Day Two

I had Mechanics of Deformables this morning with Dr. Mital. I'm pretty sure he is younger than me, but that's o.k.. He's likable. Today we covered the syllabus and some Statics review. I actually felt very comfortable with the material, which is good, because I had Statics a year ago. We took a pop quiz! He made a comment about having pop quizzes when people leave early, and somebody left early. What a way to begin. I hope that early-leaver drops.
I have Multivariate Calculus in a couple hours. Her syllabus claims that anyone who did worse than a C in Calculus I & II will find the course "challenging." I can't help but think that it will be challenging even if you had an A in Calculus I & II. This is my last math requirement from the math department, but I still have two more math courses to take. STAT 541 "Applied Statistics" and EGRM 321 "Numerical Methods" are next semester, and I must admit to being a little nervous that a graduate level course is my foray into statistics. Most people I know who have taken statistics say it is boring, so maybe a graduate class will be more thrilling. HA!

Day One

I'm back in school and glad to be there. I fixed the last little hiccup with my Circuits Lab, and now my schedule looks pretty good. My Engineering Graphics & Computation professor said her class is not a "weed-out" class, but she did say Thermodynamics is a "weed-out" class. I sincerely hope I am not a weed.
The first day of Thermo was just covering the syllabus and the professor assigned some light reading.
Circuits was a regular class section, but it was mostly review of some Physics II concepts.
Tomorrow I have Multivariate Calculus and Mechanics of Deformables.
Yippy for me!

Two Blogs for the Price of None

I just went through the digital camera and found some great photos of our trip to Nashville. We took no photos in Miami or Atlanta for reasons I can not explain.

This semester, I want to avoid the complete neglect of my creative urges that I have suffered in semesters passed, so I am doing my best to make my home studio a little more inviting. I found this little desk at Office Depot on double sale for $49. I could not pass it up. I have reinstalled Windows and Protools on my old laptop, so now I will hopefully be able to take advantage of the upgrades I performed on the memory and disk size over the summer. I don't even have antivirus software on that laptop, so hopefully there will be nothing to interfere with the function of Protools.

Also, I took down the "cone-of-silence" because it was under-used and over-sized. Now it is serving a superior function in my garage as a storage closet on wheels.
This is the only picture I could find of the "cone-of-silence" in its previous location. Notice my sisters performing their rendition of "Stop in the Name of Love." Fantastic!

Home at Last

We've been home for three days now, and we're finally feeling unpacked. We drove straight through the night on Monday after leaving Miami at 12:30 PM, and we didn't arrive in Williamsburg until about 4:30 AM. We even followed the Garmin's advice and took the ferry home. I'm not sure if it actually saved us any time, but it definitely shaved some miles off the trip. Plus, it's always nice to get off the interstate.
It took the better part of Tuesday to recover. We went to the bank, stopped by Target, and returned the rental car. I think we got to sleep again by about midnight.
We happily never left the house on Wednesday, but Christopher and Corbett stopped by around 9:00 PM to ring in the new year with us. Christopher and Sonya let Corbett and me drink in the new year.
As to be expected, Thursday was spent nursing my hangover. I was feeling better by dinner time, so we watched some of the DVDs we received for Christmas. Wristcutters is an amazing movie! We also watched the first half of Ken Burns' Thomas Jefferson and three episodes of season 2 of 30 Rock.
Today, I am finally feeling whole, so we're going to head into Richmond.

Suprise of a Lifetime

Material Science has been my least favorite class, but its over. I told myself, no matter what grade I get, I will not take Material Science over again. Of course, I would be forced to take it again if I failed, but I was absolutely sure I did not fail. Surprisingly, except to Sonya, I got an A. whawhawhat? How did that happen? I worked like mad on that class, but my test grades were all Bs. Even my homeworks and quizzes pointed to a B. Through some cosmic fluke, I got a 94 on my final. The final was supposed to be multiple choice and 2 worked problems. When I got to my final, there was no multiple choice. There was only short answer and the two worked problems. This means to me that somehow my pal Arch Angle Gabriel must have guided me to the answers. Don't get me wrong. I studied. ...but I studied for every test in that class, and I was consistently below average. Thank you Gabriel!
So Gabriel, there's this other thing I'm praying for...

The Weeks Ahead

I've got one more final tomorrow at 1:00; it's Dynamics. I'm actually looking forward to it because Dynamics is my favorite class. Two of my classes have already posted the final grades, and the results are pretty good. I got a B in Physics II and an A in Differential Equations. That Physics grade is a little annoying because it's a 5 credit course, so it really drags down my GPA.

Today, I have a dental appointment. Even though it's just a cleaning, I'm still nervous. I'm 32 and still afraid of needles and the dentist. I know it's rediculous. No matter how many painless shots I get or routine dental visits I attend, I still dread those events.

After the dentist, I'll be meeting the wife for lunch and then going home to study for that Dynamics final. Hopefully, this evening we'll have sushi with mom.

Tomorrow morning I will study some more and then head to Richmond for the final. After the final I will most likely do some Christmas shopping in Richmond.

Wednesday, we pick up the rental and head out on our holiday journey. I think we're planning on seeing everyone we've ever met this Christmas. Mmmm, a relaxing vacation...

The moral of this list of events I'm blabbering about is; next to seeing my beloved family and friend this Christmas, there is nothing I'm looking forward to more than the following week when there is absolutely nothing written on my calendar. Maybe I'll finally finish reading The American Sphynx. I love reading about Thomas Jefferson.

The real moral here: We all need to find a way to live closer to one another so it's not an event when we get to see one another. I would love to be allowed the luxury of taking my family for granted.

Brain Break

There is nothing cool about phase diagrams; they are as boring as they sound. They are more boring than watching grass grow because I don't have to read a chart about all the minutia that happens at each step of grass-growth. I don't care about the crystal structures that pop up when Austenite is cooled through an alpha+gamma phase, through the eutectic isotherm, and into Cementite. Oooh, look, Pearlite. Isn't that so pretty?! No, it's obnoxious. Materials Science falls under that special category of classes that is so general that its useless. The needed information will either be covered in specific classes or simply read from a chart. Arg!! I'm sure I'll appreciate the class once I'm done, but right now, studing for finals, ...ick.

thanks dad and Cory for the great picture!