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?

Me? Bitter? Never.

At least a cat always loves me unconditionally.

Astronomers Do It At Night

Over winter break I went to Seattle for the AAS conference. It lasted from the Sunday immediately before classes to that Thursday. Because of this, I skipped the first week of school. At first it sounded alright- in fact I was a bit excited (come on, don't tell me you're not excited when a class got canceled?) Once I emailed all my professors and got homework for the week though, I wasn't really too keen on the idea of missing the first five days of class...

I presented a poster over my research from last summer at NAU. It was great- lots of interesting and stimulating people came around and asked me about my research. I met a lot of really cool people- astronomers and students alike.

Alec, Jenny and I in front of my poster!

Last year Chris went to AAS in DC and whenever I called he always told me how tired he was and how busy he was the whole time. At the time, I had a hard time believing that you could be busy all day at an astronomy conference... Yeahhhh, how wrong I was. Talks started at 9 in the morning and lasted until about 5. There were a few invited talks each day that almost everyone attended (big conference rooms, well-known astronomers speaking), and in between those were special session talks over specific areas of astronomy that were smaller. And going on all day in the exhibit hall was the poster session where people like me stood next to their poster all day waiting for people to come by and look. The conference in general was socially tiring, but worth it.

After the "conference day" was over, I would be invited to dinner with someone from somewhere, or I went to scheduled dinners. After dinner was drinks, after drinks was talking, after talking was finally getting back to the hotel to pass out in bed. Lather, rinse, repeat!

I did get to go out while there as well. We went to Pike Place Market...

One evening we went to the Space Needle. It was really neat to see the city at night!

Nicole (from my REU!), me, Teresa and Jenny at the top of the space needle.

We went to Chinatown for lunch one day and got dim sum (only two vegetarian options... sad...) We also went to the original Starbucks! Not that exciting really, but I had to go out of principle. One evening I visited University of Washington and got to talk to their grad students and faculty about grad school (eek!) and see the department. I also went for a run down on the waterfront...

And got lost on the way back. After the conference ended, Jenny and I stayed until the following Sunday, bring our trip length to a whole week. We had planned this out months ago, and in hindsight I probably should have come back to school as soon as possible to get back in the groove of classes and catch up on what I missed, buuuuut... how many chances do you have to go to Seattle (paid for, no less)?

Things we did:
-Visit the EMP (Experience Music Project) and Science Fiction Museum (a music and science nerd's dream come true)
-Eat at Top Pot Donuts
-Went to the market again
-Visited the Fremont Troll (a huge stone troll under the Fremont bridge!)
-Went to the Erotic Bakery... haha. It was very interesting.

That was about it. Two nights Jenny and I stayed with a friend of Alec's, and the last night we stayed with Keaton (he did an REU at Indiana and stayed through early September). Then on Sunday we left early to catch a bus to SeaTac airport and from there it was back home. After a layover in Minneapolis, I made it back to Indy about midnight and then drove back to Bloomington.

All in all, Seattle was great! I could do without the weather and the extremely poorly-designed road systems... but the stores, restaurants and nightlife were diverse and unique. Skipping the first week of school? Not one of my best ideas, but I had a great time anyway. Hopefully next year I'll get to go to AAS again!

Mamma Mia!

Again, most of you probably don't notice, but I changed the background of my blog. Poppies + blue sky = simple happiness.

Okay, so this is only, what, 3 months late, but here are some photos from our Murder Mystery Dinner. It was entitled "Pasta, Passion and Pistols". It was a loosely scripted dinner mystery and was TONS of fun. Even though we were given information about our characters, we all still took them in our own directions. It would be boring for you and tedious for me to tell you the details of the story and the various highlights of the night, but suffice to say there were plenty of awful Italian (more like French) accents all around. A night to remember! A few photos for you...

The gang! Teresa, Eric, Alec, Steven, Chris, myself, Elaine and Jenny

Dessert- "spaghetti sauce and meatballs" cake from Jenny!

Struggling to stay in character as my questionable boyfriend Bo (Eric) fights with my mom (Jenny) and brother (Alec)

Good times.

Silly Moka, Trix Are For HUMAN Kids

I am watching my cat right now and she is sticking her paw into the water bowl then licking her paw... No wonder she spills her water EVERY day.

The list of people foods Moka will eat:
-peanut butter
-jalapeno salsa
-white wine

Such a silly cat! Much muuuuch more to come later, when I get a spare moment to breathe in the past 5 weeks I've been at school. On the list- AAS, Seattle, classes, ice climbing, internships, and The Future of Jo Taylor.