First Day of School

So yesterday was my first day of school! I have to admit, its quite anticlimatic when you work every day, and when your last "last day" of school was just 10 days ago. But, you still have the smell of new books (which by the way, smell even better when they are paid for by your employer), the excitement of something new, the dread of how hard it will be, and of course the realization of how busy you have made yourself for the next few months.

Sounds fun, right? Well, I am taking two classes this fall. One is Environmental Chemistry which I am hoping will be a fairly easy class. The other is Transport Phenomena. I have always wondered why they call things in science "phenomena" because when I think of that word it makes me think of something that just happens but we don't know why. But in all these classes, everyone seems to know exactly why... there are billions of equations and problems to prove it.

My "Transport" class is all about the study of how fluids move... through pipes, filters, smoke stacks, mixing together, heating, etc. I am taking this class as an independent study because it is only offered during work hours and I can't attend the class. So this is supposed to be the harder class of the two and I have already dug out all of my old college books that will of course magically have the answers to anything I am confused about.

For those who don't know or forgot, my master's degree is going to be in Energy, Environmental, and Chemical Engineering. This is basically part of the chemical engineering department at Washington University, but here they have combined chemical with environmental, whereas most other universities pair it with civil engineering. I figured I could use the environmental side of it, since being green or going green or however you call it, seems to be all the rage these days.

After class John and I headed over to the baseball game - I had a box ticket from Boeing with my work team, and John had a ticket in the bleachers with our friend Caleb from seminary. So of course I made fun of them in their bleacher seats while I enjoyed free dinner and (all-american) Budweiser in the box. The closest John got to a free beer was sitting underneath the brightly lit Budweiser sign.... in the bleachers. Despite his seats (in the bleachers) we thoroughly enjoyed the game! The Cardinals were losing the whole time and came back in the 8th inning to win. My kind of baseball - you only really had to watch the last half hour, although I'm sure John would disagree. ;-)

This is John's last week at his internship for LCMS World Mission. He is looking forward to being home all next week, getting some of those neglected summer projects done, and prepping for his first quarter. John's "first day of school" is September 8th.