Oh, the insanity!

I think I'm going to do it. I can't believe I'm gonna do it! But I kind of sort of want to!

http://www.sgcity.org/recreation/races/details.php?id=629

And lately I've been training. I go swimming once a week, and I take my bike to work. Today, though, I tried something. Enjoy the story: I work at WSU and I have to fill out a boy scout application as part of my job, so I had this bright idea that I would take it to the scout office on my way home. I looked up the address and took off down the hill, thinking it would be about all downhill. Well, I misjudged where one street was and went down this nice hill and then realized I wasn't on the street I thought I was on and had to go back up. (did I mention the one time a week I go swimming was on Tuesday? I was already sort of tired). Blah.

I got on the right street and it turned out to be full of loose gravel. A nice hill, but covered in loose gravel so I couldn't have any fun at the risk of violating rule number steve ("no dying"). Then I found the other street I wanted to turn on and it would have taken me back up a hill so I walked a little bit. Then I went down a nice hill again and this other biker came and passed me going super fast--so much for motivation, right? I kept going back up the hill on the other side but had to walk it a little too.

Then I crossed Washington Boulevard and went the way I thought I was supposed to but the numbers weren't matching up to the address I needed so I turned around and searched for a while and have ultimately decided that 1200 E 5400 S South Ogden does not exist. At least I didn't want to go up one more hill to keep looking. Google maps failed me.

I could find comfort in the fact that Washington is pretty much downhill all the way to the FrontRunner station where I still needed to go quickly and took off. I no longer find comfort in that fact if I need to go fast, because nearly all the lights were RED! When I wasn't stopped I was booking it as hard as I could so the train wouldn't leave me. I thought of the irony as I passed Riverdale Road because I had been planning to ride down it tomorrow or Thursday--I even said out loud "might as well do it now!" but I thought I'd make the train. Well the lights were mean. I was pleading and praying the last few blocks for the train to wait for me but alas, right as I was coming up to the UTA pass scanner it pulled away. Gah! Not a happy Sharon! No, I didn't cry, but I wanted to.

Then I hurriedly went through all my bus schedules and decided to take the 470 home (also ironic because I passed one on my way there). I did some more Google mapping when I got home to figure out what I did and it was somewhere around 8 miles just this afternoon! After I did nearly 2000 yards in the pool! Now I have to figure out how and when to start running. I hate running. Insane, yes--but I think this is do-able, and it will make me happy somehow. Excuse me while I go eat more chocolate and food.

I had an interesting week

My first week of summer was sure exciting, I wanted to share. Monday I forgot my lunch and realized when I got to work that I hadn't eaten breakfast either. We went out for Science in the Park and I was doing fine, I was even spinning around with the corrugated pipe for a few minutes, but I spent most of the day under one of the tents. I slowly got tired and then I got lightheaded (which isn't so uncommon for me) but then it didn't get better really even when I sat down. I told the director I wasn't okay and she brought me some water (in a cup with a hole in it--we're nerds--it was intended for use as a cup phone anyway). i just wanted to go to the car and rest but I didn't think I could walk to it, so two of them took me over. I barely made it in and had help leaning the seat back and apparently I blacked out for a few minutes after that! Scary! She drove me back to campus and called my mom when I was awake again. I spent the rest of the day laying down and reading. I did go to the doctor and have some tests done but they were all fine. So I'm trying to eat breakfast now and I'm sort of super paranoid about this.

Tuesday I did something smart, I rode my bike to work (note the sarcasm. But I was fine). The rear tire went flat as I got to the FrontRunner station. I only did planetarium stuff, not Science in the Parks, being slightly paranoid. I pumped up my tire at the WRC before trying to go home but I didn't make it down the hill before the tire was flat again. Understand this--my tire should NOT go flat. It has a thorn shield around the inner tube and slime inside the tube. I walked for a while until a bus was supposed to go by that I caught to the FrontRunner again, I rode that home, and another bus, and walked the rest of the way, so I could remove the wheel and check out what happened. The inner tube was split along one of the seams! I'm gonna call that defective and I wanted some warranty service from Wal-Mart. I wasn't able to get there that day. There was a stake pool party that evening and I've sort of been dating a guy so I talked him into taking me there so I wouldn't have to drive (paranoid) and since I couldn't take my bike. Then after that we went to another friends' house to watch a movie and it came out that yeah, we've been dating!

Wednesday was all right, it was cold in the science building so I went outside and sat on a rock under a tree to study for my project at the planetarium. Then I went to my sister's house in Draper to play the piano and make music which didn't happen because her husband was too excited about telling me about the Torah (cool) and how the moon landings are fake (not so interesting). But oh well.

Thursday there was no traffic and I got back to Ogden in good time. I stayed under the tent for Science in the Parks. That evening I ended up going on another date and we went to a show called the 3 Redneck Tenors. It was pretty awesome! We played a game on paper before the show which I will post here as soon as I can get my scanner to work. And we realized after the show that we were pretty much the youngest people there. But the show was so cool! A lot of people missed out apparently. When he took me home the light wasn't on which I thought was weird, then I went inside and tried to turn it on, and it wouldn't. My mom came in and said the power was out. Weird. But it came back on after about 2 hours so not bad.

Friday was good too, I played with the HARBOR cameras and during the HARBOR meeting we joked about trying to get a beer company to sponsor us--if we try to use one of those cup-holder/beer-cosy things as insulation on the cameras. It was funny. That night was the full moon and a lunar eclipse so we had a night-hike. The usual happened--we were on the wrong side of the mountain and pretty much didn't see the moon at all. It was windy at the top of the mountain but we had the usual sushi and music. The eclipse would have been at 4:30 am and no one was about to wait for it! I got home a little before 3 and was in bed a little after 3.

Saturday I was able to go to Wal-Mart and claim my new inner tube. I decided to try a "is there anything you can do to help me" approach rather than a "fix my problem--now!" type of approach, and it went real smooth and I walked out with a free inner tube minutes later! It better not be faulty too... I got it installed with my thorn shield and slime to be "invincible" again and it should be fine now. I was supposed to go teach a lesson with the missionaries but it was cancelled. There was a ward picnic for my parents' ward; I went and ate quickly and then ditched to go out again. It was a much better evening than I could say I've ever had before. And that's all the details I'm going to share! haha! This post is long enough.

iPod touch! Sweet!

I bought some new toys. If you wish, take this as a plug for Apple. Being a student, I can use an education discount and some other sweet deals meaning I COULD have bought a computer, an iPod, and a printer for about $2000, but I DID buy all those things for only $1250. Can you understand how cool this is? I have an iMac! And an iPod touch! And I still have my PowerBook. Apple power! At my work we also use Apples. The school library has all iMacs and I'm just super happy to have my hands on such amazing technology.

It was sad, and somewhat amusing, the other day when the thing I was trying to download would not work on a Mac. I complained about the windows machine I had to use rather loudly and whined that I wanted my Macs back. For the record, I'm typing this post using my new iPod touch. I will give windows something though, at the time it was my first experience using the windows 7 OS and since then I've figured out a few new things about it and I suppose it's not that bad. Admittedly I'm not used to it at all. What can I say? Apple is way cool! And you might expect a few of these posts to be written from my iPod because it's a great use of time while I'm riding public transportation! THIS new toy has convenientized my life. Thanks, Apple!


Sent from my iPod

Another Jam

We had a guest jammer this time. I hope the sound is okay, it sounded great while we were playing. Comments?

Ano . . . I mean what do you think you're doing! The "I can't speak English today" post

Today, I had trouble speaking English. It was an interesting phenomenon. I suppose it was a somewhat stressful situation and I just couldn't express myself in English!

So one of my jobs is called Science in the Parks. We take cool sciencey stuff to parks in Ogden so kids can play with it and be excited to learn. Today what we took were things you fly. Like paper airplanes, and air rockets, and alka-seltzer in film canisters. I was at the alka-seltzer table. First we were letting the kids put their volatile film canisters on the sidewalk. I ended up being the person keeping people away from the explosion zone. Kids can be brats, you know? you tell them over and over and over "DO NOT get close to the other canisters" but they still do. One way we tried to solve this was by getting a second table, and then they could only put their volatile canisters on the table, and then BACK AWAY. It's quite a job keeping a bunch of kids AWAY from this type of thing. If they're not reaching their arms over and getting their face close to the others already going, they're trying to pick up the pieces from off the table or grab theirs again if it's a dud. There were also countless canisters that went off in kids' hands while they were watching it instead of putting it on the table, but no serious injuries.

I was talking constantly saying most of the same things over and over, "stay back" and "they could explode at any time" and "only adults can take things off the table" and at a couple points my frustration level got pretty high and my English just deteriorated. It doesn't help that most of them know Spanish, and may not be great at English. I knew I needed to communicate in simple English but the words would not string together. A couple times I really did slip and say "ano" or "iyon" which no one would understand but maybe it's good I couldn't say much other than "stay back from the table" and no one was offended. It was a great trial of patience, and I guess I survived :-)

I concluded the day with telling our advisor that we need shirts that say "I survived Science in the Parks." Then he said the bookstore will probably donate shirts to us, so arranging the printing won't be too hard. I'm excited for this. 1 park down (well, tomorrow), 5 more to go. If I really do survive through July I'll let you know.

"A Dream to Some, A Nightmare to Others" poetry jam

here's another of my brother-in-law's poems, that we put to music on the spot.

A day in HARBOR

that's High Altitude Reconnaissance Balloon for Outreach and Research

It began last night, when deciding not to have a slumber party at WSU I just showered and went to sleep in my clothes to facilitate a 2:30 ish wake up time. Because the team had to meet at WSU by 3:30 am to depart for Duchesne, Utah, about a 3 hour drive. The whole drive was dark, cold, cloudy, and rainy, much to our dismay, but it's a darn good thing we didn't turn back because once we came out of the canyon and as the sun came up all those things disappeared. It was a perfect day to fly a giant helium balloon! After some hot cocoa and donuts at the airport we had a hurried balloon worshipping session (that's just what it looks like as we steady the thing while inflating it with helium) and got it off into the atmosphere before 9am so the FAA couldn't have a fit with us.

We then drove to Roosevelt, where there is conveniently located a satellite of, well, Utah State University, but it's okay because one of their staff and a student were with us. Still was fun to parade in there with all our purple shirts on. The computer people watched it with their computers, and some of us watched it with our eyes, until the GPS transmitter (aka BATS) indicated the thing was now falling back down to earth (after reaching a height above 92,000').

I guess they did a quick flight prediction and found a bunch of Google maps in the area we thought it would land and started driving that way. So after this, we stopped receiving data from BATS long before the thing hit the ground. That's bad. There was a lot of communication that tried to happen but mostly succeeding by way of MY cell phone, which included new flight predictions, good and faulty GPS locations, and shortage of maps in the actual fall zone to name a few. Some of us met up and we tried to chase the other group but with such limited communication out there in the Utah wilderness it didn't work well.

We ended up an hour down this dirt road with still no sight or GPS of the equipment, when what happens but one of the trucks dies. This is also bad. Cell phone coverage was sooo sketchy someone suggested we try texting, which did work, and we asked for some phone numbers to get a tow truck. Although what ended up happening was (eventually) we went to the Ford dealership in town and gave them the GPS coordinates of the truck we left in the wilderness and they'll go get it. We reorganized ourselves into 2 cars and shortly thereafter who do we meet on the road but the other chase group! They also had no sign of the equipment and said they'd keep looking for a few hours.

We went back to town and then to the airport to move the equipment trailer when what do we realize the trailer keys were still in the truck . . . oops. It's okay. We then proceeded to Heber where we had a nice Mexican dinner (thank you!) and then on home. The other group called while we were eating and said they were unable to locate the stuff or ever get a GPS transmission from BATS. So we have a pretty big area to search where it could have landed (although one [very unlikely] explanation why it stopped after 11,000' is that it unwonderfully happened upon an airplane) and someone realized somewhere that we didn't actually put the "please return to WSU" labels on anything . . . oops again. A friend from the airport will do a flyover tomorrow and team members are willing to go back up another day, like Saturday, to go looking again. But if anyone happens in the Utah wilderness off of U.S.88 past Ft. Duchesne and finds a couple boxes with a parachute, please return to WSU!

Hence
Launch: check.
Flight: check.
Landing: uh, hmmmm.
Recovery: definitely UNcheck