One of the advantages of living in the middle of nowhere is that there is are rural/countryside associated activities, such as a maze made out of corn and orchards full of apples and pumpkins that are within 15 minutes' drive away. Friend S. and I spent the first part of this afternoon taking full advantage of the orchards by going apple picking. The orchards themselves have been built up a bit with a quaint market and a Wizard of Oz themed play area complete with yellow brick road, barns painted with the Tin Man, and tree houses. 



The orchards themselves spread out far behind the buildings with row upon row of apple trees of many varieties.


Luck wasn't with us when we first started, as we came upon multiple rows of trees with apples only spread upon the floor below them. Every once in a while, we would catch glimpse of something round, but our hopes were dashed as soon as we walked closer and saw gashes in the flesh where bugs had already got at them. Fortunately, we managed to find a few rows of trees that were still full of apples. Yum!



 

I received a letter today from a friend whom I haven't seen for over ten years...One of my former classmates at Leith Primary apparently saw my post on the school website and decided to email me! She moved from Edinburgh after Leith as well and is now living in Germany. It's so interesting hearing from old friends again and finding out how far they've gone in the world.

Work's started already, and though it's only been two weeks, things are already busier than last year. Quite a few familiar faces are also working with us: Ariel's back, and his sister, Vivian is also around as a summer fellow, though she's working in a different lab. Rachel Morford's little sister, Sarah is also working here and so are Lara Saberon and James Lee (he's lurking around in some other lab, but I'm sure that I'll see him one of these days). As for me, I'm currently working concurrently on two main projects: writing up the paper for my project last year and processing data from the ambulatory oxygen study. We've made some progress in both these. I managed to finish a decent first draft of the introduction, and we've also got a draft of the methods section (though that will need several rounds of thorough Marunatizing). We've also got quite a bit of the analysis done for the RT3, breath tracker, and oxygen conserver data, which was the result of LOTS of tedious data crunching.

Last week Sara and I went roller blading at the beach last weekend. It was quite fun going down Manhattan Beach and talking about anything that flitted through our minds. We didn't quite manage to make it all the way to Marina Del Rey (very understandable, especially considering how hard my old pair of rollerblades were to skate in (the wheels had high friction because they were the old plasticky kind, and the straps were also kind of awkward, making it difficult to make the blades tight enough without being painful). We made it about 6 or 7 miles out, turning back at the end of Dockweiler Beach, had some soda, ice cream, and turkey sandwich. It was a really pleasant day, and I was really glad that Sara was willing to come all the way out with me even though it's been quite a while since she skated last.

So it's almost one third of the way through the summer holidays, and 4th of July weekend has crept up and caught me unexpected. I'm not completely sure what my plans for the weekend are--I've got four days to kill before I go back to the lab on Wednesday. I just got the Chronicles of Narnia, so I expect to spend some of that time reading through the series. (I've also got to read some of my textbooks sooner or later, but I'm trying to put it off for now <.<) I've got an appointment with Sara to go to the YMCA tomorrow afternoon. We made a deal that I would train with Sara on the machines and stuff before Sara would come swimming with me in the pool. It should be fun ^_^.