BRRRRRRR!

Hey y'all, It's Scott again on the blog.  First, some geeky things that have been going on in my world:

1.  I passed my prelims!!!!  (for those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the sad world of a PhD student, the prelims are horrible tests which you must pass or you die.)  I go on to live another year.

2.   I have an exhibit in the Pierpont building at the University of Michigan.  I'm displaying 6 of my mobiles, and the display is up all month (so if you are a current Michigander, you can go check them out)

3.   I've been published, and my articles come up as numbers 16, 17, and 18 when one types in "Scott Stapleton" in Google Scholar!!  So there are only 15 Stapletons with nerdier journal articles than mine.  What an accomplishment.  Anyway, for those of you who are curious about what a nerdy engineering article actually entails, I have included a snapshot of the title/abstract.  I would've included more, but I'd like you too see the rest of the post before you fall asleep....

Okay, "me time" is over.  In other news, it's been brutally cold up here in Michigan.  I was walking to school on friday, when I heard on the radio that it was -12 F, and the windchill was around -25.  So, we decided to toughen up our youngster by taking him snowshoeing in the nearby forest (I got new snowshoes right before moving here, and I finally got to use them).  By the dress, it's also apparent that we are preparing Timmy for the life of a ninja, or some other occupation where your secret identity needs to be protected.  
So it's cold.  Oh right, I think I mentioned that.  Well, how cold is it?  A friend of ours had a friend pass away, so we bought her some lilies.  Displaying our botanic ignorance, we took it over to our friend's house without a cover over it.  She only lives about 15 seconds away, and she wasn't home, so we came back.  About 30 minutes later, our plant looked like the flowers in E.T. when he was supposedly dead in the body bag.   Had no idea that plants are so wussy.  So we bought a new one, and took a pic with them together to prove how clever we are!!

Last random observation of the day: not sure why little one's are so fascinated with books, but we got this sweet little plastic book, and I can't get Timmy out of the tub anymore.  He just opens it up, looks for a bit, turns it over, and repeats the process.  I think he's looking for a hidden code in the text, about some clue from the aliens indicating exactly when the takeover begins.  Something like that.  

Also, if you have your own bathtub photo that you want to clean up a bit for use on the internet, here's how it's done: load it into powerpoint, do your editing, and save the whole thing as a .jpg (save picture as).  Random little tip.