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The holiday weekend is over. I got stuck on ME101 and Ge108 this morning, so I spent the rest of the day working on my Ge112 presentation. It’s not very good. Sediment transport laws just really do not warrant an hour-long discussion.

We went to worship at Holliston United Methodist Church this morning. The congregation is pretty elderly, so we felt a little out of place, but it was a nice service with nice people. The pastor is pretty cool. The pianist is AWESOME. Holy cow.

Ben and I went out to do a little Christmas shopping…well, that’s what he told me, anyway. We went to Best Buy and Ben just wanted to play with laptops the whole time. :) Then we went to have a quick dinner at a place called Robin’s, and it has morphed into a BBQ RESTAURANT!!! Oh my goodness!!! It was SO good. We split the “Garbage Can Lid” which turned out to be enough food for dinner plus another two meals. Great sauce, tender meat, excellent fries, all-you-can-eat peanuts, and great staff. I recommend it. We’ll be regulars. Who’da thunk it was right under our noses?

I wrote my Ge112 presentation today, but I might not be done because I don’t know if it’s actually an hour long yet since I haven’t practiced it.

I had fun today too though!!!

I went to PetCo and took home 17 new fish! They all look healthy and I they were priced very reasonably. (If you knew what to look for. $1.69 Plecos – good deal. $7.59 2″ Clown Loaches – not so good.) I vacummed the tank, too. It looks great. Those critters are eating a LOT nowadays, though! But who doesn’t love brine shrimp and bloodworms?

More work, then I made cookies! Chocolate chip and Grandma Lane’s crescent cookies. Then Ben took over the kitchen and made “Green Trees” (spritz cookies) while I wrapped presents.

Then some more work (my next programming assignment, computational flow around an elbow), then Ben and I set up a little studio and photographed my minerals. They look really neat with the macro. You can see so much more than you can with your naked eye, and you don’t have to squint through a hand lens, either. I want to make a webpage of them. Maybe over Christmas.

This is sodalite.

Here’s what I spent a good 16-20 hours working on and finally finished yesterday night:

Isn’t it pretty?

Seriously. I woke up at 11 yesterday, watched Santa in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and then worked on my dumb program until it was time to get showered and ready to go over to Will and Amy’s. We had a scrumptious feast at their place, came home, and I worked on my program until 10:30 or so when I FINALLY finished it. Whew.

Today I need to write that hour-long presentation for Ge112. This is turning out to be a pretty miserable Thanksgiving. At least I’m giving my presentation on Monday, though, so once that’s over I can relax a little. (Well, “relax” and do my second programming assignment :P). Of course, I have NINE HOURS of class for Ge112 next week so that I can listen to everybody else’s presentations, which I think is way over the top. I want to pick out a Christmas tree when the shop opens and I’m not even sure I’ll be able to escape school in the daylight! Arrgghh!

I gracefully slipped on the bottom stair yesterday, the one with wood but no carpet, and fell on my butt and now it hurts to sit on my left butt cheek. Ouie.

I spent today in class and then working on my fluids homeworks. Chris asked in class how long it took everybody else — they said 5-6 hours. I’d say I’m pushing 12 or 15, and I’m not done yet. Sigh.

Dad spent the whole day here! It was great to see him again. I wish I lived closer; I would like to spend more time with my family. My dad is a happy, very curious guy.

He came over here at 10:30 after spending the night at the Hilton and we headed over to Jewel Tunnel Imports, a gem and mineral warehouse that generously hosts an open house for Caltech each year. I return, they get lots of business and maybe some geology expertise. I thought it might be kind of boring for Dad and Ben, but apparantly not — we were having so much fun browsing the storehouse of pretty rocks that Ben had to remind us to each lunch, and we came back for a couple hours afterwards. I added a bunch of really neat rocks to my collection. Yay!

As soon as I have time (Christmas? Next year? After candidacy?) I want to take macro photographs of all my rocks and display them on the web. I bet you’re all really eager to visit my virtual rock collection :)

Update on Nepal: Jean-Philippe mentioned “political unrest” in the area, but today this guy in the engineering department who went skiing in Nepal responded to our request for information and called it a “civil war” but said “they seem to leave tourists alone”. Maybe we should sort this out?

After Dad left, I tried in vain to install Matlab on my computers. The folks at Matlab did a really bad job of porting Matlab over to OS/X and I couldn’t even get it to run. I could’ve played with it longer but I was afraid I would mess up my new computer. Don’t want to do that! Well, poopy on the Matlab people — I’m going to write my code in Scheme! I bet I’ll be the only one doing THAT on my fluid mechanics assignment! Ben’s being super helpful (he teaches CS1, which I audited most of this term, in Scheme) so hopefully I won’t get dreadfully stuck!

I’m hoping to go to bed early tonight and start writing that code tomorrow!

Dad came today! Yay! We grilled steak because since my sister went vegan, he hasn’t been able to meet his red meat quota. We finished off the potatoes au gratin, too. Mmm, good! Then we played with Chaco over on the North Field — he was bouncing off the walls today!

More fun on my computer today. I love it!

Evenings in late November have a habit of taking a bad day and making it really, really good.

A year ago yesterday, I came from from geology lab exhausted. Lab was hard, I still had homework, and I was getting a cold. Ben and I were suppossed to go skiing for the weekend and I knew I’d have to cancel.

Ben asked me to come outside with him…I thought he wanted me to pick up doggie droppings, and I wasn’t terribly excited about it. He assured me that it wasn’t a poo-patrol mission. We wandered off the porch and admired the moon while we dodged the unusually constant stream of people pulling into the black hole that was our parking lot. After the visitors finally finished their fifteen-bazillion-point-K-turns and left us along again, Ben released me from his hug, got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife! And he gave me this ring, which I still haven’t stopped staring at!

Yesterday was the official anniversary of Ben’s proposal. We didn’t plan on celebrating, but Sam was here for Ae160, so she and Dan joined us for a steak dinner. Ben cooked the whole thing, and even set the table up with wine and a centerpiece. It was great!

But that wasn’t this year’s bad day turned awesome. Today was a bummer (see below). And that was BEFORE lab; after my computer problems, I spent five hours doing a painstaking geology lab that I was really bad at.

Then I came home and Ben was making me dinner…and he listened to all my complaining and offered to help with my programming (no DrScheme required)…and he and I talked to my mom about Christmas arrangements…and then I came upstairs to check my email.

And there, sitting on my desk, was a 20″ Apple cinema display.

NOTHING could be better than that. Or so you think. I gawked over the display and Ben had this funny smile on his face…and then I realized that below the desk was a brand new PowerMac G5!!!!

Oh my goodness!!!

Santa couldn’t figure out how to get them to South Carolina, he explained, and the elves found a really good deal at Caltech Wired and weren’t sure they could keep the boxes a secret another month…no complaints here.

Wow.