Uh oh.

We're flying out tomorrow morning in the middle of Tropical Storm Fay.
I'm nervous.

But once we get back in New York, everything will be fine.
I'm planning on working this week and finishing up some of my summer assignments. Then my parents and I are leaving early Saturday morning to drive up to Cambridge, to visit MIT.
I can't wait!

And then...school!

How you know when you're in the South...

Pictures

Yesterday was actually pretty fun. We started out going to a car repair place appropriately named "Mr. Transmission." It was hot and I was miserable. Once we were done getting our transmission looked at we made our way over to the downtown area, which really made me miss New York. Here are some of the things we saw on the way there:


This was just some big fancy building we saw right before we got into downtown Mobile...


The first tall buildings I've seen since we left New York!

After stopping by a cafe for iced lattes (with coffee ice cubes!) we walked over to the Exploreum, a science museum that I remembered visiting years and years ago. The main exhibit was all about frogs, and they actually had a lot of different types.

They had some nice Poison Dart Frogs...



Really bizarre flat frogs (I'm convinced they're actually dead flat frogs)...


A lot of the frogs liked climbing up the side of the glass and just positioning themselves there...



And a cute little tree frog:



After the frog exhibit, we made our way upstairs to the "Minds On" exhibit. Among the goodies upstairs were:

ROBOTS

CHEMISTRY <3

HEAT SENSORS

It was actually a lot of fun. I think I enjoy science museums even more now than I did when I was a kid.

There was also some maniacal floating head...

Weird.

On our way back from downtown I was able to get a pretty decent picture of this bridge I've been wanting to photograph. Doesn't it look like half of a sine curve!?


Once we got back to the Condo we went for a swim and realized that somehow a sand crab had found its way into the pool. We took it out and released it.

Why it sucks to live in a city

We walked down to the beach last night, and I have never seen so many stars.
It was to the point that I was completely shocked by what I saw when I looked up from the beach on Dauphin Island.

My uncle also decided to be really awesome and lend us his night vision goggles, so when you took those and looked up...SO COOL! It was really amazing. Even when we travel to upstate New York, there aren't as many stars. I'll have to attempt to take some pictures.

I Survived!

Really, the plane ride wasn't so bad. Our flight from New York to Mephis was absolutely PERFECT, there was hardly any turbulence. It was also really cool to be able to look at the city from the plane window, something I've been too scared to do for years now. Our flight from Memphis to Mobile was REALLY turbulent though. Thankfully, it was only about a 40 minute flight.

So my parents and I got picked up at the airport by my aunt, grandma, and cousin. They drove us to my aunt and uncle's house in Fairhope - about a 50 minute ride. Also, you should note: I have 7+ aunts and uncles...so these series of entries may be a little confusing. Anyway, their house is huge. And beautiful. I should probably be taking pictures. So we ate dinner (a nice southern fish fry) and dessert (lemon ice cream pie). It was delicious, but we were all really full, so we took a walk around the neighborhood.

Today we're planning on driving out to Dauphin Island, where we'll be staying. It's a nice little island off the coast of Mobile, located right in the gulf. I was hoping to get some sun during this trip (I'm pale!), but the weather doesn't look so good thanks to Hurricane Fey.

Acrophobia

I am typing now from my room, seeing as we have not left for the airport yet. I'm pretty much ready, so I've been spending the morning stalking the MIT admission blogs and consuming large quantities of caffeine(yum!).

The title of this entry may or may not explain itself, but allow me to elaborate. I'm afraid of heights. It wasn't always this way. I partially blame my fear on my father, but I feel bad for doing that. So instead, I blame it on the ski lift that gave my my first frightening experience.

My family and I had traveled upstate, and were staying at a friend's house. We all went to some fair type thing in the fall, at a mountain that was used for skiing in the Winter. Since there were lots of people, the ski lift was running, bringing people up to the top of the mountain. So my dad and I hopped on, and started our ascent.

I wasn't scared until we were about a fourth of the way through with the ride. The mountain was A LOT steeper than I had realized, and the severe vertigo began to set in. Even worse, there wasn't any snow, so the rough terrain was made even more obvious. I can't remember whether or not I started crying/kicking/screaming (I was young), but I know for a fact I practically ran off the lift when we finally got to the top. Oh, and I refused to take the lift back down.

So that's where my fear originated. I used to love plane rides, but now they just make me anxious to the point of near hyperventilation. I've decided that this plane ride will be different. I'm not going to go into it thinking "OH MY GOD I'M GOING TO DIE" as I normally do. Instead, I'm going to try and just sit back and enjoy the ride, appreciate the fact that it's even possible for us to use any form of air transport. I also have all six Star Wars episodes to entertain me in times of panic.

I've just received an announcement that we'll be leaving in 17 minutes. I should probably finish packing.

The manager of the bagel shop I work at decided it wasn't right for me to receive any sum of money that wasn't an interval of ten. So he gave me some extra money from the tip jar. Woohoo!

Something Strange!

You know when you hear a song, and you feel like it's such an appropriate song for that moment? Or not even for that specific moment, but for something that's about to happen? Maybe that's just me. But it's been happening so often lately. And it's triggered by songs that aren't even new to me, it just seems like now they finally fit. I don't know. It's weird.

I bought a Rubik's cube about a month ago, since I've never solved one, and I know that my chemistry teacher had an algorithm for solving his. And it worked for him, so I figured I wanted to try. Anyways, I met up with a friend and we made our way over to the Toys R Us at Times Square (she lives around there anyway and I had gone into the city to meet with her for dinner). So we get in and this Toys R Us is FRICKING HUGE! There are tourists everywhere and there was just so much going on that we didn't know where to start. We made our way around the main floor, and without much luck, headed upstairs. We got to the top of the escalator and to my surprise (I had never been there before) there was a gigantic Dinosaur robot thing overlooking the Jurassic Park section of the store. So that was awesome. We headed over to the "Classic Games" section and continued our search. We found a bin full of Rubik's cubes, but to my dismay, they were only these kind:

and that wasn't what I wanted!

We dug through the basket to see if we could find any of the regular ones. But it was to no avail. We walked around the store and got distracted in the science toys section, which triggered lots of memories of my childhood. Then we remembered why we came her and started looking again, but then got distracted by CANDYLAND! Candyland occupies about 1/6th of the top floor and hosts all different types of sweets. So we bought some snacks for our search. We returned back to the huge basket of Rubik's Revolution cubes and I spotted something! There was a man walking around with the regular Rubik's cube! I went up to him and asked where he got it, he said something about a basket and kind of flung his hand in some general direction, so I didn't get much of an answer. My friend and I sorted through the basket once more to see if maybe we had missed something. Still no classic cubes to be found. We wound our way around the store, and found a cash register that I personally never remembered seeing. Anyways, lo and behold, right near this mystery cash register was the basket of Rubik's cubes that guy had directed me to. So in total, it took us about TWO HOURS to find that fricking cube. Then I went home and found my algorithm but it took me quite a while to actually get a feel for the cube. Within those next two days I had solved the first row, but I've been afraid to touch it since! I don't want to mess up my 1/3 completed cube! But I may have to start playing with it again...it may be good for the plane ride to Alabama.