I'm going to run a half marathon!

My best friend and I have signed up for a half marathon for this September! We're running the Wicked Half Marathon, which will give us a good reason to train hard this summer. The course looks like it will be really pretty, and it's near where my cousin's family lives, so that will be nice too. I'm pretty excited about this, because I've wanted to do a run like this for a while, and we think the t-shirts will be cool-looking. I've only got 2 months left of crew, so it's time to start thinking about what I'll do next. I'm also considering triathlons, and I wouldn't be surprised if I find myself doing some of those, as well.

In other news, I got a new computer, which is really awesome. It's so much faster than my old one, and it has so much more hard drive space! The only thing I don't like is that it's widescreen, but it seems like all new computers are that way, so I guess I don't really have a choice. It also came with a cool thing that lets us watch things on the TV wirelessly from my computer.

I also got a new camera, which was not so awesome. I think something was wrong with it, because all of the pictures came out really yellow, even after messing with the settings. Luckily, Amazon has a really great return policy, so after a quick phone call, they emailed me a return label and I sent it back for a full refund. I'm going to get a new camera soon, but I have to figure out what to get. I think I might want to get something a little nicer, because it turns out that photo quality is more important to me than I thought, based on this experience.

Other things that have happened since my last post, which was far too long ago: my birthday, our big indoor crew race (on ergs), Valentine's Day, for which my boyfriend got me the largest flower arrangement I've ever seen, and which we both thought was a little absurd, a novice crew team dinner, a concert by my boyfriend's band, a friend's birthday party, my best friend's swimming championships, the Jewish holiday of Purim, a visit from my boyfriend's sister, and a bit more work on my research. Oh, and I got admitted to the policy program I applied to!

Here is the flower arrangement, which is more than a meter tall, by my estimation:


The little blue thing in the left side of the picture is my new computer. It's a Toshiba, and so far so good. I hope it has as long and successful a life as my old one did.

I went to the Open House of the policy program on Monday, and I think it's going to be a fun and interesting group to be a part of. People's interests range over all different areas, but a lot of them are focused on energy and sustainability. The people who run the program also seem really nice, so I'm excited to start. I won't start classes with that program until the fall, but it will take me at least another semester, and likely another year, to finish the two master's degrees. I might start thinking about how to tie policy into my research this semester, though.

My classes are going pretty well, I think, but they are a TON of work. My space policy class requires a ton of reading, plus writing memos, preparing for role plays, and a group term project. My other class, human supervisory control, also has a lot of reading and a series of projects. The upside is that I have no tests and no finals, but it's a lot of work in the meantime.

Research is also going well, but I'm starting to feel antsy about when we're actually going to get started running our experiment. I've tried out some of the cognitive tests we're thinking of using, and I have to propose a battery (aka a series) of tests that we will use. We also have to come up with a series of robotics tasks, and at some point we will have to write the code for the tasks. That will be pretty challenging, I expect.

The river finally unfroze a couple of weeks ago, and it's been really nice getting back out on the water. Yesterday and today have been beautiful days, so it's a pleasure to go out, especially now that it's light all the way through practice because of daylight savings time. Next week, for spring break, we have 2 practices per day. It's going to be tough. On Friday, we leave for a race in New Jersey. After that, I'm going to go home for the weekend to hang out with my friend who is getting married in June. I'm missing her bridal shower because of the crew race, but I thought it would be nice to see her even if it's not at the shower.

Since I know a lot of you like to see pictures of what I eat, here's a picture of the vegetarian chili we made for the novice crew team dinner:


So things have been busy. But now it's time for me to go to practice, so I guess I'll have to wrap up this monster post. I'll try to post more frequently, but no guarantees. Check back every once in a while, though!

Happy Spring!