Happy Halloween!

Yesterday was the end of a week of craziness. Well, crazy as in I didn't get as much sleep or get as much work done as I would have liked. So I basically decided I wasn't going to do much work on Friday. I tried to do stuff in the morning but got stuck and just gave up looking at it. I had class and then went to Y2E2 where I chatted with some structural people. We were in the middle of talking about bars and different types of alcoholic drinks when a camera crew filmed and took pictures of us from outside the conference room we were in. The conference rooms in Y2E2 have glass walls. So ironic.

After they left to go to a review session, I went to bug my advisor again. We chatted for about half an hour where he told me about an international civil engineering conference that will happen at Stanford in the middle of June. So I should probably stick around for that. He said that the department has some money for its own students to attend the conference and that if I was going to be around, I wouldn't have to worry about the registration fees. I thought that would be a given but for some reason he found it necessary to tell me. I mean, I would've asked for it to be waived or something anyhow! He asked what my plans were for the summer and that if I wanted an internship, I should start looking in the winter. I was like, uh, at this point, if I wanted an internship, it's just a phone call or email away. Or I said something along those lines. He remembers the seminar I had just been to and said that they usually try to push their students to go to these ASCE things so that they can network. But I had asked about going to this previous seminar myself. I think he was impressed. I'm not so sure he's impressed by me dropping in unannounced every now and then but whatever, I don't want to make an official meeting just to chat.

After this, there was a small Halloween party held by the administrators of the department. There were lots of snack food and they raffled off bottles of wine. I think they were raffling them off at half an hour intervals so that people who drop by can have a chance to win. I chatted with someone in one of the environmental engineering who is working part time for the Arup SF office right now. She went to Stanford for undergrad so she's going to finish her Masters degree in 2 quarters!! We went to an ESW (Engineers for a Sustainable World) talk. The speaker is a Stanford MS grad who did Peace Corps in Honduras. He helped some communities build water infrastructure and talked about his experiences (successes and failures) there. He's still very involved with some of those communities. He was an undergrad at Cornell and worked with the AquaClara group while in Honduras. I almost went to Cornell just because of the AquaClara program. Almost...

Then I headed back towards the dorm and saw some people from Rains playing frisbee on Wilbur field (the field with the underground parking lot). One of the guys organized it and sent out an email but I knew I would be late because of the talk. Anyway, I joined them and met a few more EE people. They're a really big department here too. It was such a nice day out! The western sky is always red at dusk. We played for a while and then I invited them to come to Blume for the structural group's Halloween happy hour. There were four party size burritos! They were really awesome looking. Wish they had given some salsa to go on the side though. The burritos themselves were a little dry, I think because they didn't want the entire thing to get soggy. We also had cake for people whose birthdays were this month and during the summer. It was really good cake.

I went back with the EE people who I played frisbee with. I kind of wanted to stay to talk to the structural eng people but then I figure I'll see them around more than I would see the EE people. So I walked back to the dorm with them. I was pretty tired after all this. I didn't make it to the Rains Halloween party. I think I just played some games and watched a couple of YouTube videos and went to bed. I don't think I managed to go to bed before midnight all week so this was good.