So I (Jonathan) have been pretty busy these last two weeks! My job has been going very well! The drive takes about 50 minutes, with me driving on the now 75 mph I-70! It's a really nice drive, since I'm driving through the Kansas Flinthills area. Since it's so early when I am heading to Topeka, recently there has been a lot of fog, so with the hills it looks like I'm driving in and out of a sea of fog! Very cool! The computer that I use at work is VERY nice. It definitely rivals the computer I built for myself. Both the CPU and RAM is about double what I have, but I still have a better video card! Currently Bartlett & West has a fairly large contract with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad company and so my team has been primarily focused on that. During my day, I enter different utility and road crossings into a geographic database. This makes it a lot easier for BNSF to find where there are underground water pipes or other things. What I do is pull up a permit, that might say that at Mile Post 23.5, there is a sewer line that crosses at a 90 degree angle to the track. I then pull up the geodatabase, and draw out the sewer crossing where it is supposed to be on the map of the railroad. That way, if BNSF needs to do some landscaping there, they can see that there is something there, and they can also pull up the permit to find out more information on the lease. We have also been given the go-ahead to work overtime, so I have been doing a bit of that as well.
Not a whole lot has been happening with me (Rachel). I started my fall semester classes on the 22nd. I'm taking a stats class and a class about assessments that we give to clients. I've also been doing more research projects and I've been continuing to see clients. I currently see five clients on a regular basis. I've also been looking at PhD schools a lot recently. Right now my top choice is the Sociology/Demography program at Penn State. In order to get in there I would need really good GRE scores (kind of like SAT or ACT, except for graduate school, and MUCH harder). So if anyone has some good advice about GRE prep, let me know! My current second choice is Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Other schools I'm looking at are University of Arizona, Colorado State University, and University of Wisconsin. I won't start applying until next fall, so I've still got a while!
For a couple months now I have had a sore/blister on the inside of my bottom lip. I went to the doctor a few weeks ago and she gave me some medicine and told me if it didn't get better to go to a facial plastic surgeon. I went there last week and the doctor told me I had a blocked salivary gland. He said that it would take a simple procedure to remove it. I went in on Tuesday to have it removed, and it was slightly more invasive than I was expecting. The incision is about half an inch long and is stitched up. My lip swelled up pretty bad and it was definitely more painful than I was expecting. The worst part has been that I can't eat very well and when I smile the stitches pull. I went back to the doctor yesterday and they said it was more swollen than it should have been, but other than that it looks like it's healing and I should be good in a couple weeks. That's been my excitement this week!
The weather here has been gorgeous lately! We've had highs in the low 80's and mid 70's with little to no rain and sunny skies :)
