School, Space, and Stuff

Oh man, I’ve really been neglecting my dear readers – it’s been a while since my last post! Luckily I have plenty on which to fill you in!

Beautiful shot of the new COAS and new Quad, courtesy of my friend Johanna Petrocelli.

Beautiful shot of the new COAS and new Quad, courtesy of my friend Johanna Petrocelli.

Spring semester is well under way, and I certainly understand why they call it the “semester of death” – five 300-level EP classes together aren’t easy! I’m learning things from designing camera lenses to programming microprocessors to how to design a satellite form the ground up, and boy is it a lot of material. College always has a point where it really hits you what your major is, which is usually around the third year. The first couple still feel pretty high-schooly course-wise, with general calculus and physics, maybe delving into some advanced mechanics like solids or fluids, but overall it’s very general. Once you start taking 300-level classes like Spacecraft Systems Engineering, you really start to get a look at what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life… and you better hope you love it! Which I really do.

It’s crazy to think that I’m almost done with my third year of college. My advisor has been dropping words like “thesis” and “GRE” and I’m just like, yeah but that’s way later – except it’s not anymore! I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about grad school lately, and I think I’m going to do a PhD in Planetary Science, and have even started looking at some schools – really leaning towards UC Boulder; they have a great program, and Colorado is gorgeous. Nonetheless I still have two years left here at ERAU, so I’m trying not to get too ahead of myself.

Time does fly though, we’ve already started registering for fall classes. I’ll be taking three undergrad courses: Space Physics, Electricity and Magnetism, and Senior Design, as well as two grad courses: Advanced Planetary Science (excited for this one!) and a PhD course titled Computational Atmospheric Dynamics that my advisor teaches and talked me into taking (nervous for this one!) He says that PhD classes aren’t much harder, but he already has his PhD, so how can I really trust that? šŸ˜› Nonetheless, it’ll be good knowledge to have for when I write my thesis, which will be on computational atmospheric dynamics, so I can see why he wants me in the class.

My work in the lab is going well. I’ve been working on learning FORTRAN to make some changes to our 1D wave model (yes, people do still use FORTRAN!) The other day I was able to successfully implement a feature that allows multiple simulations to be run in a row, without having to come back and reset the parameters. For example, we can run a 1 meter wave, a 2 meter wave, and a 3 meter wave all in a row, and then just get all the results at once to compare, rather than having to go back to the lab in between just to change one number and hit start. I’m very proud that I was able to get that working – FORTRAN is a very different beast from the modern-day programming languages I’m used to working with!

My parents and I at KSC!

My parents and I at KSC on my birthday

So what else has been going on with my life in the last couple months… Well, I turned 21 in February, and celebrated by (can you guess?) a trip to KSC! My parents came down to both visit me and escape the frozen wasteland, and it was a lot of fun. We did the Cape Canaveral: Then and Now tour, which was about 3 and a half hours of bussing around to different historical buildings and launch sites. We even got to go into a couple of the intact control rooms from which they controlled some of the first manned launches! It was a very cool tour, and a very fun birthday. And totally more fun than waking up the morning after your 21st birthday and not even remembering it (though I did go at midnight on my birthday for a long island iced tea at Applebees, so I didn’t completely ignore that right of passage.)

Me with Sally the Space Hamster

Me with Sally the Space Hamster

For my birthday I got a 1/200 scale model of the Saturn V rocket from my parents, which looks gorgeous next to my 1/200 scale model of Space Shuttle Discovery. I also got a lot of birthday money in the mail, which I used to purchase a new furry hamster friend (living alone gets lonely.) Her name is Sally, named, of course, after Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and she is hilarious and adorable. I built her cage out of a plastic bin (trust me, I’m an engineer), and decorated it with lots of fun space stickers… which she keeps eating, but we’re working on that.

Some of the stickers that I have up in her cage

Some of the stickers that I have up in her cage

She likes her spaceship :)

She likes her spaceship šŸ™‚

Teaching her to eat my homework

Teaching her to eat my homework



Ā 

Obligatory picture of my boyfriend and I with Disney ears in front of the castle - that crane thing kinda ruined it though >:(

Obligatory picture of my boyfriend and I with Disney ears in front of the castle – that crane thing kinda ruined it though >:(

I also got to visit Magic Kingdom for the first time in February, and it’s name is well-deserved. It really is pretty magical, and very well-done. It was a super fun trip. I’ve also gotten to see a couple more launches in the last month – one from KSC, one from campus – and attended a really cool colloquium about weather on other planets. Planetary atmospheres are incredibly interesting, I could definitely see myself doing that for my PhD.

Me with Eric Whitacre! Composer extraordinaire

Me with Eric Whitacre! Composer extraordinaire

For those of you who don’t know me, beyond being a total space geek I’m also an avid musician. Well, used to be… my one dislike about ERAU is its lack of any music program. So, unfortunately, my saxophone sits neglected in my closet. Nonetheless, in high school I was in every possible band – music was my life (I even have a saxophone tattoo.) But I digress. Last week, my favorite band composer was in Orlando giving an informal Q&A at UCF, and I was lucky enough to get my hands on a ticket. Eric Whitacre! He’s unbelievably cool – and I told him that at the end when I got to meet him. His talk was both funny and inspiring; he told us stories of how he got inspiration for some of his pieces, and had a lot of advice for aspiring musicians. It was a fantastic evening, and really made me miss band. And I got him to sign one of my favorite band pieces. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: living so close to Orlando really presents a lot of opportunities! Because EVERYONE visits Orlando at one time or another. And it’s only about an hour drive.

Well, I guess that’s all I have for you guys for now – I’ll try to write more often, sorry about that! I’ve got some cool projects on my radar that you’ll definitely get to hear about once they get going. I’m still waiting to hear back about my internship applications to NASA and SETI, so maybe in my next entry I’ll have some good news to share. *fingers crossed*

Until next time!

And feel free to email me, I don’t bite. šŸ™‚
schroel2@my.erau.edu

Welcome to 2014!

Hello again, dear readers!

I hope you all had a great holiday. I will be blogging about my shenanigans throughout spring semester, so tune in here for that! Shall we begin?

Two days down of the “semester of death” (named so by previous generations of Engineering Physics students), although most of the classes sound less intimidating than their reputations. This semester I’m taking 15 credits, consisting of the following… My first course Monday morning is called Electro-optical Engineering, which is basically just a whole semester of optics (i.e. designing telescopes and such so that we can look at neat things in space, or really really small things.) After a three hour break, which I’ll probably spend working in my lab doing SCIENCE, my last course of the MWF day is Classical Mechanics, which I call “physics I for grown-ups.” Essentially you take all the mechanics from physics I and do the problem in the real-world rather than making assumptions, such as that a falling box is not just a single point with no air resistance, or calculating the air speed velocity of a swallow without assuming a spherical swallow in a vacuum.

Why does my EP 391 book have a lion on it? What’s electrical about a lion? Textbook covers are so random.

Tuesday/Thursday is my longer day, starting bright and early at 9:45 am (early for me) with Spacecraft Systems Engineering. This course is about every single different system of a spacecraft, such as the cooling system, power system, optics system, etc. The professor told us that we will basically be learning a new system every week, resulting in net learning of like a bajillion things – in fact I already have four pages of notes just from the first day! (Disclaimer: In college, you usually don’t get a free “get the syllabus and learn everybody’s name” day.) Next up is my junior design class, which preps us for working on our final senior design projects that will take all of next year. Those tend to be like developing a numerical model or building a small satellite or something super cool along those lines – looking forward to it! Last, but almost definitely not least, I have Microcomputers and Electronic Instrumentation, which is more circuits and electrical engineering. Most of the class is a lab where we will be building some crazy electronics.

The coolest thing about this semester is that the new building is up and running… mostly. I know my lab currently lacks a desk, and a few of my classrooms got temporarily moved because the room is missing a wall… but I’m sure everything will be sorted out soon! I spent a good chunk of time yesterday wheeling a cart of very expensive computers over from the Lehman Building – good news is I didn’t break any of them! Once all of the moving and settling in is done, I will pretty much be spending all of my time on campus in that building – every single one of my classes plus my job. I wish they’d put a cafeteria in the first floor so I wouldn’t have to leave. The building is pretty fancy schmancy though; I should’ve taken some pictures but I didn’t get around to it – sorry!

-20F with -44F windchill. And this wasn’t even the worst of it. I was certainly happy to be sitting here in Daytona that day šŸ˜›

My winter break was pretty great. I spent about 10 days back home in good ol’ Minnesota – and managed to avoid the worst of the winter weather! It got down to about -50 wind-chilll on Monday; the entire state was pretty much shut down due to the fact that you will get frostbite in 5 minutes at that temperature. Uffda. And here in Florida it was actually below zero at night, and in the high-30s/low-40s the next day – I was sitting at the mall and I heard a woman say “it’s so cold out there, it’s unbelievable.” And I’m sitting there in a t-shirt because I had just spent almost two weeks in single-degree daytime temperatures. I guess it’s all relative. Nonetheless those single-degree temperatures didn’t agree with my new-found Floridian-ism, and I arrived back home with a 102 degree fever and a nasty cough. Probably not the greatest moment of my winter break.

Our new doggie Helen šŸ™‚

Highlights of my winter break include seeing The Phantom of the Opera live in downtown Minneapolis, which was amazing! Live theater is always so great, it’s too bad it’s not a big part of our society anymore. We also got a new fur baby! She is a three-year-old rescue doggie named Helen, and is thought to be a mix of hound and terrier. She’s the sweetest doggie ever, loves to be around people and is super well-behaved. Everybody in the family has fallen in love. I’m definitely her favorite – my mom says she was whining and kept wanting to go in my room after I left. Awww.

I wanted to take her to Florida with me but the rest of my family just wouldn’t have it. I’m sure she would’ve liked it better here though because she can’t stand the cold!

 

Cooking! If I ever make smoothies and they somewhat taste like curry, this will be why.

Other winter break events included sleeping 20 hours a day, playing some Pokemon and Zelda on my 3DS, and basically just doing nothing and loving it. School is hard – it’s nice to have some time to chill and do literally nothing for a whole day. One thing I did do was attempt to make some Indian food from scratch – like actually start from spices, veggies, and water, not just cut up some chicken and add it to a jar of sauce. It actually turned out pretty good, although the spices were a bit off. I’m going to try again this weekend. That is like my crowning culinary achievement though, because usually my idea of cooking is Shake ‘n’ Bake. This took three hours, which included bawling my eyes out chopping onions, measuring a ton of different spices (and forgetting the difference between TSP and TBSP), and blending everything together into a curry in my fancy new blender. It was 11:30 PM by the time we ate – just in time for the new year!

That’s about it for my Spring semester update. This should be an eventful semester, so check back every couple weeks to read all about it! Also, my birthday is in less than a month, and I expect a present from each and every one of you.

And as always – my metaphorical email door is always open! schroel2@my.erau.edu

-Lynsey

P.S. More new doggie pictures…

Back to School and Mapping Mountains

Greetings!

I’m going to actually write a relevant blog entry this time, I promise.

Fall semester is in full swing with first midterm exams coming up soon and lots of late-night homework assignments in the rear-view. Actually, I take that back; I really haven’t had a late night. Which is odd for me… I think I’m finally learning time management skills. I’ve been really good about not starting to work at 8 pm the night before the assignment is due – a valuable lesson to say the least. I’m bracing myself for when the semester is going to hit me, but for the time being it’s been pretty manageable. *knock on wood*

I promised I’d tell you guys about the awesome classes I’m taking this semester, so I’m going to do that now. My first class of the week, bright and early at 1 pm Monday morning (I know you’re jealous) is Thermodynamics. A lot of what we’re doing so far has been review (thanks to my awesome Physics II professor for hitting thermo hard), and the concepts are pretty interesting. Exams in this class are open everything, meaning textbooks, notes, and even computers/iPads/etc! Of course with the assumption you’re not going to text your friend and ask them for the answer. I think it’s a really cool system because it’s a lot like the real world (though in the real world you actually can call your friend and ask them the answer, but that’s beside the point.) Thermo is the last class I have to get out of the way as far as Engineering Sciences, which are kind of the physical fundamental classes you have to take before they throw you in a room and expect you to design a spaceship. That being said, it’s not my favorite, but I don’t hate it either.

Monday evenings I’m taking a Master’s level software engineering class as an elective, because I’m also doing a computer science minor. It’s really neat – one of those 3 hour, once a week night classes like what your parents would take if they go back to school. Which means I am literally about 5-10 years younger than everybody else in that class. Between that and not being a software engineering major (or a grad student, for that matter), it’s a bit intimidating, but I’m not afraid of the class. It seems pretty straight forward and I’m getting to write some pretty cool programs. I’m also taking a second grad class called Numerical Methods, which is kind of a cross between MATLAB and error analysis. I’m not really sure to expect from that one, but it’s cool nonetheless, and luckily I’m not the only undergrad, as there are a few other students in the accelerated program (which is why I’m taking grad classes, if you aren’t up to speed on my other blog entries. It basically means I’m getting my BS and MS at the same time, and will graduate with both after 5 years.)

The coolest classes I’m taking this semester are Spaceflight Dynamics and Astronomy – I finally get to start learning space stuff, which is what I came here to do! And they’re really interesting. In Spaceflight we’re basically learning everything you ever wanted to know about orbits, and in astronomy it’s everything you ever wanted to know about space – we’ve already talked about the solar system, constellations, and learned phases of the moon, along with a little bit of history of astronomy. By the end of the semester I’ll know about everything from stars to black holes!

Topographical map of the Andes Mountains generated by MATLAB’s mapping toolkit.

I’m back to actually doing some cool things in SPRL, after a few weeks of reading and playing with MATLAB tools. We are working on creating topographical (elevation) maps for mountain regions – the Andes mountains at the moment – and hoping to use this elevation data to model some real-world mountain waves. More physicists just use a smoothed gaussian hill to research mountain waves, so we’re taking it one step ahead by using actual topographic data. There’s a lot of complicated math and MATLAB programming ahead, but I’m definitely looking forward to what will come of it!

With the school year back on and in full force I don’t have a lot of free time, although to be honest that’s the way I like it. Nonetheless my weekends have been pretty free (since I’m keeping ahead on my homework like a good student), so I’ve had some time to start watching Breaking Bad and frequent Red Lobster’s Endless Shrimp (coconut shrimp… mmm….) I also went ice skating last Saturday, but we were both scared so after making two laps around holding onto the edges we gave up and went to see a movie. Plus ice skating in Florida just seems wrong. In other news, I got this candle at Bath and Bodyworks Ā called “Pumpkin Pecan Waffles” and now my apartment smells ah-ma-zing.

That’s all I have for now. Tune in next week for my random ramblings about ERAU, Research, and the mysteries of life!

There weren’t very many pictures in this post, so here’s a picture I took of a moo cow from the State Fair:

-Lynsey

Simulating Giant Sound Waves on Mars

Hello, again!

Itā€™s time for another installment of ā€œa day in the life of an awesome physics student at Embry-Riddle.ā€

Well the summer is in full swing; I had my first exam on Thursday, which was also my first exam of grad school, as the class Iā€™m taking is my first masterā€™s class for the accelerated degree. I was really confident, which means I either aced the exam or bombed it – you never really know until you get your results back. Iā€™ve never taken summer classes before, but so far I think itā€™s pretty awesome. The material moves at a quick yet manageable pace, and itā€™s nice to only have one class to worry about after the last four semesters of 16-17 credits. My only complaint about summer classes is the ā€œsummerā€ part – why is it so hot outside? Itā€™s unnatural. I really wasnā€™t born to live in the south; I can handle a -20Āŗ wind-chill, but as soon as the thermometer climbs above 90Āŗ thatā€™s when I give up and hide inside. Not to mention it rains so much! (I promise I wonā€™t complain about the weather in every entry.)

Iā€™ve had a lot of free time, which is unusual for me, so itā€™s been nice. Lately Iā€™ve been learning some new acoustic guitar songs, watching old seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and leveling a blood elf warlock. And let me just take a moment to talk about how much I love living in my own apartment off campus. Everything is finally clean, unpacked, and decorated to my liking, and I can listen to loud music in any room at any time and nobody complains about my volume, musical tastes, or singing. Itā€™s great. I live only two minutes from campus, so itā€™s a nice, short commute every day. Once I figure out how to reduce my electric bill everything will be perfect!

Image of Mars’ Gale Crater from Google Earth. This location was used to generate the profile used in our acoustic wave simulations. Gale Crater was the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed last year.

My days are spent sitting up in the Lehman Buildingā€™s Space Physics Research Lab (which will henceforth be referred to as ā€œSPRLā€) working on my project for the CEDAR conference in late-June. I mentioned it briefly in the last entry, but I think I should elaborate, since thatā€™s what got me this gig as a blogger. CEDAR (which stands for “Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric regions”) is an NSF-sponsered yearly atmospheric sciences meeting that focuses on instrumentation and modeling of the middle and upper atmosphere. I am working with Dr. Snively in the Department of Physical Sciences to adapt his atmospheric wave model to Martian conditions so that we can see how atmospheric acoustic and gravity waves, which are a bit like ocean waves, but in the atmosphere, propagate on Mars in comparison to Earth (if youā€™re interested, my project abstract is here).

Some plots of relevant atmospheric data on Mars generated by the profile used in our simulations.

We are using MarsGRAM (Mars Global Reference Atomic Model) data provided by NASAā€™s Marshall Space Flight Center to specify many different properties of the atmosphere, which has proven very interesting! This data is then used to generate a profile, which essentially shows the temperature, density, pressure, etc. as you travel up through the atmosphere (itā€™s really just a big table of numbers), and then the profile is loaded into the wave dynamics model. The model produces a simulation based on some inputs, such as frequency, amplitude, etc., and we watch how the wave behaves as it moves upward.

Animation of a nonlinear acoustic wave traveling up through the Martian atmosphere. The one-dimensional simulation is laid over the two-dimensional simulation in order to determine that the results of each are valid. This wave has a frequency of 0.032 Hz, which corresponds to a wavelength of about 31 km. (Click on thumbnail to watch animation.) Note that the axes correspond to the 2-D results (and are in meters – please disregard the error in the labeling.)

This past week we successfully simulated an acoustic wave in both a one-dimensional and two-dimensional model and confirmed that the results agreed. Acoustic waves are really cool – they are essentially giant sound waves that move up through the atmosphere until the air becomes too sparse and viscous, causing them to dissipate. We’ve found that this happens really quickly on Mars compared to Earth, due to the increasing viscosity at higher altitudes. The waves we have been simulating have frequencies of about 0.03 Hz. For perspective, note that the average human can hear frequencies ranging from 20-20,000 Hz, so these waves are much larger and lower-frequency than ordinary sound waves.

The next phase of the project is to simulate two-dimensional gravity waves, which I will talk about in my next entry!

Before I close out this entry, I wanted to touch back on what I said last time about going where life takes you. I came into Riddle as an Aerospace Engineering student, but was converted to Engineering Physics after my first semester due to the fact that I love physics and space and don’t really care about designing airplanes (blasphemy, I know.) Deep down I definitely feel like an EP student, and never once regret my change. In fact, the more I go through my coursework, the more I find myself leaning towards physics and research and away from actual engineering – I took the “gauntlet” (solids, dynamics, and fluids, which are engineering sciences classes you take your sophomore year), and pretty much hated them (though I did like fluids, but that was because professor Davids is awesome!) Plus I am loving what I am doing here in SPRL. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do after Riddle, and, while my plan had always been BS then MS then Work in engineering then PhD maybe later, I am thinking more about going straight onto my PhD and getting involved in space and astrophysics research.

Tune in next week, I’ll have some really cool Mars stuff to share with y’all! (Yeah, I’m becoming a southerner. I say that now.) Be sure to email me if there’s anything you’d like me to write about Riddle, otherwise I’ll just keep rambling on about my life in every entry.

-Lynsey
schroel2@my.erau.edu

From Snow to Sunshine

Hey everyone!

I wish I knew a better way to start my first entry than with the obligatory words ā€œmy name isā€¦ā€ oh wait, there we go.

My favorite cow and signed Halestorm album.

Iā€™m Lynsey, and I think ā€œquirkyā€ is a good word to describe myself. My interests are all across the board: Iā€™m an avid musician, a lover of math and science, a gaming nerd, and I have a strange obsession with collecting cows (plastic and stuffed – not real cows.) The walls of my apartment have space shuttle posters, vinyls, and signed photographs from the cast of Star Trek (why yes, I have met George Takei), people who have actually been to space, and rock bands like Evanescence and Halestorm (bragging rights: Lzzy Hale has given me a hug.)

I was born and raised in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The state where we drink pop (not soda!), shop at the Mall of America (I even worked there for a while), and sometimes have snowstorms in May (you think Iā€™m kidding, but Iā€™m really not.) Youā€™re probably wondering what got me to move 1,500 miles south, where there are palm trees instead of pine trees and itā€™s way too hot outside. Iā€™ve just finished my second year at Riddle, but before I get into that I want to tell you the story of why I chose to come here in the first place.

In order to explain why I came to Riddle, I have to start a bit farther back. It was a cold, snowy evening in 1993ā€¦ just kidding! Anywaysā€¦ Throughout my whole life I knew where I wanted to go to college. I talked about it since at least fifth grade; I always said that someday I would go to –nope, not Embry-Riddle! But thatā€™s what makes the story all the more interesting. If you asked anybody who knew me at any point in my childhood, they would tell you I wanted to go to MIT. All through high school whenever I did something I had a constant voice in the back of my head asking, ā€œhow will this help my chances of getting in?ā€ I had a goal, and everybody knew it. I should mention that, if youā€™re reading this and thinking Iā€™m just at Riddle because I didnā€™t get in, keep reading, thatā€™s not the story.

Senior year of high school always seems so far away, and then somehow it sneaks up on you. Before you know it, itā€™s time to actually apply to the colleges youā€™ve been looking at and dreaming of attending. I worked effortlessly on my applications, applying to several big name schools. Embry-Riddle first caught my eye because I saw it listed number one for Aerospace Engineering, which was my original major. So I did a bit more research, and I thought it seemed awesome – a great backup (do you think theyā€™ll let me say that word in an admissions blog?) After taking the ACT twice, the SAT three times, and buffing my resume to glistening status, I submitted my college applications and waited. And waited. And waited. One day I got my acceptance letter from Embry-Riddle. It was definitely an exciting moment, but I was still hanging onto hope for my dream school, and didnā€™t think much of the acceptance at the time. Time passed, and my early action application to MIT got deferred to regular action. It was a set-back no doubt, but I held onto hope. Later I got my financial aid letter from Embry-Riddle, and found out that I had been awarded some pretty generous scholarships, as well as admission into the honors program. Things were suddenly falling into place in a way I hadnā€™t expected.

My obligatory picture in front of the Wright Brothers statue from when I visited campus in March 2011.

When February rolled around I was presented with the question: which school do I want to go tour? I applied to five schools – four of which were over a thousand miles away, so naturally it was a ā€œpick one tripā€ kind of deal. I had this gut feeling that I would be going to Embry-Riddle. It wasnā€™t an abandonment of my dream in any way, it was just a feeling that I canā€™t really describe; Iā€™ve felt it a couple times in my life, and theyā€™ve all been massive, defining moments. After a lot of thought, I decided on a trip to Daytona Beach to tour the campus. Long story short, thatā€™s all it took. I fell in love with the campus. I stayed overnight with one of the RAs and sat in class with her the next morning. Then my parents picked me up, and we went over to the cashierā€™s office, where I put down my tuition deposit. I was a Riddle student.

Youā€™re probably wondering if I missed a point in the story. What about MIT? Did I get in? You know what, I didnā€™t know yet. I wouldnā€™t hear back for another two weeks. But I was so sure I was at the right place and making the right decision that the word backup immediately vanished from my mind. I was so excited to start in the fall, because I had found my dream school in a place I didnā€™t even think to look. I learned a major lesson from this decision: sometimes life has a way of working out the way itā€™s supposed to, and all you have to do is follow it. I know that sounds cheesy, but itā€™s so true. I love Embry-Riddle, and I donā€™t regret my choice for a second.

Iā€™m really looking forward to sharing my Daytona Beach shenanigans with you. This summer, apart from taking a couple classes, Iā€™m spending my days in the Space Physics Research Lab as an undergraduate research assistant. My current project involves developing a model of the Martian atmosphere in order to simulate acoustic and gravity waves – Iā€™ll talk more about that in the next entry, but for the meantime, if you’re interested, you can read my conference abstract here.

Part of the living room of my new apartment, which I absolutely love!

This is my first summer here in Daytona Beach, and Iā€™m enjoying it so far (apart from the temperature, that is.) I just moved into my first apartment off-campus after two years of dorm life, and I absolutely love it. Aside from working days in the lab and taking a math class, itā€™s been nice to have some free time, as I keep pretty busy during the school year. My evenings have been essentially empty, so Iā€™ve had a chance to play some video games and get back in touch with my acoustic guitar.

Even if I may seem crazy, Iā€™m pretty friendly, so feel free to hit me up with questions, comments, fan letters, etc. Especially if there is something youā€™d like me to talk about in my next entry!

Thatā€™s all I have for now. Iā€™m still trying to think of a cool catch phrase to close with, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I think Iā€™ll go with ā€œLive long and prosper.ā€

Until next timeā€¦

-Lynsey