Things

I am officially back in Bloomington!

The most exciting news in my life recently has been the fact that this year I am the proud tenant of my first apartment. I began the move two weeks ago but finished last week and then spent some time getting everything unpacked and set up. The (preliminary) finished product:

My bedroom!

'Hallway' view from the living room.

Bathroom (obviously)

Kitchen

Living room

I really like the new place. The landlords are really nice and helpful. I've only met a few of the other tenants but they are friendly and nice. It's a pretty good location, and is even next to an adult bookstore (which I visited the other day with some friends... a very interesting place). It was recently renovated so has new carpet, drywall, etc... It's really exciting to finally have a place of my own!

This week started classes. It was sort of weird for school to be back in session, but things are going well. My classes this semester are:
-Electricity & Magnetism 1 (yuck)
-Analytical Mechanics
-Linear Algebra
-Italian 3
-Intro to Buddhism (fulfills TWO of my general requirements... score!)

My classes all seem pretty good so far, but I have a feeling E&M and Mechanics are gonna be tough. Fortunately I know a lot of people in both classes so have some study buddies. I still have my job as a FASE mentor, and am also doing research with an astro prof. Never a dull moment. Some of the more exciting aspects of the past week have been:
-Went sailing with my friend Steven, for which we had perfect weather and wind
-Had the first Friday Dinner then watched Sabrina at Bryan Park
-Had friends over for a housewarming party
-Bike broke and I had to carry it for .5 mile... Managed to mostly fix it though
-Bathtub drain broke but my nice neighbor helped me fix it
-I'm really diggin' bullet points today it seems

I already have a ton of homework, which makes me sad, but such is life. I'm glad to see all my friends again, and hopefully this year will prove to be just as fun and exciting as the previous ones.

Living in the Limelight

My sister had a baby on the 22nd! :) She had a home birth to a healthy little boy. He's such a cutie too! Hearing her talk about the experience of childbirth pretty much cements my suspicions that it may be one of the most intense experiences in life (and isn't for me).

Last weekend myself and some friends attended what will forever be one of the most epic concerts (so far). I fear this post will be similar to the Dream Theater/Iron Maiden one, so if you don't want to hear about Rush, read no further.

Sunday I went with 4 other friends to St. Louis to see Rush. Since all of us were coming from different parts of the state, we all met near the airport, and from there carpooled to St. Louis. We ended up leaving ~3 which was right on time. Since there's a time change to Missouri, we ended up getting to St. Louis pretty early, which gave us time to eat dinner and then head over to the venue.

We had pretty crappy seats, but that was because all 5 of us bought tickets together. We were in the last row of the pavilion, but it was still rockin'. They played an awesome set, including... ALL of Moving Pictures!!! That was incredibly cool. What songs I can remember (probably not in order):

-Spirit of Radio
-Some song off of Presto (which I don't own)
-Time Stand Still
-Leave That Thing Alone
-Workin Them Angels
-BU2B (off their upcoming album Clockwork Angels)
-Freewill
-Marathon
-Subdivisions

Intermission

MOVING PICTURES! Which includes:
-Tom Sawyer
-Red Barchetta
-YYZ
-Limelight
-The Camera Eye
-Witch Hunt
-Vital Signs
-Neil Peart DRUM SOLO!!!!
-Caravan (Clockwork Angels)
-2112 (Overture & Temples of Syrinx)
-Closer To The Heart
-Far Cry

Encore:
-Villa Strangiato (WOOHOO!)
-Working Man (Reggae intro...!)

They played phenomenally. I can't believe these guys have been making music since the early 70's. Who knew 3 Canadian dudes could be so cool? It's amazing how much great music only 3 people can make. I was superbly impressed with all the pieces they played. Everything sounded great and Geddy Lee actually got all the high notes. I'd never seen Rush live so was unprepared for the raw power of the combined forces of Geddy, Neil, and Alex (yeah, we're on a first-name basis). Neil played a crazy drum solo, which as far as I know, is staple to Rush's concerts. Alex Lifeson busted out some rockin' guitar skills, and Geddy was all over that bass guitar. In short, an awesome concert.

After leaving the venue at about 12:30, accidentally driving past the Arch 3 times, and stopping for gas stations 3 times, we were on the road back home. We made it to Indy at about 5am after the time change... Yikes! From there everybody headed their separate ways home. Completely worth the traveling though.

It was a completely epic trip that will definitely go down in the books!

The only salvageable photo from the concert.
Workin Them Angels

There's More Than Corn in Indiana... There's Soybeans Too!

Back in Indiana! Actually, I have been for 2 weeks today, but am just now catching up on blogs. I feel like I all ever talk about is ‘when I was in Arizona this and that’ but cut me some slack, I DID live there for 10 weeks. It became normal to me. Speaking of normal, now Indiana seems so foreign!

Everything is so different here! Some things I have noticed:

• No mountains in my backyard. Got some corn now.

• It’s frikkin’ hot and humid. Weather in Flagstaff was absolutely fantastic- 70’s or low 80’s and sunny all the time (until monsoon season in mid-July). It was a huge shocker returning to Indiana on the hottest day of the year when the heat index was above 100. The heat in the Grand Canyon was as hot and miserable, but it’s a different kind here. I’m not sure which is worse: the super intense sun of the Canyon or the incredibly awful humid Indiana heat…

• Grass!!! As in, there is grass here! That’s one thing I really missed in Arizona. Their grass was really wimpy and all prickly. It’s so green and nice here!

• Green! Everything is grass green here. First of all, there are trees here, or at least more than pine. Second, they’re actual green, not the standard forest green of Arizona. At first I wasn’t really a fan of the greens (or lack thereof) in Arizona, but now the tables have turned and it’s weird here. I kind of feel a bit crowded by all the trees, too. I got used to a mostly bare landscape, where there are no forests or trees over the road.

• There’s a lot of bugs. Mosquitoes, crickets, cicadas, you name it. I guess it was the elevation of Flagstaff, but there weren’t hardly any insects there. Now it’s so loud with all the bugs!! And I have a lot of mosquito bites! Didn’t miss those.

• The sky is lighter! Teresa and I kept on commenting about how the sky is SO blue in Arizona, and a much darker shade than back here. Kathy told me it was because there’s no moisture in the air and the elevation. It’s really noticeable though.

• Speaking of air, there’s a lot of it here. Flagstaff is like 10 times as high as Indiana, and I got used to the decreased oxygen. It feels pretty great to run/exercise here. Like my lungs will EXPLODE!

• The Midwest is boring and devoid of places to hike.

Walking Sadie with the lil sis Lizzy. The dramatic Indiana landscape dominates.

It took me about a week to finally get back in the swing of things here. I went from spending pretty much all my free time in Flag with the other REU students to not being to see them at all, and it was pretty rough for a bit. It was indescribably bizarre to be back home in Indiana. I feel like everything is different! You try spending over 2 months living in and exploring the west and finally returning here, and then you can tell me to stop talking about it. I’m really happy to see all my friends and family though (and my fish!!!). And I’m excited to start school on the 30th.

Last week I got to see the lovely annual Perseid meteor shower. The peak night was the 12th- I watched from about midnight to 12:40 and saw probably 20 or so. The peak rate can easily exceed 60/hour, but you have to watch later into the night. So, I set an alarm for 3am. I only went out for probably 30 minutes or so, but I definitely saw them at least at a rate of 60/hour, probably more. There were some pretty spectacular ones as well. My friend Steven pointed me to this page, but the first photo is taken from Flagstaff! Representin, yo.

Also, last Sunday, said friend Steven and I headed up to Conner Prairie in Fishers to see A Prairie Home Companion, a radio show on NPR hosted by Garrison Keillor.

Garrison Keillor- the semi-crazy guy wandering through the audience.

I was trying to describe what it was to a friend of mine and could only come up with 'it's a show where this guy sings and tells stories and someone makes funny sound effects'. The show was great! We had a mini picnic and the weather was nice.

And finally, I'll end with this photo... what do you think it is?

?

Back in the Saddle Again- AZ to IN!

My last few days spent in Arizona were busy busy busy. I was leaving Wednesday morning, and our presentations and papers were due on Monday. We had to give the presentations Tuesday morning. Not to mention the fact that I had to move all of my stuff out of the apartment, clean it, and check out sometime in there.

Luckily I had my paper and presentation pretty much finished the previous week so that I could leave the last weekend for the Arches trip. I put some finishing touches on it Monday and gave a practice talk to Teresa and my adviser. I rushed around Flag buying people souvenirs (of course I wait until the END of my 10 week stay to do this...) then began packing my stuff that night.

Okay, so throughout the summer, the REU students have sort of had a penchant for pulling pranks on each other. To be honest, we pretty much just stole a lot of stuff from Eric (including his phone multiple times, his french press and probably more things). As a final goodbye, Teresa, Nick and myself went over to the boys' apartment at about 9 or 10pm Monday night and stole Eric's mattress!!! We carried it down one flight of stairs, across the property to our apartment, up to the third floor then threw it in mine and Teresa's apartment. Man, I'll tell you: I never knew how heavy a full-size mattress could be... It was totally worth it, though. Once it was in our apartment, we proceeded to jump on it like the mature college students we are.

Nick and I going to town on the mattress.

We put the mattress on top of my mattress on my bed. Eventually around 11 or so, I got really tired. I didn't know what else to do so I just went to sleep on top of two mattresses. At about midnight, I was rudely awakened to a phone call from Eric asking if I knew where the mattress was. The gig was up, so Nick, Eric and I moved it back.

The next morning was THE day. The day where we had to give our research presentations to a room full of experienced astronomers who will probably rip us apart with questions (people from Lowell, NAU, and the USGS were invited). Eek! I was going 4th out of 7, so I got to sit around nervous for a bit. Everybody gave really good talks! I was pretty impressed. I thought for sure somebody would get too nervous and goof up (most likely me) but everybody did really well.

Notice my star trek cup that I brought specifically for the talk! :)

I thought I did pretty well, although I forgot to say some things, and was a little intimidated by the professional astronomers there. I was satisfied though, and that's all that matters! I answered all my questions but one that I didn't know (my adviser answered it for me though).

After our talks- we can finally relax! From left, back: Eric, Nick, Nicole and Teresa. Front: Me, Kathy (program director and our psuedo-mom), Sarah, and Cailah.

Afterward we went to NiMarco's, the same pizza place we visited on our first day in Flag. A few of the astronomers who attended the talks came as well. It was really fun and yummy. After that, Teresa and I ran all over the place (Target, NAU to give Kathy our leftover food, and Lowell to clean out the office). We frantically packed up our stuff all afternoon and cleaned the apartment like madwomen. Eric and I made a recycling run from all the stuff we've been accumulating all summer and got some espresso at Macy's. I don't think I've ever mentioned Macy's but it's a European style coffee shop. They have the best coffee I've ever tasted! But yeah, went back home, cleaned and packed more. Went back to the physics building at NAU to print off my plane tickets (woops! almost forgot to).

Flagstaff sent me off in style!

FINALLY I got back and tried desperately to use all my tortillas by making a lot of quesadillas (I succeeded). We had a last blow-out party with everyone and a USGS friend Eric (too many Erics). It was lots of fun, but I ended up staying up until 3:30... and then woke up at 5:30.

Wednesday, I did indeed wake up at 5:30, and proceeded to run around the place doing all the last-minute things I forgot to do before. At 6:40, the RA in our building came to check both Teresa and I out. We passed 'inspection' and I headed across the street to the parking lot where the shuttle would pick me up. I got Teresa and the boys to come help me bring my stuff (we woke them up at about 6:30 to MAKE them say goodbye to us). My shuttle arrived at 7:10 and I was off to Phoenix. Exchanged my final goodbyes with Teresa, Eric, and Nick and I was on my way.

It was three hours to Phoenix, and once there, I got through security like a breeze and had a couple hours to kill there.

In Sky Harbor Int'l Airport in Phoenix.

I sat around tired and bored until boarding at 11:40. It was a hard goodbye, but farewell Arizona!

Last glimpse of mountains at the airport.

I went from Phoenix to a layover in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas. I slept for pretty much the whole flight. I had about 3 hours waiting in Dallas, and my flight was a little late. I ended up leaving about 9pm Central time for Indy. I had a pretty amazing flight- I saw an incredible sunset (and Venus!). I happened to look down at the right moment to see a fireworks show going on the edge of some body of water. There was also a big storm in the distance. It was really cool to see lightning from the top down! I timed a minute and saw somewhere around 60 lightning strikes! After picking up my luggage in Indy, it was about midnight. From 7am MST to 12am EDT is 14 hours of traveling. I feel like most of it was just spent sitting around in airports though. I got a lot of reading and gameboy tetris done though!

All of my flights were fine, and I spent the night at my sister's house near the airport after arriving in Indiana. I slept like a brick, or a log, or whatever they say. This summer has been phenomenal and I'll dearly miss Flagstaff and all of the close friends I made there. I was lucky to have all really cool and awesome people in the REU group. I still get to see Teresa since she goes to IU, but hopefully I will see the rest of them at this winter's AAS (American Astronomical Society) meeting in Seattle. Until then!

The perfect sunset on my return flight from Dallas to Indy (notice Venus in the upper left!). Au Revoir Arizona! :)

Arches Arches Arches

In an attempt to catch up on blogs, here I am (I feel like this is all I ever do- get behind then have a burst of blog posts in a short period).

The week following the weekend of Sedona, Bear Mountain was spent wrapping up research and preparing my talk and presentation. I was enrolled in two classes while at NAU, one was based off research where we were required to write a 5-10 page report over what we had done over the summer. The other was based off the seminars we had twice a week. For that class we had to present our research at the end of the summer to those in charge of the program as well as anyone else who wished to attend. More about how those two things went later!

That week for our Dancing on the Square, we learned the hustle! It was a lot of fun! We got a bit rained out during the night, so Teresa and Eric (whom we managed to convince to come) and I went for some fried okra, chicken wings and apple pie at a nearby restaurant. Good stuff.

Ok, so on the weekend of July 30-August 1st, we ventured back to Utah! This time our destinations were Arches National Park, Mt. Peale, and Monument Valley. To start off our journey, we planned on leaving Flag at about 3-4pm Friday afternoon. Of course, road trips never really start on time. Friday it rained REALLY hard in Flagstaff. Like, two inches in 20 minutes hard. Up at Lowell, one of the building's basements was flooding, and on the first floor water was squirting up through the cracks of tiles. It was pretty intense. There's been a lot of uncharacteristic rain lately in Flagstaff (I blame global warming). This is bad news for people living north of town, because of flooding. After the Schultz fire, there's been a lot of flash flooding and it's been a real mess. Anyways, the main road through town, Milton, was completely flooded and impassable- right near the bottom of Mars Hill (where Lowell is located). We were pretty much stuck at Lowell until 5:30 or 6. Traffic was incredibly awful, and no one could get anywhere. Our ride coming to get us took 45 minutes, when it normally takes 5.

Yikes! Okay, so after packing hurriedly and shoving all of our stuff into Eric's car, Eric, Nicole and myself took off for Utah. We were the only ones on the trip because 2 people were going out of town, and the other two had a lot to do with their projects (presentations and papers were due the following Monday). We ended up leaving town at about 6:45... It takes about 6 hours to get to Moab, UT where Arches is!

A pretty rainy sunset leaving town.

The trip wasn't bad at all! We listened to a lot of good music, and saw some amazingly superb lightning for the majority of the ride actually. I wish we could have seen the ride in the light to see the landscape, but occasionally the lightning would light up structures in the distance. It was fun to imagine what they were, but would have been more fun to actually see them.

Nicole fell asleep with my cat, Gwynavere. :)

We ended up getting to our BLM (Bureau of Land Management) campsite at about 12am I think. There were lots of public, first come-first serve campsites around the park. We set up camp right next to the Colorado River and fell asleep to the sounds of water and bugs and to the sight of a nice clear sky.

The next morning we ate a breakfast of bagels (a baker's dozen for the trip!) and coffee. Then we drove over to the actual entrance to the park.

My first photo of the area! On our way to the park entrance.

There were an endless number of cool things to see in the park, so get ready for an explosion of photos. I'll try and restrain myself as much as possible!

We took just about every scenic view stop we saw. The first was just inside the park and had a nice view of the La Sal mountain range. It is named La Sal ('salt' in spanish) because when first discovered in the middle of a desert region, people couldn't believe it was snow on the peaks. Of course it makes sense that instead it is actually salt...?

The La Sal mountain range

The Three Gossips

The Organ. I have a hard time seeing it...

Balanced Rock! Name is self-explanatory I hope.

The Fiery Furnace.

That last photo is of the Fiery Furnace- a really cool place to hike, but you have to buy permits and it's incredibly easy to lost without a guide. Maybe next time! Our hike was the Devil's Garden primitive trail loop. About ~7 miles round trip. It was hike with the most amount of arches to see, so why not? First on the trail was Landscape Arch.

Landscape Arch

It was really cool! Back in the 90's some huge chunks fell off and since then they have deemed it too dangerous to walk under, so you can only get as close as this photo was taken. Next was Partition Arch.

Me standing under Partition Arch!

We had a lunch of, you guessed it, bagels under Partition Arch. Not a bad view at all! We stopped briefly at Navajo Arch next.

Nicole and Eric under Navajo Arch.

We went on to Double-O Arch. It was pretty neat!

Double-O Arch.

Next to the Dark Angel. It only looks like an angel from about this distance.

The bizarre landscape at the park.

We were starting to run out of water on the way back so we were quiet and didn't really take any more photos. We were pretty happy to finally get back. After getting hydrated and taking off our pretty smelly shoes we headed to Moab for some info and ice cream. While hiking in the park, we had seen rain in the distance and wondered if it was still possible for us to hike Mt. Peale, let alone get up to the trailhead. After stopping by the information center, the outcome seemed pretty bleak. The road to the trail was unpaved and after flooding in the area would be impossible to traverse in Eric's Malibu... We decided to wait until the next morning to make the final decision about climbing a mountain. Mt. Peale is the highest peak in the La Sal range at 12,726 feet.

In the meantime, we got some ice cream and espresso at a local shop, then drove to our new campsite at the foot of the mountains, near some lake. It was pretty nice because there wasn't hardly anyone there (bad weather has its advantages!). We washed off in a creek (so classy) and made a dinner of quinoa (leftover from the Zion/Bryce trip...) and veggies. We slept outside on our sleeping bags for a bit, but it started raining in the night, so into the tent we went. It continued raining through the night and stopped sometime in the morning Sunday. Definitely not climbing any mountains. Not only would it be pretty stupid and dangerous, but there's no way we could've driven to any trails.

After coffee, breakfast, and packing up camp, we went back to the park and took a short hike around the North and South Windows (also known as the 'Spectacles'), Turret Arch, and finally went to Double Arch. These were all short, 1 mile or less hikes so it was more crowded than I liked, but oh well.

North and South Windows aka The Spectacles.

Under an arch- maybe Turret?

Double Arch- it was really big and awesome to climb under/around.

Finally, it was time to head back to Arizona. The drive back was fine and dandy. We drove through Monument Valley, which was on the border of Arizona. It was incredibly weird but also cool.

Looks like somebody tilted the land...

Some of Monument Valley.

I drove us back home (so nice to drive for the first time that summer!), and we arrived home about 8pm I think. (We also tried stopping at a dinosaur museum and a coffee shop but both were closed for Sunday).

Woo! An action-packed weekend. I'm a little bummed we didn't get to climb a mountain (sometimes you just want to climb a mountain, you know?), but I had a ton of fun at Arches. It was a unique experience I'll never get again, and the landscape in Utah is incredible!