Claire's Blog

the life and times of a Viterbi student

thanksgiving

Nov 16

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This year I’ll be having two Thanksgivings.  I’m flying home this weekend to visit my family and have an early Thanksgiving, but I’ll be spending Thanksgiving proper in Los Angeles.

So what are my plans?  Well, I’ll give you a hint that they mainly involve food, food, and more food.  I baked my second pumpkin pie today so I can make sure that the final one on November 26th turns out perfectly! I’m also planning to cook up a storm when I get home.  But that’s not all–my visit will also have to be pretty functional, since apparently I’m having  dental and optometry appointments during the four days I’ll be there.  I also have to get my cell phone fixed and get my hair cut and visit some of my highschool teachers.  It’s going to be a pretty busy trip!

After this weekend, classes will be winding down (only two weeks left until the end of classes).  I’m looking forward to finals and then finally being done with this semester.  Next semester’s classes should be a refreshing change.

down with the sickness!

Nov 9

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If there’s one thing this past week has taught me, it’s the importance of having a fully-stocked medicine cabinet in college.  I’ve had what is either strep throat or the longest (and worst!) cold EVER since Thursday.  I had a little bit of cough syrup left, but went through it pretty quickly, and it didn’t really help.  After suffering through the entirety of Saturday without taking any medicine (awful idea), I went to the student health center Sunday morning.  They gave me some antibiotics in case it was strep, and my awesome roomie brought me more cough medicine.  She also made homemade chicken soup for me, which was delicious and helped a lot.

So far I’ve been enjoying the independence of being in college and being “on my own,” but being sick made me really miss living with my parents.  Having a roommate who took care of me was really great, though.  If you can’t have you parents around, I guess, the next best thing is a caring roommate!

Getting sick this weekend was also seriously bad timing.  I had a constitutional law midterm today, and I have my physics midterm on Thursday.  (The last one! Finally!!)  It was really hard to buckle down and study instead of sleeping all the time and feeling wretched.  Tomorrow unfortunately starts with 8am class and doesn’t end until 6:15pm :( AND I still have homework to do for tomorrow.  I’m already anticipating the weekend…

fall in los angeles

Nov 2

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So it’s finally started to act a bit like fall over here in sunny Southern California.  There’s a chilly breeze at night, and fog obscures downtown quite often.  Tonight, as I was biking back from the ADT meeting, I could see the intramurals practice field enveloped in silvery-grey mist.  It’s certainly a change from the sunshine and balmy weather that we get 90% of the year.  I say “we, ” even though I’m not a native Los Angelean (is that what the term is?)  It’s odd to think that I have spent the majority of the past year and a half in Los Angeles, though.

Anyway, what with the changes in weather, it already seems like we’re approaching the end of the semester–even though there are four weeks left of classes!  My registration appointment is this Thursday, so I’ve already picked out (and am anticipating) my classes for next semester.  It’ll be a pretty AME-heavy spring for me, since most of the political science and Thematic Option classes available conflicted with required AME classes.  Here’s what (hopefully) I’ll be taking:

  • AME 204 – Strength of Materials
  • AME  308 – Computer-Aided Analyses for Aero-Mechanical Design
  • AME 451 – Linear Control Systems I
  • AME 491 – Undergraduate Design Projects: AeroDesign Team
  • PHYS 153 – Optics and Modern Physics
  • SOCI 353 – Sociology of Crime and the Criminal Justice System

It definitely seems like a lot (6 classes!), but it’s actually 18 units.  I’m excited to be learning new subjects, but I’ll definitely miss having a couple of poli sci classes to provide some variation.  Hopefully SOCI 353 will be fun, though, and it counts toward my Law and Society minor.  But the part of next semester I’m happiest about is the fact that I don’t have class until 11am every day (no more 8am!), and I still managed to have Fridays off!  One of my friends who has a car here is also free on Fridays, so I’m predicting a bunch of road trips next semester, which is going to be awesome.

zipcar fiasco

Oct 26

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There’s a service that partners with USC called Zipcar.  The premise is that it’s car rental for 18-year-olds, which sounds pretty scary when you think about it, but it’s not too bad.  There are cars around USC’s campus that you can rent for $8-11/hour, and you swipe into them with your Zipcard.  My parents and I decided to rent Zipcar for when we needed it during parent’s weekend instead of getting a rental car for the whole weekend.  Thursday night, I was supposed to pick them up from their hotel after I got the Zipcar, but I couldn’t find it!

In the place where my car was supposed to be, there was an empty parking space and a Zipcar sign.  So I called up Zipcar to ask about it, and my phone died!  I ended up having to walk back to Webb Tower and use my roommate’s phone to call them back, and they told me that the car had been taken out of service a while ago.  They set me up with another car, but when I got to it, my Zipcard wouldn’t let me in.  Eventually it unlocked though, and I finally picked up my parents and took them out to dinner.  However, my plans to surprise them with the USC pep rally that was held at the Americana at 7:30 PM were ruined because we didn’t make it there until 9PM. It was a major disappointment, but at least we got to watch the dancing fountains after dinner, even if it wasn’t to the Trojan Marching Band’s ‘Tusk.’

Anyway, I ended up getting a new Zipcard that worked and the rest of the weekend went off without a hitch, but the combination of the Zipcar issues and dead phone really frustrated me on Thursday.  I miss having my own car, and I’m going to try to get my parents to let me drive my Jeep out to LA when I head back here after winter break.  So a word of warning: Zipcar can only go so far to replace your beloved vehicle.

On a cheerier note, here are a couple of photos of the beach full of seals that we visited in La Jolla:

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bbq chicken pizza

Oct 19

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So my lastest adventure in cooking has been to make barbeque chicken pizza–from scratch!  I’ve been wanting to start baking bread this year, but never got around to buying some yeast.  Luckily, the yeast has finally been acquired.

The dough for the pizza is pretty easy to make.  I found the recipe on AllRecipes.com and chose it because of the good reviews as well as the simple ingredients.  The only problem I had with it was that it creates an enormous pizza!  Since I don’t have a pizza stone, I used a cookie sheet to bake the pizza on.  Instead of splitting up the dough onto two sheets, though, I decided to try fitting it on just one.  The result?  A very thick crust.  It was still delicious, but I think next time I’ll try making individual-sized pizzas.

I topped my pizza with what I could find in our fridge–we had some chicken and ham, fresh mozzarella, onions, fresh tomatoes, and barbeque sauce, so BBQ chicken pizza was the logical choice.  Here are step-by-step instructions for making your own:

ingredients:

  • 1 chicken thigh, de-boned and skinless
  • 2 slices deli ham
  • 4 oz fresh mozzarella
  • onion
  • 5 Roma tomatoes
  • 1/2 bottle honey barbeque sauce
  • ketchup
  • brown sugar
  1. Cut the chicken into small cubes.  Cook in a pan with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic.
  2. Cut thin slivers of onion.  Pull apart ham slices.
  3. Slice mozzarella into ~1/4″ sections
  4. Dice 3 tomatoes, mix with honey BBQ sauce and 2 tbsp brown sugar
  5. Slice remaining tomatoes.
  6. Roll out pizza dough on lightly oiled baking sheet.  Spread sauce over dough, topping with cheese, tomatoes, onions, ham, and chicken.
  7. Bake at 425 degrees F for about 20 minutes

Take a look at the assembled creation ready for the oven–no photos of after it was finished baking since we consumed it instantly:

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san diego horse show

Oct 11

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I just got back last night from a weekend in San Diego for the USD horse show. It was so much work, but we placed first both days! Our team participates in the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association, which operates its shows on the system of “catch-riding.” That means that you draw out of a bag to find out which horse you will be riding, which equalizes the playing field. I competed in the Sunday show on an adorable horse named Crackers–he was super sweet even though it was his third class of the day.

On the way to San Diego, Gina and I drove by a spectacular event–the nightly fireworks at Disneyland! We managed to snap some photos from the car but they’re pretty blurry. After getting to the hotel we all slept so that we could wake up at 6:00 am to get ready for the show on Saturday. But even though we didn’t get to spend much time during our trip exploring San Diego, we did check out an excellent restaurant called Pizza Nova, which has these amazing garlic bread balls. I’m pretty sure I ate about a dozen, but I couldn’t help it–they were delicious! And of course we stopped by an In-N-Out on the way back to Los Angeles for burgers and lemonade. (After all, what’s a California road trip without In-N-Out?)

Here are a couple of photos from the show that I took:

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Loren and Moose

Gina and Rebel

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grand central market

Oct 5

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Normally, I’d say it’s a testament to how horrible midterms week(s) are that the highlight of my week was grocery shopping, but this weekend I got to go grocery shopping at Grand Central Market! It’s got a few fresh fruit & veg vendors as well as meat and seafood markets and some delicious-smelling restaurants. Although I got there by car, you can also take the DASH or the Metro since it’s located close to Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles.

So what am I going to do with my haul? Well, I’m planning on making a few things in the next week or so: salsa, apple pie, and macarons. And no, it’s not a misspelling of “macaroons”–macarons are these incredibly delicate (and gorgeous) French cookies. Today, though I have a few problem sets to do for materials science, statics, and physics, so the cooking extravaganza will have to wait until tomorrow. Needless to say, though, I am super excited!

If you’ve got some time on your hands, try out my aunt’s incredible recipe for key lime pie… Read the rest of this entry »

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everyone’s second-favorite week

Sep 28

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You guessed it–it’s midterms time! Actually for me, the only midterm this week is for AME 201 (Statics). Unfortunately though, it’s coupled with a paper due tomorrow, and of course some problem sets scattered throughout the week.  So how am I going to deal with this stressful couple of weeks?

Time management, lots of relaxing cooking, and a few well-deserved breaks are the answer.  My schedule is thoroughly planned out on GoogleCalendar; for some reason it makes me more confident to see those multicolored blocks filling up my days!  On the cooking front, I plan to host a dinner for my fellow Clements High School alumni who attend USC sometime this weekend or the next.  Cooking has always been something that lets me de-stress, but it’s not just cooking–even planning a meal or a recipe allows me to focus and organize myself mentally.  Lastly, I’m going to my horseback riding lesson this Wednesday morning.  Taking the time to think about the horse’s needs instead of my own is pretty refreshing.

Best of luck to all my fellow students who are dealing with studying for and taking midterms this week and the next!

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el mirage, or “why I love the desert”

Sep 21

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This weekend was the AeroDesign Team (ADT) desert trip to El Mirage.  It’s a dry lake bed about an hour and a half outside of Los Angeles where people go to race cars, fly planes, ride dirt bikes, and much more.  We go out there to test-fly the team’s radio-controlled planes as well as everyone’s personal planes.  Although I’m a mechanical engineer and not aerospace, I love being part of ADT because of the opportunities to build awesome things.  For example, my roommate Grace and I worked on the winglets of the BWB (blended-wing body) plane that went out to the desert for some test flights, and I helped to lay up the landing gear for the monoplane.

We drove out on Saturday night after the unfortunate USC vs. UW game, stopping at In-N-Out on the way there for some hamburger therapy, and set up camp.  The people who brought their own planes taped glow sticks to the wings, tail, and body so that they could fly at night, which looked incredible.  (Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so there aren’t any photos.)  Then the next morning there was more showing off of personal planes and helicopters, as well as test flights for the team planes we brought out.  When everyone was getting ready to head out, Ben took the opportunity to try out his car on the dry lake bed with some J-turns, handbrake turns, and donuts.  We all returned to Los Angeles dusty, but exhilarated.  Here’s a photo from my camera phone of the surroundings:

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I think what makes me love the desert so much is its starkness.  The dry heat and often desolate landscape drive you a little crazy, and I always feel accomplished for some reason when I come back to campus saturated in dust and grit.

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sequoia national park

Sep 14

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Over Labor Day weekend I got the chance to go camping at Sequoia National Park, which is about 4-5 hours away from USC.  It was so much fun! (And so different from our most recent camping trips, which have all been to desert-y locations.)  We headed out Sunday morning and stopped at Three Rivers, which is just outside of the park, for some wading and rock-hopping in a very algae-covered river.  Then when we got inside the park, we went to Potwisha Dam and swam in the creek area nearby. There was even a small waterfall with a pool underneath that you could leap into!   The following photo is from Three Rivers–it was a pretty popular spot to cool off: 8331_272838960331_502635331_8617958_2917497_n

After finding out that all of the campgrounds in the national park were full, we drove through into the national forest, where we found a great little spot to set up camp.  The night was seriously chilly–the forecast had predicted 40 degrees F, and even though I packed accordingly, I was still pretty cold.  The next morning we drove back through the national park, stopping at Giant’s Forest to get a closer look at some of the enormous sequoia trees.  One of them was so big that it had tunnels at the base of the tree that you could climb through!  I liked Sequoia a lot, but next time I definitely want to check out Redwoods National Forest.  It’ll have to wait until there’s a really long weekend, though, since it’s about 12 hours from Los Angeles.

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