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Taken from PhD Comics, www.phdcomics.com

The Silliness of Hazards

I'm starting yet a few more projects this week, now with more sampling and assessment stuff. And I'm realizing more and more that Hazards I, which in theory covered industrial hygiene, didn't. And the only reason I can say that is because almost everything that I'm doing, I'm walking into blind and need guidance on what to do, how to sample, how to assess, etc. Had the course been truly helpful and relevant, I should at least be able to figure out how to do some simple assessments and such, and know how to actually measure things.

Hopefully everything will come together tomorrow and I can finally be truly functional, with e-mail, my Delta passport, an updated directory listing so I stop coming up as "Kelly Combs" when I call, a badge that actually does let me into various places like OCII and OCIII and TechOps.

The cube farm is really quiet. I'm not sure where all the flight safety people are.

Oh wait, they're all in Hawai'i. Grrr.

Trial Run

Ok, here goes folks. I'm gonna give this a shot. I'm a little nervous...I keep having flashbacks of my Dad running behind me and pretending he's holding onto the back of my bike seat and then me turning around to realize that he's just kinda jogging beside me and then skidding to a halting stop that ended with me on the ground crying and the cool scar I have on my elbow.

First of all, Xi. You're kidding right? What are you going to do with your mercury folder? Haven't you been working on mercury all semester? That would be like me showing up in Moz and these CARE kids saying "yeah, we were thinking about climate change, but now we're gonna go for an air pollution study." You're taking this a lot better than I think I would. Regardless, good luck -- I'm sure you'll be great. How's your roomie? If he makes chocolate brownies, he's already starting at like 113 cool points in my book.

Kim and Markie. I don't know what to say to you guys other than thank you for listening tonight and always being on my side. You guys are like my dad (man, he's really gettin a shout-out tonight, huh?). He think EVERYTHING his kids does is wonderful. He thinks I'm doing ground-breaking research that EVERYONE is going to be soo excited about. I love him. :)

See you latter two tomorrow at the partay! Xi -- may the force be with you!

This could be my last blog, but now I can cross this off my "do before I die list." woo hoo!

Usefulness

I've been working in my new job for less than 24 hours, and I just submitted a report over to the folks at Flight Crew for cosmic radiation exposure. It's a little overwhelming having people calling me and asking me for information.

I'm feeling very, very useful, and am learning all sorts of crazy stuff. Thankfully all of my travel and flying experience has helped me catch on to jargon and understanding how things work pretty quickly.

Came in this morning at 5am to conduct more water sampling - pictures from that will come soon. Not that it's that exciting. But driving on the ramp really is kind of a scary experience. Especially since we had one arrival and one departure while we were driving.

But seeing as how we were here at 5am, we're leaving around 10:30 to run the samples up to the lab, and then calling it a day. Most people have barely started their work.

Hopefully all my technology stuff will come through pretty soon - I feel a little odd submitting reports via school e-mail.

Timing

I had the blog time originally set to UTC, since everyone will soon be all over the place, but I guess for now, I've changed it to EDT, or UTC-4:00. But down the line? Should we be posting on eastern time or on UTC?

I fell asleep watching a movie, so I'm still awake. But I'm definitely ready to head back for bed. That 4am alarm is really brutal.

In the meantime, you can all rest assured that the water coming out of the taps on planes is safe to drink. At least, on our planes, it is. We haven't caught one that exceeds coliform levels yet.

Mercury no more

Had a chat with another engr professor today about ya know.. what the hell I'm doing. So mercury does not seem to be my metal this summer. Maybe cadmium. Or arsenic. Or iron (yea iron, strange hunh?).

I'm also having a fun time installing windows on my poor little Mac. It didn't like it at first at all at ALL.

Annnnyways, my man is making triple chocolate brownies downstairs. Lata gatas. Hope the ATL is treating y'alls well :)

Testing

And we're off! Today is Tuesday, May 8. All four members of Team Tupperware are still in the US, and even all in the same time zone!

So far, we've already lost Xiah to the great north (aka DC) before she heads off to China. Kim, Micah, and I are still in Atlanta. Unlike everyone else, I've also already started my internship. Two days down, I don't even know how many to go.

But this shall be a short post - I was up at 4am this morning to be picked up at 4:30 for a 5am start, and we're repeating it all over again tomorrow.