Reunion

I was sitting on the bus to school the other morning, and a song came on the radio which reminded me of my friend Carrie. I wanted so badly to call her and tell her that I may have found the greatest song of the century, which she needs to Google right this instant so she would love it, too. Unfortunately, I couldn't. Instead, I called Layne to tell him how much I miss Carrie some days. He agreed, and said that he will send her flowers if I would like. He knows where she is, finally. We couldn't find her last time we went with flowers. We ended up leaving them on a bench. I wish I didn't have to send flowers. I wish I could call Carrie, like I used to.

Rest in peace, Carrie May.

My New Home

Let me give you a tour of my new place. I will be living here for the next year of my life, hopefully. I have the basement bedroom of a three bedroom townhouse. I live in the yellow one on the left, and that is my boyfriend James standing on the front porch.


You enter first into a small entryway with an insufficient amount of linoleum on the floor, considering you have to step onto the carpet to close the door behind yourself most of the time anyway. The stairs lead up to my two roommates' bedrooms and their shared bathroom.


Although a little bare, the living room is generally very clean, and altogether unused. Ever since my roommates banished their 13-inch television to the basement with me, I have had no reason to sit up there. I never have visitors, because I usually go to the neighbor's house to hang out with all of James's military friends.


The kitchen and dining area is one of my favorite places. There is a very nice set up for cooking, although I would rather have the stove on the other side of the sink. The dishwasher in in the way most of the time. None of us use it. However, the counter is always spread with my cooking concoctions.

This is the view from our back deck. Not much to say here, we never use it. Although, our next door neighbors have some pretty happenin' parties on football weekends.


Down the stairs, there is this awkward little "bonus room." I have yet to meet anyone who actually uses this room. Most people keep all their social things, like televisions and games, up in the living room. I have the little 13-inch television in that entertainment center. It looks goofy, but it works.



I couldn't really fit my entire room into one picture, so I took two. This is my desk and closet at one end, with the little buffer shelf to hold all of my prized possessions, and on the other side is my bed, dresser, and restroom.

I think the best part of the whole place is my private bathroom. It is pretty sweet only having to clean up after myself.




I love the new place and look forward to spending the whole year here.

Women in Engineering Girl Scout Saturday.

Once a month, the Women in Engineering Program hosts a Girl Scout Saturday. Girls travel from all over the state to earn a badge in one of our workshops. There were about 50 Women Engineers and 60 Girl Scouts.

The theme this month is "Humans and Habitats." Traditionally, this is a life sciences badge, but we put an engineering twist on it. The troops were given one of eight states; Montana, Pennsylvania, Arizona, California, Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, or Tennesee, and had to design a house that was functional in that climate.

Our troop was given Pennsylvania.

They had a half hour to design and build a model home for their state. My troop gave their house a large sloping roof to let the rain and slow slide off, a garage to keep the car in when it snows outside, a pond and garden in the back, two levels for seasonal temperature control, and solar panels for energy efficiency. I was pretty proud of those girls; they were the only ones to think of putting solar panels on the house.

The girls went CRAZY building their model. We had limitless supplies of everything... unfortunately. I ended up going to work with glue all up my arm. I don't know how this happened, because I didn't even touch anything. My job was to keep the project moving so they would finish on time.

I got a good chance to talk to some of the girls about pretty much everything from school, to family, to girl scouts, to interests. Here, Courtney is putting the garden together while she tells me about some of the foods she likes to eat.

Those little silver patches on the roof are solar panels.

For only having a half hour, all the troops had really extravagant houses. Granted, they all had about ten little girls working away the whole time to get these finished. After spending that much time in a small room with 100 people moving around, it was ungodly hot in there. The girls didn't mind at all, though. They had a lot of fun.

This was a really fun activity for me, too. I do hope I get to participate in a lot more of these Girl Scout Saturdays.

My Life is a Perpetual Game of Frogger

You know what I'm talking about. The old Frogger game from the 1980's, where you have a little green blob graphic roughly shaped like a frog, and you have to jump it across a vast expanse of what appears to be a six lane highway while trying to avoid little car shaped blobs, only to find that on the other side of the highway, there is a wide and fast-flowing river with the only way across is jumping from log to leaf to log to leaf. I never really understood why the frog dies if he jumps in the river. Perhaps it flows too swiftly for my little first-level frog-blob to swim without getting run over by rogue logs.

Anyway, my life has become a perpetual game of Frogger. With 40,000 student on my campus, there is a lot of traffic. Not just car traffic either, but foot traffic and bike traffic, with blockades of construction everywhere. By far the busiest street is Pollock Road in front of the HUB-Robeson center. Yesterday, as I dodged between two particularly slow moving individuals, I was nearly knocked down by a bicycle riding quickly down the street. I don't know why I think I need to cross traffic. I should just go with the flow.

My thinking has become just like a game of Frogger. Slow person, fast person, fast person, JUMP, slow person, slow person, JUMP, fast person, fast person, fast person, fast person, JUMP, bicycle, JUMP, car, fast person, fast person, car, JUMP. And so on.

I have become quite skilled at this game of Froggger I play across the street at least three times a day. I'm almost addicted. Sometimes I think, "What do I need across Pollock Road? ... Perhaps some food at the HUB? ... Maybe I need to study in Davey Library today? ... Or can I go to the Professor's office hours? ..." Anything to play Frogger one more time today.

I need more video games.