...but I hated 6th grade.

I finally found my niche here. Today I played 4-square. Tomorrow we go rock-climbing. Thursday is volleyball. New friends are the greatest :-).

Things I never thought I'd do ... part 2

Continued from the previous list...

15. Be mock-eaten by a group of zombies in downtown Indianapolis
16. Have a stranger on the street ask me what race I was
17. Travel to another time zone without realizing it (aren't they supposed to label the highways or something?)
18. See a nativity set at an amusement park
19. Have an in-depth conversation about centripetal acceleration at an amusement park (okay, so this one isn't too surprising)

Be nice to me!

...I tried to give blood today. In high school, they always handed out stickers to people who went to the blood drives...those that said "Be nice to me, I gave blood today" and "I tried to give blood today." If the Indiana Blood Center gave out similar stickers, I would have received the second.

A few people from my department at work organized a blood-donation outing. 3 of us carpooled down and a few other people drove themselves at intervals throughout the day to donate blood. I saw this as my opportunity to finally do what I had been meaning to do since I was 15. Something has always kept me from donating...in high school it was not weighing enough...through college it was usually a combination of blood drives happening on days of tests, days of planned allnighters and busy activities, and just not hearing about them until 10 minutes before they closed. Today would be my day. Although I was slightly afraid, it would be okay, and I would save a life. Really, there's no legitimately good reason not to give blood, unless you have hepatitis or something. I was finally able to stop giving excuses and just do it. And I'd get free cookies!! How could it go wrong?

I do the whole questionnaire thing, they take my pulse and blood pressure (pulse is slightly high, mostly because I'm nervous...but still in the realms of normal), prick my finger to take a tiny blood sample, and then I sit in the big comfy seat and they stick the gigantic needle in my arm. Now, when I say gigantic needle, I actually have no reference for this. I did not look at this needle ... I didn't want to. But based on the size of hole it left in my arm, I assume it was pretty gigantic. He gives me a little stress ball thingy to squeeze, and I sit back and take a sigh of relief because the worst is over and now all I have to do is squeeze the ball and eat cookies after it's all done. Not a bad day.

Unfortunately, the stress ball thingy didn't work, and my blood stopped flowing within 2 minutes. The nurse came back, wriggled the needle a little bit (eep), and then said, "well, you're done." Que? I am pretty sure a pint of blood didn't disappear from my veins in the past 2 minutes... But by "done" he meant "we're not going to get any more of your blood to come out, so we're not even going to try." He suggested that I drink lots of water for the entire week before I donate next and that would help my blood flow better. I was worried...am I unhealthy? Is my blood unusually slow-moving? My blood pressure was average, so I must have been dehydrated...even though I drank 8 glasses of water that morning.

My intern friend who was sitting next to me finishes within a few minutes and needs to spend some time on the floor with her feet raised because she feels dizzy. My coworker who organized this outing is done last, and says that he thinks the nurse might have just missed my vein causing the blood to flow oddly and unefficiently. Who knows. But either way, I was stuck with 2 needles today, my left arm is bruised and swollen still, and I didn't even donate any blood. Maybe I'll try again later.

Things I never thought I'd do

My roommate and I have been keeping a mental note of things we are doing this summer that we never thought we'd do. There are many. So instead of keeping a mental list, I am going to write them down, in this blog. The list so far:

I never thought I would:

1. Take pictures in a candy shop
2. Sit on a windowsill watching the lightning with a country western band playing behind me with the power out
3. Sit in a church parking lot with a lot of middle-school aged kids watching a movie in the middle of Indiana while watching a movie
4. Sing Christmas songs in June while driving down an Indiana country road with two Jewish girls
5. Be the passenger for the third time while the driver was pulled over for speeding
6. Play with bunnies with 6 new friends
7. Meet a future classmate of mine in Indiana (when I will in fact attend school in PA in the fall, that's a crazy story if you want to hear it)
8. Learn to change my oil
9. Stay up one night with both of my roommates trying to figure out how to get the fire detector to stop beeping
10. Join a volleyball league with a team of complete strangers (until our first game, of course)
11. Watch a movie entitled "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus"
12. Pet a shark
13. Sit next to a pool drinking hot chocolate in my bathing suit
14. Meet somebody from Zimbabwe and Malaysia

I will be updating this list continually this summer to see how many things that I never expected would happen to me do. I think it would be fun if we all kept a list like this :-) Who needs to plan out their life? The unexpected things that happen are so much more exciting! In fact, the motto of the town I'm living in this summer is: "Columbus, Unexpected, Unforgettable."

I hear the mighty thunder

One of my friends that I graduated with has a job in Bloomington, Indiana, which is 45 minutes from Columbus. After spending 2 weeks living in the same far-from-home location, we finally found the time to meet up, at Mike's Music & Dance Barn. The plan was to do some line dancing, eat some tasty food, and catch up on each others' lives since graduation. What ended up happening was slightly different, yet much better.

Line dancing was apparently canceled for the night, but instead they had a country/western band that also told jokes perform in to perform. They also didn't have their kitchen open, but offered a buffet for an exorbitant amount of money in addition to the entrance fee it cost to get in to see the band. Fine, whatever, I paid for both (I was STARVING).

My roommate, my Behrend friend, and I played pool. For approximately....2 hours. My roommate and I learned that in order to beat him, we had to gang up on him. I think I won one game, she won another, and he won all the rest. Oh well, we got to chat about one anothers' lives and learn about our mutual thoughts about the south part of Indiana. Our reactions are almost identical: It's HOT here!!

And then the power went out. At that point, pool was no longer an option since we couldn't see the table anymore, so the three of us ran to the window to check out the massive storm that had approached. Lightning was EVERYWHERE, which is kind of scary considering we are technically in Tornado Alley. We talked about tornadoes, the thought of driving home in this scariness, and how hot it was getting in the building since the air conditioning had shut off. It kind of felt like we were having a campfire, except instead of a campfire it was lightning. The best part was, the country western band was largely acoustic, so they kept right on playing for an hour afterwards. The last song they sang was "How Great Thou Art," which was so perfect for that moment; with the thunder, lightning, and rain crashing about us.

O Lord my God,

When I in awesome wonder

Consider all

The works Thy Hand hath made,

I see the stars,

I hear the mighty thunder,

Thy pow'r throughout

The universe displayed


I sang along with the band (so did much of the crowd), my friends listened in silence, and that was the end of the night. We said goodbye and promised to come back one day when there actually was line dancing. I hope we do :-).

Elevators

Last summer, a few friends and I made a video that was set in the elevator. Basically, we staked out in an elevator at GE and asked unsuspecting people random questions. "If GE was a food, what would it be?"

My whole life, I have expected elevators to be awkward places. People try their best not to make eye contact, and that's that.

I've heard from a few people since moving here this summer that in Southern Indiana, people actually TALK to you on the elevator. My roommate had an awkward conversation on an elevator just today. Good thing I work on the first floor and haven't ridden in any elevators yet...

Just kidding

This morning:

My alarm goes off at 5:00am
I press snooze until 5:30am
I get up, get dressed, brush my teeth, eat some yogurt, read some Bible
I get in my car at about 6:20. Even though I have printed a google map of the blocks surrounding the Columbus Municipal Airport, I type the address into my GPS also, just in case.
I arrive at the airport at 6:37am (whoops, I'm 7 minutes late).
I notice that this airport is absolutely in the middle of a cornfield. Surprising? Not anymore.
I park in the creepy side parking lot and walk to the Cummins hanger, show my employee ID badge, and sit in the comfy waiting chairs next to my coworkers and some other fellow employees that work for other departments. I haven't met them yet.
We board the plane at about 6:50.
I have a minor heart attack because it's been awhile (2 months!!) since I've done this. Luckily, I still remember how to fasten my seatbelt.
I meet the lady next to me. She has a son who is an intern at Cummins, also. He probably got the job because she works there.
I watch the pilots fiddle with the switches (they don't close the cabin doors when it's not a commercial flight!).
I watch them fiddle with the same switches too often, and hear a few emergency "beep" sounds. We haven't moved an inch yet.
The pilots tell us that there's a problem and request that we exit the plane so they can sort it out. They will keep us updated. It is 7:05. Wheels up was scheduled for 7:00am.
The pilot informs us at about 7:20 that there's a problem with the engine starter valve. It may take 1-2 hours to fix. He will once again keep us updated, but if we decide to leave, he understands. If he walks back in the waiting room and everybody is gone, he guesses he's not flying today. I liked the pilot, he was fun :-)
About 2 people leave. My group decides to wait at least until the next update.
Pilot comes back at about 7:35. They will have to completely replace the valve, which will take until 9:00 at the earliest to fix. The flight is an hour and a half, the engine plant is half an hour away from the airport once we get there, and so the best possible time of arrival at RMEP is 11:00am. Most likely it will be 12:00 or later. We are still scheduled for a return flight leaving there at 4:30.
My group decides to leave, it's not worth the wait. Some of the people in other groups decide to stay, but some of them leave also. We drive individually in our cars 7 miles to the office and start working by 7:45am.
My coworker gets a call at about 8:30am. Apparently, the airplane took off at 8:10 with about 5 passengers (of the original 19). 9:00 at the earliest? I guess not.
I have an average day at work, and get a surprisingly large amount accomplished. Except I am dressed in jeans and steel-toed boots for the day because I was expecting an engine plant filled day, but instead have an office filled day. It's all good, I finish 2 Pro-E measurements and polish off my research on exhaust manifolds!

I am probably going to go to bed now.