I’m going to try to focus, no more distractions.

Yesterday I worked on my paper to finish up my time here at Oak Ridge National Lab.  My project ended up well and the title for my paper is now: A Generalized Probabilistic Model for Learned String Matching.  I think it is pretty interesting and I’m quite excited for it. Today I drove to Hot Springs, North Carolina.

I met up with the other interns to go hiking for a bit. It’s one of the big stops on the Appalachian Trail so it was pretty inspiring to see these people that are on a hike for six months at a time.  I just think it would be amazing to hike from Maine to Georgia.

We did about a five mile hike and found a really amazing overlook on the way.

The rhododendrons created canopies throughout part of the trail.

We also found what a mysterious building, a public service announcement sign, and some left over railroad ties.

Then we ended up at a park before we got lunch and headed back home.

current distraction: Smoky running ramped with a pen

So it’s been a while.  I have a valid excuse though and that’s that Comcast is to blame for setting up my wireless incorrectly and therefore I could not connect to the internet.  They fixed it yesterday and apparently all is well.
Anyway, what have I been up to... well, two weekends ago at this point we went hiking in the Smoky Mountains through parts of North Carolina and Tennessee.

It was a fun day, we did a four mile hike and met some llamas at the end.

So those are pictures displaying how beautiful the hike was, how terrifying that little bridge was, how plentiful the rhododendrons are.  Now here are my cool findings:

Cool finding #1: A natural staircase

Cool finding #2: Self Explanatory

Cool finding #3: Mayan God of Death??

Mayan God of Death for comparison

Then we found a llama!

So that was the hike.  Last weekend I went up to Connecticut to escape the South for mental stability purposes.  Aside from weekends Yeva and I have just been cooking deliciousness still.  Homemade mango salsa; couscous with zucchini, garbanzo beans, golden raisins, and pignoli nuts; etc.  I always want to take pictures to put on here but I’m trying to make it not turn into a food blog.  Anyway, I’m frustrated because the spacing and sizing and editing of this post has been a hassle and now I’m tired again.  I want to go out and take pictures today but it keeps on and off thunder storming so ehh not too sure.