Miss Sarah N. Dipity

Okay, so I stole that title from Florida Cracker, but it's fitting because this post has a little something to do with him.

I arrived at the Florida Institute of Technology last summer ready to be on my own and ready to learn. My main goal was to go there, be there four years, and return home armed with a degree in meteorology. During this time, though, I hoped to meet others who shared my interests in science and, to an even greater extent, Florida. Though FIT is in the state of Florida, it is not really Florida in my mind, though there are still some hints of real Florida away from the coast.

I didn't realistically expect to meet any fellow Florida crackers at a school mostly populated by out-of-state, technologically-oriented city dwellers, but I still kept my hopes up.

After a whole semester of hard studying, I came home for Christmas Break with many great friends, but none who shared my interest in Florida's wildlife, culture or history. Hm.

Things rapidly turned around one night this past semester, though. [Patience, FC, I'm getting to you soon :-D]

One night, our school's chapter of the American Meteorological Society held a "movie night" on campus to watch weather-related movies and "geek out" about various meteorology stuff. I spoke with a fellow that night who found out about my interest in Florida through my Facebook page (if you don't have one, get one.) He's a fellow weather whiz and was in my Aviation Meteorology class this past semester. Through our conversation, I learned that he is from FC's part of the state.

A little background...
I have been following Pure Florida for over three years now after finding it through Google, and actually met Florida Cracker once at the Florida Folk Festival. At this meeting, I learned his REAL name *gasp* and deduced that we are actually kin to one another somewhere along the line. As a matter of fact, we have a series of interesting connections in our families.

So I asked my new friend if he happened to know anyone by FC's last name, and to my complete astonishment, he said yes. As it turns out he is friends with FC's son and his oldest daughter. Another thing to add to the list of interesting connections!

The last thing I expected to run into at FIT was a friend of a blogging pal.

Through this new friend, I met two girls who are also from Florida - both identifying themselves as "crackers." So in one night, I went from having no cracker friends at school to having three. As an added bonus, we are all meteorology majors who are very interested in our field of study.

Alright!

Thanks, Sarah N. Dipity!

Epic Camping Trip Part I - Lost in Wal-Mart

About a month ago, I went with the Newman Club on a camping trip to Blue Springs State Park.

The Newman Club is an organization for Catholic students, and it just so happens that it's full of ourdoorsmen/women, too. It's great to be involved in a group full of students who I know will only build me up as a person, and not tear down my character and morality...Those groups are hard to come by on a college campus.

So we set off one Friday night after our classes were finished for the hour-and-a-half drive to Orange City.

Lucas (Caesar), HurricaneTeen (Octavius), and Hunter (Cassius)

Our first stop was to be at the Super Wal-Mart down the road to pick up some charcoal, lighter fluid, and ice. My friend, Hunter, and I were sent into the massive store armed only with a HAM radio and our wallets.

After about 15 minutes of searching, we could not find the charcoal. We searched up and down the store, probably walking upwards of a mile, in futility. Embarrassed, we radioed our situation to our friend and club president, Paul:


Hey, Paul...We're lost. Send help.
You're lost??
Yes, we can't find the charcoal and we don't know where we are.
At this point, everybody in the van is laughing at us.
Alright, ummm, I'll send Francine in to rescue you.
Thanks.
And might I add that we're thoroughly enjoying your predicament here in the parking lot.
Thanks, Paul.
I chuckle when I think of some local HAM radio operator listening in to our conversation. What must have been running through his head....


We find our way to the front of the store and meet our savior. Of course, within five minutes of her arrival, we find both the charcoal and the lighter fluid (who knew they were outside, right next to each other????) and pick up the ice at the front of the store.


Any wise person would abandon a camping trip after such a sketchy start, but we are college students, so we pushed wisdom aside and pressed on.


We chattered on the HAM radio with the other carload of people going on the trip and with Paul's dad, who was stationed on the coast to watch the space shuttle launch. HAM radio is one of the things I have picked up since coming to FIT. It is great in more ways than one.


We arrived at Blue Springs State Park to find the gates to the park closed. Again, any wise person would have turned around and called it quits, but we're college students. We followed another guy in after he punched in some secret code on the gate entrance. I'm sure he felt perfectly comfortable with that. After all we DID have reservations.


Just after we arrived and checked in with the campground hosts, we turned our eyes to the eastern sky just in time to see a bright fireball ascend into the heavens. What a view. No pictures. Sorry, I was too caught up in the moment.


NEXT INSTALLMENT:

Epic Camping Trip Part II - "It looks like a waterbed."

The Atomic Toilet

Come on and take a walk with me. We're going to the Crawford Science Tower...I have a secret to share with you.

Years ago, Dr. Lynn Edward Weaver, a professor here at FIT, was performing experiments in using ionizing radiation to treat wastewater. He used Cobalt-60, a mildly radioactive isotope, to destroy bacteria in sewage. The experiments were scientifically successful, but the public had a somewhat irrational fear of "radioactive water," so the idea was scrapped in the 1960s.
A problem that the school faced, though, was finding a place to store the harmful radioactive materials after they were used. So they dug a hole. A deep hole. This is where the atomic waste would be stored, and it would come to be known as The Atomic Toilet.

Alright come on and hurry. It's 9:00 PM, and there won't be too many people in the building at this hour, but we still do not want anyone getting curious. Come through the door. Let's go down the stairs.

Here, turn your flash light on, it's dark in here.

Come on inside...Try not to kick the door...It's not in very good shape.

Oh, also, don't step in that smelly, rusty water on the floor. It's groundwater seeping onto the floor, rusting out all of the metal in here. It'll stain your clothes.

Welcome to the Atomic Toilet. It is pitch black in here, I know, but the camera's flash will allow us to survey the damp room more easily.

There's the old typewriter underneath the big "DANGER: RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS" sign.
Nobody knows why it's here, but it hasn't been touched in years.

There's the doorway through which we entered. Our three friends are studying the ventilation system of the "outer toilet."

This is the back portion of the "outer toilet." You can see the trolley controls on the right wall and the Geiger counter back in the corner.

This console controlled the overhead trolley that was used to move the Cobalt-60 into and around the "inner toilet." A system of mirrors and the big gauge here were used to determine the position of the radioactive material. DON'T TOUCH THE KEY! We don't know what will happen if it is turned, and it may lead to trouble if we do turn it.

Here's the Geiger counter. It's hard to read in the dark, but we can clearly make out 1 millirem/hour...About 1000 times the normal background radiation on earth. That sounds bad, but it's really nothing to worry about...Notwithstanding the orange WARNING light.

Now let's go into the "inner toilet." This is where it starts to get really interesting. Just walk right past this big sliding 1-foot-thick concrete door. Now we're inside the place where the actual radioactive material was stored. This room was filled to some depth with water and the Cobalt-60 was stored under the water.

You see the trolley track on the roof up there? Also, you can see that the school has started using this place for storage...The tables and the overhead projector all came in after the Cobalt-60 was removed.

Our friend is studying something over in the corner. Let's go take a look.

Alright, we've been down here for at least 20 minutes now. Even though there's not enough background radiation in here to seriously harm us, it's best if we don't spend too much time down here. Let's go on back up the stairs.

Hmm, look at that chart over there. Being engineers, our friends absolutely must study any chart they come across.

It's a security sign-in sheet. Okay, we didn't see any DO NOT ENTER signs, but maybe we're not allowed down here after all. According to the chart, the last security sweep was at 5:00 PM. Following the pattern of past days, the next sweep should be at 9:30. What time is it anyway? 9:29!!!!

BREAK!!

Life at FIT

A picture tells a thousand words...

Every one of these pictures has a unique story behind it.

Take a wild guess as to what the circumstances were when these pictures were taken.

I'll tell the whole story later.

(Thanksgiving break begins tomorrow!!)

A peek inside my brain...

asjdhfjkashdfkjahsdjhaudhfsdFORTRANsdjhfsajdlhfuweyuwoeyruwerhjwebfhdfjkdfPARTIALFRACTIONDECOMPOSITIONhjhsdfkjhyeurhywefbdfQUANTUMMECHANICSydhfkjsdlfhywueryjkdhfbasdjkf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A peek inside my stomach:






*empty*

Into the real world

"Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever."

-Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

...Studying most of today...

Tacos are pleasing to me...

To my astonishment, the art community has not accepted my concept of the Linear Dog, but I know that, with time, they will come to realize its genius.

I drew this on my Puerto Rican roommate, JJ's, dry erase board Sunday night. I am making a genuine attempt to learn Spanish, but sometimes I have to resort to this phrase and "Lucy you got some splainin' to do" to get me through everyday conversations.

Knee-slamming happiness

Around noon yesterday I strolled into my FORTRAN class and delightfully plopped into the office chair in front of a computer terminal. I was fresh off the high of receiving an "A" on my first of three chemistry exams, so my morning was off to a good start.

As I always do, I opened up my FIT "Squirrel Mail" account to check on the daily happenings around campus while waiting for my professor to begin his lecture. Before my eyes was a message with the simple subject "greetings."

When I saw the name of the message sender, I gasped. I let out a stifled "Oh my gosh!" Trying to remain somewhat quiet and controlled while other students worked around me was nearly impossible. I pumped my fist and inadvertently slammed my knee against the side of the desk I shared with another terminal. The monitors rocked, and the guy across from me glanced up. I didn't care. Opening the message, my eyes devoured the text before me:

"HurricaneTeen:

"Lauren tells me that you are majoring in meteorology and hope to work at the National Hurricane Center one day. I think that's great. We still have room for a lot of improvement in hurricane forecasting and need all the help we can get...."

The message went on much further; it was long! I didn't expect this type of extended response.

The former director of the National Hurricane Center, a man who had been a household name during the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, a man whom I have idolized since I began closely studying hurricanes when I was 12, has sent me a personal email!

He went on to tell a story of a young high schooler who came to visit the NHC about 10 years ago, and said he would some day work for the Center. I immediately recognized the name as one of the newest Hurricane Specialists at the NHC, Eric Blake. His story is very much like mine. It struck a chord.

"...I wish you the best in your pursuit of meteorology. Give my friend George Maul my regards at FIT when you run into him.

Best regards,

Max Mayfield"

Looks like Mr. Mayfield is friends with my department head, too. I love the connections that college has suddenly given me!
I jokingly told my roommate, JJ, that I was going to enlarge the text to poster size, frame it, and hang it on my wall...It was a joke...But now I wonder about actually doing it...

I owe my sister many thanks for getting this to happen. A student in the bible study group that my sister leads is friends with Mr. Mayfield's daughter. My sister spoke to her about my interest in meteorology, and the rest is history!

There's few things more exciting than getting an email from a professional that you look up to. And, yes, I would rather meet Max Mayfield than any movie or tv celebrity that ever lived. Weird? As I've always said, I kind of like being "weird." :-D

"Florida Lacks Character"

Those were the words of one of my roommates who happens to be from a certain state in the Northeast U.S. I will share with you the full discourse of our short conversation that occurred tonight.

...I'll give you some time to guess how the conversation went...In the mean time I'll share some more thoughts...

When I decided on attending FIT this past summer, I knew that I would be in the minority here. This is an acclaimed private school well-known for its aeronautics/astronautics and marine biology programs. Private is the key word there. This school is packed with northeastern students from affluent families...Now my family's not poor, but we certainly couldn't afford FIT's astronomical tuition if scholarships didn't help ease the pain...And we all know about my little Southern streak.

...Have you guessed how the conversation went?...

"Florida lacks character. Up North we have all of the colonial buildings and everything that adds character."

"You've never been to North Florida. Melbourne has no character. My hometown does."
"No it doesn't. Florida has no character."
"Ummmm...My hometown is the oldest city in the U.S. It was established in 1565. We have some old buildings and a little history, too."
So? [Something was said here, which I forgot]"
Well, [classic St. Augustinian line here] my hometown was undergoing urban renewal when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock."

"Yeah, but they have Southern accents where you're from. I hate Southern accents."

Are some of my northern readers getting a better understanding of why it's hard for me to erase the word "yankee" from my vocabulary? This was not the first time blatant ignorance has reared its ugly head, and I know it won't be the last :-D

I was going to post some beautiful pictures of my characterless hometown, but I just realized that those pictures were left behind during my annual seasonal migration.