November, Puerto Rico!

Wow, it's November already. Classes are a lot of work, but I'm making it so far. Also, I applied for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, which is pretty prestigious (and pays $30k/year as well).

More importantly, however, our research group took a trip to Puerto Rico. There's a chemistry research group at USC that we've been collaborating with for about 20 years, and every now and then we get together to talk about research. Last time was 2003 in Wyoming, but this year we made the trip to San Juan. Pretty much all expenses were covered, and we were there Friday through Monday.

The hotel had live Latin music every night.

Right outside our hotel was... THE BEACH.
The first night, we took a dip at midnight.

During the day the students gave presentations on their research.
As you can tell, it was pretty informal--no suits, no ties, and shoes were even optional.

Dinner in Old San Juan

The evenings consisted of beer pong. If you're not familiar with the game... Two teams of two people, trying to throw a ping pong ball into plastic cups of beer. If one team makes it, the other team drinks it. Some people played until 4am, and kept drinking until 6am. They were visibly hurting at the meetings at 8:30 the next morning, to say the least.

Sunday we took a hike through the El Yunque National Rainforest.

Our research group

The Final Supper, at a Cuban restaurant.

So, now I'm back in reality. It's Thanksgiving, and look what happened last night:

October

Eri came out to visit again at the end of October, but this time it was on UM's dime. For our Engineering Symposium, they paid to fly out perspective grad students who are women or minorities. Pretty sweet.

The Third Coast Kings, had our first gig on Halloween at the Corner Brewery in Ypsi.

Eri as a pirate--Arrr!

Makin' it FUNKY!

We took a trip to UM's arboretum and botanical gardens.

The Sausage Tree looked good enough to eat.

There was a big desert (not dessert) exhibit.

Pretty cool lookin

At the UM Museum of Natural History

Stuff goin' on

Here's various pics from October

Every first Friday the Blind Pig has a classic soul night,
where DJ's play soul from the 60s. My funk band went.

I made this interesting dish... A spelt tortilla, rice, vegetables,
ground turkey, and pepperjack cheese.

So that's where the Transformers hang out

Fewer Hobbits. More tubas. That pretty much says it all.

An example of a single homework problem for Applied Quantum Mechanics.

Free shirt!

While this is actually a thickness monitor for our deposition system in the lab,
it bears strong resemblance to a Star Wars ship.

September

So, school's going. Busy busy busy. But Eri came out to visit, in conjunction with MS&T Conference in Detroit.

Some of my classmates and I have been playing poker now and then. Eri came away victorious, claiming the stagger prize of... $0.

"My precious..."

Eri, striking a Bob Dylan pose.

Stopping to smell the flowers

There's a number of local breweries in Ann Arbor.
Eri sampled some of their wares.

The Bad Plus. Man, do they put on a great show. We were literally within arms reach of the drummer. I'd sum them up as virtuostic, creative cacophony.

We were walking around campus during the football game (which meant it was pretty much deserted), and saw this frat.

Eri and I took a trip into Central Michigan to see some wilderness areas and lakes.

We drove through Hell, MI. To get to Hell, you have to turn left on Darwin, which I thought was funny.

Not mummifying, but trying to find respite from the mosquitoes.
Luckily we found some locals with bug repellent.

The Law Library on campus is a pretty cool building. The upper part looks like an old cathedral, but the underground part is more modern, with big glass windows.

Kind of reminds me of a Swiss bank from a 70's James Bond movie...

Eri Incognito