And the Quantum Mechanics exam is over! No more tests or homework this week - woohoo! I'm going to get a head start on the stuff due after spring break, but still...

The Quantum exam wasn't bad - graduate Quantum is so much easier than undergrad, simply because we work strictly in abstract Hilbert space until we're ready to actually write down the wave function in function space. Basically, we're working with Dirac notation and matrices/vectors for 99% of the time. It's great! No crazy complicated WTF integrals that you get with Ψ*Ψ. Though we can't use calculators unlike some people... :P I wish we could though!

I hope no one's brain froze on that last paragraph. :D Anyway, the parents arrive for 10 days on Friday - we're really excited. It's been gorgeous here this week and I can only hope that it stays that way for next week. The daffodils are blooming and some of the flowering trees are staring to bloom, as well. The leaves are starting to peek out of their buds and there are tiny little purple flowers in the grass. I even noticed some dandelions the other day!

And I have a favor to ask of anyone who reads my blog... I'm frantically trying to find the 25th Anniversary Re-Release of the 1984 Rainbow Ponies:



If anyone happens to notice them around, could you let me know? I know some people (in the US) have seen them in KMart, but the nearest KMart is something like an hour away. I'm hoping they get released in other stores...

I've been getting some really cute and funny shots of the girls lately - I'll post those later when I can download them from the camera. I haven't had a kitty-centered post in a while! Well, I'm off to get some work done. Hope everyone in MN enjoyed the warm-up yesterday!

Actually, I had a good weekend. :D No homework was done and good times were had with friends. On Saturday, our friends Julie and Alan picked us up and took us to Royal Bavaria (a German restaurant) for my birthday. More friends - Allison, Kristen, Jeff and Matt - were waiting and beer was had by all (except the pregnant-lady)! The food was great and the company better. I was given an Appletini shot for my birthday. Yum! Unfortunately, the restaurant closes at 9:30, so we moved on to restaurant/lounge near campus known as Blu. We arrived just in time for happy hour! Woo hoo! I finally got my Guinness there. :P

Julie kidnapped me to get a manicure and pedicure on Sunday, my actual birthday. I took a picture of my toes that I'll have to post later - I'm actually in class (the one I teach), but they're watching a video. "The Universe - Secrets of the Sun"... not sure why it's a secret. o.O IT's one of those videos that I've been forbidden to watch by my dear hubby because I get frustrated when I watch them. Back on the subject, we were able to visit with the 'rents by webcam for my birthday, as well. They'll be here in 2 weeks! I'm very much looking forward to having visitors (and no, Mom, I'm not just saying that)!

Oooh, random fact - in 1988 a sun quake occurred that contained ripples that were 2 miles high and would have registered an 11.3 on the Richter scale. That's actually kind of cool. They actually recoreded the footage - it looked like a ripple on a lake. Heh.

OK, enough from me for now - I should probably pay attention to my students. :P

Yes, I'm very late with the snow pics and the snow was gone the next day. Bad me! But here is a pic of our front lawn with the snow:



As usual, school and teaching are taking up a lot of my time. Though I did get a chance to go see the Body Works exhibit at the Science Museum in OKC. I missed it in MN because I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go with me, but a friend of mine and I went last weekend. It was phenomenal - there's no way I can find the words to describe it. It took us 2 hours or so to go through it and I probably could have spent more time there. :D Just very cool.

Julie and Alan (friends of ours) got a cute chocolate lab puppy a couple weeks back and Julie brings her into the office from time to time. Of course, none of us get any work done, but that's OK. Here's Bella:



We are so getting a lab when we get a house. I was thinking about a pug first, but I was always going to get a lab. But now I'm think labs all the way. I guess we'll see...

And so my girls aren't left out, here are a couple of cute and funny pics:





Yes, that is a Silke foot. I walked into the bedroom and all I saw was a foot - it turns out she was doing her usual laying one her back, but under the covers. Minus one foot, of course. So picture this:



but under the covers. Silly kitty.

Yeah, so nothing much else is new - I hear that's a common ailment for blogs right now. I'm absolutely, positively certain that next weekend will be more entertaining...

There's really not too much going on - just school and teaching. The classes I'm taking this semester are Statistical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics and Numerical Methods in Physics and Astrophysics. Sounds fun, right? :P I'm teaching Astronomy lab, which has been interesting so far because there's no lab manual. I have to kind of make it up as I go along - the TA who taught it last semester was nice enough to leave all the exercises he did online. Unfortunately, the prof is different this semester so I can't use everything from last semester. It's still much better than teaching Physics for Life Science Majors!

Speaking of teaching, I got my teacher evaluations back from last semester and after looking at the summary sheet... well, I haven't quite gotten the guts up to read the comments from my Tuesday morning section. Man, it looks like they ripped me to shreds! Which is almost funny, considering that my Tuesday afternoon class gave me really high ratings. *scratches head* It's like night and day, though my afternoon kids were definitely much brighter and needed much less coddling than my morning class.

So that's my life right now - if anything eventful happens (aside from staying up all Saturday night due to my stupid digestive track), I'll blog some more. :)

I'm feeling the need for some bright colors and happy flowers. I blame it on the warm weather. :D Though I did see some pansies blooming next to the Physics building on campus yesterday - I'll have to bring the camera with me today.

I'm adding some pictures of the pretty purple pansies next to the Physics building:





They're still in the process of cleaning up the ice storm mess; actually, the whole town is. But the pansies are sure a bright spot! Yes, I know I'm evil yet again.

*collapses* No joking - I think I smell fried brain. I had an Applied Math exam on Tuesday and a Mechanics exam on Thursday, which translates into "I've been studying for 5 days straight". Time to decompress! I'm so glad that I have a week off!

We leave for Minnesota Monday after Jason teaches, which mean we'll get to my parents house about 1 AM. The meteorologists are tentatively placing snow on Wednesday, so it's best if we get us there before that. As it stands right now, we'll be traveling from 75 F weather to 30 F weather. That's enough weather to deal with!

It will be nice to be back in Minnesota for a while - see the fam, eat at Noodles, be able to get clothes without sales tax and go to a real grocery store. Did I mention the no tax on clothes thing? I really need some new jeans! It will also be cool to see some snow. :D I know The Boy is looking forward to it and it'd be fun to see him so excited about it.

So, not much else is happening. I'm sure I'll have more updates once we get to Minnesota. And once my brain stops sizzling.

A while back, we got invited to a Halloween party by some friends of mine from school. We're really looking forward to it, but initially had some trouble coming up with costumes that would be both affordable and doable (me without a sewing machine) in the time period before the party. Jason had an idea that made me jealous I didn't think of it first, but today we went out and got our costumes. :D Any guesses who we decided to be? As Jason pointed out in his blog, think Terry Pratchett...

Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Bueller?

We decided to go as Death and Death of Rats. Guess which one is me! :P The only sad, but laughable, thing about our costumes is that I had to go to the children's sizes to get anything to fit me. So my robe and gloves are children sizes. :/ I'm not really sure what that says about me...

The OU-Texas party was surprisingly fun - we won! We brought beer bread and dip, as well as beer. My friend's hubby and I did a tequila shot when they won and though it wasn't Petron, it wasn't too bad. It definitely wasn't Cuervo.

I've officially decided to give up the University teaching/research thing and go into pure research. I enjoy teaching, but I just can't take the stupidity of students. When I'm working harder grading their assignment than they are completing it, after basically handing them the answers on a silver platter, and and they still don't do it correctly, I give up. After several discussions with people, we're pretty sure it's the way this generation was schooled prior to coming to college, but that doesn't make me feel any better about teaching it to them. And even worse when I'm teaching a Physics lab to a bunch of pre-meds and they don't get it. It's just the basics - gravity on Earth, projectile motion, centripetal motion, conservation of energy... *headdesk* I fear for the future. But now that I've decided that research is the route for me, I can focus my attention on that and maybe get an RA next summer and teach less.

Anyway, I'll stop the rant for now. I still haven't graded the lab practicals because there's some hang-ups with the solutions, so I'll probably rant about that, too. :P

Ow. So I had a Mechanics exam at 7 PM on Wednesday night that was supposed to go until 9, even though the prof said if we needed extra time, we'd have it. So I left at 9:45 PM and I wasn't even the last one in the room. Although parts of it were difficult (ie: I had trouble getting the geometry right), I felt better about it than any of my undergrad mechanics tests. So I guess I must have learned something!

I also took a Math Methods exam Thursday at 12:30 that lasted until we were done... which for me was 3 PM. It wouldn't have taken me as long if I'd been able to use my TI-89 to find my math error in multiplying 3 3x3 matrices together, but we weren't allowed multi-line calculators. :/ I did manage to find it, but it me 30 minutes and I couldn't do the rest of the problem without that matrix being correct. Applying projection operators doesn't work so well when you have a zero vector. But I feel really good about that exam. (You can pick your jaw up off the floor now, Jim.)

So after taking the exams, I was very grateful to have today off. Yep - you read correctly. I HAVE THE DAY OFF. It turns out that the President of OU cancels classes the day before the OU-Texas game every year. They call it Texas Friday and the practically the entire state heads to Dallas for the weekend. We're actually going to an OU-Texas game party tomorrow. Talk about crazy - me at a football game party!

It also turns out that my mechanics prof will be at CERN all next week, so we don't have class. Which means I don't have class until 4 PM on Monday. It'a almost a 4-day weekend! Woo hoo! I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all that time... oh, yeah - catch up on the cleaning that has taken a backseat while studying for exams. :D And grade lab practicals, but that another story...

Wow, the last week has been crazy. Things have lined up so that I have a lot of homework due this week, but fortunately it's almost all done. I've been pretty miserable because of my allergies - the pollen counts for both ragweed and grass is in the "high" region and I'm pretty congested. Actifed is about the only thin I can take that will knock out most of my symptoms without completely knocking me out, but it still makes me pretty dazed. I'm managing, but I'll be glad when I can think clearly again. o.O

We've climbed back into the 90's again, but with some scattered showers. We had a really cool sky last night:



Even though I'm glad we weren't in the 30's like Minnesota last week, I'll be glad when we can turn the AC off for more than a couple of days. Though to be honest, I'll be really happy when the Physics building has an internal temperature warmer than 70F. I have to bring sweaters just to stay warm inside! Though here's what the girls think about the warm weather:



They are still flea-less and are due for another round of prevention tomorrow. Hopefully our flea days are over - permanently. I was very glad to hear that our vet in Minnesota was surprised to hear that they got fleas indoors as it made me feel like I wasn't a horrible kitty-mommy and did something wrong.

I hope to have something more significant to blog about at some point, but right now I'm mostly concentrating on school. But the minute something more exciting happens, I'll be sure to post. ;)

I'm so glad it's Friday - that means I actually get some sleep tonight! It's Labor Day weekend, too - though that doesn't mean I won't be here on Monday doing homework. :( At least I don't teach next week, so there's some extra time to work on it. :)

I found out this morning I've lost almost 10 pounds since moving here. *ducks tomatoes* I'm halfway to my goal - I just hope I can keep it up. I think quite a bit has to do with the heat and also our change in diet. I also haven't had nearly the digestive issues since we switched to being pescetarian, either. I know, I know... too much info.

There's a grad student picnic on Monday that I'm really looking forward to. Almost everyone I've met is really nice and it will be neat to finally meet some others who aren't on the 4th floor. I signed us up to bring veggie burgers and black bean salad. :D

Hmmm... what else is new... There really isn't much. I've been spending all day, every day at school chugging away on homework and teaching. It's finally dropping out of the 90's and into the 80's. The meteorologist actually said it might get down into the 60's tonight, so maybe we can finally turn off the AC. Though it's supposed to climb back into the 90's by early next week, so who knows. And even through all this, it still feels humid because of all the rain that's fallen this year.

So, I think that's it! I'm sure I'll have more entertaining stories after the weekend. :P

You are The Moon

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Moon is a card of magic and mystery - when prominent you know that nothing is as it seems, particularly when it concerns relationships. All logic is thrown out the window.

The Moon is all about visions and illusions, madness, genius and poetry. This is a card that has to do with sleep, and so with both dreams and nightmares. It is a scary card in that it warns that there might be hidden enemies, tricks and falsehoods. But it should also be remembered that this is a card of great creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition. You may be going through a time of emotional and mental trial; if you have any past mental problems, you must be vigilant in taking your medication but avoid drugs or alcohol, as abuse of either will cause them irreparable damage. This time however, can also result in great creativity, psychic powers, visions and insight. You can and should trust your intuition.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I can't remember if I took my medication this morning... *looks around*

For an actual update on my life as a grad student, school is going well, so far. Though I can see right now that Classical Mechanics is going to be my evil class, homework wise. It will be a tough semester, but I'm hoping that with some hard work it will turn out OK. At least it seems like the veteran grad students are very supportive of the newbies! Everyone I've met has been very nice and tolerant of my stupid questions. :D

Teaching will also be interesting - it's hard to tell how things are going after the first day, especially as students are still adding and dropping courses, so I'll have to update more on that later. It's seems to be going well so far, disregarding the fact that the IT WebCT people haven't entered any of the new TA's into the system, so I can't access any of my class info. *rolls eyes*

On the flea front, we seemed to have nipped it in the bud quite well. We still see a few stray fleas, but they're either dead or dying. Now I just have to hope that the girls didn't ingest too many...

... I found another thing I'm not so fond of in Oklahoma: the fact that your pets can get fleas even though they are strictly indoor animals. How, you ask? Well, it turns out they come in on our shoes - yes, it is as simple as walking outside. Evidently all the rain here in Oklahoma has made it a flea-happy place. So now I'm feeling oh-so-guilty for giving my babies fleas! We've spent the entire day vaccuuming, spraying everything from the carpet to the furniture and giving the kitties their first ever bath. After that, I'm allowed to say that I have the best cats on the planet - Jason and I both came through completely unscathed; no scratches whatsoever. Silke was so resigned that she even let me rinse her off by taking her in the shower with me, which was so much easier given the amount and thickness of her fur. I won't go into all the gory details, but Jason was snapping some shots:

Jasmine:





Silke:









And just to show that they're mostly recovered now:





Silke is actually sitting on my lap now, though she's still pretty wet!

On a completely off-topic, but yet lighter subject, we found a great fruit wine from St. James Winery in Missouri:



It's more of a dessert wine, but I would definitely recommend it. Especially when you have the prospect of washing all the linens, bedding and clothing that could possibly be exposed to fleas. I'm going to be doing laundry all night...

Well, I finally know what classes I'm taking and what I'm teaching this semester - and all 5 days before it all begins! I'll be taking Math Methods for Physicists, Classical Mechanics and Stellar Atmospheres for classes and I'll be teaching General Physics I lab. We had our first TA meeting this week and I can tell right now that teaching this class will be a breeze compared to the Astronomy labs I've been teaching for 2 years. We're given everything we need to teach the class, from the "this is what you need to lecture on" to the actual solutions to the labs. It was suggested we go into the labs the day before we teach to fiddle with the apparatus, but we don't have to do the labs ourselves, though I probably will. The syllabus is done for us, there are no office hours and we only have to proctor the final. I'm only teaching 2 sections, so hopefully I'll have plenty of time for my own classes and to study to pass the sections of the qualifying exams in January.

I also got into my office! There are at least 8 of us in there and it's a lot more minimalistic than I was anticipating (I think there was one computer in the whole room), but the one person I met was a 3rd year grad who was super nice and a woman to boot. :P She's the graduate liason and her desk is across from mine, so I can see not much work getting done. But she did mention that she has all the notes, work, whatever I could possibly need for both my classes and the exams. So now my building nervousness over not knowing what was going on has lessened significantly and is now just isolated to the nervousness of starting at a new school - 2 weeks earlier than I'm used to. But I'll manage, I'm sure. :D I'll see if I can snag any decent pics on Monday.

We had an adventure at the Department of Public Safety this week, which the hubby blogged about here. The car is know Oklahoma-fied and so are our licenses. The cool thing is that they print your license up right there, so you get it right away instead of waiting for it to come in the mail.

We're currently getting the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin and the meteorologists say that Hurricane Dean will hit us sometime next week - they're just waiting to see what path it takes. So far Erin has been more noise than actual rain, so I'm interested to see what Dean does. Considering they're predicting he'll hit Category 5 by the time he's projected to hit the Yucatan, it will be an interesting week...

Oklahoma is about 12.5 hours of driving - Iowa and Missouri are incredibly boring to drive through, Kansas City is crazy, but the rest of Kansas and Oklahoma were entertaining. :D The red dirt in Oklahoma was a trip - a times it's so red it's almost pink. I'll have to get some better pictures when we move down. But the OU campus is gorgeous - it really puts the U of M to shame. Though, in the U's defense, I suppose it's difficult to keep up a garden campus when it's freezing 9 months out of the year. But there are gardens everywhere at OU and we only saw a tiny bit of campus. The whole campus is probably equivalent in size to the U, but instead of being spread over 3 campuses, it's all in one, which causes it to look huge compared to the U. Anyway, here is a picture of the administration building...



... and of Boyd Street on the north side of campus.



There are some great cafes and shops along here. We ate at Louie's, the analogy to Sally's; they had great food and many different kinds of beer. They also had a fruit and cheese plate that I could see myself eating a lot. :D

We spent Saturday in Oklahoma City (OKC) seeing Bricktown, the Myriad Gardens and the OKC Memorial. A lot of pictures from the trip can be found in my photobucket here,

http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j231/starwitch78/May%20OK%20Trip/

but here are a couple of highlights:

The canal in Bricktown;



a mural in Bricktown;



and the OKC Memorial.



We were able to get an apartment at Chapel Ridge of Norman - a 3 bedroom, 2 bath for $25 less than we're paying now. We'll be signing a 15 month lease so that our in unit washer/dryer rental is free (otherwise it's $45/month)and it will also gives us a good chance to look at houses without rushing. I was also able to stop by the Physics and Astronomy department and meet the secretary, if nothing else. She seems nice, which is good because the secretary runs all! I was able to get info on what classes I'll be taking and the qualifying exam. So all that we have left to do if pack and move! Oh, yeah, and get ready for my sister's wedding on 6 Jul. ;)

So I am done with the University of Minnesota. Finals are done, classes have been passed and all TA duties have been completed. Now I'm just waiting for that single piece of paper that will make everything official. :D The Astronomy Department held a lunch on the last day, which was pretty fun, all things considered. It gave me a chance to see everyone one last time and say "good luck" to some of my colleagues I may not see again.

We gave notice on our apartment on 11 May and by 15 May we had been told the management was going to show our apartment on 19 May. Umm... I really hadn't cleaned for the last month because of the craziness with school, so I was a little, um, aggravated that they didn't give us more time. So I spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday cleaning my ass off. And we just got two more notices today that they will be showing our apartment this Thursday and next Tuesday. I don't like people coming in when I'm not here, but I guess I'll have to deal with it. Grrrr...

I've also been requested to blog about the My Little Pony (MLP) meet I went to in Wisconsin last weekend. Yes, I drove 3+ hours to attend a MLP meet in Wausau. But I had a lot of fun meeting other collectors and even made some money selling some of my extra ponies. My hubby was even more happy, because not only did I make some money, I didn't bring that much home with me. In addition to bringing back what didn't sell, I only got 4 ponies and 4 miniature (Ponyville) ponies. Oh, and a stuffed pony. :D Here's a picture of the group of us from the MLP Arena, a forum I frequent:



And just because it's shocking, this is what our hostess' dining room got converted into for the day:




This Thursday we're leaving for Oklahoma for the holiday weekend. We're finally going to get to see the city I've committed our lives to for the next 6 years. :D Though the pictures I've seen at the Oklahoma City website and OU's website paint a very pretty picture, especially of OKC's Bricktown. Anyway, we'll be driving down, so we'll be leaving early Thursday morning in the hopes we'll get down there by dinner time. We're staying with Jason's aunt (Lenore, but everyone calls her Noopy), who lives in Choctaw. She's taken Friday off, so at least we'll have someone with us who know her way around. I'm getting pretty excited - the more I hear about Oklahoma, the more I think I'm going to like it. Which I suppose is a good thing. ;)

On a couple of sad notes, we had to put my parent's dog, Kodi, to sleep last week. He got a spleenic cancer that we didn't even know about until it was too late. At least it was quick and he didn't suffer. I've spent the last 30 minutes looking through all my pics on my hard drives to find a a picture I can put up and find myself digusted that I don't have one. It appears that everything I have is on film - I really need to get a scanner. The other sad note is that my aunt, Carol, has been fighting liver and pancreatic cancer for well over a month now and was hospitalized last week. Although she improved and was sent home again, she has become increasingly ill and went back into the hospital tonight. Coicindentally, she has been placed in the same room where my uncle (her husband) passed away last December. For her sake, I hope this is the end. This is such an ugly disease and she deserves better. Here is a pic I took last holiday season:



I think that's it... I can't think of anything else and I think this has been my longest blog ever. I'll be blogging about our trip to Oklahoma next week.