good hike down to the springs, and once there we went swimming. The water was fantastically clear and cool, and it was really nice to get out of the heat for once. There was a pool you could swim to if you swam underneath a rock and came up ~10-15 second later... I was too chicken to do it. I hear it was really tough though, so I'm not too bummed about my irrational fears this time. In my defense I did jump off the side of a cliff/rock that was a good 25-30 feet high. Lots of fun! I'm slowly getting over my fear of heights! I fell on some slippery rocks and then had a wicket nasty/cool cut and bruise on my toe for over a week! I just can't manage to do anything without hurting myself.
At one point on the hike back up, we stopped to refill water at the source of the springs (it was clean). There were two middle-aged hippy-esque guys there who had a shrine with incense and candles set up. They were pretty funny, but really friendly. They gave us a pair of goggles, and you could look down into the source of the spring. Only myself and another guy in the group jumped in and stuck our faces into a hole in the ground. It was pretty neat, but I couldn't see very far. The hippy guy kept saying it went down forever and would be a life-changing experience. I'm pretty sure he was, shall we say, feeling a little more insightful than usual. If you use your imagination, though, it was pretty cool, I guess.
Okay! So that Tuesday we were invited to go observing on the 32-inch reflecting telescope at Anderson Mesa (Lowell's telescopes are there). It was pretty neat, but it was almost all done robotically, so the observer just had to push a few buttons and sit back. It was still pretty fun to 'drive' the telescope, AKA tell it what kind of filter to expose on and how long, and then look at the images, etc. Somebody went and got pizza and we sat around eating and chatting about possible deaths in the Canyon for a while we waited for clouds to pass. They never really did pass, but we salvaged a few images before giving up at about midnight. A small teaser into the real world of astronomy!
Sadly, I forgot my camera on every trip except for the observing... Hopefully later I can grab some from somebody else and upload some! For now, enjoy some photos of the telescope!
From left, Kathy (program director), Teresa (IU homedog), Christine (geologist that somehow got in the astro/physics program...), and Eric (the crazy one).
Some views of the scope.
No comments:
Post a Comment