Weather Forecasting by WXchick7

So I am officially obsessed with Amazon.com.  Yes, I know, it's horrible.  I finally caved in and am now one of those people that buy their textbooks online.  I ordered my Hydrology book on Amazon and I believe it came in today finally (I got the notice, just didn't make it to the mailroom in time).  

Slowly but surely the top half of the case on my phone has been falling apart -- all the claspy thingys have fallen off but one.  And since the only place I can buy a replacement case is online, I figured I'd look on Amazon.  I was stuck in a draw between these two cases:

Both are pretty awesome (and the green will be my fallback in case I don't like the black), but I ended up ordering the black one.  It had much better reviews and many more orders than the green one.  It's supposed to get here sometime between September 7 and September 10.  I wish it would get here faster...lol.

But yeah, so I also started listing a bunch of my old textbooks online as well, since my mom had been pestering me to do something about them.  I've listed nine books I think and I sold four last week, all within three days of listing them.  I'm afraid I missed the "textbook window" slightly and will have to attempt to sell them again going into the Spring semester.  So we will see.

It's been an adventure to say the least!  Have a great day.

Luckily, I suppose, I was not the one who got appendicitis.  I got a call from my parents Friday afternoon shortly after I got out of class, saying that they were on their way to Gainesville because Roy had tentatively been diagnosed with appendicitis.

He had started having bad stomach pains Thursday evening, and when he called my dad the next morning, my dad told him to go to the urgent-care facility in Gainesville.  From there, they recommended he go to the hospital.  So my parents loaded up and got up there in time for him to be going in for a CT scan where they officially diagnosed him.  He went under the knife around 7:30pm Friday night for an emergency appendectomy.

Everything went great with his surgery and they released him from the hospital after just an overnight stay.  My parents brought him home, and he has an excused absence for the week from school, but he's hoping to go back on Tuesday.  Though he's doing great, I don't know if he'll be well enough to walk the millions of miles across UF's campus to go to class in the heat.  If it was Florida Tech, maybe, UF, I don't know.

He's still in a lot of pain and is having numerous struggles.  But he's doing great.  Not that it was great that it happened at all, but at least it happened going into a weekend, so he has more buffer time before missing school.  He was very lucky though, to catch it before his appendix ruptured.  I worry about him, but I know he's doing good.  I feel bad for Yvette, because she's all alone up there while he's at home.  But then I know EXACTLY how she feels since I was in the same situation in May and June.  At least she'll get to see her man again in a few days...  I miss mine and want to see him desperately.  Have a great day.

My academic future is currently up in the air.  I had a meeting with one of my professors today regarding graduate school and my future.  He basically recommended that since my grades are not great, not to apply to grad school for meteorology because, basically, no one will accept me.  This was a tremendous blow, even though I knew deep down it was coming.  My goal had always been to get my master's degree in meteorology, at minimum, and preferably at Oklahoma, so I could chase storms.  Now I'm not sure how much meteorology will be in my future after May 7, 2011.

For the past eight or so years of my life, all I've been able to think about is meteorology.  It's the only career I've ever truly been interested in.  And I love meteorology and the weather.  I truly want to be a forecaster.  It's my dream job.  But I'm really afraid that it's just slipped away.  

My professor said I still should apply for meteorology here at Florida Tech, because I may get accepted since I'm one of their own.  But no guarantees...I basically have to do AMAZING on the GREs to even be considered.  So now I'm looking slightly more seriously at going to UF and getting my master's in environmental science.  They have a lot of diversity in degree programs there, and while there isn't a specialized degree for meteorology, I can hopefully still get to do something I'm interested in.  My goal would then be to try and get a second master's elsewhere in meteorology.  It's the only thing I can think of to do.  I want to be a meteorologist so bad, and even if it takes two or more years before I can get back to it, I want to, desperately.

There are a lot of jobs in the environmental science field and my professor recommended me going the public policy route.  So I could basically work for the St. John's River Water Management District, for example (which I wouldn't mind doing and sort of got a job offer there a few years ago).  Working at a job like that, hopefully I can incorporate my meteorological background and have it help me move up through the ranks or into an actual meteorological position.

The only thing that still bothers me about this whole mess, is well, that I may never get to chase tornadoes for scientific purposes.  I mean, yes, one day I will make it to the Midwest and chase a tornado, I'm promising you this right now; but I wanted that to be my job...or at least work on a related research project.

I don't know what my future holds right now or what I'm going to do in the coming months, let alone what I'll be doing a year from now.  I've had a lot of "bad" things happen to me in the last three months, I just have to keep telling myself that everything happens for a reason.  I just want to know what to do, because I am in fact, lost.  Have a great day.

It still hasn't quite hit me yet that tomorrow is the first day of my senior year of college.  Really?  It's been three years already?  It's nuts how much time has passed and yet it feels like just yesterday (or maybe last year) that I was in high school.

I'm hoping this semester won't kill me.  But then I'm also taking my first semester of Atmospheric DIEnamics (or Dynamics if you're boring).  And Dr. Lazarus is the professor for that class...and he expects a lot out of his students...especially ones he likes...like me...

I'm also taking Probability and Statistics, Environmental Hydrology, Remote Sensing for Meteorology, Physical Oceanography, and the corresponding Phys. Oce. Lab.  Tomorrow I just have Prob. and Stats. and the lab, so hopefully not a horrible day.  And they're both in Skurla, so I don't have to go anywhere.

So far, so good though.  I like my roommate a lot, and I'm pretty sure we'll get along really well.  I definitely feel like something's missing though and I know exactly what that thing is.  I'm just trying to press on regardless from that respect, but it's hard when at every turn there is something to remind me of better days.

Oh well, I'll try and update you tomorrow on how the first day went!  Have a great day.

Or at least I hope they're improvements!

Anyone who has ever visited the site before will notice the changes to the Home page, as well as the additional pages added with weather forecasts for selected sporting events and a News Archive of all stories posted on the Home page.  For example, if you look at the News Archive page now, you'll see the story from where my lightning photos were featured on Weather Underground's Approver's Choice photo gallery last weekend.  Another change includes the photo in the header at the top of each page, which is now a photo taken by me! :)

After looking around on the internet and seeing what other folks have done, I decided to change the direction of this site a bit.  Originally it was purely so I could blog and feature my more creative side (which doesn't show up very often).  Now I want to post regular forecasts for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events, as well as the forecast for each game on the Florida Gator's football schedule.

I will still continue to blog (hopefully on a more regular basis, lol), but I couldn't say yet if in-depth forecasts will appear in the blog, or just on the home page.  Keep your eyes out for continuous changes on the site.  Have a great day.