Same Title as Last Week

Ready for School Again?

Let's face it:  making hundreds of dollars a week at the Happiest Place on Earth is pretty cool. But I miss my friends, and I miss the college atmosphere. Heck, I almost even miss taking classes!

Or do I?

As I found out last weekend, the School of Music at ASU requires that non-music majors who take music classes, officially register for those courses. Trombone choir is a 1 credit class, which means that my 19 credit hour course load had to be bumped to 20 credit hours. One problem:  my college only allows a course load of 19 credit hours.

Learning that I hit the limit of credit hours kinda opened my eyes to the fact that this fall is gonna be my most difficult semester yet. I mean look at my classes!

World Music and Trombone Choir won't be too difficult, but the others sure sound intimidating. Thermofluids II? Structural Mechanics? Applied Experimental Statistics? Heck, the lady who approved my petition even felt the need to warn me about the difficulty of this large course load. But I'm up for the challenge! I'll just make sure I treasure these next few months of getting paid to work forty hours a week, rather than paying an institution to work on homework about the same amount of time.

Thankfully, this week's forty hours went pretty smoothly. Starting Tuesday, Rawlings went on vacation for a week and won't be back to work till next Wednesday. Party at the office!!

... If you consider solid mechanical analysis a party. That's what I've been doing all week:  learning how to use Solidworks to analyze the stress and strain put on a system as it's loaded by external forces and pressures. It may not sound like a party, but it's actually been very interesting! Besides, the results from my analysis are very colorful, and every day for lunch we all sat down and watched Drew Carey feign sympathetic enthusiasm on The Price is Right, so it may as well have been a college frat party.

In all seriousness, though, it was a great week. No Rawlings meant no night shifts or boring meetings; on the flip side, it meant four days of just sitting on my computer, learning new parts of Solidworks while listening to classical music on my phone. A relaxing week, indeed.

Rawlings did assign me a very important project before he left, though. Apparently ever year, on Pi Day (March 14th), the Design & Engineering department holds a pie/pi-themed celebration. It consists of two parts:  a pie-making contest and a pi-reciting contest. The interns from the Sustaining department have a bit of a reputation for kicking butt at the pi-reciting contest, and I can't be the one who tarnishes it. Rawlings told me to study up; he said the first 30 digits should be enough.

I can't take any chances, though. There could be another mentor in Quality Assurance telling his own intern the same thing. So, as of this morning, I have the first 51 digits memorized. Bring it on, hypothetical intern from QA!!

The Magic Continues

As you'll recall, last week's post ended with my thoughts on how Disney and food were both such magical things. That theme continues this week! And in the case of the latter, it's the reason for the title of this week's post.

First, the Disney magic. Francisco and I went to both Epcot and the Magic Kingdom last Saturday; both were open a couple hours later than usual, so we had to take advantage of that! On our way to the monorail station, though, we stopped and looked around at the Grand Floridian, since I'd never been inside before.

It is gorgeous. And classy. When you pass through the doors, your wallet turns into a pocketbook, your watch into a pocket watch, and your cigarette into a Cuban cigar. There's even a little jazz band on the second floor of the lobby, dressed in gray suits, playing low-key, relaxing jazz to polish off the whole experience. They've got a string bass, a clarinet - the whole classy shabang.

That's not all, though. Also on the second floor reside a handful of classy shops and stores, not unlike the ones you'd find in the Venetian in Vegas. Not those cheesy Disney stores with all the bright, touristy souvenirs; no, these are Disney stores with golf polos, jewelry, and other classy means of spending money.

As I walked out, I had to pull the tip of my nose back down to its original position; then, it was off to the Magic Kingdom! We watched all three shows that evening, including Wishes, Celebrate the Magic, and the Main Street Electrical Light Parade. It was a lot of fun, and good for me because I hadn't seen either of those last two yet. Though my family's not much for the shows and parades, I really did enjoy these.

Which reminds me, Disney World's bringing a brand new parade to the Magic Kingdom, and it premiers this coming Sunday! Exciting stuff, for you Disney buffs. I've actually seen them rehearsing it a bit back behind Splash Mountain and Big Thunder, but not with full costumes, so it'll be cool to see the real thing next week (hopefully).

As we were waiting for the Electrical Parade to begin, I saw something else I'd never seen before - though it wasn't especially magical. A frog, or maybe it was a toad, about four inches long came hopping right up to me! I've never seen a frog in real life before, probably because Arizona is so arid. The way they hop around is pretty interesting, but honestly, they're pretty unattractive creatures. And slimy looking.

Now, on to the food-related magic! A few weeks back my mom sent me a recipe for samoa bars; they're basically a thin layer of yellow cake, toped with chocolate, caramel, samoa cookies, and sweetened/condensed milk.

Having not made any desserts since my birthday cake in January (I think I'm finally done digesting that monster) I decided to make these samoa bars last Sunday. They turned out to be delicious, and extremely addicting. As in, Lucky Charms needs to hand over their copyright on the "magically delicious" catch phrase. I've been eating them all week, pretty much on my own... Hence this week's title.

In addition, Hannah's sister, Choppie (there's two of them, so to clarify, Choppie is the older one; Peanuts is the younger) recommended I try a sub from the local grocery store chain, Publix. I did just that on Sunday for lunch, and I'm glad I did! It was delicious, and I'm looking forward to trying another one this week! They're pretty big, too; I got two meals out of it that day. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it... So picture something along the lines of the Firehouse sub from last week's post.

While I'm on the topic of food, there's one other thing I forgot to mention last week when I was talking about the magic of pizza. It only occurred to me as I was clearing my dishes that I rounded off my five slices of pizza and half a sandwich with a big glass of milk. That's right, all you Warrens, I drink milk with my pizza and I'm not afraid to admit it, despite your heckling.

And if any of the rest of you think it's weird to drink milk with pizza... Well, as my favorite quarterback might say, you can "shove that one where the sun don't shine."