Monthly Archive for May, 2006

Car Shopping

Published on 31 May 2006 in Journal. 2 Comments Tags: , .

One of the things we did over Memorial Day weekend was start the car shopping process. Because I won’t have all that much money to dedicate to monthly payments on a car, I expected to get a small used car, probably a Honda Civic or a Toyota Corolla because they have good mileage. So we spent Saturday looking around. We looked at Saturns, Pontiacs, Toyotas, Hondas, Dodges, and so forth. The shocker is that both I and my parents had our eyes caught by the Dodge Caliber.

2007 Dodge Caliber

This was unexpected on many fronts. As I said before, I expected to be looking at used vehicles. And, well, at first glance the Caliber doesn’t look like a car I’d be all that interested in. Having moved N-times in small sedans, however, a hatchback was looking nice. So we thought, okay, we’ll give it a try. The first shocker? It’s roomy inside. Or, more exactly, the interior is designed so that passengers are comfortable. My father can sit in the backseat comfortably, which is unheard of in most small vehicles. All the same, it’s not big enough for me to feel uncomfortable in the driver’s seat. I’ve decided that one of the reasons I dislike being forced to drive my parents’ vehicles is that they’re too big and not just in exterior dimensions. As bizarre as it sounds, I feel more comfortable when the driver’s space is a little smaller. It somehow feels more manageable. For example, I felt comfortable sitting in the driver’s seat of a Corolla, but the Camry felt uncomfortably large. You can imagine then how I feel in the Windstar mini-van and why I flat out refuse to drive the F-250 pick-up.

And there are silly little perks, too. Like the Caliber’s auxilliary stereo jack, which lets me plug my Zen Micro mp3 player directly into the stereo. The test drive went well–although I didn’t drive because the model the lot had had a standard transmission and I can’t drive stick :-( But, all in all, I liked it.

So we started looking at whether we could afford to get a stripped down Caliber model with the CVT2 system (like an automatic but cooler in terms of engineering and better in terms of optimizing torque and fuel efficiency). It costs more than we wanted, but given the prices of used vehicles with less than 30K miles on them and the financing we can get, it turns out that I can get lower monthly payments on a new vehicle than on an older used one. Add to that the fact that a new car comes with a warranty and my parents seem to be sold. My father located an automatic Caliber SE down in Lexington and we drove over there tonight to take a look.

This time I did actually test drive the vehicle myself. I’ve been somewhat nervous to do so at the other places because I haven’t driven much recently and I despair of anything going wrong. But this dealership is in Small Town USA. Literally. The sales rep didn’t even ride with us, it was that Small Town. So I felt fine and I did great. I liked the car–which is in Steel Blue, by the way–except for one little niggling thing: it doesn’t have power locks. Now, personally, I find it rather odd that a car has a jack for an mp3 player but it doesn’t have power windows and locks. Oh well, I tell my parents. I can live without that.

But my dad, being, after all, my dad, starts thinking to himself, “But my daughter is going to have to drive through cities to get to Ithaca. She’s going to be far, far away from my protection. And there will be Neighborhoods and when she drives into one of those Neighborhoods I want her to be able to hit a button–click!–and be safe.” (I’m sure anyone who’s driven down Chester or Euclid in Cleveland know what he means by Neighborhoods; the rest of you can just imagine.) So he starts wondering what it’s going to take to get power locks. And, along the way, he starts noticing all these other little things, like the cover that slides over the cargo area to hide what’s under there. We stop by another dealer on the way home and a rep there mentions that on the next model up, the SXT, these power locks and such are standard. So my dad starts looking into that. Nevermind that I don’t know where the extra $1600 is going to come from. As my mother put it, “Justifying it is easy. Paying for it is another thing.”

So where things are headed, I can’t say for certain. It looks like he’s going to see what price we can get on an SXT someplace 40+ miles from here. The other option, of course, is to go with an SE and add some options to it, which means placing a special order. Which means waiting eight weeks. Which, you might guess, I don’t particularly want to do. Not having a car has never bothered me much in the past, but now that my own set of wheels has been dangled in front of me… Oh dear freedom…

We’ll just have to see how this ends.

Commencement

Published on 31 May 2006 in Journal and Memorable. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Graduation

Now that graduation was ten days ago, it’s really about time for me to say something about it. I’ve got just about all of the photos I have from the weekend uploaded.

The weekend was a complete whirlwind of activity. On Friday night, after my parents and grandparents made it in to town, we went out to dinner at Anatolia Cafe with my advisor, Dr. White. That was a lot of fun. My grandfather could not stop saying how thrilled he was that I’d gotten into Cornell. I think he went into that topic about five times over the course of dinner.

We had rehearsal on Saturday morning, and, in the afternoon, my family and I went to the Honors Awards Ceremony where I received a 2nd place prize in engineering for my poster at the research symposium as well as a departmental award for a student who “shows promise in professional leadership”. That was quite a surprise. The other student who received the prize was a much more obvious choice than I was: he’s been president of the Case student chapter of AIAA and has led the Design, Build, Fly team nearly every year. I, on the other hand, never even joined one of the professional organizations associated with our department. The only excuse I can come up with is that I showed leadership in class and such. Even then, though, I feel like that’s more perceived leadership on the part of other students rather than actual leadership on my part. In any case, I was flattered.

My grandfather, myself, and Prahl

My family had a chance at the rehearsal afterward to meet Dr. Joe Prahl, the head of my department. Prahl is perhaps best described as “a character”. My parents still remember meeting him when I came to visit campus the first time. I think they were a little less freaked out this time around. Maybe.

That evening my family went out with Mark and Jessica’s families at Peking Chinese. As predicted, the puns were rolling. It was another one of those dinners that I honestly didn’t want to come to an end.

As I mentioned the morning of graduation, the day started out rainy. We all got our regalia on and headed down in the rain with umbrellas for the procession. While we were waiting in the line-up, the sky cleared and the sun came out. It turned into a gorgeous day not long before the bagpipes from the law school reached us. For the procession, all of the graduating students (undergrads, graduates, and professional students) start out at their school on campus, fully decked out in ceremonial garb. Different schools fall in together as they make their way in lines across campus. From Adelbert, the platform party, which includes the President, Provost, University Marshall, etc., leads the emeritus faculty and the faculty. These groups, followed by students from the law school, management school, and the school of applied social sciences, processed (also in full regalia) through lines of undergraduates. We had to applaud the entire time they passed, which really does a number on one’s hands. Eventually, we fell into step behind them and all the groups made their way into Veale, parading past rows of parents and family members who were held back by ribbons and volunteers. Having waited four years to participate in one of these procession, I was thrilled and grinning the whole time. Video cameras were strategically placed along the way so that the procession outside could be broadcasted within Veale. All very exciting.

Veale itself was pretty decked out. We made our way through the formalities: the giving of honorary doctorates, the key note speech from Julie Gerberding, and such. Hundert conferred degrees upon each separate batch of students, and we got to cheer a lot. There was a recession where the graduate and professional students left, and soon thereafter the undergraduate diploma ceremony where they actually gave us our degrees began. It was somewhat disappointing that I received my diploma from Dean Savinell rather than from Hundert, but such is life. They also didn’t read my major–it was in the program–but they did note that I graduated magna cum laude, which thrilled my family to no end. I was the only female aerospace engineering graduate, and one of only two aerospace majors to graduate with honors!

They had people stationed at the bottom of the stage’s stairs to catch people in case they tripped. The person waiting on my side happened to be the professor who was my freshman advisor way back when. He’s an accounting professor, so I hadn’t seen him in quite awhile. I had just enough time to tell him that I was glad to see him again and give him a quick hug before dashing back to my seat.

Christian, Me, Jessica, and Mark

After that ceremony–and its haphazard recession–we had a reception in Adelbert, which involved lots and lots of pictures. In fact, most of my Commencement photos are from then. I got to see quite a few people one last time, including Dr. White, Dr. Alexander, Dr. Prahl, Dr. Ritzmann, Chris, Tim, Lisa, Christian, and Michael. Of course, there were also lots of pictures with me with Mark and Jessica and my family. Really, I’m shocked at how many good pictures we got!

The whole weekend was a pretty bizarre experience. We were all quite happy, of course, because we were graduating, but, at the same time, it was terribly depressing because we knew time was running out. My family ended up going back to the Turkish restaurant with Mark’s folks that evening and having our fill of excellent food and company. We got back to the apartment completely stuffed, but nonetheless, we had to pack. I think my family may have been surprised at how quickly I managed to get things packed and ready to stow in the U-Haul they rented. Having done this routine a few times now, it’s getting familiar. They left later, and I got to spend one last night with my suitemates and friends.

I stayed up far, far later than I ought to have, given the early start my family had planned for the next day. But, as I was hanging out with Christian and Brooke and Mark and Jessica for the last time, I couldn’t resist. It was my last night living in a college dorm, and there’s nothing like that atmosphere for making friends and having fun at any hour. I didn’t regret staying up until the wee hours of the morning, even when my cell phone alarm went off the next morning. At that point, I packed the last of my things and stowed them in Mark’s car while he drove me to my parents’ hotel. We both cried.

My family piled into the van and drove off, making it back to North Carolina early in the evening. All of my things got stacked along the walls of the garage, and most of it has remained there. I’ve taken over the guest bedroom and have done a few things to make it my own: putting my own sheets on the bed and hanging my framed degree on the wall, etc. Mark is coming to visit for the weekend and is expected to arrive tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to that. I’ve spoken to Jessica online once or twice. Today she left amusing comments scattered throughout the Commencement gallery. Good times.

All the same, I miss college and my friends and Case. Even though I look at the degree every day, I can’t believe what it says. I’m officially a rocket scientist now.

Musically Speaking

Published on 25 May 2006 in Asides. 3 Comments Tags: , .

One of the things I said I would do this summer is pick up my guitar and see about teaching myself to play some of the songs I love. I think I’ve overdone it for a first day: my fingers are blistered.