The Boots

If you thought I looked awesome in my Dwight glasses (Previous Post), wait until you see me in these babies...
Now I just need to get a sweet hat and a bigger belt buckle to complete the outfit...

More Montana

Sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, it has been busy here between school, biking, and fun.

This post is going to be full of pictures. Most of them will be of my apartment. And I guess this post won't have much to do with biking. Here is a picture view of my apartment:
Living RoomLiving Room 2

KitchenDining Area with no tableBedroomBedroom 2And Hannah made the trip to Montana, too

So I don't actually spend too much time there, but it is a pretty good spot. It feels a lot better since I got stuff up on the walls, and when I got a coffee table and bookshelf. I was pretty happy when I got those, because now the only items left in a box is stuff that goes on my desk. I also just got satellite TV, so now I have Big Ten Network and Fox Sports Detroit. I am quite excited about that. I got to watch the Michigan football game last weekend, and now I will still get to watch some of the volleyball and hockey games. And of course softball in the spring.

A lot more of my time is spent at the Chemistry Building on campus. I don't have any pictures right now, but maybe I will do that soon, because it is a pretty cool building. I tried to get another picture of the sunset out of my office, it looks pretty cool, but the picture still doesn't do it justice.

Along the same line with sunsets, here is the reflection of the sunset on the clouds outside of my apartment one night.
The road riding is pretty good around here. There aren't anywhere near as many roads here as in Michigan, so the amount of different rides is pretty limited, but I can ride flat if I want to and I can climb if I want to. My favorite road ride here is up Hyalite Canyon. It is about an 8.5 mile climb that goes alongside Hyalite Creek up near the top of the mountain. The paved road actually stops short at the reservoir. I took a lot of pictures to try to make a panorama, but the panorama didn't look to great, so here are two of the pictures from the top of the climb. The whole route along the river is amazing, too.

On campus, there is a duck pond that is actually heated during the winter, so the ducks stay year around. There are a lot of ducks there, as you can see below. The first time we went to feed the ducks, they were pretty nice and stayed in the water, but they are getting more aggressive each time we go. Now they have been walking right into Amanda's lap and biting us to get our attention.

Last week, I drove to Billings with Amanda to get her a kitten (she actually scoped it out on the internet to find the perfect kitten). Here is a picture of Wendy. She is an awesome little kitten and I never realized I liked kittens so much. Although, I am missing a lot of skin from my hands and arm. It will be nice when she is de-clawed.
I just started doing some research work in the lab this week, but for now I will be on "rotation" type work. Of course, this will just mean I will be learning skills I don't already have, and most of my work for the near future will be to grow proteins. School is going well, graduate level courses are better than undergraduate level classes. To earn my keep, I am teaching general chemistry labs. It is pretty time consuming, with three three hour labs a week plus at least three hours to grade 60 lab reports a week. Tonight I proctored an exam for Gen Chem and it was pretty fun being on the other end for once.

Last night, I went to some country dancing lessons and learned some basic steps of jitterbug dancing. It was pretty awesome. But I also learned that my belt buckle is way too small. And I need some cowboy boots and sweet cowboy hat. I think there will be more to come with that in future posts- hopefully with a picture of a super sweet cowboy outfit.

I think that is all I have for now. Saturday I will be putting on a collegiate MTB race, so look forward to a post about that. And maybe some chem building pictures and more cool pictures of Montana while we still have good weather.