Sometimes we row by eights

And today we did! It's a lot harder to keep the boat balanced when there is no one to hold their oars flat on the water. But it's so much fun! We have two races this fall, both in November. I'm excited!

Here's an amusing picture to keep you entertained:

The new apartment is looking great, and it's finally starting to feel like we've moved in and unpacked. There's always a little more to do, but it's overall really coming together.

My classes are a swamp of reading, which is pretty different from previous semesters. I'm not taking any classes with problem sets, which is also unusual. I'm finding the material interesting, but I'm not used to doing this much reading and I'm sometimes finding it hard to get through it all.

This weekend we're going to Minneapolis to see my boyfriend's family. They don't subscribe to quite the same "busy-all-the-time-don't-stop-to-breathe" lifestyle that I do, so it's a nice place to go to relax. And maybe take a nap. And with that, I'm going to go to sleep tonight!

Sorry for not posting more!

Super quick post

Well, I have at least two readers still, so I'll keep going. I have a lot of homework due tomorrow (oh, if only I had started it earlier!), so it's going to be short, but hopefully sweet.

We had our housewarming party on Saturday night, and it was a ton of fun! A lot of our friends came, but we didn't get any noise complaints and no one spilled anything on the couch. I was too busy to take pictures, but I'll put some up soon of the apartment. It's getting more and more set up, and it's really fun!

On Sunday I went sailing with some people from my lab on a boat that belongs to one of the professors in the lab and her husband (are they married? not sure, but in any case they have a boat together). There were 14 of us altogether, and it was also a ton of fun! Here's a picture:

Oh yeah, and no big deal, but they let me drive the boat for a while. I only stopped when it became necessary to eat a brownie. Isn't my lab great? Lucky for me, it was a beautiful day. Otherwise, I would have been freezing!

There's also a fun place to sit up in the front of the boat (called the bow, I now know):

Crew has also been going well. We've gone out on the water a few more times, and it's a slow process of "improvement". Well, even though we're not that good, I'm having a great time. I'm not going to be rowing in the Head of the Charles, in case you were wondering (we can't even row all 8 at a time yet), but I will be there cheering!

And, as promised, this is a super quick post, so this is the end. But check back every once in a while, because I'll keep updating!

I haven't posted in a while

Hello anyone who's still reading this! I haven't posted in a while, but things have still been going on. My boyfriend and I moved into our new apartment, grad school started, I've visited with friends, and I took up crew, among other things. I'm having a great time so far this school year, but things are quite busy. I'm taking two classes and a seminar, and all of them require a fair amount of reading. (That might actually be an understatement.) Anyway, I'm enjoying them, and I'm really enjoying crew, the apartment, and having an office. I feel like a real person! Who still goes to classes.

Today at "work" (if you can call it that, I'm not sure how to refer to grad school), we cleaned out our office and put some new things in there. Some of the stuff we got rid of looked like it hadn't been touched, much less cleaned, in the last 15 years. It's a lot cleaner now, but it's also sort of bare. I need to bring some more pictures and posters to put up. We also had a teleoperations team meeting, where we discussed an article about sleep processes that we had read. Next week, we're going to Brigham and Women's Hospital to see the suite where they do sleep studies. The idea is that it will give us a better idea of what we're working with for our research, which addresses fatigue in space telerobotics.

Crew has been surprisingly fun, even though it's quite hard. In just a week and a half of practice, I've felt like I was going to throw up several times. It feels good to be finally getting back in shape, and learning to row makes me feel really cool. For some reason, I feel like those people in ancient times who were rowing those huge boats, even though our novice team is not even coordinated enough to have all 8 of us rowing at once. There are 12 people on the team so far, including the coxswain. I'm not sure how that's going to work out, since only 8 can be rowing in a boat at once. Luckily for me, I'm pretty sure I'm safe. I'm hoping that once I get coordinated, perhaps in the spring, I can be on the varsity team. I really like the people on the team so far, so that's good. They're mostly freshmen, but there are also a couple of sophomores and a junior, which makes me not feel as old. Ironically, they all thought I was a freshman. Is that ironic? I'm not sure. But the point is, I still look like I'm 18. Oh well. I'll try to put up some crew-related pictures soon, but I'm not sure I'll get around to it.

There's more to say, but I'm not sure anyone is still reading this, so I'm going to call it a night. If you're still reading, leave me a comment or send me an email, and I'll keep writing!