So I woke up bright and early this Sunday morning at… 11:45. Last night was quite eventful, so I didn’t end up sleeping until 2:30. There was a hype Just Dance party going on when I arrived back to Old West, so of course I joined in for a little “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and “Havana” dance party! I returned to my dorm with 5 minutes to spare to take my late night shower and be in bed before our 2:00 curfew. My roommate, Scarlett, and I did a little chatting as usual for a Saturday night, but we were both absolutely exhausted from yesterday (which included an in-dorm leg workout).
Side note y’all: Bulgarian squats are SO HARD! I woke up this morning sore in places I did not know I could be sore in. XD
So to start the day off, I leisurely strolled downstairs to place my week’s worth of laundry into a washer, and boy did I get lucky! Nurkyz was just then taking out her clothes, so I snagged her washer and helped her start the dryer. It was a total win win B) After this interaction I realized that among other SSPeople I had actually woke up relatively early! While everyone else was clamoring to get a washer and dryer only an hour later, my clothes were clean, dry, and folded before our scheduled Sunday activity, watching Interstellar.
My roommate and I were planning to head to chase or maybe even Chick-fil-A for some lunch, but then suddenly giant clouds descended upon us, and we were all trapped inside! DUN DUN DUN (I ate yogurt and Wheat Thins for lunch T_T) To most people’s dismay, this thunderstorm meant we had to delay our collective viewing of Mr. Christopher Nolan’s cinematic masterpiece until 2:40 🙁
For a little backstory, I watched the first 90 minutes of Interstellar a couple months ago and got bored halfway through. I didn’t pay as much attention during the first half, but once Matt Damon and Mathew McConaughey started tackling each other on the ice snow plateau as the camera zoomed out I was GLUED to my lecture hall desk and so absorbed into the plot.
Interstellar was a total hit, and let’s just say I tried (and failed) to contain my tears at least 3 separate times. I don’t know if it was the soundtrack or the story, but that movie just hits different.
After Interstellar we only had a little bit of time to get ready and head down to Chase for dinner. Today’s options were pretty interesting… The fried fish was a little tough, but the salad bar always hits (especially when there’s cottage cheese! YUM) and the corn had a fun little kick from the green chile. There was also ice cream today, so I’m sure we can all agree that it’s automatically a good day. It’s Sunday, so Ian announced his weekly Question of the Day (QOD) score report, which was a tie! *audible gasp* Harrison and Pranav both tied for this week with a score of 4.8, which meant that there had to be a final showdown for who would win the Cosmic Cantina gift card.
After dinner I walked back to the dorms and took a couple minutes of rest before returning to Phillips to work on my Sloan Digital Sky Survey Cluster Report.
But before I got too immersed in a paper on proper motion and cluster membership probability, I had to attend the 8:00 QOD showdown. The official QOD winner was determined by… drumroll please… a singular game of Connect 4! The game was a tense minute or so, but Harrison pulled through in the end with 2 rows ready to be connected into four. Connect 4 is truly the epitome of high intensity strategy-based games, so I was once again GLUED to my lecture hall seat and thoroughly immersed in the gameplay. Congrats to both Harrison and Pranav! I’m sure both of your QOD solutions this week were absolutely fantastic. 😀
As I was working on my report, I got a discord notification that my asteroid observing group, the Shoebill Shenanigans, would be observing tonight. Our shift is 1:00-3:00, which has been quite fun so far, but the three of us are always exhausted the next day. At first the cloud cover was not looking very promising at lower elevations, but our asteroid doesn’t transit until after our shift, so we pointed the telescope up anyway and took a few science images. To everyone’s surprise, the images were gorgeous and not at all noisy from the clouds. They practically looked reduced! We must have gotten lucky with the cloud cover right where our asteroid was, and I was so relieved. After this observation session, the Shoebill Shenanigans can officially say that we have the three necessary observations for completing our orbital determination. This observation session was lovely and a great way to end off a chill Sunday here at SSP 🙂
About the author:
Hi!!! My name is Tiffany, and I’m from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I love tap dancing, bird watching, and all things math and physics. I’m always curious about the inner workings of systems, so at SSP you’ll find me asking LOTS of “why?” and “how?” questions. I love making new friends and hearing new perspectives, so SSP has been such a fun summer experience for me and I can’t wait to see what we all do in the future. 😀
