mars is love

tonight i went to the free screening of the roving mars imax movie because jorge had gotten tickets for jonathan, zack, and himself and jonathan couldn't go so i got his ticket. i think about half the asu geograds were there. it was so cool! i was on the front row, which i thought would be horrible since the imax screen is so huge. i had to look around to see everything and so it felt like i was actually on mars. awesome. my only complaint was it was too short. but, it was kind of adapted from a book of the same title by steve squyres, the pi of the mission, which i own and will read right after i finish dava sobel's "longitude." we'll call it "research." it was a lot of fun seeing people i know and have met and talked to on this huge screen talking enthusiastically about making these amazing robots and sending them to mars. it made me remember ( my experiences of watching the rovers land. )

i had lost a bit of steam trying to sort out the beginning-of-semester insanity but i'm feeling really inspired again. i'm excited about my research and am anxious to get going. yay mars woo!

the last few days have been fun. i spent sunday doing geochemistry homework and watching the nfl playoffs at zack's (go steelers!) and then went to see 'brokeback mountain' with todd on sunday night. submitted my homework online through digital dropbox at 1:30am(ish). yesterday in geochem, rick was talking about collecting the homework and he suddenly said, "heather!" "yes?" "your homework was great! that was more than i was expecting. you really did a good job!" whew. was afraid i screwed something up. but no. yay me. rick may end up on my phd committee so i really want him to know i've got a brain i can use and that i work hard. exciting.

last night todd went with me down to tucson to hear dava sobel give her talk on the planets down at u of a. the talk was decent. showed a bunch of pretty pictures by lynette cook that were going to be included in her latest book but were cut at the last minute by the editor (bummer). and i got her to sign my copy of "galileo's daughter" so that was cool. i'll add it with my book sally ride signed to my 'cool books signed by cool people' collection. now i have two. weee...

my roommate from undergrad, lisa, called me today. it was really nice to talk to her after so long. we've put our differences behind us. she's in a good place now, and i am getting there. and she's very supportive of me, which i knew she would be. i'm so glad she got ahold of me since i really had no way of contacting her. i might be able to swing having lunch or something with her when i'm in houston for lpsc in march. that would be super.

and now i'm going to look through some papers on snc (martian) meteorites for my advanced mars class. woo!

recap: i love mars, geochem is going well, saw dava sobel talk, lisa called me, time to do work on mars yay!