Ph.D. Candidate

As many of you know I've spent way too many hours over the last month studying for my PhD Qualifying Exam which is the last hoop before becoming an "official" PhD candidate. I'm happy to report that I had my exam Friday morning at 8:30 and passed! It is an all oral exam that starts with a talk on your research before getting quizzed on topic areas by four professors. Although some questions surprised me a bit and left me searching my brain for a few minutes, I was amazed by how fast the two hours went by. It ended up actually being a fun experience, minus all the stress leading up to it, and now I'm very ready to move on to other things.

As for the last month in which I have been MIA we have still been able to find a bit of time for adventures around studying. We had quite a few visitors during the month of February including Bryan and Caryn Carruthers who spent a weekend visiting from Colorado and Dan's mom who finally made her first trip down from Northern California to visit our tiny apartment. Unfortunately this has also been the rainiest month since we moved to California which dampened some of the "touristy" plans but we still enjoyed taking tours of the campus, visiting the coast in Santa Cruz, and taking some hikes around the area.

Along with the rainy weather Dan and I have also ventured to the coast a few times to watch the big waves that the storms have brought in.
We've also been playing lots of sports like usual. I'm proud to announce that Dan is the Barnes ping-pong singles champion (after beating me in the finals .... grrr) and our lab volleyball team has made it to the quarterfinals so far.

It seems like I'm always saying this but I can't believe that February is already over and another quarter is almost gone! I'm just happy to be done with my qualifying exam and am looking forward to a little time of relaxation over the coming weeks.

Wow, it is 2009!

What can I say? Time is flying by ... I can't believe it is already 2009, let alone that January is already over. Where in the world is all the time going. Anyways, here is an update of the DK life since I last updated the blog:

Christmas Vacation: Colorado and California
We started off the Christmas holiday with a short visit from Dan's Dad and Anita in the bay area. They used to live out here so we stuck pretty close to the Stanford campus for the weekend. Dan took them on a forced walk ALL the way around campus and we watched the Stanford men's basketball team cream Northwestern University. We also visited the new California Academy of Sciences which is amazing! It has a huge planetarium, aquarium, and rainforest dome ... lots of neat exhibits, but a bit pricey. The "natural" roof of the California Academy of Science's

After another week of work for Dan we headed out to Colorado for Christmas and a lot of family, friends, and food. All of the neighbors were home for Christmas which meant that the "kids" were still at the "kids" table (you have to realize I am the youngest "kid") and it felt like not a whole lot had changed over the years. Other highlights of the trip included completing a puzzle of the world and taking a trip up to Cripple Creek for poker and a cute melodrama, "Miracle on Bennett Avenue."

We headed back to the Bay Area just before New Years and drove straight up to Northern California to visit Dan's mom, brother, and grandparents. Dan's aunt, uncle, and cousins from Idaho were also in town visiting so the days were full of card playing. We also got a special treat from Dan's mom ... homemade pheasant soup (delicious!).


Good Hikes
The weather so far in January has been gorgeous ... sunny and 60-70s. We've been taking advantage of the weather and have gone on a few new hikes in the area. The Coal Mine Ridge trail is just about 10 minutes up Alpine Rd. and winds back into the hills overlooking a valley. Yesterday, Lindsey and I went to check out Edgewood Park which is just up I-280 and although it does sit right next to the highway it is suprisingly secluded and has some great views.

Our Orange Tree!
We are also very proud to report that our little dwarf orange tree actually produced oranges!

Well ... now its time for the SuperBowl ... GO .... who's playing again??
Take care everyone!

Da Vinci at the San Jose Tech

Yesterday we headed down with Lindsey and Matt to the San Jose Tech Museum to see the special exhibit, "Da Vinci: 500 Years in the Future." By the end of the exhibit I was convinced that Da Vinci must have been a very eccentric man and most certainly a genius. The sheer volume of designs he made, buildings he built, paintings he created was over-whelming. The exhibit had a bunch of replicas of machines that he and other Renissance designers created. It was amazing to see how they created complex gear, pulley, and screw mechanisms to accomplish pretty much everything.

I was also really impressed with the rest of the museum. They had so many hands on exhibits! If I wasn't already tired from the extensive Da Vinci exhibit I probably could have spent many more hours playing with all of the exhibits. They even had one where you could inject genes from jellyfish into bacteria to make them glow! We also watched their "Adrenaline Rush" IMAX film. It was all about base-jumping and sky-diving which was really neat on the IMAX screen. They also built a copy of Leonardo's pyramid-like parachute and had a professional sky-diver test it out. They dropped him from a hot-air balloon at 10,000 feet and it worked! However, they didn't make the guy land with the 200 lb structure which I think would have been the real test to see if it really "worked."

Done!

Finals are done and I am now officially a holder of an MS in Mechanical Engineering - hurray! Now I just have to figure out that little question of if I want to stay for my PhD ...

Gingerbread House and Waterpolo NCAA Championships

What can be better than an afternoon of candy-house building and a brutal waterpolo match-up? We started the afternoon off getting into the holiday spirit by going to the graduate students' gingerbread house making get-together. They gave us a great kit that had all the gingerbread pieces and, of course, tons of frosting and candy for decorating. I think we did quite well (Dan would like to point out that he decorated the little man ... nice job hubby!). Of course, he also doesn't mention that there were 2 little men. I wonder what happened to the other one?

After decorating the house to our hearts' content we headed over to the water polo stadium to watch the National NCAA Waterpolo championship game between Stanford and USC. The stadium was completely packed. Sadly for Stanford, USC finished off their perfect season undefeated. Stanford gave them a pretty good run for their money but, in the end, it just wasn't enough.

Two Strikes We're Out

Unfortunately, our IM season came to a sad end last night. Somehow, 2nd place just never quite feels very satisfying. We lost both of our IM final matches in tennis and table tennis. Table tennis was a lot closer than tennis - we lost in a close battle in the third game. The graduate school of business team dominated in tennis - needless to say, they were very good. Oh well ... there is always next quarter.

Second Times the Charm!

Woo hoo ... we won our intramural table tennis match tonight and made it into the finals! The tournament is double elimination and tonight we played the team that beat us (badly) the first time. All of that lack of practicing must be paying off! We did make them play in the sketchy, bumpy, tilted table in our basement so we did have "home table" advantage. Wish us luck in the finals. We're also playing in the Team Tennis finals on Thursday night ... however, we're playing against the Business School team who look more like professional tennis players so it could end very badly. :)