Times they are a changin'

As my days in this wonderful city draw to a close I am filled with many emotions. I love this place. I fully intend to live here once again in the near future. New York is an amazing city and anyone who hasn't been here should come post haste. No where else could I walk out of my door and have only a short walk to so many things to do.

I've made so many wonderful friends. Everyone in this program is incredibly intelligent and so much fun to be around. It's nice to have conversations with people my age that do not have anything to do with celebrities or pop culture. It's not often that one is surrounded by so many splendid and eclectic personalities at one time. I've made friends that I hope to keep in touch with for always.

I've also made quite a few discoveries about myself. Academia is the field for me. I can say this with confidence. I fully intend to get a phd in geoscience. Hopefully more specific to meteoritics, as I have fallen in love with rocks that fall from the sky. As an undergrad in geology I am constantly told to look at the ground I walk on, but never to look to the sky. So many questions hang above our heads, stuck up into the stars, that we never even think about. I hope to pluck a few of them down in my time and chizzle away at some answers.

Several things have become quite apparent to me:
*I must travel. Everywhere. As much as I possibly can.
*I must learn new languages. As many as I possibly can.
*I need to read. A lot. As much as I possibly can.
*Television is disgusting. With the exception of some public programming and of course the discovery channel.
*I really enjoy wine and cheese.
*I hate the metal poles in subway trains.
*Just because I step on a grate in the street does not mean I will fall in.
*I love school.
*I love Central Park.
*I love museums.
*I love ethnic foods.
*Etc.. etc... etc... as much as I possibly can.

Of course I miss home. I miss my family and my friends and grass that was not planted with the soul purpose of breaking up concrete. I'm glad I can go home and hopefully have two weeks of actual summer time when I can just be lazy and relax.

My presentation went well and I really enjoyed giving my talk to the museum staff and other interns. It was a great feeling of accomplishment that everything has fallen together in the last few days. The hard work paid off and now I've got some rather astounding results. My paper is underway and hopefully will be finished by late August... but let's not get ahead of ourselves...

I hope everyone reading this has had a summer as wonderful as I. I hope that if you haven't had a summer so wonderful that you may take this as a wake up call. If you don't love life than you are doing something incorrectly. You need to make a change, because there are so many things in this world to love. I suggest you up and move to New York for a few months, as this is one of the best experiences I've ever had. You need to leave Kentucky, or wherever you may be situated, and get a breath of fresh air.

And with that I end my ramblings.


Love,
Chelsea

An ode

I'm slowly making headway in the battle to finish on time.


Slowly but surely.


I expect many things to fall into place tomorrow.


Oh how I am going to miss this city and the wonderful pizzerias on every corner.
Where else can you find so many things on one island?
I've really enjoyed my time here. The people. The sites. The sounds. The food. The fun.
This city is amazing.

Coney Island

Yesterday a few of my friends and I trucked on over to Coney Island for the siren music festival. It was so much fun! I saw loads of great bands, the most note worthy of which being White Rabbits and Elvis Perkins. It was a great time to be around all of the old fashioned amusement park rides. We mozied on down the boardwalk as well and spent the better part of sunset on the beach making sand sculptures. Although I have to admit I was disappointed with the hotdogs! As you may or may not know I don't eat meat (ok, I eat fish) and have not eaten meat in quite some time. I was so excited to have a real Coney that I broke my vegetarianism for a day and had one from Nathan's which is where they hold the hot dog eating contest every year. And it wasn't very good! Ah well. It was a beautiful day full of beautiful music and no writing of paper.

It was a good break from last week.


Until next time....

Chelsea

Moon.

I was curious whether or not our moon had some sort of technical name aside from "the moon," as other planet's moons bear this distinction and ours does not seem to. The answer to this question is plainly stated as yes, the moon has a name. It is Moon with a capital M.

lame.

I think we should name the moon. Or at the very least give it some sort of prefix.
"Mr. Moon".

And my paper is well underway. I was surprised that once I started it I had an easy time keeping the juices flowing. I've got a few pages now and they are constantly growing. Woohoo!

tortuous \TOR-choo-us\, adjective: marked by repeated turns and bends

I seem to have lost quite a bit of gusto since the last time I updated this page.
Today was rather awful as my list of items lost to the city is steadily growing larger (and more expensive).

This is quite out of character. I am generally an organized person and I hardly ever lose anything..

To recap, the city has consumed the following possessions as of 7/19/07:
*new camera ~$400
*2gb flash drive ~$30
*unlimited 30 day Metrocard ~$76

The most recent of which being the metrocard, which is pretty unfortunate. The museum pays me back for transportation costs, but not for card falling out of pocket costs. There is a balance protection service offered by MTA but it is equal to $2.53/day for the rest of the time the 30 day card was to be active. So I'm out for at least half of my subway rides, if not more, because rides are 2 bucks a pop and I tend to ride the subway 2-4 times a day. I've written a letter begging for sympathy in purchasing a new unlimited pass, but somehow I doubt it will be given the time of day.

The end of my time here is looming in the not so distant future (T minus two weeks) and I'm starting to get pretty nervous. I don't have any results per se... Just a lot of unanalyzed data. Today I acquired two high school students to help me with the really tedious parts of my research which is amazing. I was looking some very sleepless nights in the face until that happened. It was a really fun experience to sit there and teach them what I know about meteorites because I didn't think it was much until that happened. It made me feel smart. Denton turned down another request to examine somebody's "meteorwrong" (some sort of strange rock someone picked up and thinks is a meteorite but never is). He looked at me and said "Well I should have just sent you down there to examine it!" and he wasn't joking. Hah.

I've got to churn out a draft of my paper by tomorrow but I just can't get myself started. I have never really written a paper like this before and I'm pretty intimidated. I shouldn't be, but I can't help it. We're planning to submit it to the journal Meteoritics and maybe one other journal, not sure yet. I'm going to be the author on the paper which is pretty scary as my job in this project is to refute Hap McSween's 1977 paper. He did pretty much the same thing I am doing now and it has not been touched since even though technology has progressed leaps and bounds since then. He is pretty much one of the big dogs in meteoritics land.

Needless to say it is going to be a long night.



Good night,

Chelsea

No survivors

I would like to take a minute to congratulate myself for staying at work past 6 o' clock this evening. Today I kicked butt and took names in my research. Take that, Adobe Illustrator. No prisoners! I will finish this initial paper draft. Huzzah.

Chelsea = Cameraless

So I lost my brand new digital camera last night on Columbia campus. I've spent lots of today sluething around the local lost and founds to no avail. Goodbye, sweet camera, I loved you so. It was a short time we knew each other, but you served me well. I'd like to think I'll see you again someday...

update with lots of pictures

Wow. It's been such a fun week. I've just got several random stories, so bear with me. I was very glad yesterday when my adviser came up to me at wine and cheese and told me how proud he is of my progress in my research! Yesterday I broke a piece of the meteorite! It was awful. I had a thin section (a very very tiny sliver of the meteorite adhered to a glass slide) and I was mounting it on a metal stub so I could load it into the EVO. I started scanning it and I couldn't figure out what was wrong... well I had glued the stub onto the rock rather than onto the glass (upside down) and it pulled out a large chunk of the sample when I pulled the stub away. I showed the ruined section to Denton and he just kept saying "Shit. Shit. Shit. Don't worry, it's an easy mistake to make. Shit. Shit. Shit." And needless to say, that didn't help me feel much better about it.

I've been slowly but surely tinkering away on this EVO program and I've pretty much got it down now, German and all. It's funny because yesterday the tech came in to install a new part for the EVO and I was giving him pointers about the program that I have deciphered because I knew more about it than he did. It was a nice feeling.

I was rushing through the fifth floor hall of the museum trying to make it to the microscopy lab for my 9am appointment when I almost barreled over a triceratops skull! It was scary. I was coming around the corner just as the caravan of wagons and people pushing them very slowing began to emerge in front of me and I skidded to a halt. I narrowly escaped. Everyone just stared at me like I had just given them all individual heart attacks. There was a triceratops skull on a pedestal in the middle of a very large white wagon like cart followed closely but another cart carrying a cast of this skull. It was a really cool thing to behold... I'm pretty sure most the bones on display are casts, at least for the most part. But this was definitely a real skull. Sorry, no pictures, it was far too awkward to ask them to stop so I could take a snap shot. Just take my word for how strange of an incident it is to almost knock over something like that.

The fourth of July was spent in Brooklyn on the promenade watching the Macy's fireworks over the river. It was a good show, but it don't got nothin' on Thunder over Louisville. We walked across the Brooklyn bridge and it was tons of fun. The following pictures are from the Fourth and walking over the bridge as well as some various views of Brooklyn. It's a very nice place and I really like it.
Plus a meteorite picture and one of the thin sections (that I did not mame).

Ready to rumble

I have recently become entangled in an epoch battle to the death. It's the EVO SEM versus me. I seem to have forgotten this is one of the world's classic blunders. Only slightly less well known than "Never start a land war in Asia." I tell EVO to do something and it yells at me in German. Literally. It pops up dialog boxes in German with exclamation points. I only recognize the words "uber" and "nicht". Basically we are both set on the other's demise... only me slightly less so, as EVO costs 400k.

The stage automation function finally exists, but nobody in the museum knows how to work it. Except me. And it's my job to figure out the most poorly designed piece of software (p.o.s., hah) that I've ever encountered. And then I've got to teach everyone else. I've made lots of headway in the past few days, much to EVO's dismay, but I still can't quite get a standard procedure down aside from "Enter numbers in such a way that the machine will not yell at you in German. Push start. Stop if it gets finicky."

EVO woes aside I have lots of fun pictures from this weekend, but they'll have to wait. Jaime flies in tomorrow evening! I'm so excited. But now I'm about to go for a run and then it's off to China Town for a fellow intern's 21st birthday!

Cheers,

Chelsea

PS
For the love of God listen to Rodrigo y Gabriella. It is such beautiful music by two very talented guitarists.

Meteorwrongs

In case any of you are wondering... if you find a rock on the ground that you think is a meteorite I can tell you right now with 99.9% certainty that it is not a meteorite. My adviser calls them "meteorwrongs" and they get 3 a week on average. People are convinced that the black rock they found is a meteorite. Given, some of them are actually strange looking... but strange looking does not equal meteorite.

Good day.

A few things of interest

What's that in the large metal container, you say?

That, my friends, is a giant squid.



Observe the label on the tub. I really hope you can read the size specifications on the bottom of the sticker. But in case you can't, the squid is 25 feet long.

Sorry to report I haven't got a picture of what's inside the squid box as I'm told it's the worst smell you've ever smelled to crack that thing open. So, hopefully another day...

Many good finds were found this week in museum land. We found the paleontology sections....



And yes, that is a dinosaur. While wandering around this wing we bumped into a friendly scientist. We asked her, "Is there are room where they keep... big bones?" and she smiled politely and said "Yes. It's called The Big Bone Room. Only two people in the museum have access to this room. But one of which is a very pleasant fellow who loves to give people tours." And we now have a tour date set to see the Big dinosaur bone room an July 9th.



We were also taken up to a really amazing old fashioned library in the ceiling of the fifth floor. It's all that's left of the old library that used to span the entire ceiling of the fifth floor. It has glass tiles that you can see through as floor tiles.



We were led to an old iron staircase by the batty librarian who shepards what's left of the wayward old library. You'll never guess what one keeps in the ceiling of an old library in the ceiling of a museum...



Why, they keep elephant skulls up there, of course! Silly. What else would they possibly keep in the ceiling of a rickety library in a museum aside from elephant skulls??







That's about it. Thought you all would enjoy that...

love
Chelsea

PS
If you click on a picture it will enlarge in a new window. So you should have no problem reading the squid label. =)

primarily posting pretty peaceful park pictures

just a bunch of pictures from a beautiful lazy Sunday afternoon spend lounging about in the park in the center of the city.




























love
chelsea

Current Theme Song:
I was born (a unicorn) by the Unicorns

I &hearts New York.

My friend AJ and I swapped almost 3 gb of music each. It is a very good thing to have new music!

Tonight I am going to see my favorite artist, Souther Salazar, at the John Levine gallery downtown. It's going to be lots of fun. After dinner and the gallery show we're heading over to the International House tonight for a get together there. It's been a very good weekend.

Last night my friends and I went dancing and it was so much fun! I'm glad there are really nice people here to hang out with.

I hope all of your summers are going wonderfully as well. Missing everyone back home.

Love,
Chelsea



--------------------
EDIT

Just got back from the Souther Salazar exhibit and it was so much fun! The entire room was like being in another world. His art is so whimsical and dream like. I loved it. Here are some of the pictures that I illegally took inside of the gallery. Woopsy.

Pictures and such

So I'm kind of disappointed right now because I had these beautiful plans of taking a big blanket to Central Park after work and laying around and reading all evening with my friends. But I am disappointed in that it was an absolutely gorgeous day all day until about fifteen minutes ago. It was so beautiful and not too hot but not too cold when I walked home from work. But no. The sky is suddenly grey and I am hearing thunder. In a matter of minutes my plans have been ruined.

But that's ok, because that means an update for you. =)

I have tons of pictures to post. So here's a little recap (with pictures) of what I've been up to lately...


Tuesday night was a very fun night. In the evenings during the summer the Lincoln Center hosts outdoor dancing with various clever names. The one on tuesday was called A Midsummer's Night Swing. There were swing dancing lessons and swing dancing all around. My friend Kelly was particularly into it, which was fun for everyone to watch because she is generally pretty quiet. Everyone was dancing on the sidewalks and in the plaza. Just everywhere there were people swing dancing. Young and old, good and bad. It was a wonderful night.

This is all of the girls when we arrived.

Here is Kelly dancing with her gentleman friend.

Experimenting with a color filter on my camera.

Everybody dancing!

Lincoln Center at night.

My friends Elysa and Stephanie dancing and being goofy.

Last night the gang wondered down to the new intern's dorm a few blocks away. He lives in the international house, and sadly I did not take pictures of the beautiful buildings lining the streets near by... you'll just have to take my word for that.



Today I did a little bit more exploring to make up for my recent lack there of. My friend and I stumbled into the entomology wing where we found lots of amazing arachnids just lounging about in plexi glass cubes lining the hallway. They were just out there for everyone to see.

Here's a cool picture of the Apex preditor I took on my way into the museum this morning. Notice how nobody is in there??? That's because it's empty. Because I am allowed in the museum when nobody else is. Because I work there. Because it's the best job ever. Hehe.


Ok... that's it for now.


Love
Chelsea

update

It's been a hectic week.

This weekend was lots of fun. Went to several markets around the city, met a new intern, and saw some more sights.
Yesterday was my birthday! I am now officially twenty years old and the gang took me out to Indus Valley which is a terrific Indian food joint within walking distance of where I live. I got a delicious masala veggies dish with lots of chick pease and various other yummy things including cake and the whole works, so it was tons of fun.

I've come quite a ways at work as well. Yesterday took the better part of the day to put in my first slab of Allende into the microprobe. The unfortunate thing is that I kind of lack the self sufficiency needed to run the machine without assistance from my advisor. Again this is even more unfortunate because he's not very good at teaching things.. at least not the way that I like to learn them. I'll just have to deal with that, though. He's going out of town on Wednesday for the rest of the week so I'll have some time to fiddle around with it on my own. Hopefully. And I haven't been exploring much in the past week, so I must remedy that.

Kind of Kentuckysick today, missing everybody back home. At first I thought I would love to live here, but lately I am thinking two months is good and I'd like be able to see some horses again.
Well that's about it, just updating before I head into work in twenty minutes.


love
chelsea

Life in the butterfly case

So now I've got slightly more of an idea as to what's going on in the research end of things. I will be making maps of a 5cm x 5cm slab of Allende. Seeing as how these maps are on the micron scale, this will be potentially very tedious work. Howevere there is a piece of software that could make my life on EVO much easier. It is the automated mapping software that has yet to come into existence at AMNH. The little tab is there on the menu and everything, the software just hasn't quite been born yet. There is a big rush to get it here in time while I'm still here... but the best estimate I heard for it's arrival was "about one month". I suppose I should ellaborate... If the mapping is not automated then I will tweaking a stage around all day long refocusing and generating tiny little mapped sections of the meteorite. I will stitch them together later to make one big picture. Example.

There's not really too much of a reason why I'm doing this aside from it's not been done before and the more information available the merrier. I'll also be counting the calcium-aluminum inclusions inside and identifying various minerals. Woohoo.

So here's the sweet butterfly storage cabinet that was stumbled upon today.


Life is good and I'm going to go read a book now. Goodnight =)


Chels

I think a bagel with cream cheese and lox is my new favorite food.

Lots o' pictures

This is an odd store we ran across while shopping in Soho this afternoon.















Some pretty buildings and shops along the way..















These are my good friends Steph, Megan, and Kelly. Kelly will be my roommate next schoolyear and is conveniently living in NYC on an internship for the summer as well! Stephanie is a fellow AMNH intern and Megan is her long time friend who lives in Jersey and takes the train up to hang out with us on weekends. We've just been exploring the city all weekend, playing cards, and having a good time.

So the next few pictures are a bit of a tour through the dino halls I walk through every morning to get to my area of the museum.















that is my friend Julie with a big dead fish.





























I work just though that door at the end of the hallway and to the right.















This dinosaur is particularly frightening because they gave him fake eyeballs. None of the others have eyeballs.



































So I was walking to the bathroom on Friday when I stumbled upon a door labeled "Roof". So naturally Mike and I went up and investigated and the following pictures are a little of what we found...















veiw from the roof of the museum
looking over central park/skyline
















That's about it. Just lots of pictures and not much of substance. Sorry, I'm pretty sleepy. A little bit sick of the city. Actually just the really over crowded downtown parts where I've been the last two days. I'm fine in my yuppy uptown sanctuary. I'm just going to take it easy this week and maybe I'll get up the gusto to go downtown and battle the crowds again this weekend.

It's not that people are rude here, per se. It's just a very different culture. What I interperet as rude the majority of people here would veiw as normal. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm still having a blast. Just kind of worn out.


Night,
Chelsea