Here's to you, Mom!

I know that I've been away from home too long when at every meal I try to add as many vegetables and non-meat protein items into one big plate of nonsense in hopes of it tasting like something my mom would make. Seriously, I didn't ever think I would miss the random food my mom made delicious, but I do.

Oh, but good news- walmart carries veggie corn dogs. The world is good again!

Friday Nights as an Oceanographer

5:00pm -- help the barnacle grad student carry some algae across campus in very scientific looking large beakers.

8:30pm -- drive to pier on Indian River Lagoon, prepared with long stick for disturbing plankton. Twinkling glowstick of microscopic miracle drifters.

8:55pm -- walk back to the car and find many jelly fish laying on the pier, ready to be poked. Upon touching they light up. Little lightening bolts of sadness as they wither away on the dock... but none-the-less, amazing.

9:15pm -- watch the moon rise over the ocean.

I love the whole world.

This is who I've spent the past 4 hours with!

what else would I be doing on a wednesday night?

Dear Ocean,
You are amazing!
I just witnessed bioluminescence at its finest. I found another HippieNerd at this tech school and we went out to the indian river lagoon, walked out on a pier, and stirred the great salty lagoon with a stick ... or I'd like to call it a "magical wand of glowing plankton." Because that's what it was. Pyrodinium is blooming in the lagoon right now, and it's crazy how not more people want to witness this fine event. All in all, a great study break.
love,
whitney!

Cross Your Fingers!

Dear Ocean,

I know Harmful Algal Blooms probably aren't that great, but it'd be really awesome if there was one this fall! At our lab meeting today for my work-study this was brought to our attention that there's some cool research to be done about the affects Karenia brevis (sp?) has on the native species of Barnacles here versus the newly invasive Megabalanus coccopoma (sp?) barnacles. It could be pretty interesting, even if that means we won't really be able to go to the beach without coughing up a lung.

Unfortunately, the engineers (everyone) on my floor aren't really interested in going out late tonight to see the Pyrodinium (sp?) that's in the water right now. It's supposed to be pretty good at bioluminescing, which should be reason enough for anyone to want to see it! I'll have to work on those ignorant engineers some more.

Beyond all that I managed to pass my chem exam without a calculator, survive two weeks without doing laundry, order pizza to be delivered to a pool, get bitten by a crab at the beach, "make" the "dance" team, sleep through a class, tow for plankton in the lagoon, go rock climbing, and cooked noodles in a microwave. Isn't that what college is all about?

love,
whitney!

A little bit of an update

Dear Ocean,

Wednesday evening I went sailing instead of going to the sailing club meeting. So perfect. It was a very windy overcast wannabe stormy evening and I saw decemberist Tshirt kid outside of the DMES picnic.
"hey are you going to the sailing meeting in a half hour?"
"....yeah.... (sort of sad yes)"
"yeah don't you just wish we could go sailing, it's so beautiful out!"
"ok, let's go."
and then we went! It was waaay fun, and we took out an "FJ" (?), I was in charge of the jib sheet, he was in charge of steering, and we only tipped over once. It was terrifying, and all I could think about was sharks, but it was so worth it!

On Thursday Dr. Johnson was receiving a couple hundred gallons of sea water to replenish the pacific tank, atlantic tank, some of the lab tanks, and the tank in the president's office. I came to help transport water, and ended up making a fool of myself in front of potential professors and colleagues. I was told to siphon water out of the fish tank, and basically long story short I ended up sucking up a huge lungfull/mouthfull of nasty fish tank salt water. And coughing up/spitting up all over. Yes.

I'm having trouble remembering what all else went on this week, but when I remember I'll tell you. Ok bye!

love,
whitney!

Physics Pajama Party (and other nerdy activities)

This should have been posted yesterday: I'm going on one hour of sleep right now because of the Physics Pajama Party that was held this morning from 2am-4am. It was a group of maybe 30-40 physics students (and me) in a classroom discussing and watching the live streaming of CERN's big opening of the new particle accelerator. And no, we are not going to die because of a black hole being created. So stop saying that! Also last night, before the "party" a conversation came up in which 4/5 of the people at the table admitted to creating their own really hard math problems and trying to solve them for fun in high school. Guess who was the fifth? me. I was too busy not doing math homework, climbing trees, jumping in lakes, and working on campaign strategies for this crazy. I went to the SAS meeting (student astronaumical society) on Monday night, which was awesome. I looked through the telescope and almost died in shock of seeing the moon up close. So spectacular. Also a bunch of nerdy work-study news, to be blogged about later!
love,
whitney!

The Library...

- is quiet
-is cold, but not too cold
-allows me to wear my smart glasses and look like I fit in
-has smart magazines
-always has a cubby for me
-is the best place to take a nap and dream of books

No one to hold hands with during the Our Father.

This morning as I was walking "home" (I can't get used to that yet) from church there was a building with a sign outside (it's address was 211 in case you were wondering) and it said "anything unattempted remains impossible." I think you should write a song about it. I would jam out to it right now instead of re-learning limits of inverse trigonometric functions. --insert barf here--

But seriously, my interpretation was "your homework is impossible unless you attempt it". ok. fair enough. What do you think?

Reasons I love my parents

this is what came in the mail this week:
-pillow
-cheesey whale snacks
-fake snow
-sweet martha's cookies
-simon delivers napkins
-sweatshirt
-deck of cards from roswell, NM
-clippings from the star trib
-quotes from the office
-st. johns bible artwork postcards
-lens de-fogger
-12 boxes of gushers.

Dale Connelly, You're the best.

Here's the story:

It's 6:20 am. I am studying. I am also listening to the greatest radio station in the world, the current. I request a song. It is 6:21 am and Dale Connelly on the Current says "well we have a request from a Whitney! down in Melbourne, Florida, that's right, a Whitney! with an exclamation point." And let me just tell you, he pronounced my name as it should be. Similar to how this girl's brother pronounces it. And he played two songs just for me. So if you look at their playlist online, 5:21 and 5:22 am were all for me because it's raining in florida.

I love mornings.

Perspective.

Why is the world so much cooler upside down? I finally went sailing on Monday and while on this little sailboat thing I lied down on my back and let my hair drag through the water and watched the world float by upside down. It reminded me of the swingset at lake calhoun which for some reason is so much fun to watch everything upside down.
Another perspective was brought up in Intro to Space Science class. I've always thought that the stars look pretty much the same wherever you are, but I realized that I've never been to the southern hemisphere! I'm missing out on half the celestial sphere! Hopefully in the near future I will be able to experience the big dipper upside down.
A final perspective before I hit the sack: if you were to hold a dime in an extended arm towards the night sky, the amount of sky that FDR's eye is covering up (a very small amount of sky) has this much stuff packed into it. Crazy.

cheers to the enlightenment!

-whitney!

Don't Judge.

Dear ocean,
I bet you don't really have embarrassing moments. My most embarrassing moment, however, happened last week. This is how it happened...

Angela*: "Jacob*, you're Muslim, right?"
Jacob: "yeah"
Angela: "Whitney, what are you again?"
me: "mostly Norwegian...?"

That's right. I made the really stupid mistake of not knowing that Muslim means religion. I'm the sheltered suburban white catholic girl whose ignorance on world religion is astounding. Great. So I want to apologize to every Muslim in the world right now, I'm sorry for being so dumb. I really didn't mean to offend anybody and I'm sorry if I did.

love,
blondest brunette in the world.