Dirt and music and talking and boys

I don't get to post very often these days, because I'm not supposed to be on the internet at work; so I write more infrequently, but they seem to be really LONG for the most part. So I'm actually goint to lj-cut this baby (!), even though I always talk about how much I hate it when other people do it. But I guess I'm trying to be respectful, or something. Suck it.

Last week, as aforementioned, I went up to Rutgers for a seminar. It was called Soils and Site Evaluation for Septic Disposal Systems. Doesn't that sound exciting? I actually sort of thought that it was. It was all about soil. I took Soils Mechanics in school (which isn't nearly the same thing, that's for building structures on top of, not septic systems within) and a Soils Lab (which was mostly not really the same thing), but this was more useful, and it sort of felt nice to be treated like a grown-up, and to be taught things that are relevant and practical. And applied, not just theoretical stuff that we should know, but don't really need to to complete a project. Though there was some of that, too.

And on the second day, we went out in the afternoon to do test pits. See, when you have a site, and you want to put in a septic system (or a stormwater management basin, but that's another seminar altogether), you do test pits. A test pit is a big ol' hole in the ground, made by a back-hoe. You go in and look at the soil and identify it and yadda yadda yadda this belongs in its_what_i_do, not here, so I'll shut up. But the end result is that my hands got dirty, absolutely filthy, and I loved it. I squeezed and rubbed and mushed a LOT of wet soil, let me tell you.

And then afterwards, I shot the shit for twenty or so minutes with one of the only cute boys my age in the class. He's a little too clean-cut for me, and lives an hour away, but still, it's nice to talk to a cute boy for a while, 'specially a geologist. And I was thinking he was older than me, but he JUST graduated! OMG! A younger man!

And I must talk about Cook a little. Cook College is one of the colleges of Rutgers University. Its campus is south of the College Ave. Campus. Cook has . . . agriculture-type studies. And animal sciences, and food science, and environmental stuff. Anything that's GREEN, you probably have to go to Cook for the degree. Lot of hippies. It's an amazing campus, though. There are cows and horses and goats and sheep. And pigs? I don't remember any pigs, but you'd think they'd have pigs, right? And fields, one of the test test pits was dug in a corn field. And there were flies all over, because they had recently put some manure down. I think that's great. Not the manure, but the goats and such. Goats! Tons of goats! Small animal studies. Something like that. And cows, tons of cows! I mean there honestly are a LOT of these animals, it's not like a petting zoo or something. And Cook and Douglass campuses (Douglass is the stupid women's college, they sort of share a campus, they're squished together) has a MOUNTED PATROL as part of Campus Police. Mounted patrol! And students get to ride! That's hot.

But of course the fun part of this seminar was hanging out at Dave and Mambo's apartment. ( Read more... )