Turns out my 88 year old neighbor is a nuclear physicist and works for an atomic power lab in ties with RPI. He told me about work he is doing - interactions of neutrons with various isotopes inside nuclear reactors. He is specifically looking at interactions with O16 and a 3% discrepancy with other data.
He offered me a job (didn't explain specifics yet) to help him with number crunching and other tasks that are just time consuming.
soooooooooooooooooooo excited/happy! I can do all of the work from home on my laptop.
It's mostly a learning experience and it'll look REALLY good on grad school applications.
Just confirming it's all about who you know.