Get excited!

John's coming in tomorrow...still not sure how he's getting here from the airport, but I think he wants to make it an adventure.  It also kind of looks like he has a purse and not a suitcase in that picture...

Wednesday

Apparently Hui didn't know what I was supposed to do yesterday, either, so I was just given some papers to read.  The Solar's server was down so Eric and Nick came out into the sunshine with me to read.  We were afraid of getting watered on the entire time.  Eric also decided that since the sprinkler system made no sense it was simply run by an angry man smashing buttons.

After lunch they went back to the computer lab and I decided to take my bike to downtown Bozeman.

It feels strangely Ashland-y in downtown Bozeman.

Except that Bozeman has a strange amount of Art Deco buildings.

Another school:

Then I went to the food co-op and got a snack.

Took some pictures of poppies and irises, which are blooming now (like I said, they're behind a month or two here).

I went back to lab at four thirty to take the samples out of the chamber for annealing, and accidentally lost a sample...

Oh noes!  Where is #2?!  Once again we had to use creative means to remove the sample from the bottom of the chamber, and once again Hui laughed at me...

More irises on the walk back to Roskie.  Later a group of people went to see MacBeth in the park, and I wisely brought a jacket this time.

Today (thus far)

The accelerator is still broken, which means that there is still not much for me to do but read, so that's what I'm doing.  I also put the annealed samples back in the chamber this morning, and while I was waiting on the vacuum pump to finish vacuuming I drew on the board.

Typical John and Aaron, except that maybe Aaron should look less mean and more concerned.

John getting ready to leave for Montana!  They're hanging out with some physics.

Once John left, Adam and Aaron formed a folk band.

This is long.

Just in case anyone was curious, here's a picture of some of the lab...

Anyhow, onwards!

Friday

Almost immediately after I posted Nick knocked on my door and was all "let's go swimming" sooo...we took Jenna and Ben and went swimming in what Dr. Smith calls the "Gallatin Gravel Pit" but is officially known as the Gallatin Recreation Center or some such thing.  It was SUPER COLD, if you couldn't tell by looking at the photo below:

Believe it or not I actually got in and swam around for a while (there were ducks to chase).  Nick is insane and swam clear to the other side and back, and Jenna and Ben decided after not too long that they'd rather be in the sun onshore because they have more sense than the rest of us.

Nonsensical sandal-washing.

The opposite.  Ben is becoming well-known for being able to bring us crazy folk back to reality.

Jenna wouldn't let me take her picture but here I am in Aaron's hat, The Best Hat in the Universe (I've been horsin' around Kentucky).

Saturday

Pretty much every REU except Krista (who has switched places with Keara as the Solar recluse) went on a hike to Bear Trap Canyon.  We were supposed to see bears and rattlesnakes and get into epic battles with mountain lions, but as far as the danger department goes we only really saw a lot of poison ivy.  Ah well.  I somehow got through the day without breaking out, too!

So here we are walking through the canyon.

I think Ben took the picture below?

Continuing the tradition established the previous Saturday, we found a rocky outcropping that was way-high-up to eat lunch on.  So, here's my view from my lunch perch:

Ben definitely took this photo below:

Robbie left with Chris and they got into the river.  I spied on them....

...and apparently they spied on me.

That night Nick, Eric and I watched a TERRIBLE/PAINFUL/MY-SOUL-HURTS Japanese B-Movie about a girl whose forearm gets cut off by the Yakuza's son and as revenge she attaches a machine gun to it and goes on a killing spree.  It was so violent that Ben and Jenna, who started out watching it with us, had to leave.  (I'm not sure what that says about the three of us?)  To make it worse it was dubbed and not subbed, and I'm pretty sure it was intentionally made to be terrible and ridiculous and all of that...guh.  

After that we watched some soul-cleansing Pete and Pete and then found some sprinklers to run around in (which wasn't hard to do).  We also tried to visit Orion but he was out of town.

Sunday

We began with a visit to Donut Man, had amazing donuts, threw some donut bits at ducks, etc.

Then I went with Nick, Keara, Robbie, and Ben to a ghost town!  There were some issues, and we took what was later deemed a "shortcut".  (A shout-out to my dad here...)  We got to Butte and were all "woo nifty!" until someone was like "waaaait a second, why are we in Butte?"

It was soon realized that we had taken the wrong turn as soon as we'd gotten off of the interstate, about 30/40 minutes before that, and a miscommunication had kept us going in that direction.

But then we were rewarded with a giant statue on the mountain!

We were trying to guess what it was...

And it's Mary!  We kind of want to have a hike up to visit her some weekend.

So!  We got on Interstate 15 and got off at Boulder I think...once off the exit most of the scenery looked like this:

Finally we reached the ghost town!

We took sort of silly pictures...

Robbie climbed to the attic of one of the safer-looking buildings...

We got into a cellar, which was disappointingly not scary.

Took pictures from the cellar...

Attempted to take some creepy pictures...

Keara actually succeeded in taking some cool ones, like this:

I was really digging the old layers of wallpaper.  The patterns were so cool!  I'm jealous.

We weren't allowed to explore the old mine buildings, which is a shame, it looked pretty cool.

Monday

So I don't have pictures for Monday.  Lab was normal, lunch was normal, and after work I went swimming at the Gravel Pit again with Nick, Keara, Robbie, and Jacob.  I think it was less cold this time...?  But there are no pictures because while we were on the way there it was discovered that Keara assumed that I was bringing a camera, because I always do, and I assumed she was bringing a camera, because she always does....and so no one did.

Nick was still insane and swam to the other (long) side of the lake/pond and back, but then Robbie and I got tired of being near shore and swam to the other (short) side of the lake, where a bench was.  The only problem was that when we got to shore and stood up, we immediately sank half a foot in mud.  Robbie thought that it was the most disgusting thing ever, and while I agreed it was gross, it was more funny to me.  While he was squelching to shore with the best highly-disturbed expression I've ever seen, I was in danger of falling face-first into the muck from laughing so hard.  Which really only made me laugh harder.

We saw Nick get back to the other shore and talk to Keara, and then (because he is insane) turn around and swim towards us.  Because we are terrible people, Robbie and I let him, gleefully anticipating his expression when he touched down.

Nick: *horrified expression*

Us: *burst out laughing*

Nick: You bastards!

Us: *fall over on bench laughing*

Today

I actually have lab news...for the first time ever, Hui let me "take a break" for a few minutes.  That is a very tremendous event!  I don't really understand why, because if any day should NOT need a break, today was it.  We went out to eat for lunch because it was one of the Micheal's birthdays, and were out for two hours.

Also of note, one of the samples fell off the holder and we had to open up the chamber (a pain!) and use some creative means to reach it.  Hui ended up getting a rod and sticking carbon tape on it to spear our sample.  He also laughed at me for a really long time for taking data on an anti-sample, while I insisted that it was there when I started.  Then again, his new hobby seems to be laughing at me (in a good-natured way), and his favorite is when I can't flip the power switch because I am that weak.

Tomorrow they're working on the accelerator again, so maybe I'll get a picture of that.  Not really sure what that means I'll be doing, because I've caught up fitting spectra, and we can't anneal the samples yet...

My lab BFF's.  I like how similar my iPod and my floppy disk look.

I also bought an amazing bottle of Mountain Dew.  I've never seen an aluminum Mountain Dew bottle, so I couldn't resist.  Which would explain why I'm still writing this right now.