Respite

I made it! Four midterms later, I have the rest of the week ahead of me with no tests, no homework due, no responsibilities. No showers, no sleep, no laundry. No going to class! No brushing my teeth! NO LEARNING!

No, just kidding. It won't be all fun and games, but it is definitely a relief to be done with those tests. I celebrated by eating zucchini bread, peanut butter and an apple for dinner tonight. Every combination of those three foods was a winner.

As for my tests....Two of them went pretty well. One went kinda well. And the last one...let's not talk about the last one. But really, it was awful. I haven't gotten the score back yet, but I'm expecting the worst. But it's ok, I'll just study extra hard next time.

This weekend, I printed out a bunch of quotes and pictures and equations and random things, and taped them all around the apartment. It is my first (in my life, I think) concerted attempt at decoration. I've always kinda had the idea to tape quotes and things to my walls, but this idea was especially encouraged this year by my General Education course, in which we're discussing the significant impact your environment plays in the shaping of your personality, your character, your thoughts. Essentially, everything about you is shaped by the environment in which you live. And I don't just mean how much money you make or your geographical location, but every little thing with which you interact during the day, like a teacher or a television show you watch, or even a doorknob. It's important be be aware of what goes into your mind, otherwise you might not like what comes out. It was this idea which spurred the quote-taping. Some of my favorites:

"If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it."
"When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear."
"love the world you find"
"Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary."
"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."
And I taped Coulomb's Law and Gauss's Law onto my door under a picture of each of these physicists in order to help me remember these concepts. And because they're damn good-looking men.

Down to Business

Three midterms! I have three midterms in one day! It's ridiculous!

This Thursday, I have a materials science midterm at 8 am, which will cover four chapters in the book, analyzing different crystal structures, defects, diffusion rates and a whole bunch of other stuff I haven't studied yet. Later, at two, I have a midterm in dynamics which will be over some hardcore kinematics and Newton's Second Law applications. Finally, at five, I will have a physics midterm covering electric fields and Gaussian surfaces and some other stuff I'm about to start studying.

College is very busy, but I'm enjoying myself. Time is passing very quickly. I'm sorry I don't have time to write as much as I would like. But I brought some pictures to show. They are of the banana bread we made the other day, and a meal I had a couple days ago which was really big, and the pool this morning at seven when I got up to go running. It was very foggy and eerie, so I took a picture.

Back to School

My computer is broken at the moment. I don't know how it happened, but I can't boot up into Windows Vista. Luckily, I can access a Rescue and Recovery section, which allows me to access the internet, but not to use any applications, so I have limited abilities. I can get to my email, I can't get to Facebook, and apparently I can write blogs. I called Lenovo Support yesterday and ordered a Recovery CD for 50 bucks. It should be here sometime this week, and hopefully it will fix my computer.

I haven't blogged in a very long time! There have been plenty of things I wanted to write about since I've been at school, but I simply haven't had the time. I'm happy to be back going to class and apparently doing something with my life, but it does make it more difficult to do the things I like, such as keep in touch with friends and practice my many hobbies.

Anyway, school is going well. I'm in five classes: four are engineering courses, and the fifth is a general education requirement. I like all my teachers, and the workload is not as heavy as I expected for this type of schedule. Typically, I have homework due once per week for every class, and the material has all been within my grasp so far. Time has passed quickly; it always seems to when I'm at school. I have two midterms next week! It is definitely hard to believe, but I've already been here for over three weeks and am well into the semester.

My living arrangement is very good. My roommates and I get along very well. Jeff and I were worried about the roommate assigned to live with us this year by random selection, but we definitely lucked out. Our third roommate, Moises, is a very cool, friendly guy who has taken on more than his fair share in keeping the apartment clean. We couldn't have asked for a better roommate. And the pool! We have a pool! I can't upload any pictures right now or my computer might explode, so you'll have to trust me when I say the pool is the size of a football field and forty feet deep. That might not be technically true. But it definitely fits into the category of 'pool' rather than 'bathtub' or 'puddle.' I've swam in it almost every day since getting to school. It has been great for making friends, since it provides a reason to hang out in the common area in our apartment complex, and we've had a couple parties in which it has played an integral part. Our apartment complex (called Stardust, I should have mentioned. Isn't that a weird name for an apartment complex? Especially one that's not imaginary?) is very close to Figueroa, a busy, commercial street lined with tons of fast food restaurants and businesses. I live just down the street from a Bank of America, where I can closely monitor my plummeting bank balance, and one of my favorite restaurants, Pasta Roma, where I can buy a twenty-dollar pizza to assuage my monetary woes. It's a pretty great setup. The only downside is our distance from campus: probably a fifteen-minute walk. I've learned how to ride my longboard enough to get to class and back without any major head trauma or other fatal injuries, so it takes me about seven minutes to get to campus.

The longboard was a good purchase overall. It looks very nice when I walk around campus cradling it in my arm when I'm too frightened to try to ride it any more, and on those occasions that I do ride it, I can feel it is a benevolent spirit and doesn't really want to throw me at the ground. But throw it does. For a couple of reasons: the trucks are very narrow, making it super tippy and difficult to balance, and the wheels are a bit smaller than normal longboard wheels, so it hits bumps in the sidewalk pretty often and stops in its tracks. It did this most notably a few days ago while I was with my friend Louie. He said I flopped like a fish as I hit the ground. I wasn't very scratched up though, which, as engineers, we attributed to the fact that a large surface area of my body struck the ground all at once, preventing the force from concentrating at any one point. Thank heavens for that. I'll stick it out with the longboard until I can afford to buy something better. I would like to stick with boarding, but I think I want to get a regular skateboard, rather than a longboard. That way, I can jump over curbs and stuff instead of stopping to get off and lift my board onto the sidewalk. I've seen guys ollie the curb, and they are by far the coolest guys on campus.

My roommates and I made banana bread yesterday. It turned out really good, and I don't know why. I really expected to mess it up, but it tasted delicious, so I'm going to try again today and see if I can't achieve more typical results.

I'm running out of money, as I mentioned before, so I think I'm going to return to my old job setting up banquets at the University Club. It pays pretty well and I get a free meal every time I work.

I'm joining the Marathon Team.

The SC Outfitters trip to Sequoia a couple weeks ago was really fun. The first day we learned a bunch of handy stuff about tying knots and reading a topographical map. A few of the guides are trained as Wilderness First Responders, and they want us all to go to a camp over Winter Break so we can become WFRs (called Woofers) too. The second day, we went on a 14-mile hike to the summit of Alta Peak at 11,204 feet. On the way up, we found an abandoned campfire smoldering on the side of the trail. It was on top of a ridge, in sunlight. I think if we had left it, the wind would have picked up in the afternoon and it could have ignited a fire in the dense forest below. We stayed there for about 45 minutes to mop it up. It was a good opportunity for me to share my knowledge with the group. I gave a short talk about how it's not enough to bury your fire, since that doesn't put it out, and how holdovers can last for a very long time. Since we didn't have enough water to spare on the fire, we each had to pee on it in order to extinguish it as much as possible. I peed on it first, then mixed it around, and spread it out to let some heat escape. Ten minutes later, we pushed it all back together, and peed on it some more, and spread it out again until there were no smokes left. I didn't feel completely comfortable leaving it there, but it was right near the path, which was pretty busy with hikers, so we figured they would help out if it sparked back up again. On the way down, there were no smokes again, so I think we did a pretty good job.

I've become a weekday vegetarian this year. I want to feel lighter (not necessarily be lighter) for climbing and running and general health, so I've decided to only eat meat on the weekends. Or special occasions, like when we go out to dinner. Or when I have some pizza left over from the weekend which has meat on it, like today. I'm the worst vegetarian ever.

Yesterday, I went out to the Santa Monica Farmer's Market with a friend of mine. We ran on the beach and shopped for produce. It was a pretty splendid time. We also wanted to adopt a dog, but neither of our apartments allow pets. We are both super bummed.

I'm continuing my work with Professor Stephen Lu on the World Classroom and iPodium this semester, and applied for a 1500 dollar research fellowship to continue this work. I'm excited to see it get off the ground, and I think I am part of a pretty strong team to make this happen. I'll tell you more about it later.

I think this is a pretty long blog. I'll tell you about the rest of my life at a later date and time.

Football Practice

My first week of school has been quite enjoyable. My professors all seem very nice, I have had almost no homework, and I have a swimming pool in my apartment complex. Life is good.

Today, I went with my roommate Jeff to the USC football practice. I was curious to see the practice of such an elite team, and since I was on Jeff's journalism squad, I was allowed entrance to the field. I was struck by how similar the practice was to those of my high school. Granted, our defensive ends couldn't crush rocks with their bare hands, but the structure of the practice, and even the guidelines the coaches yelled at their players were very familiar. I really miss the game.

After the practice was over, we rushed in with all the other journalists to speak with Matt Barkley, a freshman who was recently named the starting quarterback over sophomore Chris Corp. As we walked over, some of the other players tried to tell us they were actually the new starting QB, and the D-line broke for the locker room on a chant of, "Leave Barkley alone!" Nevertheless, he was surrounded four or five deep with pushy reporters. I held the recorder and got jostled by other perturbed reporters trying to get in on the action. It was interesting to be in such a locus of national attention.

We went to speak with Pete Carroll afterward, and Jeff was able to ask him a few questions himself, which was pretty neat. Pete's a very nice guy. He was taking pictures with people and signing things for a long time after practice ended. We also talked to a wide receiver about his thoughts on Matt Barkley. All in all, it was a pretty raucous good time.

South Sister

I climbed the South Sister up near Bend, Oregon, yesterday with my uncle and cousin and a bunch of other people, continuing my quest to climb every semi-difficult peak within a reasonable distance from my home. I think it and McLoughlin were the only two which fit that criteria. So I'm done, I guess.

It was a fun climb though. We woke up at four in the morning after carbo loading the night before with Katie, a girl my Uncle John works with at Les Schwab. We packed up all our stuff (except my turkey sandwich, which I left in the fridge on accident) and drove to a parking lot, where we met everyone else coming on the hike. John said he thought ten people would show, at most. We ended up with sixteen in the parking lot, a huge group. One of the other hikers had invited a few people, who had invited a few other people, and we had sixteen when it was all said and done (and a dog, who will play an important part in our story later on).

We got on the trail around six thirty or seven, and about a mile in one of our hikers decided to turn around. She had been battling the flu all week and didn't quite feel up to it. The rest of us carried on, eventually splitting into smaller groups. I hiked with Uncle John and Sean most of the way, responsibly bringing up the rear. The hike began in a rich forest which gradually petered out into rock and snow. We three stopped near the treeline to take a drink of John's patented energy mix, called Full Blown Extreme. We couldn't keep from laughing about the name every time it came up, but after drinking some of it the hike definitely got easier. Mostly because the unicorns bounding across the snow and the blood vessels bursting in my eyes were distracting me from the pain in my legs.

After a long scramble over loose rock, we finally climbed into the caldera on top of the mountain. South Sister is an active volcano, growing by some ridiculous amount of millimeters per year, and the caldera on top definitely supported its status as a volcano. The trail led us around the caldera about halfway to the real peak of the mountain at 10,358 feet. Woohoo! We took some pictures and had lunch with our group.

The hike down wasn't too eventful, aside from the various aches and pains which began presenting themselves as the day wore on, most notably the chafing. Uncle John calls the trail the "Howdy-Hi trail" because there are so many people, and we certainly greeted plenty of people. Sean and I told everyone we met they were almost there, even the ones at the trailhead. I think they appreciated the gesture.

Near the top of the mountain, there is a large glacier off to one side of the trail called the Lewis Glacier. I decided I would slide down it. I jumped off the path and ran down onto the snow. As I ran and slid, I was sure to steer clear of man-eating crevasses, of which I saw at least one. The snow wasn't great for sliding. I kept running and sliding, but I would eventually slow to a stop. After about two hundred yards I reached the bottom of the glacier and climbed back up to the trail. Immediately some cool hiker dudes asked me, "Was that as fun as it looked!?" Several more greetings along the lines of "Righteous, dude!" and "Sick moves, man!" followed. When Uncle John caught up, he told me it was a pretty dangerous move, and repeated what my football coach told me once, that I'm the dumbest 4.0 student he's ever met. It's a title I wear with pride. Apparently my other uncle, John's brother, Dan, did a similar move once and ended up spending the night up on the mountain with his friend, who fell into a crevasse and broke his leg. I'm glad I didn't know that before I ran down the glacier.

Sean and I made it down the mountain at about the same time. We jogged many of the steep parts. It's easier and faster to let gravity do the work rather than resist with every step. We waited for about ten minutes, and Uncle John and Sean's uncle, Carlos, showed up together. We all got a drink from the cooler and sat around waiting for the rest of the group and talking. I walked into a nearby lake.

We realized after about a half hour at the bottom that there might be a problem with a couple of the girls with whom we were hiking. They were the first on top, but everyone else had reached the bottom and they were nowhere in sight. Uncle John called them and discovered that their dog was refusing to walk any further. The rocks must have been really hard on his feet at the top, and he was really hot. John organized a rescue party and headed back up the mountain.

I'm not sure what happened up there because Sean and I were asleep in the car. But the smell of John's shirt corroborated his story of carrying the seventy-pound dog, with Carlos, for over a mile down the trail. The girls were very happy for his help and immediately rushed the dog off for emergency veterinary care. If such a thing exists, we're not really sure.

So all in all, the trip was a huge success and I'm very grateful to Uncle John for taking me up with him. The hike was 11 miles roundtrip, with a 4900 foot elevation gain. So that's 9800 feet elevation gain roundtrip. Pretty serious stuff.

Fanny Pack

Laurenne, I need pictures of your glorious fanny. Pack.

This is a post regarding an excellent creation of mine. Over the past three weeks, I have been hard at work knitting a fanny pack out of recycled plastic bags brought home from England. I completed it on the train ride to Utah, and gave it to Laurenne amid jubilant, crazed yells of appreciation and adoration for my extreme knitting talent and creativity.

First, I had to make the yarn. I took a plastic grocery bag, and folded it twice so it was layered four times. Then I cut off the bottom seam and cut the bag into one inch strips until I reached the handles, which I threw away. After I had these strips, I looped them together and voila, I had plastic yarn.

My mom had to teach me how to knit. I know, it's embarrassing that I didn't know how to knit, but now I do. I practiced a bit on real yarn, then got to work on the bag, my work loosely based on a paper prototype I made. The knitting took a long time. As I finished the first couple sections, I hand-stitched them together using a needle I fashioned out of a plastic fork. I finished all the pieces and assembled the bag on the train, then, using a nail I found in the garage, I poked holes into the fabric around the zipper I found in my mom's sewing machine and attached it to the bag. Then I put some straps on the back, and put my homemade belt through the loops, and I was done!

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the fanny pack before I gave it to Laurenne. She gave me a hat a year ago, so I figured I better pay her back. It's a nice hat, maybe I should put a picture of it on here.

I still can't really believe that I knitted a fanny pack. I'm not really sure how to think about it. Is it really, unbearably cool? Was it fun? Does it mean I'm a grandma? Will I do it again? Is this my career? Will this spark the biggest movement in fashion since leg warmers came back into style? These are questions I just can't answer right now.

The End of Utah

Blogging is hard work! I haven't had a chance yet to debrief the rest of my trip to Utah, and I can hardly remember it by now, but I'm going to give it a shot.

Laurenne took me to the Center of Excellence one day, the training facility for the US Ski Team. She said it cost 30 million dollars. She gave me a tour of everything, from the weight room to the basketball court to the skate park to the kitchen to the pool room....I might have gone a little out of order there. In the skate park, they had a basin full of blue foam cubes which you could jump into or crash into when you're doing a gnarly move, which I thought was pretty cool. It was fun to see a lot of people I had met working out in there.

Laurenne had to take a ten-minute ice bath, so I sat with her and got to meet Ted Ligety, an Olympic gold medalist. He owns a company called Shred, which makes helmets and goggles and sunglasses and such. He seemed like a pretty cool guy.

Let's see, I remember doing some rock climbing too. Perilous rock climbing. I led a couple of 5.9s, and the first was kinda pumpy because I got lost off the first arete because I didn't have any beta, but I sent it after all. (Sweet rock climbing talk, huh?) The place we climbed was above a freeway, so the speeding cars added to the danger.

The trip home was pretty fun. We stopped at some salt flats, and saw where Morton salt is made. There were huge cones of salt, probably fifty feet tall, just sitting in the desert outside of the factory. We saw a really strange tree sculpture too, which was guarded with a barbed-wire fence. Very strange.

Laurenne was really annoying on the way home. I had to punch her a few times and tell her to shut up over and over again. No, that's not true. I only had to punch her once, because I punch really hard.