My second week at Ames has been awesome.  For a recap, I passed the N.E.W.B.I. test!  Yahoo!  It was only followed by a fake N.E.W.B.I. test that everyone not taking the test thought was pretty funny to scare us with, given the fact that I don't think anyone without a Ph.D. in everything there is to know about helicopters could pass.

For Valentine's day, a group of us went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse.  It was very nice!

This Valentine's day I also became an aunt and godmother to my beautiful nephew, Finn.  Congrats to my sister and Al!  Since it was a holiday weekend I was fortunate to have time to travel home to Minnesota to visit them.  I appropriately brought him his first NASA t-shirt.  He knows what's up!At lunch before leaving, I also informed everyone that Finn being born on Feb. 14, 2012, if keeping out the zeroes, the numbers are 2-14-12, or 21412 - forwards or backwards!  How neat! A palindrome!  My brother-in-law then followed by saying, "I bet he could have gone his whole life without realizing something like that."  Hey, what can I say, I'm a physicist; I like numbers when they work.


Last week, we also went on a bike ride.  I had the honor of seeing Eric fall of his bike - not for the first time, and I'm most certainly guessing not the last!  Far too much fun to laugh, sorry Eric!  We also went to lunch one day to In and Out Burger.  It was quite delicious.  Megan and I support each other's addiction to the chocolate chip cookies (and Chipotle) that are sold at the Megabites cafeteria.  They're SO good!  We also know already to get there early, otherwise they're all gone.


Eric fell off his bike - his chain also fell off (disclaimer: don't worry he wasn't hurt, I wouldn't have made fun of him if so.)
 

This week I will be given a computer that has all of the data I will ever need for my internship.  I'm looking forward to getting to start working on some analysis now that I've passed the N.E.W.B.I. though I am also a bit nervous to be a little overwhelmed!