wtf

they don't have a movie rental place in oak ridge. srsly.

so i went ahead and got a netflix account! so pumped. i already watched the very fucked up "antichrist", a lars von trier film.

it was a solid week at the lab. i'm preparing to run another magnet experiment next week, on fathead minnows this time. we got some giant ass magnets in the mail this week. they're actually really scary because they're so strong, i was picking up small metal objects and opening drawers by accident with them.

mark and glenn and i had a short discussion about chatroulette yesterday. talk about...umm...interesting? haha. mark is going to be gone at a conference until the monday after next. that's one thing about the timing of this program...we get here right as the FY (fiscal year) for the lab is ending, so everything is little stressed and crazy trying to get projects tied up, budgets finished, traveling to different places, etc.

i made my first fully authentic asian meal last night, thanks to lin, who is awesome!

laura and sami and i are going on a quest to find an ethiopian restaurant that's apparently in knoxville right now. sami is from ethiopia, and it's apparently their new year or something today? celebration!

hmph

feeling like utter crap. i'm so glad it's a short week.

because this is the third week of the program, everyone gave a short 3-5 minute talk on their research in seminar today. it was actually pretty cool to hear about everyones' topics. the variety of presentation styles was also interesting.

something that i think is still freaking everyone out a little bit are the adults that come to our seminars. there are these older, (maybe?) post-undergrad people who are apparently in the SULI program with some of us ORSS students. but they do all the same things as us in seminar. i find it unusual that these adults are supposed to be on the same level as us and are doing the same things. all of them gave short talks, just like us.

my talk kind of sucked. i wasn't really that prepared and so it went horribly. you would think i would have learned that i have a complete inability to do anything well without overpreparing, but i guess not.

anyways. last night i went to a show in knoxville. it was a deftones show, but i went to see the support band this will destroy you. they were reaaaaal good. i cannot wait until they have a US headlining tour, though. their drummer informed me that such a tour will be happening after they tour europe, so hopefully early next year? and hopefully i can go? i'm sick of them being a support band and only have 30-45 minute sets.

the show was really the only spot of goodness for the last couple of days. everything else sucks.

shiiiiiii-

it's labor day, which = no lab.

unfortunately, this is also the day in which i discovered i had forgotten what it's like to do homework. here i am, frantically trying to remember trig identities for a calculus quiz tomorrow.

and my calc textbook hasn't come in the mail yet.

it was a good day, though. nic and i went to knoxville, bought some good books and ($70 worth of!) vinyl. we also found his perfect pressure cooker after spending waaaaay too long looking for one.

i'm feeling kind of crap now though. and tomorrow is going to be insanely busy.

week two: over

i finally completed the endless get-into-calculus-course odyssey this week. as much as it seemed like it would never happen, i am registered for calculus 1 at pellissippi state community college. i hate inflexible bureaucracies that rarely allow for exceptions to rules, grrrr.

so half of my credits from this program come from the research itself. this is equivalent to a bit more than two lawrence classes. everyone in the program also participates in a weekly seminar, which usually consists of an ORNL scientist telling us about their work or a tour of some lab facility. we also can choose to take an additional course, either one taught by the program director lori or at a nearby college. i've opted for the latter and chose to take calculus 1 as review to prepare myself for calc 2 and maybe calc 3 senior year.

i actually really like the professor who teaches my calc course. i thought, because pellissippi is a community college, that the professor would suck. he's really good. he makes calculus interesting and he's funny at the appropriate moments.

i ran my first experiment this past week! i set up the tanks on tuesday. mark and i went out to a creek behind the lab and caught a bunch of snails. he also caught two larval salamanders which are now my lab pets. i ran the experiment from wednesday morning to friday morning. from some preliminary work on the results, it looks like the snails don't give a shit about the dc magnetic field that the permanent magnets put off.

mark has ordered some more permanent magnets, some of which are twice as thick as the ones we've been using, so they'll have a stronger magnetic field. i'll probably run another trial with the snails this week using those thicker magnets. next up will be trials with the fathead minnows!

i've also been struggling with the electromagnets that produce ac fields. from some internet research and advice from glenn, it looks like it will be easier to just make our own electromagnets.

i've been really enjoying living in an apartment! i feel so grown up, haha. also, my roommates are awesome and we haven't had any problems. and for people who know me fairly well, i'm terrible at being a roommate, so this is quite the pleasant surprise.

last night, nic took lin and i to an asian market in knoxville. i bought a bunch of crazy new foods to try, mostly based on lin's awesome recommendations. i got dragon fruit and seaweed and a giant ass bag of rice. lin and i have co-ownership of a new rice cooker which i haven't had the opportunity to use yet, but i will soon!

we also had a little get together last night. everyone in the program, except one guy who was busy talking to his girlfriend on the phone, got together at one of the apartments and we all hung out. super fun. my greatest fear about this program was that everyone would be insanely nerdy and antisocial. thank goodness i was wrong! everyone is really interesting and fairly talkative.

nic tried to make fried bananas tonight. it was the most disgusting thing ever. i also played one of my vinyl records on his record player, and it sounded so gorgeous. one of my goals during my time here is to get a record player of my own.

i haven't played my clarinet once since i've gotten here. sorry mr. bell.

i have been running a ton though! it's been going so well, my legs are really cooperating with me because i've finally gotten accustomed to my new form. and i'm going to be in bomb ass shape because of how hilly the terrain is. i never really realized just how flat iowa and wisconsin are.

people have been putting up pictures and videos of cross country preseason on facebook. i miss the team so so so much. they had their first meet yesterday and it seems like it went well.

catching up

i've put off this blog post for long enough!

i arrived in oak ridge the saturday before last. it was foggy and hilly at six in the morning and my sleep-deprived mind thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. i literally could not stop laughing. this was after some mishaps with time zones and a rest stop.

when i got to rolling hills apartments, i called up lori. she's the program director and the most extraordinary ray of sunshine you'll ever meet. i also met my two roommates, lin and laura, shortly thereafter.

i spent the rest of the weekend passed out on my bed. and i occasionally ran. and ate.

monday arrived and everyone from the program (all eleven of us) met up to go to the lab and get our badges.

now, i knew pretty much nothing about oak ridge national laboratory before i got here. the place is fucking gigantic. they employ 3,000 people and usually have about as many "visitors". they have their own taxi service. and gym. and three (or maybe four?) dining facilities (that i know of).

also, because it's the government, there's an excess of both acronyms and required training protocols. it's probably one of the safest places you could ever work at. they're pretty paranoid about dangerous things happening because this was the lab where lots of work on nuclear bombs was done. you have to do training just to go anywhere outside of the visitor center.

to skip some more mundane details, i love my mentor and the research i'm working on. mark is the shit. he's super chill and likes to tell random stories. in terms of research, i spent most of last week reading and familiarizing myself with past literature. i'm picking up on some work that was done by another undergrad named julie this summer, so i also looked through her notes (which are much lighter on relevant details and quite heavy on measurements that i don't really need).

basically, mark and glenn (another aquatic ecologist) are focusing on the effects of new hydrokinetic devices on fish. these devices are smaller than a dam and take advantage of the water power produced by rivers and oceans. unfortunately, we have very little understanding of how these devices will effect individual organisms, food web structures, abiotic features, etc.

that's where i come in! the work i'm starting with is to test the effects of magnetic fields on invert and fish behavior. the hydrokinetic devices will produce electromagnetic fields, which have both an electric field and a magnetic field. the electric field can be contained by insulation, but the magnetic field can't and therefore could seriously fuck with animals that can perceive magnetic fields. so i'm putting magnetics under tanks full of certain critters and seeing if they affect distribution.

actually, i get to begin my first run-through tomorrow. i'm using a permanent magnet (which produces direct current, or DC, magnetic fields) on some snails from a creek behind the lab. this is basically a replicate of what julie has already done.

there are some kinks to be worked out. we need to look at the effects of AC fields. unfortunately, the electromagnet we're using to produce AC overheats enough to melt and crack its casing and kills fuses.

enough about research or this will be the longest post ever. tennessee is incredible. there's so much to do outside here, tons of hiking, whitewater rafting and camping. this last sunday, we went caving with one of the guys lin works with, which was a fabulous experience! apparently, tennessee is the state with the most caves. great smoky national park, the most visited park, is about an hour away.

we're also really close to knoxville, which has tons of shopping and good restaurants and live entertainment. on friday some of us went to knoxville to check out a free jazz thing. it ended up being a bust, but we wandered around and one of us found a blues band playing in some random bar and grill.

my eyes are starting to glaze over. there's so much more that has happened. turtle trapping, hey cow, calculus classes, morning car rides. i'll just pretend i'm being mysterious by not expanding on any of them though, ha!

wheeeeeeeeee

i have really limited internet right now, so i'll provide a full(er) update in the next post. hopefully soon. just know that i made it safely and am so incredibly psyched about what's been happening!

later days, readers.

if there are any of you out there.

full on prep

countdown: one week

actually, i'll be leaving for oak ridge one week from tomorrow (hopefully).

work in the lab is starting to wind down and i've been working on my presentation for our summer research symposium. i've also exerted a considerable amount of mental energy trying to figure out where all of the crap i can't take with me is going. i need to pare it down to a single carload, which isn't for easy for me to do. what can i say, i like my stuff!

i got to talk to mark a couple of days ago! he seems awesome, and super chill. we talked a little bit about hydropower and a little bit about hiking and a little bit about logistics.

that's about it. nothing too exciting.