Me and my birthday present

Me and Matt

Helen loves her yuengling

So the birthday party was awsome. Thanks to everyone who was there and especially Matt, Alberto, and Helen for hosting. It was definitely the best birthday ever. I remember the whole night, so don't try to convince me you lent me $50 last night :P

Stat final Thursday, Chem final a week from Monday, then I'll be back on the west coast until January 10th.

My mom wants to hire someone to put together furniture my sister bought from IKEA.

How a Mech E ever came out of my family is still beyond me.

I have done almost a full semester's worth of OB reading in the past 6 hours. I will be greatly dissapointed if I don't own that exam tomorrow.

I've done absolutely no studying for my Statics exam, but it's not until 1:30PM. Which is practically ages from now, all things considered.

Scratch that. New Christmas wish: plane ticket to Spain for spring break.

All I want for Christmas is a spine.

Failing that, a motorcycle would suffice.

Movies watched over break:

• The Last Picture Show


• Lost in Translation


• High Fidelity


• Welcome to the Dollhouse


• Better Luck Tomorrow

"Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

For Thanksgiving I cooked myself a relatively complete dinner, which resulted in leftovers that fed me for 3 days.

When I told this to one of my friends, he commented that I'm the personification of the "independent girl". I'm not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

It's hard to delegate things when all it results in is me doing the work anyway, but a week after it should have been done because the person I delegated to dropped the ball.

I think I've made my decision for this summer. Occupation: Rocket Scientist. Location: Los Angeles, CA.

It's snowing!

I would like it to be known that Justin eats snail pellets.

C'mon Ohio. You can do it. Don't turn red.

I want to buy a motorcycle.

My cell phone is broken. It decided to stop charging, even though I gave it a generous selection of different electrical outlets. The new one was supposed to get here today, but it didn't. I'm concerned since the At&t website doesn't recognize my order number- I'll probably wait a few more days before calling them back and threatening their lives.

Thanks to Erik I had my first vacuum bagging experience last weekend; I was surprised how well it worked, considering we used trash bags, packing tape, and a pump taken out of a broken refrigerator.

I'm looking forward to people getting back to Pittsburgh. Things have been pretty quiet.

Books I've read so far this summer:

• Diary, Chuck Palahniuk
  
• Chinese Takeout, Arthur Nersesian
  
• Breaking the Tongue, Vyvyane Loh
  
• Graceland, Chris Abani
  
• The Greyhound God, Keith Lee Morris
  
• Dogrun, Arthur Nersesian
  
• The Pleasure of My Company, Steve Martin
  

Currently working on Slaughterhouse V.

My roommate, Young-Li, arrives on Sunday. This means two things: I have to start picking up after myself better, and I need to get out of the habit of lounging around in my underwear.

Work is going well. The time passes quickly and the work is even engaging sometimes. I'm learning a whole lot, but I've barely made a dent on what I'd need to learn to be up to speed on everything.

Eat, work, sleep, repeat. It's not that I'm trying to be anti-social, it's just that by the time I'm done with work I don't have the energy to entertain.

Seeing as I'm too lazy to write out a detailed log of my three weeks in Eastern Europe (and you'd probably be too lazy to read it all even if I did), I give you the Cliff Notes rendering of my adventures:

Frankfurt, Germany > Maastrich, Netherlands > Cesk� Krumlov, Czech Republic > Prague, Czech Republic > Budapest, Hungary > Ljubljana, Slovenia > Piran, Slovenia > Bled, Slovenia > Munich, Germany > Frankfurt, Germany

• Czech Republic: Admired the stunning architecture of Prague along with all the other tourists. Enjoyed the street performers on the Charles Bridge and visited the castle in Cesk� Krumlov that had a "bear moat" which was quite literal- true to it's word, there were two brown bears living in the moat.
  
  
• Hungary: Saw St. Stephen's Cathedral in Budapest, complete with St. Stephen's mummified right hand on display in a glass case. It more looked like a hunk of black... I don't know what... but I guess that's all you can expect considering he died about a millennium ago.
  
  
• Slovenia: Parked the rental car (unknowingly) on a restricted street in Ljubljana, Slovenia- came back to find a boot on the it. Walked around the most impressive outdoor market I've seen in a while, and bought Honey Brandy that tasted like candy. Visited Lake Bled which was the prettiest scenery I've seen in years, and went to Piran on the Coast and had Pizza that rivaled the best from Italy (which makes sense, since Italy was only a few miles away).
  
  
• Germany: Stayed a few nights in Munich and ate sausages at the Brauhause. Shopped the European department stores and enjoyed my last few cups of European coffee.
  

For pictures, go here.

Work is going well. It's nice to be a part of something big again. It's hard to explain, but it's one of the few things I missed about GRT. So far the work hasn't been all that stimulating, since I had to help Alex mail out a bunch of thank you packages and such to sponsors and supporters. Luckily, that's all done and out the door so now I'm working on more interesting stuff involving shock isolation of the on board computers and magneto-rheonetics.

I've got enough frequent flier miles on US Air to get a free ticket (within the continental U.S.). I could be responsible and use it for a trip home, but where's the fun in that? Other options I'm considering right now are New York City or Boston. Anyone have any suggestions?

Arrived back in the US on Sunday afternoon. My flight was a whole half hour early, which is always a nice surprise. I got back to campus and into my room with no problems, and collected the critical things I really need right now from Stu's to hold me over until I can con someone with a car into helping me move the rest of it.

I started work the next morning; needless to say, it was a long day. I had woken up at 5:30 due to jetlag (at least I slept though the night...), and ended up staying at work longer than I intended, especially considering I had to make a run after work to g'eagle since I had no food. By the time I was on my way to g'eagle I had a huge headache, which made grocery shopping even less fun than it normally is. By the time I got back to my room I barely had the energy to put away the groceries before collapsing into bed.

I hope to update about my trip soon, but right now isn't really the time (I've been up since 5:30AM, due to jetlag, and I have to be at work soon). Look for an entry this week, hopefully, highlighting the past three weeks of bumming around Eastern Europe. Until then, here are a few of the pictures I took:

Charlie, Uncle Bill, and my Dad (Maastricht, Netherlands)


Stained glass in St. Stephen's Cathedral (Budapest, Hungary)


St. Stephen's at night (Budapest, Hungary)


View of parliament from Buda Castle (Budapest, Hungary)


Ljubjana, Slovenia


Church on the island of Lake Bled (Bled, Slovenia)


Lake Bled, with a view of the Julian Alps (Bled, Slovenia)

Arrived in Budapest yesterday. Prague was absolutely gorgeous- the architecture is amazing. The food and wine is good and cheap, a dangerous combination. Our little Opal rental car is reliable, but lacking power. Sort of takes the fun out of driving on the Autobahn.

From here it's onto Slovakia before heading back to Germany via Austria.

I hope you're all staying out of trouble. Email me or comment and tell me what you're up to- I'll be checking email sporadically for the rest of my trip.

Official change to summer plans:

I'm not going back to California. After finals are over, I leave for a 3 week trip to Eastern Europe, and then return to Pittsburgh to work for Red Team for the remainder of the summer. I apologize to everyone I promised I'd see this summer, but working on this project is an opportunity that I couldn't refuse (especially when the alternative involves spoiled little girls and summer camp food).

I just lived through 4 exams in the past 3 days. I've got a couple of nights to recuperate, and then it's time to start studying for finals, which begin next week.

♥

I decided I don't really feel like updating too specifically.

Long story short: Carnival was hectic, but fun. Driving through Pittsburgh sitting on top of buggies hanging halfway out the trunk of a camry was an interesting experience. Saturday night was pretty messed up due to a drunken fight and an unlikely escort back to my dorm. If you want to know more, you'll just have to ask me yourself. Now it's time to sleep, if I want to have any chance of being coherent tomorrow- I seem to have been lacking that quality for a few days now.

It's been a crazy week.

Last night was insane. I'm still trying to sort everything that happened out...

No time to update, really- I have to help tear down the booth in a few minutes. I just figured I'd let you know I'm still alive and hopefully I'll update about the whole ordeal later tonight, if I get my work done at a reasonable hour.

We're going to California :-D :-D :-D

Prize for winning the ASME Region V Design Contest: A trip to Anaheim, CA, to compete on the National level at the 2004 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition next November.

I'll hopefully get a chance to write about my trip later tonight when I get this lab report done.

I don't know about you, but if I'm about to vomit the last thing I'd be thinking is, "Hey, I'll go vomit in the washing machine!"

Fucking lame.

Over the past 24 hours there has been 17 cases of "gastrointestinal symptoms including nausea, vomiting and diarrhea" reported to CMU health services. Food poisoning, anyone?

Due to the aforementioned event, most people either ate off campus last night or ordered take-out. I, however, put myself at risk by eating on campus due to (1) laziness, (2) an absurd abundance of meal blocks, and (3) frugality.

So far, no sign of food poisoning for me.

The week has been rather eventful. I spent a good deal of time machining and welding for Red Team's Darpa Grand Challenge entry. Everyone was (surprisingly) nice to me, except for Jim the engineer who said (upon witnessing I can tig weld and use a mill):

"Wow, who could ask for more in a girl? I can just imagine sitting here drinking a beer as you do all my work for me."

That ranks pretty high on my "asshole-ish things people have said to me in an engineering setting" list.

It's Saturday night and Justin and I are in the shop. We consider leaving to go to a party, but instead choose to continue milling since we'll probably have more fun that way.

God damn, I'm a nerd.