My vacation adventures

I left Clemson on Wednesday at 5:40 am and drove ~11.5 hours to my grandmothers house in Port Huron. I arrived just in time to grab dinner at Duffy's in Lakeport with Grandma. We got fish and chips and then headed home to swim in the lake before the sun went down. My uncle Jim and aunt Diane showed up to swim with me. While the temperature outside was a little balmy and hot, Lake Huron was a little chilly, but felt great all the same. We spent a good 30 minutes in the water and then went in search of sea glass on the shore line. We found some great pieces, mostly white but also found a small cobalt colored piece, some green, a few brown, and a pale purple piece. We got back up to the house and added our finds to the glass display jar. Then we sat around watched the Tigers play, chatted and caught up.

The next morning I needed to go get some things from the grocery store and another battery charger for my camera as I always seem to lose them. I took Grandma along and we had a good time. When we got back I repacked my bags and was on the road by 11 am, headed to Kalkaska to drop one bag off and pick up my mom to go to the boat. Once I got home mom and I scrambled to get the bags packed and shot over to the boat. Dad motored over to the dock we loaded up and hit the bay... it was finally time to sail!

Initially the plan was to head up to Northport, MI and then on friday morning make the rest of the trip over to Charlevoix for the Red Fox Regatta, but instead gale force winds were predicted for friday so instead we just shot up the lake. We left at 4:30pm and arrived in port in Charlevoix at 11:30pm. We attempted to sail at first, but the winds were not cooperating and we motored to try and beat the incoming cold front. Here are just a few of the highlights:

- pouring down rain to start

- some wind to begin

- no wind to speak of.... sails had to come down and motor started

- removing the dingy motor to the boat while motoring

- no GPS except mine from my car (see facebook uploaded pics), Foster was not happy that we would not drive to the highlighted route

- the star gazer app from the smart phone in order to find our headings

- throwing the nautical charts in the dingy because they were rotten and smelly (not fun to sail without charts and a GPS)

- getting into port just as the skies opened up and the rain poured down soaking up through to the bone

That is only the beginning of the adventure, I will try and update more on Friday-Sunday in the morning. We are on Beaver Island and heading to the Shamrock for dinner. More gale force winds in the forecast, so we will just have to see what they bring... over and out.

Writing is my life

Well I am 2 years into my PhD at Clemson and its time for me to embark on the first big milestone, the qualifier. The past month has been spent researching, pulling articles, reading articles, and writing. I am about 50% of the way done with my writing and have about 50 more articles to pull to fill in the gaps in my literature search. My goal is to finish writing by the end of August so I can go on vacation for 2-3 weeks and return refreshed, edited, and ready to put my presentation together for my oral exam.

I will probably not blog again until I head to Michigan for vacation and then I will try and update when I am not sailing around Lake Michigan.

Wish me luck and I will try and catch up on reading all of your blogs when I can spare a few moments.

Silent treatment

So glad to find out I am back in high school all of a sudden. Apparently I made someone frustrated and they won't tell me why or what I did to frustrate them, but now it has spread to my "family" of friends and nobody will talk to me or look at me. Should we not be adults and confront or inform the person so that they know what they did and can correct it? Is that not how we learn from our mistakes?

It is super annoying and I am dealing with it. At least I now know why I have not been invited to a single event in almost a month, asked to do anything with my "friends", or even get a call or text from them. Glad we can all be grown-ups in graduate school.

Well, at least I have books to read this weekend and then lots of work to keep me busy next week. Hopefully they will come to their senses and at least start talking to me again.

I hope everyone else is having a better week than me. Guess I will just dive into work, do my own thing, and work on my patience through the Grace of God!

Uuuughhhhhh

Frustrated, annoyed, betrayed. That is how I am feeling right now. I miss my sisters, true friends, and the great times I used to have hanging out on the couch at the house, being with great friends, or chillin' with the girls.

Just needed to vent and this doesn't even come close to it, but at least I got it out there.

Hot & sticky

That's what our weather is down here. HOT! It is supposed to be 97 with a heat index of 105. Just glad that there is AC everywhere I go. Please send cool thoughts my way as I sweat away the day.

Seems that the hot weather brings in great thunderstorms, so I guess it's not all bad. Thank goodness for the relief from the high temps. It's the coolest it has been at night in over a week (73 degrees) and hopefully still dropping.

Busy week ahead

This week is going to be busy, busy, busy...

Today I start a study that is going to last 28 days. It should take the next 8 hours to set up and start. Then I have to monitor and take data at specific time points over the next 4 weeks. When I'm not in the lab this week I need to be writing my qualifier. This is a 40-50 page document that is a literature review for my PhD project and acts as the first milestone for my research and degree progress. This is exciting, but this summer is going to be all writing and reading. At least I'm hoping that it will be complete by August so that I can take a little vacation before I present my literature review.

This afternoon there is a perspective student coming in that I will be hosting for the next 2 days. Should be interesting to try and host this students while trying to get everything else done for the lab. Guess I just need to get back into multi-tasking like I used to.

Then to top it all off, I will be teaching another student how to use a piece of equipment in my lab all Tuesday afternoon, have meetings Wednesday afternoon, Wed. night and Thursday afternoon that should total about 6-7 hours of fun.

Well off to be a busy gal this week. Hope everyone is enjoying their summers. Here it is in full swing with temps in the 90's and high humidity...thank goodness for air conditioning.

Visit from my sister

Megan (my sister) is on a 6 week tour around the US and Canada visiting friends and seeing the country. She has made it all the way across the Southern United States from Phoenix, AZ to me in Central, SC. She arrived at 10pm last night and we got to catch up while she did her online class she is taking. We finally went to be about 2 am.

This morning I decided I would show them around the area and take her and her roommate around to some of the area waterfalls. We started with a visit to the Clemson campus and to my building where I work, then we headed to the Stumphouse Tunnel and Issaqueena Falls just north of Walhalla, SC.

Megan and her roommate Nicole

Issaqueena Falls
We then progressed up to Whitewater Falls on the NC/SC state line. Then back to Lake Jocassee for a swim and to chill out. Now we are headed out to Greenville to have dinner and see the sights. I will post pictures tonight!

What a great day :)

I know, I know

Sorry I have not posted in so long. It's just that the end of the semester seems to always be so hectic. Then I took a two week intensive class called Implantology, really just animal surgery for biomedical implants. It just finished up on Tuesday. So I am officially done with "real" classes until next January. This means that I now need to make great strides in research and complete my qualifier by October in order to be on track to graduate in 4 years.

So the summer has started and the humidity and heat are never ending. We have had rain every day for the last week and the forecast calls for rain for the next 5 days as well. Although I am in the south and weather is like Michigan in that it can change in 5 minutes. I hope every one's summers are off to a good start and it sounds like Michigan has gotten some nice weather as well. I'm hoping that I can get my kayak in the lake this weekend and then continue to take little treks when I get the time. Summer is finally here for me and I intend to enjoy it now that class is done!

I miss the Midwest and the clean, crisp lakes. I can't wait to get up there in the end of August/beginning of September for a vacation. I'm hoping the weather will continue to be nice through Labor Day so that I can get some sailing in. Hopefully I can also come see people on my way through! Once I know dates I can start making plans to come see people.

I miss you all! Have a great summer and I will try and update more later.

Time's a flyin'

Its already half way though February and I have no idea how I got here. It has been non stop commotion since the semester started. I feel like I am lost in school because I don't even watch TV anymore during the week and haven't caught up with shows for over 3 weeks now. I guess that is how it goes when life gets busy.

I've got my first exam this week in Experimental Statistics on Thursday night. We get a cheat sheet so it shouldn't be too bad. We have quizzes in lab every week so I am expecting the questions to be like lab. Then I have to give a 45 minute presentation to my research group on Friday in preparation of a 2 hour workshop I will be giving in Mexico on March 4th and 5th. Then I also have another presentation I have to give on March 1st and a major project outline also due that same day, of which I have yet to start due to everything else.

Classes are interesting this semester, especially my engineering education ones, and should keep me on my toes through April. Once the semester is done I'm hoping I can make some progress on my qualifying exam and get that done before the fall semester starts up.

On another note, I am finding a small amount of time to have fun. I was able to get away on Tuesday evening to go see Wicked with some of the girls. It was really good and fun to get all dressed up for a night out on the town. Then this weekend my best friend Christy came into town and I hosted a wine tasting party which was a total hit.

Well I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day and is keeping busy. Hopefully I will find more time to post once all my presentations are completed.