Whirlwind has dropped me in California

So the past month has been rather busy. Besides starting full time work on my RA project through OSU creating a online web map for Wisconsin, starting my thesis project, and traveling to visit family in Ohio and than the user conference in San Diego, I haven't had the time to land! But, directly after the user conference, I flew back to Oregon (on a plane...) visited with David's family, packed and said goodbye to my hubby and cat and made the drive down to Redlands, CA for my summer internship with Esri. I'm still getting settled and adjusted to my new room, town and job, but I will  keep you posted. I just finished my second day, day one was spent in a training class and day two involved an orientation for all 50 esri summer interns (most who have already been there for a few weeks if not a month), a meeting with Jack Dangermond (the president of esri... I totally felt star stuck, does that make me a geo geek?), and of course meeting my new coworkers on the ocean basemap team and learning the ropes of the job. Tomorrow I should actually start working on the project, so I promise to keep you up to date. Otherwise, good night everyone, I'm exhausted!

San Diego and geo geeks!

San Diego!

So after a nice, and mostly relaxing family vacation (just being honest... family vacays are NOT 100% relaxing, sorry Mom) I had a couple of days to prepare for my week long trip to San Diego for my student assistantship for the Esri User Conference. For those unfamiliar, Esri is a company that makes software and maps, think of the awesomeness that is google maps than multiple it by 50 and that would be equivalent to the capabilities of esri maps. So, basically their software allows user to make really cool maps and preform lots of spatial analyses, which is incredibly useful in so many fields (can you tell I've been drinking the kool-aid?).
It was a long, but fun week filled with multiple conference tasks, but also filled with great people, the San Diego Zoo, meeting lots of people in the field I will be looking for a job in next year, and also good mexican food and margaritas (which are hard to come by in Corvallis!). Here are some pics from the conference, enjoy!

All of the student assistants!

The Plenary Session, with over 15,000 people! People even ran for the stage!

The fliers we had to place on every seat!

       

The President of Esri, Jack Dangermond!

Fourth of July fun in Ohio!

OK, so I promised pics, so here they are! (p.s. aren't my nephews so cute?!)

Nephew Aidan

My Sister, Alicia, and I playing with the jet ski!

Myself, Aidan and my brothers new puppy, Bella

David and nephews Alexander and Nolan

Can I get a vacation to recover from my vacation?

I know everyone has felt this way, especially when a vacation involves family. David and I headed up to Ohio to visit my family over the fourth. We had great laughs, plenty of time to play with my nephews, fireworks, and a jet ski and boat to play on, and down time where I was finally able to pick up a book I wanted to read. I love my family, and I was great to see all of them and I really did have a great time, they are not the exhausting ones. Traveling was exhausting. Running through Denver's airport and getting in last night at 1:30 am (which felt like 4:30 am since we had adjusted to eastern time) just sucked. But perhaps the reason I feel like I want another vacation is because I'm trying to put off the inevitable. Early Friday morning, I get to head back to the airport to head to San Diego to attend the Esri User Conference, and when I get back I have to head down to California again for my 9 week internship with Esri. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for both, but I am feeling underprepared and wondering when I will have the time to get packed! Well, I guess it's "make it work" time, wish me luck! I hope that everyone had a great holiday weekend!

Headed out!

So, now that summer is here, I have been working on my RA work like a crazy mad woman. I am attempting to make an interactive mapping website, something I have never done before, and I feel stumped! Needless to say, I feel like I have been banging my head against the wall to even find a starting point. But at last I am making progress, slow progress, but progress. I have also been spending a lot of my free time with all my graduate friends who are still around, between barbecues and a few road trips to surrounding wineries or five guys burgers (hey, when you have a craving you have a craving)...

Here's the beautiful view from Redhawk Winery, you can even seen the snow capped peak of Mt. Hood on the left side! P.S. all you OR haters who say it rains all the time... check out the beautiful blue skies that lasted all day!

Tomorrow, David and I head out to visit my family and celebrate the Fourth of July! I hope that everyone is enjoying the nice weather and will get to relax and enjoy their long holiday weekend! Happy early Independence Day!

Anniversary Adventure

So, on June 11th David and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary. Deciding that we hadn't had much time to explore the state of Oregon together, we set out on a mini adventure. We headed to Portland for the night, and just happened to be there during the Rose Festival. We got to see the parade of flower floats and than strolled past the carnival rides, carnival food, free music down the waterfront on a beautiful sunny day in Portland.

 
The next day, after wandering the streets of Portland to find a particular breakfast food cart, we headed towards the Columbia River Gorge and it's many waterfalls (to kind of remind us of our honeymoon in Kauai with lots of waterfalls as well). I have already been to the area for the field trip at the beginning of the school year last September, but this was David's first trip. The sun was shinning and due to the 'warmer' weather the waterfalls looked spectacular! We followed the historic scenic highway, stopped at a few waterfalls and the View House at Vista Point to look at the view over the Columbia River. Our final stop was Multnomah Falls, which was packed with people enjoying the nice day.

After the strenuous hike to the top, we returned back down, chugged our water (which we left in the car) and left. We got lucky, because as soon as we were done, it began to rain, pretty much all the way home. We stopped and had lunch at Tad's Chicken and Dumplings, filled up on the delicious food (which I forgot to take picture of because I was so hungry after our hike, that I ate my food before I even though to take a picture). We drove home, thoroughly tuckered out, and relaxed for the rest of the night. It was great to get to share that with David, and make another memory for our anniversary.

End of Term Blues

OK, so I was living in Texas for majority of the last 10 year of my life before we moved here to Oregon. Everyone promised that it would be rainy, but by Memorial Day the rain would dry, the temperatures would rise and the sun would come out. I must admit I don't miss the Texas heat and humidity, but I do miss the sunshine. And for the most part Memorial Day wasn't an entire washout and the sun did appear periodically throughout the day. But now I am in my last week of classes and have two finals on Monday. The 'bummer' is that this weekend is supposed to be the nicest that we've had, well, since September. Sunny days with blue skies and highs over 80 degrees! And instead of being able to relish in the sunshine like I really want to, I have to be inside studying for my finals and writing my last ecological policy critique on marine protected areas. Can anyone come up with an excuse to be outside Saturday instead of inside? Please? Anyone...

OK... starting to see a trend

OK, so this trend isn't a good one, basically it is during school I suck at creating clever and timely blog posts. So I am planning on working on this, of course it's great that I only have a few weeks left and than it will be summertime baby! So, I figured I could give everyone a heads up of what I've been doing and a future look into my summer plans:

Currently, I am elbow deep in complete lab assignments for my advanced GIS class and my digital cartography class (aka how to make really pretty maps, like the one below)

In this map I learned how to create a whitewash effect and create a color elevation bar (kinda cool rather that just using the layer symbology). For my advanced GIS class I am creating different spatial surface interpolation maps about max ozone levels in southern California (the neatness and professionalism of this map doesn't count for points hence it isn't my finest example...)

As for the summer I shall (for now) being staying on Corvallis, except for a week to visit my parent's and rest of my family in Ohio for the 4th of July (yeah fireworks!) and the following week I will be attending the ESRI International User Conference as one of their student helpers (cool...it like my version of Google choosing me for the opportunity). Otherwise we will just have to wait and see!

Spring Break Visit from my parents

Sorry folks for such the late post. My parents came up to visit during our spring break at the end of March between Winter and Spring term. I was wonderful to see them! Can you believe that this was the first time my parent's had to travel to see just David and I? (This translates directly into time spent cleaning...).

We spent time up in Portland for their one truly sunny day...

We traveled to the coast...

        

A winery...         

And a non-profit carousel builder...? (WHAT??)

As far as I can tell everyone had a great time, David and I definitely appreciate their visit and hope they will come back next year... although maybe a little bit more in Spring so they can see all the flowers in bloom!

Return from Hibernation

Hello again everyone!

I'm back from my winter term hibernation (I blame it on the cold, wet weather as well as the heavy course load). Spring term has started and currently it's sunny and the flowers and the trees are all in bloom. Unfortuanltly, I'm stuck in my classroom for my Ocean Law class right now. Don't get me wrong, I am actually enjoying learning the in's and out's surrounding the ocean legal system and framework, but I would much rather be outside in the field. But since I am in class (don't worry we are in a break right now) this will be a very short blog posting, but I just wanted to let everyone out in cyberspace know I am alive and I haven't forgotten about my blog.

Keep your eyes open for upcomng blogs, I still need to post my parents spring break visit as well as some upcoming professional events. I will also be talking about classes and thus far classes are going well and things are shaping up to be a busy term (surprised? I'm not...). And I will hopefully by the end of this term be able to properly articulate my masters thesis work, so keep posted, I know everyone is dying to know what I will be studying, and so am I!

Winter Hibernation

Sorry, all my (few) followers. What can I say, it's cold and I've been living in Texas for too long? I wish that was a worthy excuse, but I have been negligent with my blog postings due to multiple "speed bumps" along my way this term. Shall I give a few examples?

1. My major advisor announced that she had accepted a job position and will be leave in September
2. My thesis project fell though due to the lack of a new federal budget, thus when this fell through so did my summer funding and I lost a committee member for my graduate committee

Trust me there is more, but these were the main issues that kind of bummed me out this term, and thus my enthusiasm for graduate school has been dampened (no pun intended with this wet rainy weather either). I know quite a few of my followers have been through a similar process. Any advice for a greenhorn like me? How did you pull yourself out of educational slumps? 

Road Trip!

Man, it sure does seem that since I moved to Oregon I appear to be going on a lot more road trips. This weekend I went with some friends to the coast to recharge my ocean batteries, since I have been seriously saltwater deprived since I moved here. We went to a fabulous local brewery, Rogue Brewery, which served some fabulous microbrews (aren't you jealous?), not to mention that the food was darn good also.

It was a great day, and a good break before I really have to dive into my course work this semester as well as start writing my proposal for my thesis (insert some ominous music here).

My first, get my feet wet, proposal project is due Friday, and after talking to my advisor today, I apparently need to get it done sooner than this since she wants to proofread it.... so back to work for me.

Although its hard to focus when its snowing...