Rain. We finally get rain and boy do we get a lot of it. Amy and I are going backpacking with Chris and a few folks from Greenville this weekend. It's supposed to rain the entire time.
It's May. Happy May 19th. It's 1 week until Chris' birthday, 6 days until Mom's birthday, one month until Mom and Dad's anniversary (27th). I keep track of dates based on their vicinity to important dates. This time of year, it's very easy. Most stuff circulates around Mom's birthday in my head.
Since it's May, I suppose it's time for a quick recap. I'm not doing so hot at the blog these days. I don't do anything that I feel is blog-worthy. I did well in my classes this semester. Hopefully, there will be no cause for me to need to take any more classes ever. Since I'm done with classes, I'm in the lab full-time now. I am still in the learning stage, since much of this stuff is very new to me, though still vaguely related to my old work. I learned to make sol-gel today. Don't ask me what it is. Or what it does.
The biggest thing I had this semester was the conference I mentioned at the end of the last post. Here are a few pictures from the week.
The conference was a big success and the group (the PCSA: ACerS President's Council of Student Advisors) hit the ground running again. I'm the 2009 Recruitment Chair, which means I've been reading a lot of resumes lately. We are hoping to get a good group of students this year. If you want to know more about what this PCSA thing is, feel free to ask me or check out my previous post about it.
In relation to ACerS, I have an article in this month's issue of the Bulletin. Check it out! Page 58.
Last week, Mom and Amy and I went shopping through Atlanta and then spent a few days in Callaway Gardens. The horticulture center there was way stinking cool. And the bike trails were very nice, though they were rather hilly. The spa gets 3 thumbs up.
Chris is teaching me how to play golf. Should be hilarious. All I've done is chip in his backyard, since the rain has gotten in our way.
We had some crazy cool snow in Clemson back at the first of March. My friend Kelsey had a baby (Judah) in February. I went to Charleston and did the Bridge Run with our friend Bonnie at the first of April. Chris and I went to the rather rainy opening Braves game (getting the rain theme?). The last pictures in the slide show below are of Ozaria, my 8-year-old mentee. She and I were taking pictures for her mom's birthday. We went to see Hannah Mondana: The Movie. She was quite thrilled with herself.
That's all I've got. I have to go stir something in the lab.
Sweet Summertime
Thursday, January 08, 2009
I just finished breaking in my new red KitchenAid mixer (Ginger chocolate chip bars. I can't begin to tell you how amazing they smell.) and thought I'd take the time to greet the world wide web. It's January 8, first day of classes for me. I've got plenty going on, so there is plenty to talk about. I guess I should start with a rundown of the past semester...
Classes went well. I got an A in Kinetics (Part 1) and a B in Thermodynamics. I have to maintain a 3.2 to stay in the program, so I'm set (as long as I don't fail this semester, which I don't anticipate doing). The lab I was teaching went well. We've got new materials (more to work with) this semester, so my section in particular should be more interesting to the students. We have the challenging task of entertaining both Materials students and Bioengineering students. The BioE students are in a materials concentration, but none of them seem to understand why a basic understanding of materials science is important. Thus we've given them a goal of applying the materials to their choice of a set of medical applications, selecting a material based on the results of their experiments. Hopefully they'll all realize that it's a trick, as none of the materials are remotely close to medical grade.
I went up to visit Amy over fall break. We went to Philadelphia to see Coldplay, which was one of Amy's life goals. I guess you could say she was pretty happy about it. We went up to NYC one day, which was a surprise to me, since Amy didn't hand me my ticket until we were on the train platform. It was a 3-hour ride that was pretty smooth, all-in-all. We put on our headphones and zoned out for most of the trip. By coincidence, it happened to be the morning of the ING New York City Marathon, which (of course) Uncle David was running. Our train came into Penn Station, so we took a cab up to the Metropolitan Museum and spent the morning wandering around and seeing what we felt like seeing. There's a marble statue in the slideshow called the "Hand of God" by Rodin. It's worth noticing. My new favorite. After lunch in the museum cafe, Amy and I headed around to the back of the building to watch for Uncle David. We managed to end up right across the course from Aunt Melissa. Once we yelled and screamed for Uncle David, we wandered to the road under the park and met up to wait for him with Auntie M. We never got to see him, because the exit chute took a while and we had a time limit on our day, so we gave up and headed downtown, to the corner of the park, for some shopping. We shopped our way down 5th Ave that afternoon, then wandered over to Times Square to take some pictures. Amy haggled with a rickshaw driver and managed to get us a ride back to the station with plenty of time to spare. Some pictures of this, then I'll talk about the rest of the semester...
The rest of the semester was fairly uneventful. We had Amy home for Thanksgiving, so I got the task of carving the Tofurkey (pictured in the slideshow). I came back to Clemson on Saturday for the Carolina game, which we actually won! Yay! Here are some Thanksgiving pictures...
We finished out the semester a week later. I have been home for the entire break. It was nice to be there for that long. I'm certainly ready for school again now. I've got another slideshow for you now...Christmas pictures...
That's all for now! I'm working away on plans for a conference I'm going to next weekend. I leave on Friday and I'll be gone until Wednesday. I'm sure I'll have some pictures from Florida when I get back. Until then...
Classes went well. I got an A in Kinetics (Part 1) and a B in Thermodynamics. I have to maintain a 3.2 to stay in the program, so I'm set (as long as I don't fail this semester, which I don't anticipate doing). The lab I was teaching went well. We've got new materials (more to work with) this semester, so my section in particular should be more interesting to the students. We have the challenging task of entertaining both Materials students and Bioengineering students. The BioE students are in a materials concentration, but none of them seem to understand why a basic understanding of materials science is important. Thus we've given them a goal of applying the materials to their choice of a set of medical applications, selecting a material based on the results of their experiments. Hopefully they'll all realize that it's a trick, as none of the materials are remotely close to medical grade.
I went up to visit Amy over fall break. We went to Philadelphia to see Coldplay, which was one of Amy's life goals. I guess you could say she was pretty happy about it. We went up to NYC one day, which was a surprise to me, since Amy didn't hand me my ticket until we were on the train platform. It was a 3-hour ride that was pretty smooth, all-in-all. We put on our headphones and zoned out for most of the trip. By coincidence, it happened to be the morning of the ING New York City Marathon, which (of course) Uncle David was running. Our train came into Penn Station, so we took a cab up to the Metropolitan Museum and spent the morning wandering around and seeing what we felt like seeing. There's a marble statue in the slideshow called the "Hand of God" by Rodin. It's worth noticing. My new favorite. After lunch in the museum cafe, Amy and I headed around to the back of the building to watch for Uncle David. We managed to end up right across the course from Aunt Melissa. Once we yelled and screamed for Uncle David, we wandered to the road under the park and met up to wait for him with Auntie M. We never got to see him, because the exit chute took a while and we had a time limit on our day, so we gave up and headed downtown, to the corner of the park, for some shopping. We shopped our way down 5th Ave that afternoon, then wandered over to Times Square to take some pictures. Amy haggled with a rickshaw driver and managed to get us a ride back to the station with plenty of time to spare. Some pictures of this, then I'll talk about the rest of the semester...
The rest of the semester was fairly uneventful. We had Amy home for Thanksgiving, so I got the task of carving the Tofurkey (pictured in the slideshow). I came back to Clemson on Saturday for the Carolina game, which we actually won! Yay! Here are some Thanksgiving pictures...
We finished out the semester a week later. I have been home for the entire break. It was nice to be there for that long. I'm certainly ready for school again now. I've got another slideshow for you now...Christmas pictures...
That's all for now! I'm working away on plans for a conference I'm going to next weekend. I leave on Friday and I'll be gone until Wednesday. I'm sure I'll have some pictures from Florida when I get back. Until then...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Hi family! I hope things are well. I thought Id update the blog before there are any riots. It's been a good semester so far. I'm a TA for a materials intro lab. I teach porosity, grain size, and sample preparation to a bunch of sophomores who don't care one lick. The way our lab is set up, I teach four weeks and grade the papers on my off weeks. The papers are...well...Carson could write some of them. There are plenty of good ones, but there are some stinkers too. Despite the attitude, I do actually enjoy being a TA right now. Which is good, since I have to do it again next semester. I've got a new advisor and a project that I'm looking forward to, so yay.
The football team...not so hot. We have a new coach now. We've lost several games in a row. Kinda sad.
Amy was in town this weekend. We saw a glimpse of her as she ran past. Actually, we had a lovely lunch after church on Sunday. I can't even begin to tell you how happy mom was. I go up to visit in 2 weeks. We have fall break and I have a rather open schedule at the moment, so I get to go visit. Yay!
We had a tornado or two at the beginning of the semester. It was quite scary once you realized that the tornado warning was real.
I went to Pittsburgh for a materials conference 2 weeks ago. It was quite fun and productive too. I always love a new city when I have my camera, so today's slide show will be from the conference. Enjoy!
The football team...not so hot. We have a new coach now. We've lost several games in a row. Kinda sad.
Amy was in town this weekend. We saw a glimpse of her as she ran past. Actually, we had a lovely lunch after church on Sunday. I can't even begin to tell you how happy mom was. I go up to visit in 2 weeks. We have fall break and I have a rather open schedule at the moment, so I get to go visit. Yay!
We had a tornado or two at the beginning of the semester. It was quite scary once you realized that the tornado warning was real.
I went to Pittsburgh for a materials conference 2 weeks ago. It was quite fun and productive too. I always love a new city when I have my camera, so today's slide show will be from the conference. Enjoy!
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