Chocolate Tasting

Having completely enjoyed both wine tasting and scotch tasting, when I saw a local chocolate shop offering a chocolate tasting - well, my attendance was assured.

And then I remembered last summer, when I invited a bunch of girls out a couple times to enjoy an evening of fun and relaxation. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for something similar. So I sent out an email to the girls I know, and wouldn't you know it turns out girls are nearly universal fans of chocolate - group of eight of us RSVPd for the tasting.

Man, with this along with dinner club, I'm feeling very social these days! I am blessed with a plethora of activities, an enjoyable set of of friends, and a few extra hours in my week to pursue both of those things.

It turns out that I was slightly mistaken about the event - it was actually a chocolate and TEA tasting. The chocolate shop teams up with a fine tea shop, and they present carefully edited pairings - much like you would expect wine and cheese pairings.

It was fantastic! The chocolate:

Figure: Hello, my lovelies.

Each sample was intensely flavored, beautifully balanced. In fact at one point, my friend sitting across from me leaned back in her chair and sighed, "Well I'll just need a moment here, I'm having an out-of-body-experience...." Laugh!

And the tea was also fantastic, although I didn't get pictures. I never realized the depth and variety of teas out there - I've now been inspired to move beyond my little Lipton Green Tea bags...

I was intending to buy a few of my favorite type of chocolate at the end of the event, but then I couldn't decide, so I bought samples of three different types. The other girls also had a hard time deciding. But it turned out in our favor - our group of eight were the last ones to leave, so they sent us all home with tea! The tea guy had brought a package of each type of tea, and he can't sell opened packages, so we got to split the six (nearly full!) packages amongst us. I nabbed the Chai tea, my favorite, and I am sipping it as we speak!

Cheers!

A Diversion from School Life

There is something incredibly sexy about a man working elbow-deep in grease on an engine.

Guys with pink popped collars? Eyeliner? Mere silliness. I'd take any day instead that guy I know in the automobile lab, scruffy chin and worn-in jeans, waving a wrench in the air as he explains the details of piston architecture to undergrad students. (Did you know each of the three rings on an engine piston has a specific purpose and design?)

He's whip-smart, friends with everybody, social and outgoing, and works like a real man. He's interested in entrepreneurship, flies planes, drives motorcycles, and is a natural leader. I've known him for two years, enough to appreciate the depth of his character.

I wonder if he'd go for a girl with a Craftsman toolbox in her room?

Flowers!

I love plants. I used to be a horticulture major, actually, before I became an engineer. I realized I liked gardening more as a hobby, and less as a career. But I do my best to keep green things around. For instance, my windowsill in my room looks like this at the moment:

It's much more colorful in the summer, as unfortunately I do not have things which flower all year long. But happily, look!

Tulips! Beautiful! My loving family sent me flowers for Valentine's Day. Thank you! Seeing these made me happy every time I looked around.

I split them up into two vases, so I could have one at home on my table, and one to take to my office. Because did I mention, my office windowsill looks like this:

See? Plants everywhere. I would also like to show off this beautiful vase my brother got me for Christmas: 

The colors, the shading, lovely! It wasn't the right shape for the tulips, but I will find a chance to use it. This summer I have signed up again for a farm share, and this year I am getting a share of vegetables, fruit, AND flowers. I can't wait.

Yay for color and a reminder of home during the dreary winter!

Dinner Club

I realized several things earlier this year.

1 a) I have a good group of friends whom I would like to enjoy and spend time with

2 a) I am living in a city with fantastic food, lots of it even within walking distance

However,

1 b) I would like to get to know my friends better, and expand my circle of friends

2 b) I never venture beyond the same few places to eat

Therefore,

3) Dinner Club!

In January, I sent out an email to my friends proposing a "Exploring Food" dinner series, where we would try a new restaurant close by once a month, or every few weeks. People were just free to come if they could make it.

I was a little nervous, because if nobody wanted to go eat with me it was going to be pretty lonely sitting by myself with a menu. It's a little like asking someone out on a date, I imagine. Will anybody like me?

And wouldn't you know, our inaugural dinner we had nine people! We had to push two tables together. In my head I was going, Yay - they like me!

Our first place was an Ethiopian restaurant, which is a kind of food I'd never tried. It turns out that they serve the food on a big huge platter (well, two platters for nine of us...). They put down a layer of teff tortillas, and then put piles of food clumped on top.

Then they hand out towels to wipe your hands. "Huh?" I wondered, "I guess that's a nice gesture."  But soon it all became clear. The staff brought out piles of more tortillas, and the way you eat is to tear of pieces of bread and pick up the food with the bread and your fingers.

We all loved it. Of course it didn't hurt that the restaurant also makes it own wine out of honey, and a bottle of that gave us each half a glass to try. All in all, quite a success!

Tonight was the second outing. This time there were seven of us, and we went to a seafood/grill place. Again, the conversation was good, the food was good, and I got several suggestions for the next place people wanted to visit.

I'm very excited about this dinner club, and I'm especially pleased that so many of my friends have expressed interest. I imagine the group will always be a little different each time, depending on people's schedules, so it'll be a new adventure each time.

And what's not to like about that?

Life as a TA: Or, Grading Stinks

This semester I am the TA for my advisor's class. Now that I have gotten the important things like breakfast figured out, I have moved on to other things like writing homework, grading, and holding office hours.

The first homework assignment for the class was actually a hands-on exercise in the machine shop. I am pretty experienced in the machine shop, so the shop manager and I together led two sections of students through machining, bending, and injection molding. Some students had never been in a machine shop before, and some students could have run the lab themselves. It was really interesting to observe the wide range of abilities - because I am so hands-on, I am always amused by people who don't have the mechanical knack. It takes all kinds of engineers in the world, and some should just stay away from spinning machinery...

The second homework is a standard problem set that I put together. It was the very first time I had ever written a problem, and designed a homework set. I think I did pretty well, but we shall hold the applause until I see how the students do... I was surprised at how hard it was to come up with a good problem. You would think that starting with the answer, it would be easy to work backwards, but actually it takes a lot of thought to write a clear and concise problem that tests specific technical concepts.

I have yet to hold office hours (which are scheduled the day before that second homework is due).

But I have graded the first homework set. All I can say is, WOW. What a huge time commitment. The class has about 45 students in it, which is large for a graduate class. I am sure the first time is the hardest (I set up a spreadsheet to track grades, had to figure out how to assign grades on the online class website, etc.), but STILL. It took me about 10-15 minutes to grade each assignment (typically about 4-8 pages long, so I think that's pretty quick). That's TEN HOURS of grading papers. Ack! 

I don't know if it was harder because it was a hands-on experiment report (so lots of variation between papers) and it would be easier with a standard problem set (the please-do-numbers-1-through-10 at the end of the chapter variety). I guess we'll find out next week, when the more standard homework #2 is due.

I did it over three nights. I have no idea how I'm going to manage this without the Olympics.

A Girl and Her Tools

I posted not long ago about the layout of my room, but I intentionally didn't show you a pile of things that has been defying organization. My collection of tools:

Figure: You can't see it, but at the base of that pile is my favorite Bosch cordless drill. If there is a fire, I would grab my laptop first and then that drill case.

But then this January, a happy combination of two things happened. My grandparents sent me a Christmas check (thank you, Grandma and Grandad!), and I got a flyer from Lowe's advertising a sale on tool storage.

Well, you may guess what happened.

I marched myself to Lowe's (literally marched - I have no car...) and payed cash (pulled a $100 bill from my wallet in honor of my Grandad!) for a gorgeous toolbox.

Figure: Craftsman, baby. Ball bearing slides. Premium rollaway casters. Gray and black. Very sexy.

I don't have quite enough money right now for both the top and bottom pieces of a classic toolchest setup, so I got just the bottom half. I had a choice between a four and five drawer bottom chest, and I couldn't tell from the online pictures what might work better for me. Five drawers, more organization - but four drawers, bigger spaces. So I actually brought the empty case for my drill to the store, so I could check to make sure the case fit in a drawer. Wouldn't you know, the five drawer option was too small. Gold star for thinking ahead...

The precise model I wanted wasn't in stock, so I had to wait a whole four weeks for it to be shipped to the store. When it arrived, I rented a ZipCar SUV to go pick it up. Ripped open the packaging, assembled everything, and whala:

Figure: Happy girl

What a difference! Now when I need things, it's all right at hand. In fact a girl came to my door needing WD-40, and I was able to just whip that right out. And where did I put this toolchest in my room?

Figure: Some girls have bedside tables with a romance novel. I prefer this arrangement.

It seems rather fitting that the best place for it is the foot of my bed. I know some women justify their purchase of expensive shoes by calling them "investment pieces." Well, this is my investment piece. I expect this to last until I get a house and a proper garage. And at some point along the way, I'm going to "invest" into that matching top chest. :)

Serious Grad Student Business

I am fortunate to work in a place where the administrative head of the department has done his best to make the office space for students conducive to good quality of life. We have two office complexes for grad students in my building - one on the first floor, one in the basement. Each one has nice large cubicles with desks for students, big windows, a conference area with table and chairs and projector, couches, and a kitchenette. To be honest, I haven't seen any grad office setup better than what I have. 

About 30 students fit in each complex. They try to mix around students so that you sit next to people who aren't necessarily in your lab, but you are never more than one or two cubicles away from someone you know.

This makes a nice social atmosphere - people eat lunch together at the tables by the kitchen, late in the evening there will still be people around to keep you company while you work, and everybody is generally friendly. You can always find someone to shoot the breeze with if you feel like procrastinating. Some of the students with bigger personalities will be yelling about something or holding conversations across cubicle walls. News and gossip spreads quickly, and it feels like a community.

We get work done, too. There's a white board in the office, and it's not uncommon for someone to be working out a problem on the board. If somebody walks by, they may help you out. Or someone will be in the middle of describing an idea, grab a marker and sketch out new concepts. It makes me feel like an official science nerd to walk in at 8am and be greeted by a nice classical beam bending derivation.

Figure: Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory has the whiteboard process down.

But for the past several weeks, the whiteboard has been dominated by something else. Feedback loops and free body diagrams have been replaced with a trickier, more visceral problem. Behold:

Figure: Yep. Those are football picks.

Our office had a pool going on NFL picks. The whiteboard was where the official list was kept of each person's picks. Each week there would be groans and high-fives as circles and X's went up and the scores were tallied.

This Monday after the SuperBowl, the participants gathered around for a final time, and money changed hands. The board is erased, now, and back to regular use. But if you look closely, you can see the faint images of the lineup still there - a reminder of the very serious grad student business that goes on around here...