Thursday, August 27, 2009

Some Stuff

Well hello there. I am now 6.5 lbs thinner. Not quite as much as I'd like to have lost by this time, but it's better than zero lbs lost! Hopefully it will continue to come off for at least 5.5 lbs more. I'm back in school so that will either be easier or harder. Easier because now I have less time to even think about eating, let alone eat. Harder because now my eating schedule is going out of whack and it will be much harder for me to actually make it to the gym 5 days a week. Unless I go on my way home from school. Which is when I am starving. And then I'll be eating dinner at like 8 pm, which is pretty late for me, since I eat my lunch at noon. Sigh. We'll see how it goes. If I have super good control, I can go home after school, eat dinner, and then go to the gym at around 8 or 9. It's just so hard to go to the gym once I've made it home! Ok, ok. Calm down. It's my last year of school. So long as I can maintain and not gain the weight back, I can lose more weight later.

School should be interesting. I'm taking my (hopefully) last class ever this semester: Galaxies and Cosmology. It won't be easy. I'm also doing some research on photonic crystals which should be enlightening and useful for transitioning into industry. But since I'm an Astro person, I need to first learn Solid State Physics, which I never took in my undergrad. So there's a little bit of reading on my plate.

My first day was Tuesday and I managed to get parking at BART at 1:00, yay! So I started a new book and made my way into Daly City. Grabbed the shuttle and headed for campus. Took a little over an hour, in all, from the time I left work in Oakland to arrival on campus. Met with my pal Polin in our research lab to get the tour and a feel for what she's been working on over the summer. Basically, she is trying to reproduce Dr. Man's (my research advisor) thesis with our equipment, which differs from Princeton's (obviously). They are looking for band gaps in 3D photonic crystals made of some sort of plastic that has a higher index of refraction than air. Once we can replicate her thesis, we will try to enhance the band gaps (which are areas which do not transmit photons/light/information) by coating the crystal with some sort of metal and check for band gaps again. That's about the extent of my understanding. I need to read A LOT before I really understand. Altho, I do believe she (DR. Man) is working on this to apply it to another project which is finding more efficient ways to convert solar power to thermal energy (or something...).

Anyways, after that I went and spoke with Dr. Man, since I'm out all next week and wanted to make sure I am reading what she wants etc. Then I had class at 330. The projector was broken, so we basically only discussed the syllabus. I can't believe how messed up this semester is due to all these budget issues. Kids need so many units to get financial aid and they will sign up for anything to get it. Since a lot of classes were cut (a lot is really an understatement) this semester, a lot of kids are out of luck. We had a class full of kids trying to take an upper division Astrophysics class, prolly because it sounded interesting. But you really need a lot of prerequisites in order to qualify or be able to follow the material. So after about 5 minutes of describing the syllabus, 50% of the people walked out. I think it was when the teacher said "Differential Equations" that about 7 people left. I hope they can find a better suited class! I genuinely feel bad for them! I am stuck in the same boat, really. I have 6 units of electives yet, but those are all the classes they are cutting first! Which is why I'm taking an undergrad astro class and doing research. I'm pretty much out of other options...

Class got out early, so I got back to Fruitvale BART around 530 and lo and behold, what's on my windshield? A parking ticket. For the parking that I paid for. Grrr. Of course I didn't keep the gd receipt that the machine spits out - no one does! There's a pile of about 100 sitting in there! Well, I will now. I wrote a letter to appeal the ticket and am sending them my BART ticket after I use up another $4.10 today to get to Daly City (since I still have over $5 on it, I am not sending it until I use it once more). I paid the parking on my BART ticket, so maybe they can track it that way. Altho it's all computerized, so they should be able to see that I paid. It's one of those remember-your-stall-number and pay inside the station ideas. So the BART cop had to look up somewhere to see that I "hadn't" paid. They put on the ticket: "first observed: 1245". Well I didn't even leave work until 1, so I'm thinking maybe they didn't check again before issuing the ticket at 1:47. I prolly paid around 1:10 or 1:15, so I'm hoping I just got somehow stuck in a black hole of parking fees. We'll see. IT totally ruined my day, tho. I was so excited to be able to take BART again - and it turned out to be a $50 freakin BART ride! Poop! Today I am definitely taking and keeping my receipt!

More to come, as time permits.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Dieting Woes

Well, I've lost a total of 2.5 lbs so far. That was 2 weeks ago. No change last week, which I'm not mad about, cuz at least it didn't come right back! I'm going to take my doctor's advice starting this week and reduce my calorie intake to 1200 kcal/day, only 30% of which may be fat calories. I am also going to boost up my cardio from 3-4 days/week to 5 days a week. I have 3 weeks to Burning Man, and I WILL LOOK GOOD!