I will soon be halfway around the world

On Monday morning, I'm leaving for Shanghai! I'm going with my family, and meeting up with my extended family on my mom's side. I haven't seen them in a few years so it'll be fun.

I'll be sure to post a few choice photos once I get back. Happy holidays, everyone!

My laundry waits patiently to be folded

Normally I don't experience strong emotional connections to places. But today when I arrived in cold, rainy San Francisco, all I could think was thank god for northern California. After enduring miles of walking, awful convention center food, and NHRA enthusiasts for three days, all I wanted was to be able to look around and see a mountain somewhere in the horizon.

I went to the PRI Tradeshow in Orlando with Ted & Nancy, which was a huge amount of fun (although the broken blister on my foot doesn't agree). One of the highlights was tracking down Claude to ask him a suspension question, which resulted in him learning my name (or at least my face) and promising me that he would remember me at comp. This may or may not be a good thing.

David talked to a whole bunch of people and got us tons of new potential sponsors, which is good because I'm not exactly the best at trying to convince people to help us out. We also went around distributing thank you cards to our existing sponsors, which they all seemed to appreciate.

Then there were the interesting people. At one point I was talking to somebody about possible sponsorship, and a few random guys overheard me and were very interested in learning about the FSAE program. So I ended up talking to them for a while and giving them my business cards. It was totally unexpected, but pretty cool.

Some of the guys from Auburn's FSAE team were there, and I ended up hanging out at their booth more than a few times. They were all really cool and super sweet. Nihal and I hung out with them after PRI yesterday night.

And of course I can't go without mentioning Pinstripes Guy. He was one of Claude's interns at OptimumG, and David was complimenting/making fun of his pinstriped pants after Claude's Thursday seminar. While it was mildly awkward and I didn't really participate in that conversation, Pinstripes Guy apparently remembered my face, because he said hi to me every time he saw me after that. It's one thing to smile, but it totally threw me off guard that he actually asked me how I was doing each time. It didn't help that his French accent was extremely attractive...

Now I have stuff from PRI strewn all across my bed, and a basket of laundry that needs to be taken care of. Time to get to work.

Taking a break from studying

Tomorrow (today?) is my thermo final (or rather, half of it... it's a complicated story). I am very much not looking forward to it.

Today (yesterday?) my parents came by and we went to lunch at La Med for my birthday. It was really good and I enjoyed it a lot. Then they dropped me off at the garage (of course) and I finalized the geometry of the front rocker, which was satisfying.

But by the time I got home, took a shower, and actually started studying, it was 11pm. Ugh. I've finished my cheat sheet, but I still need to look through the practice problems and midterms.

I've been feeling kind of out of it lately. I don't know if it's end-of-semester stress, or my crazy dreams involving my best friends hitting on me, or the weird feeling that I'm being stared at, or some combination of the previously stated. All I know is that I've been waiting for this semester to be over, and I only have two more weeks.

Heh, it didn't take long for me to come back

You'd think that after a month of posting daily, I'd be ready to take a couple weeks' break (especially with the semester wrapping up). But I just watched Juno and I have to say that I loved it oh so very much.

That is all... Now onto MATLAB.