Various Results and Some Pictures

Solar Oven Throwdown results are in - we did not win the throwdown on Performance Index or heat, but my group (Carry On My Wayward Sun, with an oven named Kansas) did win the Gore "All-In-The-Same-Boat" award for teamwork and got $50 to spend at No Anchovies, the pizza place on University. We did pretty well, but one group predicted their temperature exactly and won that way. This is our oven pre-throwdown. The people in charge keep saying they'll give us the photos they took at the competition, but haven't said where. Pretty proud of it.

Historic District Haunted Dungeon raised over $300 and more than 300 cans for the community food bank and UA Campus Pantry, with a total of more than 1100 people coming through over three nights. I survived almost getting run over by golf carts, increasingly obscene radio signals (come on, we're college kids), and having almost no voice while being a zombie for all three nights. (Surprisingly, the only radio signals that stayed the same were "rotten guts" - the code for drunk people, and "child's play," which meant a kid was coming through so tone it down. The first got called about twice a night; the latter only once the whole time). Here I am after the second night:

And during break time on the third night with some other people who were working in Yuma (yes, that prop is supposed to be a chainsaw):

I finally have a picture of my intramural volleyball team the Gila Monsters. We had a perfect 0-4 season, but we had a lot of fun. Most of the guys are missing from this picture - we actually had 8 people on the team:

And finally, my intramural soccer team, called Gila, the Gila Ballers, the Gila Monsters, or Red, depending on who you ask, played its first game of the season. Yes, some of the Brazilians from the second floor played, and yes, they are pretty amazing. We beat the ThunderGatos from Arbol dorm 5-4 in overtime. This is most of the team; we had the lights turned out on us, so the quality's not great. We're planning on a better one next week:

More on Thursday.

Halloween Time

         Sorry this is late. I was planning on waiting until after class to give the results of the Solar Oven Throw down, but I won't hear them until Tuesday. Then I planned to sit down and write after the Rube meeting, but then something freaky happened.
         Every year, the Yuma dorm puts on a haunted dungeon in its basement benefiting a local food bank. Since this was the 20th year that this has happened, this year the dungeon spans three dorms, starting in Gila, crossing the back of Maricopa, and ending up back in the basement of Yuma. I was walking back home to Gila from my club meeting, when my friend Ricky came up to me and said, "Hey, I'm going to help out with the Haunted Dungeon. You want to come?"
        I decided I would, thinking we would help with the outside setup or the food or something. By the time we got outside to help, everything was pretty much all set up. One of the people in charge sent us to the back of Yuma for makeup, because apparently, they needed more zombies, so I became a "Back Alley Basic Zombie". We spent the rest of the night chasing the golf carts between Gila and Yuma, shuffling, groaning, eating the golf cart drivers, the works. I looked pretty scary. It was so much fun. Apparently, the dungeon scared the director of Residence Life so bad that she spent a good while with her hands over her face saying, "Oh my God." I personally didn't see that, but I know we did scare one guy enough to make him skip the whole second part of the dungeon, and some people cried, and almost everyone screamed.
        So that was how I spent my Thursday night, and I'll probably do it again tonight.  And that's why I didn't get to a computer last night to write.

In other news...
Our solar oven did very well, getting up to 201.7 degrees Celsius. It was later in the day, and cooler, and our oven was slightly smaller, which led to our prototype actually being hotter than our actual oven. We did pretty well, again being the oven with the highest temperature in our class. Our performance index, which measures how well we predicted our temperature, was about twenty. The performance index is used to judge the contest. My team also applied for the All-in-the-Same-Boat award for teamwork, and we had two pretty good interviews with the Gore representatives who were sponsoring the event. I'm pretty hopeful we'll get some kind of award.
I am co-captaining an intramural soccer team for my dorm. That should be a lot of fun.
Midterms are over!!! Overall, I'm pleased about how I did, although I could have done better in Chemistry. Although I beat the class average by a lot, the teacher doesn't curve, so I'm stuck.
I've figured out that age/grade in school and desk size are inversely proportional and the materials needed to take a test are directly proportional to grade, which is very annoying when trying to take a test that needs pencils, erasers, a periodic table, a formula sheet, and a graphing calculator. 
I'm going to be Hermione for Halloween - one of my friends with a car offered to drive me to buy a cloak and to lend me a wand.
The roommate switch is working out so far. Although I have slightly less space, I like the room better overall.
That's all for this week - I'll try to be better about posting for next week.

I Have Moved Rooms!

This past weekend, I switched rooms with one of the girls across the hall. All parties involved were completely in agreement. There was no major problem, but it works out easier for the four of us involved this way.
SOOOOO, now instead of being in room 303, I am in room 305.
The actual moving process was pretty easy. My old roommate and the girl I switched with had their parents over for Parent's Weekend, and some of the guys from down the hall helped move the big stuff - the fridges and printers. I was moved in in about 1.5 hrs. I still get the top bunk (yay!), but I have slightly less closet space. I am now rooming with Carly from Hawaii, and it's worked out well for the first two days, and I think it will continue to be fine. I no longer have to worry about walking in on my roommate Skyping with her boyfriend at midnight, and she no longer has to deal with that either.
Barring major problems, I'll probably stay in that room for the rest of the year. We're already planning a long-term extreme battleship game and other things. It's going to work out better for all involved.

Midterm season

In other news:
It's midterm season. My last one is on Friday when I have my Chemistry midterm, but I am done with my Engineering, math, and Chem lab midterms. I also have a revised English paper due Monday. I think I have done pretty good on all of them, though I'm a little nervous to see the results.
The Engineering 102 Solar Oven Throwdown is next Tuesday. This is when all the freshman engineers compete against each other to determine who can get the highest temperature in their solar ovens at the lowest cost. My group's prototype was the hottest in our class, but we have to make a new one by Tuesday. It is supposed to be a lot of fun, and we get awesome t-shirts (which I am actually wearing right now).

I saw my first scary movie all the way through last week (Dead Silence) and ended up staying up way too late watching Doctor Who with its cheesy monsters to get the image of the lady turned into a ventriloquist dummy out of my head. Also, I never realized how big a part the music plays in movies until I watched this one. I'm not sure  I'll show up again for Scary Movie Friday (unless there's free food again)
Lat weekend I hosted two girls for Suite with SWE, which was a lot of fun. All the girls in my dorm who were hosting got together and made makeshift pizookies (cookies and ice cream) and watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which was cute. I ended up taking one to my chem lecture on Monday. I felt a bit inadequate, though, because one of the girls I was hosting was already presenting university level research and the other was taking more dual enrollment classes than high school classes.
Honors freshman have a common reading book that everyone is supposed to read over the summer. This year, it was Planetwalker, by John Francis, PhD. Dr. Francis spent 22 years of his life not riding motorized vehicles and 17 years not speaking, during which he received his BS, Masters, and Doctorate degrees. The idea is really interesting, but the book was kinda monotonous (I mean, there are only so many permutations of "I walked, and I met people who were confused, and I didn't talk").  Anyways, he's coming to campus this weekend, and a bunch of people from the Honors college get to meet him. I submitted a poem about space shuttles on "What Makes a Difference," and was a category winner. So, free lunch on Friday!
I am on a soccer team for my dorm for intramural season B. I may or may not be captaining it. I'm really looking forward to that.
The Rube Goldberg machine is really coming together. It now involves a step where a UFO abducts a hamster.
I'm hoping I can get pictures at the Throwdown. Anyway, that's all for this week! Be awesome.

Recent Gastronomical Adventures

• Chicken and waffles: I had it for the first time. It's such a big thing in southern California, but I don't get the point. Yes, it's good, but not to die for like some people think.
• Spam Musubi: A sort of "sushi for the poor man"made of seaweed, rice and spam. My friend from Hawaii brought her musubi maker. I learned how to fry spam in teriyaki sauce. They were delicious.
• The Arizona Room: I found the spaghetti on campus! And some shrimp! This is an all you can eat place at the university. It's kinda expensive, but I was full for the next day and a half. When I went, they were serving southern food, so I had gumbo and jambalaya and some really good lime cheesecake stuff.
•  Apple Pie milkshakes: very good, but I still like the Oreo ones better.
• Something unexpected: It was lunch rush at Cactus grill, and somehow, I ended up in line behind one of my professors. We started talking about word puzzles, and then he paid for my meal. That was pretty awesome, and out of the blue.  

In conclusion - yes, I am eating. 

Life is Good

I promised to post any pictures I could scavenge, so - here is the blue team from last Saturday's night-time almost campus-wide capture the flag game with the Newman Center,and the subsequent celebration. Of course, we won. I'm the only one who's wearing a color you can actually see at night - bright yellow. (Sorry, I know it's not a great one).

In other news, my volleyball team made it to playoffs! The bad news is, we lost our first playoff game, and we are new out of playoffs, Yes, we kept our perfect record of 0-4. I signed up for soccer for next season; maybe we'll do better. It was a lot of fun though, totally worth it. 

Right now, I'm taking a break from writing my second major English paper. My English teacher, who I really like, based on my first paper, suggested I do my second on role playing games (i.e. Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Pathfinder, Call of  Cthulu, etc.), so I'm researching a really fascinating character named James Ebert whose suicide was attributed to D&D, which led to a lot of social and religious backlash against gaming, but also great sales. Although the end is sad, it's a great story, with lots of "pleasurable complications," as my teacher says.

In chemistry this week we did a lab on artificial coloring in foods (some Skittles candies bravely gave their lives for science). There's something strangely fulfilling about finding that I would have to consume over 35000 liters of Red #40 in order to even knock myself out. No one is getting poisoned by those dyes. 

The Rube Goldberg machine has a solid four steps on it (which involve lots of animals "eating" each other) and working, and plans are in the works for creepy eyes peering out of the darkness, Slenderman, Bigfoot, UFOs, a teenage campsite, and an ant rave. (This is all for a camping theme).

I'm hosting a high school girl over the weekend for Suite with SWE (Society of Women Engineers), which should be fun.

I've made it halfway through one semester! I've almost made it!

Explanations

I guess I should probably rephrase my previous post - it's probably easier to understand paragraphs than a badly reworded song.
I ended up going to English class yesterday with nos hoes on because my flip flop blew out and I tripped while sprint walking to class. I got there just before the bell, so I was OK. I just have this nice scrape on my left knee.
The laundry machine ate one of my socks last week. I don't know where it went.
The biggest project in my Engineering 102 class is to build a solar oven as cheaply as possible that can bake a biscuit. This Tuesday, we tested our prototypes, but with eggs instead of biscuits (cheaper and less messy). My group (proudly named Carry On My Wayward Sun, with an oven named Kansas) achieved an internal temperature of 208.7 degrees Celsius (407.66 degrees Fahrenheit) which was the best in our class. We had the only egg that was thoroughly hard boiled, maybe even overdone, other than our teacher's, who brought a commercial solar oven. The oven is a duct-taped configuration of cardboard, newspaper, and aluminum foil, and again, I'll post pictures as soon as the teacher and/or my group mates send them to me.
Calculus at the U of A works a little strangely - the first three weeks are a separate class that is an intensive review of precalculus, then a test is taken, then you move into either Calc 1 or precalculus depending on how well you did. My teacher for the first class was fine, except she had a bad tendency of saying "and-so-um" every other sentence. I am now in the calculus class, and the teacher for this class has a super thick southern accent, which is kinda distracting and sometimes hard to understand. I'm still doing fine, though. Good news is, I have a 4.0 GPA with the 1 credit from the first class.
There was a Big Bang theory watching party in the game room of my dorm, and there was food. I missed most of the first episode, but it was a lot of fun. I still would rather have more science jokes, but the show is still pretty funny.
There is one guy in my dorm who is a professional DJ. It gets really loud at about 1 o'clock Saturday nights when I'm trying to sleep, but I've learned to live with it.
On Tuesday, there was a big Jeopardy style showdown between the wings in my dorm. I was elected team captain of my wing, 3W. We were ahead until the final jeopardy, where we bet all our points. We lost them all. It was still fun, though, and the winners were 3E, the guys from the other end of our floor.
Another interesting thing - there was a sleepover last Saturday at the house of some of the girls from the Newman Center. I never knew there were so many Catholic pick-up lines (Hey, did you forget your rosary? You can use my fingers instead).
I am doing fine. Again, I'll post pictures when I can find them.

U of A-vi lle

Blew out my flip-flop,
Stepped on some hot rocks.
walked bare foot all the way down the mall.
Thought about class then,
If I could pass, then
If was I late cuz of a trip and fall.

Workin' the day away at the U of A
Searchin' for my - lost pair of socks
Some people say that it's the laundry to blame...
But I know
It's my own damn fault.

Some cardboard and duct tape
Made so no air can escape
Can hard boil an egg real well, sometimes.
The temperature I see
208 degrees C
Our solar oven worked and won, that time.

Studyin' the day away at the U of A
Searchin' for my - lost calculus smarts
Some people say that it's the teacher to blame,
And I know
Her accent makes it hard.

Nibblin' on nachos
Watchin' the new show
Big Bang Theory party in my dorm
Community's great here,
Many stay up too late here,
But I don't wanna change that stuff anymore.

Playin' away the day at the U of A
Searchin' for my - lost Jeopardy points
Some people say it was the other team to blame,
But I know
It was everyone fault.

P.S. Shout out to my mom, whose birthday is this weekend. Also, thanks to Aunt Judy who sent cookies.
PPS. I would love to post more photos, but my only working camera is an iPad, and it's tough to transfer photos. I will post any photos of me that I can mooch off Facebook or email. Have a great week!

Homesickness

I really felt kind of homesick for the first time today. Why? Cactus Grill, the upstairs cafeteria, had salmon as a special. I realized that it's been a while since I've had seafood, period, especially my dad's awesome grilled fish and stuff. I got an email from my sister. She is awesome, and is probably going to be reading this, so I won't embarrass her, but I miss her too. My English teacher suggested role playing games (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons) as a possible research topic, which reminded me of my friends in the Nerd Herd at my high school, and of my brother, who I know doesn't actually play them (or didn't) but is still part of that great geeky subset of society, which also makes him awesome. The sand courts are rough and you can feel concrete underneath, unlike that great soft beach sand around where I live. It's really hard to run anywhere barefoot and end up with your feet intact. And my mom's birthday is coming up. It has all hit me all at once. I ought to call home more often.
I've been doing pretty good,  though - It's been a month.
I'll take a line from the Beatles - I'll get by with a little help from my friends.