Sicky and Procrastination

I haven't posted in forever.  Mostly because it's summer, and any time I have I want to spend outside, with other people.  By the time I leave work for the day, I am really sick of sitting in front of the computer.  

I'm posting now mostly out of procrastination.  You see, on Tuesday night, I started to feel like I was getting sick.  And then on Wednesday through still today (Sunday), I have basically felt awful.  I didn't go to work on Wednesday or half of Thursday.  I probably shouldn't have gone to work on Friday, because on Saturday I was so exhausted I took a 2-hour nap.  And right now, I ALMOST feel better.  The only symptoms I have left from my fever/headache/sore throat/swollen sinuses/congestion/cough illness is the sore throat, more of a cough, and a teeny teeny headache.  The doctor said it probably wouldn't completely go away for 7 days.  That's Wednesday.  Ick.  

So I should be catching up on all the work I missed this week, right?  I mean, the only real work I have to do now is to write a thesis and a conference paper BEFORE October 17th.  2 months to do a thesis and a paper.  That's it.  That is 100% of my responsibilities.  But yet, I can't pull myself to work on it right now.  Church doesn't start for an entire 2.5 hours, so I can get a super big start on it.  But instead, I'm blogging.  I am never going to graduate.  

Sorry for the complaint-type post.  Just figured I'd keep you updated on what is ailing me most.  And right now it's worrying about getting everything done in time for graduation :-).  And being sick thwarted those plans this week.  I was going to do edits on an entire chapter this week, and have them ready by tomorrow! That is not going to happen.  

BUT when I graduate, I won't feel bad about not having worked on a Saturday.  BEST THING EVER.  I am so ready to be done with everything school related.  SO.  READY.  

New discoveries

I've been in State College long enough that most of the things I do now are repeats of things I have already done.  Not that they're not great things, I super love walking to the creamery on a summer night to eat ice cream while watching the sun set over the mountains.  Favorite.  But, I've done it.  It's always so exciting to find something new.  

On Sunday night, boy and I were on our way to the creamery when he suggested instead going to the top of a parking garage to see the sunset.  I was game.  And we went.  And it was beautiful.  Best view in State College.  And best view OF State College.  It's nice to be in a town where the tallest buildings are parking garages. 

Also tonight, we drove 20 minutes out of town to a winery that had an event with one of my coworkers and her boyfriend.  We tried some wine, bought a bottle and a platter of cheese, and sat outside on a blanket next to a campfire with a bunch of strangers, with a guy in the background playing songs on his guitar.  I felt like such an adult, sipping my wine and eating my cheese, talking about the hydrogen turbine.  And I got a free wine glass (...sort of, I paid a cover to get into the event)!  And I still smell like campfire.  Mmmmmm.  :-)  

Those are just a few of the new things I've discovered in my town just this week!  I am excited for many more to come this summer. 

Some pictures!

I took about 200 pictures in Copenhagen.  All of the good ones are on facebook.  Since a lot of you got rid of it (lameeeeeeee since it makes it so hard to share my pictures with you!), I'll post a few here :-).  But not very many since the photo uploading thingy on here is clumsy and slow.  If I'm going to make this more of a photo blog, I'm going to need to look more into switching venues.  But anyway, that's for another day.  Also, I plan on posting more specifically about the trip later this week, when I'm all caught up with work and sleep and whatnot.  For now, here are some of my favorite pictures! 

After 20 hours of travel and no sleep, we went into town and found some Danish beer!  And also food.  But I didn't take a picture of that.  Check out the little candle on our table!   

Pretty fountain.  This is really a beautiful city. 

Canals in the city. 

My lab group.  We got to travel together and bond over discovering Copenhagen and gas turbine engines and stuff. 

One of the perks of being a woman in engineering?  They feel bad about all the past discrimination and send you to a palace for dinner on one of the conference nights! 

There was an unbelievable number of bikes.  Such a bike friendly town!  It made me wish I had brought mine. 

At Tivoli Gardens...2nd oldest amusement park in the world, and is said to have given Walt Disney the inspiration for Disney World.  Such a cool place.  And there's a bird flying through the picture! 

Orange juice.  But in Danish, the word for "orange juice" is "appelsinjuice".  Not confusing at all. 

The Little Mermaid statue from behind.  I saw her from a boat, so I didn't see any more of her or her tail or anything.  Which is probably good, since it kept this picture G-rated. 

Copenhagen

Today I leave for Copenhagen!  Although I won't get there until tomorrow.  We are driving 5 hours to JFK airport, and then flying to Iceland (6 hours) before boarding our plane to Copenhagen (3 hours).  We will get on the road at 11:30am Saturday, and will arrive at 6:45am Sunday (except with the time change, it will be 12:45pm local time).  Lots of travel, but I've had longer travel days.  Hopefully we don't miss a flight or there's a blizzard or something silly like that. 

Pray for safe travels.  I'm not going to write my obligatory "I hate flying" post.  Because I do it way more often than is necessary.  I'm hoping to take some Nyquil and SLEEP the whole 6-hour flight from JFK to Iceland, anyway.  And it's only the first flight that frightens me.  By the time I board the 2nd-4th ones, I'll be used to it :-). 

Here's one last picture of Copenhagen before I get there.  Hopefully the next post will have my own pictures!  With my new awesome camera! 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/travel/22copenhagenweb.html?_r=1

Memorial Day Shenanigans

Memorial Day weekend was a blast.  I took advantage of the fact that my adviser was out of town, and also decided that since I worked Memorial Day and Labor Day last year, that I would not work Memorial Day this year. So I didn't.  And apparently, neither did anybody else in my lab.  So that was good. 

It started with my dad sending me a text about 2 weeks prior that read something along the lines of, "You're coming to the Bay House for your Mother's surprise party, right?"  Um.  Dad.  I think you forgot to invite me to the surprise party.  But whatever, I rolled with it and decided that, since it was a 3-day weekend, I didn't mind making the 5.5 hour drive up north to celebrate my Momma's 50th birthday.  On my next birthday, I will be half her age :-).  Which means that she was my age when I was born.  But we won't get into that.  

For those who aren't familiar with my family history, the "Bay House" is a really old house on the Sandusky Bay in Ohio that my grandparents own.  We went there a lot for vacation when I was a kid with the family of my mom's best high school friend, who has 4 girls that are about the same ages as me and my sisters (of course the 9 of us became the best of friends growing up together, and terrorized our fathers who were 2 men surrounded by 11 women in that house).  Most summers we would spend at least a week there.  It was the first place that introduced me to Lake Erie (since I wouldn't move to Erie until I was 12, and I was coming to the Bay House since I was born).  The backyard is the waterfront, and you can see Cedar Point across the bay.  Lots of my favorite childhood memories took place in this house, it's a wonderful place. It's also yellow. 

It was great to see family and friends.  Audrey was off of her crutches (yay!), and I got to see all the cousins/aunts/uncles that were in town (and some that came from really far away! Aunt Lisa came in from San Francisco.  Talk about dedication).  Also, 3 of the 4 girls that would play with my sisters and I during our Bay House summer visits were there, so we got to see them!  The one that was missing (the oldest...the one that's just barely older than me) lives in Colorado with her husband and teaches Preschool.  

Other than surprising my Momma, my favorite part was that I got to see my childhood best friend, Erica.  We were inseparable between 1994 and 1999, Erica and I were.  And after I moved to Erie, we wrote each other almost every week for years and visited each other about every six months through the beginning of high school.  I last saw her at her wedding 2 years ago, and before that it had been a really long time since we had seen each other.  So much fun to catch up! Also I got to actually have some conversations with her husband (hard to catch them on the wedding day...), and he's a really cool guy.  We also made tentative plans for future summer visits, so hopefully that will pan out!  It's amazing that we still have so much in common even 13 years after I moved away. 

 

Another highlight of the trip was paying a Memorial Day weekend visit to the graves of my grandparents, both of whom served in the Army/Marines in WWII/Korea, respectively.  This was the first time since their funerals in 2009 and 2010 that I had been out to see them.  That was pretty sweet. 

Here's one last picture.  Aren't my sisters getting so big?  Weird, since I remember when they were BORN.  

Getting caught in the rain

Tonight, boy and I walked to Chipotle for dinner.  It's probably about a mile walk from his apartment and from where I work.  We ate dinner and it was delicious -- I am quite addicted to Chipotle.  We noted that the sky looked scary, but decided to start the walk back home after dinner.  We made it about a block before the sky opened up and started pouring.  The wind was blowing sideways, the streets were filling up with water (so were my shoes), and we had no umbrella to keep us dry (although I was wearing a rain coat, which worked for a little while but eventually the hood blew off and water got inside).  We kept walking faster and faster, while laughing all the way about the complete ridiculousness of it.  It's surprisingly hard to see when it's raining that hard.  I'm really glad we didn't get hit by a car.  We kind of looked and felt like this:

The photo is not mine, it is from the movie, "The Notebook." And no, we did not find it romantic enough to share a passionate kiss that directly follows this scene. Mostly because we were trying to make it back alive. 

We should have done this:  

Needless to say, we were completely drenched by the time we made it back to his apartment, we might as well had gone swimming with our clothes on.  And the streets around his apartment were complete rivers, it was insane!  We spent the rest of the night watching the storm from his front porch. 

It was lots of fun.  

There's just something about getting caught in the rain that's freeing -- like you've surrendered.  At some point we had to make the decision to either stop walking and duck under something that could protect us, or surrender to the fact that we're going to get wet and keep walking.  Once we had given up on all hope of making it back with any inch of us dry, I was free to jump in all the puddles I wanted!  It's better that way: there are some things in life that you have to surrender to in order to keep moving forward.  I usually am trying to figure out what it is that God wants me to surrender to Him.  Usually the answer: everything. 

Anyways, I'm sad that I didn't take any pictures of the rain to share (even if I had my camera on that trip, it would have been destroyed as soon as it left my pocket).  But here is a neat picture of a huge thunderstorm/tornadoes(?) in State College a few years ago: 

Job!

Today I interviewed (for real, this time...all the other times were just pretend, apparently) for the job at Applied Research Lab here at Penn State.  That job would involve me doing lots of fun research on energy systems for mostly Navy-sponsored projects.  The interviews went GREAT, the people there all seemed really nice and liked their jobs, they said afterwards that I seemed like an excellent candidate and they were looking forward to the possibility of working with me.  So there's that.  I want it.  It seems like the most exciting job in the world right now.  They said I'd hear back from them next week. 

Also, I got my first ever real person job offer today for that job that I interviewed for in Maryland a little more than a month ago!  Ahhh!  They're offering me, like, real money, and health care, and vacation time, and stuff.  So weird.  It is not the most exciting job in the world (that distinction is still held by the job mentioned in the previous paragraph), but that means that SOMEBODY WANTS TO GIVE ME A JOB!  I'm wanted!  And this is a job that I got the old-fashioned way of going to the career fair, interviewing, and not ever having anybody I knew from the inside convince them that I'm a good worker and they should hire me.  Allllll me.  And Jesus, of course...I'm sure he helped out a bit ;-).   

So hopefully, by the end of next week, I will have 2 job prospects to work with.  So exciting!  And frightening.  But also exciting!  I really can't wait to be a "real person."  My friend Liz and I were talking about some people that she worked with that were "adults," and it was funny because technically we're adults too.  But we don't feel like it.  Maybe someday soon I'll feel like an adult.  I really just need to graduate.