Fine food.

Just a quick entry today to say that I may not post for a couple days due to large amounts of homework. I do have one or two things of note, however:

Yesterday I went up Mauna Kea for stargazing, where Nathan taught me about how to do scientific data reduction. Reduction, in imaging terms, means taking an image and squeezing as much useful information as you possibly can out of it. There are various procedures for doing this, but I'll postpone a description till I have more time.

Also, I took the drive test, so I am now a registered driver! Able to drive the official MKSS (Mauna Kea Support Systems) vehicles if I need to. Since I've never changed a tire before, that was part of the test, so I learned how to do it. Pretty interesting. If it wasn't dark or cold or rainy, and I didn't have to be somewhere urgently, I could see it being kind of fun.

Other random news: I went to the local Safeway today, for my weekly grocery shopping. On a whim I decided take a picture of everything I bought today. Digression: riding my housemate Jonathan's moped in traffic on a 3-lane highway got a little too much for my nerves, so last week I started walking to the grocery store. It's about a mile, the same distance as it is to school, and I simply carried my groceries home on foot. Since I was carrying around 20 pounds of food in each hand, this had the interesting effect of making me mostly unable to lift my arms for the rest of the day (as a result of the strain of having to continuously hold all the bags away from my legs for 25 minutes while I walked. Try it sometime). This time, I came prepared and brought my backpack along due to a brilliant suggestion from a friend (something I probably would not have thought of for quite some time on my own), so I managed to carry at least as much weight if not more home with no ill effects. Anyway, this is what $80.44 can get you in Hawai`i. I'll let you draw your own conclusions on my healthy eating habits, or lack of them.


(I should point out that the contact solution was $20 by itself, but removing that would give you a pretty good idea of what I spend per grocery trip. Yes, food is expensive here)