Chicken Biryani, Makhani...and Pimples

Tuesday

Jenna, Chris, Nick and I got bored and ended up doing one of the hardest puzzles I’ve ever done...not that I’ve done too many puzzles, but it took the four of us about five hours to finish it.  It was Van Gogh’s Wheat Fields Under a Clouded Sky.

The “clouded sky” part took FOREVER.

Wednesday 

This day was originally going to be Cook Indian Food Day but became Buy Indian Food Ingredients Day once we looked at the weather and decided we’d rather see an outdoor play while it was pretty than in the rain.

So, a group got together and walked to the food Co-op on Main Street.  Ingredients were bought and the cashier refused to sell beer to a now-legal Eric because he thought an out-of-state license was sketchy...while everyone else found it hilarious, Eric did not.

Then we went and saw “All’s Well That Ends Well” by the duck pond, which I thought was pretty good.  It got really cold as soon as the sun went down and Dario, the Solar guy from Portugal, felt really bad and gave me his jacket to cure (as he put it) my “chicken pimples”.  Chicken pimples >> goose bumps.

A picture of the play that someone else took:

Thursday/INDIAN FOOD DAY!

For my part of the meal I had to grind up some cashews to make a paste, but there wasn't a nut grinder to check out at the front desk; instead, they suggested using a hammer and the cutting board, so off I went.

I'm sure my neighbors love me now.

Chris displaying his super knife skillz.  My fingers are thankful.

Eric came along and helped us make rice...we'd only done it in normal pots and pans and had no idea how to use a rice cooker.  He then proceeded to make chicken curry.

Nick came to visit, bring coffee, and otherwise do absolutely nothing, though I don't think more people would've fit into the kitchen anyway.  Of course if I'd just biked more than 20 miles I doubt I'd want to cook, either.

Everyone enjoying (or pretending to enjoy?) Chickens Biryani, Makhani, and Curry.  I made Makhani and was pretty pleased with the result, especially as I'm not the greatest cook...

Rob and Keara dropped by, but Keara's a vegetarian and there was kind of an oops/awkward moment.

Then some of us got ice cream at the Pickle Barrel for dessert, and because we're either idiots or masochists, we decided to do another puzzle.

Puzzle pile of doom!

This time we set a bedtime of midnight and left the puzzle unfinished in the hallway.  I haven't actually learned of its fate yet, but Johnny, the RA, assured us that it would probably be fine because the custodian was very lazy.

This school has the worst sprinkler systems ever.  I could write a paper on it, but basically it is bad because

1.  They are sidewalk waterers.  Enough said.

2.  The grass gets watered both during the middle of the day - when the water will evaporate - and during the evening - which leaves grass prone to mildew, disease, etc.

3.  They give a small amount of water to each patch daily, ensuring that the root system sucks.

4.  The system has no regard to whether it is currently raining or has recently rained.  They're on every day rain or shine.  Seeing as a week ago Bozeman was at 300% of their average rainfall for June, you'd think that maybe they would tone the watering down a little...

As for the REU'S, it's become our new hobby to think of reasons to hate the sprinkler system.  We're strange people, I guess.

A Mountain of Photos

Friday Night

The solar group (minus Keara) and I walked to downtown Bozeman for pizza.  There was an ordeal with the check because there were a lot of us and some people didn’t bring cash...it was a mess.  Some good came out of it though, because Eric and I got to make all kinds of jokes about this article:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52324

The rest of the solars went to see a movie but I came back here and traded music with Robbie, Chris, and Austin.  Bedtime was early because of...

Mountain Climbing on Saturday!  

Just a warning, I took a lot of pictures.  We split up into a few cars and made our way to Middle Cottonwood Canyon.

On the way to the trailhead.

We had to cross the creek (multiple creeks?) dozens of times.  The water was frigid, too, being snowmelt and all.  I wore my boots so I could just stomp through, but most people wore tennis shoes and got to rock-hop.  Or have wet feet.

We had a snack break in this meadow.

And then...it got snowy.

And it only got snowier.

Finally we were wading through calf-deep snow and decided to call it quits because no one was anticipating snow, at least until we got closer to the summit.  One of the professors found a rocky outcropping and it was decided that we should have lunch there and then turn back.  I'm pretty sure he meant the rocks in the foreground of the picture...

But we kind of got overly ambitious....

And chose a picnic spot much higher than that.

Nick's up there in the corner...I'm not titling the camera or anything, by the way.  It was quite a vertical experience.  The picture below is looking down at Rob and Austin

Then the fun part!  We had to get back down.

Rather than climb down all the rocks we climbed up we found a rock-less part of the hill.  Unfortunately, this meant that there was absolutely no footing and we pretty much ended up sliding on our butts the entire way down.  Nick is about to pave the way in the photo above, I'm kind of sad I didn't catch that.  I did get the aftermath (we all ended up sliding down the path that Nick blazed and all ended up dogpiled at the base of this tree) below.

Actually, I lied.  Austin (below) fared much better than the rest of us.

So after being cold and snowy and wet we made our way back to Roskie...nice scenery...

This momma duck hated our guts.

Speaking of guts and gross things, I got lovely bloody blisters.  You probably shouldn't check this out if you're squeamish.

Everyone split and cleaned up for a while, and then later I hung around with some people and watched Ocean’s 11 in Jenna’s room.

Sunday

Before the day even started it was designated as a lazy day.  A group of us woke up, got donuts from the Donut Man next to Roskie - best donuts ever - and had breakfast at the duck pond.  Later I walked to the Gallatin Valley Mall to get a camera cord but instead got a memory card adapter because no one in the universe has a cord that will fit my camera.  The walk was nice - about a mile and a half, wonderful weather.

Later I got Nick to add some air to my bike's tires, and from there it progressed to looking at the gears...brakes...kickstand...you know how bike nerds are.  I should have known that a tune-up was inevitable.  It’s like that 'If you Give a Mouse a Cookie' book.

Riding through Roskie.

Oh yeah, and the parking lot has been turned into Camperland.

Fixin'

I now have neighbors, which is sad.  It’s also really hilarious because they’re all middle aged women here for some leadership retreat.  They’re so loud!  I thought that the stereotype was that you got quieter as you got older?

Today

I had a pretty standard day: go to lab at 9, SUB at noon, come back here around five.  After work I lounged around in the sunshine, because the weather is fantastic!

My Eyes Huuuuurt

It's the computer's fault.  I got a memory card adapter and updated this post with pictures!


In lab:
I ended up doing battle with a spectrum all afternoon and got it to fit perfectly, but it had nine layers. So today's project has been smushing layers together and sticking my tongue out at them when they mess up what I already have.


In Bozeman:
I've decided that the two groups should hang out more, because

1. Why not
2. Everyone will have a better time
3. It's annoying to split your time between two (or more) camps

Unfortunately the CM group is rather shy so it takes some effort for this to happen. Overall, though, social life is improving for REU's everywhere...

Tuesday the Solars (minus Keira, the Solar recluse) decided to see a late screening of Kung-Fu Panda. Normally I'm not one for movies but in this instance the movie wasn't really the point. Three CM people were rounded up and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Wednesday it got quite snowy.

Later that day I took Jenna (Solar) and Chris (CM) to Colombo's pizza where Orion and some of his friends were. Sadly Chris is from the Chicago area and is spoiled by the pizza there. Oh well. We also decided that since there is no Indian food within two hours of Bozeman, we should try to make some one evening. (This could be very, very good or very, very bad.) I think we've gotten a few more people onto the project since then.

It was Eric's 21st Thursday and we've turned it into a three-day event in the name of making up excuses to have fun. Wednesday night Nick and I traded music...

 

Look, our computers are pals!

...and basically nerded out until midnight, at which point Nick and Eric split Eric's first legal beer.

 

You have to be in your room to drink, so...just in case.

Nick found out that I hate beer and has made it his personal mission to find one that I'll like...good luck? Yesterday, the actual day of Eric's birth, we took over the kitchen and game room and made lemon cupcakes with chocolate icing for all of the REU's. The entire solar crew showed up and some CM came out of hiding...I got Rob and Chris to go without much effort and then we went on a reconnaissance mission for Austin and Andrew. The latter refused to cross the threshold of his room, so we just brought him up a cupcake. The rest of us played foosball, sat around, and got cupcake crumbs and sprinkles everywhere. Hurrah for intermingling!

Tonight we're all going out for dinner downtown (to an establishment of Eric's choosing) at six, tomorrow's a hike and then I think some folk are going to bars in evening, and I guess I'll report on that when I get some downtime.

Speaking of downtime pursuits, I found out that the creative arts and architecture library is right beside the dorms...which means a ton of urban planning and art books for me. For now two giant tomes containing the works of two of my favorite artists (Aubrey Beardsley and Yoshitoshi) are gracing the top of my fridge - ironically, my bookshelves are filled with food.

Woo!

It looks pretty outside and it's supposed to hit 70 today!  *mini dance*

A real post later...probably when SIMNRA is about to burn my eyes out or something.

Wrong on Two Counts...

One, the post-doc I'm working for spells his name Hui, but everyone in the lab pronounces it exactly like "Hugh."  Oops.   I suppose Hui is the new Hugh.

Two, in lab I get to do way more than I thought I got to do, although I still have to interpret results:

Isn't it pretty?  (The back part is impossible to fit with the program...they told me not to even try.)  This was my 'trial run' and I guess I passed, because all Hui said was "Ok, tomorrow we'll start you on some real stuff."

Other than learning new computer simulation programs I've been learning about the exquisite art of knob-turning.  The key to running a Van de Graaf accelerator is knowing which knob to turn when, while the key to collecting data is knowing what buttons to push when.  The second part I have down pat, the first...not so much.  My knob-turning notes are two pages long...it would seem that there are a lot of subtleties to knob-turning.

In other news, the people running the dorm must have gotten some sense knocked into them, because I came in this afternoon to a funny smell...only to find that the heat had been turned on!  Yay!  I won't have to sleep with my coat on after all.

More Weather-Bashing

Hope you guys are enjoying the heat in KY (or TN, etc.), because it's freezing here. Or, more specifically, it's 43 with wind and rain here. Though tonight's forecast is: Rain and snow showers this evening, becoming all snow overnight. Low around 30F.

Yummy. On the upside, according to Bozemanites this is unusual for June.

Past Week Rundown.

For anyone who hasn't gotten news on the first week here...

Monday:  Guh.  Plane, wait, plane, wait, wait, plane...ski lodge?  The airport in Bozeman looks like a ski lodge!  The weather was cold and rainy, and it hasn't really gotten better since then.  They didn't have me on the list to get a room (bureaucratic error?), so they threw me up on the 7th floor in a single room with no one around me.  Not bad, really, until I saw the other peoples' rooms and now I feel gypped - their rooms are HUGE!  On the other hand, it would probably be even colder than it already is if my room were any larger...the heat has been turned off for the summer, even though it snowed on me yesterday...

Tuesday:  I got to meet the people in my lab and learn what felt like everything about what every person in there was doing.  I also got properly "oriented" and got my Cat Card, which is really just a fancy name for student card.  The photo turned out really well.  I expressed my surprise at this (Well really, do pictures like that ever turn out?  No.) and the photo-lady got very offended at the thought of her taking a bad photo.  'Twas funny.  I also got a GIANT stack of reading that I still haven't finished from Dr. Smith and Hugh, and since I hadn't met anyone to hang out with yet, spent the rest of the day reading.

Wednesday:  The two students who are in my grade in the lab showed up today...and their names?  Ryan and Orion.  If this wasn't bad enough, someone else in the lab is named Brian...  The rest of the day was pretty much readings, meetings, and taking notes on what we're to be doing.  While checking my mail the department secretary (who already knew my name, amazing!), upon hearing that I hadn't met my REU group yet, hauled me off to meet the Solar kids who were in the computer lab down the hall.  So I met the other physics group, but not mine.  Fortunately there was an REU Mixer that evening and the Solar kids invited me to go along with them, so there I got to meet my own group.  And my group?  They're really, really, really shy.  Of course, I'm the only girl, so maybe that's part of it?  *shrug*

Thursday:  More meetings and readings in the lab department.  Lunch in the SUB with the Solar kids, and the evening was spent with Solars Nick, Jenna, and Jacob...we got ice cream and just kind of sat around enjoying the 10 minutes of sunshine that occurred.

Friday:  The three seniors in the lab got to do a lab!  During lunch break I bought my bike for the summer.  After lab Orion invited everyone to his house across the street for turkey - 26 pounds of turkey!  According to Ryan "the best food in Bozeman" is to be found at this fellow's house, so hopefully more turkey-like evenings happen, because it was indeed good.  He also drives an Outback, and I swear, every third car in Bozeman is an Outback.  It's insane.  Nick (above) has a game called "count the Outbacks" that he plays on the way to class.  I should really start playing.

Saturday:  I was supposed to go on a hike with my group (CM) but I slept through my alarm clock.  Since that never happens I guess I was extremely tired...good that I didn't go, then?  I found a place that has good espresso, got snowed upon on my way back, and ran into some of the guys who went on the hike in the dorms.  So we went to lunch, then downtown to check that out, and then to get groceries - one of them (Chris) has a car, nice to have in the terrible weather up here.  (The other guy on this little adventure was named Rob.)  Chris neglected to mention that it was his birthday - Facebook told on him - so later I made birthday brownies and we all sat around watching Flight of the Conchords until our EST-programmed brains could stay awake no longer.

Today:  Not too much happened...more reading, talking to Aaron and John for a while...Aaron was telling me about seeing the Carolina Chocolate Drops in Morehead yesterday (so sad I missed them!) and later John was trying to figure out what dates to come visit.  The Solar kids came back from Yellowstone so I visited Jenna and Krista on the 4th floor, where there was a tent hanging out in the hallway.  It's really funny because that particular hallway is painted with a mural of a Montana landscape, so it's like they're just pretending to camp.  I dunno, maybe you have to see it.