Picture This...

As is usually (always) the case, here comes a long, much-overdue update on things. I'm too lazy to type, so here are lots of photos for you! :)

Ok, in the most chronological order I can think of...

Infrared Cards! Our astronomy club intramural soccer team. (Not to be overshadowed by the Infrared Sox softball team...)

Chris and I played in the All-Campus Band concert! Sarah and her family came to see it :)

Went to an SPS (Society of Physics Students) zone meeting in Morehead, KY. They have 21m radio telescope!

Fiesta Friday Dinner! Me, Jenny, Chris, Alec and Brian (Elaine is taking the photo)

Graduation party for Chris, Eric and Jenny. Look at all our delicious food and YES, that's right- a CHAMPAGNE TOWER. We're that classy, folks.

My cocktail dress. But aren't we just so charming? :)

The gang. Top: Eric, Tess his girlfriend, Chris and me. Bottom: Elaine, Jenny and Charity.

The late-night party crew. Jenny, Me, Chris, Jeff, Con (astro prof) and Elaine. This photo is priceless.

The graduates. :)

Hats off!

Words later, sometime! :) 

All Growed Up

Today I went to a laundromat alone for the first time in my life. I have been before, but never to actually do my own laundry. This year, I have done my laundry at friends' places who have machines (free!), at home, and once in a dorm basement. I avoid laundromats at every cost because:

a) They can be dirty
b) Sometimes they cost a lot
c) I'm extremely paranoid someone will steal my clothes
d) I don't want strangers to see my bras and undies

Today marks a monumental point in my life when I finally overcame my irrational fear of laundromats (out of necessity- I had one pair of (clean) underwear left).

Anyways. I've been neglecting the blog lately. Here are some recent updates from my life that I should have posted about loooong ago:

-Went ice climbing in Wisconsin (did I say this already? Oh well). It was TONS of fun.
-All in one day my car ran out of gas, the battery died, and a (already worn out) brake pad FELL out of my wheel. Did I mention this was during spring break, so I couldn't go anywhere?
-My car died again thiNM, NSO, Astronomy,s weekend. Did I mention it was in Lafayette? At least I got to see Naomi!
-Organized and ran the Physics Club "pi a professor day". I'm going mad with all this power.
-Presented a poster at a research symposium.
-Taking the physics GRE this saturday morning... KILL ME NOW
-And some other stuff I'm sure.
-Band concert in a couple weeks! :)

And the biggest news in my life recently is that I got accepted in the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) REU internship for this summer!!! Back to Arizona I go, but Tucson this time. It's way hotter :( I'm really excited though! I'll be working with a research scientist named Dara Norman. I spoke with her on the phone and she sounds great. My project looks really exciting too. I'm going to be looking at the distribution of x-ray AGN (active galactic nuclei... galaxies with blackholes at their centers!) in galaxy clusters. The bulk of my work will be reducing spectra, which is less exciting, but I'm sure will be informative. There's nothing like doing the behind-the-scenes work to truly understand what's really going on.

Until the next time I get a few free moments to update!!! Here's me exacting revenge on my professor during the pi a professor day.

Just pie'd my EM (electromagnetism) prof in the face...
Can you say F?

Late Thanks Giving

Friday was our Christmas Friday Dinner (more on that later). During dinner we all said what we are thankful for, since we really never had a Thanksgiving celebration (unless you count Canadian T-giving...)

As this year comes to a close, I can name many things I am thankful for. All I could come up with on Friday was snow and kitties... I am thankful for:

Friends! For new-found friends, for old friends, for renewed friendships.

My BFF Naomi and her goofy dad :)

Physics Club end of the year dinner at Yogi's

Elaine and I starring in a Christmas Slaughter

Rollercoaster shenanigans

My REU 'family' for the summer :)

Family- especially ridiculously adorable babies!

Couldn't find any good photos...

Kitties! Especially that one!

Moka is fascinated by the snow!

Snow! Who knew crystallized water could be so beautiful? (Notice kitties and snow are still on the list...)

B-Line trail this morning

Amongst many other things, but I won't get too sentimental just yet. :)

10/10

About this time last year I wrote something about all of the things I did in October. This year's edition:

-Got my first tattoo, Elaine pierced her ears and I cut her hair AND Jenny dyed her hair... all in one night.
-Went home and visited Riley Fest with family and best friend.
-Got a cat! And she is cute!! >^.^<
-Flag football with the astronomy club team 'Galactic Cannibals'... we lost all 3 games but I had so much fun! Manged to depants 2+ QB's and hit another one in the crotch.
-Brought a big cardboard box and traffic cone into the AURA.
-Canadian Thanksgiving at Jenny's house in the middle of the woods.
-Saw Rent with Eric and Jenny.
-Eric being in a 'stripper-cake' for Teresa's 21st birthday party. Don't ask.
-At least 2 happy-hour Steak 'n Shake visits.
-Studying Quantum Physics at Lake Monroe.
-One-year anniversary of the first Friday Dinner.
-Physics & Astronomy Open House, where IU physics club performed a truly astounding demo show 'Captain Planet and the Physiteers'... lighting my hands on fire and electromagnetized hair.
-Dennis James playing the organ to the silent film The Bat.
-Halloween Bowling and dressing as a hippie.
-Fall Friday Dinner dressed as 'gravity'. Good food, friends, and music.
-Took part in a haunted house. I got to scare the pants off people for 7 straight hours... pretty tiring but lots of fun!

College is great. :]

Homogeneity

I have 3 exams tomorrow and 1 Tuesday, but yet here I sit in the AURA (Astronomy Undergrad Research Area), aka, The Lab, updating my blog.

My life has been OH SO busy recently. I have only myself to blame, to be honest. Turns out trying to be VP of physics club, be in astro club, do intramural flag football, have a job, be on a newsletter committee, and take upper-level physics classes isn't as easy as it sounds. Sheesh. If I just sit around and chug out problem sets and study physics and math, though, I go a little crazy. Speaking of all these things, I have a lot of things I'd love to say, but it would be the longest post in history. So, a brief recounting of my life recently:

A couple weeks ago I went and saw California Guitar Trio at the Bishop, a bar/music place. I'd never heard of this band, but had been told they were really great. I went with two friends and it turned out to be REALLY great. It was 3 guys playing guitar (as you could have guessed, although none of them are from CA...). They were really talented, and it was a great show. Somehow after the show, myself and the 2 others ended up talking with the band for a while, helped them take the guitars/equipment to their cars, and then took them out for drinks and dinner (don't worry Mom, I didn't didn't partake in the drinks part). I have NO idea how it happened, but somehow I became a roadie for an awesome band I hadn't heard of until a few hours just before. It was really great, and the guys in the band were really cool.

Even further back than this, though, I hosted the first Friday Dinner at my apartment! The theme was based off the rainbow, and everyone brought food of a different color of the rainbow. It was pretty spectacular, and unfortunately I didn't take any photos... sorry. If I remember correctly, the foods were:

Red- red wine & red jello...

Orange- butternut squash

Yellow- lemon and chicken pasta

Green- amazing salad

Blue- blueberry muffins

Violet- eggplant and blackberry cobbler

Brown- chocolate cake

White- rice

Jumping forward in time, my first official task as physics club VP was to make liquid nitrogen ice cream for the callout meeting. I had never actually made it myself, but it was a ton of fun. Plus it was really dramatic. And delicious. My next task as VP was to organize a group to build a boat for IU's annual Cardboard Boat Regatta. The physics club has repeatedly gotten owned at this event, so this year was the time to get first place. After 'borrowing' a lot of cardboard from a recycling dumpster (hey, I'm recycling it in a way) and buying a lot of duct tape, myself and a small group of wannabe engineers put together Schroedinger's Boat, a masterful design in buoyancy. This past Friday was the day of the big race, and with our Physicists at C, we set sail against other student organizations, my coworkers, and even my bosses. Our boat performed admirably, floating much better than everyone else's (if I do say so myself), but unfortunately, physicists are not experienced rowers... After failing to row together and straight we made it across the pool far behind... Oh well! It was fun anyway! NEXT YEAR!

The day before the regatta was the astro club's first flag football game, against Chemology. Our team, the Galactic Cannibals, lost, but it was still a ton of fun. I now have war wounds from a so-called NON-contact sport... Psh, yeah, non-contact...

Oh! Last thing- after the regatta, I went to dinner with some friends, then we went to the opera to see Il Barbiere di Siviglia. I'd never seen this opera, but it was funny and entertaining. I really enjoyed it, and it actually ended happily! I generally leave operas depressed, but for once nobody committed suicide or lost their true love.

Woo. I like that all these things are out of order. Lots of things. And homework. Lather, rinse, repeat. I like to be busy, though.
And when your life is filled with stupid boys, or rather, one really stupid boy, busy-ness is nice.

I have not looked at this blog for quite some time, and when I glanced at it today, I noticed that the subheading is no longer correct. I have written 'I wish I could like tea...'. Guess what? I do like tea now! It seemed like it just sprang up on me all of a sudden. My gateway tea was Lemon Ginger and from there it was all downhill.

It's funny how our tastes change as we age. I used to dislike many types of food until recently (also becoming a vegetarian made me like more vegetables...). I still haven't warmed up to tomatoes (GASP! I know), but I'm getting over my black bean fear more and more.

In two weeks the physics club (including myself) is going to Chicago to visit Fermilab, the home of the Tevatron, a particle accelerator.

Recent accomplishments in my life:
-I ran the IU Mini Marathon in 1:58:37.0.
-I got accepted into an Astronomy REU (research internship) in Flagstaff Arizona for the summer.
-.... Obviously, I haven't accomplished too much recently

Galaxyrise

One of my friends once said 'The more you know, the more you don't', and at the time I thought it was a very pessimistic outlook on life. The more I think about it though, the more I appreciate what it means. I feel like every day I'm learning all sorts of neat and exciting new things. And every time I learn something new, it opens up new doors with new questions I can ask, now that I'm equipped with more knowledge. It's not a bad feeling to know that you don't know everything (that sentence was a bit redundant...). Gaining knowledge gives you the tools to learn more and more and more!

Yesterday, we watched Carl Sagan's 'Cosmos' (go ahead and laugh, we all know it's the cheesiest thing since Swiss). While I was watching Carl talk about if he could go anywhere backwards in time, he would go the library of Alexandria, I started thinking what would happen if I went back in time. I was suddenly struck with a terrible thought that if I was the sole representative of some civilization, I could never communicate all the knowledge we've accumulated. I was thinking I would tell the Greeks or whoever how their astronomy was so terrible and such, and I kind of had a pseudo-conversation in my head where I tried to tell them how they could measure quantities of stars and I couldn't even remember how to find the mass of a star... I think I learned this (and it was drilled into my head...) less then 6 months ago, but I can't for the life of me remember.

Wow, that entire paragraph was the most pointless anecdote I've come up with yet. But after I thought of that, I tried to think how I would tell them how to make electricity and build machines, but I don't know how to do either of those, really!!! That was when I decided that if the human race ever sent anyone back in time, or to another planet, they should never, never, ever pick me to represent our collective knowledge.

This has been a semi-intellectual post... I'm quite proud of myself! I think I shall now frolic and learn about quantum mechanics, thank you very much!