Don't mess with the laptop

I hate it when people use my laptop. I hate it when people ask me if they can borrow my laptop for some reason or other--to look up something or to check their email/facebook/whatever. I usually let them anyway, but it drives me crazy. It's somewhat akin to someone casually asking if they can borrow my toothbrush. A big portion of my life is on my laptop: school, research, pictures, documents, email, instant messaging programs, etc. Plus it's the primary medium of communication with my boyfriend that lives across the Atlantic. Due to the timezone difference plus the fact that we both have lives, our opportunities to interact via messenger are limited. When a person that is not me ties up my laptop for some evil design, said boyfriend will almost inevitably message me and then I'm stuck waiting for whoever to finish watching their Youtube clips or check all 7 of their email accounts, or read what all their friends are doing on Facebook before I can answer him. To say the least, it's frustrating.

I use my laptop a lot. For research, recreation, writing on my blog, editing and filing photos, reading stuff online, and occasional programming. One of the things that annoys my brother is that I almost always have on the order of 10 Firefox tabs open at a given time. I'll have one open to my email so I notice when I get a new message, and also so I can gtalk, one open to google reader, one open to drudge report or some type of news site, and various others related to what I'm doing at the time. If I'm in the process of trying to find a good deal on a flight to Copenhagen I'll probably have a few tabs open to some airline search sites. If I'm reading about obscure things on wikipedia, I'll have them open in tabs. If I'm trying to learn how to install linux, I'll have some tab open to articles about that. Well, you get the idea. When I'm done with whatever task it is that I'm looking up, reading about, or working on, I'll close the tabs. The point I'm trying to reach is that every time I let someone use my computer, they close things afterward. It's annoying, and in my opinion kind of rude. It's fine if they want to open a new window, do their thing, and then close it again, but why the heck do they feel the need to completely close out of Firefox before surrendering the computer over to me again? If Firefox was already open when I passed the computer over, doesn't it make sense to leave it open? That's what I do on the rare occasions that I borrow someone else's computer, but maybe I have a more developed sense of laptop borrowing etiquette than most people.

I know this post probably just makes me sound petty and shallow, but mostly because I'm failing to properly express just how much it bothers me when someone else is on my computer, and why. In the past, so as not to seem rude, I've always said "sure!" when asked, and handed the computer over despite my mental protest/screaming. But I've decided to change that. The laptop is mine. I bought it; I use it; it has some very personal/important things stored on it. If it were broken or damaged in some way, I would be very angry and also slightly screwed since I need it for school and to do my research. I don't walk up to Nate and casually ask if I can borrow his fume hoods and chemicals that he uses in the lab so I can mess around with them for my own personal enjoyment. I don't go up to my friend in dental school and ask if I can use his dental tools. So why do I automatically assume that if someone asks me if they can use my laptop, I am under an obligation to say yes or else I'm a horrible person? There are very few, if any, instances when it is critical for someone else to use my laptop. So, from now on, I'm going to say no. If they need it to look up directions on Google Maps, or check what time a store closes, or something fairly urgent, I will do it for them. But I'm not handing it over anymore.

Has it really been a year?

More pictures

It was interesting to see the steeple lying on the ground in pieces.

I love how that desk thing is still standing.

I was sitting on this bench before the fire alarm went off.

The gym. I have many a fond memory of Munch and Mingle here.

More views of what used to be the chapel.

Update--not quite homeless anymore :)

I just found out where we will be meeting on Sundays for a while. It it called the First Church in Cambridge, Congregational U.C.C. I managed to find a couple of pictures of it, and it looks like a nice building. It was built in 1871. "The exterior of the building illustrates the early Gothic revival period while the sanctuary interior is eclectic with Victorian, Byzantine, and contemporary elements. The stained glass windows by the Tiffany, Lafarge and Cummings studios provide a colorful and lively environment." Also, it's only a couple blocks away from where our church was, and the best part is that they are keeping Longfellow Park 1st and 2nd wards together (we used to meet at the same time, but with opposite schedules so one ward had sacrament meeting first while the other was having RS/Priesthood, then we had Sunday School all together, which was awesome), so I don't have to say goodbye to all my awesome friends in 2nd ward!!! I was so happy when I heard that news!

This church is so nice to let us use their building! According to Bishop Hafen (who was the one to took us skydiving on Saturday, incidentally), "They have opened their arms to us and offered their building without reservation." So kind.

My church burned down

Well, the title really says it all. On Sunday, 40 minutes into a meeting that happened to be Stake Conference (i.e. there were many times more people than usual in the building), the fire alarm went off. We realized we could smell smoke, and exited the chapel as quickly as possible. As I walked out, I glanced up at the church and could see flames flickering out from under the eaves. Needless to say, this expedited my evacuation quite effectively. Before I knew it, the 300+ people that had been in the building were gathered on the lawn watching in shock as smoke started billowing out from under the roof, from the ventilation grates in the steeple, and the attic.

I heard sirens and the first of what would eventually become over 10 firetrucks arrived on the scene. At this point I thought they would just hook up the hoses, spray the roof, put out the fire, and all would be good. It was not to be. Apparently the fire was in the attic which has very limited access. Firemen went into the building to try to fight the fire, but eventually the roof started caving in and they had to evacuate again. We watched as the entire roof caught fire and flared up. The roof collapsed on the chapel and we could see through the windows the massive flames incinerating the exact area I had been sitting less than half an hour before. Smoke was everywhere. Sirens were blaring. Firefighters were running around. Passers-by were stopping to stare. Many members such as I that has just been inside the church were standing there, shocked, not knowing what to say or do. I remember at one point a member of the Quaker church which is across from ours came up to me to offer condolences. She told me "We're praying for you," and I think I mumbled a "thanks." In retrospect I wish I had spoken to her more at length, but at the time I was too much in a state of shock and disbelief to really even comprehend what she was saying to me. It was rather cold and overcast, and I was standing there in a dress, with no jacket, freezing, and shivering uncontrollably. We couldn't go home because fire trucks were blocking my roommate's car. After about an hour I ran into my friend Rob who offered me his jacket, and that helped a bit.

A couple hours later the fire was contained and on its way to being put out. Some of the firemen went into the Institute Library--which was on the opposite side of the church from the chapel and sustained the least fire damage--and started pulling out books. Who knew we had so many books. Most of them were water damaged from the fire hoses. The Quakers offered their basement for storage, and we soon formed a line across the street and grass and begin passing stacks of books, bucket-brigade style, from the sodden pile the firemen were rescuing to the basement of the Quaker church. After a couple hours of this, the last book was passed down the line, and we cheered. Who knew the institute library was so large.

One of the awesome things is that the huge painting of Christ and the rich young man that hung in the foyer was miraculously undamaged by the fire. When two firemen exited carrying it between them, a cheer erupted from everyone present.

Words cannot really express what it felt like to witness this scene. And, though a picture is worth a thousand words, the photos fail to do it justice either. I do have a short video clip I made with my camera which does a better job of reminding me of the experience.

I must have been much more worn out--both physically and emotionally--than I realized, because when I finally made it home that evening I slept for 12 hours straight.

Although I kept telling myself "It's just a building" and I am extremely grateful that everyone made it out safely, it's still a little rough feeling displaced, and having no church "home." Having attended that building since I arrived in Boston, I had grown rather fond of it. It was also, apparently, the oldest LDS chapel in New England. However, as Nate pointed out, it's comforting to know that some things never change (see Boston Globe article, esp last sentence). I guess the building burning down is still no excuse for us singles to not get married. :)

click for more aerial shots courtesy of Matt Wall

Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane...

...or SKYDIVING, as I like to call it. :)

So, as most everyone that knows me probably is already aware, I went skydiving this past Saturday. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I will admit I was a bit nervous going into it. I didn't sleep much the night before. I kept thinking things along the lines of I'm jumping out of an airplane tomorrow! I wasn't sure what it would be like and the only reference I had to pseudo free-fall was The Rocket ride at Lagoon, and the Golden Tower ride at Tivoli in Copenhagen (which are essentially the same thing but I had to mention both of them just to throw in a reference to the fact that I used to live in Copenhagen, and I'm going to go back and live there this summer and I'll probably get a season pass to Tivoli so I can go all the time...). I like those rides and I like rollercoasters so I was pretty sure I would like skydiving. Skydiving is absolutely nothing like those rides. I still liked it.

I won't go into too much detail because then no one will read this, so I'll just give the highlights.
We met at the church at 6:30 am on Saturday (let me point out here that it took more willpower to get out of bed at 5:30 than it took to jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet). Little did I know that would be the last day the church would survive though, but that's another post entirely.

We caravaned to Pepperel and arrived at 8:15 where after some general disorganization and a lot of the people there expressing surprise at such a large group, we eventually all managed to pay, sign a waiver that stated we wouldn't sue for any reason including death, and watch a video telling us of all the things that could possibly go wrong and kill us. Yay. They only put 4 tandem jumpers in each load, so it ended up taking 5 loads to get though our entire group. Bishop Hafen jumped with a lot of the loads, but he wasn't with mine unfortunately.

I was in Group 3. After the first group had gone up, I heard someone calling my name, and came over to meet Russ--the person that I would be strapped to for the big jump. He was nice. He got me a jumpsuit, gave me a few brief instructions about how to hold out my arms, and then left to jump with group 2.

Finally it was time for my group, and I was lucky enough to be jumping with my roommate Katie, who is awesome. We got in the plane and as we started to reach altitute, everyone shifted around so the newbies like us could get clipped to our tandem jumpers. Russ was stinking hilarious and kept saying things like "[turns to another skydiver] now I can never remember, is it right clips to right, or right clips to left?" and "oh man, the strap broke, does anyone have any duct tape?!?" and "don't worry, you'll be fine, I only get paid if you survive, and I really need the money, I haven't gotten paid in a while!" Yeah, he was funny.

We were the last tandem jumpers to leave the plane, so we walked over to the door and Russ told me what we were going to do. I wasn't scared at all, which was surprising. At that point, jumping out of a moving plane that high above the ground seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. I did feel rather secure due to that fact that at that point I was now tightly strapped to a professional who knew what he was doing. He told me one more time how to pull the ripcord (yes, he let me pull my own ripcord) and then we were at the door, and then we were out of the plane.

Now you may think that free falling from 10,000 feet would be scary, but the fact is, it's not. Once you're out of the plane, there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing to hold on to and nothing to grab. When you're up that high you may be afraid of falling, but once you're already falling that fear is rather moot. You can't fall off of falling. Besides that, you don't feel a falling sensation at all. The only thing you really feel is wind. It is so peaceful and relaxing to just be falling through space, looking down at the fields and trees and grass and tiny buildings below you.

When we hit about 3700 feet Russ signaled to me to pull the ripcord, so I did, and the parachute worked, and our descent slowed to a crawl, and we slowly floated back to the ground. We were in free fall for 40 seconds (which was longer than everyone else which is awesome... we were the last ones to jump but the first to land), and then gliding down for a couple minutes more. After the parachute was deployed, there was less wind (still no falling sensation) and so we could take off the goggles and chat. At that point I realized Russ had never instructed me in the fine art of landing, so he gave me a quick tutorial. I think we did okay.

Makes it all worthwhile

One of the comments I got from a student on my TA evaluation form from last semester:

"Knows her ****. I'm half in the astronomy department now. Maybe she influenced that."

Awww.

Trekkies

Well it's the moment you've all been waiting for. Pictures we took after our little Star Trek outing. Yes, we wore these to the movie. No, no one else was dressed up but us. Sadly. It was still fun, though.

To Boldly Go...

Well, I saw the new Star Trek. It was awesome. One of the best parts is that I saw it with these two guys. And yes, I was dressed as Uhura. :)

the end of finals

For weeks the the stress and tension and anticipation had been building up. All the hard work all semester long, all the late nights, stumbling home on the last train at 1 am only to get up at 7 and go back in to school to finish assignment after endless assignment.... all the hours sitting in class, scribbling notes, reading textbooks late into the night... all the studying for midterms working through old problems again and again... trying to balance teaching, grading, and some small semblance of a social life (usually the first thing to get axed) along with cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, paying bills, eating, sleeping... all of it lead up to the final exams that could make or break one's grade. Plasma waves, dispersion relationships, plane wave solutions, linearizing, collisions, MHD, cold fluid equations, Landau damping, Hydroxy radical, rigid rotors, books from the library, studying on trains, equation sheets in a ziplock bag in the shower, falling asleep with books all over my bed, last minute cramming, whining to Dipesh, gathering fresh pencils, filling my water bottle... then suddenly it was all over. Too soon. The end. Finals taken. Anticlimax. I'm left with a feeling of emptiness and lack of direction and motivation. I didn't do nearly as well on my exam as I wanted to. It's frustrating. But moreso than the frustration is this weird feeling that I have nothing urgent to do. There's nothing keeping me awake at night. Nothing I have to finish before bed, and nothing that wakes me up in the middle of the night from stress. I can sleep when I want, and, for once, I can sleep enough. I can read books for recreation. I can watch movies. I can go to the park. Or I can sit on my bed and do nothing. And think. That's what I've been doing. It feels weird.

rant

Today I read an article entitled "First Lady Michelle Obama steps out in Lanvin sneakers and they're only $540!" Granted, the article was making fun of her a bit for wearing such pricey shoes... it went into detail about some designer, or clothing line, or something, called Lanvin, that I frankly couldn't care less about, and then explained "Dresses and strappy pumps cost upward of $1,500, while tops go for $400 to $1,000." Holy. Cow. That is more than I spend in clothes over a period of probably 5 years. I don't care how much money you have, spending $1,000 on a shirt is wrong. Seriously, there is a special place in hell for people that spend hundreds of dollars on extravagant, useless clothing purchases while people are dying all over the world from starvation and disease, kids aren't getting the education they deserve because they can't afford it, science programs need more funding... there are so many other, much more worthwhile places you could spend that money. There is nothing that can make that shirt worth 5000% more than a $20 shirt from Kohls. You want to buy nice clothes, fine. Old Navy or H&M not your style?, okay. You want to pay a little more than $20 for a shirt?, go ahead. But spending on the order of $1K per ARTICLE of clothing, not fine. Mrs. Obama's shoes were described as "suede, with grosgrain ribbon laces and metallic pink toe caps." Let me tell you what I think of those shoes after seeing the picture: hid-E-ous. I wouldn't have bought those shoes if they were on the discount rack at Marshalls for $7.99, and they fit me perfectly. They're ugly. Though, apparently they "come in denim and satin versions, and have been a brisk seller all spring." I'm willing to bet you would get nice, better-looking, and higher quality shoes if you payed about $80. I have no experience with these fancy designer, trade-in-your-firstborn type of shoes, but I doubt they are all that durable. Why should they be? If you can drop $500 on a pair of shoes, you probably won't be wearing them that long before switching to a new, trendier pair. The shoes made for us regular people have to be made well, because we will quit buying them if they keep falling apart after extended use. If I part with $40 of my hard-earned cash for a new pair of shoes, I sure as heck expect them to last over a year, with the kind of wear I put into them. The shoes I'm currently wearing I've had since a couple of months before I left for Denmark back in '07. So it's probably been about 2 years. Not only that, I wore them all around Europe on my month-long backpacking trip. I'd say they were worth the $20 I payed for them on sale at the Sports Authority.

I'm not saying everyone in the world has to buy the cheapest clothes and shop at Shopko. Some people are more into fashion and designers and all that crap than I am, and that's okay. But if you're going to pay over hundreds of dollar for one pair of shoes, can't it at least have some semblance of being worth that much?!? Seriously, those shoes are hideous. I wouldn't wear them if someone gave them to me. (unless they were really really comfortable, and then I'd wear them for working in the yard and stuff)

/rant

I love...

physics, Monet, Foucault pendulums, train rides, icebergs, Star Wars, Stonehenge, Christmas, fireworks, mathematical proofs, the night sky, soccer, meteor showers, The writings of the Apostle Paul, rain, snowflakes, hiking in the moonlight, fractals, praying mantises, pizza with egg, hugs, my bike, Chris, popsicles, Denmark, gardens, soundtracks, flowers, things that sparkle, astronomy, my family, walking in the rain, swinging on swings, Love, telling jokes (especially when people actually laugh), fresh strawberries, playing with cats, cuddling, having someone to talk to, giving gifts, 90s music, birthday parties, pictures, making friends, surprises, camping, learning new things, fine structure transitions, meeting people at the airport, having laptop parties, laughing, playing games, plasmas, singing, harvesting, fall leaves, Newton's Cradles, seals, archery, musicals, speaking Spanish, holding hands, flavored lip gloss, getting email, reading books, Star Trek, roller coasters, goldfish crackers, yepzen, exploring, hawks, stalactites, Doppler shift, my roommates, effective gravitational fields due to acceleration, spring mornings, summer nights, the periodic table of the elements, the beach, cupcakes, flags, kayaking, maps, California, socks, living on the East Coast, waking up and realizing I have a couple more hours to sleep, free stuff, getting text messages, teaching Sunday School, when strangers are nice to me, racquetball, making polymers, the sound of typing, cheesecake, my church, going for a walk, watching movies, getting mail, my nalgene bottle, waterfalls, new carpet, driving a stick, swimming, Legos, free pizza and root beer on fridays