- I just got woken up around 8:15am because my roommate next to me had both her radio and phone alarms going off. And she never seems to wake up to hit snooze on her phone alarm, so it just goes on for the two minutes or so it takes to get through the ring. (But at least she turned both off, now that there's no hope for me falling back asleep).

- When I got up to go to the bathroom, I noticed all the lights in the living room and kitchen were on. Naturally, one of my other roommates was asleep on the couch, where she has taken to sleeping this past week, and the heat was turned up to 85. The environmentalist in me screams at this, but my roommates claim that the thermostat doesn't work so you have to turn the heat up to get it to turn on. Mind you, I'm not a warm person generally (Sam can definately vouch for me on that one), but the thermostat in my room is set to 60 and I'm just dandy.

- Of course, the kitchen and dining room table are covered with dishes from yesterday's meals. Just like it is every day.

- Apparently some people weren't taught to remove their hair from the shower drain. Or the floor of the bathroom for that matter.

I miss having my own place.

Chinatown

The home of the beats

Coit Tower

Views from Telegraph Hill

Views from Telegraph Hill

Sea Lions

I can't believe it took me this long to post the pictures - this was supposed to be an easy week! Anyway, Sam's visit was great last week and we had a ton of fun and great weather for walking around San Francisco last Sunday. We walked the whole city, literally - from the Caltrain station to Fisherman's Warf, via Telegraph Hill. Definately made up for the lazy Saturday.

Today, I came home to a nice letter from Discover informing me that I forgot to pay them last month. This was naturally a total surprise to me, seeing as I distinctly remember making a trip to Sears to pay them by check at the beginning of October. Why Sears instead of just paying online? Because when my car got broken into, they stole my financial documents, including my Discover card statements, so I changed my Discover card and they didn't get it to me until mid-October, a month and a half later. So I couldn't set up bill pay through Discover until I got the card, and I couldn't write them a check earlier because I also had to wait for the checks to arrive since the guys who broke into my car also started writing fraudulent checks on my checking account and therefore I have a new one of those as well.

Apparently, the check I wrote at Sears almost a month ago was processed as paid, sent to the bank, according to my bank statement, the money was removed from my bank account and then the check was returned to Discover, leaving me with a past due notice, and 1) a $15 late fee, 2) $1.03 in finance charges (it was a small balance), and 3) a $2.06 returned check fee. Not a lot of money but truly annoying since they took until now to tell me of this, and the money has not been credited back into my bank account!

I am now off to talk to the bank in hopes that they can straighten out why the check was returned instead of being processed normally. Will it ever end?????

Update: After a few hours wasted on the phone, it looks as if the bank account is fine, they'll contact Discover to try and get the charges taken off, and hopefully they'll figure out why the check was returned in the first place soon.

Sam arrived safely on Thursday night, though I determined that San Jose's arrival area isn't the most user friendly. There were no TV screens showing arrival times for any airline other than United, and no signs indicating where different airlines arrived from, but it was ok - I happened to know which gate Jet Blue arrived at since that's where I dropped Sam off last month.

Since he's been here, we went grocery shopping (I was so busy last week, I was playing the game of how long can you live on pasta...), he got to watch my pitiful attempts to steer the sailboat with the main sail, carved pumpkins (just kididng - my roommate drew the face and I watched while Sam carved away - but I did make a pumpkin pie and am currently toasting pumpkin seeds), ate spicy chinese food, and played board games into the wee hours.

I've also been throughly catching up on sleep - after averaging ~5 hrs a night, sleeping until 11:30 was very welcome. We had set the alarm for 9 with intentions of going into the city for the day, but decided the rainy forcast didn't make that plan sound like fun, so back to bed it was. Instead, its been a lazy day with a trip to the movie theatre and some hanging out around the house, before heading over to a classmate's for a bbq.

Ever wanted to learn how to draw flow nets? I thought I already knew how, but apparently not since I spent about eight hours yesterday drawing and erasing them for my hydrogeology class. But the assignment is done and I only have two assignments due next week, which means I get to relax this weekend with Sam. I 5 hours until his flight gets in!

Until then, frisbee time - I skipped frisbee on Monday in favor of some QT with my Open Channel Flow homework, and swimming on Tuesday in favor of Hydrodynamics and reading for Privitization, so this way I won't feel like a total schlub.

Sure, I'm only starting my 4th week of classes (almost half done with the semester since its only 10 weeks), but I think I get it - weeks 1 and 3 weren't too bad, because I didn't have work due in every class. But weeks 2 and 4 suck because I have work due in every class.

I skipped frisbee today and will probably not swim this week either in favor of doing work. By Thursday, this hell will all be a fading memory. I'll be busy enjoying Sam's visit, and forget how much work I have until two weeks from now when I'll probably be in the exact same situation.

45 days until classes are over. But who's counting.

Well, I guess I couldn't expect the 85 degree weather to last forever. Last night was the first time it's rained since I've been here, and it was cloudy most of the day. Didn't matter, though, since I was at a conference most of the day, I was indoors anyway.

It was a great conference, ending on a high note last night when I heard one of the most inspiring talks about the environment ever. Terry Tamminen, Schwarzenegger's pick to run the California EPA, is one of the best speakers I've ever heard, hands down. Sadly, the result of Tamminen's inspiring speach was to make Senator Jeff Bingaman's speach the night before seem even more worthless. Its nice to know that there is someone in the government who actually thinks environmental change and sustainability is possible, and is actually doing something about it. And for a republican no less. Amazing.

I just said hi to my professor leaving the engineering building, wearing a t-shirt and towel, barefoot with goggles in hand.

- Via my mom, an amazing piece on OnPoint about the threats to reports in Iraq. If you don't have time to listen to the piece, at least read this email - who knows, maybe you have already, but I'm in school so I'm a bit out of touch with reality.

- Via Janelle, need another reason to vote for Kerry?

- And via Doonesbury, The Lone Star Iconoclast, the newspaper of Bush's hometown Crawford, TX, endorses Kerry.

- Few things give me as good a feeling as knowing that I'm on top of my work for the forseable future. Not done with my work mind you, but its totally under control. After the first week, assignments seem to have spread out a bit.

- One of the few things that makes me feel even better, though, is knowing that I'm going to see Sam in 10 days!

- I forgot to mention in my post the other day that there was tons of singing going on during the hike. And let me tell you, you havent' lived until you've heard not one but two male aero/astro engineers belting out Disney's greatest hits.

I had been debating all week if I wanted to go on a hike up at Point Reyes organized by my neighborhood (the area I live in within the dorm complex). It was going to take all day, but I decided at the last minute that I needed to escape campus, and I'm glad I did. The weather was beautiful, the scenery was great, and I got to meet some new fun people, as well as get to know a few other people I'd met previously much better. All in all, a great way to spend a Saturday.

When I was an undergrad, only went to sleep before 3am a handful of times, and if I remember correctly, they were all relating to sporting events the next morning. And I had classes at 8:30 every day. I look back with awe, wondering how I was able to survive, and whether if it called for it, would I be able to do it again. Well, let me tell you, for a woman working on three hours of sleep, who actually had trouble falling asleep last night and only hit the snooze buttion once today, I think I'm in pretty great shape. Though the woman in front of me at the coffee shop seems to think otherwise.

But tonight, there will be no need to stay up to the wee hours of the night - there will be a study session with the crew, but I have no work due tomorrow. Yep, you heard me, no work due tomorrow. That means three whole days where I have no assignments due! So forgive me while I celebrate by sleeping the night away.

Finally, after a week of walking over the huge campus (though thankfully the most painful blister healed), my bike came. In many pieces. Which I cannot put together myself since I have no bike tools. And the bike store nearby won't be able to put it together for me until Friday. And it will probably cost me as much as it did to send the bike in the first place. But at least by this weekend I should have my halfway fancy schmancy road bike back in comission.

Otherwise, my life has been pretty boring - besides a couple hour break yesterday to play some frisbee, and a couple hour break today to swim, I've been mostly doing reading, doing a geology lab, and going from feeling like I have all the time in the world to get things done to realizing there aren't as many hours in the day as I thought. I keep telling myself once my bike is ready, I'll save so much time since I won't have to leave myself 25 minutes to get to class and back, but I'm sure it won't help too much.

OK, off to finish some reading - who knew engineers actually read things?

...was spent, surprise surprise, mostly doing homework, with some assorted errands and a few moments of social activity interspersed.

Over the weekend, there was a conference for the organization, Engineers for a Sustainable World. I didn't get to as much of it as I had intended, but what I did go to was great. The best was Dr. Martin J. Fisher, cofounder of ApproTEC, a non-profit that designs affordable technology for the very poor in Kenya. They're doing great stuff - check it out.

And I did get to hang out with the other people in my program outside of work, which was fun. But mostly, I've been trying to work all weekend, with only some success. On the upside, I'm on good track to get everything done, so I'm handling the workload ok so far.

Well, I thought my schedule was set, but I realized upon talking with a friend from undergrad that I don't infact know how to use MATLAB. I know how to use Mathcad. Which doesn't help me a whole lot. But I was informed today that the MATLAB class is only 2 credits and meets at a time that doesn't conflict with my schedule, and I didn't miss much. Of course, it still means another problem set each week, but hey, when you have 3 of them already, one more isn't a big deal.

And I went to my first frisbee practice. Seems like a good group of people, and I'm not the only grad student. Am looking forward to learning better skills, so it should be fun.