This past Saturday my friends and I went to the Taste of Springfield. Tents were set up downtown in the streets for local restaurants to show off some food. Sounds cool, right? Tickets were a dollar a piece and there were 15-20 vendors there. Food cost $2-3 depending on the place and could only be bought in packs of ten. The servings were small and wouldn't suffice a full meal, but the food was pretty good. After that we all went back to Lukes apartment to hang out. It was a good time and involved some Karaoke, talking on the balcony and a movie (available through Lukes cable subscription).
Sunday I just relaxed and played with the blog. I spent most of the day trying out different things in Photoshop which I'm getting better at (though nowhere near some of the people out there!).
I'd like some more photos of Atalie and I so if you have some, could you email them to me? Thanks!
10.08.2007
10.06.2007
New look!
Changed the look of the blog. I don't know if I like it better than the other layout and I'm thinking about taking matters into my own hands with a self-written template. I suspect that Brad might be getting some emails soon if I do choose to compile my own.
Let me know what you think!
Let me know what you think!
10.05.2007
X-ray Gun!
Yesterday I went to this GIS workshop put on by the Southwest Missouri GIS User's Group at a place called "The Library Center" on the SW part of town. There were talks all day long from people in and around Springfield that use GIS on a daily basis and what they specifically use it for. Some of the talks were pretty interesting while others were not but it was cool to see how much GIS is really used. People are doing things with GIS that I had never really thought of.
School is starting to pick up with mid-term exams next week and I'm getting more of an idea of what my thesis is going to be. On Tuesday we had a meeting and demostration on how to operate our new portable x-ray fluorescent spectrometer (x-ray gun!). It's a neat little contraption that tells you the concentration of elements in the soils. I'm going to be using it to identify soil layers with very high Lead and Zinc concentrations which represent the height of the Lead mining industry in the area and help give a timeline for how much sediment has been deposited in the past 100 years. I'll be doing a lot more research than just using the x-ray gun, but I think it's going to be one of the fun parts.
Tonight is ArtWalk again (first Friday!!), although I don't know how much I feel like going.
School is starting to pick up with mid-term exams next week and I'm getting more of an idea of what my thesis is going to be. On Tuesday we had a meeting and demostration on how to operate our new portable x-ray fluorescent spectrometer (x-ray gun!). It's a neat little contraption that tells you the concentration of elements in the soils. I'm going to be using it to identify soil layers with very high Lead and Zinc concentrations which represent the height of the Lead mining industry in the area and help give a timeline for how much sediment has been deposited in the past 100 years. I'll be doing a lot more research than just using the x-ray gun, but I think it's going to be one of the fun parts.
Tonight is ArtWalk again (first Friday!!), although I don't know how much I feel like going.
10.03.2007
GR has it's coolest resident back! hehe :)
So sorry, everybody, that I haven't written in forever! I was pretty busy my last week in Austin, but I am back in Michigan now and have had no good excuse. But here I am again!
I got back in Michigan around 11 p.m. on Saturday night- an hour and a half later than originally planned. The morning of my departure, Sally received an automated voice call explaining that my connecting flight in Memphis had been canceled. After calling the airport, she worked out a change in airline and time, seeing as the airport otherwise would have had me stay the night in the Memphis airport and reassign me to a Sunday flight. Definitely glad that worked out differently.
That was a late night since my family and I stayed up to hang out a little bit, but I've had plenty of time to catch up on sleep since I've spent the last couple of days lounging around the house. Yesterday I started to try to contact people to set up times to visit before I leave in two weeks for Missouri though, so I'm sure my schedule will quickly become much more busy. In fact, it already became a little busier today since my best friend's car broke down in a middle lane on US131 during morning traffic, had to be towed and walked to her apartment from the dealership. I was able to borrow my sister's car and later take her to her dentist appointment and back to the dealership later at least, but that was an unexpected twist for the day (especially for her- poor thing)!
Anyway, I'm sorry again that it's been awhile since any of you have had a new entry to read, but I'll try to be a little better from now on since I am not working at the moment. I'll be reveling in my little vacation time, but I'll try to hang on to those few responsibilities I still have, such as writing on the blog. :)
I got back in Michigan around 11 p.m. on Saturday night- an hour and a half later than originally planned. The morning of my departure, Sally received an automated voice call explaining that my connecting flight in Memphis had been canceled. After calling the airport, she worked out a change in airline and time, seeing as the airport otherwise would have had me stay the night in the Memphis airport and reassign me to a Sunday flight. Definitely glad that worked out differently.
That was a late night since my family and I stayed up to hang out a little bit, but I've had plenty of time to catch up on sleep since I've spent the last couple of days lounging around the house. Yesterday I started to try to contact people to set up times to visit before I leave in two weeks for Missouri though, so I'm sure my schedule will quickly become much more busy. In fact, it already became a little busier today since my best friend's car broke down in a middle lane on US131 during morning traffic, had to be towed and walked to her apartment from the dealership. I was able to borrow my sister's car and later take her to her dentist appointment and back to the dealership later at least, but that was an unexpected twist for the day (especially for her- poor thing)!
Anyway, I'm sorry again that it's been awhile since any of you have had a new entry to read, but I'll try to be a little better from now on since I am not working at the moment. I'll be reveling in my little vacation time, but I'll try to hang on to those few responsibilities I still have, such as writing on the blog. :)
9.27.2007
Another week done-ish
Now that we're on the last part of the week I can write something. Not much, mind you, but something never the less. School/work was exceedingly boring this week. Looking for camping stuff (also known as shopping) online for the past two weeks or so anticipating some camping with Atalie is the only thing that was remotely interesting. You'll all be pleased to know that I put that birthday money to good use and then shredded the paper trail (thanks to Sally). Not that it needed to be shredded, it's just fun to shred things now that I finally can. Did you know those things chew up CD's?! I don't think this one was supposed to but it did anyway.
I think the first batch of beer is going to be crap. I just have this feeling that because I followed the packaged directions and not my own that it is going to be pond water. Alcoholic pond water, but pond water nevertheless. I'm sure my friends won't notice... Batch 2 will be properly done (hopefully with a larger brewpot).
End note #1: For those of you that didn't know, today is Google's 9th birthday. Alas, another excuse to eat cake. I fully expect, and I'm sure Brad agrees, that by the time they turn 18 they will have taken over the world as we know it and we'll be eating off of Google subsidiary manufactured plates or something.
End note #2: "Google's" is a typo in the Google-owned Blogger posting text editor. Can they not recognize the proper use of an apostrophe? http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/
I think the first batch of beer is going to be crap. I just have this feeling that because I followed the packaged directions and not my own that it is going to be pond water. Alcoholic pond water, but pond water nevertheless. I'm sure my friends won't notice... Batch 2 will be properly done (hopefully with a larger brewpot).
End note #1: For those of you that didn't know, today is Google's 9th birthday. Alas, another excuse to eat cake. I fully expect, and I'm sure Brad agrees, that by the time they turn 18 they will have taken over the world as we know it and we'll be eating off of Google subsidiary manufactured plates or something.
End note #2: "Google's" is a typo in the Google-owned Blogger posting text editor. Can they not recognize the proper use of an apostrophe? http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/
9.22.2007
La Fin du Monde
It was great hearing from everyone back home and abroad yesterday as I am terrible with keeping in touch (my excuse is that I truly am keeping in touch via this blog...). I’ve gotten some great cards in the mail and despite the miniature mailbox that I’ve been assigned they were still in decent shape when I found them. I talked with Mike K for a while and am excited to hear that he and Brad have been talking about coming and visiting me/us sometime in October or early November. Now I just have to think of some stuff we can do…
Last night my friends here at MSU threw a great party for me. I decided to get back to brewing again and we decided to make it the center of the party as my friends were excited to learn how to do it. Derek held the festivities over at his house and my friends went party crazy. They brought a cake, a pie, some gifts, music and some games. It was good fun. Kat gave me this really cool beer mug with the Missouri State logo on it (which she bought earlier that day on the way back from having lunch with Luke and I) and Amanda gave me a bottle of la Fin du Monde, a ridiculously strong Belgian wheat beer brewed in Quebec. We called it a night around 12:30 and Kat drove everyone home- she’s had a rough week and while she probably needed a drink, she didn’t really feel like it.
Last night my friends here at MSU threw a great party for me. I decided to get back to brewing again and we decided to make it the center of the party as my friends were excited to learn how to do it. Derek held the festivities over at his house and my friends went party crazy. They brought a cake, a pie, some gifts, music and some games. It was good fun. Kat gave me this really cool beer mug with the Missouri State logo on it (which she bought earlier that day on the way back from having lunch with Luke and I) and Amanda gave me a bottle of la Fin du Monde, a ridiculously strong Belgian wheat beer brewed in Quebec. We called it a night around 12:30 and Kat drove everyone home- she’s had a rough week and while she probably needed a drink, she didn’t really feel like it.
Anyway, it was a good 24th. Thanks everybody!
9.18.2007
Buffalo River Weekend
This weekend I went down to Arkansas to do some canoing and camping with some friends from school. It was a blast! We hijacked the Departments canoes Friday evening and set up camp around 9:30pm right on the banks of the Buffalo River. After a good campfire we got some sleep under the stars. Saturday morning two of us shuttled a vehicle to our take-out spot while the rest of us broke camp and dried out our wet sleeping bags and tents which resulted from a heavy dew.
We paddled all day and stopped only once for a lunch break. The river was really low so we had to walk the canoes through some of the more shallow rapids. We saw lots of birds along the side of the river (something like 30 heron's) and fish in the pools. We had to paddle a lot because the river was also running really slow and we wanted to get 15 miles done by the end of the day. A large gravel bar along the bank of the river provided a camping spot for Saturday night.
Sunday we woke up to a cold morning and another heavy dew. The bonus was all of the fog in the canyon looked really neat. Breaking camp took a while as we were trying to prolong the inevitable usage of our sore muscles from the previous day of canoing. The day started out overcast with some sprinkles on the river, but around noon that cleared up to a nice sunny afternoon. After paddling the remaining 10 miles to our take out point we enjoyed some nice swimming in the river and tossing the Frisbee around. All our stuff was packed back up into the cars and we headed home!
I really enjoyed the trip and it totally wetted my appetite for more. We can't wait for Atalie to get down here to (hopefully) enjoy it too!
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