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T-O-Y Toy!

Today is Toy Story 3! We’re (hopefully) going to be watching the awesome flick tonight, assuming we can all get tickets.

This has been a very busy week.
We’ve had SHAW (Safety and Health Awareness Week), which means lots of work for my department and lots of lectures for me. I spent many hours going to safety lectures (like “How to talk to your aging parents” and “Beyond Zero”) and worked at the annual SHAW picnic/expo for the morning yesterday. I also got a mediocre massage. We handed out safety surveys for people to take and I got stuck being asked many questions that I didn’t know the answer to.

Tuesday was lecture day, where we heard from someone (whose name I’ve forgotten) about the exploration of Mars. It was the exact same presentation we saw from last year, but I’d forgotten the info, so I was fairly interested.
I also learned about the summer competitions/random activities available to interns. There is an app writing competition and FRIES, which is basically extra work for people who are bored and have no work to do. I’m considering learning how to program either iPhone or Android apps, which should be a fun, difficult summer project since I know nothing about Java or Objective C. Fun fun.

Wednesday was the mandatory fun picnic (or, as I’ve dubbed it, the fun-nic. I’m clever. lolnot). It actually turned out to be sort of fun. We watched the intern volleyball teams fail at competing against the regular teams then went over to visit Jake and Trevor (since Ryan is on vacation for, like, two weeks). I finally got to talk to Brandon with video…yay!

Yesterday was also the Langley (three-hour) Tour. We went over to the Langley Air Force Base (since some of the NASA buildings are actually on the base) and did a three-part tour.
First, we learned about the DEVELOP program, which was actually pretty interesting to me (and no one else). I am considering checking it out for the future.
Next was the Transonic Dynamics Tunnel.  The first sign of trouble (or awesomeness) for that tour was the tour guide telling us about what to do in case of fire alarm several times. In great detail. I was worried. We watched a not-quite-retro video with old technology then headed out on the tour. The guide was apparently in a very large hurry because my group (in the back) got in trouble for socializing and walking slowly. We were told not to associate with one another while walking. We went into the tunnel, which turned out to be really cool, but hot. Jake asked if someone could be tethered and ride in the tunnel. The answer was no. Trevor went around a corner and never returned, so we thought he fell in a deep chasm, but he just went to the other side of the group. After we finished, our tour guide said, “well this is a very awkward moment because we have to wait for the next group to arrive.” We all laughed.
Finally, we went to the vertical spin tunnel, which was actually pretty awesome. We got to see the tunnel in action and the ‘high tech’ removal technique (one of those ‘Gopher’ clamps you see on tv with a really long arm). Jake asked if the net at the bottom of the tunnel was strong enough to hold a person who fell from “say, this height.” I’m pretty sure he’s an eight-year-old boy in an adult body.
And with that, the tour was over. We sat in our buses for awhile and had lots of fun chatting with our busmates. I suggested that my ID photo makes me look like a pedophile in an accidentally very loud voice and the whole bus heard me. >.>

Last night was nap night and I slept until this morning. Back to work. Movie tonight. Don’t know what the rest of the weekend has in store. I will be ‘telecommuting’ on Monday (so I get to sleep in) then Tuesday is the mandatory five-hour graduate seminar. Boring.