Back in CA. The semester ended alright- grades not quite what I had hoped, but stayed on the list so it's all good.

Last night was surreal. I went out drinking in downtown PA with Rod, Matt S, Max R, Ryan J, and KEN KRIEGER. We were out for Matt's birthday, and on the drive over we decided it'd be a good idea to call Ken even though we hadn't seen or talked to him in over 2 or 3 years. We're lucky he still has the same cell phone number.

We spent all night drinking and recounting old GRT stories and talking about what everyone is up to now. We started at Nola, where there were wayyy too many Gunn kids I haven't seen since graduation or earlier. After that, we headed over to the Irish Pub behind Pizza My Heart. All in all the night was very enjoyable.

Twenty-one. The older I get, the younger I realize I am. I thought I was so grown up at 15 and 16, and now I realize how much farther there is to go.

Friday was dinner at Rock Bottom, and then my little ponies (gin and pink lemonade) and a movie at Bloodshaw. Saturday was a holiday party followed by a hot date with 4 guys while wandering from bar to bar in South Side. The midget bar was noisy, smokey, and served weak drinks = Thumbs Down. The martini bar made a delicious cosmo, as should be expected for $9 a drink = Thumbs Up (since I wasn't paying :P). All in all, a good way to celebrate my birthday.

Finals week is halfway over. California in less than a week. I've been overly setimental and introspective these past couple of weeks. Maybe I'll elaborate later.

Quite possibly the cutest picture ever.

Tomorrow I have a problem set due and an ASME event, Thursday I have two tests, Friday I have a semester-long group project due and a problem set due, and next Tuesday I have an exam which will make or break my grade. Obviously, this is the appropriate time to make a new blogger layout and browse facebook and party photos for hours on end.

This past weekend was uneventful, but stellar. I ran into Abbie (and the rest of CMU) at PHI on Friday, which was a pleasant surprise. Saturday started at Bloodshaw for cocktails, proceeded to Club Wilkins for sangria, then to South Side for peach hookah at Hkan, and ended at Tom's Diner at 2AM for greasy food along with all the drunks from the local bars.

California in two weeks. Where'd the semester go? It's scary how fast time is passing.

Sushi Boat!

This weekend was fun but unproductive and not very healthy. Friday was dinner at Chaya on Murray, where Matt, Alberto and I took on the culinary challenge pictured above. Afterward, we saw Shopgirl at Southside works. I enjoyed the movie; it was one of those films that didn't have a particularly strong plot, but was saved by the individual performances.

Saturday was Matt's birthday, so we embarked on a bar crawl in Shadyside. Unfortunately, he wasn't officially 21 until midnight so that gave us only 2 hours to celebrate. In the end, we hit 4 of the 15 bars on my carefully compiled map- Doc's, PDC, Mardi Gras, and Cappies. Surprisingly, we were only carded at 2 of the 4 bars. Thank god Shadyside is within stumbling distance of amberson, because I was relatively incoherent by the time last call rolled around.

Today was spent recovering from last night and doing all the work I put off all weekend. This week is looking typical; more stressful than I would like, but not as bad as some previous weeks. Highlights to look forward to include the dynamics exam, heat transfer lab, and a numerical methods quiz. Friday is the Mech E/Chem E keg race, which is definitely something to look forward to. Team Rigid Sliding Joint is going to make it a night to remember!

Our heat transfer exam concluded at 4:30PM today. By 5:30PM, we were mixing margaritas and mojitos, despite the fact that I had yet to start a problem set due tomorrow.

Best. Idea. Ever.

Now I'm sitting here, and the buzz is luckily wearing off because it's *really* hard to get anything productive done when you're not totally sober.

"Oh shit! It's 1:00AM! All I've done is put together my keg race team and make the party invitation! I need to shower and get to bed so I can make it to church at 8 tomorrow morning!"

-My lovely roommate

Rooming with Maureen was the best idea EVARRRRR!

p.s.- Maureen didn't even get her team together since she got too depressed when she realized how badly the Chem E's are going to lose to the Mech E's!

Captain Planet and the Planeteers!

This is the best picture EVER.

A 2005 report by researchers at four British universities indicated that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to marry, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.

...........

But it is equally naive and misguided for young women now to fritter away all their time shopping for boudoirish clothes and text-messaging about guys while they disdainfully ignore gender politics and the seismic shifts on the Supreme Court that will affect women's rights for a generation.

- Maureen Dowd, "What's a Modern Girl to Do?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/30feminism.html?incamp=article_popular

Good thing I like cats a lot.

What if you do care about gender politics? Then is it alright to fritter away time shopping for boudoirish clothing and text messaging about guys? Haha. Not that I ever do that.

I think I've dug my self out of the slump I've been in for the past couple of weeks. Now I've got to pull my life back together and all will be well in the world.

This weekend was eventful- Maureen's 20th on Friday, and Club Wilkins on Saturday. After getting dressed and ready on Saturday, Lydia and I walked downstairs only to discover it was pouring rain- not exactly ideal weather for walking to a party. We briefly considered staying home, but decided to grab an umbrella and raincoat since we didn't have any other plans for the evening anyway. We dreaded that the party might be empty due to the weather, but thankfully there was a great turnout and I think it's safe to say that both Lydia and I had a good time.

Now I've got to focus on school and not be distracted by the upcoming weekend.

I miss the beach.

The Plan:

Spring 06:
-Chem lab
-EMS
-Thermal Fluids
-DSC
-Humanistic studies

Fall 06:
-Eng. Design
-Eng. Analysis
-Technical Elective
-6 units free elective

Spring 06: Caroline's Grand Adventure! Australia? Thailand? New Zealand? Maybe I'll just bum around the Bay Area for a while, or roadtrip around the U.S. and Canada. Who knows? All I do know is I won't be in Pittsburgh.

I've really been terrible about updating this thing recently.

Being back in Pittsburgh is a little strange. It's almost as if summer never happened, since I'm back to the same place surrounded by the same people that I left last May, a life that is completely disconnected from the one I lead for 3 months.


Congratulations, Matt. You're *That* Guy.

760 miles later, and I'm in New Mexico.

The motel room is economical in price, but lacking in ambiance and location.

I got in a 5:00PM and have been bored senseless since. I thought the driving was boring, but that pales in comparison to the past three hours.

I’ve resorted to watching T.V., reading trashy chick-lit, and trying to keep myself from calling him.

Maybe I’ll just go to bed early so I can get an early start again tomorrow.

On your mark... get set... go!

I'll be in Pittsburgh in 5 days.

Last night I was sitting in the back of the stretch limo all dolled up in a new dress and sipping champagne on the way to a bar in Hollywood when I stopped and thought to myself, "This can't really be happening. This isn't my life."

By the end of the night he had given up on being discreet. I'm hoping it's going to be "out of sight, out of mind", because I don't want to be distracted from life by someone on the other side of the country. Unfortunately, he's absolutely adorable and unbelievably sweet- plus, there's that accent.

Three more days until I head back to Pittsburgh. I miss all my CMU friends, but it's hard to leave everything here.

My boss just sent a bunch of us an email with simply this message in the body:

"Don't make me open a can of whoop ass!!!"

"I got my phD from Oxford a couple of years ago."
"Really? So you're *Doctor* ________?"
"Yes, and I expect to be addressed formally from now on."

Azad, me, Helen, and Bulent

Last Friday night borders on challenging my 20th birthday.

"You are so much trouble. You have such a sweet and innocent face, you could get away with murder."

It's fun surprising people.

We were never really big on Father's Day, anyway.

The (very) few people here in L.A. who know tell me they think I'm doing very well, considering the circumstances. I think I'm just good at keeping up appearances.

I still can't bring myself to delete his number from my cell.

Hi. My name is Melanie Conley. Of course that picture doesn't look like me, I'm 23 and it was taken when I was 15!

Haha. I didn't even have to use that line, although I had it carefully planned out. I win!

On a whim I went out with Robbie (the housemate) and his friend, Jay/Ray (can't really remember which it was) last night. Several drinks were purchased for me- being a girl does have it's perks, sometimes. The evening was surprisingly enjoyable considering the circumstances, and not as strange or awkward as I thought it would be. When Jay/Ray was in the bathroom, Robbie not-so-subtly asked, "So would you consider dating someone older, say, like, 30?". Haha.

At work we have a friction stir welder. I believe it is one of three set-ups in the US.

Best. Internship. Ever.

I made it here safely, and while the housemates are quite the characters they don't seem to be harmful in any way.

Lesson of the weekend: Don't be so proud as to not ask someone to help you put sunscreen on your back before going to the beach. If you are, the result is a large, odd-shaped sunburn on your back (that corresponds with the area you can't reach yourself). Hopefully it won't peel and become a permanent reminder of this little folly.

First day of Spacex commences in less than an hour, so I better get going.

Oh man. Please, please, please don't let my housemates be crazy.

Driving south tomorrow. I'm freaking out right now. Up to this point, I had been distracted enough by other things in my life that I hadn't really thought about work or housing for the summer too much, beyond getting the logistics taken care of. However, now that I'm moving tomorrow and starting work on Monday all that overdue anxiety is kicking in, and it's one hundred times more intense since my mind is cramming over at least a month's worth of worry into the next twenty four hours.

So *not* ready for this, but I guess that doesn't matter. Life isn't going to wait, you know?

Focus on the positive:

• Moving to LA in a week


• Only an (easy) take home exam and essay stand between me and summer


• Who cares about the bad weather? In a week I'll be at the beach!


• Laptop died, but I got the new hard drive only 2 days after calling Dell


• I'm no longer homeless for the summer


• A bottle of white awaits me to help celebrate tomorrow.

Focus on the positive. Don't think about the negative.

I don't want to be here, but I don't want to go home (to California). I don't know what or where I want to be right now, and it's really bothering me.

All I really feel like doing is sleeping all the time.

Nothing is going to be the same again.

The sequence of events over the past 24 hours definitely qualifies for the List of Utterly Stupid Things Caroline Has Done:

Moved on a booth at 11PM last night
Got back to my room at 1AM
Went out with a friend at 1:30AM
Got back to my room at 4:01AM (at which point my alarm had been going off for 1 minute)
Went to buggy at 4:30AM
Drove a friend's car to West Virginia from 9:00AM to 12:00PM
Played lacrosse games with no subs at 12:00PM and 1:00PM

Needless to say, I feel fast asleep on the ride home- fortunately, I didn't have to drive on the way back.

Note to self: stop doing stupid things.

The ASME RSC (and more importantly, the Student Design Contest) is over, and I believe this weekend is the last or second to last day of lacrosse games of the season. These two facts mean that hopefully I'll be able to calm down a bit and get caught up on all the other things going on in my life, like research and classwork and such.

These past couple of weeks were (arguably) the worst that I've had at CMU. There was a lot of classwork, exams, lab reports, extra-curricular activities, family issues, and planning for the summer/fall in terms of housing and such all crammed into the last 14 days. I can handle each of these things on their own, but all of them at once was too much. Luckily, things are calming down (relatively), so life is looking up.

This whole blog thing isn't really as good as it used to be. I intended it to be a way to keep in touch with people from back home and post interesting notes and pictures, but I hardly have the time or energy to keep it up anymore. Maybe it's time to move on.

Spain 2005

I would write a few words about the trip, but I have a whole lot of work to do that I'm terribly behind on. I will say I had a FANTASTIC time, and I'm so happy I went and that Aileen could come with me. Hopefully I'll find a bit of time later this week to write more.

Off to Spain :D :D :D

I'll be back on the evening of the 10th. See you all later!

In less than 22 hours, I'll be on a plane headed for Madrid.

Before then, I have to:
-Write my abnormal psych essay
-Take the manufacturing sciences midterm
-Do the stress analysis problem set
-Turn in essay, midterm, and problem set
-Do laundry
-Pack

It's good; This way, I have things to keep me occupied through the night, so I can be dead tired by the time I board the plane and I'll sleep throught the flight.

It seems we might soon see the return of midnight visits from everyone's favorite drunk.

Hahahaha.

It's good; my life needs a little excitement.

Restraining orders break up robotics team

If anyone from GRT still reads this, go to http://www28.brinkster.com/mydeepthoughts/db/ if you'd like to sign the open letter to Mr. Dunbar.

I've tried several times now to write an entry about GRT, but I'm having difficulty putting into words my thoughts and feelings about both the situation at hand and my experience with the team in the past.

The team was my family in high school. GRT was the most important thing in my life, and I put it above all else- academic work, friends, and even my health many times. The program changed me in ways I never imagined, and I can't even begin to fathom who I would be if I hadn't gone through the program.

Over winter break I got together with Lilly and Kate for the first time in several years. They were seniors on the team when I was a sophomore, and the three of us were very close for the short amount of time we shared in the program. I didn't realize how much I missed them until I saw them again. It's not that my friends here at CMU aren't as good as they are, it's just... different. I think it has something to do with the experiences we went through and had together that makes our friendship special. The three of us had not been together since they graduated high school three years ago, yet this past break when we got together we got along just as well as old times. I'd like to clarify it wasn't like old times- we've all changed significantly since we were last together- but at the same time there are those indescribable things about them that make me feel... like home.

In addition to Lilly and Kate, I've been in recent contact with other past GRT members from my years. The people I met through the team are more than amazing friends; they are simply amazing people.

It makes me so frustrated and disappointed to see what has happened to the team. I won't lie and say that the team was a completely positive experience- some of my most upsetting memories come from the robotics team- but I think that a program as intense and beneficial as GRT was is bound to be extremely upsetting at points simply because of it's impact and greatness.

I wish there was something I could do. There's nothing more depressing than seeing people you care for being hurt and things you care about being torn down while you can do nothing but watch. I know the team that was shut down was not the same team I was on- the program has changed significantly in the 18 months that I've been gone. However, it is still so disheartening to see something that is such a large part of me die.

So long, GRT. Thanks for all the memories. You were G-R-T-Great.

Everyone should be proud of me- instead of going back to sleep after my 9:30 this morning, I bought myself a double latte and continued working on my fluid lab reports.

However, the fact that I am updating my blog instead of working might negate this display of determination.

Well, at least I had good intentions...

2005. Wow. Where has the past year gone?

Time is beginning to pass by so so so much faster than it used to. I remember being stuck in high school feeling like I'd never get out of there, and now here I am three semesters into college feeling like my life is getting ahead of me.

2004 was decent. A lot has happened, and I feel like I'm a significantly different person than I was twelve months ago. Although I moved out to Pittsburgh in 2003, it wasn't until last year that I really got away from California and made Pittsburgh home.

I guess I could go into specifics about the past year and maybe fill out one of those silly end of the year survey things all the cool kids are doing, but I'm not really one for divulging personal details in such a public domain.

Happy new year, everyone. I hope you have a good year.