Boxborough-DC-Provo

Why hello friends and family,

Might I divulge to you my last week. I did, of course take a little trip to DC, and I would like to give a little review of how it went.

On Sunday I "cursed" the land of Boxborough MA and they got a lot of snow, enough so that my morning flight was cancelled and there was no church in Littleton. Did I mention the two weeks I was in Boxborough for church, it was cancelled?! I feel bad that my presence initiates some sort of weather pattern of destruction. I promise I will make an appearance at some point. Maybe when we live back on that side of the country. Back to my story. So, Karen was wonderful enough to take me to my rescheduled flight. I got to DC bitterly cold, but happy to be in a warm hotel room.

Monday morning I made sure my poster was up, and I went to a few talks before went to stand by my poster for judging. Two suspicious men came up and asked me about my poster in a very rehersed sort of way, and my two hours of allotted standing was up. I felt good about my responses and was not as nervous as I thought I would be.

And after that, the party began...well, sort of. I went to a bunch of talks, and posters, and presentations, mostly of my interest. The astronaut who went to my last conference in Colorado also spoke at this conference, and having seen the presentation before, I was still impressed.

One of the highlights was seeing all of my old friends from my internship in New Mexico. They are all doing super smart things, and all seem really happy. On one evening visiting with these friends Niel DeGrasse Tyson came up to our group and began speaking with us. I recognized his vest as one that he may have worn when he spoke at a BYU forum. I asked him and he informed me of how he received this other vest, handcrafted by a lady who was sick of the old vests. The story was entertaining, but more than anything his body language and humor made it a fun conversation. For a moment I felt important in the Astronomy world.

I will be honest though, I missed Jimmy, and I was quite thrilled to go back to Provo to get into a normal schedule again. I hadn't missed classes because my professor was at the conference, but I knew that I had a bunch of research that needed to be done as soon as I got back. And so, on Thursday all of the BYU students and professors headed back to the western state of Utah to start up a fun-filled semester. Did I mention this is my last semester of classes? I suppose I did in one of my last posts. Hooray for almost being done.

Back to the story, I got back Thursday, went to school Friday, and enjoyed a somewhat frantic weekend home with my husband. Sunday we met up with Grandpa Bob, Grandma Marie, Beth, Kent, Megan, and Justin for dinner. We played some zombie fluxx with Beth, ate lots of food(it was ribs by the way...Jimmy's favorite!!) and just had a wonderful time, as always!

Monday has passed, my research is underway again, and I have already started my homework that is due on Friday. Early semester motivation, gotta love it! And that my friends is the story, review or whatever else I have called it during this rather unorganized and poorly written blog post. I think it was more of a ramble....pictures will appear in the future....