this and that

I checked on my travel visa application today. You see, I have a tracking number on it from the USPS for the overnight delivery. Today was the first day when the USPS site showed something for it. It shipped out of Gaithersburg, MD today. Presumably since it's overnight, it'll be in tomorrow. We'll see. I'm not sure if it's a signature for delivery type thing, and how that works with the USPS and apartment complexes so I'll have to be in through noon tomorrow (I probably would be on Saturday anyway. The mail almost always runs around noon here. If I come back from campus at noon, if the mail hasn't already run, the mailman/woman is usually in the complex distributing the mail to the boxes.

Oh, and I spent a bunch of time last night trying to calculate roadway congestion index (RCI) in Alabama. I kept getting stuck, and until I got that one done in excel, I couldn't do any of the other ones. I e-mailed Dr. Weber today, and he gave me the answers for that one and I played around with the numbers until I got that answer, then applied the formula to the other problems, simply plugging in the appropriate numbers. I had the numbers correct, and the basic idea for the formula correct, it was just too much for me to get in one formula, so I had to calculate the three parts of the final formula separately, then calculate the final formula from the thee subtotals. Doing it that way caused much less gnashing of teeth and I was able to figure out the RCI for the other ones within just a few minutes (once I figured out the numbers I needed for them, which was laborious). All the data for that project is gathered and compiled, all I have to do now is the analysis part, which is easy.

I ate at Mugshots today with Paul. It's a burger joint in downtown. My burger was a tad charred (not overcooked, just charred), but the Swiss cheese, mushrooms and Tobasco sauce all but covered it up. A tad on the pricey side for a struggling graduate student, but not unreasonable. The service was great and quick.

Oh, and I'm probably going to call Liz this weekend at some point to see if she can talk with me about her experiences in the former Zaire. Specifically my main concern now is how she reacted to her vaccinations. I think I'll have similar ones to her, but I just want to see what I should expect on Wednesday morning when they shoot me up with Hepatitis A&B, Typhoid, meningitis, and Yellow Fever vaccinations.