Pointless Vent

33 days until lease is up.

24 days until I move out.

I'm thinking about keeping my toothbrush, toothpaste, and my face washing stuff in my room for the remainder of the time. Then I can get ready in the kitchen.

Some people's kids...

Baraboo: Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Friday:
- Left campus around 1:00 p.m. and began the slightly-less-than 7-hour drive to Baraboo, WI, home of some sweet geology.
- Car ride full of goofiness and miscommunications.

"There's a lever under the seat!"
"A what? A leper?"
"A leopard??"
"Lovers under the seat? What??"

"*singing* Who built the Ark? Noah, Noah. Who built the Ark? Father Noah built the Ark!"
"What? Where'd you learn that song?"
"At Vacation Bible School."
"Geisha Bible School??????"

- Nice sunny, warm weather. Arrived in Baraboo. Set up camp. Started to get dark, so we headed into town to have dinner (Pizza Ranch!) and buy groceries for the rest of the trip.
- Starts to rain and thunder a bit as we go to bed.

Saturday:
- Rain.
- Grape nuts for breakfast, with some sugar for flavor (and by some, I mean a TON, because I accidentally spilled way more than I wanted into my bowl... oops!)
- More rain.
- Head out for a day of structural geology sites.
- Rains harder.
- Arrived at the first outcrop and see another group of geology students there as well. Huge crash of thunder and lightning. Other group quickly enters van and leaves. We stay. (Sweet crossbeds, ripplemarks, parasitic folds, and slickenlines though!!)
- Eventually it starts to rain a bit less at other stops, but we're already soaked at this point so it didn't really matter. Day of geology ends (but we got some sweet samples of brecciated quartzites!)
- Back to camp. Thinking it might be decent for the rest of the evening. Ooops, thought that too soon, more rain! Gotta love eating dinner in the rain.
- Poured all night. Barely slept. My options: Curl up to stay warm and avoid touching the edges of the tent (but be uncomfortable and unable to sleep), or stretch out and touch the edge of the tent and possibly let lots of water in. I did a little bit of both, as did Beth, my tent buddy.

Sunday:
- Woke up with some puddles and leaks in the tent. Parts of our sleeping bags were wet. At least we didn't have a "river" flowing under half of our tent like the boys did.
- Still raining. Blah...
- KAB gave us the option of toughing it out and seeing more geology or packing up and going home. Yay for having a choice!
- We packed up.
- We drove home.
- Started reading a book for fun in the car, and it's got me wondering what in the world is going to happen next!
- Arrived in Mo-town around 3:30 (?). Hurriedly unpacked the van, and went our separate ways (thanks for the ride home, Beth!).
- Shower.
- Clean clothes.
- Comfort food.

Also, I didn't manage to take any pictures this weekend. Knowing that the forecast included thunderstorms, I didn't bother to bring my digital camera. I'm hoping that Beth, Emma, and Donnie will have some pictures I can post eventually. Someday, it'd be nice to go back to Baraboo to be able to enjoy/study the geology some more when morale isn't negative and dripping wet.

Photo: taken by Donnie of my fluffing up my pillow while setting up camp

Camping Trip!

The structural geology class always takes a field trip to Baraboo, WI to check out some quartzites. Well, almost always. I took the class last year, and the trip got canceled to do a blizzard at the end of April. So, I'm going to tag along (so are some other students from last year) with the current class as they go on this camping trip.

Yay! I haven't been camping since October, so I am looking forward to that a lot. Hopefully, the predicted thunderstorms, however, will end up being mild or absent. That would be nice. Field work in the rain is miserable.

Here's hoping it's a fun trip! I'll post some pictures if I get some good ones. :)

Summer hurry up!

I keep stumbling upon blogs that belong to rubber stampers that post their wonderful cards, and they have so many cool ideas! It's making me want to stamp big time!! I haven't really sat down to stamp some cards in a long time, because I don't have my stamping stuff at school and I haven't really had a summer that wasn't full of traveling or geology in a few years. So, needless to say, I have not had the time or the ability, really, to do any stamping. I can't wait until the summer!!! I am going to bust out my stamping supplies and make some sweet cards.

It's also my goal this summer to tie up all the loose ends on any scrapbooks that I've started. I'm not allowed to start new scrapbooks. Well, I'm not allowed to make any scrapbooks with any digital pictures that I have. If I want to scrapbook those, I am going to do it digitally, unless I really come upon a great idea for a scrapbook. But, I've got a bunch of pictures in boxes and folders lying around my house that need to get put into already existing scrapbooks. Like my trip to Germany junior year of high school. Yep, still haven't finished that one. Thank goodness I actually kept up with my travel journal on that trip, or I would have forgotten everything from the pictures.

I can't wait!

The Club

On Tuesday I joined the club of students who have completed their senior seminar and are ready to graduate. Thank goodness. The last few weeks were just go-go-go as far as needing to get stuff done. And, true to form, I performed well under pressure and got things done (yes, Erik, you can say "I told you so" now...).

Most of the actual seminar was a blur. I remember conversations I had with people before I started lecturing (Microsoft Powerpoint: "Cozzarelli? Do you mean Mozzarella?" Me: "No, but, dang it... now I want cheese!") and then the questions and comments that followed, but everything in between is a little bit fuzzy. I made Shannon promise me that I really hadn't babbled on the whole time, and that I actually made a bit of sense, because for all I knew I was mumbling, mixing up my words, and being repetitive.

It was also a relief to find out today that KAB (a prof who is known for asking tough/intimidating questions and having high expectations of students) thought that I did a good job. I was a bit worried as to what the profs thought about my presentation when my own adviser, JFPC, (who I have had issues with in the past, though I've never flat out confronted him about it) asked me really tough/mean/whatever questions at the end of my seminar (during which, by the way, he spent a good portion of his time dozing off). I was a bit frustrated with his questions, but thought that I may have exagerated his harshness given that I don't happen to think very highly of him, until my friends came up to me afterwards and asked, "Who is that prof and why was he such a *insert term for mean person here*?" Oh well... As long as I get a grade that is fair, I will never have to deal with this prof again (if I don't, he'll be getting an ear-full, and probably not just from me). And time to stop venting about my non-adviser adviser and move onto something not related to school.

I'm super relieved to be done with my seminar, but the rest of this week has not felt as relaxing as I had originally imagined it to be. I blame that partially on work (and partially on the rut that I seem to have gotten myself stuck in regarding other aspects of life). I was originally scheduled 13 hours this week, but after a short phone call with my manager that got changed to 20 hours. I guess we're short on staff at the pharmacy this week due to injuries and illnesses. But oh well, at least this will beef up the paycheck a little bit. Which reminds me, I need to start applying for summer jobs right away. Tomorrow though, it's time for sleep now.

Photo: www.german-business-etiquette.com

This is procrastination, but...

... I needed to get this out of my system.

Tweak seminar/finish up loose ends on powerpoint,
sleep (?),
8:00 a.m. physics lab,
seminar run-through,
memorize memorize memorize,
caffeine caffeine caffeine,
print hand-outs,
change clothes/make-up/useless primping,
6:00 p.m. present seminar,
and done (a.k.a. dinner and drinks followed by sleep),
especially sleep.

Okay, yup, I can do this...

What's my element?

I took a quiz on Facebook today that is supposed to answer the question, "Which element are you?" The possible elements were earth, water, wind, fire, aether, wood, and metal.

These were my results:

"You are Wood, an interesting element indeed. Made of tough stuff, you are. You have an outer shell that can protect you from most things and, unlike Metal, your shell is one built on logic and experience instead of one hastily put up to protect you from being hurt (though it functions in that way as well). Wood has the least personality of the elemental personae and is the most effected by the other elements (needs [air] to breathe, water to drink, earth to grow from, fire destroys it). Though to balance all of that out, you can heal far more easily than the rest (which is good, because if you do fall, bouncing back will be horrendously difficult). You are stable, stubborn almost, but smarts and common sense are your roots that keep you in place. Your place in the world: You are the wizened old soul whose mere existence proves that anything's possible."

I didn't think the questions in the quiz were all that deep, but I really enjoyed reading the summary at the end.

As for an actual update on my life: I'm still plugging along on my senior seminar. I haven't been very good about getting the reading done, but I know that as soon as I can plow through that, I'll have a decent presentation on my hands. It's just a matter of getting it all done. I can't wait until it's over! I'll be able to relax and be somewhat social again. Almost done!

Photo 1: www.tonyboon.co.uk
Photo 2: siteresources.worldbank.org

Senior Seminar Madness

"Senior projects should be dragged into the streets and shot," Melinda responded to my status on Facebook complaining about my senior seminar today. I agree wholeheartedly.

She went on to say, however, "...that wouldn't really work seeing that they are made out of paper, computer files, and expectations but I still want to do it." This does complicate her previous statement.

So yeah... I've got a week and two days, basically, until I have to give my ~40 minute presentation on something geological to a room full of supportive friends/fellow students and critical professors (some more than others...). As I type this, I am printing out various sources that I am furiously hoping will be related to each other enough for me to pull out a cohesive topic to base my presentation on. Generally, I know what my topic is (oil-spill turned laboratory for studying contaminants in groundwater) but it could go in a few directions. All of such directions are complicated, and I rrrrreally wish that I had left myself more than a week to understand such topics.

Two of my fellow students suggested talking to my adviser and asking for another week ("he'll understand" or "he's reasonable" they said). I wonder, are we talking about the same adviser? Nevermind the fact that my situation is completely my fault for not starting much sooner (believe me, I acknowledge that!)... but that's certainly not the impression I get of my adviser, and unless I am completely desperate, I have no desire to ask him for such an extension only to have him complain behind my back again.

I wish my printer was faster... please hurry up.

Fun with Flowers

"To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat."
~ Beverly Nichols

"Where flowers bloom so does hope."
~ Lady Bird Johnson

"You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses."
~ Ziggy (single panel comic strip created by Tom Wilson)

"Each flower is a soul opening out to nature."
~ Gerald de Nerval

"Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul."
~ Luther Burbank

"Earth laughs in flowers."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Birthday Boy

Happy Birthday, Erik!