Getting us to the 4th of July

The last few weeks have been pretty intense, we went from Delaware to Ann Arbor Michigan then up to Midland Michigan and then back to Pittsburgh and then from Pittsburgh to Columbia Missouri and then to Greeley Colorado back to Boulder Colorado and then finally home to Provo UT. All in all we drove a great many miles in a short period of time.

We spent a week in Ann Arbor while I attended a workshop on SOAR (http://msoar.org/). It was a fantastic experience. There were lots of interesting presentations and I learned a ton about SOAR and how to create agents, what other people are working on etc. I was also able to meet with two professors from the University of Michigan (the workshop was on their campus) and talk about pursuing graduate school there. It was a really positive experience and I got good feed back from the professors. We stayed with Megan's cousin Logan and his family. They were great!

In Midland we stayed with Megan's Aunt and Uncle Karen and Carl so we could visit Megan's cousin Audry who just had surgery. Audry was a friend from when Megan and I were still single. Anyway, Audry was doing great and we got to eat some amazing food cooked by Uncle Carl. Really, Really good food. Megan and I enjoyed sleeping on a real queen sized bed for the first time in weeks. I also picked up a Robert Jordan book for the umpteenth time.

Pittsburgh was a quick stop so I could wander around CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) and meet with a professor and a graduate student there. I had a lukewarm feeling from the professor and had a positive one from the Graduate student. CMU is definitely an engineering school and I don't know if that is exactly what I want to do. I did get a good breakdown of what pursuing a Phd there would be like though.

Columbia was a quick overnighter at my Aunt Lynn and Uncle Doug's place. We drove about 750 miles to get there and were exhausted. Doug and I talked for a few hours about life the universe and everything and then we went to bed. We got up early and left for a 790 mile drive to Greeley Colorado where my Cousin Megan and her family live. It was a loooong drive.

Greeley was great, we got to see Megan and Benjamen's new place and hang out with Patrick their 1.5ish year old. He loves basketball! Aunt Lynn was there so that was great to see her. We left after a great breakfast of breakfast burritos and headed to the Boulder campus.

Boulder is a beautiful place and the campus reflects that beauty. Our mission on campus was two fold. I had two meetings (11 & 1) and Megan had her Anatomy and Physiology test (11). Parking was hairy because there was a road under construction and I was a few minutes late to my first meeting. I met with Dr. James Martin and Dr. Martha Palmer. Jim was a great guy and very laid back. We had a great discussion on the decision between an Engineering oriented degree and a Linguistics one. Dr. Palmer treated me to lunch and we talked about some of her latest interesting work dealing with words senses and machine translation. She has an exciting project going on that I would love to work on. Trying to leave Boulder our Check Engine Light came on so we went to an Autozone to have the codes read (for free! wooHO) and it turned out there was just a weird sensor glitch and nothing major so we headed for home. The glitch resolved itself now that we are back in Provo by the way.

Provo!!!!! I never thought I would ever be so excited to drive into Provo. Honestly after eating fast food, living on floors and air mattresses for a month I was so excited to be able to sleep in my own bed I almost cried (not really... I mean that's just an expression right?) We spent Friday recovering and then went to Mount Pleasant on the 4th to celebrate Independence Day.


I'll let Megan give a post on our fourth b/c she is a much more exciting writer than I am.

In summation this last month we visited the following Schools

*University of Colorado - Boulder
*Ohio State University
*University of Maryland - College Park
*University of Michigan
*Carnegie Mellon University

And met the following people
*Julie Boland
*Steve Abney
*DJ Hovermale
*Michael White
*Chris Brew
*Noah Smith
*Justin Betteridge
*James Martin
*Martha Palmer
*Amy Weinberg
*Anton Rytting

And went to the following Places
*Georgetown Delaware
*Lewes Delaware
*Rehoboeth Beach Delaware
*Columbia Missouri
*Greeley Colorado
*Boulder Colorado
*Columbus Ohio
*Ann Arbor Michigan
*Midland Michigan
*College Park Maryland
*Washington D.C. (the Temple too, awesome one)
*Pittsburgh Pennsylvania