Arrival

I landed in Orange County just before 11 am PDT today after catching my 7:15 am MDT flight from Boise (and only getting 4.5 hours of sleep...not my brightest move, I'll admit). After waiting and worrying that my bag was somewhere between Boise and OC instead of at OC, my bag finally showed up, and I left for Palmdale in a van with five other SARPians and our driver.

I had changed my seat on my second flight just last week and I ended up putting myself next to a lovely couple, but the man was worried about his seat pocket not having a barf bag. Luckily he didn't need to use his fiancee's!

We drove right by Disneyland (!) and through downtown LA, including a couple of bouts of the typical stop-and-go traffic, on our way out to Palmdale. We didn't talk much because we were all so exhausted from waking up early and flying.

After eating lunch at In-n-Out and checking into our hotel, we wandered into the conference room and looked at everyone's posters! Mine ended up printing in purple which was kind of a bummer because it was blue on my screen. I also found a typo! Ha! Silly me...

The baggage van driver locked the keys inside the van, which is now a fun story to tell. Most of us didn't have our baggage for a couple of hours until a locksmith showed up. Thankfully my computer is okay. :)

A group of us wandered over to the mall, which is literally right across the street, for some dinner. We had a lot of time to kill before the poster session at 7. We met our mentors and other faculty members, including NASA people, during the poster session! A refreshment session followed out in the hot tub, complete with water, soda, and beer--a SARP tradition. Apparently they spend a lot of time in the pool and hot tub after our long days at DAOF (Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility--pronounced "day off"), which sounds like fun to me!

My roommate and I lucked out, and our group is the last to leave for DAOF tomorrow morning. The earliest group leaves at 6:50 and ours leaves at 8:20. The times are staggered to minimize wait time while we receive our badges. Anyway, I am SO tired, so it's early bedtime for me! Talk to you all later. :)

& thanks for reading my blog!