Trip to Atlanta, GA - 90th AMS Conference (2010)
The trip to Atlanta has begun. I got all my stuff packed up right after Thermo and we loaded up the van. After picking up Margot, we headed down to the bank so Bill could deposit the allocated funding check in the club funds, then headed back to campus to grab another iPod car adapter, then went straight down 13. The ride itself was fun but long. Margot made an epic music mix so we listened to that on the way down and randomly danced and sung. The only problem was that throughout the day, I ended up feeling crappier and crappier. By the time we made it to Manitowoc (about 9:30ish) I was full-on congested. Margot’s mother made fajita mixes for us so we ate that. Tasty. After that, we got settled in our sleeping areas. I ended up on a mattress in Margot’s room while Bill and Amber took the room next to us. Not long after, I asked about medicine and ended up running to Walmart with Margot to pick up a bit of medicine. I got ready for bed right after that, since we had to be up early for our 9:40 flight, and got into bed a couple minutes later. Sadly I didn’t get to sleep as early as I thought because once Margot came in, we ended up talking for a good long while. It was still fun though.
I ended up getting up at 5:45. I wandered out to the kitchen to see Margot’s mom making sausage, eggs and fruit breakfast. It was sooo good. :) After we all grabbed showers and got ready, we hit the road for the airport. We got there about 7:50 or so and checked in right away. We went through security with all their craziness. I ended up accidentally setting the alarm off because I had forgotten to take my cell phone out of my pocket. Once I did that, I was fine, lol. The plane ride was fine, though I forgot what flying was like so when we took off, my hand gripped the armrest automatically. The first flight was in a small plane though so it was a bit more bumpy. I made sure to have my Kleenexes out and I took an Actifed to help with the pressure and clear my head. The ride was fun once we were in the air though. Margot and I sat together and we took crazy random pictures. When we landed in Detroit, we got to see a fellow Northlander named Intefada. I knew who she was from the times I had seen her around but I didn’t really know her personally. It was neat though because her flight path to Ecuador had her on the same flight as us, so that was neat. Unfortunately, my ears would not pop at all, so everything was muffled. I called home to seek advice and they said to go find EarPlanes, Afrin and Day/Nyquil. With thanks to Amber, I did just that. I got everything I needed ($40 worth of 4 boxes) just in time to find out we were boarding the plane. I grabbed my stuff, but because my ears were still stuffed I was feeling weird. MY friends said a couple times that having plugged ears can mess with the entire system and that’s totally true. For about 5 minutes I felt semi-nauseous and had to sit down for a bit. I almost said forget it and stayed in Detroit. Dunno what I would’ve done there, but I was freaking out quite a bit. Once we got on the plane I felt better. I just ended up having a bad case of nerves. I warned the flight attendants up at the front when I boarded that I wasn’t feeling too hot and after they asked me a couple questions to see how bad I was, they let me go in and said that they would check up on me. Margot and I shared a seat bench again, only this time we were in front of the stewardesses’ area. On the ascent, one of them sat down in the folding seat next to us and we all started talking. After introducing ourselves a short way in, Bridget got me a glass of water so I could down some Dayquil. I also used some Afrin to help clear my head of the pressure and put the EarPlanes in. I kept them in the entire ride and I’m glad I did. They really helped out on the descent. That plane ride was nicer because it was a bigger plane too; I think I like larger ones better. The stewardesses and the captain did check up on me too. Special treatment, lol. The view wasn’t that great though. There were clouds all the way from Green Bay to Atlanta - we couldn’t see Atlanta until we were about 1000 feet above it. We got into the airport and walked a long way to baggage and then, after parting ways with Intefada, we headed to the shuttles. They said on the website that shuttle service to the hotel was free, so we were surprised to find that there was a fee of $16.50 per person one way to the downtown. We did get to see a bit of the city though. We got checked in and breathed a sigh of relief at finally being here, and I plugged my phone in since it decided that dying would be beneficial to it somehow. After some deliberation we walked down the block in the rain to get to a Chinese restaurant. We decided to get certain dishes and put them all in the middle buffet-style. I was nice and used the serving utensils all the time. We had so much good food that we ended up with 2 take home boxes practically full. Thank the Met funds for paying for our delightful meal. After that, we decided it was too gross outside to do much else, so we came back to the hotel and have all been putzing around on our computers. Yay free wireless. :) With all the meds I’ve taken today, I’m currently quite out of it, so now it’s time for bed.
I went to bed at 9:30. My alarm went off at 8:15, so I got a good 11 hours or so of sleep. I took a Nyquil and it knocked me out completely. Amber and Bill watched a movie while Margot studied, and once I fell asleep I didn’t hear anything until my alarm woke me up. A couple alarms went off before mine, with rings even, and I didn’t hear them either. Bill was the first one up and got in the shower right away, even though Margot wanted to be first so she could have enough time to do her hair afterwards. We were all up by the time he got out and then Margot got in. Amber took hers next and then I grabbed one. When I was about to get in, Amber said she was hungry so she and Bill took off for breakfast, even though Margot asked them to wait so we could all eat together. I got ready and she and I headed down together. We got there just as they were leaving. We grabbed breakfast fast and then headed up to the room. We got out of the escalator to see them trying to get in. They were gonna leave without us. Margot snapped at them a bit and asked them to wait. We hurried to get ready and had no choice but to leave the room in a bit of a mess, so we felt bad for the cleaning people. I discovered on the ~2 block walk over that my new shoes are too big for my feet, so every step I took made my shoe try to slide off. That and the fact that Amber and Bill wouldn’t slow down made it very hard on me, especially being sick and all. When we got registered and finally sat down, I could take a breather. The inseparable pair went off to explore while Margot and I stayed there for a bit. I found a restroom and grabbed some paper towels for my shoes, which made it a bit better. After they came back, we all went down to Weatherfest, which was like a preconvention convention. There were booths set up all over the main room, with globes, posters, radiosonde balloons, everything. The main excitements of that were: 1) Weather Channel personnel and 2) Reed Timmer! We actually got to meet Reed, with introductions and hand shakes, and we all talked for a good 5-10 minutes. At the end, we got a group picture with him and his buddy Chris. We wandered a bit and discovered a stage area at the end of the room where one of the Weather Channel guys, Nick Walker, was presenting some weather songs to the little kids. After wandering around for a while, we ended up in front of Reed’s area again, since he was going to be presenting some of his footage. Margot said that it would be funny if a tornado siren went off while everyone was there because there would be a mass exodus and people would be off chasing everywhere. Reed had left for a bit and came back to hear us laughing and so when he asked about it, we told it to him and he completely agreed. :) He then told us that he was nervous for the presentation and Margot said that there were a lot of little kids around so he could make it a little bit more geared towards them. After he left, we shifted down to the stage area and watched the end of Nick’s thing and then a raffle started. It was going so slow and ran late so at the end they sent Reed up there to hand out the last 4 bags. The little girl recruited from the audience that was pulling tickets kept doing so, and it kept going slow so eventually Reed told her to throw the bags into the audience. She chucked them good too. He then started up the presentation and it was really cool. He actually did what Margot suggested too and talked with the kids while the video clips played. We had to duck out around 3 though, since there was an Annual Meeting going on that was really helpful for the newbies. After that, we went back up to try and catch Reed again. I had told Jenn before that we met him and she freaked out and wanted something signed, so Margot and I took the map of the place to him and asked him. He said absolutely and signed it for her, and then told us that we needed to go chasing, and if we ever were chasing in Nebraska that we could stay at his house. :) She and I then got to shake his hand a second time and then we all left to get food. We headed back to the hotel first, and my feet were killing me by this time, since my shoes still needed a little more towel in them to keep them from falling off (plus they were rubbing the top of my toes). I got to change shoes and catch my breath a bit from the walk back, since they didn’t slow down any more and we had to hike up a hill this time. We headed out again a little bit later and found Jalapeno Charlie’s, a Mexican restaurant. Luckily I found something I could eat there since I don’t like much Mexican other than tacos. Unfortunately my meds wore off by that point so my throat was a little bit tight and what I got had cheese so it made for a slightly bad combination, but it was still tasty. Once we headed out, Margot and I decided to walk slow, since the other two were still walking fast everywhere. Once we told them that, they kept speeding up until at one point we saw them running. We just shrugged it off for the most part and took our time looking at the city and taking pictures. We got back to the hotel to see them leaving for a BBC presentation on clouds that we wouldn’t have known about had they started discussing amongst themselves during dinner. We said forget it and stayed in the room, and now here I am. :) Once I get my schedule done for tomorrow and get one subject of homework done, I’m going to bed.
So, I got my VBA done last night by borrowing Margot’s book (thank you Margot!) and once we got our schedule done, I decided to hit the hay. I popped another Nyquil but it didn’t work as well as the first one did. I must have to be already decently tired to make it work like that. Amber and Bill got up early to go to some of the really early presentations and I heard them rustling around. Margot and I stayed asleep until 9. We were up for about a minute or two when Melissa called to say that she was checked in and over at the building, and asked where we were. I told her that those two were over there but we were still in the room and would be over in a bit. We showered, ate breakfast and went downstairs to talk to the front desk. Randomly the toilet handle fell off and when we tried to put it back on, it wouldn’t do anything. The lady told us that she would send someone up. We also met the Japanese man that Amber and Bill held the elevator for last night. He had told them that it was his first time in America and that he lost his luggage, so we were happy to see that he had a poster in a packed cylinder. He told us that it came at 5am and that he lucked out because he was putting it up at the poster session today. We wished him luck and then took our time walking over to the conference, which was nice since my feet decided to blister from the evil death shoes. I wore my sandals over and my feet still hurt, so yeah. We went down a floor or two to go scope out our first conference room when we looked to the side and who was there? None other than Melissa! We sat down and talked to her for about 10 minutes or so. She introduced us to a friend of hers that she met in grad school and she was really nice too. Around 11, we went to our first set of talks. The first 2 were cool; the first talked about the climatology of inland winds from tropical storms and hurricanes, and the second did radiosonde climatology for South Carolina (he was a grad student). The third was about low level winds and climatology of the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica, and the last one was about the bomb cyclone. Margot and I weren’t exactly sure what a bomb cyclone was. I kinda had some idea but I didn’t know the criteria, so we just decided to ask Melissa about it later. We had a break after that (after noon) so, after I went to the gift shop to get $6 bandaids for my feet, we decided to hit the Starbucks in the building. We grabbed a coffee and a treat (I had a really sweet lemon pound cake that reminded me of Mom’s orange cookies) and sat down in a decent sized area with lots of chairs. We sat at a table with 4 chairs seated around it and were there for a good 5 minutes at least when an Asian man (later identified by nametag as Chin Lin) sat down across from us to eat his lunch. We exchanged hellos and he told us about the food court in the CNN center across the street where he got his food. He then said that he was from Boston and was presenting a talk involving space weather. Another guy came and sat down at our table (IDed as Ron Smith) and after exchanging hellos, we found out he was a professor at Yale. The four of us talked for a while (Margot got to talk about wind energy with Mr. Smith for a bit) and then we said our goodbyes so we could make our way to the room where Melissa was presenting. Turns out it was at the end of the hallway - a really long hallway - on the second level. We talked with Melissa briefly and reassured her that she would do fine and then the presentations were under way. The first one involved the factors of lightning and moisture in wildfires in Alaska and Canada, and it was pretty cool; the guy giving the talk was really tall though, lol. Melissa then presented hers on the temperature patterns during El Nino winters, and it was amazing! All of her presentations are like that one. Even the guest presentation she gave when she first visited Northland was like that - very well put together and informative but not over the top. The third was one about Africa and I didn’t understand it much so it kinda bored me. The last one was about correlations between the Great Lakes and cyclone development, and it was decent too. After the last one, Margot and I waited outside for Melissa to come out. We ended up talking with her and her friend that we met previously for a bit and then we all walked down to the gigantic poster session together. We split from there and Margot and I wandered the hallway of billboards one by one. There had to be at least 250 posters in there; we didn’t even get to 150, lol. We found some neat ones with some really cool people. The first lady we saw told us about her experience with Hurricane Camille. Another guy gave us free posters of a Luann cartoon, and he told me “since someone is gonna steal yours, I’ll give you another one” and he did. Another guy was showing cloud information and gave us cloud wheels that we could make, with descriptions and pictures. Then, on a random glance, I saw the word “Baiu” and automatically stopped. See, baiu is another word for tsuyu and tsuyu is another word for the Japanese rainy season, so after my research for Global last semester I was automatically intrigued. I must have been standing there gazing at the poster for at least a good minute when the guy presenting it came over and it was none other than the Japanese man that we talked to this morning. We introduced ourselves (his name was Hirohisa Mizuno) and I explained about my capstone idea. It took a while to get him to understand because it was his first time in America and he didn’t know a lot of English, but all things considered he was doing well, and we told him this. We told him that we had at least a tiny bit of experience with his language and we managed to make him laugh, which was really neat. We said we’d say hi if we saw him again and wandered around the posters some more. We didn’t make it through all of them because we had another round of talks to go through so we made our way to the next room. The first talk was at 4 and it was on GPS and space weather. It was a bit over our heads because the guy talked about frequencies and stuff like that more than the weather itself. After that we took a 15 min break to cross the building for our next one: the weather and communication involved in the Colorado tornado on 5/22/08. That one was neat, but it focused more on the communications than the weather itself, but they did include some charts to show what led to the event. We had to move rooms for the next one we wanted, which was measuring the structure of hurricanes with a microwave sounder, which was decently cool since it did show the structure, but it was a bit over our heads too. The fact that we were late to it didn’t help matters either, but oh well. After that, we went back to the room we were previously in for the last 2 talks. The first of those was a communications study on the hurricane products shown for Hurricane Ike, and the guy doing it was an amazing speaker. He was the only one who went out in front of the podium and when he said good afternoon, he actually made us say it again in order to get excited about it. He was an undergrad too, which surprised us. The last one was similar in topic, but a little more broad. It looked at the communications too but it broadened it to just hurricanes in general. The lady giving that one was rather longwinded. After that one, we decided to grab some dinner, so we headed over to the CNN center, but not before stopping at an information kiosk to ask about cheaper restaurants in the area. We grabbed Arby’s and then walked back to the hotel. We soon discovered that the toilet still wasn’t fixed so we went down again and reported it, and this time it did get fixed. We were there to see it happen. :) After that, I got on here and started this thing again (it’s taken me several hours to recount this, by the way). So you may be wondering why I didn’t mention Bill and Amber much. Well, it’s because we rarely saw them today and when we did they were both being completely antisocial towards us. I have no idea what the heck is their problem, but Bill will hardly acknowledge either of us and Amber will speak short sentences but basically ignores us unless we’re somehow being too obnoxious. Margot and I are both to the point where we either want to ignore them or confront them about it, but we can’t figure out which is the better option. Something is definitely up though, because there was so much friction in the room tonight… I told Margot through text that I could use the soap and it would catch on fire. Yeah, that bad. Whatever. I’m done with it tonight, and I’m done with this.
It was kind of aggravating finishing this up last night. I was still typing when Amber and Bill went to bed and at one point I saw a pillow go over a head so I was kinda growling mentally by the time I was done. Margot had just gotten off the phone when I got in bed so we discussed what time to get up in the morning. We had asked the others when a good time to get up was and they said 7:30, so we decided to get up at 7 so that Margot could shower and get working on her hair and I could shower and we could both be out of the way. After sleep, we woke up to find them on their way out the door. They had woken up at 6:30 to beat us in there. We were kinda irked about that, to say the least. We showered and ate breakfast (no sign of them) and then headed over to the convention again. Our first one was at 8:30 and it was about air traffic and Mount Redoubt ash. That one was really cool - there were slides showing the spread of ash over Alaska and Canada. The next one was about the insurance side of 2009 weather catastrophes and that was pretty sweet too. I thought it was going to be boring but it was actually really cool. Then we went to one that dealt with high-altitude luminous events (sprites, jets and elves). I thought that one was gonna be really sweet but it was so over my head… It didn’t help that the dude had some sort of accent - Russian maybe? - and the mic wasn’t turned up much at all so we couldn’t even hear him. It was misleading cuz the dude had a decent sounding name and was from Penn State… We both ended up almost falling asleep, lol. After that session, we started walking down the hallway but with my feet gaining blisters every couple hours, they were already killing me. Once we got to the next area I put my sandals back on and decided that I was wearing my tennis shoes tomorrow. We sat down for a bit and a couple ladies sat near us. The one was quite shy but the other one was nice. She told us about her lecture, which we missed and apologized for since we didn’t know what it was. It was about a soon-to-be-public website that would give weather and location criteria and allow people to check times for good activity. For instance, a cement mixer could give specifications and it would tell him when he could pour cement and when would be bad. The next session we went to was information about transportation given by Greg Forbes from the Weather Channel. That was sweet cuz a) there was good information and b) it’s Greg Forbes. Next up was extreme rainstorms in advance of tropical cyclones, and that one was really cool. It covered a topic of predecessor rain events (PRE) that happen in front of hurricanes and tropical storms and often bring as much rain as the storm itself. Right after that was a look at the origins of certain tropical storms (as in ocean versus gulf) and that was neat too. It was done by a grad student and she was nervous, I could hear it in her voice. She still did well though, and we told her so. After that was done, I was getting tired of wearing the sandals cuz I didn’t think they looked professional, so Margot told me to put my socks on, she handed me her black slippers that she had brought with her and put on her dress shoes. I thanked her immensely. :) We went to Starbucks again for lunch. They didn’t have my lemon thing so I was sad but I got a cinnamon thing instead. We sat outside the Starbucks today and at one point, Margot was saying how she was hoping Jim Cantore (from The Weather Channel) would walk by. About 5 minutes later a guy walked by and her mouth dropped. She pointed and was like “Is that Steve Lyons?” (also from TWC) and I was like “Yeah! That is him!” So, we jumped up, grabbed our coffees and followed him down the hall. He was moving at a good clip, so we got lucky when someone stopped to talk to him. He headed down the escalator just as we were approaching so we kept following him until he stopped at a pizza stand in the building. Margot began digging for her Storm Stories DVD book and once she found it, we walked up to him. We introduced ourselves and said we were big fans and after a bit of chatting, she asked for his autograph. He said sure and she got out the book and he was like “Put that away, you don’t want me to sign that” so she did. He handed her his business card and said to email him and he would send a signed picture. I asked if I could do it too and he said ok. Then Margot mentioned that she always wanted Jim Cantore’s job, being out in the storms and stuff, and he said “Oh I’m good friends with him, I can ask him to send one too.” I think Margot’s heart stopped for about 5 seconds on that one, lol. We thanked him and headed to the next session: GIS development of Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program. I got some good pictures of the data to prove that GIS is used in other areas, since we only see it for mapping at school. Then we saw the development of a GIS snowstorm database and that was cool too. More GIS, more pictures. After that was geospatial analysis of radar from tropical cyclones, and that was sweet. Again, more pictures. We walked to the next session and putzed around for a bit since we had a bit of a break. Turns out we found Amber in our next one too, and we ended up talking to her about the issues we were having. She seemed really oblivious (or else it was a front, I dunno) so I’m hoping that meant that she didn’t know it was happening. The next presentation was about avalanche impacts in winter of 08-09, and that was a really nice one. The one after that was a look at the significant storms in winter of 08-09, and it was cool too, but I don’t remember it as well. The next one was on gravity waves and it was by Ron Smith, the guy from Yale we met yesterday. It was cool to see him talk but I didn’t understand much of what he said at all, lol. After that, Margot and I split up. She went back to the room that had the avalanches, while I went up and listened to the end of a foreign guy’s presentation on drought models. The one after was the one I wanted to hear. It was on soil and droughts in the Kumamoto area of Japan and the presenter was Hirohisa’s mentor, Kenji Tanaka. It was really cool except that it was in the same room as the other dude’s presentation (the one who did the sprites and stuff) and the mic still wasn’t set decently so it was hard to hear him. It didn’t help that there were people coming out of a presentation next door and talking in front of our open door, so with Tanaka’s accent, it was hard to decipher what he was saying. Luckily he tended to read most of the slides, adding his own info here and there, so I still got the basic gist of it. Once that was done, I headed back to the avalanche room where the other 3 were, and joined in on the last presentation for the day on the tropical cyclones of 09. It was cool and said that the year 2009 was a horrible hurricane season, haha. Margot and I decided, after she said hi to friends of hers from Milwaukee that she recognized, that we were gonna go eat at the CNN center again, so we did just that. Yay tacos! After that, we headed back to the hotel and experimented with a new way to get back that didn’t involve climbing a block’s worth of death hill. We’ve climbed that sucker for 3 days now and I can happily say that with today’s find, we no longer have to climb it and my sickly asthmatic self can breathe easier… literally. (Really though, I am feeling better. My throat’s a little gunky yet but my nose is finally slowing down and I’m coughing a little less. I went completely off the meds today. :D) Once we got back, I got back on here and attempted to write, but it was hard. I was a bit ADD tonight, lol. Soon it will be time for bed, but tomorrow I can sleep in. I showered again tonight so that it’s one less body to schedule in in the morning. Smart, huh? ;)
So, Margot and I decided to type back and forth through AIM while the others were asleep. That was fun. Much better than talking in whispers. :D This morning the alarm went off and I heard Margot say “let’s not go to the morning session” and I said ok so we rolled over and went back to sleep. It was ok because we weren’t that interested in the morning ones anyway. Margot woke me up about 9:45ish and after getting breakfast, we decided that the late morning ones weren’t interesting either. Instead we decided to work on homework. I attempted a bit of Thermo but didn’t get very far there so I skipped to that 18 pg paper that Melissa wants us to read for Dynamic. I got 4 pages in and realized most of it was completely over my head so I stopped. I couldn’t concentrate on it, lol. Around 12:30 or so, we headed over to the conference center. It was sooooo nice out today. It had to be at least 60 degrees. People were out everywhere too. We saw a small group of people bouncing a giant red ball across the road and someone standing in the middle of the lane line with what looked like a video camera. They were bouncing it back and forth across the road so I’m guessing they were taping it for some reason. I just find it funny that a little ways away was a cop, lol. We got to the building a little early so we went down to the exhibit hall to look around. This one guy gave us squishy keychains and another guy showed us Styrofoam rubber band rockets. He shot one up and it hit the ceiling 4 stories up and floated back down. I loved it so he gave us 2 each and we said that with one for the 4 of us we could have a rocket war, and he was like “Oh there’s 4 of you? Here, take 4 more.” He was awesome. Then there was the guy doing sales for a mobile phone company, I think, who we talked to for probably 10 minutes. I got lots of business cards. By this time we decided that this was more interesting than the first presentation we had wanted to go to, so we skipped it and kept going. There were so many projection globes around, and I was so distracted by them all, lol. After that, we went over to look at more posters, but there weren’t as many and weren’t as exciting as the last round. We decided to go up to the next presentation then, and it was supposed to be a good one according to Melissa. Very controversial: “Blame it on climate change.” Unfortunately the guy didn’t show up, so the talk was canceled and we still had yet to go to a presentation, lol. By this time we were hungry, so we went over to the CNN center again and grabbed Wendy’s. Oh man, that was the best Wendy’s I’ve had in a while… Crispy bacon, and the fries and frosty combo… *drools* After lunch we stopped in a couple of the stores inside the center, including a Cartoon Network store. We went back after a bit and went to our first presentation. The Arctic sea ice and cloud idea was cool but I was still distracted easily and the fact that there were people in front of the screen didn’t help me learn anything, lol. After that we went to the next room and slid in the back, since it was full. We ended up sitting down in the back corner and listening to the end section of the one before it. Didn’t really keep my attention though, since it was about finances more. We saw the one we wanted to see, but again I don’t remember it. After that we decided to head back to the hotel and drop off our crap, since the bags we got tended to get heavy fast. We spent about 45 minutes back there - I got to talk to Mom, yay! - and then headed back to the hotel for the banquet at 7 that we originally thought was 5:30. On the way we found an awesome cop who randomly let me get on his police motorcycle and take a picture. Because of his awesomeness, I had to get a picture with him too, lol. We then walked with an older couple who were really nice and told us that we missed out on 2 nights of free alcohol at the Aquarium and Coca-Cola center. (Apparently the AMS people like to party, lol.) When we got there about 6:30ish, there was already a decent line formed. We ended up talking to a couple older guys from Oklahoma for a bit and then, after initiating conversation with the tall Puerto Rican guy (named Moises) next to us, Margot gave him a piece of licorice. He had never had it before so he wasn’t sure how to eat it, but he did like it. She gave his friends a piece too and they said it was like plastic, lol. They finally let us go in the ballroom where the banquet was being held. Margot and I flocked to an edge and picked a deserted table to sit at so we wouldn’t bump backs with anyone. A couple minutes later we were joined by a foreign man, presumably Indian, and 4 undergrad students from Penn State. Their names were Tom, Andrew, Nick and Beth and they were all really nice. We talked about our colleges and they told us that at PSU they had ~6 concentrations of meteorology major. When the food came (we had a salad, chicken with vegetables, and key lime pie, by the way), the guys had already finished off the 3 extra salads that had been on the table and were asking for a couple extra plates for our friends (who weren’t actually joining us) and some more bread. Margot made the comment that they ate like football players and they were like “No, we play tennis” and one of the other guys said that they were meatheads, haha. The waitress did bring a couple extra chicken dishes and they finished those too, but Andrew was sad because she never brought the bread, lol. What a cutie. :) The awards went on for a while, mainly while we were eating, and it was about 9ish when we finally got out of there. We scurried back to the hotel because there were a couple people who were seemingly getting arrested as we walked past. Needless to say, I clenched a fist around my purse. We made it back to the hotel safe and were walking through the lobby when Margot spotted Hirohisa off to the side. She said “if you want to talk to him, now’s your chance” so I waited for him. When he came out, I said hi and asked him if I could have a copy of the poster that he presented, and he said sure (basically). After a bit of talk, he said that he would come by our room with a flash drive. About 5-10 minutes after we got in, he knocked on the door. I let him in and as soon as he came in, he bowed and took off his shoes. He asked what version of Office I had and I told him I had the ’03 version, so he went back, switched the data and came back. When he put the flash drive in my computer, it wouldn’t recognize it, so after a couple minutes of trying to figure it out, I gave him my flash drive and he went back again. He came back and showed me which file it was. It showed up wonderfully, and I thanked him again. Once he left I oohed and ahhed over it and giggled mentally that a Japanese man touched my computer, lol. (I know and fully admit that I am pathetic.) After that I started typing this thing, but I kept getting distracted again and didn’t finish it completely. I decided to call it quits after a while and go to bed.
I woke up to Margot getting out of the shower around 9:50. We had agreed that we were basically done with conference things since they weren’t that interesting, except for a couple presentations on monsoons that I picked out. After going to breakfast, we came back and I was about to hop in the shower when Amber and Bill came in. Bill gave us a kind of dirty look, finished talking to Amber and then left the room again. She told us they were going to go to the Gone with the Wind house. Margot asked if they had been using allocated funding (we got $500 before the trip began) for dinners and stuff and she said no, but that they were going to use it for the CNN center and aquarium. After they left, we found it unfair that they were using it without us, since Bill is the one with the card. We want to talk to them about it later and see if we can find a way to use it together for the aquarium or something like that, since we’re basically being jipped. (The money was supposed to be used for all of us, not just two, so since we don’t have a card, Margot and I are getting shafted.) Around 1:00 we went over to the conference for the last time. The conference topic was monsoons so I thought it would be interesting. It was, except most of it involved graphs more than maps so I didn’t learn as much as I thought I would. I ended up staying for most of the hour even though I only wanted to see the first, third and fourth. Margot got bored so she went outside after a while. Sadly I ended up getting really bored after a while. Every presenter had either a Spanish or Asian accent so it was harder to understand them. I didn’t get much out of it either; it didn’t pertain to Japan (India instead) even though latent heat and sea surface temps were interesting topics. Margot and I decided to call it quits after that so we talked to the lady at a concierge desk and she told us that the closest mall was 6 miles north. She suggested, for souvenirs and such, to go to Atlanta Underground which is about 10 blocks or so away. We thanked her and decided to grab lunch first, so we went over to the CNN center again. After we had lunch, we thought about going out to the Underground but it was raining enough that we weren’t up for walking it in the rain and wind, so we decided to head back to the hotel and do homework. We got back and discovered Bill and Amber asleep so we grabbed our stuff and asked the guy at the front desk if there was a quiet place to study. He told us to go downstairs another floor and to use the 2 chairs down there, so we did just that. I got a decent attempt on Thermo but I couldn’t get the right answers, so I need to wait until we get back so I can talk to Jeremy about it. Hopefully he can help me make it make sense. After a while we went back upstairs and decided to basically putz around. Around 8 we ordered pizza and had it delivered, and it was good. And after that, that’s basically it for today.
Today was our goof off day. Margot and I went to the CNN center to grab our combo tickets for the CNN center and the aquarium. $35 for both, not too bad. Around 11:30 we toured the CNN center. Since the giant escalator that runs up 8 floors was broken, we had to take the elevator. We got to see the inner workings of the center, including people in the offices and such. There was even a green screen to represent broadcast meteorology in one room. The tour guide asked if one of us would come out to try it, and since I had said I was a meteorologist at some point, I volunteered. Even without having the practice of the Broadcast Meteorology class, I picked out the targets she asked for just fine, no trouble at all. Must be inherent or something, lol. After grabbing some post-tour lunch, Margot and I walked down to the aquarium. It’s the largest aquarium in the USA for a reason. It had 5 wings, and each wing had something special about it, like a theme. One wing was a petting zoo type, which Margot was freaking out about. She insisted I not stick my hand in the water to pet the rays. Didn’t quite understand her reasoning for that, considering I was the one to touch them, not her. (Funny how she loves looking at fish but she’s afraid of them…) Either way, I didn’t do it, to humor her. We walked through several areas where water covered the ceilings and if you looked up, all you saw was the underside of a fish. We also went past one area with a hidden sea turtle that I had to help Margot find, and a puffer fish that decided it would be fun to swim in and out of the side of the viewing area. The main attraction was the big tunnel of fish that led to the biggest wall of fish ever. The tunnel in and of itself was cool. The glasslike material went in a complete semicircle so that from the average person’s waist up, it was all water view. We saw many a giant fish, including several odd looking rays, a manta ray and some whale sharks, which the Georgia Aquarium prides itself in. The tunnel itself leads under the attraction and the big wall is actually a side view of the exhibit. The immensity of the big wall hits you as soon as you turn the corner. On that wall, you can see all 4 whale sharks, which are juvenile and already enormous. Margot and I stayed there and watched the animals for probably a good half hour. We wandered the halls some more and I got a boatload of pictures, including a picture of a fish that was staring straight at the glass. If there ever was a creeper fish, that would be it. After the aquarium, we went into the gift shop. I picked up a stuffed manta ray that I just couldn’t resist, and Margot picked up a shot glass. It was a 2 for 1 deal, so we split the money and I got one too. After that, we headed to the Coca Cola factory. It was later in the day so we just went into the gift shop instead of touring it. It was so red in there… I grabbed coca cola bottle shaped salt and pepper shakers as a gift for my parents and a coca cola shot glass too. I almost got a sweet pair of flip flops but they were expensive so I didn’t. Man, do I regret that now… After that, we went back to the hotel to chill for a bit. For dinner, we went to the Azio, which was like an Italian restaurant. That place would be a great dinner date location - good atmosphere for it. The food was good too. After dinner, we stopped at the Hard Rock Café to say we’d been to it. We were served by this nice guy bartender who suggested a drink for us to try, so we did. It was a drink that you could get the glass afterwards, so we had our tasty drink and both got our souvenir Hard Rock glasses. It was served in a hurricane glass so it was really sweet to get that. (The shot glasses fit well in the box, too.) Once we got back to the hotel, we packed up most of our stuff and relaxed for the night.
Our flight back was fairly early in the morning so we ate quickly and made sure we were packed and ready to go. Since tensions were still high, we made sure that we were up and out as fast as possible so that we wouldn’t be left behind. Considering how they were acting toward us still, we wouldn’t put it past them. Despite that, we were still out of the room after them so we hurried to get ready and then waited out in the lobby. We took the shuttle to the airport and chilled there until our flight. (I made sure to take my phone out of my pocket this time, lol.) The weather was still craptacular, so we didn’t get to see much during the flight. Margot and I still had fun though, taking random pictures and such. It was a little easier since I was feeling better this time around. Margot and I grabbed a little lunch in the Milwaukee airport while we were waiting for our flight. For the second flight from Milwaukee to Green Bay, none of us got to sit together. I was way in the front and ended up next to an off duty pilot who was headed home to see family. I didn’t get to talk to him much since I ended up falling asleep for most of the flight (about 30-40 minutes). As soon as we were on the ground, the other 2 took off and almost left us in the parking lot at the rate they were going. We loaded our luggage and drove the 45 minutes or so to Margot’s house. That night was pretty fun actually. The other 2 were civil toward us, which was interesting (front for the parents, perhaps?). Her parents love to play games, so we played Hand and Foot, Pictionary and a couple other games. It was mainly a relaxing night of fun games and the occasional drink. Margot’s dad, Amber and I made quite the team at Pictionary, I must say. :) We made sure to repack our stuff and include the boots and jackets we left behind before heading to bed.
The next day was simple. We got up early to do the drive back to campus. We had to make it early since I had to work at 3:30 that day. The drive wasn’t spectacular. Tensions were still a bit high and there wasn’t much in the way of conversation. Margot and I ended up sleeping for a couple hours of it. Made it go faster, lol. After we got back, I unpacked a little and then got ready to work for 5 hours… Thus ended our excursion to Atlanta, GA.
I ended up getting up at 5:45. I wandered out to the kitchen to see Margot’s mom making sausage, eggs and fruit breakfast. It was sooo good. :) After we all grabbed showers and got ready, we hit the road for the airport. We got there about 7:50 or so and checked in right away. We went through security with all their craziness. I ended up accidentally setting the alarm off because I had forgotten to take my cell phone out of my pocket. Once I did that, I was fine, lol. The plane ride was fine, though I forgot what flying was like so when we took off, my hand gripped the armrest automatically. The first flight was in a small plane though so it was a bit more bumpy. I made sure to have my Kleenexes out and I took an Actifed to help with the pressure and clear my head. The ride was fun once we were in the air though. Margot and I sat together and we took crazy random pictures. When we landed in Detroit, we got to see a fellow Northlander named Intefada. I knew who she was from the times I had seen her around but I didn’t really know her personally. It was neat though because her flight path to Ecuador had her on the same flight as us, so that was neat. Unfortunately, my ears would not pop at all, so everything was muffled. I called home to seek advice and they said to go find EarPlanes, Afrin and Day/Nyquil. With thanks to Amber, I did just that. I got everything I needed ($40 worth of 4 boxes) just in time to find out we were boarding the plane. I grabbed my stuff, but because my ears were still stuffed I was feeling weird. MY friends said a couple times that having plugged ears can mess with the entire system and that’s totally true. For about 5 minutes I felt semi-nauseous and had to sit down for a bit. I almost said forget it and stayed in Detroit. Dunno what I would’ve done there, but I was freaking out quite a bit. Once we got on the plane I felt better. I just ended up having a bad case of nerves. I warned the flight attendants up at the front when I boarded that I wasn’t feeling too hot and after they asked me a couple questions to see how bad I was, they let me go in and said that they would check up on me. Margot and I shared a seat bench again, only this time we were in front of the stewardesses’ area. On the ascent, one of them sat down in the folding seat next to us and we all started talking. After introducing ourselves a short way in, Bridget got me a glass of water so I could down some Dayquil. I also used some Afrin to help clear my head of the pressure and put the EarPlanes in. I kept them in the entire ride and I’m glad I did. They really helped out on the descent. That plane ride was nicer because it was a bigger plane too; I think I like larger ones better. The stewardesses and the captain did check up on me too. Special treatment, lol. The view wasn’t that great though. There were clouds all the way from Green Bay to Atlanta - we couldn’t see Atlanta until we were about 1000 feet above it. We got into the airport and walked a long way to baggage and then, after parting ways with Intefada, we headed to the shuttles. They said on the website that shuttle service to the hotel was free, so we were surprised to find that there was a fee of $16.50 per person one way to the downtown. We did get to see a bit of the city though. We got checked in and breathed a sigh of relief at finally being here, and I plugged my phone in since it decided that dying would be beneficial to it somehow. After some deliberation we walked down the block in the rain to get to a Chinese restaurant. We decided to get certain dishes and put them all in the middle buffet-style. I was nice and used the serving utensils all the time. We had so much good food that we ended up with 2 take home boxes practically full. Thank the Met funds for paying for our delightful meal. After that, we decided it was too gross outside to do much else, so we came back to the hotel and have all been putzing around on our computers. Yay free wireless. :) With all the meds I’ve taken today, I’m currently quite out of it, so now it’s time for bed.
I went to bed at 9:30. My alarm went off at 8:15, so I got a good 11 hours or so of sleep. I took a Nyquil and it knocked me out completely. Amber and Bill watched a movie while Margot studied, and once I fell asleep I didn’t hear anything until my alarm woke me up. A couple alarms went off before mine, with rings even, and I didn’t hear them either. Bill was the first one up and got in the shower right away, even though Margot wanted to be first so she could have enough time to do her hair afterwards. We were all up by the time he got out and then Margot got in. Amber took hers next and then I grabbed one. When I was about to get in, Amber said she was hungry so she and Bill took off for breakfast, even though Margot asked them to wait so we could all eat together. I got ready and she and I headed down together. We got there just as they were leaving. We grabbed breakfast fast and then headed up to the room. We got out of the escalator to see them trying to get in. They were gonna leave without us. Margot snapped at them a bit and asked them to wait. We hurried to get ready and had no choice but to leave the room in a bit of a mess, so we felt bad for the cleaning people. I discovered on the ~2 block walk over that my new shoes are too big for my feet, so every step I took made my shoe try to slide off. That and the fact that Amber and Bill wouldn’t slow down made it very hard on me, especially being sick and all. When we got registered and finally sat down, I could take a breather. The inseparable pair went off to explore while Margot and I stayed there for a bit. I found a restroom and grabbed some paper towels for my shoes, which made it a bit better. After they came back, we all went down to Weatherfest, which was like a preconvention convention. There were booths set up all over the main room, with globes, posters, radiosonde balloons, everything. The main excitements of that were: 1) Weather Channel personnel and 2) Reed Timmer! We actually got to meet Reed, with introductions and hand shakes, and we all talked for a good 5-10 minutes. At the end, we got a group picture with him and his buddy Chris. We wandered a bit and discovered a stage area at the end of the room where one of the Weather Channel guys, Nick Walker, was presenting some weather songs to the little kids. After wandering around for a while, we ended up in front of Reed’s area again, since he was going to be presenting some of his footage. Margot said that it would be funny if a tornado siren went off while everyone was there because there would be a mass exodus and people would be off chasing everywhere. Reed had left for a bit and came back to hear us laughing and so when he asked about it, we told it to him and he completely agreed. :) He then told us that he was nervous for the presentation and Margot said that there were a lot of little kids around so he could make it a little bit more geared towards them. After he left, we shifted down to the stage area and watched the end of Nick’s thing and then a raffle started. It was going so slow and ran late so at the end they sent Reed up there to hand out the last 4 bags. The little girl recruited from the audience that was pulling tickets kept doing so, and it kept going slow so eventually Reed told her to throw the bags into the audience. She chucked them good too. He then started up the presentation and it was really cool. He actually did what Margot suggested too and talked with the kids while the video clips played. We had to duck out around 3 though, since there was an Annual Meeting going on that was really helpful for the newbies. After that, we went back up to try and catch Reed again. I had told Jenn before that we met him and she freaked out and wanted something signed, so Margot and I took the map of the place to him and asked him. He said absolutely and signed it for her, and then told us that we needed to go chasing, and if we ever were chasing in Nebraska that we could stay at his house. :) She and I then got to shake his hand a second time and then we all left to get food. We headed back to the hotel first, and my feet were killing me by this time, since my shoes still needed a little more towel in them to keep them from falling off (plus they were rubbing the top of my toes). I got to change shoes and catch my breath a bit from the walk back, since they didn’t slow down any more and we had to hike up a hill this time. We headed out again a little bit later and found Jalapeno Charlie’s, a Mexican restaurant. Luckily I found something I could eat there since I don’t like much Mexican other than tacos. Unfortunately my meds wore off by that point so my throat was a little bit tight and what I got had cheese so it made for a slightly bad combination, but it was still tasty. Once we headed out, Margot and I decided to walk slow, since the other two were still walking fast everywhere. Once we told them that, they kept speeding up until at one point we saw them running. We just shrugged it off for the most part and took our time looking at the city and taking pictures. We got back to the hotel to see them leaving for a BBC presentation on clouds that we wouldn’t have known about had they started discussing amongst themselves during dinner. We said forget it and stayed in the room, and now here I am. :) Once I get my schedule done for tomorrow and get one subject of homework done, I’m going to bed.
So, I got my VBA done last night by borrowing Margot’s book (thank you Margot!) and once we got our schedule done, I decided to hit the hay. I popped another Nyquil but it didn’t work as well as the first one did. I must have to be already decently tired to make it work like that. Amber and Bill got up early to go to some of the really early presentations and I heard them rustling around. Margot and I stayed asleep until 9. We were up for about a minute or two when Melissa called to say that she was checked in and over at the building, and asked where we were. I told her that those two were over there but we were still in the room and would be over in a bit. We showered, ate breakfast and went downstairs to talk to the front desk. Randomly the toilet handle fell off and when we tried to put it back on, it wouldn’t do anything. The lady told us that she would send someone up. We also met the Japanese man that Amber and Bill held the elevator for last night. He had told them that it was his first time in America and that he lost his luggage, so we were happy to see that he had a poster in a packed cylinder. He told us that it came at 5am and that he lucked out because he was putting it up at the poster session today. We wished him luck and then took our time walking over to the conference, which was nice since my feet decided to blister from the evil death shoes. I wore my sandals over and my feet still hurt, so yeah. We went down a floor or two to go scope out our first conference room when we looked to the side and who was there? None other than Melissa! We sat down and talked to her for about 10 minutes or so. She introduced us to a friend of hers that she met in grad school and she was really nice too. Around 11, we went to our first set of talks. The first 2 were cool; the first talked about the climatology of inland winds from tropical storms and hurricanes, and the second did radiosonde climatology for South Carolina (he was a grad student). The third was about low level winds and climatology of the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica, and the last one was about the bomb cyclone. Margot and I weren’t exactly sure what a bomb cyclone was. I kinda had some idea but I didn’t know the criteria, so we just decided to ask Melissa about it later. We had a break after that (after noon) so, after I went to the gift shop to get $6 bandaids for my feet, we decided to hit the Starbucks in the building. We grabbed a coffee and a treat (I had a really sweet lemon pound cake that reminded me of Mom’s orange cookies) and sat down in a decent sized area with lots of chairs. We sat at a table with 4 chairs seated around it and were there for a good 5 minutes at least when an Asian man (later identified by nametag as Chin Lin) sat down across from us to eat his lunch. We exchanged hellos and he told us about the food court in the CNN center across the street where he got his food. He then said that he was from Boston and was presenting a talk involving space weather. Another guy came and sat down at our table (IDed as Ron Smith) and after exchanging hellos, we found out he was a professor at Yale. The four of us talked for a while (Margot got to talk about wind energy with Mr. Smith for a bit) and then we said our goodbyes so we could make our way to the room where Melissa was presenting. Turns out it was at the end of the hallway - a really long hallway - on the second level. We talked with Melissa briefly and reassured her that she would do fine and then the presentations were under way. The first one involved the factors of lightning and moisture in wildfires in Alaska and Canada, and it was pretty cool; the guy giving the talk was really tall though, lol. Melissa then presented hers on the temperature patterns during El Nino winters, and it was amazing! All of her presentations are like that one. Even the guest presentation she gave when she first visited Northland was like that - very well put together and informative but not over the top. The third was one about Africa and I didn’t understand it much so it kinda bored me. The last one was about correlations between the Great Lakes and cyclone development, and it was decent too. After the last one, Margot and I waited outside for Melissa to come out. We ended up talking with her and her friend that we met previously for a bit and then we all walked down to the gigantic poster session together. We split from there and Margot and I wandered the hallway of billboards one by one. There had to be at least 250 posters in there; we didn’t even get to 150, lol. We found some neat ones with some really cool people. The first lady we saw told us about her experience with Hurricane Camille. Another guy gave us free posters of a Luann cartoon, and he told me “since someone is gonna steal yours, I’ll give you another one” and he did. Another guy was showing cloud information and gave us cloud wheels that we could make, with descriptions and pictures. Then, on a random glance, I saw the word “Baiu” and automatically stopped. See, baiu is another word for tsuyu and tsuyu is another word for the Japanese rainy season, so after my research for Global last semester I was automatically intrigued. I must have been standing there gazing at the poster for at least a good minute when the guy presenting it came over and it was none other than the Japanese man that we talked to this morning. We introduced ourselves (his name was Hirohisa Mizuno) and I explained about my capstone idea. It took a while to get him to understand because it was his first time in America and he didn’t know a lot of English, but all things considered he was doing well, and we told him this. We told him that we had at least a tiny bit of experience with his language and we managed to make him laugh, which was really neat. We said we’d say hi if we saw him again and wandered around the posters some more. We didn’t make it through all of them because we had another round of talks to go through so we made our way to the next room. The first talk was at 4 and it was on GPS and space weather. It was a bit over our heads because the guy talked about frequencies and stuff like that more than the weather itself. After that we took a 15 min break to cross the building for our next one: the weather and communication involved in the Colorado tornado on 5/22/08. That one was neat, but it focused more on the communications than the weather itself, but they did include some charts to show what led to the event. We had to move rooms for the next one we wanted, which was measuring the structure of hurricanes with a microwave sounder, which was decently cool since it did show the structure, but it was a bit over our heads too. The fact that we were late to it didn’t help matters either, but oh well. After that, we went back to the room we were previously in for the last 2 talks. The first of those was a communications study on the hurricane products shown for Hurricane Ike, and the guy doing it was an amazing speaker. He was the only one who went out in front of the podium and when he said good afternoon, he actually made us say it again in order to get excited about it. He was an undergrad too, which surprised us. The last one was similar in topic, but a little more broad. It looked at the communications too but it broadened it to just hurricanes in general. The lady giving that one was rather longwinded. After that one, we decided to grab some dinner, so we headed over to the CNN center, but not before stopping at an information kiosk to ask about cheaper restaurants in the area. We grabbed Arby’s and then walked back to the hotel. We soon discovered that the toilet still wasn’t fixed so we went down again and reported it, and this time it did get fixed. We were there to see it happen. :) After that, I got on here and started this thing again (it’s taken me several hours to recount this, by the way). So you may be wondering why I didn’t mention Bill and Amber much. Well, it’s because we rarely saw them today and when we did they were both being completely antisocial towards us. I have no idea what the heck is their problem, but Bill will hardly acknowledge either of us and Amber will speak short sentences but basically ignores us unless we’re somehow being too obnoxious. Margot and I are both to the point where we either want to ignore them or confront them about it, but we can’t figure out which is the better option. Something is definitely up though, because there was so much friction in the room tonight… I told Margot through text that I could use the soap and it would catch on fire. Yeah, that bad. Whatever. I’m done with it tonight, and I’m done with this.
It was kind of aggravating finishing this up last night. I was still typing when Amber and Bill went to bed and at one point I saw a pillow go over a head so I was kinda growling mentally by the time I was done. Margot had just gotten off the phone when I got in bed so we discussed what time to get up in the morning. We had asked the others when a good time to get up was and they said 7:30, so we decided to get up at 7 so that Margot could shower and get working on her hair and I could shower and we could both be out of the way. After sleep, we woke up to find them on their way out the door. They had woken up at 6:30 to beat us in there. We were kinda irked about that, to say the least. We showered and ate breakfast (no sign of them) and then headed over to the convention again. Our first one was at 8:30 and it was about air traffic and Mount Redoubt ash. That one was really cool - there were slides showing the spread of ash over Alaska and Canada. The next one was about the insurance side of 2009 weather catastrophes and that was pretty sweet too. I thought it was going to be boring but it was actually really cool. Then we went to one that dealt with high-altitude luminous events (sprites, jets and elves). I thought that one was gonna be really sweet but it was so over my head… It didn’t help that the dude had some sort of accent - Russian maybe? - and the mic wasn’t turned up much at all so we couldn’t even hear him. It was misleading cuz the dude had a decent sounding name and was from Penn State… We both ended up almost falling asleep, lol. After that session, we started walking down the hallway but with my feet gaining blisters every couple hours, they were already killing me. Once we got to the next area I put my sandals back on and decided that I was wearing my tennis shoes tomorrow. We sat down for a bit and a couple ladies sat near us. The one was quite shy but the other one was nice. She told us about her lecture, which we missed and apologized for since we didn’t know what it was. It was about a soon-to-be-public website that would give weather and location criteria and allow people to check times for good activity. For instance, a cement mixer could give specifications and it would tell him when he could pour cement and when would be bad. The next session we went to was information about transportation given by Greg Forbes from the Weather Channel. That was sweet cuz a) there was good information and b) it’s Greg Forbes. Next up was extreme rainstorms in advance of tropical cyclones, and that one was really cool. It covered a topic of predecessor rain events (PRE) that happen in front of hurricanes and tropical storms and often bring as much rain as the storm itself. Right after that was a look at the origins of certain tropical storms (as in ocean versus gulf) and that was neat too. It was done by a grad student and she was nervous, I could hear it in her voice. She still did well though, and we told her so. After that was done, I was getting tired of wearing the sandals cuz I didn’t think they looked professional, so Margot told me to put my socks on, she handed me her black slippers that she had brought with her and put on her dress shoes. I thanked her immensely. :) We went to Starbucks again for lunch. They didn’t have my lemon thing so I was sad but I got a cinnamon thing instead. We sat outside the Starbucks today and at one point, Margot was saying how she was hoping Jim Cantore (from The Weather Channel) would walk by. About 5 minutes later a guy walked by and her mouth dropped. She pointed and was like “Is that Steve Lyons?” (also from TWC) and I was like “Yeah! That is him!” So, we jumped up, grabbed our coffees and followed him down the hall. He was moving at a good clip, so we got lucky when someone stopped to talk to him. He headed down the escalator just as we were approaching so we kept following him until he stopped at a pizza stand in the building. Margot began digging for her Storm Stories DVD book and once she found it, we walked up to him. We introduced ourselves and said we were big fans and after a bit of chatting, she asked for his autograph. He said sure and she got out the book and he was like “Put that away, you don’t want me to sign that” so she did. He handed her his business card and said to email him and he would send a signed picture. I asked if I could do it too and he said ok. Then Margot mentioned that she always wanted Jim Cantore’s job, being out in the storms and stuff, and he said “Oh I’m good friends with him, I can ask him to send one too.” I think Margot’s heart stopped for about 5 seconds on that one, lol. We thanked him and headed to the next session: GIS development of Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program. I got some good pictures of the data to prove that GIS is used in other areas, since we only see it for mapping at school. Then we saw the development of a GIS snowstorm database and that was cool too. More GIS, more pictures. After that was geospatial analysis of radar from tropical cyclones, and that was sweet. Again, more pictures. We walked to the next session and putzed around for a bit since we had a bit of a break. Turns out we found Amber in our next one too, and we ended up talking to her about the issues we were having. She seemed really oblivious (or else it was a front, I dunno) so I’m hoping that meant that she didn’t know it was happening. The next presentation was about avalanche impacts in winter of 08-09, and that was a really nice one. The one after that was a look at the significant storms in winter of 08-09, and it was cool too, but I don’t remember it as well. The next one was on gravity waves and it was by Ron Smith, the guy from Yale we met yesterday. It was cool to see him talk but I didn’t understand much of what he said at all, lol. After that, Margot and I split up. She went back to the room that had the avalanches, while I went up and listened to the end of a foreign guy’s presentation on drought models. The one after was the one I wanted to hear. It was on soil and droughts in the Kumamoto area of Japan and the presenter was Hirohisa’s mentor, Kenji Tanaka. It was really cool except that it was in the same room as the other dude’s presentation (the one who did the sprites and stuff) and the mic still wasn’t set decently so it was hard to hear him. It didn’t help that there were people coming out of a presentation next door and talking in front of our open door, so with Tanaka’s accent, it was hard to decipher what he was saying. Luckily he tended to read most of the slides, adding his own info here and there, so I still got the basic gist of it. Once that was done, I headed back to the avalanche room where the other 3 were, and joined in on the last presentation for the day on the tropical cyclones of 09. It was cool and said that the year 2009 was a horrible hurricane season, haha. Margot and I decided, after she said hi to friends of hers from Milwaukee that she recognized, that we were gonna go eat at the CNN center again, so we did just that. Yay tacos! After that, we headed back to the hotel and experimented with a new way to get back that didn’t involve climbing a block’s worth of death hill. We’ve climbed that sucker for 3 days now and I can happily say that with today’s find, we no longer have to climb it and my sickly asthmatic self can breathe easier… literally. (Really though, I am feeling better. My throat’s a little gunky yet but my nose is finally slowing down and I’m coughing a little less. I went completely off the meds today. :D) Once we got back, I got back on here and attempted to write, but it was hard. I was a bit ADD tonight, lol. Soon it will be time for bed, but tomorrow I can sleep in. I showered again tonight so that it’s one less body to schedule in in the morning. Smart, huh? ;)
So, Margot and I decided to type back and forth through AIM while the others were asleep. That was fun. Much better than talking in whispers. :D This morning the alarm went off and I heard Margot say “let’s not go to the morning session” and I said ok so we rolled over and went back to sleep. It was ok because we weren’t that interested in the morning ones anyway. Margot woke me up about 9:45ish and after getting breakfast, we decided that the late morning ones weren’t interesting either. Instead we decided to work on homework. I attempted a bit of Thermo but didn’t get very far there so I skipped to that 18 pg paper that Melissa wants us to read for Dynamic. I got 4 pages in and realized most of it was completely over my head so I stopped. I couldn’t concentrate on it, lol. Around 12:30 or so, we headed over to the conference center. It was sooooo nice out today. It had to be at least 60 degrees. People were out everywhere too. We saw a small group of people bouncing a giant red ball across the road and someone standing in the middle of the lane line with what looked like a video camera. They were bouncing it back and forth across the road so I’m guessing they were taping it for some reason. I just find it funny that a little ways away was a cop, lol. We got to the building a little early so we went down to the exhibit hall to look around. This one guy gave us squishy keychains and another guy showed us Styrofoam rubber band rockets. He shot one up and it hit the ceiling 4 stories up and floated back down. I loved it so he gave us 2 each and we said that with one for the 4 of us we could have a rocket war, and he was like “Oh there’s 4 of you? Here, take 4 more.” He was awesome. Then there was the guy doing sales for a mobile phone company, I think, who we talked to for probably 10 minutes. I got lots of business cards. By this time we decided that this was more interesting than the first presentation we had wanted to go to, so we skipped it and kept going. There were so many projection globes around, and I was so distracted by them all, lol. After that, we went over to look at more posters, but there weren’t as many and weren’t as exciting as the last round. We decided to go up to the next presentation then, and it was supposed to be a good one according to Melissa. Very controversial: “Blame it on climate change.” Unfortunately the guy didn’t show up, so the talk was canceled and we still had yet to go to a presentation, lol. By this time we were hungry, so we went over to the CNN center again and grabbed Wendy’s. Oh man, that was the best Wendy’s I’ve had in a while… Crispy bacon, and the fries and frosty combo… *drools* After lunch we stopped in a couple of the stores inside the center, including a Cartoon Network store. We went back after a bit and went to our first presentation. The Arctic sea ice and cloud idea was cool but I was still distracted easily and the fact that there were people in front of the screen didn’t help me learn anything, lol. After that we went to the next room and slid in the back, since it was full. We ended up sitting down in the back corner and listening to the end section of the one before it. Didn’t really keep my attention though, since it was about finances more. We saw the one we wanted to see, but again I don’t remember it. After that we decided to head back to the hotel and drop off our crap, since the bags we got tended to get heavy fast. We spent about 45 minutes back there - I got to talk to Mom, yay! - and then headed back to the hotel for the banquet at 7 that we originally thought was 5:30. On the way we found an awesome cop who randomly let me get on his police motorcycle and take a picture. Because of his awesomeness, I had to get a picture with him too, lol. We then walked with an older couple who were really nice and told us that we missed out on 2 nights of free alcohol at the Aquarium and Coca-Cola center. (Apparently the AMS people like to party, lol.) When we got there about 6:30ish, there was already a decent line formed. We ended up talking to a couple older guys from Oklahoma for a bit and then, after initiating conversation with the tall Puerto Rican guy (named Moises) next to us, Margot gave him a piece of licorice. He had never had it before so he wasn’t sure how to eat it, but he did like it. She gave his friends a piece too and they said it was like plastic, lol. They finally let us go in the ballroom where the banquet was being held. Margot and I flocked to an edge and picked a deserted table to sit at so we wouldn’t bump backs with anyone. A couple minutes later we were joined by a foreign man, presumably Indian, and 4 undergrad students from Penn State. Their names were Tom, Andrew, Nick and Beth and they were all really nice. We talked about our colleges and they told us that at PSU they had ~6 concentrations of meteorology major. When the food came (we had a salad, chicken with vegetables, and key lime pie, by the way), the guys had already finished off the 3 extra salads that had been on the table and were asking for a couple extra plates for our friends (who weren’t actually joining us) and some more bread. Margot made the comment that they ate like football players and they were like “No, we play tennis” and one of the other guys said that they were meatheads, haha. The waitress did bring a couple extra chicken dishes and they finished those too, but Andrew was sad because she never brought the bread, lol. What a cutie. :) The awards went on for a while, mainly while we were eating, and it was about 9ish when we finally got out of there. We scurried back to the hotel because there were a couple people who were seemingly getting arrested as we walked past. Needless to say, I clenched a fist around my purse. We made it back to the hotel safe and were walking through the lobby when Margot spotted Hirohisa off to the side. She said “if you want to talk to him, now’s your chance” so I waited for him. When he came out, I said hi and asked him if I could have a copy of the poster that he presented, and he said sure (basically). After a bit of talk, he said that he would come by our room with a flash drive. About 5-10 minutes after we got in, he knocked on the door. I let him in and as soon as he came in, he bowed and took off his shoes. He asked what version of Office I had and I told him I had the ’03 version, so he went back, switched the data and came back. When he put the flash drive in my computer, it wouldn’t recognize it, so after a couple minutes of trying to figure it out, I gave him my flash drive and he went back again. He came back and showed me which file it was. It showed up wonderfully, and I thanked him again. Once he left I oohed and ahhed over it and giggled mentally that a Japanese man touched my computer, lol. (I know and fully admit that I am pathetic.) After that I started typing this thing, but I kept getting distracted again and didn’t finish it completely. I decided to call it quits after a while and go to bed.
I woke up to Margot getting out of the shower around 9:50. We had agreed that we were basically done with conference things since they weren’t that interesting, except for a couple presentations on monsoons that I picked out. After going to breakfast, we came back and I was about to hop in the shower when Amber and Bill came in. Bill gave us a kind of dirty look, finished talking to Amber and then left the room again. She told us they were going to go to the Gone with the Wind house. Margot asked if they had been using allocated funding (we got $500 before the trip began) for dinners and stuff and she said no, but that they were going to use it for the CNN center and aquarium. After they left, we found it unfair that they were using it without us, since Bill is the one with the card. We want to talk to them about it later and see if we can find a way to use it together for the aquarium or something like that, since we’re basically being jipped. (The money was supposed to be used for all of us, not just two, so since we don’t have a card, Margot and I are getting shafted.) Around 1:00 we went over to the conference for the last time. The conference topic was monsoons so I thought it would be interesting. It was, except most of it involved graphs more than maps so I didn’t learn as much as I thought I would. I ended up staying for most of the hour even though I only wanted to see the first, third and fourth. Margot got bored so she went outside after a while. Sadly I ended up getting really bored after a while. Every presenter had either a Spanish or Asian accent so it was harder to understand them. I didn’t get much out of it either; it didn’t pertain to Japan (India instead) even though latent heat and sea surface temps were interesting topics. Margot and I decided to call it quits after that so we talked to the lady at a concierge desk and she told us that the closest mall was 6 miles north. She suggested, for souvenirs and such, to go to Atlanta Underground which is about 10 blocks or so away. We thanked her and decided to grab lunch first, so we went over to the CNN center again. After we had lunch, we thought about going out to the Underground but it was raining enough that we weren’t up for walking it in the rain and wind, so we decided to head back to the hotel and do homework. We got back and discovered Bill and Amber asleep so we grabbed our stuff and asked the guy at the front desk if there was a quiet place to study. He told us to go downstairs another floor and to use the 2 chairs down there, so we did just that. I got a decent attempt on Thermo but I couldn’t get the right answers, so I need to wait until we get back so I can talk to Jeremy about it. Hopefully he can help me make it make sense. After a while we went back upstairs and decided to basically putz around. Around 8 we ordered pizza and had it delivered, and it was good. And after that, that’s basically it for today.
Today was our goof off day. Margot and I went to the CNN center to grab our combo tickets for the CNN center and the aquarium. $35 for both, not too bad. Around 11:30 we toured the CNN center. Since the giant escalator that runs up 8 floors was broken, we had to take the elevator. We got to see the inner workings of the center, including people in the offices and such. There was even a green screen to represent broadcast meteorology in one room. The tour guide asked if one of us would come out to try it, and since I had said I was a meteorologist at some point, I volunteered. Even without having the practice of the Broadcast Meteorology class, I picked out the targets she asked for just fine, no trouble at all. Must be inherent or something, lol. After grabbing some post-tour lunch, Margot and I walked down to the aquarium. It’s the largest aquarium in the USA for a reason. It had 5 wings, and each wing had something special about it, like a theme. One wing was a petting zoo type, which Margot was freaking out about. She insisted I not stick my hand in the water to pet the rays. Didn’t quite understand her reasoning for that, considering I was the one to touch them, not her. (Funny how she loves looking at fish but she’s afraid of them…) Either way, I didn’t do it, to humor her. We walked through several areas where water covered the ceilings and if you looked up, all you saw was the underside of a fish. We also went past one area with a hidden sea turtle that I had to help Margot find, and a puffer fish that decided it would be fun to swim in and out of the side of the viewing area. The main attraction was the big tunnel of fish that led to the biggest wall of fish ever. The tunnel in and of itself was cool. The glasslike material went in a complete semicircle so that from the average person’s waist up, it was all water view. We saw many a giant fish, including several odd looking rays, a manta ray and some whale sharks, which the Georgia Aquarium prides itself in. The tunnel itself leads under the attraction and the big wall is actually a side view of the exhibit. The immensity of the big wall hits you as soon as you turn the corner. On that wall, you can see all 4 whale sharks, which are juvenile and already enormous. Margot and I stayed there and watched the animals for probably a good half hour. We wandered the halls some more and I got a boatload of pictures, including a picture of a fish that was staring straight at the glass. If there ever was a creeper fish, that would be it. After the aquarium, we went into the gift shop. I picked up a stuffed manta ray that I just couldn’t resist, and Margot picked up a shot glass. It was a 2 for 1 deal, so we split the money and I got one too. After that, we headed to the Coca Cola factory. It was later in the day so we just went into the gift shop instead of touring it. It was so red in there… I grabbed coca cola bottle shaped salt and pepper shakers as a gift for my parents and a coca cola shot glass too. I almost got a sweet pair of flip flops but they were expensive so I didn’t. Man, do I regret that now… After that, we went back to the hotel to chill for a bit. For dinner, we went to the Azio, which was like an Italian restaurant. That place would be a great dinner date location - good atmosphere for it. The food was good too. After dinner, we stopped at the Hard Rock Café to say we’d been to it. We were served by this nice guy bartender who suggested a drink for us to try, so we did. It was a drink that you could get the glass afterwards, so we had our tasty drink and both got our souvenir Hard Rock glasses. It was served in a hurricane glass so it was really sweet to get that. (The shot glasses fit well in the box, too.) Once we got back to the hotel, we packed up most of our stuff and relaxed for the night.
Our flight back was fairly early in the morning so we ate quickly and made sure we were packed and ready to go. Since tensions were still high, we made sure that we were up and out as fast as possible so that we wouldn’t be left behind. Considering how they were acting toward us still, we wouldn’t put it past them. Despite that, we were still out of the room after them so we hurried to get ready and then waited out in the lobby. We took the shuttle to the airport and chilled there until our flight. (I made sure to take my phone out of my pocket this time, lol.) The weather was still craptacular, so we didn’t get to see much during the flight. Margot and I still had fun though, taking random pictures and such. It was a little easier since I was feeling better this time around. Margot and I grabbed a little lunch in the Milwaukee airport while we were waiting for our flight. For the second flight from Milwaukee to Green Bay, none of us got to sit together. I was way in the front and ended up next to an off duty pilot who was headed home to see family. I didn’t get to talk to him much since I ended up falling asleep for most of the flight (about 30-40 minutes). As soon as we were on the ground, the other 2 took off and almost left us in the parking lot at the rate they were going. We loaded our luggage and drove the 45 minutes or so to Margot’s house. That night was pretty fun actually. The other 2 were civil toward us, which was interesting (front for the parents, perhaps?). Her parents love to play games, so we played Hand and Foot, Pictionary and a couple other games. It was mainly a relaxing night of fun games and the occasional drink. Margot’s dad, Amber and I made quite the team at Pictionary, I must say. :) We made sure to repack our stuff and include the boots and jackets we left behind before heading to bed.
The next day was simple. We got up early to do the drive back to campus. We had to make it early since I had to work at 3:30 that day. The drive wasn’t spectacular. Tensions were still a bit high and there wasn’t much in the way of conversation. Margot and I ended up sleeping for a couple hours of it. Made it go faster, lol. After we got back, I unpacked a little and then got ready to work for 5 hours… Thus ended our excursion to Atlanta, GA.