Summer School in Session

Well I just completed my first two days of class. The way the class works is that Monday and Wednesday are lectures from 9am to noon, and Tuesday and Thursday are at the LACMRERS research facility located near Muscatine, IA on the Mississippi River. The class is called Water Quality and it's basically an introduction to remote sensing methods used in civil and environmental research. It should be really cool and not too difficult. Here are a couple pictures of the facility.

The first one is just a picture of the front of the building. Nothing too exciting. We just have lectures in here before we start the day's activities.

This one is of the neighboring Iowas Department of Natural Resources Fish Hatchery. Maybe I should bring my fishing pole and get to work. Speaking of fishing, the last field day is where we go out on boats and electroshock fish in order to count them as they float to the surface.

All in all it hasn't been to bad of a week of summer so far. In the last three days I have watched a season and a half of the hit TV series 24. This show is ridiculous but I literally can't stop watching. It is full of terrorist situations and corruption to the very top of society. Gripping I know.

In other news, I have continued to try and improve in the craft of cooking. Tonight I made beef teriyaki. This was a big undertaking as I wanted to make homemade fried rice and vegetables to go with the beef. I cute up my own veggies (peppers, onions, and a cucumber) and sauteed that up for awhile. At the same time i started working up the fried rice by whisking up some egg yolks and cooking them in a pan while simultaneously cooking the rice. At this point I had three things going and things were getting ugly in the kitchen. There was sizzling, there was smoke, there was also some partially burnt eggs. But with a little perserverance I managed to cook the rice and veggies only to see that i did not have enough rice. At this point I made the call to make ramen noodles as well. I cooked these will getting the beef going. Like a true champion I came through in the clutch and got everything together. It was AWESOME. Am I the best cook ever? Probably not but i was able to eat what I cooked and that is good enough for me. Here is a picture of my masterpiece. Until next time........