overheard

*Brian smiles mischievously*
Amy: What?
Brian: I'm just cute.


Amy: So many words, and all they say is blah.
Brian: It's a history book.
*I'm pretty sure I've turned back into a 2-year-old who needs to have lots of pictures and very few words in her books.*

Europe

Brian: original post 7/1/12 - pictures and sentence at the end
Amy: edited 7/19/12 - captions under pictures

View from the Bella Sky Hotel (walkway between the two towers). Lots of wind turbines.

Classic canal in Copenhagen. Commonly shown in postcards.

The original Christus, sculpted by Thorvaldsen.

Brian in front of the Bella Sky Hotel.

Guards in front of one of the buildings at Amalienborg Palace.

Changing of the guards. This apparently happens on the even hours, which we didn't know. We were literally wandering around the city and happened upon this place, and the guards changed while we were there.

The Little Mermaid. Major tourist trap, it's really not that cool.

I don't remember for sure, but I think this was taken on the cruise. I believe we were sailing past wind turbines placed in the water near Denmark (those white lines behind us).

Brian in front of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tallinn, Estonia. We were happy to see onion domes. :)

One of the "joke fountains" at Peterhof (which is easier to say than Petrodvorets). It was a tree with several flowers surrounding it. Cute.

Brian and me in front of the main fountain at Peterhof. They had this awesome sort of ceremony to start all the fountains in the morning. (It wasn't really a ceremony, but there were thousands of people gathered to watch as a loud anthem played when the fountains turned on.)

Brian in front of the Copenhagen Temple. We took the metro to the right part of town and had a nice little jog to get the rest of the way there. It seems to be right in the middle of a neighborhood. We had a good chat with a member who came up to talk to us when we were wandering around the grounds. This was apparently his stake center before they renovated it to be the temple.

 
These are pictures from our trip. We enjoyed it.

Not Europe

Brian: "Amy, come look at these pictures!"

Amy: "I have to pee first!" *frantically runs down stairs into basement*

Brian: *worried and confused* "There's no bathroom in the basement!"


But what pictures, you ask...

The day was long and hot, and I was quietly working in my windowless lab, mostly alone on a Friday afternoon. I started hearing odd sounds, like the rustling of cardboard coming from the walls, and some of the doors throughout the building started opening and closing on their own. The sounds persisted, and were added by the rapid slapping sounds of ceiling air vents. I joined a couple of my coworkers, who were equally confused. Without ever having been near any windows, I opened an alternate exit door, and this is what I saw.

 

Several of the trees on the property were at least partially down. Pieces of tree were scattered all over, Had the lower picture tree fallen the other direction, it would have blocked the exit gate. On my way home, every traffic light was out, and I passed by several residents standing in their front yard, staring motionless at trees that had fallen in their own yards. Luckily, our place was fine, without even having a power outage. The kicker- the severe weather sirens never went off, even though they've gone off several times this year without any serious incident.

pictures of...

Ok, I know these aren't the pictures everyone wants to see (all 5 of you who read the blog...), but I've been avoiding studying for the last week or two and need to get to it for real now. (It's so hard when I keep remembering I'm graduating in 7 or so weeks.) We'll put up the Europe pictures sometime, I guess. ;) Anyway, these definitely aren't the best pictures of me, but you get the point.

before - I don't think my hair has ever been this long before

Also, I've decided it doesn't matter what my hair looks like, because I'm going to look 18 regardless. Hopefully my theory isn't wrong. Does the new cut actually decrease that age? (Don't answer that, I don't think I really want to know.)

after - nothing major, just a couple inches to restore my sanity

classical conditioning

I feel like Pavlov's dog.

Toward the end of the quarter in p chem, we started talking about (potential) energy of molecules. During one particular lecture, I had a light bulb moment and connected something from p chem lab back to the lecture. Dr. Jaroniec was talking about what the curves (graphs) look like, and I realized it was the same as the Morse potentials we'd been using in lab, so I brought it up. He seemed impressed.

Stole this from Wikipedia.

The next time we were talking about what a certain energy curve should look like, he pointed at me and said, "I"m going to call on you because you said what it was last time." Of course, (after thinking for a second) I responded with "Morse potential." I laughed about it and figured that would be the end of it. But then it happened again in another lecture. He pointed at me and said a variation of his statement above, and I correctly answered "Morse potential."

I'm not sure how many times it happened overall (probably at least 5 or 6), but it got to the point that once or twice I was even zoned out or lost for a part of lecture but still gave the answer when he pointed at me.

Classical conditioning at its best.

Side note: I adore Dr. Jaroniec. He has this cute baby face but sort of a rugged/stylish look. And his accent is the best! I actually thought it was Russian or something at the beginning of the quarter, but it bothered me so much that I finally asked him. Turns out he's from Poland but learned English in Canada. He has a great sense of humor (and sometimes it's even funnier because of his accent/the way he says things). He actually reminds me a lot of my brother, Eric.

octopus

Yesterday, I did something I've been wanting to do for a long time.

When I finished my p chem final, I still had about 15 minutes of the allotted time left. I went back through and checked all my work, making minor corrections here and there. When I was done with that, I still had about 5-10 minutes.

So I flipped to the blank page after the last problem and drew an octopus.

This is not the original (obviously...I turned it in with the exam).

I re-created it at home for your viewing pleasure.

In case you can't read it, it says "I drew an octopus for you. Happy grading!" Now, I'm clearly not a great artist, but this made me really happy. Unfortunately, I realized after turning it in that the grader might not even see it since my work was complete on the previous pages (so he might not flip the page). Before leaving, I saw that he was flipping through one of the exams and stage-whispered "Did you see it?" Somehow I managed to convey that he should flip to one of the last pages of my exam. When he did, he looked up at me and laughed. And really, I guess that's why I did it. I was hoping to make his day of grading just a little bit happier.

Incidentally, I did quite well on that final in spite of only studying for 2 hours. (Or less? I'm not even sure.)

almost done

A lab report, a homework assignment, and 3 finals are all that stand between me and the end of this quarter. It can't come soon enough.

(And then it's off for some hard-earned fun in Europe!!)