sunrays and saturdays

It's time for a cool down/hydration break after working outside for the last two hours. The builder of this subdivision brought some topsoil fill dirt in a dumptruck but left it in a huge pile so that it's our job to spread it around. You see, instead of laying down sod for the lawn, he just left bare ground figuring that the grass would fill in on its own. Well that was a stupid idea. We have more weeds and stickers than grass, and a few good rainstorms have washed huge ruts downslope to the ditch. The natural soil here is mostly clay, and the recent drought has made it rock hard so the grass is not only drying out but is also having trouble getting established in the areas that are still bare. The purpose of the rich top soil is to fill in the ruts and hopefully give the grass a chance to quickly grow into it to prevent more erosion. Jeremy and I have spent several hours in the past two days getting the dirt where it needs to be. Now Jeremy's at work all day, so the job falls to me. Woo. Hoo.

On an unrelated note, today is my journal's fifth anniversary. Yay!

Why is Excel completely stupid when it comes to exporting the charts and graphs into image files? It really shouldn't be this difficult to figure out how to do it, so is there something reeeeaaally obvious that I'm overlooking? I'm trying to avoid copying it into Powerpoint and then saving as an image since a) that seems to degrade the quality of the image, and b) that would be a huge pain in the ass. Death to Microsoft.

It's interesting that I just finished in an hour what I said I'd have done in two weeks. I must be awesome.

I got the callback for SCEP about an hour or two after my ORISE call this morning. I was selected as the top candidate to be forwarded to region from the Des Moines office. They're only hiring four SCEP students out of 20-something candidates from all the NWS offices in the central region (although I wonder if all of them are actually going to have candidates since some of the offices are a million miles from the closest university...*cough* Goodland, KS). Brenda (the Meteorologist in Charge at Des Moines) thinks I'm a "strong candidate," but I'm going to try not to get my hopes up. My job is to just make myself sound as irresistible as possible on the full application and list good references. The rest is up to the folks at the Central Region office. I'd rather have this than ORISE anyway, since I can do it during the school year and it pays better. Ok, so money's not really a big deal to me, although it would be nice to pay back some of my loans before I'm out of school. SCEP is what I've wanted to do since I started school here at Iowa State. It's an amazing opportunity and a gateway to a lot of things. Plus, I believe it would look even better on a resume to have done it in these times of budget cuts. Fewer SCEP spots are open now than have been available in the last several years, so I've gotta go for it when I have the chance.

I cannot possibly study any more for atmospheric physics tonight, so now I listen to Mars Volta and chill.

I guess I can lay out my plans for the summer while I'm at it, so here goes:

In one week, I'll be in Washington, DC. I'm giving myself just enough time after finals to get my shit together, and then I'm gone. It is going to be so nice to get away, especially since I'll be with Jeremy.

God damn I miss that boy. More than anything, I just miss touching him. I need human contact after going without for so long, even when it's as simple as a hug, a back scratch, or a hand to hold. I never felt like I needed it when I was single, but I've developed an appreciation for it over the past year.

Anyway, back to the summer. I'll be in DC with Jeremy for three weeks until May 31st. We've already begun making plans for things to do. He saved all of his sightseeing of the area for when we're together, so we're trying to figure out when we want to do what. For May, I think we're going to explore northern and western Maryland a bit more. We're going to go camping (CAMPING!!! It's been years, so I'm stoked as hell) in the mountains somewhere where we can do a lot of hiking and exploring. I believe he has already reserved a campsite at one of the Chesapeake & Ohio Park sites. He also mentioned something in passing about heading east to the Chesapeake Bay and doing a little fossil hunting. I think most people would rather do more touristy stuff than that, but come on...I'm a geology minor! He knows how to appeal to my interests. :) He does still have to work during the week, so those are primarily weekend plans. Since he'll be gone during the day so much, I'm bringing my senior thesis research stuff so that I can get a jump start on it. I have a full load next fall, so I want to get as much out of the way as possible during the summer.

Once I get back to Iowa, I'll be participating in a research project just south of Ames. They're going to fly planes over a watershed and calculate soil moisture and whatnot from the air. They need a student to gather data on the ground, so that's possibly what I'll be doing through the first part of July. It's in the same watershed that my senior thesis focuses on, so I thought it was a good opportunity to have involvement with. Plus, it's paid experience, which is precious in my field of study. Most student work is volunteer-based.

By July 4th I'll be back in DC with Jeremy for a couple of weeks. I think at this point we're planning on heading out to the far western portions of Maryland (in the panhandle) to camp since it's supposed to be very scenic and beautiful out that way. Plus, I'm a sucker for mountains. What can I say....when you're from somewhere as flat as Kansas, mountains are fascinating. I also spent a lot of childhood family vacations in Colorado. Hopefully I'll see the ocean at some point, too, since I've never seen one before. Yes, I was in Connecticut a year and a half ago and never saw the ocean once. Long Island Sound, yes. Atlantic Ocean, no. And no, the Chesapeake Bay does not count in my book as ocean. I'm always on the wrong side of the plane when we land, so I never get a good look. I'm also told that DC is a hip place to be on the 4th of July by a native of the area, so we may have to catch the fireworks from the nation's capital for a cool memory and good photo-op.

I'll probably have to be back in Iowa by mid-July so that I can pack up my shit and be out of this apartment by the 31st. I'm hoping that my new apartment will open up early so that moving will be easier.

Anywho, that's my plan. It's not nearly as interesting as my sister spending the next six months in JAPAN, but meh. She better send me cool souvenirs or take pictures or SOMETHING. I'll get out of the US someday and see the world. It's just not happening anytime soon.

Ho hum. You can tell by my lack of entries that there really hasn't been much going on in my universe over the last couple of days. I voted early with Jeremy since he wasn't going to be able to vote on election day. He has been giving me SUCH a hard time for voting for a republican on my ballot. It's the fucking County Auditor for crying out loud! She's the incumbent, and she seemed to have done a good job at it, so I figured what the hell. How does partisanship make a different in a position like that anyway? She'll probably win by a landslide anyway. I left half the damn ballot blank because I knew nothing about any of the judges or boards up for re-election, and I don't want to throw my vote away to someone who doesn't deserve it just because I've never heard of them before. Maybe I should have done some research first, but it was kind of a spontaneous decision to vote on that day.

I'm going to be second author on a presentation that my advisor is doing at a conference in San Francisco in December. Wheee! If it's a conference presentation, does that mean I'm published or does it have to be in a journal of some kind?

I woke myself up snoring this morning. It was a loud one, too, so I can just imagine how much I probably torture anyone who has to sleep even remotely near to me.

Only two and a half more hours to go until the end of my last summer work day. Woo hoo!

I am in a very pleasant state of mind tonight. I'm peaceful, I'm docile, and I have coffee. I'm happy that classes start on Monday. All I have to do to get psyched for school is to glance over at all the new textbooks I've bought in the last few weeks. Unless I get another terrible instructor for Diff. Eq. and barring the fact that I have 8am classes twice a week, I think it will be a fairly interesting and pleasant semester. Most of all, I'm just thrilled that my work hours will be cut back. That seems like an odd thing to say, but I'll be largely supported by scholarships and loans through the semester, which allows me to work less and concentrate more on classes. I think Takle is also happy about it considering that I will fall back under Federal Work Study. That means that if my wage is $9 an hour (which it will likely be this semester...yay for raises!), only $3 of it comes out of his pocket. The government picks up the other $6 as part of my federal aid package. See, the government does spend some of its money on good things. :)

Ooohhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....so at peace. I just drink my coffee, play my online games, listen to my music, and chiiiilll.

God this last hour of work is so long today. I even did one of those Quick Kwiz things to make it go faster...





P.S. I am getting very, very annoyed with Five for Fighting and their whiny ass lead singer.

Calling all people who run unusual browsers or low res displays!!! Go to this site and let me know how it looks to you. I've already tested IE, Netscape, and Mozilla, so unless you have ancient versions of those, don't worry about it. It's pretty basic code, but I suppose it's always good to check. I'm tossing around the idea of making the graphic bigger, but if it already takes up the whole screen on 800x600, I'll leave it alone.

.....*stifled giggle*

So I'm sitting here in my office, trying to look busy. There's another guy working in the same room as me now, so we each try to mind our own business. Anywho, a couple of you guys have written some pretty funny shit today, and normally I would just laugh out loud at some of it. However, I've been trying to hold in the amusement so that the office mate wouldn't think I'm some kind of freak, but I'm just making it worse because instead of it coming out like a normal, natural laugh, it's coming out in oddly sounding spurts. You know, the nasalish stuff that happens when the outward rush of air goes through your nose instead of your mouth. Maybe you don't know. Eh well.

I think it's a general assumption that most people think I'm strange anyway.

...two more hours to go.