Some Beach

For those of you who frequent my blog, you must be surprised by this post since it has only been a week since my last one. Well, I thought both of you would be interested since a few big things are finally happening/have happened recently. Yes, we're having a baby. It should arrive sometime in the next 20 years. Also, we found a Safeway here, but it says VONS on the outside of the store. Weird.

Safeway Website

VONS Website

Merilee had a few job interviews, both in person and over the phone. She got an offer this morning from a seed company called Bejo and later another offer by one called SMS Mastermind. The latter is some sort of mobile marketing company. We have until Monday to decide on one or none. I think I've said before that pay is less here than in the bay area, but at least most if not all the jobs she's been getting attention from give full employee benefits and partial family benefits.

Quick question, is it illegal to take a few buckets of sand from the beach? Mer and I are getting close to planting our patio garden, getting most of our information from a square-foot gardening book we are borrowing from America. We went to Home Depot, got some seeds and garden-box materials, and I decided it was time we got a power drill (though we haven't bought one yet). Anyways, we are also utilizing our broken pantry cabinet (one of the two had a busted bottom shelf from the weight of all the cans we put on it and it just fell apart even more during the move) as one of our garden boxes, and it's deep enough that we were going to fill some of it with sand before putting soil in. We tried to see how much sand we could fit in a bucket and a plastic trash bin, and borrowed some from Avila Beach. It wasn't really worth the effort and the shame so we will probably just buy the rest of our sand.

Monday was a big day because I had orientation and was able to register for classes and meet with advisors and department heads about my academic planning. I was also able to rearrange how my GE courses were articulated (which was super-weird, bee tea dubs) so I have no more lower-division GE requirements to fulfill. I might even be able to get out of a bio-engineering class they make people take (though it's a long shot and I have to wait two weeks before I hear back). 

I had wrestled with the decision of whether or not to switch to mechanical engineering and try to graduate faster. I would still get my master's degree in aerospace engineering, and it would take me four years total. Another advantage of majoring in ME as an undergrad is that ME is a more general major. Aerospace industry employers need more than just aerospace engineers, and having a background in ME probably would have had better career opportunities.

The disadvantage of that would be that my undergrad would not be in something that I was truly interested in (though it still probably would have been a fun major). Also, for me to possibly save time, I'd have to be taking an average of about 17.5 units per semester, make sure that the right courses were offered over the Summer, and with all of that, maintain a GPA high enough to get into their grad program (or that of any other school at that point). I haven't yet experienced the rigor of a Cal Poly workload, but a one like that sounds like a lot of stress for me and for Merilee.

It turns out that almost all the aerospace courses are offered once a year. Only accounting for prerequisites, I could graduate with a bachelor's in a little over two years. However, it will take me three years to finish undergraduate coursework. It sounds like the blended program truly takes only one year as long as the student is on top of his or her thesis. So if all goes accordingly, I will graduate in the Spring of 2018 with a master's degree in aerospace engineering. It sounds like forever to me with how slow Summer is going, but once classes start, it will fly by. At least I hope so. I'll be very light on units each semester because I have pretty much everything done except aerospace classes. Hopefully that means more time for internships/work/Merilee and I'll have a high GPA.

Previously I thought that VA benefits were one or the other. I could either have a fee waiver, or chapter 35 (which awards about $1,000 every month that I'm in school). In going through the process for the fee waiver, however, I discovered that that isn't always the case. Under plan B of the cal vet fee waiver, chapter 35 could still be used. My intention was to apply for plan A since plan B had an income restriction, and I had qualified for plan A since Dad died. I learned that the only income that mattered for plan B was the amount on the W-2 forms, not the AGI (as it says on the application). When I was told that, I felt like I had struck gold. An extra seven or eight thousand dollars a year would be great considering Merilee will be making less and I don't know if I'll be working at all. I was somewhat disappointed, however, when I talked to Cal Poly about paying my fees.

It seems like the fee waiver covers about 60% of my total registration costs (which I'm very grateful for, thanks Dad). The waiver covers state fees, not school specific ones. Many of them are ambiguous, and some of them sound pretty lame ("Student Success Fee"?), but I suppose those college resources that make a school desirable come at a cost.

After the 60%, these fees make up about 38%, and the remaining 2% is for class-specific lab fees. The total before the waiver is just over $3,000, meaning that I'll still have to pay about $1,200 each quarter, making me very glad that I am receiving both benefits instead of just getting the fee waiver (I had calculated the difference in value of the two benefits assuming that the fee waiver covered about $9,000 a year, not $5,500). Basically, I'm paying about $1,200 for each quarter, but then I get about $3,000 from the VA from chapter 35.

Have I mentioned that there's a lot of PT Cruisers in San Luis Obispo? I see at least 5 every day.

I'm almost done with the Summer reading program. Merilee is leaving on a trip next week so we are driving up to the Bay Area where her flight is leaving from. I'll sure miss her.