I’m back in Boise after a long weekend in Baltimore for the Society of Women Engineers Conference. The conference was great! Here’s some photos from the weekend…
HP Recruiting on Thursday night:
Author: Alonna
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Society of Women Engineers
Today I traveled to Baltimore, Maryland to attend a National SWE Conference. I have been a member of the Society of Women Engineers, or SWE (pronounced “sw-ee”) since college. SWE is a national non-profit organization which encourages women to enter and succeed in the engineering field. I’m President of our local Southwest Idaho SWE Section, and I was lucky enough to get HP to fund my trip!
Sunset from my flight:
For some background on me & engineering, here is a profile I wrote for a SWE newsletter last year.
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Moab ’08
Last weekend we took a road trip to Moab. Ahh, Moab, I love that place! If you’ve never been to Southern Utah you should definitely add it to your “list” (if you have one, well, doesn’t everyone?). The scenery is just amazing. Bright orange and red rocks in all kinds of shapes and formations. And usually the sky is bright blue which makes a nice contrast.
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Not Moving
As many of you know, Ben and I have been trying to buy a “short-sale” house in Eagle since last March. Well, this week we canceled our offer on the house in Eagle. In light of the financial crisis in the US and around the world, we decided to play it safe and stay where we are. The whole process has been pretty interesting, so below is a timeline of how it all happened.
Our House: Short-sale House:
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Why you should setup an RSS Reader (and how)
If you read our blog, or any other blogs, you might find yourself checking them frequently only to find that nothing has been updated. Or you might forget about them and then later when you remember to check there’s 6 months of posts that you’ve missed. This is why you should setup an RSS reader.
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Family Trip to Ruttgers, Minnesota
Last weekend the Albertus family (plus us two Scott’s) took a weekend trip to a lake in Minnesota. We stayed at a nice resort called Ruttgers on Bay Lake and took advantage of tons of available activities including: water skiing, swimming, fishing, jumping on the water trampoline, tennis, campfires, Clay’s birthday, board games and yard games. We had so much fun! Here’s some of the highlights… (more…)
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SE Boise Fire
Tonight there was a huge fire in Southeast Boise in a neighborhood near our house. We first noticed something when we heard a lot of sirens outside. The wind was really strong and we had headed out on our bikes to try out Ben’s new kite. But we saw smoke in the distance and decided to head that direction to investigate. There was a huge fire spread out across a large open field off of Amity Road and houses burning on the ridge above. It’s so dry here, and with the strong winds the fire spread like crazy. We got there pretty early so we saw it spread and multiple houses catch on fire. It sounds like about 10 houses burnt down and a bunch more damaged. Luckily it doesn’t sound like anyone was hurt. Anyway, our video and photos probably tell the story better than I can… (more…)
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Northern Idaho Road Trip
I’ve already posted about some of our activities in and around Coeur d’Alene. But we also had a fun time along the way. Here’s two google map snapshots of our route, and some photos of the trip:
A = Boise B = Grangeville C = Coeur d’Alene D = Route of the Hiawatha E = Moscow
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Coeur d’Alene – Day 3
Ben, Beth and I rode a “rails-to-trails” bike ride in Northern Idaho called Route of the Hiawatha. It’s an old train route in the mountains, going through 10 tunnels and over 7 trestles (bridges). The coolest part was a 1.66 mile long tunnel! The tunnel was pitch black (bike lamps required), and super cold. It was damp and only 40 degrees F inside. We were warned ahead of time to go slow, because if you go fast you’ll get mud splashed in a straight line up your back. Sure enough, a few guys sped past us and they all had thick mud streaks right up their backs! Anyway, the scenery was gorgeous and we had a really fun time. The trail is 15 miles long downhill, then you take a bus back up to the top. Here’s a few photos from the ride.
Start of the adventure: The view:
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Coeur d’Alene – Days 1-2
Last weekend Ben’s sister Beth came to visit. We decided to take a road trip to Northern Idaho, an area that Ben and I hadn’t yet explored. There’s a popular destination called Coeur d’Alene which is on a lake in a mountainous area. Also we heard about a cool rails-to-trails bike trail that we were really excited to try out.
We drove 7-hours Friday night and Saturday morning to get to Coeur d’Alene. The drive was long, but really pretty – windy mountain roads, rivers and canyons, golden-colored wheat fields, and small towns. After arriving, we had the afternoon in Coeur d’Alene, so we took out the kite to take some photos… you can see a few of those in Ben’s last post. Here’s another good one, and also a photo of our reward after a long day of driving and kite-flying.
