Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Dust off the cobwebs

Been awhile eh? I don't know why that is. Maybe it happens to all (pseudo)writers, but I just hit this dry spell where I had nothing to talk about, nothing interesting seemed to be happening, and I had worse joke drought than the Great Depression.

So the burning question in the internets mind is what HAVE I been up to? (or WHAT have I been up to, depending on inflection...). Well the answer is a lot, a whole lot (though I've never heard anyone say a semilot, or a hemilot or a quarter lot, so a whole lot maybe isn't as descriptive as we all think).
http://www.bandelier.national-park.com/images/bandelier.jpg
I live here!

For starters I'm working at Los Alamos National Lab in Los Alamos, NM. Fortunately, it's a job I enjoy as I get to travel to different places and do experiments, and living in the desert is a very new experience for me. Unfortunately there are lots of rules about writing about my job, one being anything I write about the lab has to go through classified security to make sure I'm not saying something I shouldn't be, so I can't talk to much about it. (but that's ok, it's not that interesting to the general masses anyway).

I have been on a bit of an outdoor knack lately, and as I find myself window shopping REI catalogs (online, so I guess it's still "window shopping"! ok ok bad joke) I realize that being outside actually makes me really happy. You'd never guess it from my eggshell complexion and the physical build of a cadaver, but being outside resonates with something deep inside me. Maybe it's the trancendentalism from high school bubbling back up in my thoughts as I imagine living out in the wilderness. There's something comforting about the wild, it feels honest. It doesn't care if you planned to go hiking, if it's going to rain it will rain. And maybe that's what I like about it, I like feeling powerless because it means I might as well not even worry about it. Nature will do as it pleases regardless of how polite or polished I look, or how strangely I talk. It's freedom at it's finest.

Unfortunately, I've already had my last weekend at Los Alamos, and in 3 short days I'll start the craziest travel itenerary I can imagine. I'll be several places in California (mostly around the Bay area)for two weeks, a trip to Arkansas for my sister's wedding, back to Los Alamos for a week, then back to California for a leisure visit, then back to Pearland to visit my family for a week, then back to Boston. I'll be living out of a suitcase for about a month, racking up frequent flier miles and commiting the airport security dance to muscle memory (at this point I can probably do it without exchanging a single word or look to the TSA, which frankly is an idea that makes me smile).

In the spare time I do have I've been building my cooking skills and recipe box, and working on some (unsurprisingly) geeky projects that involve programming, mountain dew, and late nights. I have too many ideas to even begin to be able to accomplish them, but some of the stuff I'm working on include:

  • A grocery optimizing program.
  • A networked door lock for my room at school. (unlockable with my phone!)
  • using twitter to control things like lighting, sound, etc. in my room at school.
  • An iPhone app (I'm a developer now!) that will make multiple website logon easier.
  • Learning Dvorak (way better way to type. Google it)
So I've got my work cut out for me in front of the keyboard and screen, but hey that's what layovers are for right?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

:: mouth hanging open ::

Michelle said...

You're the worst for saying that nothing interesting happened to you before July. Hello!!! Our amazing Oregon trip??? Have you forgotten how much you want to move to Oregon?