Spring break in Florida

   I think everyone is pretty much caught up on my trip to Florida, but I can at least make a blog post for the pictures I took.... even if everything I say is repetitive.

   Dad and I spent Wednesday afternoon looking at lots of apartments. I chose a two-bedroom apartment at Timerlake Apartments. It is in a great location on University Pkwy, which is an up and coming part of town. Lots of new restaurants and shopping, including a brand new HUGE mall that is supposed to open this fall. The apartment is seven miles from my work and there the drive isn't bad at all. Here are some pictures I took of the place that aren't on it's website.

   I didn't get a chance to take photos of the model unit that I was shown, but I'll post pictures of my new place when I move in. I have furniture ordered and it will be delivered and set in my apartment the day before I'm moving in. Convenient! The complex has two pools, a hot tub, a sand volleyball court, a small exercise room, a clubhouse, and a "lake." My apartment is on the second story with a view of the lake and pool. Great location.
   While driving around, Dad and I drove past this restaurant. Two of my favorite foods! I will be trying this place out shortly after I move down, I'm sure.

   I saw online that there is a restaurant called "The Dry Dock." So I requested that Dad and I try it. But we didn't realize it is a fancier place than the website suggests, and without a reservation, it was an hour long wait for a table. We just went somewhere else to eat. But here is a picture of it. Maybe I'll go back a different time. There was actually a dry dock with a bunch of boats in storage right next to the restaurant.

   After Devin arrived and Dad left on Friday, Devin and I spent some time walking around St. Armand's Circle near our hotel. It is the same area I stayed when I had my interview in February.
   The next day, Devin and I went to breakfast at the hotel and then walked on the beach. Then we went to finish signing some papers at my apartment and eventually made it to a boat show at Marina Jacks.

   After the boat show we went to the beach. Devin and I are still NOT good at taking "selfies." And Devin is probably not excited about me putting these glamorous photos of him on here, but too bad. I don't look any better! But we eventually got a couple good photos.

   On Sunday morning, Devin and I had reservations to go paddleboarding at sunrise. Neither of us had ever tried it before, so we expected to have a lot of laughs. And we didn't expect to stay dry. We did very well, though! Neither of us fell in. We laughed because we figured "expert paddleboarders" who might be watching us probably saw our boards and knew that they were "beginner boards," and were maybe wondering if it is even POSSIBLE to tip one of them over if we tried. But we felt pretty cool! After getting the hang of it for the first few minutes, it was pretty easy to maneuver. I'm anxious to try it again!

    After paddleboarding, we walked to the Lido Beach main entrance. Our hotel was on Lido Beach, but we weren't at the main entrance, so we walked a couple blocks to find it. I'm glad we checked it out for our future reference. It has a bar and food, pool, showers, locker room, etc. We sat at a shaded picnic table and enjoyed some water and popsicles. This guy was hoping for some french fries, but we didn't have any. He got pretty close to make sure, though.

   I'm sure everyone heard I didn't have the best of luck on my flights home. I missed my second flight from Atlanta to Portland. But I'm not upset. I got to hang out with Devin for an extra hour. I got fixed up in a hotel suite with a jacuzzi, kitchen, and small dining room, and I got to watch all the TLC I wanted! And I didn't have to go to school on Monday! The airline gave me an "amenity bag" with all kinds of toiletries in it, including an XL t-shirt. It is the thinnest t-shirt ever. It looks like it would be a cotton shirt that my mom wore back in high school that has been washed a thousand times before handed down to me. So soft and light. Probably my new favorite pajamas. So I really don't mind at all that I missed my second flight in Atlanta. I'm sure I would feel differently if I was sitting in the airport for 24 hours, but the hotel made it all okay. 

   It's time to get ready for bed. I'll try to post again on Sunday and get back on track with my posts. But I'm not sure if I'll have much to talk about. This week doesn't look like it will be as eventful as my trip to Florida. Now that I have a place to live, I am so excited to move down. I know school and my final project is going to go by very quickly. I'll end this post with a quote that I feel I can relate to:

"Everything has been the same for so long I don't know anything else, and I don't know if that should scare me or excite me, because change is coming and it's gonna be a big one. I'm moving on to the next chapter of my life, but that means leaving behind the chapters I've already found and loved. The scary thing about flipping the page is that you don't know what you're going to find on the other side. I just hope it's all worth it, because the people I'm leaving behind are some damn fine ones. I hope growing up turns out to be as amazing as I always imagined it to be." 

   I don't have much to catch up on... And I forgot yesterday was my usual blog-post-Sunday... Oops.

   My design proposal went over very well. My teachers are very excited to see how my yacht design turns out. I can't wait to show them what else I am capable of. I'll post updates of my design as I make them. So far I've decided on how fast I want my boat to go, how heavy it will be, how much fuel it will need, and what engines and powering system to use. I don't have any graphic representations of that to post. IF you are interested, here is that information:

Cruising speed: 27 knots
Max speed: 35 knots
Weight: 11,400 kg
Engine: 2x Volvo D6-435 IPS Drive
Fuel: I don't remember off the top of my head. Something like 350 gallons...

   Pictures are more fun to look at (I think), so I'll post more CAD drawings when I have them.

   Last Wednesday I took a trip to Portland with my friend, Rachel. She grew up near Portland, so she is familiar with all of the cool places. Places that tourists/new people (whatever category I fall under) don't know about. She took me to Empire. Empire is a bar that was having its weekly "Clash of the Titans," otherwise simply known as "The Clash."
   The Clash is kind of like the battle of two bands. Each week, two bands face off. The bands are actually cover bands. Bands who impersonate whoever they are covering that night. For example:

Korn vs. Limp Bizkit
Mariah Carey vs. Whitney Houston
Britney Spears vs. Justin Timberlake
Spice Girls vs. Backstreet Boys
Radiohead vs. Pink Floyd

   When I was there it was The National vs. The Walkmen. Nope, I have no idea who those bands are. I didn't recognize any of the songs. But it was still a lot of fun. The bands play every other song. I can't even tell you which band won. But I know that it was the band in the first picture below:

   Quite a few kids took off early for spring break, so the classroom was a bit empty on Friday. It was a fun day for that reason. Our instructors, Derek and Sean, ordered pizza for the yacht design students. And they joined us in playing Cards Against Humanity. If you know what Cards Against Humanity is, you know that that isn't the best card game to play with your teachers. But Sean and Derek are cool guys who don't get offended easily. I guess sailors/designers aren't usually very uptight, huh?

The students have played this game a lot on the weekends, but it has never been as funny as when our teachers played.

   The game is a lot like Apples to Apples, if you are familiar with that game. Everyone has ten or so white cards. One person draws a black card and reads it. It has a sentence like "No romantic dinner is complete without _______." or "What do white people like?" Each player looks through their ten white cards and lays down the best answer (usually the funniest one) like "Michelle Obama's arms," or "racially-biased SAT questions," or "anal beads." The player who drew the black card reads all of the white card answers and chooses his/her favorite one. I think our teachers almost peed their pants. 

   I was at the grocery store the other day looking for some fresh mozzarella. I saw this parmesan. It is from the parmesan factory that I toured in Parma, Italy. I see this parmesan in basically every grocery store. I didn't realize at the time of the tour in Italy that I was at such a well-known, successful worldwide company. The most memorable part of that tour was Libby and I trying not to puke at the smell. And lots of laughing.

   And I found this on facebook. Kelly and I have the same expression. I see, like, three kids who are smiling for the picture.

   I'll do my best to take some pictures of my trip to Florida with Dad and Devin. Hopefully I have some luck finding a place to live!

Final Project Proposal

   I finally finished the Pilot Boat. I don't have anymore images of it because the last few deadlines weren't anything visual... just a bunch of SUPER FUN hydrostatic and stability calculations. I'm glad I was able to start my final project. I'll talk about that in a second.
   This weekend we had really nice weather. Yesterday I ran on the beach and watched the dogs run up and down the shore chasing seagulls. People were in shorts and t-shirts. After the beach I was getting ready to take a nap when some of my classmates came and banged on my door and drug me to lunch at Alisons. I was so happy they stopped by. Instead of wasting part of the day napping, I ended up spending the rest of my day outside playing games in the yard. I look forward to more weekends like that now that the weather is getting nicer.

   I turned in my design proposal for my final project last week. We had a bunch of criteria that was required to be a part of the proposal. So if some of the details about my persona seem a little unnecessary, I'm going to choose to blame it on the assignment's requirements. I also added details that were not required... lots of details. So I guess you will just have to guess what was required to include and what wasn't. Okay, I'll stop babbling. I am excited about the project. I can't wait to go to school tomorrow to keep working on it. My first goal is to calculate the power requirements and decide what engines to use. I've learned things!

Here is the link to my proposal (I hope it works. Someone tell me if it doesn't.):

file:///Users/paigemitchell/Desktop/Final%20Project/DesignProposal.pdf

   Okay.... an hour and a half later of trying to figure out how to attach a PDF file so you can look at it in a separate window.. I give up. I just posted each page of it as a jpeg image.... NOT what I wanted to do. But this blog site doesn't allow any attachments other than .jpg or .mov files. Dumb. I've tried converting my .pdf to a web format and I can't get it to look right. It jumbles all the pictures up and it doesn't look how I want it to. I put it on Google Drive, but it compressed it so much that most of the colors disappear.
   I also don't know why some of the pages look gray now. They are all supposed to be white pages. I have a raging headache now. I'm going to bed.

Front Street Shipyard

   My friend, Rachel, invited me over for dinner last week. She made spaghetti and a really good sauce from scratch with chicken and bacon and sausage in it. This was my favorite part of the meal:

 They are dog sitting their landlord's dog for the month.


I got this in the mail. Thanks Mom and Dad. I wear it every day.

   I had a career fair on Wednesday last week and went for a little while to see what other companies are out there. I had a really good hair day that day, so I took a picture of it. No I did not wear that sweater for the career fair. But my hair really did look like that and I really do think it looks awesome. No sarcasm... unlike that sharktooth necklace.

   I took a field trip to Belfast, Maine last Friday. It was a three hour drive from school. We took a charter bus. The shipyard was cool to see. This company, Front Street Shipyard, started up only three years ago and is already super busy. All of their buildings are jampacked full of boats they are restoring. The company is looking into starting a design team to design and build boats, but they currently don't do that. They refurbish boats, winterize them, repair them, repurpose them, etc.

This boat, Gusto, is a cruising sailboat that is being repurposed to make it capable of sailing around the world. One of the biggest challenges for the yard is to add enough tankage to it. The boat wasn't originally intended to spend more than a couple days at sea, so it doesn't have much extra space for larger freshwater tanks and other things. Depending on what route the client takes around the world will decide how long they will need to be able to survive without docking and refilling the freshwater tanks and stocking food.

This was a cool houseboat made out of shipping containers. It has a very contemporary interior. I think it was my favorite boat.

This big yacht, Magic, was being refitted with a new 70" TV that rises out of the floor on the outside deck.

   In the same town as this shipyard is a design firm that we also visited. Stephens Waring Yacht Design. It is a two-man firm who specialize in Spirit of Tradition sailing yachts. I really liked the atmosphere of their studio. I really really liked petting the dog. I noticed that there was this mushed down pillow with dog hair all over the corner of this couch. I'm betting that that was the dog's favorite spot.

   After the tour of their studio, we had some time to kill before the bus left. Our instructor, Sean, knew of a good brewery in the town. So we sampled beer and a bunch of us bought some growlers. We were all kind of hesitant to buy a growler or sample beer because we were at a school function. But Sean bought one first and that was enough of an excuse for the students to buy one too. I know the point of a growler is to be able to go back and refill it at the brewery. I know I'll probably never be back in Belfast, Maine, but I like it as a souvenir if nothing else. 

I think I will finally get to start my final project by the end of this week! I am almost done with my design proposal. I want to post my proposal on my blog, but I want to finish it first... So you can look for that next week.

Goodnight.