Sunday, July 16, 2023
By:
This week was another week that was rather slow, at least until the weekend rolled around.
This week at work was the first week my mentor returned from his three-week leave. That being said, we didn’t have a meeting until Wednesday, where I informed him of what I’ve done since he’s been gone. It’s safe to say that he was pleased with what I had accomplished. I also got the title for my presentation ironed out, as well as started working on my abstract. Friday was the longest day I’ve had at NIST this summer. Granted, with a commute time of a little over an hour each way, this was not incredibly fun. I got to NIST around 8:30-9:00 and had our weekly meeting at 11, which hasn’t happened in three weeks. At the meeting, my mentor informed my postdoc and me that we would start setting up the next part of our experiment. Although it sounds cool, I don’t think it will be completed in time to be included in my presentation. We started the setup at around one. Took a little break around three, then worked until 5:15, when I caught the 5:30 shuttle back to the metro. While the time at NIST may not be too long, including the commute, it was close to a 12-hour day which I am definitely not used to.
The other thing that happened this week was that my dad came to visit. He flew in Thursday night, and I went and met him at the airport. The thing was that it was both of our first times at that airport, and neither of us realized there were two different baggage claim areas depending on the terminal you were in, so I waited by the wrong baggage claim, but we eventually found each other. I took him out to dinner that night after he dropped off his bags. We went to Tonic, where we each got a burger and a side of some form of potato. Friday, I obviously had to work, so as far as I know, he wandered around DC, walked to the Washington Monument, and saw the rest of the memorials on the Mall.
We went to Arlington National Cemetary on Saturday because he had never been and wanted to go. We got there around 12:20. And we didn’t pay for the guided tour on the shuttles they had, so we walked around for about 2-3 hours and saw the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unkown Soldier, JFK’s grave with the eternal flame, and the Challenger Shuttle memorial. From there we headed back, aching and dehydrated, but not before roughly eleven-thousand steps in that short time period. We both took cold showers when we got back. I also had a killer migraine the rest of the day from being dehydrated. We ordered dinner, District Taco, and called it a night.
Sunday, we woke up and went to the National Spy Museum which is just off the National Mall. We spent a long time there. Our time to get there was 9:15, and we didn’t leave until around two. Mainly because we both were reading every little sign about every artifact they had and were really taking our time. They also had this undercover mission thing where you could pretend to be a spy and play along through the different exhibits. We started doing that, but with all the kids there lines began to form at the kiosks for the checkpoints.
There’s a reason for the title of this blog. The museum had the prop car of the Aston Martin DB5 prop car that belonged to James Bond in the movie Goldfinger. They even had a little demo, so you could see the lights drop and the machine guns poke out and “start firing,” as well as the changing license plate and a few other tricks. Oh, and it’s the week seven blog so it works out.
This again concludes another week of the internship and another blog. Be back in a week.
Clayton Markech