An afternoon at Sullivan’s

Made it out to Poe’s Tavern on Sullivan’s Island for lunch with a friend today. Not sure why it’s taken me this long to get out there. Don’t have too many occasions or excuses to head out that way I guess. Poe’s makes a pretty good (and huge) burger.

Afterwards we went to wander along the beach. It was a nice afternoon out on the beach, and there were plenty of people around. Kite boarders were out in force.

Kite boarders on the ocean

Does anybody know what this happens to be out near Station 29? It seemed like some kind of fortification for a cannon or some other ocean pointing artillery.

With a little more sand and a little less ocean, you could pretend to be living on Tatooine in this house.

Dome shaped house

Sea oats blowing in the wind

Sea oats on a beach dune

First lecture

Yesterday was my first Biomaterials class (BioE 801). Just an intro to the class so nothing too big. The list of topics the class covers looks pretty cool though: ceramics, polymers, bioactive materials, biochemical, cell and tissue interactions, a little bit of tissue engineering. 5 other students in the class with me. A passing C is > 70%, but grad students are expected to maintain > B grade average (> 80%).

I have a seminar class Monday afternoons and for the month of September, Monday, Friday and Saturday Research Principles course through MUSC.

I see lots of reading in my future.

Not so mandatory orientation

Made the road trip up to Clemson Sunday so I could go to the grad student orientation for the Bioengineering department on Monday. Brought the bike with me so I could ride it around campus and explore a bit.

Biking around Clemson turned out to be a good deal more challenging than I expected. My brain seems to have forgotten that it’s been well over 13 years since my body did any serious cycling.

Sunday afternoon I spent a couple of hours getting lost riding around the campus. I had meant to try to find the Rhodes Engineering building where the orientation was supposed to be, but I missed the left turn at Albequerque and got lost in one of the many residence areas. Fun riding around, but the campus turns out to be a lot hillier than I was expecting. Wasn’t much good for anything else after all that riding.

Monday morning I got back on the bike despite my protesting sore butt (think a new seat for the bike is in order) and rode around a little bit more. Made a stop at the book store to pick up the texts for my Biomaterials course and also managed to find the Rhodes building. Killed a few more hours and then it was time for the orientation in the brand new bioengineering building.

Turns out the mandatory orientation wasn’t so mandatory for those of us in the Clemson/MUSC joint program, although they did seem to appreciate the fact that I made the trip up for it. The trip wasn’t entirely useless though. I did get to meet some of the other grad students, some of the faculty and the grad student coordinator. She’s the most important person of all to get to know because she’s the one that Knows Stuff.

Apparently there’s an MUSC orientation that I need to go to next week. I wonder how mandatory that one is.

Memo to Brain

Re: Biking

Hey you. Yes you. Remember me, the blob of goo that moves you around?

You do realize that it’s been over 13 years since we did any serious cycling, don’t you?

No, apparently not.

You also could have at least warned me Clemson had all these hills.

Let’s try to take things a little easier next time, ok.

thanks

Body

Storm train

The next couple of weeks are shaping up to be interesting with Tropical storm Ana and Tropical depression 3 following close behind and quite possibly becoming Tropical storm Bill in the next day or so.

What I find interesting is the strengthening forecast. The 5-day forecast for Ana has it remaining a tropical storm until it reaches somewhere near Florida/eastern Gulf of Mexico/Cuba. TD3 however is forecast to become a hurricane by the end of it’s 5-day forecast

Either way it looks like there will be some interesting weather to watch towards the end of the week and into the weekend.