This week has just been crazy....I thought that once I passed my dissertation defense, that I would feel a little less stressed, and definitely less rushed, but that has not proven to be true. This week has been a whirlwind of activity.
Monday: 9 am--Pick up rental vehicles. 1 pm--First team meeting. Spent the better part of the afternoon getting the Sprint internet cards functioning in all 6 vehicles. Intermittently--tried to correct some of the figures in my dissertation.
Tuesday: 9 am--Team member Ian Giammanco's (my boyfriend) dissertation defense. 1 pm--team meeting to do a CPR refresher and discuss the experimental plans for this year's project. Intermittently--tried to correct some of the figures in my dissertation.
Wednesday: 9 am--hooked up truck & trailer for media event. 10 am--Brian Hirth, Jerry Guynes, Chris Weiss and I gave interviews and demonstrations for members of the local media. http://www.kcbd.com/global/story.asp?s=12391800, http://everythinglubbock.com/fulltext/?nxd_id=52725, http://everythinglubbock.com/fulltext/?nxd_id=52705. 12 pm & on--random prep tasks, plus more dissertation figure correcting. 6 pm--arrive at home, start some laundry, start packing.
Thursday: 9 am--hook up the trucks and trailers to pull outside for mass test. 10 am--StickNet mass test. 11 am--luggage staging. We have to fit 18 people's 7-week luggage into 7 rubbermaid tubs in the back of our trucks. Pretty tough. Looked OK for now, but people's bags are bound to be fatter come Saturday. Hopefully we can manage until our University of Michigan partners join us in a few days. 12 pm--packed up truck toolboxes and spare parts. 2 pm--tried to get the GPS in my truck to function. 4 pm--communications tests for all 6 vehicles, testing radio communications, internet, and SASSI capabilities. My truck receives a big, fat fail! Still couldn't get GPS to interface with SASSI. Thought we had a major issue with our Sprint internet, but turns out the other 5 trucks were hogging all the bandwidth. A simple jog down the runway cleared up that problem. But still, no GPS. 6 pm--trip to RadioShack to return USB/serial converter that did NOT solve my GPS problems. 6:30 pm--trip to Best Buy to try to get my serial port fixed. They basically laughed and said buy a new laptop. They did give another suggestion....PCMCIA/serial adaptor. 7 pm--call with Chris to determine the next day's plan of meeting at RadioShack to try to find said PCMCIA/serial adaptor. Intermittently--more dissertation figures.
Friday: 8:30 am--Chris calls to cancel our RadioShack trip, turns out we already have some of the desired parts. 9 am--Target shopping trip to get some books for the trip, and to get cards/gifts for Mother's Day. 10 am--arrive at Reese and start some more dissertation figures. 11 am--sit with Brian in my truck & his truck, still trying to troubleshoot GPS issues. After many hours, I gave up. He is much better at these kinds of issues, and me sitting there staring at him working did neither of us any good. He ended up giving up several hours after I did, and we're ordering some new GPS units. 12 pm--pack up drills. 12:30 pm--back to dissertation figures. I finally finished making figures for each of my 144 statistical models. 2 pm--straighten up desk. The 40th anniversary of the Wind Science & Engineering Research Center is taking place while we are on the road, so wanted to leave things tidy. 3 pm--pick up my dogs and head home, then head out to post office to mail Mother's Day items (never know when you'll have a chance to go to the post office on the road!). 4 pm--start laundry, mow backyard, sweep floors. Rounding off this evening by watering the lawn, and typing this blog.
All-in-all a productive week, but still, seems like I spent more time walking between my office, the lab, and the hanger than I did actually working. Although I'm excited to get started, my feelings would certainly NOT be hurt if we managed to have tomorrow off. Did I mention that I'm selling my house? Making sure its clean every night and every morning before I leave for work is tiring too.
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