I'm knitting a square

My friend Rebecca inspired me to write this post because she is knitting a blanket to donate to a homeless shelter in Boston and wrote some on her blog about it. The blanket is made up of 35 squares, and our other friend Jenn and I are each knitting a square to contribute to her blanket. We are alternating little squares of knitting and purling. I'm a little more than halfway done with my square at this point, but it's slow going. I'll try to remember to take a picture of it when I'm finished.

In other news, I rowed port yesterday at practice (I'm usually a starboard), and I got some new blisters on my right hand as a result. I'm getting what's known as "crew hands", which means basically a lot of blisters and/or calluses. We are racing in the Foot of the Charles on November 14th, and I'm looking forward to it. My parents and maybe my brother are going to come watch, which is very exciting. They haven't seen my new apartment or my office (except my brother), so that should be fun.

Research is going ok, but I wish I knew Python (a programming language) better. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do something using the pieces that I know, and then I ask someone for help on one little aspect of it, and they point out that there was a much easier way to do the exact same thing. Also, there is still a never-ending pile of background reading to do, which gets a bit tedious. On the other side, I'm thinking that I might apply for a dual degree in technology and policy, along with aero/astro. I have to run that by my advisor to make sure he's ok with that, which I'm nervous to do (on the chance that he'll say no).

The weather here is getting colder and yuckier, which isn't fun for crew or biking everywhere or just being outside or wearing skirts and dresses. It's raining today and it rained yesterday, but hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Oh! I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this, but President Obama was here on Friday to give a speech about clean energy! You can watch the speech from the link here. There was only room for 200 students in the entire auditorium (I think the capacity is over 1000), so most of the community was watching the speech from other rooms with projectors set up, including me. It was very exciting!

My brother is visiting!

He's the first one in either of our families to see our new apartment, and it's very exciting! Yesterday we went to the Boston Public Library, which I'd never been to. It's beautiful, and now that I've been, I'm definitely adding it to the list of places people have to see when they visit Boston. Here's a picture of the courtyard:

It seems like I start these posts and then don't get around to finishing them, but I guess it's better than not posting at all, even though it's short. Life is busy!