25 August 2009

"I'll Be Coming Home Next Year..." ~ August 25th and 26th

Oftentimes, I get too caught up in the stress of life worries and I end up forgetting the things I am really excited about and enjoy. This seems to be the case here with Germany. I keep going over my packing list, hoping I didn't forget something important, wondering if I packed too much or not enough etc etc....and then there's people who keep asking me, "Are you excited?" and I smile and say yes! but I don't think the feeling has sunk in totally yet. It just kindof peeks out now and again. Lately, I've just been feeling sad that I have to leave ~ especially since this year is senior year for my sister and all my friends!!! Ach. I have to stop and shake myself into focusing on how much fun I will have while I'm away (which of course mentally I know I will), rather than what I might miss. After all - I remind myself - I've been working three years to get to this point. I should be very excited and breathless with anticipation. I think that'll finally come when I actually land in Germany. :-)

In the meantime, I am reminded of this song, which a wonderfully good friend of mine sent me this spring when I was feeling this way before - all sad about leaving and forgetful of what an exciting adventure I was going to have.

And what an adventure it will be!!! :-D

~E.

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I'm in the sky tonight
There I can keep by your side
Watching the wide world riot
And hiding out
I'll be coming home next year

Into the sun we climb
Climbing our wings will burn white
Everyone strapped in tight?
We'll ride it out
I'll be coming home next year

Come on, get on, get on
Take it till life runs out
Noone could find us now
Living with our heads underground
Into the night we shine
Lighting the way we glide by
Catch me if I get too high
When I come down
I'll be coming home next year

I'm in the sky tonight
There I can keep by your side
Watching the whole world wind
Around and round
I'll be coming home next year
Come on, get on, get on
Take it till I fall down
Noone can find us now
Living with our heads underground

Say goodbye
Say goodbye
Say goodbye
Say goodbye

I'll be coming home next year
I'll be coming home next year
Everything's alright up here
If I come down,
I'll be coming home next year....

~Next Year by The Foo Fighters

24 August 2009

Memories of Summer







"The summer days are gone too soon
You shoot the moon
And miss completely
And now you're left to face the gloom
The empty room that once smelled sweetly
Of all the flowers you plucked if only
You knew the reason
Why you had to each be lonely
Was it just the season?
Now the fall is here again
You can't begin to give in
It's all over......"
Shoot the Moon by Norah Jones
~E.

Looking Back, Turning Forward ~ August 24th




"All my bags are packed I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin' it's early morn
The taxi's waitin' he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die...
Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane
Don't know when I'll be back again
Oh how I hate to go..."

Mmm I love that song by John Denver!! It’s true; my bags *are* packed and now I’m at that in-the-middle stage where you try not to count down the days or think to yourself “This is the last time that I’ll be able to do __ for a year” and all that sort of stuff that makes you either more impatient or more sad. I’ve somewhat successfully fooled myself into thinking I’m not leaving at all and it’s a normal vacation at home and so I’ve enjoyed these last days much more. Ha. The whole “I haven’t left yet but I’m already missing home” feeling still sinks in sometimes, which amuses me. Ah well….

22 August 2009

"I'm published! (in a way)" My Summer as an Undergraduate Research Assistant ~ August 22nd



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If I haven't already mentioned it, for those of you who do not know, I spent my summer in the soils lab of Gellersen (Valpo's engineering building; the math department only thinks they share it with us), working as an undergraduate research assistant for Dr. Carmine Polito. He is an amazing professor. He has a BS, MS, and PhD in Civil Engineering, specifically in geotechnical engineering, but he also recently got another MS, this time in transportation engineering. His specialty is in earthquake engineering, though. His research this summer is a part of the continued investigation of liquefaction of soils, in this case sands and silts (liquefaction = when a saturated soil under a load loses all its strength and acts as a fluid). The one of the primary lab tests used in this research is called a triaxial test.

As his research assistant, before I could really begin working this summer, I had to start off by reading alot of technical papers and learning about the triaxial equipment, the data acquisition program, and how the apparatus was to be set up. The scariest time was the day Dr. P told me to run a test, and then left for the afternoon. I was on my own. Eeeek! But it prepared me well for when he left to travel for two and a half weeks in July and again in August. By then, I was comfortable enough with the equipment and the testing procedure that I had to remind myself to think about what I was doing! That isn't to say I didn't have problems to solve with the testing. Ahh, there were plenty of frustrated calls to Polito, as I gazed *yet* again at "useless" data and couldn't figure out what to do. It gets old fast, when it's the 4th test of the day to end up like that.....All in all, I think I must have done at least a hundred of those triaxial tests. Probably not, but it surely feels like it!!!

The end result: my name listed as third author at the top of two papers published in the ASTM Geotechnical journal. The final copies of those papers are being sent in here soon, if they haven't already. Title of Paper #1 - "Validation of the GMP Pore Pressure Generation Model for Non-Sinusoidal Loadings" Fascinating, eh?? Ha. It's okay if it isn't for you, dear reader. For me, it is, and it makes me consider graduate school even more than I was before.

Ha - There's a picture Mom showed me in an old photo album with me as a little tot, standing in a muddy puddle, covered with dirt, with this happy grin all over my messy face. Who knew, over 16 years later, that that would still be me!? Ah, but this is much more "sophisticated" dirt.....! ;-)

In the words of the venerable Dr. P, "Way more fun than humans should possibly be allowed to have."

~E.

Spam: "It's nice to feel important" ~ August 21st

So I get an odd assortment of spam, thanks to my e-mail provider. It claims to have a filter for that kind of thing but I have yet to find it, so I am left to suffer with half annoyance, half amusement, the daily ritual of deleting unwanted mail. Sometimes the subject line is just too interesting to pass over and I end up opening the file. It would be interesting to take a picture of the various expressions those spam emails tempt onto my face. There's various classifactions of spam, I've found. There's the "Quick, Quick! We have a to-die-for sale!!" spam. Then there's the "You need to be indignant about this issue of importance concerning such and such" spam. And the "This is the government here, trying to convince you to do something for us, after which we'll tax you for it" spam. Then the strange "My name is _ and I live in _ country, please give me money" spam. Thanks to my scholarship Google search a year ago, there's also the "You are getting lazy! Why aren't you applying for this huge scholarship we are giving out?!?" spam. Or the "Don't you know you're poor!? Let us help you learn how to pay your bills and in the process get you further in debt!" spam. These are just a few examples. Oh and I also randomly get an e-mail from time to time from the "Society of Irish Americans" or something like that (I can't remember exactly what it's called), wanting me to become more active in their organization. Ha. Funny; the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers have been pleading the same thing ever since I became a member.....yeah.....I should probably take their e-mails more seriously.....Ah, and then there's the "Erin! You're on someone's mind!" or - the latest one - the "Erin! One person has Googled you!" spam. Those humor me to no end. It's usually some network that's trying to match me up with someone who I'm compatable with, or reunite me with high school classmates from some city that I've never lived in. I will say, though, the Google one is a first. I've never been Googled before!!...at least not by anyone other than myself...*ahem*....yeeeeeah...Ha. Well, as long as I view the spam e-mails as a never-ending source of entertainment, I guess I can live with them. I'm sure I've made my professor laugh too, since the spam has found me frequently dashing the not-even-6 yds distance from my lab to his office in order to laughingly relate the latest ridiculous e-mail I received. Ah, Se' la Vi !!! Hmm; I bet there's a program out there to help me improve my French....I'll probably receive an ad about it tomorrow.....


~E.

Summer's End ~ August 20th



We share the days of laughter
We share the nights of sorrow
And in the morning after
We face the bright tomorrow....
We walk the halls of learning
And serve a proud tradition
The flame of truth is burning
To clarify our vision
Look at how the future gleams
Gold against the sky!
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That song by Simon & Garfunkel captures so adequately the feeling I have, looking back at these few months and realizing that summer is coming quickly to an end. Here I am at home again, busy unloading and heaving and hefting and climbing stairs and packing and boxing and sorting and doing massive amounts of laundry. Normally these activities are a desperate attempt at organizing my life before I am thrown into the deep dark bottomless pit that is my academic schedule. This year, it is even more hap-hazard of a messy task, since I am preparing for a full year away from home. Yes indeed. So my room temporarily looks like a war zone, or perhaps, the aftermath of a minor tornado. And the downstairs living room floor is taken up with baskets of unfolded laundry and mole-hills of dirty laundry. As if that weren't bad enough, apparently, not only are you not able to walk through the room, but you aren't allowed to sit down either, because I've used the sofa as a makeshift folding station and the chairs as the designated clean-clothes-piling-spot. Yes, it is a good thing indeed that my sister is still in California, my parents are at work all day, and we don't have any pets. It gives me some factor of safety as far as time is concerned, to get all this stuff cleaned up. Hopefully my bed will be clear enough to sleep on.....

And in the midst of all this rush, I fear I am becoming horribly nostalgic. I spent some time looking through pictures on my computer as I sorted them into files and it made me smile to think of all the memories I have made these past three months. What I thought was going to be the worst & most boring summer grew into the best & one of the most fun summers of my life. Sure, there were low points....like sitting all day in the lab, waiting for water to flow through pure silt (yes, it does take forever....or at least 5 hours).....or getting out of work at 8:30 PM, having arrived at work at 8:30 AM....But there were half a dozen more of other days that made up for similar such incidences. And thus they make me look back with fondess and happiness at the summer.

Ahhh......Mmm & now for some iced tea and a peanut butter sandwhich, to procastinate further on attending to the few boxes that are left still in my car trunk......
~E.