Autumnal

So, this weekend has been completely awesome. OH EM GEE completely awesome. I had tests and things due last week so I had absolutely no written work to worry about this weekend. And also they cancelled signals lab for this week, so I didn't even have a pre-lab to do! I think this is the first weekend I've ever had here that's been so light on work.

Saturday morning I got up and drove Brian and another guy from radio club around so they could do some tests trying to hit the CMU repeater from various places...mostly to make sure that a repeater that some other club about 25 miles wants to set up out isn't going to interfere with CMU's. So that involved driving out into some semi-rural areas which were absolutely gorgeous, especially with leaves changing color and whatnot. We ended up briefly at this one park where they had a couple barnes and pastures. Jeremy and Brian wnted to walk to the top of this one hill to do the tests and when we got there, there were super cute sheep behind a fence along the trail! They watched from behind the fence (well, all except the one that ducked out under the fence and came onto the trail) while Brian and Jeremy played with their radios. So cute!

Then we drove back and it was all grey and rainy and cold aka perfect nap weather. So Brian and I took a 2 hour nap. Then I woke up and studied for my amateur radio exam (to get the lowest class of amateur license from the FCC) while Brian slept more. After he woke up I decided that I wanted to cook dinner, so I ran to the store and bought stuff and he worked on homework while I cooked pasta Bolognese. It turned out pretty well, if I say so myself....

Then today was church, a bit more studying, and then passing the exam! Yay! I still don't get to operate a radio until the FCC actually gets the results and puts them in their database, but that shouldn't take more than a couple weeks. I'm really excited because I thought about joining radio club freshman year but (obviously) never did...and now I can help out doing radio stuff for Buggy during Carnival, and I'm also going to be Brian's assistant for telecom on Carnival Committee. After that we hung out in the Shack and watched TV for awile (The Colbert Report and Futurama). Then he took me out to dinner to celebrate me passing the exam. We took our time walking back because it is a beautiful day - complete with shining sun! :-) And now I'm sitting in the ECE undergrad cluster getting around to studying for my Networks quiz on Wednesday.

Earlier last week I was thinking about how strange my own life feels to me sometimes - how it seems like I'm still in a place that's completely foreign and uncomfortable, even after I've been here for over 2 years. I'm still searching for that feeling of "place" but right now I'm pretty happy and I think I'm getting closer to finding out what "home" means to me.