There’s Football in the Air..

It’s happened.  OSU’s football season starts this weekend, and the entire campus (not to mention the city of Columbus) has a unique buzz.  There’s been a sudden influx of red and white jerseys proudly displayed by Columbus citizens from every walk of life.  A clock outside of the Polaris Fashion Place (an upscale mall north of Columbus) has a countdown, to the second, of the first game this coming Saturday.  Even the weather has changed its tune, dropping ten degrees and raining as if to signal that football season is here.

For those readers who have never experienced an OSU football Saturday, it is truly something to behold.  The entire city shuts down, making it therefore impossible to do anything but sit in front of a TV and watch the Buckeyes “fight the team across the field” to victory.  Picture the intensity of the stereotypical Texas high school football portrayed in the TV series “Friday Night Lights” and movie “Varsity Blues,” and translate it to a city with a population of almost a million people.  If you are trying to make it down 315 around campus, forget it.  Want to watch something different on TV?  Good luck.   Nothing is sacred; I have memories from shopping days growing up, when the stores would set up TV’s in order to provide shoppers the option of simultaneously watching the game.

Even though I grew up here, I never quite understood the whole idea of OSU football.  Both of my parents completed their post-undergraduate degrees here, three of my grandparents were associated with the University in some way (one English degree, one dental degree, and one Emeritus professor in the College of Medicine), and the fourth grandparent felt a strong association with OSU even though she was (gasp) a Purdue grad.  If scarlet and grey runs through anybody’s veins, it should be mine.  OSU home games always seemed like more of a nuisance to me, making it pretty close to impossible to drive within a ten-mile radius of campus.

But a few weeks ago something changed.  Almost like my DNA finally morphed to include the Buckeye gene, I now actually care that there is a football game this Saturday.  More than care, I plan to dress up in the new jersey I got for my birthday (it’s Laurinaitis in case you were wondering), and actually watch the game.  There is something here (I personally believe they put something in the water) that makes you ridiculously excited for a couple dozen guys dressed up and throwing a synthetic version of a dead pig around.  Now, when I hear “O-H,” I excitedly reply “I-O!”  And I am looking forward to being trapped on campus for an entire day with a city full of my closest OSU football friends.

Missing OSU…

Summer is almost up, that means we have to see Megan again… What a shame, I personally was enjoying my time away from her. Although there is a long list of things I miss from school that I will enjoy getting back into full swing in just under a month.

1. Everyone’s favorites, FRIDAY DONUTS! I lucked out this coming quarter, I have no classes after donuts so even if they are late I will be able to eat my full and enjoy it while I am in the beloved food coma.
2. One word, FOOTBALL. Let’s see here third times a charm! I hopefully will be able to make it to a third national championship game to watch our adored Buckeyes not get whooped in the final and most watched game of the year.
3. Those crazy lab experiments. Who says spending the night in the computer lab is a bad idea. I say the more you do it, the more dedicated you are. Just remember to bring your MP3 player, its battery charger, and plenty of illegally downloaded music to listen to. I find that if you wear your favorite hoodie, the computer lab may become your second bedroom, it is very nice when you don’t have AC at home!
4. Ross’s favorite word, “Rocken”, thanks for saying something that so easily rhymes with my last name.
5. Fall get-togethers. Where else can you blare music on your front porch and have a police officer drive by and just shrug. What is in those red plastic cups?
6. Gary blaming everything on Kovacs.
7. ¿Coffee on the third floor? YUM!

Anyways, hope all of your internships are going well. Mine is going swimmingly; I get to play with all different types of materials from the basics Al, Cu, Ti, and Zn, to some exotic metals Cd, Ag, Cr, Pd, W, Ta, Au, Ag, and Pt. So you know I am having fun. To the entire incoming freshman, we will see you guys in just over a month and I hope moving in is not too much to bear.

Forewarning:

Don’t buy any electronics in the next couple of months. Chances are I have touched the material that goes into making them.

Oh how I miss Friday donuts….

Can't wait for OSU MSE Friday donuts!!

    Less than one full month now before I am back in Buckeye Country enjoying more of what the OSU MSE program has to offer and I find myself distracted.  All I can think of when I picture coming back is the Friday donuts.  I know this is a small part of the big program that OSU MSE is, however it is something I will never forget.  Last Friday a co-op at work brought in donuts because he was going back to school.  Although they were donuts and they tasted amazing, they didn’t have that “man it’s Friday, we made it!” sort of fun that comes with the MSE Friday donuts.

    The best case scenario with Friday donuts is that you are done with class when they come. Thus eliminating the need to either scarf down three while trying not to choke to death on your way to class; or try carrying them around awaiting the unavoidable drop of the donut.  Which, as all of us are aware, will of course land sprinkle side down rendering it uneatable. 

    Although school starting again does seem a little soon, the donuts however have been missed for almost a full summer.  As for all of my fellow MSE students I look forward to seeing you in the “donut room” very soon, and to anyone thinking about OSU MSE let me tell you that the donuts alone make it worth it.  Now I will spend the rest of the morning thinking about how I wish it was Friday and I were eating donuts……

 

GO BUCKEYES!!!

Las cucarachas

Up until this past year, I’d had the pleasure of not having had any close encounters with cockroaches since my ill-fated Girl Scout camping trip of 1992. I’d hear stories from classmates at OSU about their little friends skittering back into the darkness whenever they’d turn on their kitchen or bathroom lights. These stories would make me feel grateful that I lucked out in the apartment arena and didn’t have any creepy critters running around. [An aside: That’s not exactly true. I did end up having a star boarder in the form of a mouse at my apartment during my (first) senior year. The contraband weekend cat we had was the one who discovered the post-poison-pellet body of the little guy once rigor mortis had set in. Unfortunately, I was the first human to discover the dead mouse when I blindly reached down to pet the cat.]

Watts Hall, where the MSE department is headquartered, is a bit of a crusty old building. There are routine e-mails sent out to the department updating us on the status of perpetual problems such as our rarely-functioning elevators, the wonky heating and cooling system, and occasionally unexpected events such as second floor floods. There’s a group that’s left off the e-mail list, though, even though they’re as much a part of the MSE department as Professor Dregia or even Gary in the foundry. This group is our resident posse of cockroaches.

We have Friday donuts!

Before you get weak-kneed at the thought of having to put up with cockroaches as study buddies, let it be said that I was unaware of the problem until this past fall quarter when I happened to be running up the Watts-MacQuigg stairwell to class and found one, belly-up, on the landing of the third floor. Shortly after, I ran into the TA for the class and mentioned the disgusting beached roach, and he seemed rather indifferent about the news. Apparently, the roaches are the rebellious teenagers of the MSE family, throwing wild parties on the weekends while feasting on the leftovers from Doughnut Fridays [See that, prospective students? We have doughnuts every Friday!] and then passing out in the stairwells, hung-over from all of the sugar.

So why am I writing about this now? Because even GE has cockroaches, albeit much bolder cockroaches than those from Watts.

About a month ago, as I was walking down the main hallway in the building that houses the majority of the materials labs, I noticed a dark leaf blowing haphazardly across the hall. In my sleep-deprived state, I somehow put two and two together and realized that this could not be a leaf, as: a) it was not yet autumn, and b) there is no breeze in Building 500. I took a closer look and sure enough, it was a roach, drunkenly weaving its way across the hall. For a moment I considered poking my head into the adjacent office of my section leader from last summer to request her intervention, but quickly realized that the interruption would most likely not be appreciated. Plus, her shoes were probably as worthless at stomping on roaches as mine were (this was during the pre-steel toe era). As a result, I turned and ran away from the bug as fast as possible.

Earlier this week, I was participating in a few rounds of interviews for a potential position at GE. After my first interview, I exited the room only to be met by a cockroach that was repeatedly running into the wall. I turned on my heel, thinking that my interviewer might have a solution for this little mixed-up fellow, maybe in the form of a crushing blow to the head, but thought better of it. I could imagine the last line of his notes from my interview: “Caitlin seems to be unwilling to assume responsibility for solving problems of the cockroach variety. She would not be well-suited for work at any of our older, crustier facilities.”

Donut overdose?

Yesterday, after turning in my timecard, I walked down the dark, barren hallway of the basement of the building in which I work. As I neared the door to exit the building into the beautiful light of day, something familiar caught my eye. It was the same shade of brown as the floor, but it wasn’t moving. Crouching down to get a better look, I greeted the belly-up cockroach. “Hey, little guy!” I said. He didn’t respond.

Perhaps there is a Doughnut Friday at GE that I haven’t yet heard about.

The new kid in town

Those who know me know that I have a weakness for sneakers. If I could wear sneakers to work without feeling like a total bum, I would. These summers of closed-toe dress shoes have made me especially fond of wearing sneakers in my down time. I like it when my feet feel as though they’re being hugged by old friends.

Here are some of those friends:

As of today, though, there’s a new kid in town:

GE shop floor-mandated steel toe shoes.

When Manager Mike mentioned the steel toe shoe requirement in a meeting a few weeks ago, he’d also mentioned that the selection of shoes at the Red Wing store had improved greatly over the past few years. Feeling optimistic, I drove over to my local Red Wing store yesterday evening to scope things out. The clerk brought two pairs of work boots out for me to try on.

“Do you happen to have anything a little more sneaker-ish?” I asked him while casting a longing look at a sneaker-ish steel toe shoe displayed on the wall.

“I’ll check,” he said, and disappeared into the stockroom. When he reappeared empty-handed, he said, “Sorry – that’s all we have in women’s.”

I should’ve known better. Twenty styles of men’s shoes, and only two styles for women, one of which is not kept in stock – when will the world catch on that there are women working in engineering these days?