Enjablog

Wow, I just sat down to write about my last few days and I completely blanked on the last thing I wrote about.

So.

I’m back from Texas. I was there for an inclining experiment for a sludge vessel. And yeah… a sludge vessel is pretty much what it sounds like. It was a new ship though, so not gross yet. It was unbearably hot and humid on Thursday and there were predictions of thunderstorms on Friday, so we moved our flights back from Saturday morning to the evening just in case the inclining ran over.

And then it was gorgeous on Friday. It was a little overcast in the morning, but the afternoon was 70s and clear. We finished up around 9pm and I went back to my hotel room to wash off the layer of grime I had collected throughout the day. It was an educational trip. I did my first tank sounding and got to climb in, out, and around tanks and machinery. I have decided that when I finally get around to sorting my clothes for donations, I need to start a shipyard wardrobe.

Got back Saturday night and just crashed. Sunday was mostly dedicated to the Post Hunt. I got my newspaper this week! So, I was able to look through the magazine and prepare before going out to my car and finding my battery dead. Again.

Ian came over for breakfast though, so he was nice enough to drop me off at the metro so I wouldn’t miss out on all the fun. It was crazy over there and I can’t believe people actually figured out the final puzzle. Our group was standing around with half our clues wrong and just dialing phone numbers from the magazine.

Headed home after the excitement concluded and Ian drove me to Target to get posterboard for the ASNE L&R student poster contest that I entered. Which was today, btw. I came home to work on it and promptly fell asleep on the couch with Dellilah on my lap. Oops…

Woke up to my parents calling on their way back from a wedding. They offered to trade cars with me later in the evening so I could still go to Annapolis today for the symposium. Woo!

Then… I procrastinated for most of the evening and ended up uploading a bunch of pictures to CVS for them to print out for me to use on the poster. Except the earliest I could pick the pictures up was 11am. So, I picked a CVS in Annapolis and set about laying out the rest of the poster.

It’s been years since I last needed to make a poster. Maybe high school… possibly earlier than that. Apparently, at some point posters got awesome and I missed the memo. I printed out my title and text; cut out colored paper for matting; paired off photos with text; and pasted/taped everything together.

There were 4 posters there today. One was printed on plotter paper, laminated, and tacked to a foam board. Another was professionally printed and mounted on a foam board cut to size. The third was done on a tri-fold board in the same style as mine, but with way more charts and equations… what with all of them being about technical papers.

The judges were really nice about it, even though when I walked in it was clear that the other people had put way more effort into it than I did. And mine looked like I had made it that morning… you know, because I had. The judges went around talking with each student for 20-30 minutes. One of the judges was even a volunteer at the event I made my poster about, so she had some good questions. She didn’t get to go around and see all the different games that were going on either, so she particularly enjoyed my pictures. Then they spent over half an hour deliberating and even asked the coordinator if they could give me an outreach award or something.

I did win a consolation ASNE membership for a year though. I guess they didn’t want me to be the only one without a prize. So, that was exciting. :)

On the way home I saw a big rig tipped over and facing the wrong direction, which looked to be a moving truck. There was a second truck next to it that they were moving all the stuff to.

So tired. Driving to VA Beach tomorrow night for training on Wednesday. Baltimore on Thursday.

When do I get a nap?