I could be a brick layer!

Earlier this month we did a brick laying lab as part of our masonry design class.  I was a little worried about getting all dirty and having to wear seriously unfashionable and uncomfortable work boots and having to spend 2 hours on something else right before a midterm, but it turned out to be so much FUN! We laughed so hard at our lack of skills and it was great stress relief.

We got into partners and built arches.  It's one thing in class for the prof to say the quality of the brick laying is super important for the strength development, but it's another thing to execute that!  I definitely have huge respect for brick layers now.

Here's Tim and I starting the arch.  It was pretty hard to get the mortar slapped on vertically and end up with the right spacing at the end for the last brick.

It's so pretty standing all by itself!

Some other group's much more curvy arch.

We watched this team load their arch.  They got a lot of bricks on there!

And here's Tim loading our arch. Getting dirty is worth it sometimes!

Belts and Forks

I've been pretty sick for the last week and in that time I think I've shrunk a bit.  We had a masonry lab yesterday (more on that in another post with awesome pictures) which meant I had to wear my jeans for the first time in a while.  And my belt was too loose to hold up my pants!  So half an hour before our evening midterm (great timing!), I asked around the homeroom to see if anyone had a belt hole puncher.  Of course, no one did.

But Amir had a fork!

And Trevor wasn't studying very hard right then.

So they found a hammer and mangled the fork (so sad I don't have a picture of that!) and made me a belt hole between two concrete cyclinders!

And I was able to write my midterm with my pants nicely cinched.  That's a success I'd say!  Thanks to my handy friends!

Grad Pictures

Here are my best three grad photos. They all look so official and stuff.  Based on the majority, I've ordered some prints of the hat one.  And since everyone has asked, no I did not take any pictures without my glasses on because I didn't even think of it.  Sorry!