Half a year

half a year has gone by since my last blog, I should go back and read what it was.

But my life as it appears to me know is very stressful. I have 5 projects that I am currently working on. This takes up almost all of my time, Plus I have been working a lot as well.

My five projects for this semester are as follows

• designing a Low cost wind turbine, specifically designed for lower income countries
• designing a alternative energy vehicle, its based upon hydraulic pressure and an internal combustion engine. Hopefully we will have some working components by the end of the semester
• I am working on a team with Engineers Without Borders to develop a way to make homes in Mali more weather resistant. I have a few good leads on what we can accomplish, so I am hoping that will make it possible for me to travel there this summer to implement my ideas.
• My Art Design and Engineering class is finally working on the project which I signed up for in the class, it is to design the interior of a passenger jet. With a lot of effort we should be able to have this designed by the end of this semester and built next semester.
• Lastly, I am working on a paper on the Viability of Wind Energy in the United States.

This semester I have been struggling with a lot of things. I have never had this problem of not being able to focus on class work before. I mean there was the occasional spacing out in class, but I feel like lately I have been really detached from the world. I spend a lot of time with a few of my friends because I can't really take being alone all the time. I guess to catch you all up to speed, August 31st 2008 my half brother Jay took his life. For nearly a month I felt nothing I never was able to see his body, this has caused me to not really realize he is dead. I still imagine I will see him at Christmas when I return home. I went to a memorial service for him, and I spoke at it. My family was glad I was able to return home for it but still my grandmother has not said a word to me. I really hate that it took a death for my family to speak to each other but as the months have passed since then the relationship has broken down once again.

This summer Katie came to Iowa to live with me here. It was great having her here all the time but, it caused a lot of problems once she left. I have not seen her in 3 months, after spending 3 months with her then not being able to see her at all it really is a shock. I will be leaving in a couple weeks to go to see her in Cleveland for Thanksgiving. Though I think that only seeing her for a week won't be enough.

The big question I have right now is, where will I be next semester, or this summer, or next year. I have a lot of places I would like to be and what I would like to be doing, but I just am lost as to what is going to be next for me.

Nick

Sorry for the 1 month break

Sorry for the month long hiatus of my blog, I have been really busy with this semester.

So lets see...
Three weeks ago I went to Trashionals in Chattanooga, TN. It was a ton of fun, and Chattanooga was a really nice place.

Two weeks ago was Veishea, which was interesting, since I lost my wallet on a Friday and had no money of my own for the rest of it.

Last weekend was the Iowa State High School Championship for quiz bowl which went a lot smoother then the previous tournament.

So other than weekend events. I have been aimlessly trying to finish my Term project for one of my classes with no real success, I had an inspirational in my sleep on Thursday night so I just need to implement it into my project, Hopefully that will make everything work!

In completely other news, I applied for a job at Mad Science of central Iowa, and was able to get the job. I am excited to get back into the "mad science" world of entertainment.

Katie's Spring break, my spring break, and my return

So right now I am sitting in a GSB finance commitee meeting and the best thing to do is blog so here goes....

Well lets start off with 3 weeks ago. Katie had her spring break, and she stayed with me all week! it was pretty fun to have her here with me. Though the week was a bit stressful since it was around the time every prof wants to have exams :(... Lets see, I think on friday we lit fireworks on country roads and had a ton of thrill fun, or maybe it was saturday? The weekend is a little bit of a blur, I know there was Margaritas somewhere in there. Wednesday we went to an improv show that was so-so and thursday we went Campiniling! We ended up going home on friday, a day later then we had planned... friday, was definately an interesting experiance, under a bridge that is...

Saturday I returned to Holland, and that in itself was a pretty good break, though exhausting. I will give an overview of what I did.

Sunday, Arrived in Delft had lunch with Steve in Den Haag, and showed him to Delft that evening and dinner with Steve and Donald.

Monday, Trained to Paris, saw the Louvre, Eiffel tower, met some Aussie's, Kiwi's and Yanks at the Hostel I was staying at and went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I found it easier to order in Chinese then French well since, Chinese is a little bit stronger in my mind then French at the present. After getting back to my hostel i found that my roomies for the night were engaged in drinking games, mind you they were all at the time Asian. After I join in an Aussie girl joins in and we continue to drink the others under the table and aren't even phased by it.

Tuesday, I see the Arc d' Triumphe and a few other things I cant seem to remember right now... I returned to Delft and pretty much called it a night.

Wednesday, went to de ruif and hung out with the international students, guy commited suicide on the railroad tracks and caused the cancellation of all the trains to den haag from delft that night... but that is a completely different story...

Thursday, went to the market, Amsterdam, and a Karaoke bar that night... more to that story as well

Friday, Played poker with Moritz... lost badly... but had fun

Saturday, back in the US... but I volunteered my seat on my flight from Newark to Kansas City for a flight voucher of 500 dollars and a free trip to New York for the night and visited an old friend.

Sunday, finally got home and fixed two computers, hung out with rivka.

Monday, FINALLY drove back to school before class...

This is mostly a synapses of the past couple of weeks.

Whoa, I am super tired

Bummed

As the title suggest I am kinda bummed out about today. I was really hyped about the SIE CAFE tonight, So I spent several hours last night and several more today prepping food for it. BUT as fate would have it the weather was really nice all day long until the evening and that created a situation where no one wanted to come since it was freezing raining... ugh... im ready for this winter to be over...

The only thing I am really looking forward to is being able to go back home this Friday to pick up katie :) I am ready for a reality break and this weekend hopefully will be that for me.
Thats it for now short and sweet, or I guess bitter.

its been wayyyy to long

So once again i went through a dry spell of updating....sorry

So hmm what has happened lately...

A couple of weekends ago I flew to Cleveland for Katie's birthday, and I am pretty sure we both had an amazing time! My best story from the trip though was surprising her on her birthday with breakfast in bed... She had no idea that I snuck out and picked up some pastries and juice from a bakery and delivered them warm to her bed! On that friday night we ended up going to a club and having some fun especially the ride back on the metro bus system was quite funny... I think her roomies are a little strange when it came to the situations we were around at the club but oh well... I had tons of fun on the dance floor with katie... Once again we shared a bottle of wine at an italian resturant, and for once Katie claims she drank more then me but I will say I didnt like the wine as much as others... oh well... we went to olive garden on that saturday and also had a lot of fun... I decided we needed to go someplace that would embarass her... which worked out well plus we had some really good cake for the event.

It looks like a lot of my post are about dreams... So here this one goes on about dreams... lately my dreams have become more and more intense... I am not sure why but lets take for instance my dream I had saturday night. I dreamt about doing my homework assignment that was due today... the strange thing is I hadn't even started on the assignment... and in my dream i finished it and I remember all my calculations in my dreams... seriously these were numbers that I would only solve using my calculator... and the only error was calculating the reciprocal of 132... So i have no idea what is going on in my head...

I took the presidency of quiz bowl over a couple weeks ago, so I am finally at the head once again. I spent all of my saturday sitting in the sports [and leisure] club council, when I say all of my saturday I mean from 8 AM till 8 PM... it was one really really long day. I dont think I should go into the details of all the clubs and arguements about budgets but needless to say there was a lot of discussion that accomplished very little.

In a little under two weeks from today I will be heading down to kansas city to pick up katie, and then drive back up to ames, and then drive to minneapolis... thats a lot of driving for two days... but atleast i will have amazing company in the car.

It seems the days are getting short even though they are getting long... and even in the shortness of the days they seem to be more miserable then the last due to the extremely cold weather... there was a day last week that hit -20 F, and thats without windchill.... OMFG.... though today we had an interesting change of events... we had snow and rain at the same time! We definately have all the ice I think I can handle due to the constant melt and refreeze... whats up with that? anyways

I am Out

Dreamscape

I had a very unsettling dream the other night... I am not sure whats been going on lately but I haven't been sleeping very great lately. I have been going to sleep around 1:30 and waking up around 3:30 or 4:00 am staying up for a while and then going to sleep. Its been pretty much every night, I don't whats up with it. I should probably get it checked out again though.

I wish I would stop dreaming at night.

Horrible blogger

Alright for those of you that do read this probably agree that I have been a horrible blogger the past 20 or so days. Well alas I will finally update you!

I am back in Iowa and under about a foot of snow and under that snow is about 2 inches of ICE!!!

So over break my laptop battery decided to completely call it quits and shortly after I called in to receive a new battery since circuit city doesn't do shit anymore my power cord for it went out as well. So Nick was no longer a mobile Techie, but Nick did get a GPS unit for his car for Christmas. I didn't really want a GPS but it is a very nice gift. Then again I really never want anything for Christmas, the only real Christmas wish I ever had was for my house to be rebuilt back almost exactly where it was... looking back that probably wasn't the best idea. Then I wouldn't have lived in Independence, maybe I could have grown up in a more accepting place? Oh well...

So news in life. In a couple of weeks I will be heading to the airport to go to Cleveland, an event which I am very excited for! There were a few problems that occurred in my planning of this trip, first of which is my tuition needed to be paid, and well I didn't have all the assets in my family bank account so I used all my secret money to pay the tuition, which left me without some of the financial means to make some of the events possible, that is until reimbursements comes through.

I have a pretty full schedule this semester which means I couldn't take the Chinese language class I really wanted to take in order to get my minor but I audit the class 2 days a week so that helps a little bit.

I have been having huge issues sleeping the past week, I am not sure exactly why but it may have something to do with break, I had someone to share the bed with several of the nights :) and now I have to supplement that with a stuffed monkey in the bed and well, its just not the same :(. I miss you Katie <3.

Tomorrow is Wednesday that means full schedule from 9-12 and then 3-4 plus meetings, oh joy do I love meetings! I think its time for us to just do web conferences every time a committee wants to do anything. It would make scheduling so much easier, that way you can have a couple meetings simultaneously instead of wasting 1 hour to do nothing.

I am finding my most interesting class this year is once again not related to my major. Chinese culture is very fufilling most of the days we meet. I once again get a chance to mental spar a teacher and not feel bad. It reminds me of the times my high school history teacher would go on wars of words in the middle of class while all the minions around were staring with blank faces.

Oh well, I think I want to be topical, so next blog will be partially of my own life and the rest is a topic you pick.

Worried

A couple things have been eating at my mind lately, I don't really want to post them but thats what my worries are.


I am about to go up to Iowa today to do the Caucasus but I am pretty sure I will not be staying the night. It really all depends on how long the process takes. I may be home around 11 or midnight if everything goes quickly.

New Years was kinda boring, though I definitely had conversations with people my parents age and my parents about things I really didn't want to know..

I think my Christmas present is awesome... Katie made me a Monkey! to replace Monkeymeat I thought it was really special. Though I am having a hard time coming up with a name for the new monkey. I was thinking of something kinda nerdy.

I should have taken a picture of one of the gifts I made Katie, I think i did a pretty good job on it...the third time around... maybe she will take a picture and I will add it into the post.

I haven't been sleeping much lately, and it hasn't really taken its toll on me yet... I guess I am so used to not getting much sleep during the semester it really hasn't affected me yet.

I guess its time to pack things up... aka, my laptop and myself... I guess I am traveling light :(