Let it Sneaux!

(Get it? Like Geaux? As in Geaux Tigers? Tehe!)

Dear Finals,

You are boring. The weather is not!


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Sincerely,
ashpags

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like...

...Finals! I have three take-home finals this semester, and while I prefer take-homes because they are less stressful, they take a lot of time! Basically, I get up each morning, work at home, eat lunch, go work at the office, come home and eat dinner, and then work until I'm too tired to work anymore. I stumble to bed, wake up, and start all over. Occasionally I start with something like this:



Want a better look?



Oh yeah. "They propose using the 4r vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv..." Nope, it doesn't make any sense to me either. No more falling asleep at the keyboard! (Also, please don't make fun of my writing! I'm a scientist, not a novelist. And it's a first draft!)

And on that note, I should get back to it. I just thought y'all would enjoy. =) Good luck to everyone with finals and holiday shopping! =)

Just popping in...

...to say hi! Hi blog! You may have guessed I've been a bit busy lately, and that would be a correct guess! But I have done a few things:


Went to College Station for my brother's Aggie Ring Day. Congratulations brother!!!


Went to see my cousin play soccer in Lafayette. Apparently, Louisiana Hot Sauce was a tournament sponsor!


After the tournament, my aunt and I went to the Festivals Acadiens et Creole, where they had many delicious food booths, including this one. Jambalaya, Poboys, Frog Legs, and Pork Rinds. So awesomely Louisiana.


And at least one booth with beignets, aka the most delicious food evah!

Good times, friends, good times! And now, back to work! Ciao ciao! Hope y'all have a wonderful weekend. =)

If you're not tired of it yet...

...here are some more pics from around town!

A mess of tangled wires and trees:


Utilities workers from all over the country have been brought in to help with power restoration efforts:

It's fun to play the license plate game! These are from Indiana and Mississippi.

There are also debris removal trucks from all over:

The boxes on the back are bigger than standard 18-wheeler boxes. (There is a better word than "boxes" but I can't think of it right now.)

There are a lot of uprooted trees like this:

It's incredible to see in person.

Here's an idea of the scale of that tree - see my lens cap sitting on the side?

(If not, click the pic to go to Flickr where there's a note pointing to the lens cap.)

Funny Sign #1


Funny Sign #2


The current state of my awning:

It's blowing all around, scratching up my door, and occasionally hitting my doorbell. It's quite funny, actually.

And lastly, yesterday there was a beautiful rainbow that crossed right near the moon:

I took the shot from my car so it's crummy, but trust me that it was really beautiful!

Good luck Texas! Stay strong!

I DON'T like Ike.

(Image from Weather Underground)

Get ready, Tejas. Based on the outermost bands that we started getting last night, this storm sucks. A lot. Good luck to everyone in the path - stay calm but alert, don't be stupid, evac if you're told to, and be excellent to your neighbors when the power goes out.

(We're certainly taking a harder hit because we are still in a damaged state, but we've got street flooding and have lost a lot of the power that the energy companies had worked so hard to restore. And remember my awning, that Gustav blew over on itself? Now it's dangling by a screw and a half, right in front of my door, banging my door every time the wind blows. I'd get it down myself but I don't have a ladder, so hopefully my complex will come get it today!)

Good luck! Sending good thoughts and prayers for calm winds and not much rain!!!

Gustav. Gross.

I've put up some more Gustav pics in my Flickr set - mostly just photos of the destruction around town, taken while I was driving (so forgive the less-than-stellar composition and exposure, por favor).  Here are a few highlights:


Power lines. Power lines power lines power lines. Down. Everywhere.


There are parts of the parish (what we call a county in LA, don't ask) that will be without power for three weeks. Three weeks.


So many people have trees on/in their houses. Suck.

But, there is some good news!

Blue tarps!!!!! The blue tarps have arrived, my friends, and they are popping up all over town!

Now, we're just hoping and praying and crossing fingers, legs, and toes that Ike doesn't hit us too badly!

Choice Quotes

I did a bit of radio listening during the storm, as it was the only way to keep up with what was happening while the power was out.  Here are some of the best quotes I heard:

"X number of customers are without power.  You can check entergy.com for more information and maps of where the outtages are."

[That's really easy to do when you don't have power.  Really.]

"Temperatures today?  It hardly matters.  Rain and wind, on the other hand, ..."

[During a mid-storm weather report.]

Guy #1: "FEMA is now telling us that they don't have the blue tarps.  They don't know where they are, but they will try to find out.  Does that sound familiar?"

Guy #2: "Hey now, no editorializing..."

[They still don't have blue tarps.  Apparently there is a massive blue tarp shortage.  Same as there was three years ago.  Also, blue is apparently the only acceptable tarp color.  I guess the other colors don't keep out rain.]

[On people being stuck at home, it being a holiday, and most people not having work the next day]

"There tends to be a little drinking going on.  You've got a lot of people with a lot of booze."

[Really?  In Louisiana?  No way!]

It is never boring living in this state! =)

Gustav

Whew, that was a doozie.  Gustav brought some serious destruction to Baton Rouge and many of the surrounding parishes.  According to the radio, we got winds gusting to 92 mph (148 km/h), which is the highest it's ever been recorded in BR.  Thankfully, there was no major loss of life (at least, as of yet) because of the many precautions that were taken (2 million people evacuated), and the fact that there were only minor levee breaches.  There is a lot of flooding, a lot of downed trees and power lines.  Most of my friends still don't have power.  I think I am lucky, because I live near a substation, so mine was restored after only ~27 hours.  It will take a long time to recover from this, but we will, thanks to many hard-working folks.  There are three more tropical disturbancess in the Atlantic right now, "queued up" as they said on the radio, one of which is already doing damage in Haiti.  Here's hoping they don't make their way here!

In the meantime, here are some pics:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

ETA: You can click over to Flickr to read captions on the photos!

Ready...

Gustav is hitting us, just rain and wind so far. 100,000 people in the state are already without power; mine'll probably go soon, so I won't be around much. I've eaten as many perishables as I possibly can, have pulled things out of the fridge so I won't have to open it, and filled up plenty of water:



Or as my Mom likes to say, Service for 20 in Nalgene. (Hi Mom!)

Y'all take care. Catch you on the flipside! =)

The WB.

No, not the network. ;) WB = White Balance. I've talked about it before, and I play around with it a lot. I don't know why, but I find it really interesting. Here's a series of pics I took the other day for my knitblog. I took them in what I now know is called open shade (thanks Miz Boo!) in the morning, when it was good and bright outside. I used three different WB settings: Shade, Sun, and Auto. In that order, here they are:


Shade


Sun


Auto

The Shade is awful. Sun and Auto are much better, and pretty similar. Sun is actually probably closer to real life, on my monitor at least, but I prefer the slightly cooler colors of Auto. (This is probably because I have an affinity for cooler colors in general.) I ended up using a different pic, but still with the Auto WB setting. I've noticed before that Shade (and Cloud) generally give worse results than Auto, and even Sun. I kind of wrote that off to the fact that, on the scale of DSLRs, my camera (the D40) is the cheapest. But now I read Miz Boo's excellent post over at Ree's, and she says:

Personally, on my camera I do not care for the shade and cloudy options. I think their effects are too strong on my D80. So I almost always shoot on “A” for Automatic white balance. (Except when I’m inside, and then the incandescent and florescent options work wonders.)

Exactly! I would write the exact same thing! And she has a way fancier camera. I wonder if the same holds true for the super-duper fancy cameras like Ree's D200, or even the D300. Is it a Nikon thing? Canon users, what's your experience?

Sidenote: When I was at the airshow, I saw a woman using a D300 to take nothing but snapshots of her kids. My assumption is that she's a professional photographer, so she's got the nice equipment, and is most comfortable with it, so prefers it for snapshots, too. Because I cannot fathom spending $2000 on a camera for snapshots! That would be nice!

And on that note, I'm out. Work to do, dinner to eat, etc. (Hurricane already prepared for - check!) Ciao! =)

Two Things

One: The other night, I had a dream that a crazy stalker had trapped me and my kids (?!?) inside my house. (It was a really nice house, with tons of natural light. I hope to actually live there IRL someday!) Anyways, what makes it blog-worthy is that all the while I could see him through the windows (which were everywhere) and I had my camera, and I kept trying and trying to take pictures (you know, so after he killed us, the CSIs would come in, find the SD card, and be able to track down the killer, duh) and though my camera would focus, it wouldn't take a single picture. The little focus box would light up red, it would beep (even though I turned that setting off the day I got it, so annoying!), and I would continue pushing the button and nothing. I'm not sure if I was more freaked about the crazy stalker, or the fact that my camera wouldn't work. Please don't judge, lol.

Two: Today marks the end of the Daily Photo, though I'd like to continue taking random pictures of things that happen to me. In fact, I actually took a picture outside the grocery store today, but it's on my phone and I don't know how to get it on my computer. But with school and research/work, I don't have much spare time, and certainly not during the day when there is good light. The whole "having passed the qualifier" thing is supposed to equal more free time, so hopefully I can do some more "real" blogging. I actually have pics taken for another post on white balance (why am I so fascinated by that topic?), but I need to write up the post. Maybe soon! Here's the last daily photo, from yesterday, intended for the knitblog, but I'll share it here, too:



My Ravelympics socks, finished with 11 hours to spare. I waited 'til morning to take pictures, so I could have some sun, and then we up and got hit by Tropical Storm Fay, which dumped scads of rain on us. So I figured what the heck, the rain could be in the pic, too. =)

And on that note, it's bedtime. 'Night y'all! =)

Football season!

I love college football! And this is a great town for it. Almost everywhere you go, there are count-downs, as we wait to see if the Tigers can pull off another season like the last one. This is my favorite, because it's close to campus so I see it often:



They've been counting down for most of the summer, lol, and we're finally into single-digit days! Yay!!! =)

It Figures.

Went to the podiatrist for (just) a consultation today, or so I thought. Turns out, I ended up with minor surgery:



Since I did not anticipate any cutting, I did not wear appropriate shoes. Normally I wouldn't mind hobbling barefoot out to my car, except that it was raining and the parking lot was full of puddles. Hence the ubersexy plastic bag over my foot. I'll spare you the bag-less photo, 'cause there's iodine and blood all over the neighboring toes, and plaster left from the molds they cast for my new footbeds.

I could possibly be cooler, but it would be hard. ;)

Girls' Night!

There aren't many ladies in our department, but there are a few of us, and we stick together. And sometimes we branch out and make friends with other scientists, and occasionally (gasp!) even humanities majors! ;) We had Girls' Night tonight at my place, and it involved some lounging in the pool, a walk around the corner for the yummiest sandwiches in town, pink beverages, the Olympics on TV (go Shawn and Nastia!), and Catchphrase. And of course we talked about boys. ;) Signs of success:



And everyone home to go to bed by midnight, because, after all, we are still nerds who have to work in the morning. ;) Buona notte!

Airshow!

Yesterday was the "Air It Up" airshow at the Baton Rouge airport, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the airport. We went out for the morning and early afternoon and had a great time, checking out vintage aircraft, goofing around, taking pictures, and waiting for the big flyover. Unfortunately, the big flyover didn't happen, but we still had a ton of fun. It was hard to pick one photo to count as my Daily Photo, but I ended up going with this one:



As we walked in, they were handing out commemorative paper airplanes, and this is Shannon and Mark trying to put theirs together. Mark, being cool, put the extra paper on his head while he assembled the actual plane parts. Then he stuck out his tongue. Love it. =)

You can see the rest of the pics on Flickr, or in the slideshow:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Enjoy! =)

Panic.

The closest I have ever come to a panic attack has been when I'm shopping for a planner. I'm talking shaky hands, nearly crying in the store, frantic phone calls to my parents, etc. It's happened more than once. I'm incredibly attached to my planners because they keep me on track - if I had to keep all that info in my head, I would explode. I thought I had everything ready for this upcoming semester (classes scheduled, books ordered, binders and paper procured, etc.), when I realized that I didn't yet have a new planner. Crap. I nearly had another panic attack when I got to my local big-box office supply store and saw this:



Ugh. Nothing there even remotely close to what I wanted. I am very, very particular. So I'm thinking about making the investment and getting a Franklin Covey planner. Anyone have any experience with them? Advice? They have a store in BR, so I'll be going there in the next day or two, and hope to find something fab!

The Value of a Daily Photo Project

For the past few days, this guy has been working on the inside scoreboard of Tiger Stadium:



I finally snapped a pic today, and it's a good thing I did, because this was the scene when I was walking back to my car this evening:



The crane up and disappeared! =)

Surprises!

I took my little point-and-shoot camera to school today to take a daily photo, and I did actually take a few, but they're not super exciting. (I was taking pics in a sculpture garden near my building, and I think I can do a lot better with my 'real' camera...I didn't like how the lighting was coming out...) What was super exciting was going to load them on my computer and finding a few leftover Germany pics on the memory card - yay! Here are my two favorites:



I forgot to charge my iPod in the hotel before I left, so I looked high and low for an outlet in the Frankfurt airport. The only one I found was in, you guessed it, the bathroom! It took some jury-rigging to get my (really really heavy) converter and the iPod charger to stay plugged in, but it totally worked. So I hung out in the bathroom knitting while it charged. And yes, it was worth it, because the sound on my entire side of the plane didn't work (boo American Airlines), so the iPod was the only way to block out the noise!



Before deciding that yes I really was going to hang out in the bathroom for awhile, I did some knitting out in the lounge area. This is my very first heel from memory, done in a mildly stressful (not letting my luggage out of my sight) situation - woo! I'm quite proud. Probably should go on the knitting blog, but it's late, and I'm tired. ;)

So hopefully, there will be nicer sculpture pictures to come later. =)

New Office!

Since I passed my qualifying exam, I got to move into a "real" grad student office, which I did last week. I finally got around to hanging some pics today:



Can you tell I'm a scientist and not an artist? It was very important that they be lined up straight and in some type of order, with colors balanced. But I like how it turned out. =)

I <3 the Farmers Market

Almost every Saturday morning, I visit the Red Stick Farmers Market in Downtown BR to stock up on fruit, veggies, milk, etc. One thing they have a lot of is plants and flowers. Herbs, ornamental plants, fresh-cut blooms, annuals, perennials, etc. I've never purchased any, but I've always wanted to. Here are some that I lusted after today:



I love the colors. I just need to figure out how to get my patio in shape to grow plants like these, herbs, and flowers. One of these days! =)

Good Golly Miss Molly!

Molly belongs to my friends Shannon (of the flowers) & Mark, but they had to go out of town at the last minute and couldn't take her along, so she's staying with me for a few days - yay! Unfortunately, I've got a lot of work to do, so I'm spending most of my time working on the computer, and she misses Mommy & Daddy, which means she's sitting next to me looking bummed:



Aww, poor girl! Mommy & Daddy will be back, soon!

Why not?

Why not try to do a 365-type picture-a-day? I already try to keep a one-sentence journal, so adding in one picture should be fun! I make no promises of being super-reliable, but it's good to try, yeah? We had an awesome sun-storm today:



It was raining pretty hard, so I didn't leave my (covered) front steps, but I did get some shots. It reminded me of the MCP post about seeing the light, the way it was so bright. I love when it's sunny and raining at the same time. =)

PS - This is 4. You can see 3 over here! =)

Dear Edouard,

Please feel free to dissipate before you hit my parents. Or veer off and hit some place where no one lives. Ok Edouard?

Thanks,
ashpags

(Could this be 2? How long can I go?)

My Exciting Life

Marathon Post Office Trip:



It took me more time than I'd like to admit to assemble and mail all these packages and letters, but I think it was worth it! I sure live an exciting life, don't I? (Please don't answer that, haha.) If I were Nin, I'd have figured out a clever way to get myself into this shot to make it a 365 pic. ;)

And now, to bed. My prof's been out of town for a few weeks, which meant that I could pretty much work whenever and wherever I wanted, so long as everything got done. But he's coming back in a few days, so I've got to get back on the typical "work in my office during the day" routine (as opposed to the "work in my sweats at home" routine), which means early-ish bedtime. Night night blogosphere! =)

Sonneberg Photos

After we finished up in Boston, my group flew to Germany where we spent two weeks working at the plate archive housed at the Sternwarte Sonneberg (Sonneberg Observatory), which is a wonderful observatory in the small town of Sonneberg. As usual, I took zillions of pictures and have finally gotten around to selecting and uploading some of the better ones. Instead of photo overload like the last post, I present this fancy slideshow! (Thanks to Photojojo for the link to FlickrSlidr, which automatically creates the embed-able slideshow from Flickr...so easy!) Click on any of the pics for more info, and the option to go to the Flickr page. Or, you can just go straight to the set.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

My group spent a week in Boston working at the Harvard College Observatory, and we happened to be there the week when all the flowers were blooming. Perfect!

















I like to think that these are Purple & Gold for LSU:


Many of the flowers were in here, a lovely treat I got to walk by daily:


If you know what kind of flowers these last two are, I'd love if you would share. Thanks!